In the Blood (24 page)

She snapped the baby's neck like a green twig. It didn't even have time to cry. Anise
stared at its tiny, motionless body and ran a trembling hand over its bulging brow.

"Poor little thing. It didn't ask for any of this." She suddenly grimaced and the
mutant baby's corpse slipped from her arms and landed on the floor with a dull
thud.

"Anise, what's wrong?"

"The contractions. They've started again. I-Oh Lord, not again! I can't go through
this again!" Anise grabbed Sonja's shoulder as she pushed, digging her fingernails
deep into the other woman's skin. "Ah! Oh, Jesus! Make it stop!" She drew a shaky
breath through her teeth. "Whatever the first one did trying to get out-it screwed
me up real bad, Sonja! I mean it! I don't know if I can-" A third contraction turned
her words into a swallowed scream.

"Don't worry, Anise. Everything will be all right. I'm not going to let anything
happen to you, understand?" Sonja untangled herself from Anise's grip and
resumed her place at the foot of the bed.

Anise's second child came into the world wrapped in a caul. Sonja split the thick
membrane shrouding the infant, relieved to see what looked to be a normal, human
baby face underneath. She gave its tiny flanks a small pinch and was rewarded with
a healthy, indignant wail. She swiftly severed the umbilical cord and wrapped the
newborn in a clean towel. She smiled and held it out to its mother.

Anise turned her head away, pressing her face into the pillow. "I don't want to see
it."

"It's all right-you can look."

Anise hesitated for a second, then cautiously lifted her head. Sonja was frightened
by how drawn and sick she looked. She peered cautiously at the child wrapped
inside the impromptu swaddling.

It was still as red as a piece of raw meat, but she could tell the child shared her
coloration. It squalled like a Siamese cat in heat and had the face of a miniature
prizefighter.

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"She's
beautiful!"

"Yes, she is, isn't she?" Sonja whispered, placing the tiny bundle in her mother's
arms.

While Anise was preoccupied with the baby, Sonja scooped its dead twin off the
floor and wrapped it in one of the discarded, blood-caked towels. It would have to
be burned later on. It wouldn't do to leave something like that for the housekeeping
staff to find the next day.

Sonja stared absently at the blood smearing her hands, then licked her fingers. She
knew she was pushing her own tolerance dangerously far. She needed to feed, and
her surroundings weren't helping much. The room reeked of blood.

Palmer limped out of the bathroom. He'd ripped open his right pants leg from the
knee down and wrapped his calf with strips torn from his undershirt.

"How's the leg?"

"It's been better."

Sonja found herself staring at the crimson seeping through the makeshift bandage
and quickly looked away.

What was I thinking? This is a man I think I might actually love! And I was imagining

what his blood would taste like! I was actually picturing slicing open the artery in his

leg and drinking from it! Sick! Sick! Sick! Can't you let me have any happiness ?

The Other laughed, but no one else heard.

"Sonja?" Anise was looking at her funny.

"Uh, sorry. I guess I was busy-thinking."

"I said, how do you like Lethe?"

"Lethe?"

"I think that's what I'll name her. I like the way it sounds, don't you? It's from
Baudelaire. A name is the least I can give her before I die."

"Anise, listen to me. I know you've experienced massive internal damage, but you're
not going to die. I know this, because I've suffered a hell of a lot worse in the past.

You'll regenerate, but you're gonna need blood. If you don't feed soon, your body
will start cannibalizing itself. Do you know what that means?"

"You're saying I'm going to have to kill someone if I want to stay alive."

"Basically."

"I can't do that, Sonja! I don't care what that bastard did to me-I refuse to be a
monster."

"Look, you won't have to do anything. I'll hunt for you. There are plenty of
transients, people no one will ever miss. Drunks, hitchhikers, bums..."

"My God, Sonja! You sound just like him!"

"I'm not going to let you die!" Sonja was surprised she was shouting. "I won't let
you!"

Lethe started at the noise and began to cry again. Anise did not look at Sonja as she
spoke, but instead addressed her words to the newborn baby at her side, smoothing
the few wispy strands of hair on her daughter's brow.

"I can't do it, Sonja. I can't take the step beyond. I don't have your... courage. I had
enough to break free of Morgan, but not enough to deal with continuing my life by
killing others. Not that I'm condemning you for it. But I can't live knowing I'm

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responsible for another human's death, no matter how worthless that person may
be."

"That's what you're saying now! I felt the same way, myself, years ago. But later,
once you get used to it, you'll see things differently."

"I know. That's what I'm afraid of! Please, Sonja. Don't try to talk me out of this. I
know what I'm doing."

"But what about Lethe? What about her?"

Anise smiled sadly and kissed her daughter on the forehead. "I hope she can forgive
me for not being there while she grows up. But if there's one thing she needs more
than anything else right now, it's protection. I promised myself no child of mine
would be born a slave, and I mean to keep that promise! That's why I'm trusting
you to protect her, Sonja. You and poor Mr. Palmer over there."

"Anise, I'm the last person on earth you should put your faith in. I'm a murderer
and worse a hundred times over. Every day I fight to keep the demon inside me
from taking over, and a lot of times I can't! You might as well hire Typhoid Mary as
a baby sitter!"

"You judge yourself too harshly, sister. Here, take the child. Leave now. Morgan
will be here soon. I can feel him calling to me."

Sonja cocked her head as if listening to distant music. She could feel him too. She
could take him. She was sure of it. But she was equally sure Morgan had at least two
renfields with him. What about Palmer? He could handle himself in a firefight, but
what about his ability to handle a combined psychic assault? And should either one
of them fall to Morgan's forces, where would that leave Anise's baby? She couldn't
protect them both at the same time.

Sonja bent and kissed her on the cheek.

"Good-bye, Anise."

"My name is Lakisha. Anise was just a dream. And not even mine."

"You better give me the baby now."

Anise hesitated for a moment, staring at her daughter as if committing to memory
every detail of her face. She suddenly closed her eyes and thrust the infant away
from her. "Here! Take her! Take her before I change my mind!"

"Is there anything you want before we go?"

"Leave me the gun."

Palmer looked sharply at Sonja.

"Give it to her."

Lakisha smiled weakly as she accepted the .38. It wasn't much of a tradeoff, her
child for the gun, but it would do.

Sonja paused on the threshold, cradling Lethe against her worn leather jacket.

"Look after my baby, Sonja."

"Like she was my own."

16

"There's the car, milord. She must be inside the motel room," observed the
chauffeur.

"A brilliant deduction, as usual, Renfield," Morgan sighed from the back seat of the

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Rolls.

He peered over the top of his tinted aviator glasses at the Ferrari parked outside
Room 20 of the Pink Motel. The automobile was his, although the paperwork and
owner's registration in the glove compartment claimed that the legal owner was one
Dr. Joad Caron. The vanity plates agreed. But since Morgan was also the good
doctor, whatever belonged to Joad Caron belonged to him. Including his patients.

Morgan glanced at the human seated beside him. The renfield was an ethnic
Chinese whose ancestors had served as the imperial court's seers for six generations.

They had deliberately interbred, cultivating some of the finest human psionic talents
Morgan had run across in his travels. What was equally impressive was the line's
reputation for relative sanity and stability, something rare among the more powerful
wild talents. Morgan acknowledged his servant's special status by addressing him as
something beside the generic "renfield."

"Wretched Fly. Scan."

The sensitive nodded silently, tilting his head to one side, like a robin listening for
worms.

"She's there. Alone."

Morgan scowled. "Are you sure? Not that I doubt your abilities, my friend. But I
don't like to be caught unawares. Something our mischievous Ms. Blue seems to be
quite adept at."

"She is alone. And in pain."

Morgan weighed the information carefully. It was possible Anise's would-be savior
had abandoned her after all, although Morgan was curious as to why his enemy
would leave the breeder alive.

Fell had informed him of how Anise had babbled on about "free will" and "the
right to choose" before beaning him with the ash shovel. The speed and ardor of
Anise's conversion bothered Morgan. He'd picked her as a breeder because of her
keen psychological need to be assimilated by the dominant class structure. His
programming should have held. That this rogue could have penetrated his defenses
and undone so much work in so short a period of time troubled him. That his enemy
had claimed to be one of his own by-blows disturbed Morgan even more.

Over the years there had been rumors circulating among the Nobility of a strange
creature stalking various revenants, vampires and their attendant renfields. A
predator that preyed on predators. The stories told by the broodmasters credited
the maverick Pretender with immense strength, the ability to walk in daylight and
an unheard-of immunity to silver.

Some thought their antagonist the product of human technology, created to destroy
the Pretender race. Morgan imagined the stories to be the result of a group of
pathetic, senile ancients made paranoid by centuries of intrigue and counterplots.

Morgan had been amused by their need to create a bogeyman.

Still, it had given him the idea to create his own race of hybrid vampires. With his
specially bred
homo desmodus
under his control, he would soon have the likes of
Baron Luxor and Marchessa Nuit kowtowing before him, pledging fealty for all
eternity. Or however long Morgan saw fit for them to continue.

But now his dreams of glory were collapsing, undermined by a creature he'd

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imagined mythical. Morgan savored irony, but not at his own expense.

"Signal the others," he said, straightening the cuffs of his Saville Row silk suit.

Wretched Fly nodded, silently relaying his master's commands to the occupants of
the second car.

The doors of the accompanying Mercedes popped open and two figures climbed out.

One was a renfield. The other had once been a particularly obnoxious insurance
salesman who had tried to pressure what he thought was Dr. Caron into buying a
policy. Now his body housed a fire elemental. The renfield gave the pyrotic a wide
berth, wary of the fierce heat it radiated.

Morgan climbed out of the Rolls, followed closely by Wretched Fly. The gravel
crunched under his handmade Italian shoes as he crossed the parking lot to Room
20. The door was unlocked. Not that it mattered.

Anise lay curled atop sheets befouled with blood and the fluids of childbirth. Her
pallor was grayish and her eyes sunken in their orbits. She clutched a bloodstained
bundle to her breast. She cringed at the sight of Morgan standing in the doorway,
flanked by his most trusted-and powerful-renfields.

"You disappoint me, my child."

She closed her eyes, trying to subvert the conditioned responses his physical
presence triggered in her. But simply shutting off the visual cues wasn't enough. He
was all over her-in her mind, in her nostrils, in her taste buds. He was everywhere
and everything. He was unavoidable and undeniable.

"I'm not your child!" She tried to make her voice hard, but the words came out
sounding more petulant than angry.