Darkest Heart (19 page)
"Have you succeeded?"
"I'm getting better. But I still have my bad nights. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching myself from a great distance, as if everything I say or do is happening to someone else. Other times it feels like I've been
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) dropped down a mineshaft. I can't see, hear or feel anything but the darkness surrounding me. I tear at it and rage against it, just to make sure I'm still there. Then there's the times when everything in the world is going on all at once inside my mind: babies crying, women screaming, men cursing. It's like having a short-wave radio in your head that you can't turn off; all you can do is adjust the volume up or down.
When it's real bad, everything I look at, every sound I hear, every thought that churns inside my head hurts like hell. If it gets too loud, the only way I can have some bloody peace and quiet is to kill every living thing within striking distance."
"Jesus..." Estes' face contorted in genuine pity. "I had no idea..."
"But, you want to know why it hurts so much? Because I haven't surrendered yet. No matter how good succumbing to the darkness might feel - and it does feel good, that's the terrible thing about it - I refuse to give in. Still, every so often I weaken and allow the Other to escape. That's why I know how good it feels to surrender in the first place.
"Giving in to the Other is better than sex, better than drugs, better than liquor - because it makes the pain stop. But every time I give in, I lose a little bit more of my self, my humanity, if you will, to the vampire inside me. You see, I died on the operating table. Just a little bit, mind you - only for a minute or so. But when I died, I became a bridge between the land of the living and that of the dead. The Other is mine, yet not of me. We're like Siamese twins joined at the medulla oblongata. It roams at will inside my mind, like a wild animal pacing its cage. It's always with me, no matter what."
"Is it with you now?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it wants?"
"Yes," she replied matter-of-factly. "It wants to kill you."
Estes nodded his understanding. There was no fear in his eyes. "Is there any way of getting rid of it?"
Sonja shrugged her shoulders. "How can I escape when there is no place to run from? When my rage overwhelms me, it's like the whole world is bathed in blood and fire. Sometime I know what's going on but am unable to stop it, as if I'm riding in the backseat of a car, unable to grab the wheel. But most of the time I black out, like a drunk on a bender. I never know what it's done... what I've done... until I come back to my senses. But I do know the fucker likes to hurt people who are close to me, and because of that, I'm dangerous to be around. I've learned to keep my contact with others to a bare minimum."
"What about, you know, blood?" Estes asked, his cheeks burning as if he'd just questioned her about her sex life.
"I feed myself with black market plasma. The only time I allow myself a fresh drink is in self-defense, if you will."
"What does it taste like?" There was an excited tremor in the back of his voice Sonja decided to ignore.
"It tastes like blood. But I will admit there is a difference between fresh and bagged. The bagged stuff is cold and stale. The hot red straight from the vein is fresh, vivid, and alive. And it's good - no, what am I saying? It's fucking great! In that regard, I'm no different from any of the suckers I hunt. Believe me, no junkie has hurt for a fix the way a vampire lusts for fresh blood.
"Blood enables vampires to ignore the pain of being an unnatural thing in a natural world, and they will do whatever it takes to sate their need; whether it means luring their grieving widow into a blizzard, snatching a baby from a stroller, or trawling for johns in subway stations. But no matter how much they feed, it's never enough. That's what makes the bloodlust so terrible. It isn't a hunger for food, but for something else: something that isn't there and never can truly be replaced. Where I'm different from the others is that there's one other thing that feels as good as blood - and that's killing vampires."
* * * *
"Excuse me - sir?"
Frank glanced up from his copy of GQ at the attractive, dark-haired young woman standing on the other side of the reception desk.
"Yes, ma'am?" he said, automatically. "May I help you?" As he got to his feet, he couldn't help noticing that the woman was very pregnant, her belly riding low on her hips.
"I need the room number of a guest who is staying here. His name is Estes."
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) Frank frowned. Someone had called ten minutes before, asking whether or not there was a guest by that name registered at the hotel. When he offered to put the call through to the room, the caller had hung up without another word. However, Frank distinctly remembered the caller as being male.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're not allowed to give out the room numbers of our guests."
"But he's my husband," the pregnant woman said quickly, a look of distress crossing her face.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but I still can't help you. I can place a call to his room, though, and he can tell you his room number..." He pushed the house phone resting atop the desk towards her.
The pregnant woman laced her hands protectively across her belly and grimaced as if she was going into labor on the spot. "No, you don't understand. He - he's here with another woman. He promised me he wouldn't see her again. He promised on the life of our baby." Her voice cracked and she began to cry, her belly trembling like a bowl of Jell-O with each sob.
Frank cringed. He hadn't felt this guilty since he'd accidentally backed over the neighbor's cat with his Toyota.
"Ma'am... please don't cry. Please..." He sighed and rolled his eyes in surrender as her slender shoulders began to shake even harder. "Okay! Okay! I'll check the register." He turned to the computer and tapped on the keys. Within a half-second, the name and room number of Jack Estes flashed onto the screen. "Mr.
Estes is in Suite 1432. But, please, don't tell anyone I told you. It would mean my job."
The woman he assumed to be Mrs. Estes dried her tears and favored him with a wan smile. "Thank you, sir. And my child thanks you, too."
Frank's gaze inadvertently dropped to the woman's midsection. And for the briefest second he could have sworn the child inside her had maneuvered itself so it could press its ear against the inside of her stomach.
"You know, Sonja...You're the only person I've ever met who understands," Estes motioned with one hand to include not just the room and its furnishings, but the world itself. "You see what I see. You see even more than I do. You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"
"Just a little," she said with a shrug. "But not in a bad way."
"When I first came to my senses, back at the Institute ... Dr. Morrissey was my lifeline. He was my father and my mother rolled into one, you know? He was the man who unlocked my mind and set me free. I thought I could tell him everything. But when I talked about Blackheart, he didn't believe me. Oh, he said he believed I believed I was telling the truth. But he didn't believe. He kept insisting I was creating false memories to hide the truth from myself. He said I created Blackheart to take my father's place.
"When I insisted I was the one who was right and he was wrong, that I wasn't lying to myself or anyone else, Dr. Morrissey's attitude toward me changed. When he scheduled me for electroshock, that's when I discovered I was truly on my own.
"Up until the day they wheeled me into the electrotherapy room and stuck that rubber stopper in my mouth, I still trusted others as a child does. But my ability to trust was burned out of me with the first surge of electricity.
"It was a bitter lesson, but I quickly learned that no one was going to believe me, no one was going to help me, and no one was going to plead my case. If my family was to be avenged, it would have to be by my hand, and no other's. From then on I learned to hide what I really thought and lie to others about what I knew to be true.
"I was robbed of everything - my parents, my childhood, my place in the world. I could never be like the people I see on the streets, the ones who are happy and simply going about their business. I told myself that I didn't miss those things, because I had never known them. But that's not true. Maybe some needs must be satisfied if we are to live as human beings."
His hand dropped onto Sonja's knee, its warmth and weight oddly comforting. She knew she should remove it, but it had been so long since she had last been touched by anyone in something besides anger, she allowed it to stay.
Estes leaned in closer, his breath redolent of alcohol. She had feared this might happen, but now that it had, she was actually relieved. She hated worrying about things that had yet to happen.
"You scare me, Sonja," Estes whispered, his voice as raspy as a file. "I look at you and I see something I should kill. But I can't, because I also see someone who has been where I've been, who has seen what I've seen. I never thought I would ever be able to relate to anyone else, or find anyone capable of understanding what I've gone through - until I met you."
His lips grazed Sonja's cheek, sending an electric shiver down her spine, while his warm, masculine smell
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) generated a pulsing ache between her legs. If Estes noticed how cool her flesh was against his own, he didn't show it. Sonja closed her eyes, trying to block the sight of the carotid artery pulsing inches from her mouth. It would be so easy to pin him to the sofa and sink her fangs into his exposed throat....
As he cupped the pale weight of her right breast in his palm, she gasped aloud, opening wide her mouth.
Her fangs ache to be unsheathed from their hiding place in her gums. The urge to plunge her canines into his throat and make the sweet, hot red that pulsed within his veins her own was unbearable. She quickly turned her head away from his and growled a warning.
Estes made a strangled noise and jumped off the sofa as if it was on fire, Sonja's sunglasses caught in his numbed fingers. Sonja raised a hand to her eyes, shielding them as best she could. Although the only light in the room was from the television, it might as well have been the high beams from a car shining directly in her face. Estes went white around the lips and nearly fell over his own legs as he hurried for the john, a hand clamped over his mouth. The door slammed behind him just as his strangled groans exploded into violent retching. The scene was bad and headed for worse if she stayed around. She snatched her sunglasses from where Estes had dropped them on the floor. She needed to put some distance between them before things got completely out of hand.
As she turned to close the door of the hotel room, she glanced at the television one last time. Parades of clowns were marching by Lon Chaney, each slapping him viciously in turn. The last clown in line snatched the silk heart pinned to Chaney's costume and hurled it to the sawdust of the center ring, then gleefully jumped up and down on it. Although Chaney's painted face was fixed in a rictus of pained hilarity, his eyes shone with tears of madness.
"Idiot," she whispered, to no one who could hear.
It is that time called "morning," even though it seems more like night than day. The streets are deserted, save for the occasional taxi and stretch limo bearing those on their way to all-hours clubs located in Midtown. I walk past the shuttered restaurants and shops lining Peachtree without really seeing them, a lonely figure on foot amongst the towering bank buildings and executive office blocks that loom overhead like black glass monoliths. A carload of inebriated college students speed past, leaning out of the open passenger windows while hooting like baboons.
There's an edge of desperation to these after-hours revelers, as they chase after parties while the city winds down around them like a clockwork toy. In another hour or two the taxis and limousines will glide back to wherever it is they go during the day, to be replaced by boxy vans making dawn deliveries to restaurants and hotels, before the crush of commuter traffic turns the wide, empty boulevards into temporary parking lots.
A limo pulls up to the curb beside me, its sleek surface as shiny as a beetle's carapace. I see myself reflected in silvery glass as impassive and unreadable as my own mirrored gaze. The rear passenger window slides down, revealing an older, heavyset man with a bad comb-over. The tie of his business suit is loose and the collar of his shirt is smeared with lipstick. An attractive young woman with unfocused eyes is seated beside him, smiling vacantly at nothing in particular, CK1 coming off her in waves.
"Hey, baby," the john leers. "Wanna party?"
The john's companion leans across him to address me. "Yeah - y'wanna party, honey?" She takes one look at me and the coked-up smile disappears. I instinctively take a step back from the curb when I realize I've been made. Most humans can't pick up on my vibe, unless they're drunk or messed up on drugs. And the party doll qualifies on both levels. "No, thanks," I reply.
"Your loss, baby," the john says, with a shrug. The window glides back up as the limo pulls away.
I continue walking. I have no destination in mind, merely somewhere I'm headed from. I still haven't decided whether or not I should go back. Part of me wonders whether I did the right thing, walking out like I did. That's probably the one thing humanity fears worse than death: deciding whether to take action or do nothing. So many people spend their lives in perpetual stasis, just so they never have to figure out for themselves what to do - or not do, as the case may be. It's so much easier to allow things to happen to you, rather than take action. I could have fucked Estes; it would have been the easy thing to do. Instead I walked out of the room. But why?
