Divine Madness (16 page)

To this day my university friends have no idea how bloody lucky they were that they found their own way home from that trip. My control wasn’t great around the third day after S.M.’s spinal surgery, and I’m not sure what I would have done if Mamita had not kept me confined and brought me animal blood to drink. As it was, all they got was Montezuma’s revenge and a case of the clap that could be treated with antibiotics.

Eventually I sort of recovered my mind and strength. Dazed and feeling like a pariah, I went back to Edinburgh and, over Cormac’s objections, I started the process of transferring to an American school. Dukie’s father was a real help. I was offered a full scholarship to—should I name the school? Would they be proud of their alumnus? Probably not. I knew that I could not take my disease and soul-shame back to live at home where it would hurt my father every time he looked at me. Besides, the Americans really, really wanted me—and not just because I can count cards and do other numeric tricks.

I’ve done my best through the years to ignore the contagion inside me, but my body doesn’t always see things my way. It goes without saying that I’ve had some holes in my life since then, and sadly none of the usual things can plug them. I can’t get truly drunk or stoned, though I have really, really tried and consumed almost every outlawed substance, natural and man-made. The best I can achieve is a bit of buzz from jimsonweed, perhaps because it grows near Cuatro Cienegas.

As I mentioned, I won’t do relationships, since I tend to have strong sanguinary impulses first thing in the morning. They come with the first erection of the day, and coffee doesn’t help. Also, Mamita has managed to free herself from her poza and occasionally comes to visit, and she never phones ahead so that I can get girlfriends safely away. As with many mothers, she seems to feel that none of these girls are good enough for her son.

I spent some time in therapy, of course, but it didn’t do much to help my violent impulses and dreams. Probably because I had to lie to my therapist—after all, I didn’t want him to think I was insane. Sadly, it turns out that I have more snakes in my brain than Medusa, and some are hydras that multiply when you chop off their heads. You can’t slay them all, not at one hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour, especially when you have a high-level security clearance that’s under constant review. So instead I write novels under a couple of pen names. Paranormal fiction, they call them. Really, they’re more autobiographical. That’s where I exorcise my demons. I don’t think my employers know anything about this. I’ve been at pains to keep the hobby from them. Still, even if they do find out, it won’t be a breach of national security.

So without drugs and relationships—and no urge to play racket ball or golf—that pretty much left work to fill the void. And I was good at that, since I had so much time to devote to it. I did have a problem with blood sweats near the full of the moon. They were annoying and leaked reddish fluid all over my lab coats and scared my colleagues who thought—and they were right—that I have a blood disorder. They’d have preferred it if I left, but thanks to the higher-ups, and to the fact that my routine physicals—always scheduled for the evening—never turned up anything unusual, they couldn’t make me.

But that seems to be over now. I saw this morning through without any urge to rip out someone’s throat, and
my white shirt is still white in spite of the moon being as round as a pie.

Which brings me to Ninon, the midwife—she would hate to be called mother—of my latest rebirth. And anyway, since I turned her, I guess in this analogy she might be considered my daughter. Whatever her relationship to me, she is a complete enigma. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She’s also the scariest. You think I’m kidding? You don’t know her then—though you should by now, if I’ve done my job as a writer.

So, to sum up, my rebirths have changed me. Now I can live for longer, for stronger—like Mamita—and because of Ninon, forever. Probably. Unless this wizard catches up with us.

I’ve heard about this Saint Germain guy from other sources, and I know there has to be more to him than long life and magic tricks. Whatever it is, it’ll be bad. I don’t think Ninon’s trying to gaslight me. If anything, she’s played her fear down. She barely broke a sweat when she was pinned under S.M. and he is the meanest thing I’ve ever encountered. And she’s told me some stuff about this Dark Man—Saint Germain’s father and her own childhood death god—and though my skin was creeping as she described him stripping her and then chaining her down for electrocution, she was utterly calm. So, if this Saint Germain can make her wary, I know we’re in for one hell of ride.

But that’s okay. Maybe it’s leftover buzz from the lightning strike that ended my blood craving, but I feel ready to take on anything. However, if you have a weak stomach, my apologies. Best exit the story now.

For those who like thrill rides, fasten your seatbelts. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re in for a rocky ride.

I have met people who worshipped their broken hearts as a sign that they are superior to others because they possess such great emotion. They feed these hearts with the incense of sorrowful or wrathful thoughts, until this smoke itself becomes an addiction and they have no more reason but only their fear and rage.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

Okay, we now return to our regularly scheduled program.

I felt calm as I waited for Ninon outside her hotel, my anxiety worn off the lining of my mental brake pads that had only barely stopped my earlier panic from roaring across the steep downward grade toward insanity. What can I say? S.M. affects me that way—especially when the bastard is crawling around in my skull, committing acts of vandalism. I knew that I’d have to have some brain repairs, and soon. But for the moment I was enjoying the absence of fear and the floating feeling that followed my death by electrocution. As I said, the only substance that can still get me high is jimsonweed, and for it to have any effect I have to smoke a joint about the size of a
grande
burrito, or eat an entire pan of brownies so fibrous they also serve as a colon cleanser. I don’t do that often. This buzz was a rare treat.

The Hotel Ybarra had been invaded by tourists while we were out dying. People were in a party mood, but the Cheers bar it still was not, so I listened carefully to the gossip while I waited for Ninon to pack up her cat. It was
easy; my hearing had always been good, but now it was exquisite.

There were a few tourists come to see the wonders of the pozas and a couple of boutique owners—women in their forties, I would estimate—looking for inexpensive imports that were colorful and yet still cheap. They had had a couple of margaritas to go with their new Vulcan-style face-lifts, and it was clear their credit cards were set to stun. They were going home with new stock, or they’d die trying. There was also another Anglo, a woman recently betrayed by her “rat bastard” husband. She had no credit limit and was in monetary kill mode. Her husband—rat bastard or otherwise—should be grateful that she discovered his infidelity while in Mexico. The local jewelry was fairly inexpensive, and even if she bought out the town, this would be marginally less expensive than paying for a divorce in California where they lived and had liberal community property laws.

The odd weather was mentioned in passing, but of vampires or death gods, there wasn’t a single murmur. That was good. I hoped Mamita had the sense to get out of town for a while. I knew that we weren’t being offered a clean escape route, a get-out-of-jail-free card from the mess we were in with either S.M. or this Saint Germain, but what we had been presented with was a quick getaway and a small detour from a really bad reality, a back road that might allow us to find a more advantageous position from which to fight the next battle. Clearly research and strategic planning were in order, and we’d do that better away from here.

I thought it a good thing that I’d brought my portable computer along. Aside from being able to write, I figured that the internet might actually be of some help. I hadn’t had the thing open in days. Frankly, I’d been avoiding e-mail, though the town had an internet café I could have used. Partly, the avoidance was the fact that my mail is almost always disappointing. My colleagues aren’t the kind
to write casually—too many security hoops to jump through even on a home computer—and just how much does any man’s penis need to lengthen, strengthen, be pumped up, or implanted? And, frankly, if you’ve seen one lesbian coed slumber party, you’ve seen them all. Of course, that wasn’t the main reason I had been avoiding my in-box.

I was also dreading some bad news. I knew that my career at NASA was probably over. I’d been granted leave to visit Cormac and then, after the funeral, more time off to wrap up family affairs in Mexico. But vacation was long over and I hadn’t reported in. So if not at that moment, then the next time they performed a routine security check on their AWOL employee, my termination would be carried through. I would possibly be declared persona non grata and probably have my U.S. visa revoked. They might do worse if they found out what I’d been doing while on vacation—like consorting with vampires and planning the killing of a vampire god. My explanation that these creatures were not really alive, or even persons, probably wouldn’t help much either. And I am sure that an appeal for sympathy for my own vampirism would only get me labeled a security risk of the highest order. If they didn’t believe me. If they did believe—I’d probably end up as an experiment in some bioweapons research unit. Of the two, being thought insane was better.

There was no way that I was going back to NASA. I couldn’t simply disappear, though. They would investigate a suspicious disappearance very quickly and would soon discover that while my home computer system was hooked in to a Ma Bell approved outlet with all the security devices that allowed my employers to spy on me, I also had a second line that I used for my portable, and it was on this that I did some very interesting research as well as play a lot of Sudoku with a program I had written to generate puzzles. Acquiring the line had been fairly easy. I had borrowed it from my neighbors when they forgot
to disconnect the landline when their daughter went off to college four years ago. It had taken some creative routing and a few lies to a pair of the most trusting people on the planet, but to this day my neighbors have been grateful for my “help” when they had a mysterious problem with their phones that the telephone company refused to fix free of charge because they said the fault was with the wiring in their home—which was utterly true. I had made sure that this was the case. I pay the monthly fees for this phone online from a blind account and since the neighbors never receive a bill for that number, no one is the wiser about my rerouting.

At least, not yet. That would change though, and then I’d have all kinds of three-letter agencies looking for me.

What I should do is resign—take early retirement. But not yet. Ninon and I might need access to some special databases and machines that could really crunch numbers, and they might not take official action to shut me out right away. That meant I had better check in—soon—and perhaps spin some yarn about a case of amoebic dysentery that had laid me up in village with downed phone lines.

Ninon stuck her head out of the bedroom window, waved at me once and then disappeared back inside. Then I caught a glimpse of what looked like Mamita. I didn’t call out to her speeding shadow. If S.M. was after her, I didn’t want to cause any delays.

Ninon emerged a few minutes later, her arms full of cat carrier, looking a bit unsteady and very angry. Her luggage was already in the Jeep. I’d checked. She had packed it before our meeting, knowing that whatever happened, she wouldn’t be sticking around for a postmortem of the day.

But you’ve heard this part before. I don’t want to bore you with too much redundant detail. I’ll have to watch that, since I’ve slipped off the yoke of third-person POV discipline—which says as a popular novelist I have to keep internal monologue and descriptive narrative to a
minimum, and not go on and on about things that are important only to me. The fact that it’s a real story—and
my
story—is no excuse for being tedious. Still, I have to tell you that even annoyed, electrocuted, and concussed, Ninon looked like every man’s ideal sex toy, the ultimate accessory for any heterosexual male’s private fantasy—even for me. Especially me.

Ninon is one of the few women I’ve ever met who actually understands male lust and who would be completely aware that every man who looks at her would be thinking about doing some version of the dirty boogie with her. For some of those men in the bar, they would be imagining her looking up at them through her eyelashes and saying:
Spank me, Daddy
. Or maybe they’d like her in six-inch heels and nothing else, saying:
Suck on my toes—I know you want to.
Harmless stuff, these fantasies mostly, though most women would find it freaky to know men think of them this way all the time. Yes, we strip you and dialogue you with brainless ego-boosting patter, and have sex with you in all kinds of bad ways.

For me, it’s darker stuff than bondage and unnatural sex acts. And she had looked up at me and into my soul, and then given me permission to do the really bad thing I’d been longing to do ever since S.M. had changed me. And just as I had feared, a part of me had enjoyed violating her, sucking her blood, pouring my poison into her body.

Does the fact that she knew my desire and gave me permission make it okay?

Ah! My head was indeed full of snakes that night—larvae implanted in my brain that were finally hatching out into wriggling nightmares of bloody violence. They still wiggle sometimes. I’ve got to wonder if writing all this down is exorcising my demon maggots, or keeping them alive so I can go on shadowboxing with that powerful thing inside me that I both despise and yet cherish because it is now part of me.

Perhaps that’s why I always write at night. The shadows
are stronger then, words more potent and, being my ultimate opiate, they keep me from the temptation to examine my own life, from turning to see if that bitch, Fate, is gaining ground on me, stripping me of my last shreds of humanity. In the dark, I can’t see I’m a monster.

Ugly, isn’t it? But I don’t lie to myself—and won’t lie to you. Much. Just enough to keep Ninon and I safe because, gentle reader, you aren’t the only one who follows my work, and others are likely trying to piece together the facts into a map that leads directly to their own gain, usually at our expense. So I shade the truth, practice a bit of misdirection, lie about small things—but not the essentials. Truth is a bitter drink, a vintage not much appreciated by the sinful, maybe because it doesn’t go well with fish or steak or brimstone. Still, I uncork the bottle from time to time and take a sip for medicinal purposes. It clears the mind. And on the day that it no longer tastes bitter, I will know I’m not human anymore.

Reason says I should be bitter about this, but I’m not. And that’s partly Ninon’s doing. I’d offered some of this truth to Ninon, and she had accepted, hardly grimacing at any of what had to be unwelcome revelations. She’s kind that way. I didn’t like giving her poison, but she had to know what I am and what she might become. Some things you just don’t keep secret.

But I’m digressing again.

“Hello, beautiful.” Ninon managed a brittle but still lovely smile. She reached over and twitched my shirt collar into place. It was a casual act, a small maintenance that women do for people they care about—children, lovers, spouses—and I found myself smiling again because I doubted very much that she saw me as a child. Ninon thinks I’m beautiful, in a fallen-angel sort of way. Most people—if they really believe in Hell—find Lucifer scary, but as I’ve mentioned before, very little seems to frighten this woman. Including occasional whiffs of brimstone, I guess.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked as she closed the passenger door on the Jeep. The upholstery was bald, like a dog with mange. It didn’t suit her at all, but the cat seemed to like it well enough as a scratching post.

I looked into the back of her Jeep at the lumpy tarp. I had lifted a corner earlier and had to smile. Rope, flashlights, duct tape, an axe, a toolbox, work gloves, boxes of ammunition, cans of gasoline, and a camera bag. Great minds thought alike, though I had substituted a first aid kit for a camera, and I liked a shotgun with lots and lots of shells.

“Of course.” This answer probably wouldn’t pass a polygraph, but the answer was as nonnegotiable as junk bonds after the dot-com bust. What choice did we have? We had to be ready. “Do you want to lead, or shall I?” she asked.

“Whither thou goest,” I answered. I wanted to touch her, but she looked pale and focused on what was to come. I wasn’t sure what she was seeing, and didn’t really want to know. I think we had both had enough togetherness for the time being. Neither of us was used to it, and we would need practice at sharing our thoughts and space.

“I goest north.” She jerked her head. North was an interesting choice. Wouldn’t be much there for long stretches at a time, but I didn’t question her inner compass. She seemed to have a game plan, which was more than I had.

“North it is,” I said, opening the door to the Jeep and helping her inside. As my father Cormac had been fond of saying, manners cost nothing, and Ninon, for all that she appeared very modern, would have come from a world where manners were valued. I wanted to please her. It was my way of apologizing for being a blood-sucking bastard who had enjoyed making her a vampire.

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

—
T. S. Eliot

The aim of common sense is to learn to be happy, and to do that it is only necessary to look at everything with an unbiased mind…A man’s intelligence is measured by his happiness.

—
From a letter by Ninon de Lenclos

He is a worthy gentleman, but he never gave me the chance to love him…Women are never truly at ease except with those who take emotional chances with them.

—
Ninon de Lenclos about the Duc de Choiseul

What does Ninon say about this?

—
Louis XIV