In the Blood (10 page)

With its cheap prices, slovenly service and haphazard attitude toward hygiene, it
was obvious that the Monastery did not cater to the hordes of Visa-packing tourists
the Quarter thrived on. A prostitute sat at the bar, sipping a sloe gin fizz while the
bartender cleaned a highball glass with a grimy rag. Both watched Palmer and
Sonja Blue intently as they entered.

"What if the guy you're looking for isn't here?" Palmer whispered hopefully.

"He's here, all right. He's
always
here."

Sonja's connection was seated in the back booth, where the shadows were the
deepest. Sonja's lips curled into a thin, cold smile. "Hello, Malfeis."

The demon returned her smile, licking his lips with a forked tongue. "Ah, Sonja!

Please, call me Mai! There is no need to stand on formalities."

Palmer frowned. Whatever he'd been expecting, it definitely wasn't a teenaged boy
dressed in faded denims and a
Surf or Die
T-shirt. A skateboard, its belly painted to
depict an eyeball wreathed in Day-Glo flames, leaned against the converted pew.

"Kid, are you old enough to be in this place?"

Malfeis lifted an upswept eyebrow in amusement. "Who's the renfield, Sonja?"

"My name's
not
Renfield." Palmer fought the urge to grab the snot-nosed little
skatepunk by his rat-tail. "What'd you mean by that?"

Sonja waved Palmer silent. "I'll explain later. After I get through with business.

Wait for me at the bar."

"But-"

"I
said
wait at the bar." Her voice was as hard and cold as steel, and as unyielding.

She waited until Palmer left before sliding into the booth.

"Quite a change from the last time, Mai." Six months ago Malfeis had worn the
body of a young black male wreathed in coils of gold chain.

The demon shrugged, smiling slyly. "I like to keep up to date. I've always been
something of a fashion plate. So, what brings you back into my clutches, sweet
thing?"

"I think you know that already."

"Do I?"

"Don't play cute with me, Mai. I don't have the time or the patience right now. I
need to know what Pangloss has up his sleeve." She pulled the letter Palmer had
delivered to her out of her jacket, sliding it across the table.

Mai tapped the folded paper with an overly long fingernail and grunted. "Easy

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enough. What's in it for me?"

Sonja produced a black ceramic vessel the size of an unguent jar from her pocket
and held it up so the demon could get a good look.

"Got it in from Katmandu just last week. The powdered skull of a man who killed
six Tibetan holy men, then murdered and raped three missionaries. It's good shit,
man, as pure as you'll find it."

Mai's catlike eyes filled with a strange fire. His fingers drummed nervously against
the tabletop. "Gimme a taste."

Sonja carefully unscrewed the lid and dispensed a pinch of a fine, chalky yellow
powder into Mai's outstretched palm. The demon daubed a forefinger in the
pulverized skull and popped it his mouth.

"So? What's the verdict?"

Mai nodded, appreciatively. "Yow! Mama, buy me some of that!"

"Deal?"

"Done."

Sonja pushed the jar over to Malfeis's side of the table. The demon brought out a
gold-plated razor blade and a flat piece of volcanic glass, quickly arranging himself a
generous line of powdered skull. Oblivious to his surroundings, Malfeis lowered his
head to the table and inhaled the line with both nostrils, snuffling like a
bloodhound. He jerked his head up when he was finished, blowing out his cheeks
and shaking himself like a winded stallion. His eyes were too big and the pupils
slitted unnaturally, but otherwise he still looked human.

"Cold-blooded! True righteous shit!" He grinned, showing a mouthful of shark
teeth.

"Glad it meets your approval. Now, about Pangloss..."

"No problem!" Mai picked up the letter and tapped one edge between his eyebrows.

His eyes rolled up in their sockets, exposing green-tinged whites. A strange, basso
profundo gargle rumbled from deep inside his narrow, hairless chest, but no one in
the bar seemed to notice. After a second or two Mai reconnected, his eyes dropping
back down like the symbols on a slot machine.

"There's not much available information concerning Pangloss, outside of his recent
attempts to make contact with you. That much seems up front. There does seem to
be a bit of a buzz concerning Morgan, though."

"Really? Were you able to find out what?"

"Sorry, that requires First Hierarchy clearance. I don't have the necessary power to
access that information for you, at least not in detail. I
can
tell that whatever it is
Morgan is doing, it's generating a great deal of speculation among the First and
Second Hierarchies. Whether that means they approve of what he's doing is
impossible to say."

"Don't you have some connections? I thought your uncle was a Second Hierarch."

"Uncle Oeillet? Yeah, but he's not exactly what you'd call a big wheel. I mean, he's
in charge of tempting people to break their vows of poverty, for crying out loud! His
star's been on the decline since the Reformation. In fact, most of the Second
Hierarchs are pretty redundant, since they were originally conscripted to tempt holy
men back during the Dark Ages. Still, a direct hookup with any of them rates a

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blood sacrifice. At least three quarts. I wish I could cut you a better deal on that,
babe, but them's the rules."

Palmer glowered first at the highball in his hand then back at Sonja, still talking
with the fresh-faced punk with the funny-looking eyes. The Black Madonna stared
down at him from her place above the half empty liquor bottles. The Black Baby
Jesus looked like a doll someone had dropped down a coal chute, its chubby uplifted
arms ending in misshapen fists since the fingers had rotted off.

"Hey, mister. You looking for someone?"

It was the prostitute at the end of the bar, the one he'd noticed when they entered.

He shook his head without looking up from his drink. "Thanks, but no thanks."

"Are you sure you aren't looking for someone?"

There was something in her voice that made him look up, and what he saw was
enough to push him to the brink.

He could feel insanity yawning like a snake eager to swallow him whole, right down
to his Shermans and public library card. All he had to do was let go of the bar and
let it suck him deep into its guts, never to be seen or heard from again.

The woman seated at the end of the bar was Loli. And this time he knew he wasn't
dreaming. She smiled seductively and moved closer to him. She smelled of sloe gin
fizzes and something Palmer recognized but could not name. Her fingers were cold
and dry against his exposed flesh, but Palmer was beyond shivering. At her touch,
his penis became erect. It was so hard it hurt, forcing tears from the corners of his
eyes.

"I've been waiting for a man like you," she cooed into his ear. "I've waited such a
long time!"

Palmer wanted to cry out, but his mouth had been sealed from the inside. His dick
throbbed as if someone had slipped a piano wire tourniquet around its base and was
slowly cutting off the circulation.

"Come on, baby. I got a place we can go and be alone." Loli hooked her arm in
Palmer's, pulling him free of the bar. She was at least a head shorter than him, but
she was strong. Too strong. "When we're alone, I'll fuck your brains out!" The way
she laughed made it sound as if the joke was on him.

Palmer didn't want to go with her, but it was as if he was being pulled along by a
wire fastened to the end of his dick. Every time he tried to fight it, the invisible
tourniquet tightened its hold on his member. They were almost out the door before
Palmer felt a second, equally female hand close on his right elbow.

"He's mine, you skaggy hell-bitch!" Sonja Blue yanked Palmer in her direction, but
the succubus still held firmly to his left arm. The demon-whore hissed like a cat,
digging her nails into Palmer's upper arm. He tried to scream, but his mouth was
still pasted shut.

Palmer pictured himself being ripped apart like a wishbone as the vampire and the
succubus fought over him. Then Sonja produced a switchblade and neatly severed
the demon-Loli's hand at the wrist. Momentarily confused by this new development,
Loli's grip on Palmer weakened enough for Sonja to wrench him free. Once away
from the succubus's physical control, his overinflated sex organ rapidly shrank. It

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was the first time in his life he'd been relieved at losing an erection.

He stared as Loli picked up her severed hand and tried to stick it back on. To his
surprise, the graft took.

"Loli... ?" It was the first time he'd had the power to speak since the trouble started.

"She's not Loli, Palmer. Take my hand. See as I see." Before Palmer could protest,
she grabbed his right hand and squeezed.

The thing that had bewitched and tried to kidnap him had three pairs of floppy tits,
arms as long and hairy as an ape's, crooked legs and a six-inch-long sheathed clitoris
dangling between her shanks. Tiny horns grew from the creature's sloping forehead.

The succubus hissed, her lipless mouth hinged like a piranha's. She stepped
forward, growling a challenge to the mirror-eyed intruder that had dared steal her
evening's repast.

"Jamara!"

The voice was as loud as thunder and so deep the speaker sounded as if he was at
the bottom of a well. The succubus cringed, automatically turning her flank in
submission.

Palmer turned and saw the boy called Malfeis rise from his booth in the back. But
now he was no longer a boy. The demon stood well over six feet tall, although the
curvature of his spine made him stoop. The demon was covered in coarse, brick red
hair, like that of an orangutan, except for his twin-pronged penis. His features were
porcine, complete with curving boar's tusks. His feet were cloven.

Malfeis shouldered Sonja and Palmer aside, jabbering in a language that consisted
largely of squeals and grunts. He reached behind Jamara and grabbed the
succubus's tail, twisting it viciously. Jamara yelped and tried to break free of the
demon's grip. Mai propelled the protesting succubus out the door and onto the
street. When Malfeis turned back around he was a skatepunk again.

"I'm sorry about that. New girl. Actually, she's family. I promised one of my sisters
I'd break her in, but I'm afraid it's just not working out."

6

Palmer shifted in his seat and tried to ride out the nicotine fit.

The flight was under six hours and therefore, according to FAA regulations, smoke-free. Palmer could feel the pack of Shermans calling out to him from inside his
breast pocket, nestled against his heart like the picture of a loved one.

Sonja Blue sat beside him, mirrored shades in place, nonchalantly paging through
an in-flight magazine. His companion was an up-to-date vampire-no crates packed
with native earth for her. She believed in traveling first class.

"We should arrive at the airport within the next two hours. Pangloss said he'd have
his car there to meet us. I have no reason not to believe him," she said without
looking up from an article on Fun-Filled Florida Family Vacations.

Palmer nodded without saying anything. Personally, he considered Sonja's decision
to meet with Pangloss something close to suicidal. At first he thought she'd used a
devious form of mind control so he'd agree to come along, like she'd used on the
security guards at the airport. The ones who'd demanded that she take the
switchblade out of her pocket.

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"What switchblade, officers?" she asked, holding up the ornately decorated knife.

Her voice had been steady, without a tremor of fear.

"We're terribly sorry, ma'am. Our mistake. Have a nice flight," the security guards
said, in unison, doing everything but tugging their forelocks as they backed away.

Palmer wanted to believe that his decision to become involved had been shaped by
forces outside himself, that he had no say in what was happening around him, but
that would be lying to himself. Like it or not, he needed her.

Disgruntled by where his thoughts were taking him, Palmer glanced at the night sky
on the other side of the window and immediately wished he hadn't.