In the Blood (21 page)

Sonja knelt before Anise and stared into the other woman's face. Fell tensed but
Anise did not flinch or draw away when Sonja touched her chin.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to Anise, "but it's time for childhood to end."

Sonja's eyelids twitched as she downloaded into Anise's mind. The pregnant woman
jumped as if she'd received a jolt of electricity, her eyes rolling back in their sockets.

Her jaws snapped shut, an exposed fang slicing open her lower lip. The biggest
problem with physically kick-starting another person's memory was the risk of
triggering defensive shock. If Sonja wasn't careful, Anise might retreat into
catatonia rather than deal with her memories.

"Anise! What did you do to her?"

Sonja was conscious of Fell's hands on her person, but she was too busy to shrug
him off. All she needed was to give a little
push...

You're no longer Sonja. Now you're Anise. Only you're not really Anise. You're

Lakisha Washington. You grew up on Fourteenth Street in East Oakland, a part of the

city so vile, dirty, violent and hopeless that the police consider it an unofficial free-fire

zone. Your mother is a junkie who sells herself for drugs. Your father is a nameless

white man who happened to have the right amount of money and lust. Your mother

leaves you alone in your crib, screaming and squalling in fear of the rats, while she

goes to meet her dealer. The neighbors break in and rescue you after six hours.

You live with your grandmother after that. Your mother fades from your life, until her

death from an overdose on your seventh birthday is meaningless- the death of a casual

friend of your grandmother.

Despite the odds you thrive in an environment as hostile to innocence as the surface of

Venus. You do well in school, striving to prove yourself, better yourself. You want to

escape so bad you can taste it. You manage to avoid the other pitfalls that ensnare

many of your friends and classmates: drugs, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, dropping

out. You want more of life than drudging for minimum wage at the corner Kentucky

Fried Chicken.

Your determination to succeed inspires respect and contempt among those trapped.

You get a reputation for being a "nice" girl, one that's going places, but too smart and

self-possessed to attract the opposite sex. You graduate valedictorian with an out-of-

state scholarship. For the first time in your young life you escape the bone-grinding;

soul-numbing poverty you were born in but never succumbed to.

Your grandmother dies in a charity hospital during your sophomore year. Despite your

grief you're relieved; it means you'll never have to go back to Fourteenth Street ever

again. You work as hard in college as you did in high school, landing a degree in

Business. To your delight you're recruited by a prestigious financial firm stationed in

San Francisco. You return to California, but this time you're on the right side of the

Bay. You have a nice apartment in the Twin Peaks district, overlooking the city. From

your balcony you can glimpse the place of your birth, on those rare occasions you look

in its direction. Separated from you by time and a large body of water, it looks

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

deceptively serene. But never inviting.

You are happy. Everything you've set out to accomplish, to prove to yourself and

others, has been attained beyond your wildest dreams. You 're respected at work,

you're making more money than most Americans your age, white or black, male or

female, and everything is looking up.

No one knows you're the bastard daughter of a whore who died with a syringe angling

from her arm, stuffed between a couple of garbage cans like a broken doll for the trash

collectors to find. There's no reason for them to know, and no way they ever will.

That's when the dreams start. The bad ones. About the things in the dark with the red

glowing eyes and the razor-sharp teeth, watching you as you lie helpless in your bed.

The dreams get so bad they intrude on your work. So you do what any other self-

respecting young urban professional would do: You get yourself a shrink.

Dr. Joad Caron comes very highly recommended. His clients number among San

Francisco's political and financial elite. He is handsome, sympathetic, understanding.

The kind of psychiatrist a young woman can open her soul to without fear. Dr. Caron

tells you there is nothing wrong with turning your back on the squalor and

unhappiness of your past, that you need not feel guilty because you are now a part of

the system that exploits your friends in the old neighborhood. You owe nothing to

anyone, except yourself. Soon the dreams go away. But your dependence on Dr. Caron

grows. Your will seems to dissolve when you are in his presence. But this does not

frighten or worry you. Instead, you feel at peace.

One day Dr. Caron invites you to a weekend retreat hosted at his "place in the Valley.

" You are one of ten patients, five women and five men, who
find themselves in

Caron's strange, rambling mansion. All of you are single and live alone. All of you are

either orphaned or estranged from your parents. All of you are people no one will miss.

But you don't know that until the experiments begin.

Dr. Joad introduces a form of drug therapy, created by himself and a quiet, moon-

faced man known as Dr. Howell. Each participant is given various dosages, injected

intravenously. Dr. Caron mutters something about finding a "worthy vessel. " Then

all hell breaks loose.

Three subjects die of convulsions within minutes of injection. Two suffer massive

coronaries. Another two blind themselves by plunging their thumbs into their eyes.

One patient, screaming like a wounded animal, leaps onto the blinded subjects and

tears at them with his bare teeth. You do none of these things
-
you go to sleep. A long,

long sleep filled with dreams of a sterile environment full of hypodermic syringes and

intravenous drips.

And when you awake, you are no longer Lakisha Washington. You are Anise, because

your Father tells you that is your name. Which is as it should be. And your Father,

knowing you are lonely and need companionship, gives you a mate: Fell. He is

beautiful and you love him, as your Father commands. Which is as it should be.

"Damn you, get your hands off her!"

Fell's fist smashed into Sonja's face, knocking her away from Anise and sending her
glasses flying across the room. Sonja lay dazed on the floor, blood seeping from her
broken nose, as Lakisha/Anise's imposed persona receded and her own identity
reasserted itself.

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)
Anise sat staring at her hands as if she'd never seen them before. She trembled like a
malaria victim and would not look at Fell.

"What did you do to her?" Fell delivered a vicious kick to Sonja's side. She took the
blow without complaint. She deserved the pain. "Answer me! What did you do
?"

He cocked his leg for another kick.

"Leave her alone, Fell."

"My glasses-"

Anise nodded. "Help her find her glasses, Fell."

"Anise, what's gotten into you?"

"Do as I
say,
Fell!" The acid in her voice caused him to flinch. He did as he was told,
retrieving Sonja's mirrored sunglasses.

Sonja sat huddled on the floor, her upper lip smeared with blood. As Fell neared,
she lifted her head and flowered at him. Fell's stomach knotted at the sight of her
raw eyes and overlarge pupils.

"Get used to it, kid," she hissed, snatching the glasses out of his hand. Fell
wondered what she meant.

"I don't know if I should thank you for what you did, but I remember now." Anise
sat with her hands resting on the swell of her stomach, her gaze fixed on Sonja. "I
remember it all."

"Self-knowledge is the hardest. I know what you must be feeling... thinking."

Anise nodded slowly. "It wasn't all one way. I picked up some of your memories as
well."

"What are you two talking about, Anise?"

The pregnant woman leaned forward, ignoring her mate.

"What does he want from us?"

Sonja pointed at the woman's midsection.

"The baby?"

"That's more than just a baby you're carrying around, honey. It's his ticket to
godhood."

Anise frowned. "I don't understand-"

"Whenever vampires attack humans, they infect them with a kind of virus. The
virus generates drastic mutations in the human's biochemistry and physical
structure. It reshapes half of the host's chromosomes so they resemble the vampire's.

It's not unlike human conception, except that the fetus is an adult corpse. Because
part of the new vampire is the same as its Maker, there is a certain... biological
fealty. Obedience to the Maker is in the blood."

Anise slumped back in the chair. "Then it's hopeless to try and fight him."

"No, it's not! Morgan can only dominate you if you don't fight him! How do you
think Morgan came into being? He was Made, just like I described. But he had the
force of will to break away from his Maker, to assert his personality over that of his
creator. You can do it too, Anise. For the sake of your child, you've got to." Sonja
was not a hundred percent certain what she'd just said was true, but she was
unwilling to accept biochemical predestination, whether natural or supernatural.

"It all keeps coming back to my baby. Why?"

"Vampires like Morgan are incapable of live birth. They can't breed true. Most

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)
vampires are severely flawed because... well, they have to use dead meat. Their
brains are screwed to the max. Only a handful are resurrected without some form of
brain damage. It takes a new vampire a long time to develop into something as
powerful as Morgan-decades, possibly centuries. Think what it would mean to
Morgan to have a living vampire, one capable of perfectly replicating itself, bearing

his
chromosomal structure.

"Within the time it takes for a single king vampire to germinate, he'd have an entire
army of obedient myrmidons, each immune to silver and capable of movement
during the day! And not a single one of them possessing bothersome memories of
having once been human. No wonder the renfields hate you. You're threatening to
make them redundant! Morgan's out to make himself a god-emperor, Anise! And
you're providing him with his first high priest."

"Anise, that's bullshit and you know it! Our Father would never do anything like-"

"Shut up, Fell! Just
shut up!"
hissed Anise, baring her fangs. Rebuffed, Fell bit his
lower lip and looked away. Anise returned her attention to Sonja. "What do you
want me to do?"

Sonja surprised herself by saying, "Come with me."

"Leave? You want me to leave?"

"Not leave. Escape!"

"Where could we go?"

"There's a world out there, Anise! I could find somewhere safe for you to have the
baby. If not here, then in Central or South America."

"But Morgan..."

"Let me worry about Morgan, okay? So, what's the verdict? Are you with me?"

"I-yes. I'm with you." With a grunt Anise hoisted herself out of the chair.

"Anise! Darling, what's gotten into you? You've never acted toward me this way
before! What did that crazy woman do to you?"

"She woke me up, Fell! I'm not a sleepwalker anymore. I'm finally doing something
for myself that's my idea!"

"You're not going through with this!" He grabbed her upper arm. "I positively
forbid it!"

Anise jerked her arm free of her husband's grasp. "Back off, asshole!"

Fell looked like a pole-axed young animal, left alive but forever altered. Sonja almost
expected to see him stagger and fall.

"Come on, if we're going to leave, it better be now." Sonja motioned to the secret
doorway she'd entered through.