In the Blood (34 page)

The Other thought that it would be a really good idea to pluck Morgan's eyes out
and use his head for a bowling ball. Sonja agreed but continued to fight the rage
boiling inside her. She hated the leering monster who'd raped and tortured her so
many years ago-in truth, she'd cultivated that hate in order to face her day-to-day
existence-but this was not the time to indulge her loathing.

Sonja knew the immensity of her hate, knew what it could do once unleashed. She
had sworn she'd never allow herself to lose control again. Not like last year. She
could never forget the lives she'd destroyed and the souls she'd shattered that night.

"Should I say 'so, we meet at last,' and get the cliches out of the way?" suggested
Morgan, his handsome, debonair visage once more securely in place.

"Do you know who lam?" She had to fight to keep the tremor from her voice.

"I know that you call yourself Sonja Blue. Or perhaps you mean, do I recognize
you?" Morgan's lips curled into a cruel smile. "Do you have any idea how many
hapless, silly human girls I have seduced in the last six hundred years, my dear?

And you expect me to remember
one
out of that multitude?"

"My... her name was Denise Thorne. London, 1969."

The vampire nodded, as if this answered something. "Ah, yes! The heiress! You
were actually missed. Careless of me. Even more careless that I didn't make sure you
were truly dead when I disposed of you. I blame the sixties for that. It was such a
happy-go-lucky, irresponsible era! I found it quite contagious. Didn't you?"

"Cut the routine, dead boy! You know why I'm here."

Morgan sighed and studied his fingernails. "I know! I know! You're here to kill me.

How tedious. Tell me, child, what exactly would my demise prove?"

"That I'm not like you."

"Indeed? If you are not like me, how have you survived these past few decades, little
one? How have you kept yourself fed?"

"I-I have my ways."

"Caches of bottled plasma, no doubt. But that is hardly enough, is it? You can't lie
to me, child. I know how bland prepackaged blood can be. Have you killed, my
pet?"

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"I-"

"Answer me true, child."

"Yes."

Morgan smiled a slow, sly smile. Sonja fought the urge to rip it off his face. "How
many have you taken down? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? Thousands?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Ha!" Morgan laughed, the smile widening into a smirk. "And you say you aren't
like me!"

"I am not one of your kind!"

"That is true. You aren't like us. Nor are you, in many ways, like your dear,
departed siblings. If only Fell and Anise had turned out half as well as you. But
perhaps that's what I get for choosing flawed templates. Still, it's a shame to destroy
something so... unique. You remind me of something I once saw in a vision, fifty
years ago-"

"-in a Gestapo torture-house in occupied Amsterdam."

Morgan's look of smug self-assurance faltered. "How do you know of that?"

Sonja smiled mockingly, pleased by the look of confusion on his face. "There are
places where the future and the past blur, provided one has the eyes to see.

The window worked both ways, Morgan. I saw you, dressed in your SS colonel's
uniform. And you saw your death, separated from you by time and space."

He was inside her head, fast as a striking" cobra. Sonja tensed as Morgan's will
crashed against her own, like a wave breaking against a high cliff. As the pressure
inside her skull increased, she was dimly aware of something warm and sticky
flowing from her nostrils. Impressed by her show of strength, Morgan withdrew
with a low, bemused chuckle. He tilted his head to one side, studying her closely
from behind his aviator shades.

"Why are we fighting, child? Is this how father and daughter greet one another?"

Sonja wiped at the blood oozing from her nose and mouth. "You're not my father!"

she spat.

"I made you, child! You are shaped in my image! We are bonded! There is no
denying me! We are much alike, you and I. You have more in common with me than
you ever did with Anise and Fell. They were weak. Flawed. Unworthy vessels. They
could not surrender the illusion of humanity."

He held up his left hand, dragging the nail of his right thumb across his palm. A
black, polluted liquid gushed forth. "Honor thy father, Sonja! Look into yourself
and you'll find me there-it's in the blood!"

She felt it then, the relentless pressure of his will bearing down on her like a leaden
weight. It was as if she'd been suddenly transported to the bottom of the ocean floor.

The temptation to capitulate was intense. It would be so easy to surrender and allow
him to fill the void inside her. She dropped to her knees, her arms wrapped around
her abdomen. Blackish-purple solar systems went nova behind her eyes.

Breathe! Breathe, damn you!
shrieked the Other.

Morgan moved closer, smiling down at her like a punishing parent. "You are
beautiful. I like beautiful things." His handsome, male model features shivered, ran,
turned into a worm-eaten ruin. "You are also very, very dangerous. I like that, too.

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In you I see elements of my younger self-angry, volatile, scheming, defiant. I find
this similarity... arousing." He gestured with one corpselike hand to the knot in his
pants.

"Humans are always prattling on about love. I know nothing of that. I do know of
hunger, need, want. You have awakened a hunger in me, my beauty. The hunger of
a moth for a flame, the mongoose for the cobra. I have spent centuries exploiting the
weaknesses of others, only to discover a frailty in myself. I cannot allow this. It
imperils my continuance. But, still, I can not help but be fascinated-"

The vampire lifted a hand smelling of graveyard mold and touched her cheek. His
skin was dead and cold against her own. Sonja closed her eyes and saw a young girl,
naked and bleeding, struggling to wriggle free of the red-eyed demon pinning her to
the back seat of the car. She heard her screams as he emptied burning semen into
her battered womb. She heard him laugh as the girl's pulse fluttered and dimmed
under his cold, cold hands.

The Other's sibilant voice snarled in her inner ear:

Twenty years! You've been hunting this bastard for twenty yeas, living just to kill
him! To pay him back for what he did to you! And what are you doing? You're
cringing like a damned whipped dog offering up its throat! You came all this way to
die at his hands? Let me out! Let me out, woman, before he kills us all!

"You're trembling..." His voice was a husky whisper, close to her ear. His breath
billowed out in a mildewed cloud.

"Don't touch me!" The switchblade was in her hand as she struck him, slicing air
and decayed flesh in a single, powerful arc.

Morgan shrieked and recoiled from her, clutching the left side of his face. A thick,
yellowish fluid welled between his fingers. "Silver!
Silver!"
His voice cracked,
climbing the register. "You hurt me!" He sounded like a petulant toddler.

The sight of her enemy's pain was good. Very good. "I'm not one of your pedigreed
lap dogs, Morgan! I was born in the gutter and raised on the street! And I
like
raw
meat!"

There was a hysterical gleam in Morgan's remaining eye. How long? How long had
it been since he'd known pain? Not the temporary discomfort of snapped limbs and
ruptured tissue, but real pain? The kind only immortal flesh is heir to. The
realization that he'd been badly-and permanently-scarred both angered and thrilled
him.

"I was going to let you live, changeling!" he hissed. "Maimed and lobotomized, true.

But still alive. Not now, bitch!" His voice dropped, becoming an inhuman growl.

"Not now!"

Morgan threw wide his arms, and his remaining eye rolled back in its socket.

Although she'd never battled a Noble before, Sonja recognized the ritual stance used
in psychic combat. She followed suit, falling inside herself in time to meet Morgan
on a field of battle known only as the Place Between Places.

There was darkness and light, and at the same time, neither. There was up and down

in all directions. Morgan's imago hung suspended in midair, its features unmarred,

dressed in the flowing silks and samite of a medieval Florentine prince. His eyes

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burned like polished garnet and flames licked from between his lips. His hands were

turned palm upward, each cupping a ball of black energy that smoldered like

malignant St. Elmo's Fire.

"Is that the best you can do, prodigal?" he sneered contemptuously, motioning to his

opponent's self-image.

Sonja looked down at herself. Except for her leather jacket looking brand-new, there

was no appreciable difference between her imago and her physical self. "What matter

does it make ? We 're all naked inside our heads. "

As if in reply, a tiger with three heads and the tail of a scorpion jumped out of

Morgan's chest. Sparks flew from its myriad sets of gnashing teeth as its heads roared

in unison. It pounced, knocking Sonja onto her back.

As the chimera's fangs closed on its victim's face, the Other began to laugh.

Howell and Palmer watched as the lock on laboratory door began to glow, becoming
white-hot within a heartbeat. The odor of roasting pork was strong enough to make
Palmer's gut growl.

"Is there another way out of here?" he snapped at Howell.

The scientist nodded, unable to take his eyes from the door. "There's a trapdoor
that leads to the nucleus." He motioned to the dissection table pushed against the
wall.

"Then what are we waiting on?" Palmer grabbed Howell's arm. "If that's what I
think it is, you don't want to be here to tell it hello!"

Howell pulled away from Palmer, shaking his head. "No! Like I told you, I'm a dead
man. Better for me to die facing one of Morgan's servants than to end up in his
hands."

Before Palmer could argue any further, the door flew open, its lock and handle
reduced to warm taffy. The pyrotic stepped into the room, sizzling in its own fat.

Although it had the same boiled lobster complexion and dead white eyes as the
elemental he'd confronted in San Francisco, Palmer doubted it was the same body.

The one guarding Morgan's Pacific Heights residence would have been a puddle by
now.

"So, the renfields sent you in their stead, eh?" Howell picked up a large, wickedly
curved knife from the tray of instruments next to the dissecting table. "It'll do him
no good! I'm not going back! You're going to have to kill me!"

The pyrotic did not seem to hear, much less understand. It moved closer, smoke
issuing from its ears and nostrils like party streamers.

Palmer didn't waste any more words. If the scientist wanted to purge his sins in a
one-sided battle with the pyrotic, that was his business. Palmer dove under the
dissection table and peered down the trapdoor. All he could see was a rickety ladder
disappearing into the darkness below. Hardly the stairway to heaven, but it would
do.

"No! No, stay away from that, you idiot! It's not a television! I said no!" There was
the sound of glass breaking and Howell screamed something unintelligible.

The changeling fetus lay on the floor, surrounded by shards of splintered glass. Its
skin was the same bright, blistered pink of a boiled shrimp. The changeling emitted

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a plaintive mewling sound as it flopped helplessly about on the floorboards like a
landed baby shark.

Palmer looked up in time to see Dr. Howell, shouting curses at the top of his voice,
drive his blade into the pyrotic's stomach, slitting it from crotch to throat as easily
as he would carve a holiday turkey. The pyrotic opened its mouth to scream, but all
that came out was the hiss of live steam. Napalm spilled from the pyrotic's wound,
splashing Howell.

The hapless scientist screeched as he was consumed by a column of flame-,
trampling the dying changeling under his heels. Howell's screams grew as he waved
his blazing arms over his head like a small boy beset by angry hornets.

A sinuous serpent-shape made of smoke and fire, like the bearded dragons wrapped
about Chinatown's luck gate, uncoiled from the pyrotic's slit gullet, twining its way
through the air in search of another host.