It was after six o"clock and all of the businesses were closed for the day. The elevator was old, with a collapsible gate and a control switch that looked like something from an old-fashioned ocean liner. She stopped the elevator on the fifth floor and rolled back the protective gate so she could unlock the outer barrier. She made a mental note to be careful not to trigger the b.o.o.by traps she"d installed.
The entrance barrier rolled back with a rusty squeal, and she squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced, but nothing happened.
She stepped out of the elevator into the foyer. A double barreled shotgun and a loaded crossbow, rigged with fishing line and lead counterweights, were pointed at the elevator.
She unlocked the door to the fifth-floor loft and entered into total darkness. Not that it mattered. She could read the New York Times in the deepest pit in Carlsbad Cavern without straining her eyes. The loft had the dusty, close smell that sealed rooms often get. As it was, her nest was actually on the sixth floor. The fifth was empty of anything except b.o.o.by traps. She liked keeping as much s.p.a.ce between herself and whatever might be looking for her as possible.
One of the first things she had the renovators do when she bought the building a decade ago was alter the interior staircases. The original staircases had been sealed after the fifth floor and a second staircase installed that bypa.s.sed the fifth and sixth floors on its way to the roof, thus ensuring her privacy. But, this was New York City, after all, so she placed a few b.o.o.by traps in her private stairwell just to be on the safe side.
She unlocked the door that led to the roof after disarming the spear gun aimed at gut level. The moment she opened the door, she knew that one of the traps had been sprung.
She found what was left of the would-be burglar on the landing between the roof and the sixth floor. He"d triggered the deadfall, sending a cinder block secured by a rope into the middle of his face. He had probably been young, although it was hard to tell with most of his features pulped. He"d been lying there at least a month or two, and he"d decayed to the point where she couldn"t tell if he was black, white, latino, or asian. In any case, he was dead.
Sonja dragged the body down to the sixth floor and unlocked the door to the loft, careful not to trigger the old box-spring mattress studded with bayonets hinged to the ceiling just inside the threshold. The sixth floor was sectioned into three large areas centered around a long hallway. The one closest to the entrance was a fully outfitted workroom with a carpenter"s bench and a huge array of power tools. Not to mention a large gla.s.s-lined metal tub.
With the help of a few well-chosen power tools, it took her less than ten minutes to reduce her unwanted guest to component parts. She tossed the limbs and viscera into the gla.s.s-lined tub and opened one of the industrial-sized hydrocholoric acid bottles she kept in a special cabinet. The solution was meant to process metal, but it was also handy in turning troublesome dead bodies into soup.
Satisfied that her erstwhile intruder was liquefying nicely, Sonja shucked her protective gloves and ap.r.o.n and headed down the hall to the room set aside as living s.p.a.ce. At a thousand square feet, it was larger than most New York apartments.
A kitchenette, complete with microwave, dishwasher, gas range, refrigerator, and breakfast bar took up one corner.
There was an inch or more of dust on every surface and a shriveled orange the size of a walnut in the fridge. What had once been a walk-in closet was now a bathroom, with shower and toilet, and a loft bed occupied the exposed brick wall.
Thick Persian carpets covered the floor, and the ceiling was decorated with drooping falls of mosquito netting, giving the s.p.a.ce the feel of a bedouin"s tent. A couple of starkly chic halogen lamps, a free-standing antique wardrobe, and an oversized leather chair set in front of a projection television screen were the only other pieces of furniture.
Sonja opened the wardrobe and the smell of cedar filled the room. Inside were hung several expensive silk suits sealed in protective plastic wrappers, along with half a dozen matching black silk shirts. Four pairs of Italian shoes littered the floor of the wardrobe. Chaz"s stuff. He"d had a taste for the expensive things in life. Not necessarily good, mind you, just expensive. She bundled the suits together and dumped them in the tub with the melting burglar, then went back into the living area and stripped naked.
She hadn"t realized she was still a blonde until she looked down at her crotch in the shower. She closed her eyes and, when she reopened them, the last of the yellow was being replaced by black. Her hair was still long, though. Since it was impossible for her to shorten her hair the same way she forced its growth, she elected to jettison it. She ran her fingers through her hair and all twelve inches dropped to the floor of the shower. By the time she"d stepped out to towel herself dry, her scalp was already bristling with fresh growth.
If I am going to find a clue as to where to locate Morgan, it will be in the traditional hunting grounds of the urban vampire - the nightclub. I hit the first one around midnight The interior is designed to resemble a church, with stained-gla.s.s windows and a disc jockey spinning CDs in the pulpit. The waitresses are dressed as nuns, except that they wear miniskirts, high heels, and fishnet stockings. There are a lot of lasers and loud music, but the faces that stare back at me through the dance floor fog are painfully human. I leave before one o"clock.
The second club is a cavernous s.p.a.ce filled with taxidermy exhibits liberated from defunct roadside attractions. A cougar, frozen in mid-leap, reaches out for a startled mountain goat. A grizzly bear, its fur somewhat moth-eaten, towers over the main bar, as if warding off imprudent drinkers. The head of a gigantic water buffalo, its nose worn down by club patrons stroking it for luck, peers off into s.p.a.ce, no doubt eyeing the ghost of the Great White Hunter who plugged it decades ago.
As I wind my way through the club-goers, I get the distinct feeling I"m being watched - and not just by the gla.s.s eyes of the dead animals on the wall. I duck through a beaded curtain into one of the orgy alcoves off the main floor. The walls are painted with fluorescent paint and lit by black light-tubes. A king-size mattress on a carpeted dais dominates the middle of the room. A couple of queens tricked out in Mary Tyler Moore drag, wearing six-inch platform shoes, are sitting on the bed, smoking a joint. They look at me quizzically, then return to their previous conversation.
"So what did you tell Donny?"
"Just that she should go ahead and get big ones. I mean, if she"s planning on dancing to pay for the operation, she ought to give them what they want. . ."
I grab my shadow before he even clears the curtain, slamming him against the wall. I have my forearm pinned against his windpipe and my switchblade a millimeter from his right eye.
"Tell me why you"re following me, or I"ll put it out," I hiss.
The drag queens gather up their purses and exit the alcove as quickly as their platform heels can carry them.
My shadow smiles slow and wide, opening his hands to show me they are empty. "No need to get hostile, milady. I mean you no harm."
I step back and let him go, but I do not put away the knife. My shadow is a man of slight build, about five foot seven. His hair, which he wears in a medusa"s coil of tightly woven dreadlocks, is gray, but it is hard to guess his age. There are ceramic beads, pieces of metal, and what look like knucklebones braided into his locks. He wears a loose-fitting black overcoat that reaches almost to his ankles, tight-fitting black leather pants, a black velvet dress shirt with a ruffled d.i.c.key, and Doc Martens that lace up to his knees. Although his hands are finely manicured, he sports pimp spoons on both ring fingers; his nails are so long they curl inward. He smiles easily at me, but his pale blue eyes watch me intently, like a cat trying to calculate the best way to evade the jaws of a dog.
"Why were you following me?"
"It"s my job to follow . . . those such as you." His right hand dips into the breast pocket of his overcoat and retrieves a printed invitation. "My ... employers ... are discreet and very . . . discriminating ... as to who they allow into their establishment. Their clientele "tis most select indeed." He hands me the card with a flourish. Tell them Jen sent you, milady." And with that he slips from the alcove, pausing only long enough to look over his shoulder to make sure I"m not about to plunge my switchblade into his back.
I study the invitation, frowning slightly. In appearance it looks no different than any of the thousands of invites and announcements handed out on the New York party circuit every night. The picture on the front is of a naked female torso. The nipples are pierced and connected by a fine filigreed chain, the l.a.b.i.a infibulated. A surgical steel ring winks from the model"s navel.
On the back is printed, in Gothic script: "The Black Grotto at No Exit: W.14th at 10th Avenue. Open to the Trade."
There is something odd about the texture of the ink used to print the card - and something familiar about it as well. I sniff it, then taste it with the tip of my tongue. Human blood has been mixed with the ink. Quite a bit of it too.
I step out of the alcove just as the two drag queens are coming back with the bouncer. I slip into the murk of the dance floor and I"m out the door in seconds. No matter. I already know which nightclub I"m going to hit next.
The doorman at the No Exit is dressed in black leather chaps, a suede jockstrap, and a leather and chrome-studded slave harness.
He scowls at me and lifts his hand to block my path.
"Seventy-five dollars t"get in."
"Jen sent me," I reply, holding up my invitation so he can see it.
The doorman jerks back his hand as if I"d scalded him, eyes widening. "I"m sorry, milady! I ... I didn"t realize! Welcome to No Exit. You"ll want the second door on the right after the ladies" room, in back of the main hall."
I breeze past him into a cinder-block antechamber filled with gym lockers. I pa.s.s through a doorway hung with black velvet curtains and find myself headed down a concrete corridor lit by lurid red spots that make everything seem awash in blood. Fifty feet later there is a heavy vault door. I turn the handle and the door hisses open on pneumatic pistons. The sound of the Cure amplified beyond human endurance pours into the confines of the corridor.
The main hall of No Exit is large enough to park a jet.
The cinder-block and poured-concrete floor motif is continued, accompanied by standard disco fog and laser light displays.
There is a long bar made from cinder-blocks and gla.s.s bricks occupying most of the west wall, with a handful of tables and booths nearby. There is an elevated stage on the north wall, with a set of stocks, a flogging post, and a rack of whips and chains.
Close to a hundred people, all in various stages of undress, wander the floor. Some have black leather masks over their heads, some wear harnesses, and one patron walks around with a chrome bit in his mouth, the reins held by a pudgy woman stuffed into a Merry Widow corset. All of them, to my surprise, are human.
I make my way to the back of the club. The ladies" room is a toilet placed in the middle of a waist-high corral of cinderblocks.
The door I was instructed to find is guarded by a monstrously huge specimen wearing leather pants, a muscle shirt, and a zippered leather face mask. Try as it might the hood cannot conceal the fact that the bouncer is an ogre.
"Jen sent me," I say, flashing the invitation.
The ogre grunts something and stands aside, swiping a magnetic key through the computer lock that secures the door. I glimpse a stairway leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Once I"m inside, the ogre closes the door behind me, leaving me to whatever fate I"ve walked into.
I hear music - not disco or techno or rave, but the strains of Mozart - as I climb down the stairs. At the bottom is yet another secured door, this one guarded by an ogre too misshapen to ever be mistaken for human, with or without a bondage mask His single brow furrows and he rubs his lower left-hand tusk as he studies the invitation I hand him. In his huge, gnarled hand it looks like a playing card.
"Jen sent me," I explain.
The ogre makes a snorting noise like that of a warthog and unlocks the final door with a key the size of a tire iron. "Have a good night" it oinks.
The interior of the club is dark, lit by low-wattage rose-colored bulbs so the human attendants don"t trip and fall as they work the room. There is a lot of black velvet drapery, antique statuary and Victorian furniture in evidence. But the first thing that catches my notice upon entering are the people hanging from the ceiling. Some are men, some are women, some are children.
Almost every major ethnic group seems to be represented.
They are all naked and suspended by piano wire from hooks fixed in their flesh. Some are wrapped in barbed wire. Some have been flayed, peeled to expose the muscles that lurk beneath their skin. All of them are alive.
Something warm and wet strikes my hand. It"s blood. I look up to see a partially skinned young man suspended directly overhead.
The skin on his legs and feet has been carefully pared away, leaving only the bone. He smiles down at me like a medieval martyr, his eyes going in and out of focus as he speaks.
"Welcome to the Black Grotto, milady."
The other human chandeliers take up his greeting, their voices slurred and dreamy.
This is my kind of place, purrs the Other.
I"m too distracted by the chorus of flayed cherubs to try and squash the Other"s voice, so I lick the blood from my hand and move on. A woman encased completely in black latex, except for her throat her arms stuffed into a single glove and bound behind her back, walks up to me, accompanied by the whir of a chain being paid out. I notice her dog collar is attached to a spool of stainless-steel chain set into the wall. Her exposed jugular is outfitted with a phlebotomist"s shunt.
A slender young man dressed in lollipop panties and a starched pinafore steps forward, holding a solid-gold serving tray. On the tray are a syringe and a Baccarat crystal winegla.s.s. I stare at the syringe, then back at the shunt set in the woman"s neck. I cannot see her face - it is obscured by a leather bondage mask, the mouth zippened shut from the outside. Her eyes are wet and gleam like a trapped animal"s.
I shake my head and turn away, both disgusted and excited by the display around me. In one corner of the room is a string quartet playing Mozart"s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. Upon closer examination I can see that their eyelids are sewn shut and their mouths filled with ball gags.
There is a scream from elsewhere in the room and a naked boy no older than ten runs out from a curtained booth, blood streaming from the wound in his neck. A vampire dressed in the ca.s.sock and collar of a priest darts after him, hissing angrily. One of the attendants grabs the frightened boy by the hair and slams him against the wall, dazing the child. As I move forward to intervene, the priest-vampire slaps the attendant so hard the blow snaps his neck. The naked, bleeding boy, sniffling and knuckling his teary eyes, runs forward to embrace the vampire. The priest coos endearments and strokes the boy"s hair, all the while leading him back to the curtained booth. The string ensemble switches from Mozart to the Kronos Quartet"s arrangement of "Purple Haze". An ogre shambles out of the shadows and picks up the body of the dead attendant as if it weighs no more than a suitcase, tossing it over one stooped shoulder.
"I see you decided to come check out the scene."
Jen is standing off to one side, watching me with a twist of a smile on his lips. He has his left arm draped over the narrow shoulders of a naked girl who looks to be about six or seven. The girl"s eyes are heavily painted, like those of an Egyptian priestess, and her hairless l.a.b.i.a are sewn shut.
Jen"s smile disappears and he jerks his head in the direction of one of the curtained alcoves. "My employers would speak with you, milady."
"Your employers? And who might they be?"
Jen lifts the heavy velvet curtain at the mouth of the alcove and gestures for me to enter. Their most Serene Majesties Baron Luxor and the Lady Nuit"
The names sound familiar, although I cannot place them.
They are n.o.bles, that much is certain. In the twenty years I"ve spent in search of Morgan, I"ve only come across one other vampire of power -- Pangloss, Morgan"s own vampiric sire. Most of the bloodsuckers I"ve dealt with are exceptionally minor league, many no more than brain-dead revenants. Now I"m being brought before not one, but two n.o.bles. I make sure my switchblade is at the ready before entering.
Inside the audience chamber is an antique love seat on which is seated a male vampire, naked except for a black leather pouch, garter belt, black silk stockings, and matching patent-leather pumps. His hair, shaped to resemble a s.h.a.ggy Beatles cut, frames a long face that has neither eyebrows nor lashes. The vampire"s flesh is so pale it seems translucent like that of a finely polished opal. A human male wrapped in a full bodysuit of latex lies curled at the vampire"s feet like an adoring hound. I shift my vision into the Pretender spectrum in order the gauge the vampire lord"s aura. It is a powerful one, surging and bubbling around his head like boiling sugar.
"You are Baron Luxor?"
The n.o.ble"s lips pull up in the approximation of a smile.
"And you are the Blue Woman?"
"I am Sonja Blue, if that"s what you mean."
Luxor sits up slowly, his eyes never leaving me. No doubt he"s a.s.sessing me as well. "We ordered Jen to keep an eye out for you. The old man told us you"d be coming sooner or later."
"The old man?"
"Pangloss." Luxor stands up, wobbling slightly on four-inch heels.
"He was the one who told us about you - that you were the one who marked Morgan, the one who devoured his chimera--"
"You keep saying "we", but I only see one of you. Where is this Lady Nuit Jen mentioned?"
Luxor smiles and turns to face me, flashing a brief glimpse of fang. "Oh, she is here. She is always here."
Suddenly Luxor"s opalescent flesh starts to twitch and ripple, as the muscles underneath begin to dance. The vampire lord"s waist seems to draw in on itself, as if cinched by an invisible hand. The muscles lining his chest slowly ripen and swell, blossoming into small, but serviceable, b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The leather pouch covering Luxor"s s.e.x begins to deflate as he retracts his testes.
The bones in his face squelch and groan as they mold themselves into softer, more feminine aspects. A thick nest of coppery curls sprouts from his scalp, spilling down to cover his shoulders. I have to admit I"m impressed. Such tightly controlled shape-shifting is not easy, even amongst n.o.bles.
Lady Nuit claps her hands and the latex-coated slave jumps up and scurries off into the shadows, returning a moment later with a silk kimono decorated with b.u.t.terflies. She stands there, arms outstretched, and allows him to dress her.
"Why were you looking for me?"
"We were told you were a creature of great power. A creature of... purpose. And that you would see the Lord of the Morning Star dead."
"What"s that got to do with you?"
Lady Nuit produces a syringe and sticks it into a shunt that juts out of the latex slave"s elbow. As she speaks, she draws quarter of a pint of blood and decants it into a champagne flute. "Morgan has been our enemy for centuries. Our broodlings have clashed and struggled with one another since the days of the Bourbon kings. Countless renfields have died in our service protecting us from his attacks on our person.
We would see him dead forever."
"So?"
Lady Nuit pauses to sniff the blood she"s just drained, then sips it. She smiles appreciatively and motions for me to help myself.
"Exquisite! Please, do try some. It"s from my private stock, as you can see."
It had been a couple of days since I last fed - and on animal blood, not human. I can feel my palms begin to sweat and itch as I eye the latex slave. "N-no thank you."
Lady Nuit studies me, rolling the champagne flute between her palms thoughtfully. "Ah, yes ... Pangloss told us you had a peculiar attachment to humans. But you have tasted their blood, have you not?"
"Yes."
Then why are you hesitating? All the humans you have seen here tonight came here of their own free will. They begged us to use them in such a fashion. The world is full of those who seek their own destruction. They are drawn to our kind, like moths to the flame. You know that, my dear."
"Even the children?"
"Runaways, each and every one of them, fleeing parents and guardians far more inhumane than ourselves. They asked us for refuge, and we provide it."
"I don"t believe you." I focus my attention on the latex slave crouched at Nuit"s feet. There are control threads the color of raw veins sprouting from his cowled head, leading back ,to Nuit/Luxor. With a single swipe of my mind, I sever the leash binding master to slave.
The latex slave jumps to his feet and begins screaming. He pulls off the mask shrouding his head, revealing himself to be an older man with gray hair and the look of a prosperous banker. Still shrieking, he claws at the shunt stuck in the crook of his arm, his eyes bulging out of their sockets like ping-pong b.a.l.l.s.
"How dare you!" shrieks Lady Nuit, her bone-white cheeks marred by unbecoming raspberry blotches. She must be really p.i.s.sed to get that much blood pushed into one area. "How dare you break my leash?!"
The latex slave"s body snaps like a whip as Nuit shoves her will back into him. He collapses on the floor, his lips foaming and limbs twitching spasmodically. There is a ripe, unpleasantly organic smell as he s.h.i.ts his suit Nuit spins to face me, her eyes flashing red, fangs bared in ritual challenge. She is so fl.u.s.tered she"s lost control of her physical nature and her features are sliding back towards those of Luxor. I briefly glimpse the vampire for what it truly is - a walking cadaver with skin the color of tallow, its withered flesh stretched taut over desiccated muscle - then the illusion is once more in place.
"I"ll take your heart out for that stripling," Luxor snarls, reaching for me with fingers capped by six-inch-long talons.