Darkest Heart (3 page)

"I better leave. I had a nice time, Judd. I really did. But I have to go."

"You'll call me, won't you?"

"I'm afraid so."

Why don't you fuck him? He wants it bad. So do you. You can't hide that from me.

The Other's voice was a nettle wedged into the folds of her brain, impossible to dislodge or ignore. Sonja opened the mini-fridge and took out a bottle of whole blood, cracking its seal open like she would a beer.

Not that bottled crap again! I hate this shit! You might as well go back to drinking cats! Wouldn't you rather have something nice and fresh? Say a good B negative mugger or an O positive rapist? There's still plenty of time to go trawling before the sun comes up... or you could always pay a visit to lover-boy.

"Shut up! I've had a bellyful of you tonight already!"

My-my! Aren't we being a touchy one? Tell me, how long do you think you can keep up the pretense of being normal? You've almost forgotten what it's like to be human yourself. Why torture yourself by pretending you're something you're not simply to win the favor of a piece of beefsteak?

"He likes me, damn it. He actually likes me."

And what exactly are you?

"I'm not in the mood for your fuckin' mind games!"

Welcome to the fold, my dear. You're finally one of us. You're a Pretender.

Sonja hurled the half-finished bottle of blood into the sink. She picked up the card table and smashed it to the floor, jumping up and down on the scattered pieces. It was a stupid, pointless gesture, but it made her feel better.

She knew it was stupid, even dangerous, to socialize with humans, but she couldn't help herself. There was something about Judd that kept drawing her back, against her better judgment. The only other time she'd known such compulsion was when the thirst was on her. Was this love? Or was it simply another form of hunger?

Their relationship, while charged with an undercurrent of eroticism, was essentially sexless. She wanted him so badly she did not dare do more than kiss or hold hands. If she should lose control, there was no telling what might happen.

Judd, unlike Palmer, wasn't a Sensitive. He was a basic, garden variety human, blind and dumb to the miracles and terrors of the Real World, just like poor, doomed Claude Hagerty had been. Rapid exposure

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) to the universe in which she lived could do immense and irreparable damage to those unequipped to handle it.

To his credit, Judd hadn't pressed the sex issue over much. He wasn't happy with the arrangement, but honored her request that they "take it slow."

This, however, did not sit well with the Other. It constantly taunted her, goading her with obscene fantasies and suggestions concerning Judd. Or, failing to elicit a response using those tactics, it would chastise her for being un true to Palmer. Sonja tried to ignore its gibes as best she could, but she knew that something, sometime was bound to snap.

Kitty wiped at the tears oozing from the corner of her eye, smearing mascara over her cheek and the back of her hand. It made the words on the paper swim and crawl like insects, but she didn't care.

She loved Judd. She really, truly loved him. And maybe after she did what she had to do to save him, he'd finally believe her. He needed proof of her love. And what better proof than to rescue him from the clutches of a monster?

Dearest Judd,

I tried to warn you about That Woman. But you are blind to what she Really Is. She is Evil Itself, a demon sent from Hell to claim your Soul! I knew her for what she truly was the moment I first saw her, and she knew I knew, too! Her hands and mouth drip blood! Her eyes burn with the fires of Hell! She is surrounded by a cloud of energy as red as blood. She means to drag you to Hell, Judd. But I won't let her! I love you too much to let that happen. I'll take care of this horrible monster, don't you worry. I've been talking to God a lot lately, and He told me how to deal with demons like her. I Love you so very, very much. I want you to Love me too. I'm doing this all for you. Please Love Me.

Kitty

Judd woke up at two in the afternoon, as was usual for him. He worked six to midnight four days out of the week and had long since shifted over to a nocturnal lifestyle. After he got off work he normally headed down to the Quarter to chill with his buddies or, more recently, hang with Sonja until four or five in the morning before heading home.

He yawned as he dumped a heaping tablespoons of Guatemalan into the hopper of his Mr. Coffee.

Sonja. Now there was a weird chick. Weird, but not in a schizzy, death-obsessed art-school freshman way like Kitty. Her strangeness issued from something far deeper than bourgeois neurosis. Sonja was genuinely out there, wherever that might be. There was something about the way she moved, the way she handled herself, which suggested she was plugged into something Real. And a frustrating as her fits of mood might be, he could not bring himself to turn his back on her.

Still, it bothered him that none of his friends liked her - not even Arlo, who he'd known since junior high school. Some of them even seemed to be scared of her. Funny. How could anyone be frightened of Sonja?

Sure, she could be intense... but scary?

As he shuffled in the direction of the bathroom, he noticed an envelope shoved under his front door. He stooped to retrieve it, scowling at the all-too familiar handwriting.

Kitty.

Probably another one of her damn fool love letters, alternately threatening him with castration and begging him to take her back. Lately she'd taken to leaving rambling, wigged-out messages on his answering machine, ranting about Sonja being some kind of hell-beast out to steal his soul. Crazy bitch.

Sonja was crazy, too, but not in such a predictable, boring way.

Judd tossed the envelope, unopened, into the trashcan and staggered off to the bathroom to take a shower.

Sonja Blue greeted the night from atop the roof of the warehouse where she made her nest. She stretched her arms wide as if to embrace the rising moon, listening with half an ear to the baying of the hounds along the riverbanks. Some, she knew, were not dogs. But the vargr was not her concern tonight. She'd tangled with a few of their breed over the years, but she found hunting her own kind vastly more satisfying. Since warehouse's exterior fire escape was badly rusted and groaned noisily with the slightest movement, Sonja avoided it altogether. She crawled, headfirst, down the side of the building, moving like a lizard on a garden wall. Once she reached the bottom, she routinely pat-checked her jacket pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out during her descent.

There was a hissing sound in her head, as if someone had abruptly pumped up the volume on a radio tuned to a dead channel, and something heavy caught her between the shoulder blades, lifting her off her

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) feet and knocking her into a row of garbage cans.

She barely had time to roll out of the way before something big and silvery smashed down where her head had been a second before. She coughed and black blood flew from her lips; a rib had broken off and pierced one of her lungs.

Kitty stood over her, clutching a three-foot long, solid silver crucifix like a baseball bat. While her madness gave her strength, it was still obvious the damn thing was heavy. Sonja wondered which church she'd stolen it from.

The dead channel crackling in Sonja's head grew louder. She recognized it as the sound of homicidal rage. Shrieking incoherently, Kitty swung at her rival a third time. While crosses and crucifixes had no effect on her - on any vampire, for that matter - if Kitty succeeded in landing a lucky blow and snapped her spine or cracked open her skull, she was dead no matter what. Sonja rolled clear and got to tier feet in one swift, fluid motion. Kitty swung at her again, but this time Sonja stepped inside her reach and grabbed the crucifix, wresting it from the other woman's hands.

Kitty staggered back, staring in disbelief, waiting for Sonja's hand to burst into flames as she hefted the heavy silver cross. It was at least three inches thick, the beams as wide as a man's hand, and at its center hung a miniature Christ fashioned of gold and platinum.

"What the hell did you think you were going to solve, clobbering me with this piece of junk?" Sonja snarled.

Kitty's eyes were huge, the pupils swimming in madness. "You can't have him! I won't let you take his soul!"

"Who said anything about me stealing - "

"Monster!" Kitty launched herself at Sonja, her fingers clawing at her face. "Monster!"

Sonja instinctively defended herself, swatting Kitty with the crucifix. The mad woman dropped to the alley floor. The only thing still holding her head onto her body were the muscles of her neck. Way to go, kiddo! You just killed lover-boy's bug-shit ex-girlfriend! You're batting a thousand!

"Shit." She tossed the crucifix aside and squatted next to the body. No need to check for vital signs. The girl was d-e-a-d.

What to do? She couldn't toss the corpse in the dumpster. Someone was bound to find it, and once the body was identified New Orleans Homicide would take Judd in for questioning. Which meant they'd be looking for her, sooner or later. And she couldn't have that.

I've got an idea, crooned the Other. Just let me handle it.

Stealing the car was easy. It was a '76 Ford LTD with a muffler held in place with baling wire and a Duke for Governor sticker on the sagging rear bumper. Just the thing to unobtrusively dispose of a murder victim in the swamps surrounding New Orleans during the dead of night.

Out in New Orleans East, there was what was to have been yet another cookie-cutter housing development built on the very fringes of the marshlands of Lake Pontchartain. The contractors got as far as pouring the concrete slab foundations before the oil slump hit, then the money dried up. The condos were never built, but the access road from the interstate still remained, although there was nothing at its end but an overgrown tangle of briars and vines that had become a breeding ground for snakes and alligators.

She drove the last mile without lights. Not that she needed them. She could see just fine in the dark.

Having reached her destination, she cut the engine and rolled to a stop. Except for the chirring of frogs and the grunting of gators, everything was quiet.

Sonja climbed out of the car and opened the trunk with a length of bent coat hanger. She stood for a second, silently inventorying the collection of plastic trash bags. There were six, total: one for the head, one for the torso, and one apiece for each limb. She'd already burned Kitty's clothing in the warehouse's furnace and disposed of her jewelry and teeth by tossing them into the river.

She gathered up the bags and left the access road, heading in the direction of the swamp. She could hear things splashing in the water, some of them quite large.

She paused for a second on the bank of the bayou. Something nearby hissed at her, then slithered out of the way. She tossed the bag containing Kitty's head into the murky water.

The assembled gators splashed and wrestled amongst themselves for the tender morsels like ducks fighting for scraps of stale bread.

Sonja was tired. Very tired. After this was over she still had to drive the stolen car to a suitably disreputable urban area and set it on fire. She looked down at her hands. They were streaked with blood.

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) She absently licked them clean.

When she was finished the Other looked through her eyes and smiled. The Other wasn't tired. Not in the least.

It hadn't been a very good night, as far as Judd was concerned. He'd gotten chewed out concerning his attitude at work, Arlo and the others had treated him like he had a championship case of halitosis, and, to cap the evening, Sonja pulled a no-show. Time to pack it in. It was four o'clock when he got home. He was in such a piss-poor mood he didn't even bother to turn on the lights.

His answering machine, for once, didn't have one of Kitty's bizarro messages on it. Nothing from Sonja, either. He grunted as he removed his shirt. Was she mad at him? Had he said or done something the last time they were together that ticked her off?

It was hard to figure out her moods, since she refused to take off those damn mirrored sunglasses. Judd wondered how she could navigate in the dark so well while wearing those fuckers.

Something moved at the corner of his eye. It was the curtain covering the window that faced the alley.

Funny, he didn't remember leaving that open... Someone stepped out of the shadows, greeting him with a smile that displayed teeth that were too sharp. Judd felt his heart jerk into overdrive as the adrenaline surged into his system. Just as he was ready to yell for help, he recognized her.

"S-Sonja?"

"Did I scare you?" Her voice sounded like something out of The Exorcist. She sniffed the air and her smile grew even sharper. "Yes. Yes, I did scare you, didn't I?" She moved toward him, her hands making slow, hypnotic passes as she spoke. "I love the smell of fear in the morning."

"Sonja, what's wrong with your voice?"

"Wrong?" The Other chuckled as she unzipped her leather jacket. "I always sound like this!"

She was on him so fast he didn't even see her move, lifting him by his belt buckle and flinging him onto the bed so hard he bounced. She grabbed his jaw in one hand, angling it back so the jugular was exposed.

Judd heard the snik: of a switchblade and felt a cold, sharp pressure against his throat.

"Sonja, what are you doing?"

"Do not struggle. Do not cry out," she whispered, her voice as harsh and as cold as a metal rasp pressed to his ear. "Do as I command, and maybe I'll let you live. Maybe."

"What do you want?"

"Why, my dear, I just want to get to know you better." The Other removed the sunglasses protecting her eyes with her free hand. "And vice versa." Judd had often wondered what Sonja's eyes looked like. Were they almond-shaped or round? Blue, brown, or green? However, he had never once pictured them as blood red with pupils so hugely dilated they resembled shoe buttons.