Darkest Heart (4 page)

The Other smirked, savoring the look of disgust on Judd's face. She pressed her lips against his, thrusting his teeth apart with her tongue, and penetrated his will with one quick shove of her mind.

Judd's limbs twitched convulsively then went still as she took control of his nervous system. The Other disengaged, physically, and stared down at him. He couldn't move, his body locked into partial paralysis.

Satisfied her control was secure, she moved the switchblade from Judd's throat.

"I can see why she finds you attractive. You're a pretty thing... very pretty." The Other reached out and pinched one of his nipples until it began to purple. Judd didn't flinch. "But she's much too old fashioned when it comes to sex, don't you agree? She's afraid to let herself go and walk the wild side. She's so repressed." The Other shrugged out of her leather jacket, allowing it to fall to the floor. "I will explain this to you once, and once only. I own you. If you do as I tell you, and you please me, then you shall be rewarded. Like this." She reached into his cortex and tweaked its pleasure center. Judd shuddered as the wave of ecstasy swept over him, his hips involuntarily humping empty air.

"But if you fight me, or displease me in any way - then I will punish you. Like so."

Judd emitted a strangled cry as he was speared through the pain receptor in his brain. It felt as if the top of his skull had been removed and someone had dumped the contents of an ant farm on his exposed brain.

His back arched until he thought his spine would snap. Then the pain stopped as it it'd never been there at all.

"Hold me."

Judd did as he was told, dragging himself upright and wrapping his arms around her waist. The Other knotted her fingers in his hair, pulling his head back so she could look into his eyes.

"Am I hurting you? Say yes."

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"Yes."

"Good."

She smiled, exposing her fangs, and with a cold shudder he realized that the worst had not even begun.

They fucked for three hours straight, the Other skillfully manipulating his pleasure centers so that he remained perpetually erect, despite his physical exhaustion. She randomly induced orgasms, until they numbered in the dozens. After the seventh or eighth climax, he was shooting air. She seemed to enjoy his wails each time he spasmed.

As dawn began to make its way into the room, she severed her control of Judd's body. He fell away from her in mid-thrust, his eyes rolled back behind flickering lids. The Other dressed quickly, her attention fixed on the rising sun. Judd lay curled in a fetal position amongst the soiled and tangled bedclothes, his naked body shuddering and jerking as his nervous system reasserted its control.

"Parting is such sweet sorrow," purred the Other, caressing his shivering flank. Judd gasped at her touch but did not pull away. "You pleased me. This time. So I will let you live. This time."

She lowered her head to his neck, brushing his jugular lightly with her lips. Judd squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of the bite. But all she did was whisper: "Get used to it, lover boy."

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

The Other took a great deal of pleasure in telling Sonja what it had done to Judd, making sure not to leave out a single, tasty detail as it reran that morning's exploits inside her skull.

Sonja's response to the news was to scream and run headfirst into the nearest wall, then to continue pounding her skull against the floorboards until her glasses shattered and blood streamed down her face and matted her hair. She succeeded in breaking her nose and fracturing both cheekbones before collapsing.

"Girly-girl! Long time no see! What brings you into my little den of iniquity this time?"

The demon Malfeis sported the exterior of a flabby white male in late middle age, dressed in a loud plaid polyester leisure suit with white buck loafers. A collection of gold medallions dangled under his chins and he held a racing form in one hand.

Sonja slid into the booth opposite the demon. "I need magic, Mal."

"Don't we all? Say, what's that with the face? You can reconstruct better than that...."

She shrugged, one hand absently straying to her swollen left cheek. The bone squelched under her fingertips and slid slightly askew. Heavy-duty facial reconstruction required feeding in order for it to be done right, and she'd deliberately skipped her waking meal.

"You tangle with an ogre? One of those vargr punks?"

"Leave it be, Mal."

Malfeis shrugged. "Just trying to be friendly, that's all. Now, what kind of magic are you in the market for?"

"Binding and containment."

The demon grunted and fished out a pocket calculator, his exterior flickering for a moment to reveal a hulking creature that resembled an orangutan with a boar's snout. "What kind of demon are you looking to lock down?"

"I wish to have myself bound and contained."

Malfeis glanced up from the calculator, a sour look on his face. "Are you shitting me or what, girlchick?"

"Name your price, damn you."

"Don't be redundant, girlchick."

Sonja sighed and hefted a knapsack onto the tabletop. "I brought some of my finest acquisitions. I've got hair shaved from Ted Bundy's head just before he was to go to the chair, dried blood scraped from the walls of the LaBianco home, a spent rifle casing from the grassy knoll, and a cedar cigar box with what's left of Rasputin's penis in it. Quality shit. I swear by its authenticity. And it's all yours, if you do this one thing for me."

Malfeis fidgeted, drumming his talons against the table. Such close proximity to so much human suffering and evil was bringing on a jones. "Okay, I'll do it. But I'm not going to take responsibility for anything that happens to you."

"Did I ask you to?"

"Are you sure about this, Sonja?"

"Your concern touches me, Mal. It really does."

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) The demon shook his head in disbelief. "You really mean to go through with this, don't you? Sonja, once you're in there, there's no way you'll be able to escape, unless someone on the outside breaks the seal."

"Maybe."

"There's no maybe to it!" he retorted.

"The spell you're using is for the binding and containment of vampire energies, right?"

"Of course. You're a vampire."

She shrugged. "Part of me is. And I'm not letting it out to hurt anyone ever again. I'm going to kill it or die trying."

"You're going to starve in there!"

"That's the whole point. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll starve that side of myself to death, so that I can walk away clean and human."

"Whatever you say, girly-girl. But if you ask me, you're out of your fucking mind."

Sonja hugged herself as she stared into the open doorway of the meat locker. It was cold and dark inside, just like the Other's heart. "I'm not paying for your opinions, just your hoodoo. Let's get this show on the road."

Malfeis nodded and produced a number of candles, bottles of oil, pieces of black chalk, and bags of white powder from the Gladstone bag he carried. Sonja swallowed and stepped inside the meat locker, drawing the heavy door closed behind her with a muffled thump.

Malfeis lit the candles and began to chant in a deep, sonorous voice, scrawling elaborate designs on the outer walls of the locker with the black chalk. As the chanting grew faster and more impassioned, he smeared oil on the hinges and handle of the door. There was an electric crackle and the door glowed with blue fire.

Malfeis' incantation lost all semblance of human speech as it reached its climax. He carefully poured a line of white powder across the threshold, made from equal parts salt, sand and the crushed bones of human babies.. Then he stepped back to assess his handiwork.

To human eyes it looked like someone had scrawled graffiti all over the face of the stainless steel locker, nothing more. But to Pretender eyes, eyes adjusted to the Real World, the door to the locker was barred by a tangle of darkly pulsing VéVé, the semi-sentient protective symbols of the voudou powers. As long as the tableau remained undisturbed, the entity known as Sonja Blue would remain trapped within the chill darkness of the meat locker.

Malfeis replaced the tools of his trade in the Gladstone bag. He paused as he left the warehouse, glancing over his shoulder.

"Goodbye, girly-girl. It was nice knowing you."

"I'm looking for Mal."

The bartender looked up from his racing form and frowned at Judd. After taking in his unwashed hair and four days' growth of beard, he nodded in the direction of the back booth.

Judd had never been inside the Monastery before. It had a reputation as being one of the sleazier - and most uninviting - French Quarter dives, and he could see why. The booths lining the wall had once been church pews. Plaster saints in various stages of decay were scattered about on display. A Madonna with skin blackened and made leprous by age regarded him from above the bar with flat, faded blue eyes, an equally scabrous Baby Jesus, cradled in her rotting arms.

Judd walked to the back of the bar and looked into the last booth. All he saw was a paunchy middle-aged man dressed in a bad suit smoking a cigar and reading a dog-eared porno novel.

"Excuse me... ?"

The man in the bad suit looked up at him, arching a bushy, upswept eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Uh, excuse me - but I'm looking for Mal."

"You found him."

Judd blinked, confused. "No, I'm afraid there's been some kind of mistake. The guy I'm looking for is black, with dreadlocks..."

The man in the bad suit smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. "Sit down, kid. He'll be with you in just a moment."

Still uncertain of what he was getting himself into, Judd slid into the opposite pew.

The older man lowered his head, exposing an advanced case of male pattern baldness, and hunched his shoulders. His fingers and arms began vibrating, the skin growing darker as if his entire body had

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) suddenly become bruised. There was a sound of dry grass rustling under a high wind and thick, black dreadlocks emerged from his scalp, whipping about like a nest of snakes. Judd was too shocked by the transformation to do anything but stare.

Mal lifted his head and grinned at Judd, tugging at the collar of his turtleneck. "Ah, yes. I remember you now. Sonja's renfield."

"My name's not Renfield."

Mal shrugged indifferently. "So, what brings you here, boychick?"

"I'm looking for Sonja. I can't find her."

"That's because she doesn't want to be found."

"But I have to find her! Before she does something stupid, like kill herself, maybe."

Mal regarded the young human with a look of mild amusement in his dark eyes. "Tell me more."

"She sent me this letter a few days ago." Judd fished a much-folded envelope out of his back pocket and held it out to Mal. "Here, you read it."

The demon took the letter out of its envelope like a gourmet removing an escargot from its shell. He unfolded the paper, carefully noting the lack of signature and the smears of blood in the margins.

Judd, I can never be forgiven for what was done to you, even though I was not the one who did those thing. Please believe that. It was her. She is the one that makes me kill and hurt people. She is the one who hurt you.

I promise I'll never let her hurt anyone, ever again. Especially you. I'm going to try something I should have done years ago, before she became so strong. She is sated now, at least for the moment. Which means she is asleep. By the time she becomes aware of what I'm planning, it will be too late. I'm going to kill her. I may very well end up killing myself in the bargain, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. I won't let her hurt anyone ever again, damn her. I love you, Judd. Don't try to find me. Escape while you can.

"She doesn't understand." Judd was close to tears as he spoke. "I do forgive her. I love her, damn it! I can't let her die!"

"You know what she is," Mal said flatly. It wasn't a question.

Judd nodded. "I know. And I don't care."

"So why have you come to me?"

"You know where she is, don't you?"

Malfeis shifted in his seat, his eyes developing reptilian slits. "Are you asking me a question?"

Judd hesitated, recalling Sonja's warning that he should never, under any circumstance, ask Mal a question. He took a deep breath and nodded his head, his lips pressed into a tight line.

Mal smiled, displaying shark's teeth. "Before I respond to any questions put to me, you must pay the price of the answer. Is that understood, boychick?" Judd swallowed and nodded.

"Very well. Tell me your name. All of it."

"That's all you want?" Judd frowned, baffled. "My name is Michael Judd Rieser."

"To know a thing's name gives one power over that thing, my sweet. Didn't they teach you that in school?

Come to think of it, I guess they don't."

"What about my question? Do you know where Sonja is?"

"Yes, I do." The demon scrawled an address on the back of the letter Judd had given him. "You'll find her here. She's inside the meat locker on the ground floor."

"Meat locker?"

"I wouldn't open it if I were you."

Judd snatched up the address and slid out of the pew. "But I'm not you!"

Malfeis watched Judd hurry out of the bar with an amused grin. "That's what you think, boychick." He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he was white with shoulder-length hair pulled in a ponytail, a ring in his nose, and a four days' growth of beard.

It was cold. So very, very cold.

Sonja sat huddled in the far corner of the meat locker, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her breath drifted from her mouth and nostrils in wispy flumes before condensing and turning to frost on her face.

How long? How many days had she been here? Three? Four? Twenty? A hundred? There was no way of telling. She no longer slept. The Other's incessant screams and curses made sure of that.