Divine Madness (25 page)

I hit, I know I did, but there was no reaction except to continue the momentum of the turn I had started, spinning us both toward the trapdoor in the roof. We twirled twice like drunken dancers doing the Viennese waltz, slipping in my blood that gushed freely, and then we finally fell apart.

I caught a break. The creature’s left hoof got caught in one of those cracks that fissured the roof, and it very nearly overbalanced and toppled through the open trapdoor. I didn’t give it time to recover its equilibrium. I leapt at it and slammed my fist into its body, accidentally
punching through the desiccated flesh and into withered organs. I gave a half twist of the wrist and then grabbed. I’m not sure what I had—liver, gallbladder, appendix, something. I hadn’t paid much attention to my anatomy lessons, and anyway everything inside was sort of leathery and fused. I gave a backward yank, pulling out organs and, as a bonus, a loop of intestine. That was still soft and squishy and very full of red pulp.

Its arms swiped at me and it tried to bite, but my second hard jab to its torso tipped it through the trap door opening. Intestines un-spooled and then ripped free with a splash of blood as it fell, but that didn’t stop it. I stood there gaping at the bloated, oozing rope in my hand as the damn thing came popping right back out. Its broken teeth were bared and it reached for me confidently, sure of my death.

Pride goeth before a fall, that’s what Cormac always said.

I had forgotten in those first moments of shock that I wasn’t dealing with a living person. My brain, now with oxygen restored, was finally functioning again. The only thing that would kill this creature was to rip out its heart or brain. My shotgun was out of the question—and not just because of the noise, but because I would never reach the gun in time. I did a quick calculation as the creature launched itself toward me. Ribs would be easier to break, but it might take me a moment to find the heart. There wasn’t any confusion about where the brain was. Pulling back my arm, I slammed into its head with all the remaining strength I could summon.

All I did was dent its skull and make it fall back into the darkness. I also broke my right hand.

Two falls from the roof. Its neck should be broken, but the nightmare refused to end. There was another hiss and then it came back up. This time I was ready. My brain had recalled Ninon’s deadly gift, tucked into my boot, a personal weapon for a personal battle. I got out the trench spike with my left hand, and brought it down with all my might as the damned thing popped out of the trapdoor.

It must have felt the spike go in, but the beast’s upward progress stopped only when my knuckles hit its skull. The blow was numbing from fingers to elbow. My aim wasn’t great either. The front of the spike was protruding out of the thing’s upper side jaw. Still, my hit had to have wiped out massive amounts of brain.

There was a long enough space of time for me to worry that this method would not kill a ghoul, to see the enormous teeth that were not flossed or brushed. Then the creature stiffened, thrashed once more and fell a third time through the trapdoor, slowly pulling free of the spike with a disgusting, sucking sound.

I waited, breathing hard, listening for cries of alarm and nursing my broken hand and bruised calf. It didn’t do its Jack-in-the-box trick but I could hear it whipping about below, louder than the washing machine it had filled with victims. It still wasn’t screaming, but it was hissing and making too much noise as it lashed about in what I hoped were its death throes.

I did some mental cursing and then dropped through the door, not bothering with the ladder. I landed beside the thing and used my downward momentum to bury the trench spike in its chest. I must have found the heart, because it hissed once more and then finally stilled.

I got up slowly and wiped the spike on its chest, doing my best to clear the dark red slime it used for blood. I reached up and pulled a selection of its teeth out of my scalp and then pushed the torn flesh of my cheek back into place. That hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and I would probably need stitches.

“Mary, mother of God,” I murmured, regressing to boyhood and calling on Mamita’s Virgin for help. I whistled when I spoke, the air passing through the tears in my face. No one answered, and so I passed another rite of passage alone, took another step away from my humanity and into the realm of monsters without any witnesses except heads in a dryer.

I hurt everywhere. It took a bit longer this time for me to climb out onto the roof that second time. The smell of baking intestine left me sick. I no longer hungered for blood. When I did finally get around to looking over the wall, Saint Germain was gone. So was the music. I was truly alone.

That felt ominous, trying to throw off my lingering shock. I cursed again and then picked up my dusty shotgun.

Time to find Ninon. We were going to do what I should have done when I stumbled into the grisly scene in the laundry room—namely, get out of town as fast as we possibly could. I didn’t care what Saint Germain and the ghouls were up to anymore. We had grossly underestimated our enemy. Or I had. Ninon was right—we needed weapons. At the moment I was telling myself that until we had attack helicopters and a small army—and maybe a priest and a shaman—I wasn’t taking him or any ghouls on again. I’d won this battle, but no way would I win the war. Not without help.

My honored father:

I am eleven years old. I am big and strong, but shall certainly fall ill if I continue to assist at three masses every day, especially on account of one performed by a great, gouty, fat canon who takes at least twelve minutes to get through the Epistle and the Gospel, and who the choirboys are obliged to put back on his feet after each genuflexion. This is all depressing, I can assure you. Well, I am done twiddling with the rosary beads while mumbling Aves, Paters, and Credos. The present moment is the one for me to inform you that I have decided to no longer be a girl, but to become a boy. As I am now a son, it is your duty to take over my education immediately and I shall tell you how it is to be done…

—
Letter from Ninon de L’enclos

It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.

—
François de la Rochefoucauld

While I was having my face ripped off, Ninon was having some adventures of her own.

The Gypsy Kings played on in an asthmatic fashion. Maybe they needed some of the tequila the men had been drinking. Maybe they were just stoned from the marijuana smoke.

Two of the men held Ninon. A third—the fat one—held a gun on her while the fourth came up behind. He seemed to have guessed that it was safest to aim for her head. Or someone had told him that he should handle her that way.

These four weren’t ghouls—not yet—but their breath stank of blood and rotting flesh. There was also a lack of intelligence in their eyes that suggested some sort of brain damage. She didn’t think they were victims of a vampire attack, but something was wrong with them. They were a long way from being human, and even their mothers would say so.

She wasn’t screaming, though that was what they wanted—and she wouldn’t, no matter what they did. Not
unless she had to shout to warn Miguel away. Ninon had seen Saint Germain walk past the shutters outside less than a minute before. She’d had no more than a glimpse of him, a few slices of his body that moved by in a blur, but it was enough to shake her. Her enemy was here and she didn’t have a single bloody weapon to defend herself with.

Saint Germain was here.
How? How had he known she would be here?

The man behind her tore her dress. The vandalism made her angry. He reached around her, squeezing her left breast roughly and shoving his hand into her panties. He pushed a dirty finger inside of her and bit down on her shoulder, drawing blood. She knew that she was supposed to be afraid, to whimper and plead, but she found the idea of rape so much less horrifying than being ripped apart by ghouls that she couldn’t work up much fear. And she felt no shame, though humiliation was their aim. She wouldn’t give them that either.

Anyway, these were dead men. Dead, dead, dead. All she needed was a moment when the gun wavered from her head and she would take them. Wisely, she kept her eyes lowered; the fat one with the gun might be bright enough to read her intent if she looked him in the eye, and he was nervous enough to shoot.

The man behind her got bored with her unresponsiveness. He came around her left side and then stepped in front of her. She looked up but kept her face blank, not telegraphing her intent until he stepped between her and the gun. The moment she was shielded, Ninon jerked her right arm forward, throwing her unprepared captor toward the gunman. His headlong stumble wasn’t anything to put in a Hollywood movie, but it served her purpose well enough. Jackie Gleason was pinned between a body and a heavy table.

She spun then toward the stunned creep holding her left arm and used her right hand to double him over with a shot to the diaphragm that broke the tip of his sternum.
His eyes before she hit him were terrified, and she wondered what she looked like, or if he simply read his destruction in her face. As he doubled over she saw that he had a gun tucked in the small of his back. She had to reach over him to snatch it, letting his contorted face press against her bare torso.

Jackie Gleason was shouting at the gaping dress-ripper to move out of the way. It didn’t occur to him to move himself around the table. She had no such problem with mobility. The gun wrenched clear of the goon’s waistband and she stepped around her shield to put a bullet into Jackie Gleason’s head. The strangeness of the weapon did not strike her at the time; she was conversant with firearms of all eras. The noise of the shot was uncomfortably loud but still satisfying, because it was one of the many sounds that meant death for her enemies.

A part of her was horrified at what she was doing, but it was a small part that didn’t protest.

It was a tough decision, but she chose to shoot the man who had had her right arm first. The dress-ripper was closer, but the other guy had a gun and he was finally groping for it.

Time slowed down. Intellectually, she knew why. The pituitary gland was being stimulated by the hypothalamus. Adrenaline—actually adrenocorticotropin—was washing through her body, helping her muscles prepare to do what they needed to survive. Inside, the vampire virus that Miguel had infected her with had woken up and leapt joyfully into action. The organism’s bloodlust took over immediately, aiding her already prepared muscles into new autonomic reflexive actions. It said prompt, aggressive deeds were called for. It tightened her finger on the trigger before her conscious mind had a chance to weigh options and make any pacifist decisions about running away.

Ninon might have been able to override the monster in her blood, but she chose instead to let its instincts guide her. She had sought precisely this kind of help, and this
was no time to be slowed by doubts about what she had done. She sensed its utter ferocity and will to live. It would do whatever was needed to keep her alive. It was a natural killer. She was not.

Thanks to her supernaturally fast reflexes, the second goon was down before the dress-ripper reached her. The noise from her gun was very loud, dangerously so given that Saint Germain was somewhere nearby, but she couldn’t take all four of them in a fistfight. Not yet. Her vampirism was still gathering strength.

A quick glance assured her that the man whose diaphragm she’d torn was still lying on the floor and no threat. That just left the one who had wrecked her lovely dress and bitten her shoulder. She was especially angry with him.

The CD player stopped playing with a loud pop and then a sizzle that suggested some power surge. Ninon looked at her arms and realized that she was glowing, all but setting the room on fire.

Damn. There would be nothing now to mask the sound of guns. That might be all right though, if Saint Germain had continued walking. The walls were thick and would dampen sound. Still, she wouldn’t risk it if there were any other way. There was just the one man left to deal with, and she could break his neck if she could get around behind him.

Her muscles were gathering themselves, preparing for a leap, when on her left a door opened and yet another man, one with a gun, rushed into the room. Blood smeared his lips and chin. More danger. The organism in control of her brain didn’t care. It had calculated and decided that she could take him as well.

The fourth man had her now. Her left hand, the one without the gun, whipped up and shoved hard against the dress-ripper’s nose, pushing it upward into his brain. She pushed off against him, using him as a brace, and launched herself into the air before he even fell over, putting
to use an all-but-forgotten karate kick a retired CIA spook had taught her one night when he was very drunk and hoping to get laid. The fifth man, the one with the gun, had no chance to bring it around before she hit him, her right heel serving as a pick that broke through his sternum and drove itself into his heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Unfortunately, it took a moment to free her foot and, already off balance, she was dragged down with him. Inside she screamed in frustration at being snared by this corpse. She wrenched violently until the heel snapped off.

Damn it! Damn it! Now she’d wrecked a pair of shoes.

She heard the door to the street open and threw herself around with desperate speed, aiming in that general direction with the pistol she still held in her hand, but she had no chance to do more than catch her breath before someone who looked a lot like Saint Germain pointed a shotgun at her.

“
Bonjour,
Ninon. Now say good-bye.” It was Saint Germain’s voice, Saint Germain’s eyes.

Her finger tightened on the trigger, but her gun was empty. She opened her mouth to scream at Saint Germain and tried to leap at his weapon to push it away, but the room filled with explosion and a fine mist of shredded blood and tissue catching her midflight knocked her backward.

I think it took Ninon a moment to realize that she hadn’t been shot, that it was Saint Germain’s exploded chest covering her almost naked body in blood, and not her own.

“Miguel?” Her voice was hardly recognizable. I didn’t blame her for asking. Last she had seen me, my face was whole and I wasn’t limping.

“We’ve gotta go. There are ghoulth all over the plathe.” I had developed a lisp. The left side of my face wasn’t working right. Muscles had been severed.

I jumped over Saint Germain—amazingly, he wasn’t
dead—and reached out for her. Ninon didn’t recoil, but the look in her eyes gave me pause. Her gaze was fixed on Saint Germain and she was shaking. It wasn’t with fear either. Lightning also danced over skin. That wasn’t sexual arousal, though I think it was lust of another sort. I was facing a wild animal who was nearly beyond control. The vampire had finally woken up in her. I think I understood what she was feeling. I wanted Saint Germain ripped open and to wallow in his blood. I wanted to tear him limb from limb, as the saying went. As his bitterest enemy, her desire had to be even stronger.

However, even if I were inclined to give in, we simply didn’t have the time to indulge the monsters within. There were other ghouls still about.

My eyes finally adapted to the dark and I took in the rest of the slaughter. I was impressed. Five bodies, not counting the twitching Saint Germain who was actually attempting to get to his feet. Ninon had been busy. No wonder her bloodlust was roused. I couldn’t imagine how she had managed not to fall on these creatures and lap at their blood. I shuddered.

Saint Germain reached for me, grabbing at my sore leg. Since the time for silence was long past, I took the handgun from Ninon, an old revolver, and loaded it with the ammo in my pocket. I turned and emptied all the bullets into Saint Germain’s head. I shoved the empty gun into my pocket when I was done. Then I got Jackie Gleason’s gun and emptied it too. Small-caliber weapons, museum pieces really—they didn’t even have magazines but required the loading of individual bullets—and they didn’t do as much damage as I would have liked.

To the best of my recollection, I didn’t think once about the fact that I had just performed an execution-style shooting. All I can recall thinking was that we were out of ammo now. I had taken the carbine and the rest of the ammunition out to the Jeep before doubling back for Ninon. It wasn’t until I was back in town that I had seen the other
men—ghouls—and Saint Germain. I’d considered going back for the carbine but then the shooting had started.

It took several long seconds for the bullets to do their work, but Saint Germain finally fell back to the floor. His head was pretty much gone and he looked real dead, but I didn’t for one second believe it. I was filled with supernatural dread and no longer expected natural law to prevail. He would rise again. Whatever was animating him, it wasn’t just in his brain. Call it irrational fear, but I didn’t think we were getting rid of him so easily. This was no zombie to be put down with a bullet. And evil—real evil—doesn’t retreat that effortlessly. It was the second thing in this world that was eternal.

A second look at Ninon showed me that she actually was wounded. My shot had gone through Saint Germain and into her. But just as she had assured me, the wounds weren’t lethal. I watched as she dug out the spent shot with her fingers. Her skin returned to normal and she began to shiver. More than anything else, I was unhappy with the look in her eyes. Terminal horror can leave the eyes looking permanently harrowed. I didn’t think she was there yet, but we needed to get away from this horror show as soon as possible. Too much more and she’d never be able to pass for human again. It might already be too late for me.

I knew I’d probably feel really bad about this later, but at that moment, I didn’t let myself care. We were both breathing and able to run—that was good enough.

“That’s not Saint Germain,” she whispered finally, pressing a hand to the small wounds in her chest. She was beginning to look sick, her skin turning a faint shade of green that made her lipstick look like an old wound. I felt for her; the downside of an adrenaline high was awful. She would be recognizing just what she had let the bloodlust do. Even if you don’t feel guilt, ever after you have a fear of the monster within because you know what it can do. Also, she probably hurt. I knew we would mend
quickly, but for a while, my face had been very painful. I guess our gifts didn’t include an escape from pain.

“Miguel—
cher!
This is not Saint Germain.”

Her words registered, both the endearment and the bad news.

“What? But it hath to be.” I looked at the body. His face was pretty smashed, but he looked like the man I had seen from the roof. I thought the clothes were the same. Of course, a white shirt and jeans was pretty standard.

“No.”

I began to doubt. Perhaps it was that he was almost disintegrated, but I didn’t feel the same psychic pull toward him.

Ninon insisted: “That’s not him. It looks like him but…maybe it’s a clone or a doppelganger or something.”

A clone—his evil doubled. Before I could digest this horrible idea, we heard an ominous combination of hissing and growling fill the air. It was coming from the south, the square where the aborted fiesta had taken place.

“Come on! Thith way.” I grabbed her arm and pulled toward the back of the building. She stumbled over one of the bodies but I held her up. “The ghoulth have found uth. We need to run. Fatht.”

Ninon didn’t need to be told twice.

We raced through the gunroom and out into the back street. We were both hobbled. My calf was damaged and she had broken a heel; still, I think we would have qualified at any Olympic track speed trial. Funny. Having a pack of ghouls racing after you and no more ammunition for your empty guns can put wings on you feet.

I am in terror. I have seen my man in black! The man with the red tablets bearing my name and the dozen bottles of elixir—the one who appeared before me seventy years ago. And I heard him say he has a son who will be called St. Germain.

—
From the letters of Ninon de Lenclos

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.