Sonja Blue - Paint It Black Part 12

'Isn't it? Sonja, if I stay with you, I'm in danger of losing my soul. I'll end up just like one of Morgan's renfields. Is that what you want for me? Is it?'

Don't bother answering the jerk, just reach into his head and snap his will off at the faucet, hissed the Other. By the way, I liked the bit about killing his girlfriend and making him forget her, then relive her death whenever you feel like a chuckle.

Not bad. Not bad at all. You're getting the hang of this stuff, Girlfriend.

Sonja balled her fists and looked down at her boots. 'No.

Of course not.'

The Other hissed and spat obscenities no one else could hear.

'Then give me my freedom.'

She jerked her head up, moonlight flaring across the mirrored lenses of her gla.s.ses. 'You've always had it!'

'Have I?'

Sonja opened her mouth as if to answer, then turned her back on Palmer and his lover.

'Go.'

Her voice felt tight and sharp, like a piano-wire garrote had been slipped around her throat. She could hear Palmer s.h.i.+ft his weight, trying to decide whether to stay or flee.

'Sonja--' There was a hesitancy in his voice.

'I said go! Before I change my mind!'

Palmer grabbed Concha by the hand and hurried from the ruins into the surrounding jungle. Just before he disappeared into the tangled shadows, he turned and called out to her with his mind one last time.

I did love you.

Then he was gone.

Sonja tossed her head back and shrieked like a cornered jaguar. Yowling obscenities, she kicked and pummeled the ancient limestone ruins, obliterating friezes depicting the rule of Mayan wizard-kings a thousand years dead. With a yell that swelled her throat like a bull ape's, she bashed her shoulder against the remaining wall until it collapsed in an explosion of yellowish-white powder.

When it was over, she stood in the middle of her handiwork, trembling like a winded stallion, her face and clothes limned with the dust of centuries.

I loved you too, she thought.

But there was no one there to hear her.

When she got back to the house Sonja was too tired to hate or even feel sorry for herself. The house seemed horribly empty. Lethe was gone. Now Palmer was, too. Within the span of a few days, the little nest she'd built for her family had turned into a tomb.

A featureless black papier-mache mask sat atop a small pile of mail heaped on the kitchen table. As she picked up the mask, a thick business envelope slid off the heap and fell onto the floor. She noticed, with a rash of excitement, that it was addressed to Sonja Blue.

Inside the envelope were several clippings from the New York City/Triborough papers, the oldest dating back six months, the most recent clipping dated two weeks previously.

Most of them were brief, taciturn accounts of the deaths of nameless prost.i.tutes, none of the columns garnering more than an inch. As she placed them on the table where she could read them, she immediately noticed the one item that linked them: 'the deceased was found dressed in a black leather jacket, wearing mirrored sungla.s.ses.'

Sonja picked up the envelope and searched for a letter.

Nothing. The postmark told her it had been mailed in New York City from the Cooper Postal Station. The West Village.

Already the gears were engaged, the wheels in her head turning.

Palmer and Lethe might no longer be a part of her life.

But there was still Morgan.

London, England: Mavis Bannister was a charwoman. Oh, they had a fancy name for it nowadays - 'maintenance engineer', she thought it was. Just like they had a fancy name for the women's toilet: 'the ladies' lounge'. But, in essence, her job was to swab down the loos at Farquier & Sons.

Farquier & Sons was one of the more prestigious department stores in London. It began by catering to the carriage trade over a century ago. The store's reputation rested on a royal commission it had landed during the Edwardian era and had yet to be updated - something involving spats. In any case, its clientele included movie stars and rock musicians, not to mention stockbrokers and MPs. Still, if anyone was to ask Mavis, she would tell them that the rich and famous treat public lavatories just like the hoi polloi. You'd be surprised how many couldn't bother to flush.

Still, mopping the jakes of the overprivileged had its definite perks. Like the time she found a pair of mink-lined gloves left next to the sink. Or the time she found close to twenty quid lying on the floor next to the second stall - no doubt it fell out of some rich twit's pocketbook. Most of them were so well off they'd never notice it was gone, or, if they did, would a.s.sume they'd dropped it while getting in or out of a taxi, not while they were taking a squat in a public bog.

Mavis wasn't really thinking about anything much that day except whether to warm up a tin of stew when she got home or pop for some takeout vindaloo, as she wheeled her mop and bucket into the ladies' lounge. It was towards the end of the business day and time for the third of the four scheduled daily cleanings. Farquier & Sons prided itself on the cleanliness of its 'lounges'.

At first she thought she was hearing things. It sounded like a baby crying, only m.u.f.fled. No doubt a child was crying out on the floor. Then she realized that the sound was coming from the litter bin next to the sinks.

Mavis flipped back the little metal hood and stared down into the cylinder. There, nestled amidst wadded-up brown paper towels and discarded tampons was a newborn infant, wrapped in a swaddling of newspaper, just like an order of fish and chips. The baby stopped crying and looked up at Mavis with eyes the color of marigolds and smiled at her.

'Merciful G.o.d!' Mavis gasped. 'You poor thing!' She set aside her mop and bucket and removed the top of the litter bin, reaching in to retrieve the child. There was a sound from behind her as the Home Secretary's wife entered the ladies' lounge.

'Go and get the shopwalker!' Mavis barked.

The Home Secretary's wife looked first startled, then indignant, that she was being ordered about by a simple charwoman. 'I beg your pardon--?' she began to huff.

'I said, go and fetch the shopwalker! Someone's gone an' left a baby in the bleedin' litter bin!'

The Home Secretary's wife blinked, her face going blank for a moment. 'Oh. Oh dear. Of course. I'll go and find him.'

Mavis chuckled to herself, taking a moment's pleasure in the role reversal, then looked down at the baby she held cradled in her arms. It had been a long time since she'd held a child that small. The baby's dark hair was still damp with birth fluids and his skin was smeared with tacky blood. It was a boy and apparently healthy, although the umbilical cord looked like it had been chewed off. Whoever the mother was, she must have given birth in one of the stalls. Mavis opened each and every one of the doors, looking for signs of blood and placenta. To her surprise, the toilets and the floors were spotless. But that was impossible ...

The shopwalker, an elderly man with a neatly clipped salt and-pepper mustache, opened the door to the ladies' lounge and peered in, mustache twitching. 'What's all this nonsense about there being a baby left in here? And have you gone mad? That was the Home Secretary's wife you yelled at!'

Mavis held up the baby, still wrapped in its receiving blanket of newsprint. 'You call this nonsense, sir?'

The shopwalker's eyes widened at the sight of the child.

'Good Lord!'

'Did you see a pregnant woman come in here in the last ten or fifteen minutes? The poor thing can't be more than five minutes old himself!'

The shopwalker looked genuinely perplexed. 'I don't understand! There hasn't been a woman in such a condition on this floor since noon! I could swear it! I'm sure I would have noticed...'

'So where'd this poor tad come from, eh?' Mavis sighed, running her work-roughened hand against the baby's cheek.

'His mum must have been in the store. Surely the fairies didn't leave him. Too bad he can't tell us who he belongs to.'

The nameless son of William Palmer yawned, waved his chubby little fists in the air, and smacked his toothless gums, wondering all the while when he was going to be fed.

Heilongjiang Province, the People's Republic of China: The madman's name was Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai, and he had spent the last thirty-three of his seventy-seven years locked away in a private sanitarium in the frozen climes of Heilongjiang Province in the People's Republic of China. There are many such sanitariums scattered throughout Communist China where those considered bent on 'criminal insanity against the State' and deemed impossible to reeducate have been banished. What made this particular sanitarium different from the others was that Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai was its only inmate.

None of the six staff members a.s.signed to watch over him could understand what was so important - or dangerous about the old man that he had to be kept in isolated confinement and dosed with the most potent of psychoactive drugs.

Thin to the point of being emaciated, his arms and legs withered from decades spent strapped into a straitjacket and manacled to his bed, with a long beard and mustache the color of fresh snow, and a piercing gaze that seemed to look through both time and s.p.a.ce, Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai looked more like a crazed wizard from the Beijing opera than a senile mental patient. And that, more or less, was the truth.

Although no one save a select handful of Party leaders knew of his existence, at one time Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai had served as mystic adviser to Chairman Mao.

w.a.n.g Zuocai was born in 1917 in Zhejiang Province, a place renowned for its scenic beauty. His father was a wealthy man, heir to a sizable tea plantation and silkworm concern that stretched back three centuries. His mother, however, was of even n.o.bler stock Her family was descended from a long line of wise men and sorcerers who had advised the emperors since the days of the Ch'in Dynasty. By the time he was five years old, w.a.n.g Zuocai's talent as an oracle was already making itself known. But then the j.a.panese came and things became bad for his family. His parents hoped that he would someday become a member of General Chiang Kai-shek's retinue, but w.a.n.g Zuocai's second sight told him that the future lay with Mao Zedong. So, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and found himself on the Long March.

During those hard, torturous years, on the run from both the Nationalists and the occupying j.a.panese, w.a.n.g Zuocai came to be one of Mao's most trusted - and secret - personal advisers. At first his precognitive abilities were limited to a few minutes and those who were physically present, but as time progressed, so did his power to see into the future.

Mao relied on w.a.n.g Zuocai's talents a great deal, but he had to be exceptionally careful in screening the exact nature of his confidant's ability. If his Soviet advisers got wind of w.a.n.g Zuocai, they would either dismiss Mao as a fool or try to steal w.a.n.g for their own uses. It would not help matters amongst his fellow workers if it was discovered he was using the services of an oracle, a habit a.s.sociated with the Imperial dynasties. Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai was one of the most powerful and influential members of the CCP, yet no one knew who he was.

And so it went for twenty-two years.

Until 1958.

Before 1958, there had been the First Five-Year Plan, which emphasized rapid industrial development and expansion. Iron and steel, electric power, heavy engineering, and other sophisticated, highly capital-intensive plants were pushed at the expense of agriculture, which, up until then, had occupied more than eighty percent of the population.

Now Mao proposed the introduction of the Second Five Year Plan, which he called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward called for the abolition of private plots and the formation of communes, and the increase of agricultural output through greater cooperation and physical effort.

The Chairman called his oracle to him and told him of his plans and asked what great future w.a.n.g Zuocai foresaw for China.

What w.a.n.g Zuocai saw was crop failure and famine, leading to the starvation of millions and, eventually, to the dissolution of diplomatic ties between China and the Russians and Mao being forced to retire as chairman of the republic.

Mao, already growing accustomed to being wors.h.i.+ped as the wisest of men, took exception with w.a.n.g Zuocai's prophecy and denounced him as a reactionary. The very next day, w.a.n.g Zuocai-was arrested as he left his house and taken to a 'reeducation facility' in Jiangxi Province.

He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, endless tape loops quoting the wisdom of the Chairman haranguing him from hidden speakers day and night. The only time he saw other people was when the guards came in to beat him. Malnourished and forced to sleep on lice-ridden straw, denied anything to read except the writings of the Chairman, w.a.n.g Zuocai's talent began feeding on itself, growing stronger and wilder. Soon he was able to predict the guards' arrival to the minute, even though he had no way of keeping time.

On one occasion, as he was being beaten, he looked up into the face of one of his guards and said: 'Your wife is being untrue behind your back. She takes the village Party official into her bed the moment you leave the house. He is with her now.' The guard called him a liar and struck him with his rifle, breaking w.a.n.g's jaw. Two days later, the guard caught his wife in bed with the village Party official and shot them both, then turned the rifle on himself.

w.a.n.g Zuocai had seen that part, too, which is why he'd told the guard in the first place.

By 1961 the Great Leap Forward had proven itself to be a disaster. Uncounted millions had starved to death in the outlying provinces, and the Soviets had left in disgust, taking their blueprints with them. Mao, chastised, retired as chairman of the republic, if not the Party. Not long after his resignation, Mao ordered w.a.n.g Zuocai's release from prison and had his old adviser brought back to the Forbidden City. But he quickly discovered that the Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai who stood before him was not the man he used to know.

Although w.a.n.g Zuocai was only forty-four, his ordeal had turned his hair white and cost him most of his teeth. But what Mao found most discomforting were his eyes - they seemed to see into a disturbing distance. Occasionally w.a.n.g Zuocai would grimace or shake his head or smirk at something only he could see. After offering his former confidant some rice wine, Mao asked him what it was he saw. w.a.n.g Zuocai said he saw many things, but at that moment he was watching the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Americans' most recent president.

He then went on to forecast, in no real order, the fall of Saigon, the death of a black musician, and Nixon standing on the Great Wall.

Mao did not know if the oracle was, indeed, seeing the future or if he'd gone mad. When w.a.n.g Zuocai veered from forecasting the future into claiming to have knowledge of non-human races dwelling unseen amongst humanity, and accusing Mao's own wife, Jiang Qing, of having the head of a vixen, Mao decided w.a.n.g Zuocai was indeed insane. As much as it saddened him to realize that he had been instrumental in destroying his friend's mind, part of him couldn't help sigh in relief. That bit about Nixon and the Great Wall had really had him worried for a moment...

So Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai was bundled off to the frozen frontiers of Heilongjiang Province, to be tended by nurses and doctors better suited to the treating of farm animals, for the rest of his natural life. Which, it proved, had been considerably longer than Mao's. In the years since his initial commitment, he'd only had one visitor - Deng Xiaoping. He'd asked w.a.n.g Zuocai two questions, then never returned. However, Deng did order that w.a.n.g be kept in a straitjacket round the clock from that day forward. Now, after fifteen years, he was to receive his second - and final - visitor.

She poured herself through the reinforced window, her skin glowing like light s.h.i.+ning through a gla.s.s of plum wine. w.a.n.g Zuocai watched silently as she moved toward his bed, her feet skimming the cold bare tiles. Everything in Heilongjiang was cold. The winters were fierce and harsh, lasting up to eight months. For someone such as himself, born and bred in the warmer southern climes, nothing was ever warm enough. But that was about to change.

The glowing woman smiled down at him, radiating a heat that sank through his wrinkled skin and into his ancient bones. How long had it been since he'd last known a woman? Thirty-six years? It had been the better part of a decade since he'd been able to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e.

The woman gestured with her hands and the canvas straitjacket that had been w.a.n.g Zuocai's one article of clothing since 1979 disintegrated as if made from tissue paper. Freed at last, w.a.n.g Zuocai's member rose to greet its liberator. Smiling demurely, the woman climbed onto the bed and straddled the old oracle.

Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai had foreseen this night encounter the day he went before Mao and spoke of the American president and of Lady Mao being one of the kitsune. He knew that Mao would dismiss him as mad, but that was the only way to ensure that he would survive the coming years of turmoil, with its Cultural Revolution and Gang of Four and Tiananmen Square. It was the only way to make sure that he somehow managed to live to see the arrival of a beautiful glowing woman, who would make him the father of a new and wondrous race.

It didn't take him long. After all the planning, all the waiting, everything was happening so fast. As his celestial lover pulled herself off him, Sun w.a.n.g Zuocai felt something in his chest fold in on itself. Fast. Everything was happening so fast. first the mating, now his death. Even as his seed quickened in her womb, w.a.n.g Zuocai's life came to its end. Of course, he had already known it was going to happen.

Part 2.

When the Dead Die.

Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.

ophocles, Electra.

The fever called 'Living'

Is conquered at last.

Edgar Allan Poe, 'For Annie'.

As she stepped out of the limo in front of the Chelsea Hotel the first thing she saw was a homeless person p.i.s.sing in a doorway. She smiled and tossed the driver an extra twenty.

h.e.l.l, it's New York.

The limo pulled back into the traffic and she shouldered her one piece of luggage - a black nylon duffel bag - and strode towards the entrance of the hotel, just in case she was being watched. She did a turn in the revolving door and was back on the streets within seconds, her hair five inches longer and the color of raw honey.

She kept a nest in Tribeca, a stone's throw from City Hall.

There were a couple of holding companies and realty agencies involved in collecting rents and maintaining the property, but essentially she owned the building. She'd bought it several years ago with some of the proceeds from Ghilardi's estate.

She dodged into the subway entrance on Eighth Avenue, dropping her vision into the Pretender spectrum, scanning for signs of the inhuman amongst the commuting hordes.

In any major city there were numerous shadow races hidden amongst the bread-and-b.u.t.ter featherless bipeds, and New York was certainly no exception.

It was five-thirty - well into the rush hour - and the subway platform swarmed with the Pretending kind of a dozen different cultures, each having followed its traditional prey group to the New World in search of a better life. A naga wearing the skin of an elderly Pakistani gentleman flared his cobra's hood at her in ritual warning, then went back to peruse its newspaper. A garuda, cloaked in the disguise of a lowly busboy, clattered its bill nervously as it fed itself unsh.e.l.led sunflower seeds. It kept exchanging glances with the naga. Their respective species were ancestral enemies, but having to maintain the appearance of humans - and catch a train - forced the necessity of coexistence. At least for the moment.

An ogre, its misshapen limbs hidden by homeboy fas.h.i.+on, slouched against one of the support beams. A succubus, dressed in the body of a young woman, smiled seductively at an older man in a London Fog raincoat carrying a briefcase, who was fumbling for a light for her cigarette. She doubted he could see the succubus's cyclopean eye or the mane of living, writhing worms she sported in place of hair.

Suddenly the platform was full of the smell of ozone and filth and the A train came thundering out of the tunnel. It screeched to a halt and the doors opened. Inside she found a vargr dressed as an investment banker, and a thickset, clay-eyed golem serving as an escort for an extremely old Hasidic man who, according to her peripheral mind scan, was carrying a fortune in diamonds on his person.

She rode the train to the World Trade Center, then made her way to the surface. The first thing she saw as she exited the gla.s.s and steel megalith was the seventeenth-century churchyard across the street. Twilight had mellowed into dusk while she was underground, and, amazing as it might seem in such an urban landscape, a handful of fireflies danced between the leaning tombstones.

Her nest was located on Chambers Street off West Broadway.

The building was six storeys tall, identical to those flanking it. The first three floors housed various businesses - a karate school, a photographer's studio, an accounting firm while the top two floors were left vacant.