Sonja Blue - Paint It Black Part 7

Sonja straddled him as he lay in the hammock. Except for her sungla.s.ses, she was naked.

She perched atop his crotch, the moonlight outlining her body in silver and shadow. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were still as full, her stomach and thighs just as taut as he remembered. Perhaps even more so. Palmer set aside his beer and reached up with one damp hand to tweak her nipples. They were cool and hard between his fingers, like smooth little stones.

She reached down with one hand and yanked open his denim s.h.i.+rt as if it was made of newspaper, sending b.u.t.tons flying in every direction. Lowering herself atop him, she slid her legs down his, wrapping her arms around his neck. Palmer caressed her naked hips and she moved to fill his hand, like a cat eager to be stroked. A heady rush of arousal and fear surged through him, as it always did before their lovemaking.

On a deep, instinctual level, Palmer knew the beautiful creature that fondled him was death personified; yet he trusted her not to kill him. His physical excitement came from the knowledge that his lover could, at any given moment, tear him apart like fresh bread.

The moment his fly was open, Palmer's p.e.n.i.s leapt free. He closed his eyes as Sonja took him into her mouth, exhaling a long sigh as the curvature of her fangs glided against the head of his p.e.n.i.s. A sane man would go limp knowing razor-sharp teeth encircled his c.o.c.k. But Palmer hadn't been sane in a long while. Trembling, he pulled her head away from his crotch, gasping between his teeth as he fought to regain control.

She moved quickly, lowering herself onto him before he could protest. Palmer reached up to cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and, with a firm upward thrust of his hips, penetrated both her body and her mind. To tell the truth, he missed the mental bonding more than he missed the physical aspects of s.e.x.

He could always jerk off when she was gone, but there was no such thing as masturbatory telepathy. And without further effort, he surrendered all thought and self, all barriers dissolving with the bond.

Once again Palmer found himself in the other place he and Sonja shared during their trysts. As he moved through a gray s.p.a.ce that was neither air nor water, he was uncertain whether he was flying or swimming. It was warm and comforting, like he imagined the womb must be. Sonja emerged from the gray, as swift and sure as a shark in its element, her features blurred by speed. She wrapped herself around Palmer, her arms and legs impossibly long and tapered. Her hair was a dark blur, trailing behind her like jet exhaust.

She looked more like a nude painted by an Impressionist than a flesh-and-blood woman.

He wrapped his own limbs about her, pulling her into himself.

Thoughts, feelings, perceptions jittered between them like static electricity, the inner voices growing louder and softer as they merged. This sharing of self and experience, more than anything else, was how they managed to 'catch up' with one another after so many months apart. Sonja's face floated inside his mind's eye, the features softened by release as she flowed into him and he into her.

Missed you.

Need you...

Love you ...

Worried...

Gone so long...

Love you...

Judd...

Judd?

Sonja's eyes went hard and cold and suddenly Palmer was no longer in the warm gray place, but falling, plummeting through s.p.a.ce as if he had stepped from the lip of a cliff into the deepest, darkest pit in the Carlsbad Cavern. It felt as if he was spiraling down, down, down into the mouth of h.e.l.l itself. The transition was so sudden, he didn't even have the time or breath to scream for his life.

He hit hard, but because he was not a physical thing, there were no broken bones. He groaned and got to his feet, surveying his new surroundings. The first thing he felt was the wind, cutting into him like a flaying knife. He was in the middle of a vast arctic ice field, a dark, moon-haunted sky overhead. In the far distance he could make out the humps of vast glacier-bound mountains. As he turned around, shuddering in the frigid mind winds, he marveled at the frozen desolation surrounding him. There was nothing but an empty tract of ice, gleaming blackly in the moonlight. As far as he could tell, he was the only living thing to be seen for thousands of miles in any direction.

Sonja?

There was no answer to his mind call as it echoed across the frozen sea.

SONJA!.

Nothing moved or waved or responded to his cry.

Exasperated, and starting to get a little scared, Palmer struck off in the direction of the full moon on the horizon.

He didn't know why - it simply seemed like the thing to do. He had never gotten lost inside anyone before - at least he a.s.sumed the ice-bound tundra was Sonja's mental construct, not his own. But he was certain he would have to rely on his instincts if he wanted to get out of this mess.

The ice was smooth beneath his feet, at least ten feet thick, but he didn't have any trouble moving across the gla.s.slike surface. He had gone a mile, possibly more, before he realized he was being followed by something below the ice.

At first it looked to be a shadow, black and amorphous beneath the thick layer of ice. For a moment Palmer experienced a surge of blind fear, recalling a nature doc.u.mentary he'd once seen on PBS where a killer whale stalked a seal sunning itself on a floe, smas.h.i.+ng its way through several feet of ice to s.n.a.t.c.h the hapless beast and drag it to its death.

Struggling to remain calm, he reminded himself that he was nowhere near the Arctic Circle and that whatever might be lurking beneath the ice, it certainly wasn't a killer whale.

Marshaling his courage, he dropped to his knees, wiping at the fine layer of dry snow covering the ice with numbed hands, peering intently at the thing beneath the ice. It was probably Sonja, no doubt trying to find him.

Sonja?

Twin fires blinked on underneath the ice, glowing like embers lost from h.e.l.l's furnace. Only then did Palmer realize what he'd stumbled across. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but it was too late. The Other knew he was there.

And unprotected.

Arms burst through the ice floe, the skin cold and hard and blue. The hands were those of a crone, with hooked, cracked nails. They flailed about blindly, seeking purchase on the slippery surface. The Other pulled itself out of its frozen grave, like a woman wriggling free of a girdle. The head emerged after the arms, the hair transformed into a dark sunburst by rapidly forming icicles. The eyes burned with an unending anger, and the lips seemed obscenely full, like freshly fed leeches. They pulled back into a predator's grin of antic.i.p.ation, revealing shriveled black gums and the teeth of a killing thing. As demonic as the Other's features were, there was a horrible familiarity about them - like those of a loved one in a picture torn to shreds and pasted back together by inexpert hands.

Look who's come to pay me a visit!

The Other's mind voice sounded like a clogged kitchen sink trying to approximate human speech. It made Palmer ill to feel its cold, hateful venom leaking into his consciousness.

Give me a kiss, lover boy!

He smashed his fist into its face as hard as he could. Blood the color and consistency of transmission fluid flew from the Other's nostrils. It laughed - a sound that lay somewhere between a lion roaring and a toilet backing up. The Other's laugh made him hit it harder - and harder. But all it did was laugh and laugh and laugh.

Suddenly Palmer was back in his own body. He landed two more blows before he realized he was. .h.i.tting Sonja.

Somehow he had gotten astride her and pinned her throat with his left hand while his right rose and fell, rose and fell. She lay underneath him, her face smeared with something sticky. Her sungla.s.ses had fallen off, revealing eyes the color of a dying sun. In the dark, the pale ichor that pa.s.sed for blood amongst her kind almost looked normal.

Palmer stared at his lover's bruised and swollen face - the damage already righting itself before his stunned eyes then at his right hand. It was still clenched in a fist. He slowly opened it, as if expecting a stinging insect to fly out.

'Oh, G.o.d. G.o.d. I'm sorry, Sonja. I don't know what happened.

I was ... I thought I was fighting ... I must have flipped out. I didn't mean to hurt you.'

She smiled then - the slow, lazy smile of satiation - and placed a finger on his trembling lips, halting his babbled apology.

'Hush.'

'But--'

'I said hush.' She pulled him down to her, pressing his face between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He could not have escaped her embrace even if he tried.

They lay together for a long time until Palmer finally fell asleep. In his dreams he heard the groaning of approaching glaciers and the echo of inhuman laughter.

They had s.e.x nearly every night after that. Sometimes more than once. But the telepathic communion they had once shared was now strained, bordering nonexistent. Sonja was always guarded during their trysts, her psionic defenses at the ready.

It was as though she did not dare allow herself to relax, even at the most intimate of moments. Palmer was uncertain whether she was afraid of the Other getting out or of his getting in.

She was a blank wall as far as he was concerned - unreadable and impenetrable, shrugging off his attempts at psychic rapport. While her mental frigidity bothered him, Palmer never pressed the issue. Whatever secrets Sonja kept locked inside herself were hers and hers alone.

As the telepathic aspect of their relations.h.i.+p dwindled, the s.a.d.i.s.tic side grew. The first time she came to him with the whip, he threw it down. He yelled his defiance. He did not want to play that game. He refused to hurt her. Then she took off her sungla.s.ses and looked at him with those terrible eyes mutated beyond tears, and something within him broke.

He beat her until the blood flew, stippling the walls and spotting the bare light-bulb hanging over the bed. He beat her until his arm ached and the whip fell from numbed fingers. All to meet her need. She needed his blows. Needed them as much as his caresses. Maybe more. Palmer did not know what sins she hoped to expiate with stinging leather kisses and roses fas.h.i.+oned of swollen flesh and splattered blood, nor did he want to. Some things are sacred. Even to monsters.

About a week after her arrival home, Palmer awoke in the middle of the night to find the bed empty. His first thought was of Lethe, and his heart leapt in fear. He hurried to the child's bedroom, but Lethe was sound asleep. He felt a surge of shame.

Sonja would no more harm Lethe than he would. He looked out the window at the nearby forest. No doubt she was out hunting. After all, she was nocturnal. He returned to his room as she crawled in through the window. She was completely nude, her mouth and belly smeared with fresh blood.

'Sonja?'

She turned like a startled cat, hissing a warning. The hairs on his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es stood on end as he realized he was looking into the face of the Other.

The Other spoke in a gravelly, slurred baritone, sounding like a cleverly remixed version of Sonja's normal voice.

'So, lover boy's still up! Why does she keep you around, Palmer? It can't be the way you f.u.c.k!'

The Other laughed as Palmer flinched, licking the blood smearing the back of its hand like a cat cleaning itself.

It enjoyed making him twitch. Palmer was still uncertain whether Sonja's vampiric alter ego was a genuinely separate ident.i.ty or simply an elaborate self-delusion; her id given voice. Was his lover possessed or mad? Either way, Palmer had to be careful when dealing with the Other. It definitely lacked Sonja's patience - marginal as that might be at times - and made it clear more than once that it suffered Palmer's presence only as a 'favor' to its host.

'I want to talk to Sonja.'

Tough t.i.tty, a.s.shole,' the Other growled, dropping onto the bed. 'She ain't here.'

'Then I'll wait until she gets back,' Palmer said, folding his arms.

'Back off, renfield!' the Other snapped, showing its fangs in ritual display. 'I'm not in the mood!'

There was a sound from the direction of the door and the Other fell silent, something resembling fear flickering across its face. Palmer glanced over his shoulder and saw Fido standing on the threshold, his eyes glowing in the dark.

When Palmer turned his attention back to the Other, Sonja was sitting there, looking puzzled.

'Bill?' She frowned at the blood drying on her belly. She wiped her finger along the smear and tasted it, grimacing slightly. 'Don't worry, it's not human--' She glanced back up at him. 'Why are you looking at me that way?'

'You went out hunting and the Other came back.'

She s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. 'Did ... did it say anything?'

'About what?'

Her eyes flashed angrily and for a heart-stopping moment Palmer was afraid the Other had returned. 'Did it taK?'

'Yeah, but it didn't say much. Told me I was a lousy lay, if that's what you mean.'

'That's not true, you know that'

'Do I?' Palmer knelt beside her on the bed, taking her hands into his. 'Sonja, what's wrong? What happened in New Orleans that you're not'telling me?'

She looked at him, her dark-adapted pupils so dilated they filled her eyes. The sadness inside her pressed against him, wrapping him in stifling grayness. Her depression filled his lungs, crus.h.i.+ng the breath from him. His heart seemed to swell then wither as the misery inside her sought to pull him down into its depths. Palmer knew that if he succ.u.mbed to the vortex, he would be lost. Marshaling all his strength, both physical and mental; he drew back and punched her as hard as he could, right in the face.

He told himself it wasn't cruelty. It was self-preservation.

The gray pain retreated from his mind. In its place was a red-hot coal of anger, betrayal - arousal.

He hit her again.

And again.

And again.

His o.r.g.a.s.m took him by surprise. He looked down at his wilting p.e.n.i.s, blinking in confusion. He hadn't even touched himself. Sonja lay facedown on the bed, her body twisted in sheets smeared with her blood and sweat and Palmer's spent seed. She didn't seem to be breathing.

'Sonja?'

No response. His fists ached from the pounding they'd administered. His body was still trembling like a plucked guitar string.

'Sonja?'

He rolled her over. Her body was so heavy, so limp. Her face was a mess of blood, pulped cartilage and shattered bone. The walls looked as if someone had tried to clean a dirty paintbrush by flicking it dry. She still wasn't breathing. Her brain sounded like a radio tuned to an empty channel.

Bile rising in his throat, Palmer lurched to his feet and headed for the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and splashed water on his face. When he looked up, he found his reflection, haggard and drawn, staring out at him from the mirror. There was a mad gleam in the eyes - a gleam he recognized. He'd seen its like in the eyes of the humans in the service of the vampires Pangloss and Morgan.

Renfields. They called them renfields.

The Other had called him a renfield.

Palmer pressed his bruised and bleeding hands against his eyes. The screech and squall of the mind-world pushed against his head, threatening to breach his barriers and inundate him with other people's fears, hopes, dreams, secrets, and sins until his individuality, his consciousness was erased 'Stop it!' he yelled at an old lady in Poughkeepsie, who couldn't decide whether to put her cancer-ridden poodle down or not. 'Get out of my head!' he screeched at an aging businessman in Taipei, who was worried about his waning potency.

'Leave me alone!' he bellowed at a n.a.z.i war criminal in Paraguay, who was certain he was being followed by an Israeli task force.

'Bill?'

He jerked open the bathroom door. Sonja was standing on the other side, her cheekbones already restructuring themselves, her lips deflating, the bruises covering her eyes fading from black to blue to yellow.

'You all right in there?'

He had failed her. He would always fail her. She was insatiable. How could he hope to satisfy a woman who healed within minutes? Palmer wondered if he would ever be able to f.u.c.k a woman again without trying to kill her.

As he lay beside her on the bloodstained bed, watching the dawn chase the shadows across the walls of their room, he wondered which was worse: thinking that he'd killed her, or being disappointed she was alive.

Later that day, while Palmer was building yet another s.h.i.+pping crate - this time for obscene pull-toys: terracotta figurines sporting enormous p.e.n.i.ses with wheels affixed to the glans Lethe came out onto the patio to watch him. She was carrying the black mask he'd kept from the previous s.h.i.+pment.

'Where's Auntie Boo?'

'Auntie Boo's sleeping. You know she sleeps during the day, Lethe.'