Chapter Sixteen
"There's the car, milord. She must be inside the motel room," observed the chauffeur.
"A brilliant deduction, as usual, Renfield," Morgan sighed from the back seat of the Rolls.
He peered over the top of his tinted aviator glasses at the Ferrari parked outside Room 20 of the Pink Motel. The automobile was his, although the paperwork and owner's registration in the glove compartment claimed that the legal owner was one Dr. Joad Caron. The vanity plates agreed. But since Morgan was also the good doctor, whatever belonged to Joad Caron belonged to him. Including his patients.
Morgan glanced at the human seated beside him. The renfield was an ethnic Chinese whose ancestors had served as the imperial court's seers for six generations. They had deliberately interbred, cultivating some of the finest human psionic talents Morgan had run across in his travels. What was equally impressive was the line's reputation for relative sanity and stability, something rare among the more powerful wild talents. Morgan acknowledged his servant's special status by addressing him as something beside the generic "renfield."
"Wretched Fly. Scan."
The sensitive nodded silently, tilting his head to one side, like a robin listening for worms.
"She's there. Alone."
Morgan scowled. "Are you sure? Not that I doubt your abilities, my friend. But I don't like to be caught unawares. Something our mischievous Ms. Blue seems to be quite adept at."
"She is alone. And in pain."
Morgan weighed the information carefully. It was possible Anise's would-be savior had abandoned her after all, although Morgan was curious as to why his enemy would leave the breeder alive.
Fell had informed him of how Anise had babbled on about "free will" and "the right to choose" before beaning him with the ash shovel. The speed and ardor of Anise's conversion bothered Morgan. He'd picked her as a breeder because of her keen psychological need to be assimilated by the dominant class structure. His programming should have held. That this rogue could have penetrated his defenses and undone so much work in so short a period of time troubled him. That his enemy had claimed to be one of his own by-blows disturbed Morgan even more.
Over the years there had been rumors circulating among the Nobility of a strange creature stalking various revenants, vampires and their attendant renfields. A predator that preyed on predators. The stories told by the broodmasters credited the maverick Pretender with immense strength, the ability to walk in daylight and an unheard-of immunity to silver.
Some thought their antagonist the product of human technology, created to destroy the Pretender race. Morgan imagined the stories to be the result of a group of pathetic, senile ancients made paranoid by centuries of intrigue and counterplots. Morgan had been amused by their need to create a bogeyman.
Still, it had given him the idea to create his own race of hybrid vampires. With his specially bred homo desmodus under his control, he would soon have the likes of Baron Luxor and Marchessa Nuit kowtowing before him, pledging fealty for all eternity. Or however long Morgan saw fit for them to continue.
But now his dreams of glory were collapsing, undermined by a creature he'd imagined mythical. Morgan savored irony, but not at his own expense.
"Signal the others," he said, straightening the cuffs of his Saville Row silk suit.
Wretched Fly nodded, silently relaying his master's commands to the occupants of the second car.
The doors of the accompanying Mercedes popped open and two figures climbed out. One was a renfield. The other had once been a particularly obnoxious insurance salesman who had tried to pressure what he thought was Dr. Caron into buying a policy. Now his body housed a fire elemental. The renfield gave the pyrotic a wide berth, wary of the fierce heat it radiated.
Morgan climbed out of the Rolls, followed closely by Wretched Fly. The gravel crunched under his handmade Italian shoes as he crossed the parking lot to Room 20. The door was unlocked. Not that it mattered.
Anise lay curled atop sheets befouled with blood and the fluids of childbirth. Her pallor was grayish and her eyes sunken in their orbits. She clutched a bloodstained bundle to her breast. She cringed at the sight of Morgan standing in the doorway, flanked by his most trusted-and powerful-renfields.
"You disappoint me, my child."
She closed her eyes, trying to subvert the conditioned responses his physical presence triggered in her. But simply shutting off the visual cues wasn't enough. He was all over her - in her mind, in her nostrils, in her taste buds. He was everywhere and everything. He was unavoidable and undeniable.
"I'm not your child!" She tried to make her voice hard, but the words came out sounding more petulant than angry.
Morgan's lips pulled into a thin, cruel smile. "If I am not your father, who is? God? Satan? A honky from Watsonville out for cheap *? Is this how you show your gratitude? By running away and killing my servants? Is this how a daughter repays her father for all the things he's done for her?"
"Done to her, you mean!" Her lower lip was trembling, but the hate in her eyes remained undimmed.
"Come now, my child! This isn't the way I want things between us! You're mixed-up. Confused. You don't know what to believe, do you? Your friend abandoned you, didn't she? Left you alone and helpless. She talked about freedom and free will, didn't she? Those are nice, pretty-sounding words, aren't they? But they're just words, simple-minded phrases deluded humans use to coerce themselves into believing themselves masters of their destiny. They are meaningless!" He opened his arms wide. "Come home with me, Anise, and all things will be forgiven."
Anise felt her defenses start to melt. She still hated Morgan, but part of her wanted to rush into his strong, protective arms. Thinking on her own and deciding for herself was exhausting, even frightening. Things would be so much better if she refuted the pretense of free will and let Morgan take control. It would be so easy to say yes and surrender, to become like him...
No! That's what he wants! That's what he's betting on! Stay angry! Stay angry! Don't let him win! Be strong, woman! If not for yourself, for Lethe!
"You can't fool me anymore, Morgan. I can see you for what you really are. I'm not going back!"
The pyrotic, its skin the color of barbecued meat, wandered over to the corner of the room where an old black-and-white Zenith television sat bolted atop a pedestal. The pyrotic's eyes resembled hard-boiled eggs, but this did not seem to impinge on its ability to navigate. It punched the television's ON button and stepped back. The Beverly Hillbillies theme song blared from the TV's speakers at full volume:
"Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed, Poor mountaineer barely kept his fam'ly fed... "
Morgan spun around, his face livid. "Turn that shit off! Renfield! Get that damned elemental away from that accursed idiot box!"
The pyrotic showed its displeasure by making a noise like live steam escaping a radiator. The renfield grunted and moved to turn off the television. There was a loud crack and the side of the renfield's head disappeared.
Morgan spun to face Anise, his ears ringing from the gunshot. The muzzle of a .38 was leveled directly between his eyes.
"Put the gun down, Anise."
"My name's Lakisha!"
Morgan pretended not to hear her. "I said put down the gun, Anise. "
She fired the gun a second time, but her hand was shaking too hard. The slug struck Morgan in the shoulder instead of the head.
"Nice try, Anise. But no cigar."
"I told you my name's Lakisha, asshole!" she hissed, and shoved the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Her head opened like a cracked pi?ata, spraying the wall with the raw material of memory. Morgan stared at the mess dripping from the walls as if divining omens.
Wretched Fly removed the bloodstained bundle from the bed and held it out to his master for inspection. Morgan grimaced at the sight of the mutant baby's hideous puckered mouth and skeleton nose and snatched the offending corpse from Wretched Fly, shaking it like a rag doll.
"This is Howell's doing! He promised that the child would be able to pass for human! The bastard lied to me! Lied! I'll make that junkie pay for this!" He hurled the dead baby at its mother's corpse, turning his back on the tableau in disgust. "Torch it!"
The pyrotic stepped forward. Its mouth dropped open and a gout of liquid flame leapt free, consuming the bed and its lifeless occupants. The smell of burning mattress and roasting meat filled the room.
Morgan stepped outside Room 20, scowling at the night sky without seeing it. His mouth tasted of ash. There was only one thing that could wash away the bitterness of failure - the blood of his enemy.
"Hey, you! Keep your hands where I can see "em!"
An elderly man armed with a double-barreled shotgun hurried across the parking lot from the motel's office. His bathrobe flapped open, exposing faded pajama bottoms and a stained T-shirt.
"What in hell's going on here? I heard gunshots! Where's the Smiths?"
"Smiths?" Morgan raised an eyebrow in amusement.
"You know who I'm talking about - the young couple that rented Number 20. You better answer me, fellah, or I'm liable to blow a hole in you! I ain't one to be fucked with!"
"Indeed."
Wretched Fly and the pyrotic stepped out of the motel room to stand beside Morgan. The motel manager frowned and took an automatic step backward. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the flames reflected in the windows.
"You crazy bastards set fire to my motel!"
Morgan, bored with the confrontation, turned his back on the man. "Take care of him," he yawned, waving a languid hand at his servants.
"Where you think you're going, asshole?" The manager's voice wavered as he fought to control his anger. He stepped forward, shouldering the shotgun. "You're staying put until the state police get here!"
The pyrotic belched and a fireball the size of a ripe cabbage struck the old man in the chest. He dropped his weapon and clawed at the flames eating his clothes and skin, spreading it to his hands and upper arms.
Screaming like an angry blue jay, the old man threw himself to the ground and rolled in the dirt and gravel, spreading the fire to his pajama pants and hair. During his final, conscious moments, he tried to drag himself back the way he came, his ears filled with the sound of his own flesh hissing and crackling like bacon fat in a frying pan.
He succeeded in crawling nearly six feet before he was completely consumed.
The pyrotic squatted next to the smoldering remains and inhaled the blue-white flames back into his nose and open mouth. The intense heat had reduced the old man's skull to the size of an orange. Wretched Fly signaled impatiently for the elemental to get back in the Mercedes.
Morgan slid behind the wheel of the Ferrari, sneering at Anise's crude hotwiring job. Within seconds he was speeding down the highway, the Rolls and Mercedes following in his wake. The night was young and there was much to done.