Chapter Nineteen
Fell sat beside Sonja while she drove, his posture rigid. In his faded denims and loose-fitting cotton shirt, he could almost pass for a college boy, provided you ignored the bruises and dried blood on his face.
"I'm sorry I did those things to you, kid."
Fell started, blinking rapidly. "Huh? Oh. Don't worry about it. I understand what you were trying to do." His hand strayed to where his ear had been. "Besides, it'll all grow back, won't it?"
"In time. Your regenerative powers at this stage aren't so advanced that you'll recover overnight, though."
"How long, then?"
"Give it a couple of days. Maybe a week."
Fell grunted and glanced at his warped reflection in the windshield. "What about my eyes? When will my eyes be like yours?"
Sonja shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't matter. "Hard to say. It took mine several years to mutate. Maybe yours never will. Maybe it's different with different people. Who knows?" Sonja cleared her throat. "Uh, there's a few things I need to know about Morgan's setup at the house, if you don't mind talking about it."
"Sure. Go ahead."
"Anise mentioned someone called Dr. Howell. Who is he? Another vampire?"
Fell looked back down at his hands. Without his realizing it, they had become fists. "No. He's not a vampire. He's human."
"A renfield?"
"I've never given it much thought before, really. But, no, he's not a renfield. I guess he's just a normal human. If you could call Doc Howell normal." Fell snorted. "He's Morgan's pet mad scientist, although they don't get along too well - and Howell openly loathes the renfields."
"Interesting. If that's the case, what hold does Morgan have on him?"
Fell smirked and held up his left arm and pantomimed sinking a hypodermic needle into his bent elbow with his right hand. "Doc's a stone junkie. Morgan provides him with all the heroin, morphine and opium he can handle. And then some."
"And this guy's a scientist?"
"That's what he keeps saying. He's some kind of hotshot geneticist. Occasionally he'd get hopped up and start ranting about how he was our true father, not Morgan! I always thought it was just crazy talk. We got a lot of that from the renfields, whenever they'd bother to talk to us at all."
"How many servants does Morgan have at Ghost Trap?"
Fell frowned. "I'm not sure. I never saw them together at one time. They avoided us as much as possible. There might be as many as six. Plus Wretched Fly."
"Wretched Fly?"
"Yeah, Morgan's top renfield. He was at the disco."
"The Asian?"
"Yeah, that's him."
"Well, I took out one at Ghost Trap this afternoon and one at the bar, and Anise said she'd killed one while escaping. That depletes his backup by half," mused Sonja, ticking off the kills on the fingers of her right hand. "Does he have any mercs?"
"What?"
"Muscle for hire. Various species of Pretender make their way by hiring themselves out to vampires as powerful and well connected as Morgan. I know he's got a pyrotic on the payroll. Did you see any ogres? Vargr? Skindancers?"
"Whozits?"
"Boy, he sure did his best to keep you ignorant, didn't he?"
Fell flushed. "Anise and I were restricted to a suite of rooms on the ground floor for most of our lives. The first few months we were kept in a sterile environment, and only Morgan and Doc Howell were allowed in. Most of the time we stayed in our rooms, except for when we were escorted to and from Doc's laboratory on the second floor.
"We were only allowed outside once - it was during the day, and we were under heavy supervision by the renfields. Dr. Howell was there, too - taking notes. I guess they wanted to see if we'd turn into crispy critters when exposed to the sun."
"Weren't you even a little bit curious as to what was really going on?"
Fell's face reddened even deeper. "No, not really. I know that's a horrible thing to admit to, but it's the truth. Anise was a little more inquisitive than I was, and that didn't become part of her behavior until after she became pregnant. Until yesterday afternoon, it had never occurred to me that the life I was living was in anyway... unusual. After all, I didn't have anything to compare it to, did I?" Fell shook his head, amazed at his own naivete.
"But what really makes me sick is that a part of me, deep down, liked Morgan running my life for me. And what's worse, I enjoyed what I had become! I was never any good at sports back when I was Tim Sorrell, Super-Geek. I never did real well with the girls. I was a gold-plated wimp if ever there was one. Although I didn't consciously remember any of that stuff, it was still buried inside me.
"There's a fully outfitted gymnasium on the second floor we were allowed to use. I can bench-press eight hundred pounds. Me! Scrawny little 'Dracula Weirdo' Sorrell!" He flexed his biceps, parodying a Charles Atlas-style bodybuilder.
For a fleeting moment, he was what he had once been - a bright, sensitive nineteen-year-old boy, standing on the threshold of manhood. Then the smile disappeared and he was staring at his hands again.
"Morgan used to talk about 'the cattle' and how easy it is to control them. Sometimes he'd bring in humans from outside... I don't know who they were. Transients, I guess. And he'd let me..." He closed his eyes, trying to blot the image from his memory. "I'd play with them." His voice shook, the words burning his tongue. "Sometimes there was sex. Man. Woman. It didn't matter. And then after..."
"Fell, you don't have to tell me this."
"But I have to! I have to tell someone!" His voice was high and tight, like a frightened girl's. "My god, Sonja, if I can't tell you, who can I tell?"
She pursed her mouth into a thin line and nodded. "Go on."
Fell took a shuddering breath, anxiously knotting and unknotting his fingers in his lap. "After the sex was over, I'd bite them on their arms and legs and groin, like I was kissing them, only they were screaming and bleeding instead of moaning with pleasure. And it wasn't because I was hungry, either! Morgan provided us with all the bottled blood we could ever need. I did it because... because it felt good! It was better than sex or drugs or anything else. It made me feel alive! It was like my nightmares, only I wasn't scared of the things I was doing anymore.
"Morgan would stay in the room and watch me do these things. I pray to God he was controlling me, making me do those horrible things. Because if he wasn't, I did them!"
"What happened was in the past. You've regained your conscience and with it autonomy. Whatever you may have done while under Morgan's influence, it's over and done with. It's up to you to realize that and accept it, Tim."
"Don't call me that. I'm not Tim anymore, not where it really counts. I don't know who - or what - I am. Part of me remembers what it was like to be Tim Sorrell. I can still recall all the times the bigger, more popular kids made fun of him, called him names. I can remember the hatred he felt for them. I can remember his parents, and how he felt about them, but it's not the same as when I was Tim. But I'm not what Morgan wanted me to be, either. When I think of things I did before I regained my sense of self, it makes me want to puke. I guess I'm Fell more than I am anything - or anyone - else. Just like you're more Sonja Blue than Denise Thorne."
"How did - ?"
"The skull-peeping works both ways. When you were working me over at the disco I kept getting, I dunno, flashes. Of you and Morgan. What he did to make you... what you are."
A muscle twitched in Sonja's cheek as she tightened her grip on the steeringwheel. "You're right. I don't really think of myself as Denise anymore. She's more someone I used to know."
"Do you like her?"
She reflected on that for a moment before answering. "Yeah, I guess I do."
"I like Tim, too. Now that it's too late to do him any good."
"What do you mean you can't find him?" Morgan bellowed, hurling an antique ivory music box at the cowering renfield.
The renfield dodged at the last moment, wincing as the music box smashed against the teak paneling next to his head.
"J - just that, milord. The doctor is not in his laboratory, nor is he in his room."
"Are you saying he's managed to escape?"
"No. Not exactly. He's... he's somewhere in the house."
"How astute! Then if he's still in the house, why haven't you brought him before me?"
"He's not in the nucleus, milord. He's... somewhere in the outer house. He's in the Ghost Trap." Having delivered this news, the renfield pulled his neck in between his shoulders like a turtle.
"Damn him! Damn his junkie soul to a thousand drug-free hells!" Morgan shrieked, knocking books and rare antiques from a nearby bookshelf with an angry sweep of his arm. "He did this to me! He deliberately set out to ruin my plans!" The vampire spun back around to face the trembling renfield, pointing a finger at the whey-faced psychic.
"You! I want the outer house searched, is that clear? Take the others with you!"
"But - but, milord!"
"Do it!"
The renfield fled the library, leaving Morgan to fume in silence.
He should never have trusted Howell. Never! The scientist had been unstable long before the drugs became a factor. But Howell's erratic behavior was what had allowed Morgan access to him to begin with. As much as it galled the vampire lord to admit it, the mistake was his own. He'd been intimidated by the scientist's facility with technology, allowing him far more autonomy than was prudent. And now Morgan was paying the price for not keeping his pet biogeneticist on a tighter leash.
If news of his humiliation at the hands of a mere human ever got out, he'd be the laughingstock of the Nobility! Worse, he would be perceived as weak, and that would endanger his alliances and encourage another round of brood wars against him. He might even be forced to surrender his title of Lord! It would no doubt please snapping jackals like Pangloss and Verite to see him brought low.
This was what his reliance on technology and science, humankind's sorcery, had brought him to. He should never have relied so heavily on something of human manufacture! These things were always confusing and somewhat frightening to Pretenders, and Morgan was no different. Yet its inherent power had been too lucrative to leave to mere humans to exploit.
While Howell might be a necromancer of unparalleled power in his postnuclear wizard's workshop, it would do him little good once he was strapped to a chair. Morgan had all kinds of interesting things planned for the good Dr. Howell. Depriving him of his precious white powder was only the first of many cruelties to be inflicted on the thankless swine. Perhaps a few judiciously applied medical probes would make him more appreciative of his betters. Of course, the good doctor would be forced to personally oversee his own flaying and subsequent vivisection. Morgan had long since evolved beyond the need to soil his hands with the blood of his victims.
But first the conniving bastard had to be caught. Morgan struck his desk with a balled fist, cracking its imported Italian marble. While Brainard Howell might be devious, vainglorious and ungrateful, he definitely was not stupid.
The bastard knew that the outer layer surrounding Ghost Trap's nucleus was dangerous, especially to Pretenders and humans with psychic abilities. While this had worked in Morgan's favor in the past, Howell's escape had turned that advantage against him.
There were things roaming Ghost Trap that did not like outsiders, and Morgan was in no hurry to meet them face-to-face.
"Milord?"
Morgan glanced up from his reverie and glowered at Wretched Fly. The renfield stood in the doorway to the library, the right side of his head wrapped in sterile gauze.
. "Are they dead?"
"Milord - there were difficulties. "
"Explain yourself."
"The woman, the one called Blue, uncovered our presence. My companion was killed outright. I was momentarily... incapacitated." He touched the bandage shrouding his right eye gingerly.
"Then what of Fell?"
"I don't know, milord. The rogue had the upper hand the last I saw her. Milord, she was tapping him!"
Morgan frowned. "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive, milord! The nimbus configuration was quite distinct. She was absorbing and metabolizing the negative energy generated by the breeder."
Morgan fell silent. He hadn't been expecting that. Perhaps it was better that his plans had collapsed, after all. His schemes had revolved around a race of vampires incapable of living on anything but blood. Feeding on emotions was something only the more advanced species were capable of. Fell had shown no signs of battening onto his terror-stricken prey for anything but plasma during the "tests" Morgan had arranged.
"Are you certain this rogue isn't a true vampire?" he hissed.
"I am sure of it, milord. Her aural configurations were identical to those of the breeders, although much stronger."
Morgan cursed under his breath. This was turning out the way he'd hoped.
"Milord - "
"What is it, Wretched Fly?"
The renfield cleared his throat. "Milord, I have failed you. And since I have done so, I offer now my life to you, for you to destroy as you see fit."
Morgan suppressed a smile. "I can do that any time I want, Wretched Fly. But I appreciate the offer. No, you are too valuable to me, my friend. The eye - it is gone?"
"Yes, milord."
"Then that is payment enough for your failure."
"As you wish, milord."
Morgan watched as his maimed lieutenant left the room. It had been centuries since Morgan had last known the treachery of mortal flesh. The mere thought that he had once been restrained by the limits of bone and muscle, fearful of disease and pestilence, was enough to make his skin tighten.
"Christ, I never realized how big this house was before! I mean, I knew it was large, but I never truly comprehended its scale... " Fell whispered in awe, tilting his head to ogle one of the ninety-nine lightning rods decorating the spires and turrets of Ghost Trap.
"Look, once we're in there I want you to stick with me, understand? The inside of this place is designed to confuse and trap the dead. It also does a good job scrambling the synapses of anything more complicated than a worm. If regular humans have a hard time dealing with it, you can imagine what it'll do to Pretenders! I still have the protective charm I used from the first time I entered the house, but I can't guarantee it'll extend itself to include you. Have I made myself clear?"
Fell swallowed hard and nodded. Sonja surprised herself by giving the boy a brief hug. Shit, the kid was brave. Fell's cheeks reddened.
"Uh, Sonja..."
"Later, kid. We'll talk about it later." With that she turned and put her fist through one of the downstairs windows, reaching inside to open the lock.
"No wonder Morgan wouldn't let us wander loose around here." Ever since they'd entered Ghost Trap's rambling confines, Fell had spoken in a low, reverential whisper, as if in church. "You could get lost and never find your way out again!"
"That's not all you have to worry about. There are things that walk these halls. Most people would call them ghosts. Spirits of the dead."
"But ghosts can't hurt you, can they?"
"Normally, no. But Ghost Trap is hardly what I'd call normal. Just keep an eye out for anything that looks like a little girl or a woman dressed in old-timey clothes."
"Are they ghosts?"
"No, they're fuckin' tour hostesses! Of course they're ghosts! What did you expect? I think I can find my way back to the fire room - "
"The what?"
"Never mind. Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, okay? I - " She halted and tilted her head at an angle. She shot Fell a look from the corner of her eye. "You hear that?"
"What? I don't - " He stopped, his jaw dropping open. It was faint, but he could just make out the sound of someone whimpering. "Is - is it a ghost?"
"It doesn't sound like one. The dead tend to be mute." She motioned for him to follow her, moving stealthily through the shadows and dust of the empty rooms.
They found the source of the whimpering in a nearby room. The wallpaper sparkled faintly in the illumination provided by a flashlight on the floor. Fell touched the wall nearest him and felt the gold and crushed crystal wallpaper underneath his fingertips. It had the texture of sandpaper. Sonja picked up the flashlight and turned the feeble beam on its owner.
A middle-aged man dressed in a rumpled dark suit sat huddled in the far corner of the room, his face pressed tightly against the wall. His suit and hair were smeared with dust and cobwebs. One side of his face was bloody from where he'd been rubbing it against the wallpaper. He'd recently wet himself and an ammonia smell clung to him. He twitched and whimpered like a kicked puppy.
"I recognize him," Fell whispered. "He's one of Morgan's renfields. But what's he doing here?"
"Whatever his reasons for entering this place might have been, I doubt he was looking for us," Sonja muttered. She took another step toward the man crouched in the corner. He stopped shivering and bared his teeth, foam flecking the corners of his mouth.
"Renfields aren't terribly stable to begin with. And being somewhere like this, I'm not surprised the bastard lost it totally," Sonja muttered as she moved closer. "Still, he might be of some use."
The renfield shrieked and launched himself at her, his fingers clawing at her glasses. Sonja cursed and smashed the butt of the flashlight against her attacker's skull. The renfield collapsed to the floor, his head caved in. Sonja tossed the broken flashlight over her shoulder and bent down, lifting the dead renfield by his suit lapels.
"Waste not, want not," she growled, sinking her canines into his still-warm throat. After a minute or two, she withdrew, handing the corpse to Fell. "Here. Drink."
Fell's eyes widened and he took a step back. "No. I can't."
"You're no virgin! You said so yourself! Now, drink! You're gonna need it!"
"I..." Fell meant to protest further, but he'd already caught the scent of blood on her breath. His mouth began to water. He quickly battened onto the dead man. The blood was already below body temperature, but it was enough. He let the drained corpse drop.
"Feel better?"
"Yeah. I know this sounds horrible, but I feel like I've got my second wind now."
"Good boy!" She grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. "Now, all we have to do is - "
A loud scream broke the silence, bouncing through the rooms like a rubber ball before being cut off in midnote. Sonja and Fell exchanged looks and headed in the direction of the noise.
They found the second renfield in the hall Sonja had called the "fire room." The gas jets were still blazing as they entered. The renfield lay sprawled in the middle of the room, his skull smashed like an overripe pumpkin dropped from the top of a ladder.
Fell glanced about nervously while Sonja tried to find the secret panel the late Mrs. Seward had shown her. "This little girl and lady you mentioned - are they, uh, good ghosts or bad ghosts?"
"They're - ambivalent. Like most dead. But if you mean are they friend or foe - I think they're friendly. No, they're not responsible for this." "Then who - ?" "Found it!" Sonja stood back, allowing the secret door to pivot open.
"C'mon!"
Fell gave the mutilated remains a final glance over his shoulder before following Sonja into the secret passage.
The rental car was parked on the south side of the house, its hood still warm.
They're here, all right. Now all I have to do is catch up with them, Palmer mused sourly, nervously eyeing Ghost Trap's sprawl.
His own transport, a BMW he'd "borrowed" back in San Francisco, was in no shape for a return journey. Steam seeped from under its hood, while something dark and viscous dripped from the undercarriage. Probably ripped the oil pan off a mile or so back. Obviously, the car had not been designed to navigate SonomaCounty back roads at high speeds.
Spying an open ground-floor window, Palmer checked to make sure his Luger was securely holstered before climbing over the sill in pursuit of his partner.
Three steps into the Ghost Trap, he realized he'd made a big mistake. If he'd found the exterior of Ghost Trap disorienting, it was nothing compared to the interior.
He remembered how, as a child, he'd pestered his parents into allowing him to enter the House of Horrors at the state fair. He'd promised them that it wouldn't give him nightmares - he was too old to be scared. Finally, they'd weakened and allowed him to go in. His self-assurance in his proclaimed maturity vanished the minute the wooden double doors swung shut behind him, cutting off all contact with the world where light, parents, and rational thought ruled.
Surrounded by dry-ice mist, black lights and prerecorded screams and rattling chains, he'd shrieked at the sight of a department store mannequin dressed to look like Frankenstein. He'd been so scared he wet himself and was escorted outside by one of the employees, a pimply-faced teenager dressed in a hunchback costume. His father had called him a sissy, and they'd been forced to leave the fair early because of his "accident."
Now, thirty years later, the same paralyzing terror he'd experienced in the House of Horrors was close to claiming him again. His scalp prickled and his bladder ached as if full of ground glass.
He trudged through the oddly designed rooms, barely noticing such oddities as doorways set three feet off the ground, windows that opened onto blank walls and fireplaces that served as staircases.
With every room, he found it harder and harder to think straight. Why was he here? Why had he entered this horrible place? He knew he must have had a good reason. Or at least some kind of reason. Right? Now if he could only remember what it was...
Palmer staggered as the floor dropped out from under him. The walls bowed inward as if made from rubber. He retched while leaning against a sharply canted doorway, the acid burning his throat. His dad was really going to yell at him now. He shouldn't have eaten all those corndogs before riding the Tilt-A-Whirl. Now they were going to have to leave the fair. But that didn't sound like such a bad idea. He'd already been too long at the fair. Now if he could only remember where the car was... parked.
Palmer collapsed onto his hands and knees as dry heaves shook his body. His forebrain throbbed fiercely, keeping time like a jazz drummer.
I'm gonna die in here. I'm gonna wander around lost inside this hellhole until it kills me. Just like Seward. Sonja...
He lifted his head and found himself staring at a small boy.
The child looked to be no more than three years old, dressed in a sailor's suit. The boy held a teddy bear close to his chest with his left arm because he was missing his right one. A knob of bone and bloodless flesh protruded from his mangled shoulder. Although the child's face was still round with baby fat, his eyes were solemn. Palmer dimly noticed that the child was transparent.
"Little boy..."
The child did not waver or disappear.
"Little boy... I need... help..."
A young girl clutching a china doll joined the boy, both of them watching Palmer with interest. The girl leaned toward her brother and muttered something that Palmer could not make out. Moving together, the children grasped Palmer by his shoulders and pulled him back onto his feet. He gasped and felt a strong chill run through his body at the touch of their tiny fingers on his flesh.
The children were in front of him now, motioning for him to follow. Shaken and weak, Palmer lurched after them. He had no way of knowing if these creatures were friend or foe, but anything was better than crawling around in circles in his own vomit.
The children froze like fawns scenting the approach of a hunter. The boy and his sister disembodied, transforming themselves into fist-sized globs of light. The change was so abrupt it looked to Palmer as if the children had rolled up like window shades.
Palmer pressed his hands to his eyes, even more disoriented than before. What had happened to his tiny spirit guides? Or had he imagined the whole thing? And if not, what was it that had frightened them away?
The scream ripped through him like a bullet. As he listened, it ended abruptly, cut off in midshriek. The echo was so distorted it was impossible to tell if it had been a male or female voice.
"Sonja!"
Palmer weaved in the general direction the scream had come from. His brain churned and stretched inside his head, pressing against the plates of his skull. Sonja. He had to find Sonja. That's why he'd come into the House of Horrors. Now he remembered. Once he found Sonja she'd make the pounding in his head go away.
Palmer stared at the thing with the ax for several seconds before realizing he'd discovered the source of the scream.
The creature was shaped like a man, only taller. It carried a large, cruel-looking ax, which it was using to dismember what was left of a man in a dark suit. The ax-murderer made weird tittering noises while it hacked away at its prey. The victim's head had been cracked open from the top of his skull to his upper palate.
The thing halted in midswing and turned to look at the new intruder. Palmer's bladder let go, just as it had in the House of Horrors back in 1961. Only this time he knew there was no way he would be escorted to safety by a sympathetic teenager tricked out in monster drag.
The ax-murderer had two heads. The head on the left was the larger of the pair, boasting a batlike snout, a mouthful of jagged teeth, and pupil-less eyes the color of fresh blood. The head on the right was that of a man in his mid-thirties, the eyes brimming with a grief that extended beyond anything Palmer had ever known. With a start, he recognized the face of Creighton Seward, Ghost Trap's architect.
The two-headed monster stepped forward, hoisting the ax that grew out of its left wrist in place of a hand. Palmer wanted to turn and flee the abomination before him, but he remained frozen, unable to move.
Seward's lips were moving; whether he was praying or arguing with its grotesque twin, Palmer couldn't tell. As if in reply, the ax-murderer's head sneered and emitted more high-pitched titters. Suddenly Seward's head turned and bit its neighbor on the cheek, ripping free a wad of flesh. The ax-murderer's head gave a high-frequency wail that made Palmer's nose bleed, and returned the attack in kind, scissoring off the ear nearest its mouth. Cowed, Seward's head did not attempt any further interference.
The ax-murderer's head leered at Palmer and lifted the ax-hand higher, until it almost brushed the ceiling. Palmer was not sure if the creature standing before him was flesh and blood or composed of ectoplasm, but it was evident the ax, at least, was solid enough to do its job. Palmer stared at the fiend advancing on him like a steer awaiting the butcher's knife.
Just as the ax was ready to fall, a bright light appeared between Palmer and the two-headed thing. The creature balked, uncertainty crossing the ax-murderer's face. Steward's head seemed to take strength from the light and plunged the fingers of its right hand into the ax-murderer's eyes. The beast shrieked even louder than before and Palmer felt blood seep from his ears.
The two-headed thing was gone. In its place stood a woman dressed in clothing better suited to an Ibsen play, her back to Palmer.
"Oh, thank God! Lady? Lady, I need your help - "
The woman turned to face Palmer, her left eye swinging loose from its socket.
Palmer screamed and ran. He had to find his way out of the House of Horrors. He'd been too long at the fair. It was time to go home. He bolted from the death-room and headed down a corridor lined with doors of varying shapes and sizes, the sound of his own shouts for help filling his ears.
Suddenly one of the doors opened outward and a golf club cut the air with a wicked slicing sound.
The last thing Palmer saw before the darkness claimed him was the word DUNLOP.