There was no way to tell who - or what - had tracked her down. Was it a friend or foe? The only way for her to find out was to open it.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. Sonja carefully unfolded it, frowning to herself. It was a photocopy of a news clipping from a national paper. The headline read: 'Wife of Millionaire Industrialist Suffers Stroke.'

'What's it say?' Palmer asked, one eye fixed on her as he tilted back the tequila bottle.

'My mother's in the hospital.'

'You're not really going, are you?'

Palmer watches me from the door of our bedroom as I busy myself with packing my bag. He's drunk Sloppily so. His sense of betrayal wraps itself around me like a damp towel left to mildew in a gym locker for a few weeks. I know it should make me feel bad, but I'm getting angry with him instead. I always get mad when people try to make me feel guilty.

'Of course I'm going! What the h.e.l.l does it look like?' I snap, shoving a pair of leopard-skin bikini briefs, a black lace camisole, and a Revolting c.o.c.ks T-shirt into my flight bag.

I go to the wall safe and retrieve the special strongbox I keep my various pa.s.sports and credit cards in. I dump them onto the bed, rummaging through them for an appropriate alias for my trip to the States. I decide to use Anya Cyan and pocket the corresponding identification.

'But what about Lethe? You can't just leave her like this!'

'Bill, I can't do anything for her while she's like this! What the h.e.l.l difference does it make if I'm here or not?'

'Sonja, please. Don't go. I need you to stay. Please.'

I turn to look at him and I'm shocked to see how quickly he's fallen apart He hasn't shaved since Lethe went into the coc.o.o.n, nor has he bathed - or changed his clothes, for that matter. With his earplugs, tattoos, and nose piercings, he looks like a demented Humphrey Bogart from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. His weakness radiates from him like carbon monoxide fumes from a busted m.u.f.fler, and I turn away for fear he will sense the disgust welling inside me. I know, then, that I cannot stay in that house another hour; for it is in the vampire's nature to exploit - even destroy - those weaker than themselves.

Palmer raises a trembling hand to his face, brushing drunkenly at his tears. 'Jesus, Sonja, what's happening to us?'

Part of me hears the sorrow and confusion in his voice and wants to reach out and hold him; to pull him into my arms and comfort him as best I can. But another, darker part sees his tears and wants to smash him in the face and grind its boot in his groin. I stuff the last of my gear into the flight bag and zip it shut all the while refusing to look at him eye to eye.

'I doubt if anything is happening. Bill.'

And I leave them behind, just like that.

I'm not proud of what I'm doing. I realize I'm using my mother's illness to escape an uncomfortable situation at home. Things have changed between us, and there is no use in trying to get what we had back I've been trying to figure a way out of the situation since the day I got back Lethe's metamorphosis merely accelerated the process, that's all. I've developed this ability over the years of being able to cut myself off from people I care about Or thought I cared about, It's a survival mechanism, one I've been forced to evolve over the last twenty years. I don't think it's a side effect of my being a vampire.

I'd like to be able to blame it on that but I know better.

Monsters don't have a lock on cruelty.

I catch the first flight for the States, flying first cla.s.s as usual. I always fly first cla.s.s - it guarantees a certain amount of privacy and if the stewardesses notice I don't seem to breathe while I sleep, they keep it to themselves.

I spend most of the flight from Yucatan trying to remember my mother. That's not entirely true. Shirley Thorne was never my mother - she was Denise's.

As I sit watching the clouds slide by my window, I try to find a memory from the life before my own. I reach back . . . back . . . back before Palmer . . . back before Chaz . . . back before Ghilardi and Pangloss . . . beyond Morgan and his horrible, blood-red kisses . . .

I am sitting on a picnic bench- Where? Backyard? Which house? The one in Connecticut? There are lots of balloons and brightly colored crepe-paper streamers and other children running around, dressed in party clothes. I'm wearing a pink dress with lots of ruffles and petticoats. I don't like the petticoats because they're itchy and make it hard for me to put my arms down to my sides. There's a man dressed like a clown walking around making Wiener dogs and bunnies out of balloons for all the children. Another man is leading a pony around in a big circle. Some of the older kids cling to its mane and wave to their moms. Or maybe they're their stepmoms.

Or nannies. Everybody's wearing silly cardboard hats and carrying party-favor noisemakers. How old am I? Four? Five? And suddenly everyone's smiling and pointing behind me and I turn around and look. There is my mother, standing in the doorway that leads from the house to the backyard and she's holding a big cake with lots of pink icing and big roses made out of white marzipan. She's smiling and she looks so happy and beautiful and everyone starts singing 'Happy Birthday' and gathering around the picnic table.

Someone says 'Make a wish, Denise' and I have to stand up on the seat to blow out the candles. I don't remember whether I made a wish or if it came true . . .

'Ma'am, are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?'

I look up at the stewardess, still too stunned by the weight of the memory I've unearthed to do more than grunt. 'What?'

'Ma'am your hand.'

I glance down at my left hand. One of the 'perks' of first-cla.s.s service is that your drinks are served in actual gla.s.sware, as opposed to c.r.a.ppy plastic c.o.c.ktail cups. My fist is full of shattered gla.s.s, melting ice, and Seagrams VO.

All I can say is 'Oh.'

'Are you hurt?' the stewardess asks again, and I can tell she's trying to figure out if I'm drunk, stoned, or stupid. She can't see past the sungla.s.ses and it's making her uneasy. I don't want her watching me the rest of the trip so I reach into her skull and plant an explanation.

'There must have been a flaw in the gla.s.s. What with the cabin pressure changes and everything - I'm just lucky I didn't get cut.'

'You're really lucky, ma'am,' she clucks, her head bobbing in agreement as she takes what's left of my drink out of my hand.

'You could have gotten a bad cut'

'Yeah, I'm really lucky,' I'mutter, moving my hand so she does not spot the gaping bloodless slice across my palm.

From the diaries ofSonja Blue.

It was daylight by the time she reached her destination. Her bones ached from spending close to forty-eight hours in a cramped position. The flight from Yucatan took six hours, then she spent six hours in Los Angeles, waiting for the proper domestic carrier. She could stay active during the day, but not without it taking its toll. It made her slower, more vulnerable to the tricks and pitfalls that might come her way. Although her body craved its sleep - or rather, the regenerative coma necessary to repair any physical damage encountered over the course of the night - at least she didn't have to worry about contracting immediate and lethal skin cancer from being exposed to the sun's rays. Not yet, anyway.

She rented a car at the airport and drove into the town that, until 1969, Denise Thorne had called home. Although her first instinct was to unlock the trunk and crawl inside, she climbed in behind the wheel instead. As she drove through the suburbs into the city, she pa.s.sed the Thorne Industrial Complex. It was even bigger than she - that is, Denise remembered.

She had to hand it to the old man, he always knew how to make a buck and a half.

The light poured into the car, making Sonja's skin p.r.i.c.kle a little bit. She told herself that she wasn't used to direct sun anymore, although she kept eyeing her hands, looking for signs of quick-blooming melanomas. She'd seen a couple of vampires die of sunlight poisoning - not a pretty sight.

Their skin burned and was quickly covered in blisters that swelled and swelled until they exploded. Then they simply withered away, like earthworms on a hot sidewalk. It only took a couple of minutes - five, tops - for a dead boy to bust 'n' bake.

Yep, not a pretty sight.

The clipping had said Shirley Thorne was staying at St Mary's Hospital, over on the Upper East Side. It was the same hospital where Denise had been born. She parked in the public garage attached to the hospital and made her way to the information desk. An aged nun wearing bifocals looked up at her, frowning quizzically.

'Can I be of some a.s.sistance, young lady?'

'Yes, sister. I'm looking for a relative's room. Thorne? Shirley Thorne?'

The nun scribbled down the name on a slip of paper and turned to consult a computer terminal. She clucked her tongue and shook her head and turned back to face Sonja, her bifocals making her eyes look strangely warped. 'I'm so sorry, dear, but I'm afraid Mrs Thorne isn't with us anymore.'

'She's been released?'

'She died yesterday afternoon, according to the computer.'

Sonja stared at the terminal, at the name highlighted in amber against a black screen. The cursor blinked like a stuttering firefly.

'I... Is there any notation on where to send memorials?' 'It says flowers should be sent to the BesterWilliamson Funeral Home.' The nun pursed her lips and offered Sonja a sympathetic smile. 'I'm dreadfully sorry, dear. Was she a close relative?'

'No. Not really.'

Sonja called the funeral home from the lobby of the hospital.

The receptionist informed her that the loved one's services were scheduled for the next day, during the late afternoon.

The graveside services were to be held at Rolling Lawn Cemetery. Sonja didn't have to ask where that was - it was the same graveyard Claude Hagerty was buried in. And Chaz.

After finding out all she needed to know concerning her mother's funeral, Sonja drove the rental car out to a suburban shopping mall and crawled inside the trunk to sleep away the remaining hours of daylight.

She wasn't certain what went on inside her head when she was not awake qualified as 'dreaming'. She saw things. But were they dreams, or shadows of things that had happened before or of things to come? Sometimes she found herself inside other people's dreams - or their nightmares. Or their madness.

She was walking through a dreamscape made of dripping moss and rotten lace. Sitting on a canopy bed with satin draperies coated with mildew, was a woman dressed in a white bridal gown. She seemed to be adjusting her dress. As Sonja drew closer the bride looked up, like a fawn surprised while drinking at a stream, her face almost obscured by the heavy veil. She spoke without opening her mouth. It was the voice of a five-year-old girl.

He made me dirty.

She looked down at the woman's lap, expecting to see a bouquet Instead she saw the woman's hands - they were those of an aged crone, with long, crooked nails. She clawed at her crotch with hideous witch's fingers. The material of the gown was torn away, exposing her withered thighs and her gray and wrinkled s.e.x. It was all b.l.o.o.d.y because she'd scratched away her l.a.b.i.a and c.l.i.toris.

When Sonja woke up, the car was in motion. She pressed her ear to the dividing wall that separated the back seat from the trunk and heard the heavy, rhythmic thump of rap music and, above that, laughter.

Males. Two of them. Adolescent from the sound of their voices and taste in music. Two kids on a joyride? She concentrated harder, tuning out the intrusive music and background noise, focusing on their conversation.

'The Chopper will pay five, mebbe six bills for this baby--'

'What about the Red? He ships cars over to the Russian black market.'

'He only takes j.a.panese and Euro s.h.i.t. This thing's American.'

'f.u.c.k!'

's.h.i.t, there's no point in lettin' the Chopper get everything. Maybe there's something in the trunk we can take over to King Fence for a quick buck or two, huh?"

The car slid off the road onto gravel. She bounced around for a few minutes more until everything came to a stop.

As she thought about it, she realized she was pretty d.a.m.n hungry. She hadn't eaten in almost seventy-two hours and it was beginning to make her irritable. The car doors slammed and shoes crunched on gravel, heading back for the trunk.

"Think there's anything back there?'

'Maybe just a spare tire and some jumper cables. Then again, mebbe some c.u.n.t left her bags from Nordstrom's.'

There was a sc.r.a.ping sound as one of the car thieves worked at the lock with a screwdriver. Probably the same one he'd used to force the door, open the ignition cowl, and start the car. The lock gave with a loud pop and the trunk swung open.

Sonja was on them in six seconds flat.

They were young. Their surprise and fear made them seem even younger. They were suburban white boys with bad haircuts, dressed in clothes four sizes too big for them.

One of them had a gun stuck in the waistband of his pants.

She grabbed him first, taking him to the ground hard enough to break his back. He screamed like a little girl - high and pure - as she tore into his throat.

His companion shouted something and tried to drive a six-inch screwdriver into her back. The leather jacket deflected the blow, but it was enough to make her look up from her feeding. She grinned at him, displaying her fangs, and hissed in disapproval. The kid dropped his weapon and wet himself.

It took less than a second to snap his neck. Sonja finished draining the first youth, then took as much as she could handle from the second. She then kicked their emptied bodies into a nearby ditch. How thoughtful of them to pick such a nice, secluded spot for their own disposal.

The ignition was hanging from its socket, so she had to hot-wire the car to get it started. No doubt the rental company would not be pleased. Like she cared.

It was still early, by her standards -just after midnight. She decided to cruise the old hometown, to see if anything kicked a memory out of what was left of Denise Thorne. It worried Sonja, at times, that she felt so little of her previous self's pain.

Denise used to be more a part of her personality, decades ago, but over the last few years her voice had grown gradually weaker until it had been drowned out by the increasingly strident Other. Maybe a visual cue would spark something inside her, generate an emotion that went with the memories in her head. Because without those flashes of sentiment, all Sonja had were dry and flavorless souvenirs of another's life; shadows of the dead rendered meaningless to her - like watching someone else's jerky, disintegrating home movies without the benefit of sound or reference to the players.

She drove around and around, but so much had changed in the twenty years since Denise Thorne walked those streets that nothing seemed familiar. Suddenly the gates were in front of the headlights, throwing up striated shadows. Sonja blinked and looked around, uncertain how she'd gotten there. Had she deliberately steered the car in this direction? Or was something besides her subconscious behind her arrival? The gate was rusty and the twelve-foot brick walls that screened the estate from the road were overgrown with creeping ivy and covered with graffiti. There was a heavy chain coiled around the gate like a chrome python, secured by a padlock the size of a baby's head. A metal sign read: 'No Trespa.s.sing. Violators Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law.'

Sonja killed the headlights and slid out from behind the wheel of the car. She held the lock in her right hand, judging its heft; it was a beauty all right. It would even give a New York bicycle thief reason to pause. Sonja yanked on it twice and it came away in her hand, the chain unspooling at her feet. The gates to the Wheele Estate swung inward with a rusty squeal.

She walked in the direction of where the main house once stood, her boot heels crunching on the overgrown drive. Weeds and small trees poked their way through the slowly dissolving layer of bleached sh.e.l.ls.

She scanned the area for signs of derelict habitation or teenage lovers and came up empty. This surprised her. The abandoned five-acre estate was perfect for suburban youths to hide from the apathy of their parents and practice their drinking and s.e.x, but she couldn't pick up the faintest trace of such activity. Instead, as she neared the blackened remains of the Wheele mansion, she began to receive psychic signals similar to those she'd experienced at Ghost Trap.

The place was haunted Big time.

Sonja wrinkled her nose. Even though the place had burned to the ground five years ago, it still smelled scorched. There wasn't a lot left of the house - she'd made sure of that when she set it on fire. She'd also killed everyone in it beforehand. And a lot of people in the surrounding area, for that matter. Sonja still felt bad about that part of the ma.s.sacre. But it wasn't really her fault; the Wheele b.i.t.c.h was the one who'd kidnapped her and kept her in that s.h.i.t-hole of an insane asylum for six months.

Wheele was the one who'd started it, not her. But she had finished it, by d.a.m.n. Besides, the psychic shock wave she'd released that night only affected those with true darkness in their souls. At least, that's what she liked to tell herself.

There was a light moving amongst the ruins. It was a cold, unnatural luminescence, glowing greenish-white against the darkness. At first it was formless, a glob of pulsating light hovering amidst the collapsed timbers and fallen masonry of the destroyed house. The will-o'-the-wisp fluttered for a few seconds, then began to change, taking on shape and substance. It was a woman - or something that had once been a woman.

It had no eyes, no ears, no tongue; its skin hung from its phantom bones like an empty sack. Although it had arms and an upper torso, its legs ended in glowing tatters. Even though it had no eyes in its sockets, Sonja knew it could see her. And that it recognized her.

'h.e.l.lo, Catherine. It's been a long time, girlfriend.'

The ghost of Catherine Wheele, erstwhile televangelist and faith healer, raised its glowing arms and howled like a d.a.m.ned soul. Which was only natural, since that was what it was.

'Can the spook routine, sister. It might work on teenagers looking for a place to screw and b.u.ms out for a midnight tipple, but it doesn't cut any mustard with me.'

The ghost shrieked like an owl with its tail caught in a blender and swooped towards her, fingers crooked into claws.

Sonja held up her right hand and a burst of electric-blue light flew from her palm, catching the ghost in its reconst.i.tuted midsection. Catherine Wheele rolled up like a window shade, reverting to the pulsating ball of light.

'You're as ignorant dead as you were when you were alive,' Sonja sighed. 'The dead cannot physically interface with the mortal plane except on Mardi Gras, the vernal equinox, and All Hallows' Eve. And just because you're dead doesn't mean I can't kick your b.u.t.t, lady.'

Catherine Wheele rea.s.sembled herself, scowling at Sonja from across the Divide. Smaller, feebler lights began to appear, floating through the night air like fireflies. One of the ghostly b.a.l.l.s unraveled itself, taking on the appearance of Dr Wexler, the corrupt psychiatrist who first steered Shirley Thorne in Catherine Wheele's direction, then arranged to keep Sonja locked up in his sanitarium. Sonja was glad to see he was being forced to spend his afterlife in the company of his former lover. The other, lesser lights took on human forms as well, turning into the Wheelers, Catherine's private cadre; a mixture of religious fanatics, hired muscle, and stud m.u.f.fins. Sonja had killed each and every one of them.

'It's nice to see you're not lonely,' she smirked, carefully searching the wanly glowing faces in search of one in particular.

When she did not find it, she heaved a small sigh of relief and turned to go. But she couldn't resist one last jab. 'You know, they called it "Jonestown in America". All the stuff about your parents dying under mysterious circ.u.mstances, your late husband's fraud convictions, the graft and corruption in your church - all of that got into the papers. The Wheeles of G.o.d Ministry is gone - kaput. All your worshippers jumped ship for other, less controversial preachers. And since Waco went down, you're old news. You're trivia for atrocity buffs, nothing more. Just thought you'd like to know.'

The ghost of Catherine Wheele threw its mouth open so wide it struck its breastbone, and issued an agonized shriek that told Sonja she'd better watch her a.s.s come Halloween.

Sonja chuckled to herself as she sauntered back to the car.