Part 1 (1/2)

Paint It Black.

Sonja Blue.

By Nancy A. Collins.

PRELUDE.

Particularly.

When something like a dog is barking.

When something like a goose is born a freak.

When something like a fox is luminous.

When something like a tortoise crystallizes.

When something like a wolf slides by.

All these things are harmful to the health of man.

Hagiwara Sakataro, 'Harmful Animals'.

It's a beautiful world.

I look out across the predawn rooftops. Most of the buildings are still dark, except for scattered windows that mark early risers and insomniacs. The moon is down and the sun has yet to make its appearance, leaving the city to a darkness that is deeper than midnight. Now is the time for the changing of the guard.

I look down on the streets from my perch and watch the night things begin their retreat. I don't mean prost.i.tutes and drunkards and other so-called 'night owls'. I refer to creatures that are genuinely nocturnal. Things that shrink from the first touch of the sun's rays for fear of burning.

A succubus wearing the outer appearance of a crack wh.o.r.e is bartering with a drunken older man. The succubus lifts its head, nostrils flaring as it scents the coming dawn, and speeds up the transaction. The older man seems pleased that he is getting such a good deal on p.u.s.s.y as they stagger into a darkened alley. I doubt he'll think it's such a bargain when, in the middle of his five-dollar f.u.c.k, the wh.o.r.e's body starts revealing razored mouths in places he never dreamed of.

I spot a pack of vargr making their way down a connecting Street. The early hour and the accompanying darkness have made them bold, and they run in their skins. They are young, at least by werewolf standards, and still given to such acts of rebellion. They lope along, two abreast and three deep, almost on all fours. They snap and growl and bark at the shadows. Any human unlucky enough to encounter them might, at first glance, mistake them for a pack of feral dogs - household pets gone wild.

But once they stood up on their hind legs, baying to signal an attack, the illusion would be torn asunder and the truth revealed.

For all the good it would do their victim. The werewolves pa.s.s by quickly, headed in the direction of the abandoned warehouses lining the river front where they make their den.

Not long after the vargr run past a homeless man emerges from a p.i.s.s-soaked doorway. He is dressed in rags, his feet encased in busted-out boots stuffed full of newspaper. I study him more closely, thinking he might be a seraphim in disguise.

But no, he is a genuine vagrant. He is probably old, but it is hard to tell for sure because of the grime caking his hands and face. He might be black, maybe not. He is clutching an empty vodka bottle in one hand and muttering aloud to himself. He tilts back the bottle, tonguing the neck for one last drop. His brow furrows when he realizes it's empty and, in a sudden burst of rage, he shrieks an obscenity and hurls the bottle to the curb. The sound it makes as it breaks is impressively loud in the predawn silence.

The b.u.m seems to find a certain pleasure in making noise and continues to do so. He rants at the top of his voice, his ravings bouncing off the surrounding buildings like a handball. He finds a garbage can to knock over and kick A bottle or two to dash against the curb. Just as he seems to be losing steam, there is the sound of leathery wings and he is gone.

I look up in time to spot a large black shape silhouetted against the dark sky. It looks to be carrying something almost as large as itself in its talons. No doubt a diligent gargoyle matriarch out hunting for prey to feed her hungry chicks.

As the sky begins to slowly lighten, I spot my own prey. It moves swiftly, clinging to the shadows as it hurries to its nest. Its pallid features and blood-red eyes make me want to puke. I hate these creatures more than all the other Pretending races combined.

The very sight of them makes my palms itch and my gut tighten. All I want to do is drive my silver switchblade deep into their worm-fed hearts. f.u.c.king lousy bloodsuckers.

I do not want to lose the vampire's trail, so I abandon my perch.

I grin in antic.i.p.ation of the slaughter that is to follow, the morning breeze chill against my exposed fangs. Without further delay, I crawl headfirst down the side of the four-storey building I've been using as my observation tower and hurry after my victim.

It's a beautiful world.

From the diaries of Sonja Blue.

Part_1.

When the Dead Love.

I am the Vampire at my own veins one of the great lost horde doomed for the rest of time, and beyond, 'to laugh - but smile no more.'

Baudelaire, 'Heauton Timo Roumenos'.

Isee the world through ancient eyes.

They are not the eyes of an old man, dimmed by age and clouded by cataracts. And while my mind is filled with memories, unlike humans, I never find myself lost in the tangle of interconnecting a.s.sociation or the fog of recollection.

My time on earth has been tenfold that of the oldest human. I am ancient. But I am not old. I stand outside the time stream that ages mortal flesh, making bones brittle as gla.s.s, teeth crack like chalk. I need never fear that my world will telescope downward to what little light and sound can be strained through failing sensory apparatus.

I look upon some of the aged creatures I myself have personally known and sported with in years past and marvel at their irretrievable descent into decay. A breast that was once as succulent and firm as a fresh melon is now a withered dug, hanging flat and wrinkled. A p.e.n.i.s, once proud and full of the malt of life, is now only good for the elimination of waste.

This is mankind's heritage. Its destiny. All of humanity's triumphs and advances -- its art, science, technology, and philosophy -- reduced to a lump of sweating flesh, straining on a nameless bed. Being mortal as individuals, humans seek to embrace eternity as a species. And while I consider such attempts at 'immortality' laughable, through their relentless breeding they have succeeded in maintaining a certain continunity throughout the centuries.

I have kept a journal for seven hundred years.

There are literally thousands of volumes, stored in a hundred different hiding places scattered over three continents. I have no genuine memories of my life as a human, except for those preserved in faded ink on these crumbling pages.

The sentiments, dreams, and fears expressed in those earliest entries belong to a creature forever beyond my ken, thanks be to the forces that made me.

Still, humans have their uses. Of course they provide my kind with sustenance; that deep red vintage that is so much sweeter when stolen from its host. That much goes without saying. But there are other, more subtle, more . . . rarefied pleasures to be had at their expense.

Allow me to elaborate . . .

There are several nightclubs in this city that cater to those humans whose personal tastes, like those of my own kind, have nothing to do with procreation. There is one club in particular The Ossuary - I enjoy frequenting. It's located in the meat-packing district. In fact, I was there just last night. The exterior of The Ossuary is very unprepossessing, no different from the rest of the drab warehouses lining the street. But the interior is, by human standards, quite inspired.

The walls are painted matt black and festooned with the bones of the various beasts who have met their fate at the hands of the neighbors. The boiled, peeled, and bleached skulls of creatures bovine, porcine, caprine, and equine stare blankly at the prancing hairless primates responsible for their destruction, bearing mute witness to the rituals of orchestrated pain and degradation played out before their empty sockets.

Entry to The Ossuary's dank pleasure rooms is expensive - the cost of members.h.i.+p runs in the low four figures. One-time 'tickets of pa.s.sage' for curious visitors can cost upwards of fifty dollars apiece, and there's always a line to get in. The bouncer nods his head in recognition as I move to the head of the line, stepping aside to allow me pa.s.sage. They know me here, as I am known in dozens of similar establishments throughout the rest of the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

I breeze past the combination dressing-undressing room, where the club's regulars change into their preferred costumes for the evening' s entertainment.

I have no need for such theatrics. The thump of the disco and the smell of dry ice make me smile, ever so slightly, in antic.i.p.ation of the night' s hunt.