Alison

Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Nicole Collins, as she was after the death of her guardian, Dr. Julia Hoffman, finds herself alone, once again isolated from humanity. In order to survive she has had to rely on her vampiric instincts. For which it has been far too easy to succumb. And so, like a wraith flitting from shadow to shadow through the darken Boston streets she had sought and stolen a car so as to carefully make her way out of the city. With time growing short as she makes her way toward Providence, she has been forced to stop and seek shelter in a cheap motel, before the sun soon rises above the horizon.

The woman in Room 2 checked in just before dawn.

Most of the girls had long since called it a night and returned to whatever it was they called home, which for some was one of the rooms of Motel Viva. Rooms to Rent: For the day or by the hour, or so the sign said. For some flush with cash, they rented by the week – and Alison, she had been lucky enough to draw a flush for yet another week.

She had just stepped out of the mold stained shower where she had tired to wash the night away, one hand fluffing the cotton towel over her short mussy bobbed, 3-shades of highlight, blonde hair, while the other held the cracked ice and Gilbey’s in a small water glass. Bare foot, striding across the well travelled carpet, she had been only moments away from slipping between the fresh linen she has to pay extra for—extra so that she can strip off the soiled nightly ones and carry them in a rolled up bundle to the addict-thin man with the golden teeth, who attends the small closet, which the precariously tilted plaque proclaims to be Housekeeping and smells of disinfectant and marijuana. Where Lamont Trepsichore, displaced by Katrina, displaced all the way up to Woonsocket, (exiled by something he only sometimes alludes to when he’s extremely high, something very hoodoo, something he is hiding from), always begins to sing Elvis Costello’s Alison when he sees her striding Gilbey in hand down the corridor. Usually it’s something about sticky valentines, or her party dress or about his aim being true, but this morning it was something he had never sung before: “Oh, Alison I know this world is killing you.”.

“Lamont, that’s very grim.” She said as handed him the rolled up wad of linen.

“I feel the vudu speaking tonight, Alison.” He replied putting aside the leather bound book he had been reading — something in French by the title she noticed — as he handed her the fresh sheets that he has wrapped in butcher paper and tied into a neat bundle with rough twine and big loopy bow (a special amenity that he provides only for her – to keep the scents of the janitorial closet from infecting them he says).

“Beware.” He tells her in a low voice, his nicotine stained fingers briefly touching the top of her hand as she took the bundle. At the touch, he suddenly looks up at her as his blood-shot eyes, giving testimony to the joint he had smoked earlier, grew very serious.

Rumour was that Lamont has heavily involved in some deep swamp cults in Louisiana, and that he was now connected to some very mysterious powers in Providence.

“Lamont, I am really tired.” She told him – like her mother, not believing in God, why would he think she would give any more credence to his backwoods superstitious nonsense.

“Oh Alison—I feel her.” He said now his eyes narrowing intently as if his touch had read something from her flesh, “Death—she is coming.”

She smiled, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” her eyes now falling upon her well practiced flirt, “Until I get another drink and a shower – I feel like death . . . warmed over.”

“There is nothing warm about death.” He told her, his low New Orleans’ accent deep with warning, “Do not make light of her Alison – death she comes with a pretty face.”

“Lamont, “ She rattled what remained of the ice in her glass, “I just want to get between these sheets . . . and call it a night, and so–,” she leans forward with her sweet parted lips, “I think I should be safe all alone with my dreams.”

“Do not be deceived.” He admonished her, his eyes looking at her as if she saw something written now upon her forehead.

She had to admit it was a bit unsettling – his tone of voice – that accent. His sea-green eyes awash in the broken tributaries of blood.

But she turned on a bare heel and left his N’Awlins warnings all behind her as she returned to her room to remake the bed and take a shower. Pour one more Gibley’s.

It had only been by chance that as she strode over to check the thermostat of the wall heating unit she just had happened to take a glance through the slightly parted drapes and saw the old Impala pulling to a halt. Saw the woman getting out. A vision in an old, battered black Impala convertible. Alison stepped closer to the window and her fingers widen the drapery divide, as the small water glass came up to her lips – which tasted more like gin flavoured water and need more Gibley’s — as she watched the woman get out of the car and hurry into the office. She was tall, and svelte, and dressed in tight faded jeans, a black double-breasted blazer over what was most certainly an expensive cashmere pullover sweater. The woman quickly came back out of the office and walked over to Room 2. Furtively – as if hiding from a husband or the law.

Alison suspected the later.

Never having been a light sleeper, dead to the world when she hit the sheets, she found herself rolling over to awaken to the sound of cars starting or doors slamming – someone yelling, “Hey b***h!” a few feet from her window, causing her to lie there for a moment trying to determine if she was the b***h in question. Then, having decided that she wasn’t, she rolled over with a groan and pulled the covers up over her head to try and drift back into unpleasant slumbers. She could hear the laughing banter of girls starting to work the lunch hour trailing off as they scattered off into the parking lot and along the sidewalks. Alison always worked at night – the harsh light of the day was much too revealing, too unremittingly truthful about her profession. Whereas the night always seemed to her to have a way of disguising the truth – even truths that one is all too well aware of. And so her sleep is intermittent, rolling over to look around the room with heavy-lidded eyes – but it was not the sounds alone that disturbed her sleep. For some reason she could not stop thinking about the woman in Room 2.

There had been something in the way she walked across the parking lot – a sensual saunter. And those sapphire eyes she had caught so fleetingly a glimpse. They are absolutely haunting. For when she dozes off, finally drifts back into an irregular sleep, she is suddenly startled awake from dreams in which the woman in Room 2 comes to her with a slight knock on her door – which she sleepwalkingly moves over to open to find the woman, silent, standing there, looking at her, a smile that is all a dazzle of even white teeth, with her voluptuous lips now slightly parted by the tip of her tongue, as if she is hungry enough to ravish her with but a single bite . . . the blue eyes so brilliant, so wanton, so full of wanting, so full of a horrid need . . . and Alison finds herself in the dream slowly stepping back to let her enter – and can feel the woman’s caress – her lips now ever so lightly dusting her own lips with a kiss. . . before they begin to move, oh so tantalizingly slow along her throat, feeling now the pressure, the points of her teeth, long and sharp, and, their all too sudden pain as they enter into her, a thrilling ecstasy that progressively gives way to an overwhelming sense of being smothered – of losing her breath, a struggle now to not give up that last rasp, feeling like some small child, defenceless against the cat that is stealing her breath away, which causes her to jerk awake gasping for breath. Damned Lamont!

In Room 2 Nikki lies on the floor beside the cheap bed and feels the sun going down. She’s lying on the opposite side of the bed from the window – which she has covered with the sheets she had quickly snatched up from the bed and hurriedly draped over the butterscotch draperies and secured as best she could up against the wall with an end table and a chair. And as she arises she can feel now the sudden rush of sensations: light, colours, sounds, and a myriad of odours. She sits on the edge of the bed, turning her head now to listen to the sounds coming from the parking lot – car motors starting and stopping, doors opening and closing. Footsteps. Laughter. Men and woman, sitting in cars, standing on sidewalks, walking through the parking lot, all in the midst of the profanity laced banter of procurement. She was well aware that the motel she had chanced upon rather than chosen was really less a motel than a whorehouse. Nikki steps over to the linen draped window and reaches up to pull the sheets down and tosses them back on the bed. She pushes back the heavy, butterscotch drape – which feels more like a thick shower curtain. The prostitutes arrayed about the motel are all dressed for business. She looks out at the dying day and the comforting twilight hinting of the darkness to come – the motel neon just flickering to life. Vacancy. She feels there is always a vacancy at Motel Viva.

She closes her eyes and rolls her head. Nikki can feel the sharp tips of her fangs with her tongue– how long has it been since she last had a drink.

Her hand trembles.

She suddenly cocks her head now as she hears the soft padding of bare feet outside the opposite door of the room.

Motel Viva is some kind of mutation, a motel/hotel combination. The rooms have two entrances, one from the outside, and the other from a long narrow, carpeted interior corridor.

Nikki lets the heavy curtain fall back into place. Her eyes narrow as she feels the vampire within her taking control. The heart is young. The blood – the blood still full of hope. A whore and yet she has not yet given up on the hope of someday transcending her profession. Nikki closes her eyes – she cannot resist the sweet temptation.

A predator cross the room, she opens the much-maligned door leading out into the interior corridor just in time to see a young woman walking past. The mussy bob blow-dried to look wind tousled she walks past her naked save for a pair of black nylon knee-highs. She is carrying a Styrofoam bucket of ice.

The woman stops and half-turns to look at Nikki.

“Are you looking for anyone?” Alison asks and feels an uncharacteristic rise of colour to her cheeks.

Nikki smiles, the sharpness of her canine teeth just barely visible—if Alison were looking at them rather than at her brilliant blue eyes, “That would be so lovely.”

“Oh, my, I do so love a British accent,” Alison tells this woman she is vaguely aware she has dreamed about.

A three-quarter profile, nude, save for the knee-highs and Nikki’s eyes only linger on her throat.

She has to be careful. She tells herself. Not too much. Just a little – until she can find another. She is so, so thirsty. And she steps aside to allow the young woman to enter.

Only when she is done, Nikki has to bite her own tongue and hurriedly lick the wound in order to close it – the woman lies amid the thrown sheets in a swoon upon her bed.

Nikki rises from atop her.

She takes a deep breath and feels the blood rush of exhilaration. She resists the urge for more and groans – the girl tastes so good.

Across the room the silvered glass of the cheap wall mirror refuses to watch, refuses her reflection as she stands, fingertips to her lips. She looks down to see her fingers damp with crimson.

She licks them clean.

“I have to—“ Alison says in a soft whisper as her hand moves languidly across her bare stomach.

“Not tonight.” Nikki tells her with a flourish of her hand, “Sleep.”

The young woman slips into a deeper slumber.

Well aware that she is a bloody mess, Nikki steps over into the darken bathroom. There’s no need to turn on the lights, she sees perfectly well in the dark – and she really doesn’t need to see the slovenly-maintained facilities. She takes a rolled up washcloth and dampens it to wipe away the blood from her mouth, her chin, and the side of her face. She cups foul metallic tasting water in her hand and rinses her teeth.

She returns to gather up some of the bundled up linen she had earlier tossed on the bed and that the girl lies upon, pulling it up and over the young woman as best she can.

Nikki looks over at the dresser. She steps over to search in her clutch for her phone, but the battery is beyond red. The smartphone does not come to life.

And so—she steps out of the room and languidly strides over to the young woman’s room. The door is unlocked. Inside, she quickly finds the young woman’s cell and takes it. But in turning to leave, Nikki stops now to take more than just a cursory glance about the room.

It is oddly so very tidy. Neat. Everything is precisely arranged. And, Nikki is so suddenly struck by the guilt now of having become yet one more tragic occurrence in a chain of unforeseen cause and effect that has not only turned this young woman into a prostitute but has begun to eat away at her soul. Nikki finds herself drawn to the dresser and the half open purse. She hesitates for a moment—for at the moment the girl has no name, she is just a pretty little whore. Nikki finds her wallet, her Rhode Island Drivers License – and discovers that she is Alison Drew. She is all of twenty-two on her way to forty-two before she is even twenty-three.

Nikki closes her eyes and puts the purse back on the dresser.

The motor of the ice machine at the far end of the corridor sudden disengages in a cascade of falling ice as she exits the room. If only she could put her guilt away as easily as she can close this door. She lifts her head; while the vampire is so ready to put this all behind her, Nikki, strides thoughtfully now back down the jaundiced carpet toward Room 2. She watches a gaunt young man, in dirty jeans, a Boston Red Sox tee shirt under a black corduroy jacket, his hair wind-blown, his beard a fashionable several days of neglect, stroll up the corridor towards her. His narrow eyes looking her up and down. Not an assessment of her figure – but it is an assessment all the same.

“You finishing up a party with Alison?” His voice is thick with a New Orleans accent.

Nikki does not reply.

“So, she let you take off her party dress.”

A strange allusion to an Elvis Costello song, now that she knows the young woman’s name, she gets, “I don’t see that is any of your concern.” She tells him reaching the door to Room 2.

He holds a small cloth sack in his hand, “Well, you see, that’s where you’re wrong. She’s a friend of mine.”

Nikki is not certain what is in the cloth sack but she grows weak and oddly sickened.

“Now if she doesn’t see the big light – that mean Mister Sun a’comin’ up in the morning . . . “ He tells her, his golden teeth visible in a tight grin, “Then I don’t care who knows you’re here – Iwill cut your head off. Do you understand me?”

Nikki’s blue eyes darken and she opens the door to Room 2 and enters.

He stands there a moment, making his hand into the shape of a gun and pretends to pull the trigger, his wide smile seemingly frozen, before he turns and slips the small cloth sack into the back pocket of his faded jeans and walks on down the hall.

Nikki quickly feels her strength returning. Whatever was in that cloth sack of his – it certainly had an effect . . . Vooddoo—no doubt, she certainly needed to do some research . . . but at the moment she has more pressing concerns . . . shaking her head she steps over to the bed to check on Alison; she is still sleeping.

She sits on the side of the bed, her fingertips reaching up to check the shallow pulse of the young woman lying on her bed, before she begins to tap in a number on Alison’s cell phone.

“Madam Vadoma?” She says as absently she strokes the young woman’s cheek with the back of her hand, “This is Nichole Collins, I am on my way to Providence – well, I’m in Woonsocket, actually. Yes. That’s why I am calling. My plans currently are all disrupted. Yes. Absolutely. But—I am going to need some assistance.”

After their brief conversation, she hangs up.

Her long slender fingers slip down over Alison’s face as she places her within a deeper trance so she will not awake until she returns.

Nikki strides over and picks up the keys to the stolen Impala.

Twenty-two minutes. 15.6 miles to Providence. A city of seven hills, she is seeking the one known as Federal. A light snow has been falling to cover the streets and sidewalks. To fall now lazily against the windshield, dancing in the headlights as she drives cautiously past the darken store fronts of the typical urban businesses, the occasional dress shop, and neon lights of the busy pizza parlours, the garish fluorescent of convenience stores, the bright colours of graffiti covered tattoo and piercing salons. The address, given to her by Madam Vadoma, leads her past a huge darken old church, and then several turns, to a three-story Victorian apricot-and-cream house. 1212 Primrose.

Nikki parks the car and gets out, letting the wind blow through her hair as she savours the night’s caress, the feathery touch of the falling snow upon her face. She crosses the sidewalk and makes her way to the front door. A dog stops and looks at her, lowers its head and growls. Nikki turns her head slowly and narrows her eyes. The dog sulks away. The hem of her long woollen coat, whipping about her almost like darken wings, just barely escapes dragging the ground as she strides up the walkway. Her shoes leave no trace in the whiteness covering the tarmac of the narrow street or the cement of the sidewalk.

The woman who answers the door is very tall and pale. Her hair is the colour of a raven’s wing. Her almond eyes are a multi-tonal cerulean blue and in contrast to her dark hair they are mesmerizingly piercing. She is dressed in a smart black skirt, white blouse and short black jacket. She holds a book up against her breast, a finger inside marking her place where she closed it when she arose to answer the rap-rap-rap of the hound faced doorknocker.

“Yes?” She asks looking at Nikki with those intense eyes and a voice that was oddly melodic.

“Good evening, I am Nicole Collins. I am from Collinsport, Maine – I was given your name by—“

“Madam Vadoma.” The woman says, “Yes, Miss Collins. Please, do enter of your own free will.”

Nikki, hands in her overcoat pockets, enters as the woman side steps to allow her to step across the threshold – it had been a long time since someone felt the need to bid her entrance.

“We are traditionalists.” The woman says, as if reading her thoughts – which Nikki strongly suspects she is doing, even as Nikki is being discouraged from reciprocating in kind. She is very, very guarded and very powerful – and she is full of secrets. And yet Nikki finds deep memories of the bottle-green sea washing up on driftwood sand; of university nights in witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham; solitary streets of night-shrouded Boston and long-shadowed Ipswich; a man with a gun; a dilapidated house by the dunes; some ancient ruins in the heart of Maine; of lying in bed beside the man who had fired the gun; of waves crashing against a reef in the Atlantic; the sandy line of Plum Island; the sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables of Innsmouth at the mouth of the Manuxet; the scent of the sea. She was from Innsmouth and—she was—

“Enough—it is unwise to pry.” Asenath Upton says as she leads Nikki through the double, mullion glass doors into the parlour. A thick, dark, cut pile Victorian carpet of roses set in large medallions would silence her footsteps, if they made a sound. There are several plush, slightly worn recamiers, mahogany sideboards, and some light coloured high-backed Chippendale chairs. The room is lit by an antique lamp, which sits in the precise centre of a large round topped table, and the rose and lemony light cast through the strain-glass of the Tiffany floor lamp near the wing-backed chair, where she had been reading.

“A very lovely house.” Nikki says.

“It is?” The raven-haired woman asks, as she walks over to one of the toile recamiers and reaching behind it lifts a long, black nylon bag. “But, you know better,” she says as she sets the heavy bag on the seat.

Nikki stands now in this set-piece sitting room, with the gilt framed portraits and landscapes, the warm fire in the hearth, the brandy in a cut crystal decanter on a silver serving tray, the whole room a pictorial for an Architectural Digest on the quaintness of old Providence, Rhode Island, but she is well aware that the lace curtains and the dollies and toile and soft felt upholstery are mere camouflage for the evil that can be, and has been, done in this room –

She saunters over to the lilac recamier and unzips the bag and looks inside.

“And what do you plan to do with that?” The tall woman asks as she walks over and places her book on the table beside her chair and lifts a small glass of brandy, “You think you will force your way in to see the Metropolitan?

“I understand I need to see him.” She tells her zipping up the bag.

“You understand – but you are not certain?” The woman’s cerulean blue eyes cutting askance, “Just how old are you child?”

“31.” Nikki answers quickly, unthinkingly, feeling like she is in front of some headmistress, as she reaches into her coat pocket and removes an envelope.

The beautiful, almond-eyed woman makes an off hand motion towards her, “I do not mean this corporeal self – but the one within.”

“I really don’t see . . .”

“Seventeen months?” The raven-haired beauty says, raising a brow of admiration, as Nikki is well aware she is continuing to read her thoughts. “Just a mere seventeen months – he was right to choose you—you are going to become . . . very formidable.”

“Choose me?” Nikki’s voice turns cold, “Who chose me?”

“You know, my dear, “ She says with a much too knowing smile as she takes a seat in the rose coloured wing-backed chair, “As well as I—The Darkness.”

‘The Darkness?”

“He has so many names. Does he not?” She crosses her legs, flattens the black skirt; “There are some here who know him as Satan. Some who knew him as Diabolis. But, you and I . . . we know him by his true name. We are ofwhat we have read. And you my dear are very well read.”

Nikki’s sapphire eyes darkened a shade as she takes a step forward.

“There is nothing but evil in the books I read – and I am not evil, Asenath.” Nikki says as she steps over and places the envelope on the end table beside the wing-backed chair in which the dark-haired woman sits.

Although, she has to admit it is a question that of late has begun to haunt her with an answer she fears—is it really evil or is it merely the actions of creatures that are perhaps beyond good and evil . . . and if so, is she not one of them? That which is inside her, that which animated her after death – which corrupted her, mutated her, turned her into the un-dead, that fills her head with questions and doubts and temptations of power, that which was alive long before man – that which had come down from the stars. Just what sense of morality did it bring – this parasite, this symbiont that needs a host, that feeds on the living, that drains away its host’s very life’s blood in order to be conceived – does it even have a morality? If so, it is so utterly alien. It conflicts with what remains of her humanity, which it so longs to be finally gone, to finally just give up—and yet, Nikki refuses, continues her battle every day to maintain control. To maintain the last vestige of that which the vampire believes should have died there with her in the gutter—

Or did it?

Was it a human that rose up tonight from that young woman—Alison—with a mouth full of blood? No! She is no longer human. She cannot continue to delude herself, cannot continue to ignore the fact that she has been transformed— that she is un-dead. A Vampire. She is of a monstrous servitor race called down by abominations even more hideous than she – as repulsive as this beautiful monster sitting before her . . . whose grotesque history she has slowly now been able to comprehend, whose evil reviles and disgusts her and yet—are they not in some ways similar? Enticed by words that men should not know – inhabited by monsters.

We are of what we have read.

Her eyes glance to the glass fronts of the old walnut barristers cases. The sorcerer’s library. Books they have read. Only both of them know Nikki has read books the sorcerer has only read brief inferences to, as so longed to obtain. Foul and evil words – written by madmen and wizards – written with pens dipped in corruption. Oh, how they had insidiously worked their temptation upon her – how else would she end up in Paris seeking Marceline de Champeaux. Or Joseph Salpêtrièr. Agree to call up what they could not put down. For so long she has suspected that rather then being innocent – she got precisely what she deserved.

There naked on a laboratory table, wrists and ankles within steel restraints, Julia’s fingers pushing her lips up to review the transformation of her teeth, the distension of her fangs, “Then my diagnosis is correct?’

“Of course,” a penlight shining in her eye, as Dr, Praetorius completes his examination, observes the reaction time of the dilation of her pupils, the shifting colours of her iris, “She is of the un-dead.”

“Oh God—not my Nikki . . .” Julia Hoffman turns to look at him her face a mix of sadden anger, having known it to be true but now that he has confirmed it, her hand slipping down to grip her chill fingers, holding on to her tight, as if refusing to let her go, “This is not possible – Septimus, she should be immune.”

“Well, then my dear – if that were so, then she would be true dead.” He tells her putting away his penlight. “She was after all bled out was she not?”

“But the experiment?” Julia questions.

“Oh, I do not disagree, you are quite right –“ he says, his voice moving back and away from the laboratory table. “But I have no idea howsoever her immune system could have been so compromised, being that she is the child of an un-dead – unless . . . “ His voice trails off into thought.

“Yes?” She asks, “What? What are you thinking—.”

“I say, Julia we are in the uncharted waters now, who knows what should and could not be.”

Julia’s fingers slid over hers, rubbing them gently. Nicole can hear them, all to well, as she can hear the breathing, the beating of their hearts, Dr. Praetorius’ oddly out of rhythm, the buzzing of a fluorescent tube; smell the scent of gin – but she as yet cannot move. Has not been able to move since she became conscious of what was happening around her, of Julia bribing a hospital attendant to help her remove her body from hospital; rolling her out to Julia’s car; lying her on the back seat; the trip to wherever she is; someone helping Julia lift her out of the car, putting her on a gurney, rolling her into this laboratory, putting her on this table, restrained. How long has she laid here, a sheet covering her as Julia comes in to lift it in order to look upon her – to check to see if she has yet moved? The sound of a sob struggling to be held back in Julia’s throat. And then—this doctor, this Doctor Praetorius arriving now to examine her even as she feels all the horrid pain growing inside, grisly, wrenching pain, as something is transforming – oh God, changing her from within . . . and yet she is trapped in chrysalis of her un-dead body – unable to scream.

“This is the evening of the second day—we need to give her blood.” He says.

“A transfusion?” Julia asks hopefully, thinking of her own attempts to cure her father.

“No, a feeding tube.”

And then the hunger began.

“Or, should I say—Ephriam.” Nikki adds, well aware he has been indirectly directing her thoughts, which in turned, has allowed his own guard to lower enough so that she has been able to rifle through his own horrid memories . . . this sorcerer within the attractive woman’s body, “And so—just how old are you?”

Ephriam Waite now looks at her with those cunning and mischievous blue eyes, “Oh, you are a wonder.”

“Not the Ephriam Waite inside—but the young woman within which you reside?” She asks now the reciprocal question.

“She was twenty-seven when I took her. Oddly enough it was just about the same time as you were taken.” The raven-haired woman’s lips form a wry smile, “You see I too was once deluded. I once believed that a man’s brain was far superior, that it was aligned with cosmic powers, but the first I inhabited was a les metis, and so I have since found over the long years that a woman’s is far more clever, cunning, and intuitively attuned to the universes primal forces– if only they aged more gracefully.”

Nikki’s eyes narrowed, “And so you felt compelled to murder this young woman for her youth and beauty.”

“You and I are beyond good and evil, Miss Collins.” The raven-haired woman says evenly, “You should know that better than most. “

Nikki stands with her hands in her overcoat pockets, “I thirst – you covet. “

“Ah, yes, the age old admonition, thy shall not covet thy neighbours wife? But had I not—I would not have survived. Seeing as how once my neighbour put six bullets through my head.”

“Each one well deserved.” Nikki’s arching eyebrow full of disdain.

“Of course he was a bit too strong-willed . . . where as his wife? A fitting revenge, no?”

“And then later their daughter.” Nikki’s voice drips with contempt.

“What you fail to understand Miss Collins is that there are two realities. The one of everyday mundane mortals getting up each morning to seek the pleasures and disappointments of their daily lives, millions obliviously hurrying along like ants, ants to meet the boot—car accidents, a bullet, or a knife by strangers or loved ones, a myriad of insidious diseases, that inevitable race to old age and oblivion. Not a first or second or third or fourth or fifth extinction, but thousands of individual extinctions every day.” The raven-haired woman swirls the brandy in her glass, ”While there is yet another reality behind and beneath that of the mundane world, a reality of cosmic significance, of things not of this earth, long lived, immortal, where their science is magic, or their technology is as if it were magic, and only a few of us ever get to transcend our inevitable reality for the one that endures. You and I are of that reality.”

“You are a monster—“ Nikki tells her curtly, “You took your own daughter’s life . . . twice.”

A sip of the brandy, with those so lovely lips, “And you are so innocent? Standing there with another woman’s blood inside of you—warming you, sustaining you.”

“I am forced to survive.”

“As am I,” She puts the brandy glass aside, “have you seen death Miss Collins? Experienced it – not un-death, my dear, but true death?”

And suddenly Nicole finds herself now within the grotesque memory of lying in a dark, damp, earthen grave with the ground pressing all around her, lifeless – not the inanimate sleep of the un-dead, but true death, stark and unrelenting and yet owing to some outré magic being able to feeling the horrid decomposition directed by the Queen of Decay, the breaking down of tissue, the liquefaction organs. Nikki can feel the insects, and microbes, the worms eating at her rotting flesh.

“That my dear is death.”

Nikki fights to thrust the memory out.

“Oh, you and I are far too much alike– each of us clinging to an existence no matter what the consequence.”

“Yes, and you and I have both failed to understand message of the Necronomicon.” Nikki states ruefully, “They want us to be as evil as they.”

“Survival is not evil.” Ephriam Waite, in the stolen body of Olivia Martense, using the identity of Asenath Upton, tells her. “And who at the end of the long day – or . . . night in your case – tallies up the evil they do against the evil that men do – who is to say which is worse. Monsters? You think of us as monsters. What of Luis Alfredo Garavito, Gary Ridgeway, Alexander Pichushkin, Jeffery Dahmer . . . Gacy . . . Bundy – mortals all. You lecture me on taking life – and yet, Miss Collins—precisely why are you here? “

“You are not a monster – you are an abomination. And, I don’t really have time for this mediaeval metaphysics. Even if I wanted to discuss it with you.” Nikki removes a hand from her coat pocket and waves at the end table “So—do you wish to count that?” She indicates the envelope, well aware now that there were other reasons for having her come to Providence—hisway of education..

“No. As one abomination to another – I trust you.”

Nikki strides over and picks up the black, nylon bag. “You will tell the Metropolitan I wish to see him.”

“The Metropolitan, my dear, only sees whom the Metropolitan wishes to see.”

Nikki walks over the threshold of the double, mullioned glass doors and stops, “Is he the Darkness?”

“No child.”

Nikki nods, “Either way, I think he wants to see me. Tell him that I am here.”

“I don’t have to tell them.” And the raven-haired woman takes a sip of her brandy.

Asenath Upton’s eyes narrow as she watches Nicole Collins saunter out of her parlour, hears the door close, and the motor of the large car start. She rises from the rose coloured chair and steps over to the front windows, pushing back the lace drapery. Snow is lightly falling, she smiles; it begins to fall now a bit heavier. He has chosen wisely. She lets the drape fall back into place.

She steps over to the antique phone and lifts the receiver and dials.

“The Wizard’s daughter just left.” She says to the person who answers.

With the convertible top down, Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up on the radio, the cold winter wind in her hair, Nikki wants to accelerate, to push this old Impala up to the 120 that it shews on the speedometer, but being as it is a stolen car she knows to maintain the speed limit. The Metropolitan – the whole of it sounds so preposterous. Sounded preposterous to begin with – ancient cabals and powers and alliances within New England. But what from what she has gained from Asenath Upton she now realizes the horrible truth.

Doctor Praetorius was right – she is part of a game . . . a game that has been going on for a very, very long time.

She stops to get some petrol at a small combination petrol station and donut shop. She purchases a dozen donuts – for the young woman in her motel room. Also, a half-gallon of orange juice. And resists the urge to follow a woman into the ladies room, whose blood she knew would taste oh so heavenly.

When she arrives back at the Motel Viva, the prostitutes and their clients were busy either negotiating in the parking lot or heading into or out of rooms having already settled upon the pricing arrangement. She puts up the convertible top, takes her box of donuts and orange juice, and with the room key in hand languidly makes her way over to the weathered, whitewashed door of Room 2.

Upon opening the door, she quickly closes it behind her. There was a middle-aged man dressed in a pair of black slacks and a white dress shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up. He wears latex gloves and was busy checking the bag of blood suspended over the head of the bed via a bent coat-hanger and a nail. A tube ran from it into Alison Drew’s arm.

“And you are?’ Nikki asks putting the box of donuts and orange juice on the battered dresser.

“I am Dr. Sabine.” He says as he checks Alison’s pulse. “Known for my discretion when it comes to having to sew up knife wounds, setting broken bones, and extracting bullets . . . as well as—” He looks over at her, and then down at his patient, “Other things. For a whole host of clients.”

“How is she?” Nikki asks stepping closer to the bed,

“Her vital signs are improving. She is stable.” Dr. Sabin replies as he puts something into the old, black physician’s bag on the end table. “I assume your intent was not to turn her.” He said without looking at her. “Else I wouldn’t have gotten a call. “

Nikki notices the claw hammer beside the black bag with which he must have placed the nail to suspend the plastic bag of blood.

“You know, out of town binge drinkers are frowned upon.”

“Yes, well, I did not . . . intend . . . things have not gone as I had planned . . . and it has been some time since I had last had a drink.” She says less an apology than an explanation. She took off her overcoat and draped it over a chair with a duct-taped arm.

“She will be alright?”

“Yes,” He says and turns to step over to the bathroom for a moment and returns with a plastic bag of blood, which he tosses to her. She one hand catches, feeling that he has had it submerged in warm water. “If you restrain from drinking more of her.”

Nikki nods.

“There’s a glass over there, I understand the plastic tastes rather horrid.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“It’s all been taken care of,” he says and looks at her, “You’ve got your appointment with The Metropolitan.”

Rather than the normal theme music, Pump It Up begins to play . . . End of Episode