Free Dead Roses for a Blue Lady by Nancy Collins Page B

answer. Is that understood, boychick?"
    Judd swallowed and nodded.
    "Very well. Tell me your name. All of it."
    "Michael Judd Rieser. Is that it? That's all you want? My name?"
    "To know a thing's name gives one power over that thing, my sweet. Didn't they teach you that in school? Come to think of it, I guess not."
    "What about my question? Do you know where Sonja is?"
    "Yes, I do know." The demon scrawled an address on the back of the letter Judd had given him. "You'll find her here. She's inside the meat locker on the ground floor."
    "Meat locker?"
    "I wouldn't open it if I were you."
    Judd snatched up the address and slid out of the pew. "But I'm not you!"
    Malfeis watched Judd hurry out of the bar with an amused grin. "That's what you think, boychick." He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he had shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, a ring in his nose, and four days' growth of beard.

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) It was cold. So very, very cold.
    Sonja sat huddled in the far corner of the meat locker, her knees drawn up to her chest.
    Her breath drifted from her mouth and nostrils in wispy flumes before condensing and turning to frost on her face.
    How long? How many days had she been here? Three? Four? Twenty? A hundred? There was no way of telling. She no longer slept. The Other's screams and curses kept her awake.
    Let me out! Let me out of this hell-hole! I've got to feed! I'm starving!
    "Good."
    You stupid cunt! If I starve to death, you go with me! I'm not a damned tapeworm!
    "Couldn't prove it by me."
    I'm getting out of here! I don't care what you say!
    Sonja did not fight the Other as it asserted its ascendancy over her body. The Other forced her stiffened limbs to bend, levering her onto her feet. Her joints cracked like rotton timber as she moved. She staggered in the direction of the door. In her weakened condition she had difficulty seeing in the pitch black of the meat locker. She had abandoned the sunglasses days ago, but as her condition worsened, so did her night-vision.
    Her groping hands closed on the door's interior handle. There was a sharp crackle and a flash of blue light as the Other was thrown halfway across the locker. She screamed and writhed like a cat hit by a car, holding her blistered, smoking hands away from her body.
    This was the twentieth time she'd tried to open the door and several of her fingers were on the verge of gangrene.
    "You're not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever!"
    Fuck you! Fuck you! I'll get you for this, you human-loving cow!
    "What? Are you going to kill me?"
    Sonja crawled back to her place in the corner. The effort started her coughing again, bringing up black, clotted blood. She wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket, nearly dislocating her jaw in the process.
    You're falling apart. You're too weak to regenerate properly...
    "If you hadn't pounded your head against the fuckin' wall trying to get out in the first place—"
    You're the one that got us locked up in here! Don't blame me!
    "I am blaming you. But not for that."
    It's that fucking stupid human again! You think you can punish me for that? I didn't do anything that you hadn't already fantasized about!
    "You raped him, damn you! You almost killed him!"
    I didn't, though. I could have. But I didn't.
    I loved him!" Sonja's voice cracked and became a sob.
    You didn't love him. You loved being mistaken for human. That's what you're mad about; not that I molested your precious lover boy, but that I ruined your little game of Let's

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) Pretend!
    "Shut up."
    Make me.

    Judd checked the street number of the warehouse against the address that Mai had given him. This was the place. It was one of the few remaining warehouses in the district that had not been turned into trendy yuppie condo-apartments. There was a small sign