Dark Changeling

by Margaret Carter

  As far as Roger could tell from analyzing the police of-ficers’ reactions, they accepted his “innocent bystander” pose. He expected no further trouble.That was damn close, though! he reflected, his hands shaking as he poured a fresh glass of milk, liberally laced with brandy. Though his stomach protested the additional burden, he forced down the concoction for its tran-quilizing effect.

  His head still reeled between pity for Alice and rage at her attacker. To rip out her throat and leave her to die! The atrocity, touching someone he knew, stirred Roger more deeply than the other assaults had. He felt responsible for the girl's condition, since her link with him must have drawn the ravisher.Sandor—who else? Sylvia was right.

  And she had brought him here!

  Meanwhile, on top of his major crime, the renegade had disrupted Roger's schedule. Roger frowned at his empty glass. His system still cried out for what it had been denied. He wouldn't risk taking a victim at random, not so close to home. Instead he went out to hunt animal prey. Several hours of strenuous hiking through the woods, along with the blood of a few rac-coons or opossums, might relieve his tension enough to let him rest the following day.

  * * * *

  LATE SATURDAY afternoon the telephone's ring broke into Roger's sleep. Sometimes he wished he hadn't trained himself to wake at that stimulus. With a muttered curse, he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, Dr. Darvell,” said a male voice. “How did you like last night's entertainment?”

  Roger sat up. “Who is this?”

  “Have you already forgotten what you did to me in Boston?” The voice didn't display anger; instead, it gloated.

  Roger felt as if an icicle were stabbing through his temples. “Neil Sandor.”

  “And I thought it was little Sylvia! I should have known she didn't have the guts.”

  “What are you after, Sandor?”

  “For now, just to watch you squirm—take my time and have fun with you.”

  Roger struggled to rein his anger. Losing control wouldn't help. “By attacking an innocent woman?”

  “Innocent?” Sandor made the word sound like an obscene joke. “How was it? Didn't you enjoy my present? I got her primed and ready for you.”

  “I didn't—” Roger shut up, revolted at the thought of dis-cussing his habits with this psychopath.

  “Not even a sip? Then you must be in bad shape by now. You've got a lot to learn if you actually passed up that luscious little—”

  Roger slammed the phone down.

  Trembling with fury, he dressed in a blind rush and stormed out of the house to the car. He didn't realize where he meant to go, until he found himself pulling up to the Holiday Inn near Route 50 in Annapolis. He needed answers from Sylvia—right now.

  Chapter 9

  WHEN HE KNOCKED on the door of Sylvia's motel room, she mumbled a protest in a voice thick with sleep.

  “I don't care how early it is,” he said through the door. “Let me in, if you don't want me to shout it in the middle of the corridor.”

  Her sluggish footsteps approached. “You wouldn't. You're the one who has to keep living here.” But she was already unfastening the bolt.

  Sylvia let him in and offered him a chair. Draped in a sheer nightgown, her hair a tangled mane, she curled up on the bed. “Did it take you this long to think up a rebuttal to what I said the other night? And if so, couldn't it wait until after dark?” She yawned.

  “Sandor is here.”

  She froze in mid-stretch. “What happened?”

  “He almost killed one of my patients.” Roger narrated Friday night's events and repeated Sandor's message verbatim.

  Staring at the wall, Sylvia murmured, “So he believes me now.”

  Roger felt like shaking her. “Why the devil wouldn't he? You came straight to me the moment you arrived here, so he must have followed you and then started watching me. If his paranormal perception is anything like yours, it couldn't have taken him long to discover my—oddity.”

  Sylvia focused on him. “Yes. And it must have been your—well, your shadow, you might say—on the girl that led Neil to attack her. We can tell when someone has served as a donor—it shows in the aura. And people who've been touched are awfully attractive. Maybe he mesmerized your girl and found out she belonged to you.”

  “And that made her fair game? Is that how your kind think?” Even now, he didn't think “our kind.” He wasn't like Sylvia; he couldn't sprout wings and levitate.

  “Only for an outlaw. Taking somebody else's prey is taboo. That's why Neil would see it as the perfect revenge.” Stripping off her gown, she stepped over to an open suitcase and picked out a selection of garments. “Roger, I'm sorry he's done this to you. On the other hand, I won't deny that I'm glad he isn't after me anymore.”

  Roger lunged across the room, grabbed her by the shoulders, and spun her around. “Not good enough, damn it! Youled him to me! I've had more than enough of your evasiveness.”

  Dropping the clothes she was holding, Sylvia placed her hands lightly on his chest. “All right, Roger. What do you want from me?”

  “I can't deal with this in a vacuum, and you claim you aren't allowed to give out information. Very well—put me in touch with the other vampires.”

  She projected a flare of resistance, instantly quenched. “So now you believe they exist?”

  They had argued that point too much already. “Introduce me to them.”

  She slumped in his grasp. “Only fair, I guess. Listen, Roger, I can't do it on my own. But I suspect, from the way my advisor reacted when I mentioned you, that the elders do know about you already. I'll contact my advisor and pass on your request.”

  “Tonight.”

  He sensed her complete surrender. “Yes, tonight.”

  * * * *

  DRIVING AWAY from the motel, Roger shook with pent-up frustration. Sandor, damn him to hell, had been right about one thing. Roger's body, accustomed to regular “doses” of human blood, was in violent revolt.

  I can handle it. I've abstained longer than this many times.

  That reminder didn't ease the burning in the throat and the cramps in his stomach. For an hour he drove the crisscrossing back roads of the county, ignoring speed limits. He almost hoped for a confrontation to discharge his aggression, but, ironically, no radar trap netted him. Finally he returned to Annapolis and parked downtown at the city dock. He knew resorting to a casual pickup so near home was dangerous. For once, though, need overpowered caution.

  It didn't take long to find a solitary woman who responded to his practiced seduction technique. Together they walked away from the crowded, brightly lit tourist district to a thicket of trees on the Naval Academy campus, where Roger lulled her into a sensual dream. He drank deeply and went home satisfied.

  * * * *

  HE OPENED HIS eyes upon dense gray fog. He lay, not in bed, but on mossy ground. Above him spread the branches of a decaying, hollowed-out tree. Alice Kovak stepped out of the fog, a bloody hole gaping in her neck. She raised a pointed stake in her clenched hands. He tried to leap up. Someone held both his arms pinned to the ground. Looking wildly from side to side, he saw Sylvia at his right, the woman he had just drunk from at his left. The woman's neck, like Alice's, bled copiously.

  “Why?” he tried to scream. The word came out as a faint whisper. “I didn't do that to you.”

  “He's lying,” Sylvia growled. “He's a traitor—kill him!”

  The stake swept down to pierce his chest.

  * * * *

  ROGER WOKE TO the ringing of the phone. For once he welcomed the interruption. He checked the clock. He'd gone to sleep between four and five a.m., and it was now six thirty.

  When he answered the phone, Sylvia's voice said, “All right, I made that call, and I'm waiting for an answer. I should hear before tonight. Want me to come over then?”

  “Yes, please do.” The dream was already dissolving, except for a confused miasma of guilt and terror.

  “I can hardl
y believe what my advisor told me.” Sylvia sounded almost childlike in her excitement. “He said I'd be getting a call from Lord Volnar.”

  Her awed tone reminded Roger of the way his late mother would have spoken about an audience with the Pope. “I gather that's something special?”

  “Lord Volnar is—well, you'll find out. He spent a lot of time with me when I was growing up, almost a co-advisor, but he's very busy, and I hardly ever see him now.” Roger didn't need empathic contact with Sylvia to guess that she had, in human terms, a crush on Volnar. “I never expected him to take a personal interest in you. Roger, there must be something important about you that I've never suspected.”

  Roger discounted that suggestion. Sylvia was jumping to conclusions with little more data than he himself possessed. Besides, even if true, “importance” wasn't necessarily a good thing. In this context, “important” could mean “dangerous.” Roger didn't dare assume this Lord Volnar's attitude toward him would be favorable.

  * * * *

  “LORD VOLNAR will contact you sometime in the next few days.” Sylvia paused to lean against a tree, absent-mindedly shredding a pine cone. She and Roger were strolling together in the woods behind his townhouse. “I can't say exactly when. He's the oldest of the elders; he has his own way of accomplishing things.”

  Roger glanced up at the moon through the branches, inha-ling deeply the sharp evergreen scent and the richer smell of moist leaves. “You seem relieved.”

  “I am! You can't imagine how glad I am to have this whole mess off my hands.”

  “Just like that?” said Roger, irritated at her readiness to dump her trouble with Sandor onto him. “What will you do now, run away again?”

  Sylvia gave him a tolerant half-smile. “You can't goad me into throwing another temper tantrum at you. My guardian said I should have known better than to overreact to your confused behavior, so I'm going to be reasonable if it chokes me.”

  “Thank you,” he said acidly. They resumed walking.

  “As for leaving, he thinks I should, right away, but I can't take the idea of—well, yes, running again. So I'll hang around for a few weeks first. After that—well, I passed through a quiet little town near Albuquerque where I could really enjoy living. I may try that for a year or two.”

  Exasperating as she was much of the time, Roger felt let down at the thought of losing Sylvia's company again. “Well, I wish you luck.”

  “I have a special reason for staying here the next couple of weeks. I could go back to the Nevada headquarters for this, but somehow I don't want to accept anybody at random for my first time.”

  “What are you getting at?” He noticed Sylvia's aura fluctuating, and her scent held a musky undercurrent he hadn't sensed before. Was she ill? From the remarks she'd dropped, Roger thought vampires were immune to disease.

  “I have something to ask you.” She paused, turning to face him. In the silence between them the rustling of hidden animals and the chirps of crickets stirred the air. “Damn, this is hard to say. Any other male of our kind would take it as a routine favor, but you grew up with human beliefs about body functions.”

  “For all you know, I'm not your kind. Did it occur to you that your Lord Volnar might want to get rid of a human being who endangers your race by behaving the way I do?” Roger had not formulated the theory this way before, but now that he did, it sounded chillingly plausible.

  Sylvia shrugged off the suggestion. “I'll worry about that later. The point is, there's no one else in Maryland except Neil, and I'd rather die.” She reached up to twist a spray of leaves off a tree branch. “What I'm getting at is that I'm about to enter my first estrus. I recognize the symptoms I was taught about. It'll hit soon, within a week at most.”

  Stunned, Roger said, “You're asking me to—”

  Sylvia nodded. “Mate with me. You don't have to worry about pregnancy, because the first heat period is never fertile. I've got to have somebody, I won't take Neil, and better you than a human male—Ilike you.”

  He cut her off. “Out of the question. Look, Sylvia, even if I didn't have—stuffy as it may sound to you—moral reservations, I don't—” he evaded her eyes. “I told you haven't been capable of ejaculation for almost twenty years.”

  “Oh, don't worry, that's normal. If you really are one of us, you will be when the time comes.”

  Flushing with embarrassment, Roger didn't pursue that point. Sylvia's nails grazed his cheek, coaxing him to meet her pleading gaze. Sensing what it cost her to make the request, he didn't have the heart to refuse outright. “I'll think about it. I can't make any such decision until I know more about this race you claim I belong to.”

  That answer contented her for the moment. Declining her invitation to hunt, he left her gliding among the trees, nostrils flared, every sense extended in search of warm-blooded prey.

  * * * *

  ROGER STARED IN shock at the second page of Monday morning's paper. The headline shrilled, “Vampire Killer?” What-ever sense of well-being lingered from Saturday night's feast instantly crumbled to dust.

  “A woman identified as Ellen Soames, age 22, was found dead early Sunday morning on the steps of the Naval Academy Chapel....”

  The story went on with the customary sensational drivel about peculiar throat wounds and massive blood loss. Roger skimmed it, thinking of the woman he had left drowsing on the grass near the chapel. She'd been about the right age and had given her name as Ellen. No possible doubt. He hadn't lacerated her neck, much less left her bleeding to death.

  He knew who had. So Sandor's call hadn't been a bluff; he meant to pursue his revenge. And an effective one—it occurred to Roger that this crime, unlike the first, endangered him. Someone might remember seeing him with the dead woman.

  Roger silently damned his own carelessness. His undisci-plined appetite had thrown another victim into Sandor's clutches. How long would the persecution continue? Roger had a night-marish vision of patients staggering into his office with bleeding wounds several days a week. Neither his career nor his sanity would long survive.

  Lingering to mull over the article made him later than normal in getting to work, but Britt intercepted him anyway. While he poured a cup of the double-strength coffee Marcia had made for him, in a pot separate from the weaker brew the two women favored, Britt said, “I lucked into a pair of tickets for the Bach Meistersingers at St. Anne's Sunday night. Want to go with me?”

  “Very well.” He'd done so once before and enjoyed the music, as well as enjoying Britt's company entirely too much.

  “And relax, I won't bite,” she whispered, following him into his office.

  He guessed the tickets were partly a pretext for Marcia's benefit. Sure enough, as soon as Britt had shut the door behind her, she changed the subject. “I heard about that patient of yours who was attacked Friday,” she said without preamble. “Terrible thing, especially hitting so close.” He heard more speculation than sympathy in her voice.

  “How did you hear?” So far as he knew, the police hadn't released Alice's name to the local media.

  “I have a friend in the State's Attorney's office,” Britt said. “And have you seen this morning's paper? Another woman was assaulted the same way over the weekend—only that one died.”

  “I don't want to discuss it,” Roger growled, pretending to be engrossed in unpacking his briefcase.

  “Well, I do,” Britt said, leaning against his desk, arms folded, “and who better to listen than you? I have some ideas on the subject that might interest you.”

  “I doubt it.” Confound it, why wouldn't she take rudeness for an answer?

  “Did you know there were two similar killings in Baltimore within the past ten days?”

  Roger flinched. Now that she mentioned it, he recalled noticing headlines about such crimes. “I try to avoid reading that sort of thing.”

  “They present some intriguing angles.”

  He raised his eyes to hers, strongly tempted to use the hyp-notic for
ce he'd sworn never to inflict on her. “Can't you grasp that I don't find the incident pleasant to dwell on?”

  “No use evading it,” she said. “Physician, heal thyself. I pre-scribe a long talk over lunch.”

  If he didn't agree, she would give him no peace and might become actively suspicious of his reluctance. “All right, lunch. Now, I have a patient in ten minutes. Will you please let me get to work?”

  * * * *

  IN THE UNGLAMOROUS milieu of a bargain steak house, Britt unfolded her speculations while Roger nibbled halfheartedly at what the menu optimistically called prime rib. “As soon as I saw the report about the murder on the Academy, I remembered those Baltimore crimes. The m.o. is too similar for coincidence.”

  “I never suspected you had such low tastes. This is worse than dabbling in the occult.”

  “Insults won't sidetrack me, so don't bother,” she said, etching a grid in her swordfish filet with the fork tines.

  “Your hypothesis is that it's the same criminal. What about it?”

  “This morning I called my classmate from Johns Hopkins in the State's Attorney's office and blackmailed some information out of him.” She hesitated before adding, “Off the record and confidential, of course.”

  “Of course.” Roger felt a tingle of excitement along his nerves, despite the threat to his own security.

  “My friend says the name ‘vampire killer’ isn't just some journalist's fevered fantasy. All the wounds were made by human teeth, only not quite human. There are anomalies.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “What would you say to fractures on some of the victims, apparently made by bare hands, but requiring abnormal strength? Or some unidentifiable organic compounds in the saliva found in the wounds?” She gleefully speared a chunk of fish and savored it while waiting for his reaction.