“Shut up, fool!” Michael snapped. “Or I’ll shut you up permanently and take your cute little girly friend for myself.”
“You wouldn’t,” Paul challenged.
“I could and I would. Isn’t that right, Kelly?”
Selena heard no response from Kelly. The girl was probably way too afraid of Michael to open her mouth. Her boyfriend was really pushing it with her brother, though. Michael was right. The guy was a fool.
“Why are you in charge anyway?” Paul wanted to know.
The guy just doesn’t know when to shut up, Selena thought as she crept through the forest about forty metres behind them.
“Because I’m your maker,” Michael said, surprisingly calmly. “Everything you can do I can do ten times better. The strong are always in charge. That’s just the way it is and the way it’s always been. So either live with it, or die by my hand. Your choice.”
Michael must have finally got his point across, for Paul didn’t utter another word for the next twenty minutes.
Selena maintained her distance the entire time, moving silently as always, but keeping the trio in her sights at all times. She was careful not to rustle any bushes as she swept through the forest like a spirit in the night. Her eyesight was superb, even better than Michael’s. She just wished she’d been given the gift of flight like he had. That ability would be magnificent.
The three up ahead crossed a road and walked down a rutted dirt driveway. Lightning flashed, illuminating the trio like three ghosts in the dark. Thunder cracked nearby. The storm was almost upon them now. A stiff wind picked up as Selena darted across the lonely road. She crouched behind a clump of shivering bushes, looked ahead, then moved quietly along the driveway, keeping to the undergrowth along its left edge. The road curved gradually to the right. As Selena rounded the bend she saw a farm house. Out front was parked a four wheel drive utility with a cement mixer in the back. Beneath a carport rested a black Holden of some description.
Michael was standing on the porch, while Paul and Kelly lingered near the carport. No lights burned within the house. Those that were home had obviously retired for the night.
Selena sneaked behind a grove of trees just to the left of the carport and waited. She saw Paul sniff the air. He looked all around, but failed to spot her. Kelly just stood quietly at her boyfriend’s side. Michael was trying to pry a window open. It was old, made of wood and glass. It creaked and groaned and threatened to shatter.
“The hell with this,” he said and walked back to the front door. Standing about two feet away from it, he lifted his right leg and kicked the door in. It flew off its hinges and crashed inside the house.
So much for being discreet, Selena thought gravely.
Michael stepped inside. Paul and Kelly glanced at each other. Paul grinned, grabbed her by the hand and dragged her in.
“Feeding time!” he said happily.
When she heard a blood curdling scream come from within the house, Selena slipped in through the shattered front entrance way just as thunder cracked viciously overhead. The first heavy drops of rain fell from the night sky and pattered on the rusted tin roof. Wind tore through the valley and frequent lightning flashes lit up the windows. She slithered down a hallway, not needing to be as quiet now that her presence was covered by the sounds of screaming, struggling and the ravenous slurping of fresh blood.
“This is better than an orgasm,” Paul said as he stepped out of a bedroom, blood dripping from his chin and his eyes crazy with lust. “I want another one. How many live in this house?”
When he disappeared into another room, Selena crept forward and poked her head around a corner, peering through an open doorway that led into a bedroom. There the body of a teenage boy lay on the floor. Kneeling on the floor beside him was Kelly, her jaws clamped onto the throat of a lifeless young woman with fiery red hair. Kelly didn’t notice Selena. She was too intent on sucking every drop of blood from the corpse that she could.
Selena moved on, quickly ducking past the bedroom where Paul had gone to find another victim. She came to the end of the hall and went left. She found herself outside the master bedroom. Glancing around the door frame she saw her brother leaning over the bed. A woman lay there already dead and Michael was about to feed on her husband. He wasn’t moving. Presumably Michael had rendered him unconscious first.
“Come in and join me, Selena,” he said softly, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. He never turned around, but somehow knew she was there.
“You’re supposed to be discreet, Michael,” Selena snapped.
“I know why you’re here.” Now he did twist his head to face her. His jaw was covered in gore. When he smiled she saw blood dripping from his fangs. “I know why you’re here,” he repeated.
“Oh? And why’s that? Why am I here, Michael?”
“Because you want some of this action,” he said, a knowing glint in his blue eyes. “You crave human blood, I know you do. You’ve had it before. We’re like sharks. Once we get a taste, it never goes away.”
“That’s you, not me.”
“Stay in denial then. I know you want it.” He nodded down at the unconscious man he held in his arms. “Come and have this one. He’s young and nice and fresh. You’ll like him.”
Selena felt her mouth salivate at the thought of clamping her needy fangs down onto that exposed throat and sucking the blood from the man. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her fangs sprang to life. As if in a hypnotic trance, she slowly stepped over to the bed and dropped to her knees. Michael maneuvered the man until his neck was within her reach.
“Take a bite,” he encouraged his sister. “Just one bite won’t hurt. Just suck a little blood if you want and I’ll finish him off.”
Selena wasn’t even listening to him anymore. His voice was indistinct, like it was way off in the distance somewhere. She bent forward and savagely bit into the man’s exposed throat. Blood gushed from the puncture wounds and channeled up her fangs. She slurped loudly as she sucked hard, desperate now to get that precious human blood into her system as quickly as possible. It had been so long. Self-depravation was no longer a good thing. She needed this and loved it.
When she’d finished she tilted her head back and hissed, spitting blood all over the white ceiling above as the storm raged outside.
From this point on she would never be content to drink anything but human blood.
Thirty Nine
Once again Detective Marks had endured a sleepless night, and once more he’d spent the night in his office. He was up until four in the morning poring over case files from interstate, searching for clues; anything that would pinpoint possible suspects.
After five hours of fitful dozing on the couch, his mobile phone had rung, alerting him to a house of horrors in Eagle Heights. A multiple homicide. Five dead. Marks knew the SOCOs would be there for quite some time processing that scene, so he delayed his arrival on site until well after midday.
A small tent city had been erected on the property. There were police cars, ambulances and unmarked vehicles parked on every available bit of land. News crews and other members of the media waited in the wings to capture any snippets of footage or bits of information that they could. As soon as Marks got out of his car he was accosted by several eager journalists. He brushed them aside like annoying flies. Even if he’d wanted to talk, he had nothing to tell them. Right now they probably knew more about the situation than he did.
He adjusted his sunglasses as he weaved his way through the myriad of vehicles, tents, equipment and people. There were still puddles on the ground from last night’s thunderstorm and the air was thick with humidity. All the while he scanned for Detective Scott Richards of CSU. Richards had been the one who had made the call to him earlier. He spotted him standing near a carport, tall and lanky, his blond hair glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Today he was dressed very casually in faded blue jeans, button-up beige shirt and had trainers tied to his feet.
The two det
ectives shook hands when they came together.
“Very grisly scene inside, David,” Richards gave him the heads up. “Prepare yourself when you go in there.”
Marks nodded and played with his goatee. “You said on the phone there are five bodies. Is that confirmed?”
“Yep. Sure is.”
“An entire family?”
“Not sure yet. Looks that way, but until official identifications are made, I can’t be certain. At this stage it’s just conjecture.”
“Fair enough. How much longer do you think the forensics guys will be?”
“Hard to say, really. They’ve been at it for over four hours already. Come with me.”
Marks followed Richards around the side of the house and into a tent, where coffee and biscuits were served. He realized he needed both. He’d only had the one coffee some hours ago and he hadn’t eaten a thing. His stomach was growling like an enraged animal.
He threw down a quick coffee that was supplied in a small, white plastic cup and chased it down with several shortbread biscuits. Marks drank one more coffee, then left the tent just as Chris Saunders was exiting through the gaping hole where the front door had once been.
“What have we got?” Marks asked him, not bothering with the usual pleasantries.
Saunders looked tired, his eyes red and a little glazed. “Five deceased. Two teenagers, one male one female, a young woman, and what looks like a couple, or husband and wife, in the master bedroom.”
“Any similarities to the other cases?”
“Yeah, just about everything. Same throat lesions. One guy has been decapitated. The teenage girl had her stomach ripped open and the contents spewed all over the carpet. Very little blood, though. Seems like the blood was sucked from their bodies before any of the mutilation took place.”
“Can I go in?” Marks asked.
“Sure thing. I’ll show you through.”
With Detective Scott Richards in tow, Marks followed Saunders into the house. The other SOCOs were just finishing up processing the scene and packing up their gear. Saunders led the way into the first bedroom.
Two bodies lay on the floor and, as Saunders had already pre-warned, the girl had been disemboweled. Intestines lay strewn over the carpet like sausage. The first thing Marks did was check their throats, where there were indeed those all-too-familiar puncture wounds. They moved into another bedroom where a young woman was dead on her bed. There was light blood spray on the white wall beside the bed and some blood was left in a trickle pattern across the sheets. Marks checked her neck and nodded.
In the master bedroom things looked more macabre. The male victim’s head had been ripped from his body, very similar to the Toby Matthews case. Beside him on the bed, next to the wall, was a woman. Apart from a bruise to the left cheek and the wounds on the throat, she looked basically unharmed in any other way. In this room there was blood splatter on the ceiling, and Marks looked to Saunders for elaboration.
“It appears to have been sprayed up there,” Saunders said, “as if spat from someone’s mouth.”
Marks screwed up his nose at the morbid visual that statement gave him.
“Any prints?” he quizzed.
“Plenty. As you would expect with five people in the house. But we’ll check them all and run them through the database, as per usual.” Saunders looked at Marks in earnest. “The body count is mounting rapidly, David.”
“Tell me about it. It’s all on my shoulders and I can feel the weight of it, believe me. We just need a fucking break here.” A gut feeling had been gnawing at him since yesterday. “I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough, though. I really think we’re getting close to nailing someone for these murders.”
* * *
The Brisbane subsidiary of the Research Institute was located on the south side of the city, right next door to the QHSS building. Ryan parked the rental car out of the way in a space around the side of the building. He got out dressed very similar to how he and Jack Jones had been attired when they’d infiltrated the Melbourne unit; grey trousers, black shoes and a white lab coat. Ryan pinned an ID badge to his coat and slung his make believe credentials around his neck.
Angela had been a great help. She’d supplied him with the clothing and ID, and had even managed to locate exactly where the APHV was kept in the building.
By the time everything was organized and Ryan had hooked up the rental car and driven to Brisbane, it was two in the afternoon as he walked across the car park and headed for the entrance doors. He went in the front way this time, not bothering with the cloak and dagger approach used down south with Jack.
There were two security guys in the foyer. One of them glanced briefly at the credentials that hung around Ryan’s neck, then turned away, seemingly satisfied that Ryan was meant to be there. Ryan skirted right around the curved reception desk and headed for the elevators, following the mental instructions he had burned into his memory. An empty elevator was already waiting for him and he stepped inside, riding it to the third basement level; the lowest level in the building. The ride was uninterrupted, and when it stopped and the heavy steel doors slid open, he walked out into a tiled corridor where everything was white and very sterile. Once again there was that strange potpourri of smells that he couldn’t distinguish.
No one was in the corridor, and the place was more of a storage level rather than a level in which doctors, scientists and professors actively worked on. Ryan followed the layout in his head and made for a room way down the back of the building. He arrived at a locked door with a small glass window set into it at eye level. Peering into the room he saw refrigerated cabinets and a stainless steel bench in the centre. From a pocket in his lab coat he withdrew a swipe card and ran it through the slot beside the door handle. A green light gave him the go ahead to open the door. He did so and stepped inside, where he was greeted with a cold blast of air.
Angela knew the vaccine samples were kept in this room, but she wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly where in the room they were, so it was a matter of opening each refrigerator and manually going through what was inside.
The first compartment yielded nothing, as did the second. However, when Ryan searched the third fridge he got lucky. It was as he was stuffing vials of APHV into his pockets that he heard heavy footsteps approaching the door.
* * *
Marks was still at the Eagle Heights crime scene when he received a phone call from a detective friend in Brisbane. He listened to the conversation on the other end with extreme interest, then got in his car and made a beeline for the motorway.
All the way to Brisbane he weaved in and out of traffic, impatient to get to his destination and see what this guy could tell him about his cases. By the time he skidded to a stop outside the precinct it was after four in the afternoon. The sun was slowly dropping towards the western horizon and twilight would be settling over the area in just on two hours from now.
* * *
Ryan was led into an interview room, where he waited for five minutes before a detective, dressed in clothes that looked like they had been slept in, entered the room and took a seat on the opposite side of the large scarred wooden table. The overhead lights reflected off the man’s bald head.
“I’m Detective David Marks,” the bald man introduced himself. “I’m a Homicide Detective for Gold Coast CIB.” He glanced at some notes he’d spread out in front of him. “And you are Ryan Fox, a local private investigator down on the Coast. Is that right?” Ryan nodded. “Is that why you’re up here breaking into science labs? Are you currently working a case?”
“That’s correct,” Ryan said. He was sizing up Detective Marks. He knew the man was the one in charge of investigations into the recent spate of murders on the Gold Coast. He was trying to decide how much the man knew and whether he could trust him enough to enlist his help. Time was running out. It would be dark soon.
“I’m curious,” Marks said. He sat there stroking his goatee as he spoke. “Why were you trying
to steal vials of APHV? You must have had a reason to go after that specifically. Was it a client request?”
“It was,” Ryan admitted, “but I don’t know if I can tell you the story. I doubt whether you would believe me.”
“Don’t be so sure about that, Mr Fox. I don’t think anything would surprise me anymore.”
Ryan decided he had no choice but to tell the detective everything he knew. If he didn’t, they would just keep him locked up overnight at the very least. Then there would be no chance of saving his sister. At least if he confided in Marks there was some semblance of hope.
For the next half an hour Ryan filled Marks in on everything he knew, from the start of his association with Selena Thorne, right up to why he was there in Brisbane stealing APHV. He related the story as quickly as he could. When he was done, Marks sat there staring at him with what looked like an expression of immense satisfaction. Ryan hadn’t been expecting that response.
“Okay,” Marks said with a nod. “Now I’d better tell you what I know.”
Forty
“We’re running out of time,” Ryan protested as he watched the sun dip behind the mountains in the west. He was being driven back to the Gold Coast in Marks’ Falcon. Detective Marks had arranged for Ryan’s rental car to be returned to the nearest depot of the rental company.
“If we’re going to save your sister, Ryan, then we’ll need some help. I don’t think we can do it with just the two of us.”
“Your superintendent is never going to give you the resources you want when you tell him why,” Ryan was adamant.
Marks seemed to mull this over.
After hearing everything Marks knew and they put both lots on information together, the detective released Ryan from the custody of Brisbane police and together they’d gone back to the Research Institute to retrieve Becker’s serum samples, as well as some handy little injector guns.
Night Realm Page 25
