Tainted Blood

by James M. Thompson

  Chapter 11

  It was about four days after Ed Slonaker had gotten the call from Elijah telling him that if he and Kim were going to participate in his experiment with the new transformation method, they were going to have to go off the vaccine, that his new number two man came running into his office at Mountie headquarters.

  “Hey, Chief,” Sonny Tedesco said, his voice high-pitched and breathless with excitement.

  Ed sighed heavily. “Sonny, calm down before you have a stroke.”

  Sonny took a couple of deep breaths, and then he started off again, “Chief, they’ve found a couple of bodies over at the Banff Springs Hotel.”

  Ed cocked an eyebrow. Murder wasn’t all that unusual in Banff, but it usually only claimed one victim at a time and he’d never had one at the Springs. “Yeah?” he asked, turning in his chair and leaning back. “Tell me about it.”

  Sonny consulted a small notebook in his hand, making Ed smile. He knew Sonny must have seen cops do that on the television, because it certainly wasn’t something he’d learned in Mountie school. “Two young people, male and female in their early twenties or so, were found naked with their throats ripped out,” he read. And then with eyes wide, he continued, “and get this, Chief, their bodies were stuffed in an air shaft in the ceiling on the top floor.”

  Ed felt his heart grow cold, for he knew what he was dealing with. Only one type of perp killed like this—Vampyres.

  “You say they were young people?” he asked, turning to a folder on his desk.

  “Yeah, Chief,” Sonny said. He consulted his notebook again. “Look to be about nineteen or twenty or so.”

  Ed nodded, thumbing through the missing persons reports in the folder. After a moment, he pulled two sheets out and laid them face up on his desk. “A Miss Becky Robertson and one Billy Johnson were both reported missing three days ago,” he read. He looked up at Sonny. “Seems Becky’s mother said she and this Billy guy had gone out to celebrate Becky’s nineteenth birthday and they never came back. She reported she thought they’d probably run off together. Said Becky was kind’a boy crazy and it was something she might have done.” He looked up at Sonny. “Guess she was wrong, huh?”

  Nineteen years old, he thought, his stomach churning. What a waste. He stood up and pulled his belt and holster off a nearby coat rack and belted it on. Taking his hat, he ushered Sonny toward the door. “You got the crime scene cordoned off?”

  “Yes, sir!” Sonny replied as he led the way out the door toward their patrol car. “That was the first thing I did. I got the manager standing by making sure nobody messes with anything around the area.”

  * * *

  Ed ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and looked at the bodies from a few feet away. The smell was strong enough to make his eyes water—old blood, excrement, and decaying flesh made quite a potent combination. The bodies of the young couple were lying in the middle of the top floor corridor where the workmen who’d pulled them from the air-shaft had laid them. Bloody sheets were crumpled around them and two piles of what appeared to be vomit were on the floor nearby.

  Ed raised his eyebrows at Sonny and pointed to the vomit. “Yeah, the two men who pulled ’em out of the shaft puked when they uncovered the bodies and saw what’d been done to ’em,” the deputy explained.

  “Medical examiner on his way?” Ed asked.

  “Yes, sir. He was in the middle of surgery but he said he’d be here in ’bout thirty minutes or so.”

  Like most towns in Canada, the medical examiner was a surgeon who also had other duties besides examining bodies at crime scenes.

  Ed took a couple of steps closer to the bodies and squatted down, his gaze fixed on the open wounds around the necks of the victims. “Find out an approximate time of death and then get the manager to give us a list of all the people registered in the hotel from two days before to two days after the date of death, with special emphasis on those staying on the top floor,” Ed dictated.

  Sonny pulled out his small notepad and began to write Ed’s instructions down. “Yes, sir.”

  “I imagine the time of death is gonna be about three days, around the time they disappeared,” Ed said, still squatting down and letting his eyes roam over the bodies, searching for some clue as to who did this but knowing all he was going to find were two bodies completely drained of blood. “Soon as you get the list, call the airport and put the names on a watch list and tell the airport authorities not to let anyone on the list fly out until I’ve had a chance to talk to them.”

  “Okay, but don’t you think they’ve already gone, sir?”

  Ed nodded, sighing with frustration and anger. As much as he hated to, he was going to have to be very careful with this investigation. He couldn’t afford to let it get out of his control and go in directions that would be dangerous for he and Kim. “Yeah, I don’t think they’d have the balls to stay around and wait for the bodies to be discovered, but we’ve still got to cover all the bases.”

  “All right,” Sonny said, getting a look from Ed that made him blush.

  “Uh, I didn’t mean to question your orders, sir,” Sonny said contritely.

  Ed chuckled and stood up. “Don’t be silly, Sonny. The only way you’re ever gonna learn to handle a crime scene on your own is to ask questions, so if you ever think I’ve missed something or you don’t understand why I’m doing things a certain way, by all means ask.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.”

  “Now, while you get the CSI guys to lift any prints off the ceiling tiles they can find, I’ll go on over to the office and log onto the VICAP computer site and see if there are any serial killers operating anywhere with a similar MO.”

  Sonny cut his eyes back to the bodies on the floor. “I . . . I’ve never seen nothing like that before, Chief,” he said, swallowing audibly.

  “Yeah,” Ed said quietly, slipping his Mountie hat back on. “The perp is probably going to turn out to be some crazy American up here visiting.” He shook his head. “If anyone in Canada was killing people like this I would have heard about it.”

  * * *

  When Ed got back to his office, instead of logging onto his computer terminal to check the Violent Criminal Apprehension Profiles, he shut his door and dialed John Ashby’s cell phone number. Though he had no idea where John went after their talk the previous week, he hoped he still had the same phone number and was carrying his phone with him.

  After a few rings, he heard his old friend’s voice answer cautiously, “Hello.”

  “Johnny, Ed here.”

  “Hey, Ed. What’s up?” John asked, sounding surprised to hear from Ed.

  “I got me a couple of bodies over at the Springs Hotel,” Ed said slowly. “They’ve had their throats ripped out and I’m betting the ME’s gonna find there ain’t a whole lot of blood left in ’em.”

  John chuckled low in his throat. “And you called me up to see if your old friend Johnny had anything to do with their demise?”

  “No, Johnny,” Ed replied evenly. “I know you’re too smart to shit in your own backyard, and I’d like to think you still think enough of our friendship not to leave a mess like this in my lap that’s gonna raise a whole lot of questions I don’t particularly want raised right now.”

  The humor disappeared from John’s voice. “Well, you’re right on both counts, old pal. I wouldn’t do that to you and to Kim—not after all the years we were friends.” He was silent for a moment. “I didn’t have anything to do with those killings, but I think I know who did.”

  “Was it one of the men who came up here with Michael Morpheus looking for Elijah Pike? Was it the guy you mentioned the last time we talked—Thantos I think you called him?”

  “Yeah, at least that’s the only other one of our kind in the area that I know about. His full name’s Theo Thantos, and he’s traveling with a woman named Christina Alario, though I have no idea if those are the names they used to register at the Springs with.”

  Ed sighed. “I
doubt it. Not if they planned on leaving a calling card like this behind them.” He hesitated, and then he asked, “Why are you giving me their names so easily, John? Aren’t they your new buddies?”

  John waited a moment to answer. “In the first place, I know for a fact they’re long gone, Ed, so I’m not hurting them by telling you who they are. In the second place, they’re not my buddies as you call it. They just happen to be on the same side I’m on in our race’s struggle for existence. It’s like that old Japanese general wrote in The Art of War—the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “I’m not sure that’s where that quote originated,” Ed said with a laugh, enjoying talking to the man who used to be his closest friend even though the circumstances of the talk were serious.

  John returned the laugh. “Neither am I, but it sounded good, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Ed replied lightly, “You always could bullshit with the best of them, Johnny.”

  John’s voice sobered. “Well, let me give you some advice that isn’t bullshit, old pal.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A while back, when this group I joined were preparing to go after Elijah Pike and his friends, we had eight or ten of our kind staying up here in the mountains around Banff for a couple of weeks.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Ed, I’m sure you realize they weren’t on no diets while they were up here. I figure when the spring melt begins in a couple of months, you’re gonna be up to your ass in bodies with suspicious neck wounds.”

  “Oh, shit,” Ed said, realizing John was right. He had noticed a moderate increase in the number of missing persons reports over the past six months, but in the excitement of the fracas between Morpheus and Pike he’d not made the connection until now.

  “Your only hope is that the animals will mess up the bodies enough that their causes of death won’t be too apparent,” John added, “or you’re gonna have more brass from headquarters around here than a dog has fleas.”

  That’s for sure, Ed thought. “Why are you telling me this, John?”

  “In spite of all that’s happened recently, with us being on opposite sides in this war that’s starting and all, you’re still my best friend, Ed. I think maybe it’s time for you to get the hell outta Dodge ’fore the shit hits the fan. Not even someone as good at acting like a Normal as you are is going to be able to cover this shit up when the bodies start piling up at the morgue.”

  “Thanks for the heads up, John,” Ed said, and then he added thoughtfully, “You may just be right.”

  Chapter 12

  In Washington, D.C., by the time the bodies they’d left behind had been found, Theo Thantos was bustling around his top floor suite at the Ritz Carleton Hotel like a nervous teenager before his first date.

  Christina, who was sitting quietly on a sofa drinking a glass of champagne, just shook her head. “Theo, will you for God’s sake please calm down? You’re even making me nervous with all your prancing around.”

  He didn’t look at her as he bent and straightened a plate of sandwiches and cookies on a sideboard that had been set up by the hotel staff.

  “I told you, Christina, I need everything to be perfect for this meeting. These are very important people and I’ve got to convince them to join us under my leadership or my plan will never work.”

  She smirked. “If they’re as smart and important as you think they are, Theo, then it’s going to have to be your arguments that convince them to join us, not that pathetic plate of food.”

  He whirled on her, eyes blazing, just as the doorbell rang. He took a deep breath, tried to calm himself, and went to answer it.

  * * *

  Within an hour, everyone he’d invited had arrived, been fed and given drinks, and Theo had the floor and their attention.

  “I’ve asked you all to come here because of a dire threat to our race and our way of life,” he began, striding back and forth in front of the men and women gathered around the suite.

  A distinguished-looking man with salt-and-pepper gray hair combed straight back over patrician features held up a small envelope. “So you said, Theo, in this note you sent me,” said Augustine Calmet, the night editor for the Washington Post, the city’s leading newspaper. “But I’m due at two embassy parties tonight so would you please get to the point?”

  Theo pursed his lips, wanting to rip the arrogant bastard’s throat out—as if his parties were more important than the future of the race. With an effort he controlled his temper and continued. “All right, the short version then. A rogue among us named Elijah Pike has developed and almost perfected a serum, a vaccine that will enable any of our race to live as Normals again, without the necessity to feed on human blood.”

  The group looked at each other as excited murmuring spread throughout them.

  “I’d heard rumors of such a vaccine,” Gabrielle de Lavnay said from the sofa. She was a gray-haired woman who appeared to be in her sixties, though Theo knew for a fact she was only forty-two biological years old and used elaborate makeup to appear older. She was known around Washington as a wealthy recluse, who gave huge sums of money to both political parties to gain influential politicians’ presence at her infrequent parties. “But I gave the rumors no credence. Do you mean to tell me there is such a vaccine?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him.

  He felt the familiar tickle of her attempting to read his thoughts and closed his mind against her. “Yes, Gabrielle, there is such a vaccine and it is my belief that it poses the most significant threat to our race that has occurred since the pogroms in the middle ages.”

  A man named Johannes Cuntius spoke up from where he stood leaning against a wall on the far side of the room, a drink in his hand. “But Thantos,” he began, his voice bored, “how could such a vaccine, even supposing one really exists, be a threat to us? Surely, there will be a number of our kind who are tired of the life we are forced to live who might want to try this magic elixir, but so what? How can that harm the rest of us?” He glanced around the group with a supercilious smile on his face. “I think most of us feel as I do. I love my life and I don’t intend to change the way I live in any way.”

  Theo knew him to be an executive with the local TV station, WXMB, who had something to do with producing the evening news, but Theo was unsure just what his actual job title was. “Let me answer your question this way, Johannes,” Theo said, “and I’ll try to be brief so Augustine can get to his parties. In my experience, there are two types of people within the Vampyre race—those who are proud of what we are, who love the thrill of the chase and the excitement of the kill, and who know in our hearts that we are the superior race and that the so-called Normals are here on earth to serve as our food stock.”

  He paused and glanced around the room, gauging the expressions he saw on their faces. He’d picked this group of people with care, for he knew they were not only very important in the tight-knit society of Washington, but that they were the type of Vampyres he’d just mentioned.

  “And then,” he continued, “there is the other type—the weak sisters who cringe at the thought that they need to kill to survive, who feel a profound guilt for their actions and a misguided sympathy for our natural enemies, the Normals. It is precisely these people who will line up to take the vaccine and try to become what they can never truly become, a Normal human being again.”

  “I say again,” Johannes spoke up, “so what? I say good riddance to the bastards.” He grinned savagely. “That just leaves more prey for the rest of us.”

  Theo noticed several members of his audience nodding their heads, so he held up his hands. “Oh, I don’t bemoan the fact that they might choose to leave our race,” Theo said, darting his eyes to each pair watching him, “what I do bemoan is the threat to our very existence that they represent.”

  “How so, Mr. Thantos?” Christabel Chordewa asked. Christabel and her mate, Brahma Parvsh owned and ran the city’s largest limousine service.

  “How long do you th
ink it will be before one of these traitors to our race, once they feel that they themselves are back among the Normals, makes the fact of our existence public?” Theo asked. “Oh, they’ll do it with the best of intentions, to force the rest of us to take their damned vaccine and become mindless sheep with the life expectancies of mayflies like them, but do it they shall!”

  “Surely they wouldn’t be so stupid,” a man who used the single name Danag said. “They would be indicting themselves in the bargain.”

  Theo remembered the man was some sort of singer or entertainer as he gave an elaborate shrug. “We’ve all lived long enough to see the martyr syndrome in action,” he said, looking around the room, “and does anyone here think that out of probably many thousands of this kind of weakling there won’t be some who just can’t wait to throw themselves on the mercy of the Normals, their new friends?”

  “I can see your point, Theo,” Augustine Calmet said. “I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can see the possibility of it happening. But, just what do you propose we do about it? Try to prevent the vaccine from being given out?”

  Theo shook his head. “No, Augustine, it’s much too late for that. The formula is known to too many people and it would be impossible to silence all of them.”

  Calmet shrugged and spread his hands wide. “Then what are we to do, but hope what you fear won’t come to pass?”

  Now was Theo’s chance to make his case. He took a deep breath and began. “We eliminate the threat by arising and finally taking our place as lords and masters of the Normals, as we were meant to be!” Theo said forcefully.

  At first everyone just stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, then one by one the audience began to chuckle and finally to laugh out loud.

  “Forgive me, Theo,” Augustine said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, “but I hardly think a few hundred thousand of us would stand a chance of taking over the world from six billion Normals.”