Tainted Blood

by James M. Thompson

  “Well, lo and behold, the wonder boy awakens,” Shooter said when Matt appeared. Matt stared at his best friend for a moment, realizing Shooter looked somehow younger than he used to, with all the stress lines around his eyes and mouth completely gone.

  Matt looked around the room, surprised to see in addition to Elijah, TJ, Sam, and Shooter, both Ed and Kim Slonaker sitting in the room. He hadn’t noticed their thoughts in the mélange of voices in his head before. One drawback of telepathy, he realized, is when you’re in a group, everyone is thinking at the same time and it’s hard to pick out individual thoughts. It isn’t like a group conversation where only one person speaks at a time. Oh well, he’d probably get used to it sooner or later.

  Sam jumped to her feet and rushed over to throw her arms around his neck and give him a resounding kiss on the lips. “Darling, I’m so glad you’re finally awake,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his and then pulling back and frowning at the beard stubble there. He picked up the thought “porcupine” from her before he was interrupted by Elijah Pike.

  “Good morning, Matt,” Elijah said, smiling and nodding his head in greeting. “You look like you’ve survived the Rite of Transformation with no ill effects.”

  Kim Slonaker laughed from across the room and smoothed her hair back. “Well, he wasn’t feeling any pain last night when I gave him my donation of blood, I can tell you that,” she said, thinking of how sore her breasts still were after their session in his bedroom the night before.

  Matt, who could read her thoughts as easily as if she’d spoken out loud blushed and glanced at Sam, worried that she might be jealous.

  Sam laughed and ruffled his hair. “Oh look, Kim,” she said lightly, “You’ve made the poor man blush.”

  Kim laughed too. “Serves him right for what he put me through last night—the man was an animal!”

  “Hey,” Shooter said indignantly, “what about me? I seem to remember you coming to visit me too last night.”

  “Yes, dear,” Kim said indulgently, “but you were a pussycat.”

  Everyone laughed as Shooter looked around with an embarrassed expression on his face.

  “That’s okay, baby,” TJ said, rubbing his thigh. “I still think you’re an animal even if no one else does.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot!” Shooter said, grinning himself now. He muttered “pussycat” and shook his head ruefully. No female he’d ever been with had called him that before.

  “I’ll get you some coffee, sweetheart,” Sam said, “while you tell everyone how you’re feeling.”

  Matt smiled and looked around the room. “I feel great,” he said and took a seat on the couch where Sam had been sitting.

  “That’s not what she meant, chum,” Shooter said, shaking his head. “They want to know what effects the transformation has had on us, what we can do now that we couldn’t before.”

  “What did you tell them?” Matt asked, arching one eyebrow and tuning into Shooter’s thoughts.

  Shooter smiled and shrugged, thinking back at Matt, let’s do this out loud so the others can hear. “Mainly that it seems I can now read thoughts pretty much at will,” he said. “I really haven’t tried anything else yet.”

  “Same for me,” Matt said. “I can hear the sound of everyone’s thoughts in the back of my mind, kind’a like background music that I can ignore or listen to whenever I want to.”

  Elijah looked skeptical. “You mean you boys can both hear our thoughts even when we’re not trying to contact you?”

  Sam reappeared with a steaming cup of coffee and handed it to Matt as she took a seat next to him.

  Both Matt and Shooter nodded, glancing at each other as if to say it was no big deal.

  “I want you to try something,” Elijah said, leaning back in the chair he was sitting in and pursing his lips in thought. “I am going to think of something and try to block it from anyone reading it. I want everyone in the room to try and read me and we’ll see what happens.”

  He shut his eyes and his brow furrowed with the strength of his concentration.

  After a moment, Matt and Shooter looked at each other and smiled, sharing the thought between them that this was too easy. The man was an open book, as was everyone else in the room.

  Minutes later, Elijah opened his eyes and looked around the room. TJ, Sam, Kim, and Ed all shook their heads, indicating they couldn’t get any hint of his thoughts.

  Both Matt and Shooter said almost in unison, “You were thinking that this is shaping up to be a much colder winter than last year.”

  When Elijah’s face showed his astonishment, Shooter stared at him and sent the thought, “At least that was what you were thinking on the surface. Underneath you were worried that if we could read your mind we’d find out about how strong your feelings for TJ still are.”

  Elijah’s face paled and he murmured, “Jesus!”

  “Don’t worry, pal,” Shooter continued, still thinking thoughts that only Matt and Elijah could ‘hear,’ “your secret’s safe with me . . . and Matt.”

  “This is amazing,” Elijah said, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anyone who could break through a mind block before.”

  “I wonder if they have any other powers that are as strong,” Ed Slonaker asked, regarding the boys with speculative eyes. “Like telekinesis or long-distance telepathy or precog abilities, things like that.”

  Matt glanced at Ed and his eyes narrowed as he stared at the coffee cup on the table next to Ed’s chair. The cup slowly rotated on the table and then moved up to hang suspended several inches in the air.

  After a moment, the cup returned to its place and Matt took a deep breath. “There’s your answer, Ed. I can do it, but it takes full concentration and is very tiring.”

  Shooter turned his head to look at TJ and suddenly the buttons on her blouse popped open and her blouse opened slightly to reveal the cleavage of her bare breasts. She gasped and grabbed the edges of her blouse and gave him a stern look.

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, babe,” he said, “I didn’t open it too far.”

  Sam and the others all laughed, and even TJ gave a half-smile, but it was clear from the glint in her eyes that she intended to have a serious talk with Shooter later.

  “I think this psychic stuff is gonna be fun,” Shooter said, smiling lasciviously at TJ, “except what you’re thinking about me right now does not bode well for an enjoyable evening.”

  “Yes, and it will be quite useful to our work too,” Elijah said, glancing around at the group. “Of course there is a down side to this.”

  “What’s that, Elijah?” Sam asked.

  “It means that the rest of us are going to have to double up on our sharing of each other’s blood, and that in turn means we’re going to have to remain off the vaccine for a few more days at least.”

  Kim and Ed glanced at each other, and then Ed spoke. “That might be a problem, Elijah. Both Kim and I are having a rather tough time controlling our hunger. Remember, we hadn’t been on the vaccine nearly as long as you and Sam and TJ before we had to stop it to donate blood to the boys.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid we might do something rash if something isn’t done to relieve the hunger.”

  Before Elijah could answer, Matt looked at Shooter and they mind-spoke at each other. After a second, Matt said, “Elijah, I think you should know that just about everyone here is feeling the same way, except for Shooter and me. We haven’t been Vampyres long enough for the hunger to build yet, but you are all struggling with it.”

  Elijah sighed. “I know. I was hoping it was just me, but now I can see the signs on all of us—the irritability, the nervousness, and the general air of waiting for something to happen.”

  “Elijah,” Sam said, “If we’re going to try and share out blood among ourselves to attempt to gain some added powers, then we’ve got to stay off the vaccine. What are we to do? This area is too small and lightly populated for any killings or missing persons to go unnoticed.”

  “
You’re right, Sam, so I think the only solution is for us to leave here for a short while. Maybe a trip to Portland would give us the chance to assuage our hunger and to still keep our existence a secret.”

  TJ cocked an eyebrow at Elijah. “What have you got on your mind, Elijah? I know you detest the idea of killing innocent people to satisfy our hunger—in fact, that is the entire reason you invented the vaccine in the first place.”

  Elijah grinned and for a moment all two hundred years of his cunning and his experience hunting humans for food could be seen in his eyes. “Who said anything about killing innocents?” he asked. He inclined his head toward the morning’s newspaper lying on a nearby table. “There was an interesting article in the Portland paper this morning,” he said. “It concerned a vicious gang of thugs who’ve been shanghaiing innocent townsmen and putting them to work on oceangoing freighters.”

  “You think that’s enough to justify killing them?” Shooter asked with some ambivalence evident in his voice.

  “Not that alone,” Elijah answered, “but the paper went on to say that just before reaching port, the poor suckers who were shanghaied are thrown overboard and left to either drown or be eaten by sharks.”

  When everyone frowned at the barbarity of these acts, Elijah smiled again and there was no mirth at all in his expression. “What say we give them a taste of their own medicine?”

  “Do you think there’s enough of them in this gang to satisfy all of us?” Kim asked.

  Elijah shrugged, the evil glint in his eye sparkling. “If not, there are plenty of other lowlifes in Portland that can easily be found.”

  Kim’s face lit up and she took Ed’s hand in hers and squeezed it. “Oh, a road trip,” she said gaily. “That sounds like fun!”

  Chapter 22

  At five o’clock the next morning, Elijah tapped on the door to Matt and Sam’s room.

  Matt, unlike his previous disposition to have to be driven out of bed and plied with coffee before waking up, came immediately awake and felt refreshed and more alive than he ever had before.

  He cast his mind out and found that it was Elijah at the door and called, “Come in, Elijah.”

  Elijah stuck his head in the door and had a rueful smile on his face. “I can see there’s going to be no keeping secrets from you from now on.”

  Matt grinned back. “Nor from the rest of you guys once we all share our blood.”

  Elijah entered the room and tried to keep his eyes, and his mind, off the sight of Sam’s body as she sat up in the bed and stretched with the sheet down around her waist revealing her bare breasts. “Hey, what’s up, Elijah?” she asked.

  “I’m waking everyone up early today. After you all went to bed last night, I got to thinking that in addition to needing to feed, we have some vaccines ready to send out. So, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I spent the night preparing dozens of batches of serum and I have the boxes all addressed and loaded in the back of the Explorer. I thought we’d all drive into Portland and you and Matt and TJ and Shooter could fly off to different cities and mail the boxes from there so there wouldn’t be any trace of our location.”

  Matt pursed his lips as he looked into Elijah’s mind. With his new powers, Elijah wasn’t even aware he was being read. “There is a secondary benefit to your plan,” Matt said.

  Elijah just nodded and Sam looked at Matt. “What?” she asked.

  “It spreads us all out in different areas of the country so we can all feed to satisfy the hunger without the authorities in any one place seeing a rash of missing or dead people.”

  “I’m afraid it’s necessary, Sam, at least until we finish our sharing of blood among ourselves and get back on our vaccines,” Elijah said, his tone apologetic.

  Sam jumped out of bed, completely unconcerned about the fact that she was naked, and walked toward the bathroom. “No problem,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. “We’ll look on it as a vacation. I just love staying in motels—it makes Matt even more horny than usual.”

  Elijah grinned. “Don’t use up all the hot water,” he warned. “Everyone else is going to be showering too.”

  Matt threw the covers back and followed Sam toward the bathroom. “In that case, we’ll conserve by sharing the shower and using only half as much water.”

  Elijah knew what that meant. “Fine,” he said, “just don’t take too long. We’ve got to be at the airport by eight o’clock and it’s an hour’s drive.”

  Sam stuck her head back out of the door and grinned at Elijah. “Don’t worry, dear,” she said, “Matt never takes too long in the shower when I’m in there. As a matter of fact, he’s quick like a bunny rabbit.”

  Elijah could see Matt’s hand reach around the door and yank her out of sight. “We’ll see about that,” he heard Matt say.

  * * *

  Matt and Sam, their faces still flushed from their exertions in the shower, piled into the car along with Shooter and TJ and Elijah.

  “We’ll swing by the Bear Mountain Inn and pick up Ed and Kim on the way,” he said. Ed and Kim were staying at the nearby bed and breakfast as Elijah’s cabin only had two bedrooms.

  “You think they’re awake yet?” Shooter asked. “After all, they didn’t get to bed until really late.”

  He was referring to the fact that the previous night had been spent with the group playing musical beds as they all went from person to person to take small drinks of each other’s blood. Some of the visits had lasted longer than others when hormones began to rage and playful sex was engaged in. Just as Elijah had foretold, even Shooter had lost his monumental jealousy under the influence of the Vampyre Bug. Of course, having the beautiful Kim to keep his mind off what Ed was doing with TJ helped quite a bit.

  “I’ll bet they’re already up and at ’em,” Sam said. “Kim is really anxious for this trip. It seems the hunger is especially strong in her.”

  Sure enough, both Ed and Kim were waiting in the inn’s driveway when Elijah pulled up. Shooter and TJ got in the rearmost seat, leaving Kim room to squeeze in beside Matt and Sam while Ed got in the front seat with Elijah.

  “How are you guys feeling?” Elijah asked.

  Ed replied, “Not too bad, all things considered. We’re both running a slight fever and have some muscle aches, but not nearly as bad as the first time we went through the Rite of Transformation.”

  “Speak for yourself, my cuddly little bear,” Kim said from the backseat. “It’s been so long since I had any kind of sickness, I’d almost forgotten how rotten a fever makes you feel.”

  “Have either of you noticed any changes in your abilities yet?” Matt asked.

  Ed looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, we both think so. At least, we feel like our psychic abilities are getting stronger.”

  “Last night, after Elijah let us off at the inn, we could both sense almost every other guest’s thoughts and dreams. It was really weird.”

  Matt smiled. “It is at first, but you’ll soon find you can shut them out entirely, or let them kind’a run at the back of your mind like when you’re talking to someone and there’s a TV playing in the background. You hear it but you don’t really listen to what’s being said.”

  “I hope so,” Kim said with feeling, “otherwise, I’m going to go crazy.”

  Ed winked at Matt. “What she means to say is she’ll go crazier!”

  “Cuddly bear,” Kim said, her voice low and dangerous but her eyes still holding a glint of humor. “You know how cranky I get when I don’t get my sleep and those damned psychic thoughts kept me awake all night. You’re already living on borrowed time, so watch it!”

  Rapidly changing the subject, Ed turned to Elijah. “By the way, I was wondering how you got all those names on the boxes of vaccines we’re going to be sending out.”

  “Through my e-mail,” Elijah said. “I opened an account on AOL with one of my old names and addresses on it so it couldn’t be traced. A friend, Ramson Hol
royd, has spread the word about the vaccine and asked everyone he told to tell all of their friends and to give them my e-mail address. Those that are interested have e-mailed me they’d like to try it. So far I’ve gotten several hundred inquiries.” He laughed, “And not a few threats and diatribes about how what we’re doing is going to ruin the race, etcetera.”

  Ed whistled low in his throat. “Wow, that’s gonna cost a bundle to provide that many of our kind with the vaccine, since I know it can’t be cheap.”

  Elijah grinned. “You’re right, Ed, and even though I’m not exactly hurting when it comes to money, most of the people wanting the vaccine have agreed to donate what they could to a Swiss bank account number I provided when I e-mailed them their instructions on how to take the vaccine and what it could and couldn’t do for them.”

  “You mean they’re really sending donations when you told them they could get it for free?”

  Elijah nodded. “That’s right. Last time I checked, my account had grown by over a million dollars in the past two weeks.”

  “Jesus!” Ed whispered. “Now I feel really bad about not paying you anything for Kim and my vaccines.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ed. I realize you and Kim are living on a policeman’s salary and don’t have a lot to spare. Remember, most of my . . . uh, clients or patients, are still actively hunting and killing Normals. That usually means they have a steady supply of shall we say ill-gotten gains. They can certainly afford it.”

  “Still,” Ed said, unconvinced, “We’re gonna find some way to help you pay for all this.”

  * * *

  Elijah pulled into the Portland Jetport driveway and eased the big SUV up to the passenger unloading area. Everyone got out of the car and he opened the rear hatch door. There were two large trunks lying there. He bent in and easily lifted both out and put them down on the sidewalk.