BloodlustBundle

by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor

  “Karma’s a bitch,” she whispered as she dropped his limp body to the floor and walked toward another gunman who had emerged from what appeared to be a back bedroom.

  Lily joined her. Screams still emanated from the addicts around them. The gunman from the bedroom opened fire, but Lily and Tessa ducked to either side of the blast of bullets, then flew toward him, their pupils dilated to large black saucers and their fangs now clearly not human.

  “Holy fuck! What the hell are you bitches?”

  Tessa reached him first. Glancing in the back bedroom, she could see a young girl, not more than thirteen, naked, splayed across the bed, her body bruised and unnaturally bent.

  “Never call me a bitch.” Tessa sneered. She grabbed the gun from him as if she was ripping a toy from a baby’s hands. The gunman, lanky, with pockmarked skin and dreadlocks, dropped to the floor and covered himself with his arms. Tessa could smell that he was high. For a moment, she took pity on him, but smelling death, she realized the girl on the bed was beyond abused. She had been murdered.

  She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up to her height. “Look me in the eyes, you fuck.”

  He trembled and hid his eyes with his hands, so she pried them away from his eyes and commanded him again: “I said look at me.”

  He reluctantly returned her gaze. “P-please…I—I didn’t know she was only twelve.”

  Tessa didn’t even want this man’s blood within her. She wrapped her hand around his throat and lifted him off the ground. She didn’t feel anger—at least, not the rage she used to feel when she was young, passionate, and with all the foibles of humanity. She snapped his neck, and then went into the bedroom. The little girl had an almost beatific look on her face, with long black hair tied into ponytails with dirty pink ribbons. Her breasts were just tiny mounds, her skin smooth and the color of café au lait. She had a small smile on her lips, but her big, brown eyes were frozen and fixed.

  Tessa closed the eyelids of the girl. Then she covered the body with a sheet from the floor. The dingy sheet was stained, but it offered a modicum of modesty. No mother or father, however messed up, deserved to see his or her child this way. Tessa whispered to the dead girl, “You’ve probably had some terrible suffering in this life, baby. Next one will be easier. I promise.”

  She turned from the sight. All that was left was finding Baby Rock. She sensed movement at the far end of the apartment. The addicts were all still hiding, clustered in groups of two and three, moaning from fear, but she felt vibrations from the other side of a large door. It was his safe room. Tessa was sure of it.

  Tessa moved toward the door, her beyond-human hearing picking up on panicked whispers on the other side. Lily was next to her, her strength even greater from feeding. They didn’t even need to speak to one another, communicating on some other level, not, Tessa mused, unlike cops who’d worked with a partner a long time. Tessa nodded to Lily, who took three paces back, then ran and kicked down the door with a crash that reverberated through the apartment. Tessa entered quickly, crouching, expecting bursts from semiautomatic weapons at any moment. She was not disappointed.

  Two men at either corner of the room, wearing gang colors and obvious prison tattoos on their massive biceps, fired at Lily and Tessa, shooting up the walls in the process. Cement pieces and plaster flew along with bullets, and dust from the destruction of the walls billowed around Tessa. She advanced on one man, Lily on the other.

  Tessa leaped toward the ceiling, coming down with a side kick that landed at Baby Rock’s bodyguard’s throat. His gun dropped to the floor as he fell to his knees, no air coming from his crushed windpipe. He drew another gun as his final act, but Tessa kicked that one from his hand, and he was dead moments later. Lily was at the neck of the other man, feeding. And that left Baby Rock, who cowered in a corner, holding on to a gun in each hand, eyes wide with disbelief and the expression of someone on crack.

  “What’s the matter?” Tessa approached him. “Too fucked up to fight?”

  He mumbled something and fired one gun, wildly missing her. She kicked that hand, forcing the gun from it, and with a loud clatter it spun across the linoleum floor. In a split second she had his other hand in hers, gun pointed safely at the ceiling. She released the clip, and it, too, fell to the floor.

  “Don’t kill me!” Baby Rock pleaded, a shiny gold tooth glinting in his mouth. He wore the latest “gangsta” fashions from Sean John and enough chains around his neck to give Mr. T a run for his money. “I’ll give you all the crack you want. Ask anybody…Baby Rock has the best supply in the city.”

  “That’s what we hear. But we didn’t come here for your crack.”

  “Money. You want money? Yeah, yeah.” He grew excited. “Sure…I got a bag full of it over there.” He nodded toward a closet.

  “We don’t want money, either.” Tessa shook her head. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “Reincarnation? Yeah…sure, whatever, lady. Just don’t kill me.”

  She pulled him to her and sank her teeth into him. As his body went limp, she released him and whispered, “You’ll pay in the next life for the suffering you’ve inflicted…”

  Stepping over his body, Tessa went to the closet where he had said he kept his money. She had a “Robin Hood” fund of her own. She never used the money on herself, but would dole it out to the homeless, to the children of addicts, to church poor boxes. She and Lily went through the apartment, urging the addicts to emerge from their hiding places and get outside on the street to safety. Shaking, shuffling, they slowly got up. They were like ghost people, soulless. As they made their way out of the apartment and then the building, Tessa and Lily went to the bodies of the men they had fed on, and, taking their daggers, slit the area where their fangs had left telltale vampire bites. Tessa knew that the crack addicts would either keep mum or would rant about supernatural phenomenon the cops would think were hallucinations. As sirens echoed in from the windows, NYPD cars making their way onto the street in response to the gunfire, Lily and Tessa moved out of the apartment and up the stairwell to the rooftop. They were five buildings away before the first officers reached the front door of the building.

  Technofreak: Got the files of the Daily News guy who covered the Baby Rock home invasion.

  Nightlady: Not sure I’d call it a home. More like a prison for the addicts.

  Technofreak: Stearn’s files say throats were slit. Place was a bloody mess. Not to mention almost 700 rounds of ammunition were fired.

  Nightlady: Interesting.

  Technofreak: The reporter, though, found a couple of crackheads who swear they saw vampires. Vampires who never were hit by a single bullet.

  Nightlady: So they were superhero vampires? See what drugs do to the mind? “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.” Remember that commercial?

  Technofreak: Yeah. Sizzled fried eggs for brains. I remember. But one crackhead even thinks he saw a vampire feeding on the neck of one of the guys.

  Nightlady: Maybe whoever it was was simply slitting the throat.

  Technofreak: Maybe.

  Nightlady: Anything else?

  Technofreak: No. Except to say, whatever your secrets, Nightlady, we’re cool. Me and U. Fighting the good fight.

  Nightlady: The good fight. I hope it’s the good fight.

  Technofreak: Baby Rock had ten prostitutes working for him. Two were 12 years old. One was 14. That’s in Stearn’s files. They’re going to be helped now. It is the good fight. Never forget it. Never doubt.

  Nightlady: Thanks, Hack. I needed that.

  Technofreak: U got it.

  Nightlady: And Hack?

  Technofreak: Yeah?

  Nightlady: Didn’t U say there was a charity for victims of domestic violence that U gave donations to?

  Technofreak: Yeah.

  Nightlady: I’m sending you a check for $5000. Give it to them, will U?

  Technofreak: U R cool. Sure thing.

  Nightlady: Good night, partner.<
br />
  Technofreak: Good night, good lady.

  Chapter 4

  The next night, Tessa awoke and went to her altar to chant. She lit jasmine-scented incense and placed her palms together, bowing as a sign of respect. Many people, Lily included, mistakenly believed Buddhists worshipped Buddha, but Buddha was simply an example of one who lived an exemplary life. Buddhists aspired to be like him, but did not worship him. The Buddha on her altar was a pale green jade with gold inlay, and she had found it in Shanghai, in an old man’s store. She had bartered, trading some gold and an ivory-handled dagger for it, and carried home her treasure to the altar in her bedroom in Shanghai. She’d moved it with her to every city and home she had lived in since.

  After Tessa completed her chant, she rose and opened the locket she wore around her neck, the one containing the lock of Hsu’s hair. Tessa sighed. Buddhists followed five laws or precepts. They avoided taking another life, avoided taking things not freely given, refrained from false speech, avoided sexual misconduct, and avoided intoxication, which could impair someone’s judgment enough to make them ignore the other four precepts. Tessa’s very existence defied the first precept. And though she told herself that fighting the scourge, fighting the intoxication of millions of hollow-eyed addicts, was a mission that ultimately helped humankind, not hurt it, she wrestled with her conscience and beliefs each night. She owned a nightclub—that alone was difficult to reconcile with her beliefs. But it provided her a nocturnal cover—and drew to it the evil she made it her existence to hunt.

  She walked into her cavernous living room, fighting ennui. She had lived in New York City for ten years now, owned the club for four, and had not taken a lover in all that time. She had vowed many years ago not to bury a lover again. She was through with mourning. She supposed some would think the gift of immortality was priceless, their fear of death deluding them into believing it would be wonderful to live forever. In fact, when she looked back on the years of her very long life, all she could recount was a string of losses, each heartache like the pearls on a necklace, strung one after the other, poignantly beautiful.

  Detective Tony Flynn was the first man in many years who made her even think of giving up her self-enforced celibacy. Perhaps it was one lonely soul glimpsing another. They seemed to understand each other. But she hardly needed to take a lover who wore a badge. Her life was complicated enough.

  Her cell phone rang, playing an electronic bar or two of Beethoven’s Ninth, jarring her from her melancholy thoughts.

  “Hello?”

  “Hack here.” He sounded short of breath.

  “Hello, my dear, sweet, hyped-up Hack. How many Manhattan Specials have you had tonight?”

  “I’m on number six.”

  “Six bottles of pure caffeine and sugar. Don’t you know that stuff will kill you?”

  “Not as fast as this new drug hitting the streets.”

  “The one you called me about the other night?”

  “Yeah. Remember how I said they didn’t know what to make of it—it’s that new?”

  “There’s never an end to those who want to invent the perfect drug, is there?”

  “Well, this one is far from perfect.”

  “They all are.”

  “This one’s got a kicker. It’s tough to gauge how much should be in each hit. It makes users feel so good that, like OxyContin, they figure if a little feels good, more will feel better.”

  “Terrific. Just what we need on the streets.”

  “And there’s a pureness to it. It’s a love drug, like Ecstasy—but you know how they can make Ecstasy with household bleach and lye and all kinds of crap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is some kind of synthetic something—doesn’t appear to have that stuff in it. In fact, it’s like it’s manufactured under pharmaceutical guidance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know how big drug companies have to follow the FDA and everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure…well, with this drug, it’s like some anal-retentive chemist is overseeing production. Then, there appears to be a touch of opium to it. So not only do you want to fuck all night, you feel real happy doing it.”

  “Do they take it at raves?”

  “Nah. It’s more of a designer club drug. Seems to be concentrated in Manhattan proper. Not even out in the five boroughs yet.”

  “That’s just a matter of time. Then the burbs. And usually when suburban white kids start taking it, then…then the politicians and law enforcement will take it seriously.”

  “I don’t know…seems like a lot of internal e-mails at the NYPD on this one. Know what they call it?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Shanghai Red.”

  Tessa shivered, as if a cold breeze had swept over her. “What did you say, Hack?”

  “Shanghai Red.”

  She was silent.

  “What Tess?”

  “It’s nothing. Just a weird coincidence.”

  “What is?”

  “Nothing. Will you keep me posted if you can…. Follow this one like a bloodhound, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Nightlady.”

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “What?”

  “Shanghai Red.”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe it had its origins in Chinatown.”

  Relief flooded Tessa’s body. “Of course. You are quite clever, Hack. Chinatown. That makes perfect sense.”

  “I’ll keep nosing around.”

  “Good. Talk soon.”

  “Fight the good fight.”

  “Always, Hack. Always.”

  Tessa hung up the phone. Just the mention of Shanghai made her homesick—and worried. She had been born in England, the willful daughter of a nobleman. It wasn’t until after Marco, after she had witnessed atrocities she could barely think of, let alone give voice to, that she had escaped to China. It had become her second home, a place she adored that offered her peace. But then changes there had forced her to take flight and she had returned to Europe, and then continued on to America.

  Shanghai represented gardens to her. Fragrant flowers, bamboo trees with delicate thin leaves. And her koi pond safe behind a graceful high fence to protect her privacy. She used to go out at night to feed the koi and watch their gaping mouths kiss the surface of the water as they waited for their mistress to drop their food into the pond. They’d even let her pet them.

  And then there was Shen.

  She sighed. Shen, her loyal servant, had become a true friend. His devotion to her had touched her deeply, and she had made sure that after his death from a bout of tuberculosis one winter, his son was able to escape the Communist Revolution and come to England to study. She was the young man’s unseen benefactor, always there with both money and influence, making sure his path was free of obstacles. His Chinese medicine clinic, in the heart of London, was world renowned. She wondered if the kindly doctor, who had died ten years before, after leaving his clinic to his child, a daughter named Anna, ever knew where his scholarship and the secret funds to purchase the building in Notting Hill had come from.

  Shanghai Red. It made sense that Chinatown, long a seat of corruption and gangs, though recently much cleaned up, might be the source of the latest drug that people felt they needed to make them forget life, forget their problems. Shanghai Red. The color of blood.

  Chapter 5

  Tessa’s DJ was a white kid from the Bronx who had blond dreadlocks down to his ass. He had been a Calvin Klein underwear model for about a year, and his face was like a painting of Michelangelo’s, with classic features and perfect lips and large, wide-set, blue eyes. When he smiled—which was any time he was playing music—he looked like a little boy, with two dimples and a sparkle to his eyes. Each night he dressed in tight black jeans, a black T-shirt, and black leather boots from Italy, and he took his music very, very seriously. “Cool” remixed the hottest techno and club music, and he had a following. His musi
c was the drug that drew people to the Night Flight, and though Tessa didn’t kid herself that the club kids and celebs wouldn’t try to snort lines in the bathroom, fuck in the stalls, and in general try to outsmart Jorge and her security team, she ran a clean club and was sure Cool was part of the secret to its success.

  The night after the raid at Baby Rock’s, he had bounded into her office and opened one of her mahogany cabinets that hid her stereo equipment and a flat-screen plasma television like the one in her apartment. He pressed a button and opened the CD drive, then put his homemade CD in it, shut the drive and pressed play. “Listen to this. You’re gonna love it, Tess.” He grinned.

  The bass line was intense. She felt it reverberate through her, almost hypnotic. She shut her eyes and listened, getting lost in the sensuality of the music. When the new remix, a Madonna classic with a Moby sound, was done, she kept her eyes shut for a full minute more.

  When she finally opened her eyes, Cool was leaning against her desk, his arms crossed and face expectant.

  “Well?”

  “What can I say? Beyond brilliant. Once again, you prove you are the hottest DJ in town.”

  “Felt like sex listening to it, didn’t it?”

  “You could say that.” Tessa pursed her lips. Cool thought everything about music was like sex. He seemed to live, breathe, eat and dance to sexual music twenty-four/seven. And he had enough groupies that if he actually wanted to have sex, there wasn’t a shortage of willing partners. Right now he was involved with an A-list sitcom star, which meant even more stargazers trying to get past the velvet rope. The TV star brought her L.A. friends out whenever she could, meaning real star sightings were now as commonplace at the Night Flight as cosmopolitans and apple martinis.