by Dale Mayer
“Drugs,” Tessa said instantly.
Cody looked over at her. “Can you see that, or are you just guessing?”
“I was guessing.” She stepped back and nodded. “But even though he’s dead, the temperature in this room is cool enough to keep the energy low and heavy.” She spun to look at the other gurneys. “There is a darkness surrounding all of them.”
Serus systematically walked over and flipped back the sheet on every one. “They are all vamps,” he announced. Cody walked to the wall of drawers. He didn’t know if they were full, but if they were, it would make sense why these were just lying in the room instead of being taken care of properly. Whatever that meant.
He clicked the latch on one and pulled it open. It was full. Only it wasn’t a vamp.
The body inside was human.
And he might just know him.
“Tessa, come here,” he said quietly. “Tell me if you recognize this man.”
*
Serus strode over just ahead of Tessa. They both stared down at the young male in the drawer. Serus shook his head. “I don’t remember him.”
Tessa frowned. “I don’t know. There’s something familiar…”
“Think back to the rescue in the mine where Jared showed up with all those other young people,” Cody said in a grim voice.
Serus looked up at him. “You remember him?”
Cody nodded. “He was with the group Jared brought that day. I can’t remember his name though.”
Tessa nodded. “There were several young men. We found several of the same group later in the mine – they’d been locked in one of the rooms. We let them out.”
“And they were in that last group that Motre had his group of vamps haul out of the mountain before it blew up.”
She studied the young man’s face. “I do hope all of them weren’t caught again.”
Serus move to the next drawer and opened it, then on to the next and then the next. He systematically opened every door so that they would know exactly who was here and who wasn’t. At an odd sound, he turned to see Tessa taking a photo of each face, walking along the line behind him. The drawers were stacked three high. When she was done, he walked back the other way and closed the drawer that sat open while opening the drawers on the next row. She repeated the process. He wouldn’t have bothered, but for some reason she had a need to memorialize the dead. Maybe so the others could find out about their missing loved ones. He had to admit, knowing there were this many dead humans in the vamp hospital was very concerning. Finally, he turned to the third row and once again repeated the process. By the time he was done, Tessa right behind him, there was only grim silence. Fifty–seven dead humans, all young. Why?”
Cody cried out. “This makes no sense. They didn’t appear to have been in any accident or show injuries of any way.”
“Only one,” said Tessa. Her voice gentle, grieving. Serus watched her, seeing the tears collect in the corner of her eyes. She was soft, this daughter of his. Even after all she’d seen, she mourned for those who would never be again. He turned his attention to the walls of bodies and had to admit he was feeling pretty despondent himself.
“What do you mean?” Cody asked.
But Tessa was flicking through the pictures. She stopped. “This one.” And held up her phone.
Cody studied the image. The man’s arm was turned outward, showing the smooth inner skin. “I don’t see any injury.”
Serus saw it and said softly, “Damn. I’m going to be so glad when this is over.”
In the picture, clear as day, was a set of needle tracks running down the man’s arms.
“Drugs.”
Tessa shook her head. “Maybe some was, but I think this was something else. I think this was the short-term answer for the blood farm not being up for production.”
“What? Oh no.” Cody stared at Tessa in shock. “No. That would be too gross.”
Cody looked at Serus. “Sir?”
Serus contemplated the selection of healthy young males and their alabaster white complexion in the drawers. “Unfortunately, I’m very much afraid that she might be right.” He ran his hand over his face and in a hard voice, he said, “I think the men were bled out.”
“Until they died?” Cody asked in shock. “Surely it would be better to have kept them alive.”
“We took down the blood farm, remember?” Tessa said.
“Without the facilities to keep them alive, they had to turn to other alternatives.” Serus reached out and kicked the bottom drawer – hard. “In the short term, they took the ones they wanted and bled them until they had no blood left to give.”
*
Goran stood in the open doorway watching David calm a weeping Jewel down. He turned to Motre. “That ends this search.”
Motre nodded, his face grim. “I do not like any of this mess.” He said. “It makes no sense that they separated her from the rest.”
“That’s what they did to me,” Ian said from behind them.
Goran turned to look at him. Tall and lanky, he was no poster boy of fitness and health, but he didn’t look as bad as he had earlier. “Speaking of which, how are you feeling?”
Ian shrugged. “I’ve felt better, but knowing we’ve found Jewel and that Wendy is safe, I’m good.”
Motre shifted, accidentally bumping Goran as he turned to study Ian’s pale features as well. “You don’t look it. You look terrible.”
But there was nothing weak or tired in the glare he flipped Motre’s way. “I’m fine. I just haven’t eaten in a while.” Goran frowned, studying the pale color of Ian’s skin. He looked dead. It could be from lack of sustenance. After all, they had fought pretty heavily recently. His own reserves had filled quickly, but Ian had been drugged too many times for his system to recover that fast. He looked around, wondering if there was blood. “You need to eat.”
“Don’t bother. There’s nothing here for me.” Ian exclaimed. “At least nothing I care to eat.”
Goran couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t exactly confidence building to see all the vamps connected to tubing.
Just then, Serus checked in. Goran, we’re in the morgue. You’re not gonna believe this mess. And proceeded to tell him.
“Serus is in the morgue,” Goran told the others. “They haven’t found Deanna yet, but there are a dozen dead vamps on gurneys and fifty–seven dead humans in the drawers down there.” He lowered his voice so Jewel wouldn’t hear him. Motre and Ian leaned in. “They are thinking the humans were bled dry.”
Ian gasped.
“Shit,” Motre said. “That’s not good.”
“No, but as we took out the one blood farm, they need stock while getting back up and running or to increase their supply at a different blood farm.”
“Wouldn’t they have taken these fifty–seven men and taken them to the new blood farm instead of killing them off?”
“If they had equipment up and running for these numbers. If not, they still have a lot of people needing the blood in the short term.”
“And there’s no doubt they are going to consider the humans disposable.”
Goran nodded. “Cody recognized a couple from the group that came with Jared to the rescue at the end.”
“Ahh hell,” Ian said. “Those kids were young.”
“That means their blood is all the sweeter,” Motre said.
Silence ensued.
Ian said, “I wondered about something.” He opened his mouth then closed it.
“Go on,” Motre said. “Wondered what?”
Ian stared down at the hallway, moody and unsure. Finally, he looked back at Goran, his gaze sliding to Motre then back to Goran. “I was wondering why all the vamps we’ve seen so far are male.”
He waited a beat then added, “Where are all the females?”
*
Jared walked in the direction of the school grounds with a whole new viewpoint.
He’d been worrying about the license plate number all night.
He pulled out his cell phone and texted Sian asking if Taz could help with tracking the license plate number and Tobias.
Glancing around at the empty streets, he realized it was early. Like really early. He didn’t need to be here just yet. He could go to his aunt’s house first. It was closest to the school and just a block out of his way. Maybe see if there were any papers in there to find.
Considering the distance, he checked his watch and realized he had close to forty-five minutes to spare. That wasn’t tons of time, but impatient to figure out what was happening in his world, he turned the corner and changed directions. Acting as if he had the right to be there, he walked up the stairs to his aunt’s front door. The door was locked. Crap. He stepped to the side and lifted the front door mat. Perfect.
That spare key had been there for as long as he could remember. He used it to open the front door and pocketed it afterwards. As he entered, it occurred to him belatedly that maybe someone else had moved in. But the sight of the familiar furniture eased his mind. Surely the police wouldn’t have this mess sorted out so quickly. At least not the police he knew.
The living room appeared untouched. Except for the bloodstains. He swallowed hard and skirted around them. There was no business type of furniture in the living room. The coffee table didn’t even have drawers. He carried on to the dining room and found the same old table he remembered since he’d been a kid. An overstuffed cupboard with glass doors sat on the side. It had drawers. He thought they were full of dishes, but walked over to check. Sure enough, it was the matching set of dishes to the china set showing in the cupboard. Probably her mother’s. He doubted she ever used it. But maybe she did if she entertained.
He carried on into the kitchen and realized that room would likely take longer to search than he had at the moment. His aunt’s bedroom was likely the best bet. He raced up the stairs to the spare room and realized it was a pristine, empty room. Good. Made it one less that he had to search. He walked over to his aunt’s bedroom, realizing this house was quite a bit smaller than his uncle’s. He hadn’t considered that before.
In the bedroom, he turned on the light, seeing the heavy drapes closed and the bedding tossed from the bed. He stayed in one spot studying the mess. Had she done this before she’d died, or had the killer done this after taking her out? The drawers of her dresser were pulled out and dumped. Jared walked further inside so he could see her walk-in closet.
Someone had been looking for something.
She’d always kept several hatboxes stacked on the top of the closet. He’d watched her box up papers and put them away several times when he’d been younger and had gotten roped into helping her to spring clean the house. At least one of his more distant memories said that. Interesting. He stepped further into the closet and studied the mess. Some stuff was still on the shelves, like several hatboxes, but there were several cardboard banker boxes tossed on the floor. He didn’t see papers anywhere.
If she had a huge boxful, he’d have no way to carry them. He reached up and carefully brought down the stack of hatboxes at the far end. He vaguely remembered the purple and yellow polka dots pattern. He turned and set them on the bed. And opened the top one. A hat. Well, what did he expect?
Just to make sure, he lifted the Sunday hat that she’d always worn to church. And how he knew that, he didn’t know. It seemed like he remembered her more than he thought. And with it came a certain amount of nostalgia. If things had been different…
There was nothing under the hat. Good. He opened the second box and found a different hat. Black for funerals. But it wasn’t very big, and he could see a big packet of something underneath. Excited, he pulled it out and opened the tape sealing it closed. He should probably be handing this over to the police. But how? They wouldn’t believe him, and he highly doubted that any of them were going to be looking out for his interests.
He carefully dumped the paperwork on the bed, gasping when several bundles of cash fell out with it. At the very end, a large yellow gemstone fell out as well.
How had his aunt collected so much money? This was just what she had hidden here in this spot – was there more? He glanced around. Maybe this was what the intruder had been looking for. He flicked through the wad of cash and realized there had to be several thousand dollars. He quickly stuffed it back into the envelope, and then picked up the large multifaceted jewel. He couldn’t imagine her not wanting this set into something special to wear. He presumed she couldn’t afford to set it the way she wanted to – or she couldn’t wear it. As in it wasn’t hers and she might get caught if she wore it.
He voted on the last one. He carefully unfolded the paper. One appeared to be the deed to the house. Reading the name on the paper was like being stabbed in the heart. He sat down in shock.
It was his father’s name on the papers.
This wasn’t even his aunt’s house. It was his father’s.
She’d not only sold him to the blood farm, but she’d moved in and taken over his home.
Chapter 13
Tessa winced as her father’s boot connected with the heavy metal drawers. She turned to study the far wall of drawers similar to the first. She hated to think it was full of dead humans as the other drawers had been.
Still, how could she find out if she didn’t look? She walked closer, studying the weird energy pattern outside. There was a lot of black on the bottom. She spun around and checked the bodies on the gurneys – they had similar energy surrounding them. She suspected they’d died from the drugs they had been given. Either from being given too much or some new drug that they hadn’t tested fully to make sure it was safe before administering it to others. The last drawer on the right held the biggest mystery. There was energy there, but it was…odd. She strode forward, her hand outstretched to open the drawer when her father called out, “What’s the matter, Tessa?”
She motioned to the drawer. “The energy here is unusual. I suspect that all those victims,” she motioned to the drawers covered in black energy, “and the ones on the gurneys were administered lethal doses – quite probably by mistake.”
“Mistake?” Cody asked. “How could anyone have given them too much of the drug accidentally?”
It was Serus who answered. “They were likely thinking that bigger and better was best and gave too much or didn’t have time to do proper testing and found out too late that the drugs were killing a high percentage of the patients.”
Tessa nodded, hating the thought, but given the panic the assholes had gone into, she could see something like that happening. A small sound wafted up to her. She turned her head slightly. The noise came again.
“Cody? Dad? I just heard a noise from inside this unit.”
Both rushed to her side. Cody pushed her back and pulled it open for her.
Deanna, her arm moving slowly as if to hit the wall again, took a deep breath.
Tessa dropped to her knees beside the old woman. “Deanna, are you okay? It’s Tessa.”
“Tessa?” The woman’s feeble voice was hard to understand. It was so weak.
“Yes, you called to me,” Tessa said, studying the other woman’s faded features. She looked even closer to death – if that was possible. “You told me you were in trouble, so we came to find you.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes fluttered open. She saw Cody and Serus and she reached up a hand. “Help an old woman to sit up.”
With Serus’s help, she sat up and rested for a moment before swinging her legs over the side of the drawer. She sat like that and rubbed her face. “I don’t ever want to go through that again. Being locked up alive is not the end I’d envisioned.” Her glance went from one face to the other before she added in a conversational tone, “The bastards caught me.”
Tessa sat back in surprise. Outside of being very tired, she didn’t appear to be injured.
“Did they get Hortran, too?” Tessa asked quietly. She turned to study the drawers beside the one Deanna sat in. It looked suspicious, too. She motioned t
oward it and Serus opened it. There lay Hortran, and this time he was older and more frail-looking. He appeared to have succumbed to old age. Deanna looked over at him and grinned. “Hortran, wake up, you old bugger.”
Hortran’s eyes popped open, and he stared at her with his ageless look and smiled slowly. “So it worked?”
Deanna nodded. “Looks like it. Tessa heard my call and came to rescue us.”
The Ghost sat up and nodded at Tessa. “I am, we are,” he corrected, “indebted to you.”
Serus straightened and walked over to stand beside Tessa. “Explain what happened.”
Deanna frowned at his tone, but she obliged in a grudging voice. “They caught us. Being both so old and frail, we pretended to die during the fight, knowing we were outnumbered.”
Tessa gasped. And what started out as a tiny smirk ended up in a full–blown laugh. “Oh my, that’s priceless. Why didn’t you just project that voice of yours into everyone’s minds and knock them all out like you did me?” she asked, still giggling.
The Ghost stared at her in confusion, then his whole face changed as he smiled at her in wonder. “It’s almost as if you understand.”
She grinned back, loving the wrinkles and the man’s strange appearance. She was starting to think these two had tricks she’d do well to learn. “I do. I’ve never tried such a tactic before,” Tessa said. She glanced over at Cody. “Mindspeak is new to me.”
“That you can do it at all is wonderful in one so young,” Deanna said. “That makes you way ahead of the curve.”
