Bloodlust

by Kramer, D. L.

  “Army,” he answered after a moment. “I ran with the wrong crowd when I was a kid and eventually they all ended up in jail. I figured that was a good place to make a clean break and start over. It turns out I was a natural or something.”

  “Or something,” I agreed. I finished the rose, dropped the brush into the jar of turpentine and set my palette down on the worktable as I turned to look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa where he’d slept and was trying to straighten his shirt. “I’ve got a couple of friends coming over. One of them is like me--us,” I corrected. “The other one isn’t. But neither one is going to hurt you.” I really hoped that last part was true. It had taken me an hour to clean up Gianna’s blood from the night she’d tried attacking me.

  Rasmussen swallowed and I could feel the waves of emotions in him. His heart was still beating stronger than when I first met him, which I now realized was coming from the infection starting to take hold in his system. He’d been healthy before, by the time the transformation was complete in a year or two, he was going to be a real bear.

  We talked a bit more as I cleaned the couple of brushes I’d used that morning. He told me about his time in the army as a sharpshooter. I had made it a point of avoiding any and all military service, having decided early on that was going to put me in the way of too many people who’d be wanting to account for my whereabouts every day.

  And now I found myself planning to take on an army.

  It was about half an hour later when someone knocked on the door. I sniffed the air, then smiled faintly and nodded. Before I could answer it, I heard the door unlock.

  I really needed to find out when she’d made herself a key.

  Marcella came into the room first and I could see the cautious look in her expression. Her gaze fell on Rasmussen immediately as he stood up and I noticed she positioned herself between him and Rosie as Rosie closed the door behind them. I realized Rosie was wearing trousers, square-heeled boots and a closer fitting top than usual. All things I’d seen her wear before when there was a chance she was going to have to defend herself. Not that Rasmussen would stand a chance of even getting near her with both Marcella and I there, even if he had been infected long enough ago to matter.

  “This is the one?” Marcella asked, her accent heavy and her eyes locked on Rasmussen.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Detective Eric Rasmussen, this is Marcella De Santis,” I nodded to Marcella as I introduced her, then Rosie. “And her granddaughter, Rosie.”

  Rasmussen nodded to each of them and I felt him tense up slightly as Marcella stared at him, her dark eyes unblinking for a long moment. Finally, she sniffed the air slightly.

  “Let me see the bite,” she ordered him, her tone telling him there would be no argument.

  Rasmussen glanced at me and I nodded to him.

  “It’s usually best to do what she says,” I advised him.

  He seemed to nod with resignation and unbuttoned his left sleeve, rolling it up past a bandage on his forearm. I opened one of the cupboards in the kitchen and got out more gauze and tape for it as Rosie came over to him.

  “Let me,” she told him.

  “Rosie—“ Marcella’s voice held a warning note. A dangerous note.

  “Grandma, he’s fine,” she said over her shoulder. “Even if he’s infected, it hasn’t been that long ago.”

  I glanced at Marcella and saw her set her jaw and slowly extend her claws on both hands as she stared at Rasmussen.

  Please don’t even breathe wrong on Rosie, I said silently to myself, hoping Rasmussen would realize the dangerous position he was fast approaching.

  “Better let me,” Rasmussen said to Rosie. “If it’s as bad as Mr. Dorian seems to think, I wouldn’t want to risk you getting infected from it.”

  Good man. There might be some hope for him yet. He may even live to see the end of the week if he kept this up.

  “You can call me Michael,” I pointed out to Rasmussen. “Formalities aren’t going to mean much from this point on.”

  “Mikhos,” Marcella corrected.

  “Call him Michael,” Rosie told Rasmussen, taking my side. “My grandmother’s just stubborn sometimes.”

  Rasmussen glanced between us, obviously noting the familiarity we all had with each other. I noticed his eyes moving with practiced skill, relying on his years as a cop to pick up the subtle hints and possible dangers. He came over to the table as he unwrapped the gauze from his arm, then held it out for Marcella to see it. She came over to him, taking his arm in one hand and turning it in the light.

  The bite was large and had obviously been the whole mouth over his arm, not just a few teeth. There was no doubt it had been a full on attack. The whole area was mottled black and blue bruises with dark red and black scabs over each spot it had bled.

  Moving with that speed of hers that made even me question it had happened, she jabbed the point of one of her claws down into one of the heavy scabs over a tooth mark. Rasmussen muttered a curse, jerking his arm automatically, but Marcella held fast as the blood ran freely down his arm, dripping onto the gauze she’d picked up just as quickly and held under it.

  Bright red blood, smelling thick and strong, ran freely over his arm, almost as if it were a little too thin. Then there was just a hint, almost faint enough to make me doubt it had been there. Bitter.

  “Do you smell it?” Marcella asked, glancing at me.

  I nodded.

  Marcella set her finger over the puncture and pressed down against the bleeding.

  “How long did it bleed for?” she asked him.

  “About an hour,” Rasmussen answered. “The paramedics kept asking me if I had a history of bleeding problems.”

  Marcella nodded. “It happens when we need to feed,” she explained to him. “To keep the blood from clotting when we eat, so it can sate what Mikhos calls the animal.”

  “It is an animal,” I told her. I came over and handed her the gauze and tape for when the bleeding stopped.

  “When did it happen?” Marcella asked next, making a point that she was going to ignore me.

  “The night before last,” Rasmussen replied. I could tell by his tone he was still somewhat in a state of shock. I suppose that was to be expected. I sort of hoped I wasn’t there when the full realization hit him.

  “Are they dead?” she asked.

  Rasmussen nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I saw them, Marcella, they’re both very much dead,” I assured her.

  “Why don’t you two go take care of the bodies,” Rosie suggested. “I’ll stay here with the detective and keep an eye on him and maybe answer any other questions he might have.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I told Marcella. “The coroner hadn’t gotten to their autopsies yet as of last night and it would go a lot faster with you helping me.”

  The thought of getting into the coroner’s office, removing two bodies and doing it without being noticed was quite frankly, something I wasn’t sure I could do alone. Especially not in the daytime.

  Marcella seemed to consider it for a long moment, her eyes pinned on Rasmussen the entire time. He shifted slightly, obviously uncomfortable under her glare.

  I winced when she muttered a few curses in her old Bari dialect.

  Yes, that’s usually when I start looking for exits. The only thing that kept me there was the fact that she wasn’t cursing at me. I did, however, take an instinctual step back, just to be on the safe side.

  Marcella pointed one claw at Rasmussen, the needle-sharp point only a few inches from his throat.

  “We’ll be back very soon,” she told him, her voice low. “If you touch one hair on her head, I will hunt you down and flay the skin from your body before I rip your heart out and eat it.”

  Rasmussen stared at her, wide-eyed and paling a bit at her words. I saw him visibly swallow.

  “I wish I could tell you it was an idle threat,” I said to Rasmussen as he took a slight step back. “But I�
��ve actually seen her do it before, so I know she will.”

  About two generations back from Rosie, her grandson had been a fairly mild-tempered young man who was also fairly shy and quiet outside of family. He was constantly picked on by a couple of young men who bullied him incessantly all the way up through school. He came home from his last day of school with bruised ribs, a black eye and dislocated shoulder and refused to tell Marcella what had happened.

  It was at that point Marcella had enough and went hunting that night. When he realized where she must have gone, her grandson ran all the way from Marcella’s house to the apartment I was living in at the time in a panic, begging me to find her and make her come home. To show how much he loved his grandmother, even knowing what she was, he was afraid she was going to get hurt or caught and not afraid of her hurting the boys who had beat him.

  I spent a couple of hours tracking her down; she’d done an exceptional job hiding her trail. I finally found her in an abandoned house, her hands bloodstained and chunks of skin and flesh still clinging to her claws. She’d still been angry, but seemed to have gotten through the worst of it. What was left of one of the boys was found the next day and the other boy ended up being admitted to an insane asylum. He’d been found wandering the streets, ranting and raving about monsters eating his friend. The fact that she hadn’t even tried to hide the body told me a lot about how upset she’d been.

  The investigation had been kept quiet and closed quickly with the other young man being accused of murdering his friend in a psychotic break. My suspicions were that the police at the time had absolutely no idea how to deal with it, so they had simply taken the first explanation that made sense and made it fit their investigation

  “All right, you two, go,” Rosie said, sighing. “Detective Rasmussen isn’t going to hurt me.” She came over and gave her grandmother a deliberate look as she took Rasmussen’s arm from Marcella’s hand and put some of the gauze over the bleeding wound.

  “Come on,” I said to Marcella, handing Rosie the rest of the gauze and tape. “The longer we wait, the more time they have to discover things they shouldn’t.”

  Marcella nodded as I got my coat and hat from beside the door, then led her from the apartment.

  “Do you think he’s any danger to her?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s ex-army and a career cop, he’s got self control, discipline and he’s intelligent.” I tried to make my tone reassuring, though the entire situation had me not liking what I was finding out lately. “And he’s still trying to figure out exactly what’s happened. I don’t think his brain has quite convinced the rest of him of what he saw and went through.”

  “I’d imagine it’s hard,” she said after a moment as we walked to the end of the hall. “I always knew this world existed, so I didn’t have the shock of transitioning to it.” Her accent was still fairly heavy, but not as bad.

  “It is,” I told her. “It took me a while to figure out the basics. I don’t know where I’d be now if you hadn’t hunted me down and taught me more.”

  “Probably dead,” she told me. We paused outside the door to the roof as I opened it. She preceded me through the doorway and I followed her up to the roof. Once there, we broke into a run toward the city morgue.

  We covered the distance quickly, the gaps between roofs little more than slight pauses in our pace. Marcella’s leaps were more graceful than my own and her footing seemed surer on the rooftop edges. We dropped to the ground about a block before, falling into a normal walking pace to blend in with the other people around the area.

  The people around us automatically moved away from us, their natural instincts for danger kicking in to keep them away from risk. I was used to a certain amount of space and had to admit I was a bit amused that people gave us even more with Marcella there. I kept my hat pulled low over the right side of my face, hiding my scars the best I could. Marcella was wearing a long skirt and blouse, with a light scarf tied loosely around her neck, hiding her scars as well.

  “Where are they inside?” she asked me when we reached the doors but before we went inside.

  I paused, remembering the layout of the place. “Downstairs,” I said. “Hallway toward the west, they’re in freezer compartments on the far wall in a room there.”

  “Windows?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll have to do it the hard way,” I told her.

  She nodded and pulled open the door.

  Once inside, we both paused, knowing something wasn’t right. We could hear voices downstairs and there didn’t seem to be anything anxious or stressed about them, but there was that instinctual sense nagging at me. I sniffed the air out of habit, relying on my stronger senses to tell me what I couldn’t see on my own. I noticed Marcella doing the same thing.

  It took a few sniffs and sorting smells before I picked it out almost before it was gone. Faint. Distant.

  Old.

  Ancient.

  I glanced at Marcella and realized she’d extended her claws.

  “Someone’s been here,” she said. She sniffed again. “Mikhos—“ she paused and seemed to be struggling to find the words she wanted. “The bodies.” She turned and looked up at me. “I think he came for the bodies.”

  I nodded, her words making sense to me. “Let’s go see,” I told her.

  She nodded a single time and took the lead down the stairs. Most people ignored us completely, even when we walked right beside them.

  “Whoever it is, he’s gotten control of them already,” Marcella said, studying one young man’s face. “He can’t see us.”

  “How could he not see us if we weren’t the ones to blow on him?

  She shook her head. “You smell the age?” she asked me.

  I nodded my head.

  “That’s how you smelled when I found you,” she told me. “Whoever it is, they must have willed them to not see or remember anyone like him or her.” She paused, sniffing the air again, sorting subtleties in the scent. “Male,” she decided. “I’m sure of it.”

  “That makes sense,” I said after thinking about it. “Make them forget about the bodies and seeing anyone taking them out of here.”

  Marcella nodded, sniffing the air once more, still testing it. Still searching.

  “They were down here,” I pointed to the hall and led her down to the room where the bodies had been stored. We walked down without interruption from anyone. The room was empty at the moment, but the two doors where they’d been stored waiting for autopsies were slightly ajar. A quick check of each one confirmed the bodies were gone and that faint, fleeting scent of someone very old who had been there.

  It’s hard to describe smelling the age. Sort of like how your grandparents might smell a particular way, though where they might smell of medicine or muscle balm, this was more like smelling a time period. You could smell the particulars of the person’s scent, but there was something else, as well. Another layer, overlapping it, that you could pick out separately if you knew how. Like walking through an antique shop and knowing which of two pieces of furniture was the older one before you even read the information cards on them.

  I could pick it out with a little concentration and taking the time to sort out the scents. Marcella could latch onto it like a bloodhound after a hare.

  We made a quick check of the other rooms, just to make sure the bodies hadn’t simply been moved, then quickly left the morgue when it became obvious they were gone.

  Back outside, we separated briefly, trying to pick up a scent for either the bodies or the old one we had caught a whiff of, but had no luck.

  I really didn’t like the implications of this. If Aleksander had an old one working with him, it would change things drastically in his favor. It was impossible to tell the age of the one we’d smelled, which that alone told me he or she was not someone to mess with.

  It also meant if they were helping to infect people, they were going to be stronger than those Aleksander infected.
r />   I wasn’t sure if the sick, painful gripping in my stomach was just from the cold realization of it or from an impending sense of doom.

  I could tell Marcella felt much the same way when we met up again a block from the morgue. She only shook her head, then looked up at me with a sudden near panic.

  “Rosie--”

  I made the realization the same time she spoke. If this other one was working with Aleksander, which it appeared they were, chances are they knew where I lived as well. It took us each two jumps to reach the top of the building beside us and we broke into a run back to my studio.

  Chapter Eleven

  Family

  Marcella was the closest thing I had to a family and that was tenuous most times. I could only imagine the panic she felt at the thought of something happening to Rosie. I had known all of Marcella’s grandchildren since I’d met her and Rosie was one of those who would always have a special place. She was intelligent, honest, dedicated, attractive and always tried to be warm and caring.

  She also knew from an early age what the risks would be for her. I had seen her defend herself before, however, so I wasn’t quite as worried as Marcella was. Rosie could take care of herself. But I had to admit if this was an old one like it seemed, Rosie might not be able to stand up to him or her. Depending on how old they were, it could very well take both Marcella and me to take them on and win.

  Marcella and I ran back to my studio as fast as we could. Our heightened strength, speed and stamina allowing us to cover the distance in what seemed record time as we leaped from rooftop to rooftop. The sense of urgency from Marcella was almost tangible and when we made the last jump onto the roof of my building, I had to stop her from just charging in without warning.

  “We should check the area,” I told her, taking the risk of grabbing her arm to stop her. She had her claws out, each one fully extended and I could see the thin green-black lines of venom in each one. She was here expecting to go all out if she had to.

  I couldn’t really say I blamed her. Rosie was all she had. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d feel the same way if I thought Dawn was in danger. It was something I’d have to consider later.