Night Blood

by James M. Thompson

  “See here.” He pointed to a sharp puncture wound in the edge of the neck, and then to another. “And here. These wounds were obviously made by very sharp canine teeth, canines at least two inches long such as are found only on animals, not humans.” He peered more closely at the edges of the wounds and at the surrounding skin. “Also, if you’ll look, you can see no extravasation of blood into the surrounding tissues, no bruising at the edges of the wound.”

  He walked to the foot of the table and peered between the body’s legs, gently lifting one of the knees to expose the vaginal area. He inserted his right hand into the vagina and looked at the ceiling as he did a pelvic exam. Minutes later, finished with his examination, he glanced at the bloody ballpoint pen, then dropped it in the metal basin on the floor with a metallic clang.

  Goddard stepped back and looked over at Hunt, then at the students and residents. “From the bloodstains on her hips and thighs and the obvious tissue damage in the vaginal area, I would guess that the poor woman bled almost to death, possibly from a rape or illegal abortion. In my practice, unfortunately, I’ve seen this many times. Once she was unconscious and near death, animals were attracted by the smell of blood and made the wounds described by Dr. Hunt. By that time, her blood pressure and volume were so low that she couldn’t bruise or bleed anymore.”

  He walked over to Hunt and stood next to him as he turned to face Shelly and Sam. “Shelly, I think Dr. Hunt’s theory is correct. This woman was mauled by wild animals and the cause of death was acute blood loss from whatever caused her vaginal injuries.”

  Shelly looked around at the other doctors, astonishment on his face. Dr. Bloodworth, who was gaunt to the point of emaciation, nodded solemnly. “I concur, Shelly,” he said in his deep, cadaverous voice. “It looks pretty straightforward to me.”

  With that, Goddard put his arm around Hunt’s shoulders. With an almost imperceptible movement, he began to lead his students from the autopsy suite, as if once he’d made his pronouncement, there was nothing left to say.

  “You know, David,” he said to Hunt, “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hadn’t tried to do an illegal abortion and panicked and dumped her when she began to bleed,” he said as he led Hunt out the door. “That would certainly explain the small amount of blood in the body.”

  Hunt took his mask off, and with a malicious grin looked over his shoulder at Shelly and Sam. “You’re right, Dr. Goddard. That would explain it without conjuring up any great mystery.” Then they were through the door and it slowly swung shut.

  Sam removed her mask, her mouth open in disbelief. “Why, that grandstanding son of a bit . . .” she started, when Shelly cut her off with a wave of his hand. He was staring at the door, a thoughtful expression on his face. Matt thought he heard him mumble, “What a strange alliance.” Shelly turned to Sam, “No Sam, let it be. We have more than enough mysteries to deal with, so let’s deal with them one at a time.”

  He walked toward the corpse, with Sam and Matt following. Bloodworth glanced at a table across the room and ambled over that way, as if he was bored with this case.

  Dr. Niemann, who’d remained behind, asked him, “What do you mean, Shelly, more than one mystery?”

  Shelly looked at Roger and shook his head, as one would at a recalcitrant child. “It’s a curse of those with massive egos that they see but do not observe.” He held up his hand and began to tick off points on his fingers. “Number one, we have to find out what killed this lady ’cause Goddard’s explanation won’t hold water, and I have a feeling he knows it.” He held up the next finger. “Number two, why would a doctor come in to observe an autopsy on his own patient, then not twenty minutes later waltz over to where he wasn’t invited and stick his nose in?”

  Shelly went to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee, gesturing at the pot. Matt shook his head, wanting him to get on with it, while Roger Niemann just nodded as he considered Shelly’s points. Shelly blew on the coffee for a moment before taking a sip. He scowled at the taste as he held up a third finger. “Thirdly, why would he make such a fuss about our diagnosis and go to such creative lengths to convince Hunt and the others we were wrong, and why would it make any difference to him anyway?”

  He glanced at the coffee, as if trying to decide how badly he needed it. Finally, he put the cup down and walked to the body, leaving Matt and Sam and Niemann to ponder what he had said. He picked up the large autopsy scalpel and leaned over the table. “Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and find out just what happened to this poor lady.”

  As Shelly started to make the standard Y incision, he paused and addressed the corpse. “Sweetheart, what in the world happened to you Friday night?” He stood, contemplating the dead woman for a moment. “What horrors did you endure, and why?”

  He shook himself, as if coming out of a reverie as he began the deep autopsy. Beginning at each shoulder, he made an incision, coming together at the breastbone and continuing down the middle of the abdomen to the pubic bone.

  One clean stroke, down through skin, fatty layer, muscle, and fascia to the rib bones in the chest and the internal organs in the abdomen. He didn’t look up, but dropped the scalpel and held out his hand. Gregory was ready and put the bone saw in his hand as soon as he held it out.

  After watching him work for a moment, Matt said, “Shelly, you should have been a surgeon. You have great hands.”

  Niemann agreed, mumbling, “If I had hands like those, I’d go into surgery where the big bucks are.”

  Shelly didn’t pause. He used the saw to cut through the breastbone and ribs like a hot knife through butter, then pulled the flaps of skin, muscle, and ribs back and opened up the body like a suitcase. He stepped back and winked. “Thank you, Matt, Roger. I’ll keep you two in mind for a reference if I ever decide to change professions.”

  Sam and Matt and Roger leaned in close to see what other mysteries might be uncovered, just as Gregory turned from the table and vomited into the wastebasket. Matt watched him retching, and thought, Jesus, what a day.

  The doctors learned nothing they didn’t already know from the rest of the autopsy. Shelly signed the case out as “Death from exsanguination, secondary to lacerations to the throat and vagina. Homicide.” Even though he probed the vaginal wound and took samples of the edges of the torn tissue, he could find no evidence that a foreign object had been used to cause the massive destruction. The wound did, however, fluoresce under ultraviolet light.

  When Niemann saw that, he asked, “Shelly, doesn’t that indicate the presence of semen?”

  Shelly nodded, his eyes vacant, as if he didn’t believe the results of the test. “Yes, ordinarily, but for a penis to cause this much damage, it would have to be . . . huge.”

  Niemann pointed to the presence of pancake makeup on the dead girl’s face. “Perhaps she was involved in pornographic movies. I’ve heard some of the men in those are built quite . . . large.”

  Shelly nodded, as if considering this possibility. “Perhaps, but most of those girls are drug addicts, and I see no needle tracks.”

  “Well, I wish I could’ve been more help,” Niemann said. “Why don’t you send me some samples of her blood and I’ll take a look at it under the microscope. Who knows, maybe it’ll tell us something.”

  Shelly smiled and said, “Thanks for your help, Roger.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, “and ignore what that pompous ass Goddard said. He’s a legend in his own mind, so I hear.”

  After Dr. Niemann left, Matt thanked Shelly and Sam for allowing him to watch and told Sam it had been nice to meet her. He considered saying more but chickened out at the last minute, thinking surely someone as attractive as Sam was already in a relationship. Finally, he left to try and salvage some of the rest of his day off.

  Shelly and Sam were still bent over the body, conversing in low tones, when Matt eased out the door. He stood in the hall, breathing deeply to flush the smell of formaldehyde and death from his nostrils. The autopsy
had raised more questions than it had answered. He shrugged and walked down the hall toward daylight and fresh air, wondering how he could go about getting Sam’s home phone number.

  Six

  After I came out of the autopsy room, I managed to avoid any further interaction with the other doctors who had been present. They’d served their purpose, I hoped. Some doubts had been raised about the cause of death of the girl, but Silver was a sharp, intelligent pathologist and not easy to fool. And I could see that his assistant, and Matt Carter, were also starting to question the smokescreen I tried to throw up. None of them had looked convinced at the explanations for Salee’s wounds.

  I vowed to make a harder effort to be more careful in the future. I would just have to find some way to control the Hunger, at least enough to conceal the manner of death if I couldn’t manage a nonlethal feed, or perhaps even cover my trail with a red herring in case the authorities got too close.

  Exhausted from the ordeal of confronting the fruits of my own particular demon in the autopsy suite, I decided to take the rest of the day off and headed for the Nightrunner. The August sun was brutal, and in spite of dark glasses and copious amounts of sunscreen, my skin was itching and burning and my eyes were on fire by the time I arrived at my sanctuary.

  Leaving the lights darkened in the screened-off interior of the ship, I entered, relaxing for the first time in many hours. I flopped on my bunk and lay back, thinking about my research into Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. I’d already succeeded where the Others had failed—I had a reliable blood test that would give some indication if a patient had the deadly prions coursing through his blood. It continuously amazed me how many of the Others had the beginnings of the disease. Only their relatively short lives prevented more of them from coming down with it. Because infection to full-fledged illness usually takes from thirty to fifty years, only my race, with its lengthened life span, is at real risk.

  Most of the Others were infected by eating contaminated meat, like the recent outbreak of Mad Cow disease in Britain, a close relative if not the same thing as CJD. In fact, I’d noticed in one of my medical journals that the entire blood supply in Britain had been declared unsafe due to the prevalence of CJD in their population. For a while, I’d tried hunting only vegetarians, knowing they would be far less likely to have the prions in their blood than meat eaters, but now, with the blood test I’d perfected, that would no longer be necessary.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, hoping Salee wouldn’t visit me in my dreams, as many of my victims had in the past.

  * * *

  As the orange and red hues of the sunset faded into the purples and blacks of approaching nightfall, the Hunger began to grow and intrude on my rest. My eyes flicked open, red-rimmed and staring as always when I first awakened. The Hunger beginning to gnaw at me, I arose and began to dress for the evening’s outing, knowing that soon I would be unable to resist the Hunger’s siren call.

  On the way to my dressing room, I checked a calendar on the wall. Less than a week since my last feed—the urges were coming closer and closer together now. I would have to do something to slow them down, or the Others would begin to get suspicious.

  From my closet, I chose another pair of black Sergio Valente jeans, a gray silk Nieman Marcus shirt, and black western boots. Ideal clothes for an evening on the town. I took a thick ropelike gold chain out of the jewelry box and slipped it around my neck. I was ready to hunt.

  I walked out on the deck and leaned against a rail, breathing deeply of the moist air, redolent with the smells of the ship channel—fish, iodine, chemicals, and rotting garbage. I stood there as long as I could to see if I could possibly push the ever-insistent Hunger back down, even trying once again to occupy my mind with my research on the Sickness. But it was no use. Like voracious rats nibbling at my insides, the Hunger grew until I could think of nothing else but the sweet, coppery taste of human blood.

  Finally, giving up on my resistance, I went inside to my office and opened my briefcase. I took out a computer printout I’d made earlier while at the hospital and quickly scanned the list. I chose two names—the second as a fallback in case of problems with the first—and tore them off the list to carry with me.

  I walked the short distance to the storage facility I used to garage my cars and got in, my heart hammering under the insistent urging of the Hunger. Even so, I still had the presence of mind to use the automobile registered under one of the fictitious identities I’d built over the years.

  * * *

  The earthy taste of the hundred-year-old Cognac almost overcame the rancid smell of cigarette smoke that hung in the air of the bar like a coastal fog. As the analogy formed in my mind, I almost smiled. I remembered the fogs of New England well and how I had counted on them to make the hunts, and my subsequent escapes, easier.

  Again, I marveled at how much, and at how little, things have changed in the two hundred years I have been hunting. I forced my mind back to the present and began to focus on my prey again. I began to let my lust build so that the hunt, and its inevitable climax, would be all the more enjoyable for the anticipation.

  The waitress was moving my way, her lush breasts swaying as she walked, tiny droplets of sweat making rivulets down her chest in the heat of the club. I started to raise my hand to signal her for another drink, when I felt a tugging at the periphery of my mind. I quickly lowered my hand and withdrew all my psychic energy and sealed it within me. I crouched in my chair like a wolf that has caught the scent of danger on the wind.

  I realized, from the brief mental contact, that there was another of my race nearby. Because of the swiftness of my reactions in withdrawing my psychic powers, I didn’t know if the contact was aware of me, or whether it was friendly or dangerous. I did know I felt naked and vulnerable with my psychic powers sealed and had to restrain myself from bolting from the club.

  Instead, I leaned back, sipped my drink, and began to look around, hoping to find the other without using the mental powers that might alert him—or her—to my presence. In spite of the darkness of the club, I had no trouble, for my vision is much better in semidarkness than in full light.

  In less than five minutes I found him. The interloper was sitting in a corner, feeling secure in the darkness and apparently unaware that he was being observed. I shifted in my chair to better study the other without being noticed. He was thin, and looked old, older than he should. Even with my psychic powers muted, I could “smell” the stink of decay and disease on him from across the room.

  I sighed, thinking about what I should do next, even though I knew I didn’t have a choice. I hoped the Hunger would allow me the time to do what I had to do before it made me incapable of rational thought and took complete control.

  Throwing a ten-dollar bill on the table, I left the bar. I went to the parking lot and opened the trunk of my Mercedes. I reached in and popped open a secret compartment in the sidewall and withdrew my katana, the long sword of the Japanese samurai, and a gallon container of gasoline. I placed these on the floor next to the driver’s seat and sat in the car, waiting for the interloper to leave the club.

  As I sat, the Hunger became more insistent, and I began to worry that it would grow and fester until my mind was too consumed with it to complete my task. As I was about to drive away, the door of the club opened, and my quarry, with one of the bar girls, came out. They strolled into the parking lot, arms around each other, and stopped in the shadows for a quick embrace. I started my car, pulled up next to the couple, and rolled down my window.

  The other gave a low growl at the interruption and turned to face me, hunter to hunter, his eyes glowing with anger. I unshielded my psychic powers slightly and power-thought Leave her and follow me. Then, without waiting to see the fear in the other’s eyes, I quickly drove from the lot.

  I sped down the street and screeched around the corner, knowing a challenge such as I’d issued could not be overlooked by one of my kind, no matter how sick or insane. Several blocks d
own the road I came to a deserted parking lot in front of an abandoned building and pulled in. Getting out of the car, I took the katana and placed it behind me against the fender and leaned back against the Mercedes, letting my weight hold it there. I crossed my feet at the ankles and my arms in front of me and waited, my heart beating fast. Members of my new species have always been loners, and requesting the company of another hunter is simply not done—it always means a battle.

  A few minutes later, a red Ferrari slid into place next to my Mercedes. The other got out and stood in front of me, his eyes red-rimmed, blazing. He shot a blast of psychic hatred at me, although it was weak and easily ignored.

  “Who the hell do you think you are to interrupt my hunt?” he asked through clenched jaws, his face contorted by anger.

  I tried to remain calm, and said in a soothing voice, “You have the Sickness. It’s eating you alive and the stench of your mental decay is obvious, even to mortals.”

  He took a step backward, some of the animosity leaving his manner. “So what, the Sickness can’t kill us. My body will heal itself eventually, and I’ll be good as new.”

  I shook my head. Many of the others I’d encountered with the Sickness in the past also thought we were immune to it, as we were to almost every other type of illness. They didn’t understand the unique nature of the prions that were destroying them, didn’t realize our bodies had no immunity to the new life forms.

  “No, you’re wrong,” I said, not unkindly. “The Sickness can’t kill you, but neither can your body heal itself.” I uncrossed my arms and let them hang at my side, ready for the inevitable end to our meeting. “You’re doomed to waste away, to live in constant and unrelenting pain, your mind decaying further with each passing day. Soon your mind will be so weak that you lose control of your body. You won’t be able to hunt, and your only choice will be to go to ground, growing weaker and weaker, tormented forever without hope of escape from the pain.”