He put the journal on the side table and went to take another shower. He felt dirty just from reading about the horrors of Niemann’s life.
After he finished his class that afternoon, Matt put in a call to Shooter at the police station.
“This is Detective Kowolski,” Shooter said as he answered the phone.
“Hey, Shooter. It’s Matt.”
“Yo, Doc. What’s happenin’?” Shooter asked in his typically jovial voice.
“I saw Damon yesterday in the hospital,” Matt answered.
Shooter’s voice sobered. Damon was a hero of his and a man he respected above all others in the Houston police bureaucracy. “How’s he doing?”
“He came through his surgery all right this morning. His doc says he’s gonna be just fine.”
“That’s a relief,” Shooter said. “We need him back here as soon as possible.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The lieutenant that took his place is a raving asshole—”
“Shooter,” Matt interrupted, “Damon gave me something they found on Niemann’s boat the night of the attack.”
“Yeah? What?”
“A journal. A sort of diary he’d written about his life.”
“That must be interesting reading,” Shooter said sarcastically. “The ravings of a lunatic.”
“Believe it or not, it’s fascinating,” Matt said. “In fact, I’d like to go over it with you and the girls tonight.”
“I don’t know, Matt,” Shooter said. “I’d kinda like to put all that behind us.” He paused and Matt could hear him take a deep breath. “TJ’s acting strange enough without being reminded of what happened to her before.”
“I think we need to do it, Shooter. For TJ, if nothing else,” Matt pleaded. “There are some things in the book that may help TJ get over this.”
Shooter’s voice changed at Matt’s mention of helping TJ. “In that case, I’ll be there,” he said firmly.
“How about I whip up some spaghetti and meatballs and we make a night of it?”
“Sure. I’ll bring the wine.”
Matt groaned. “Only if you promise not to buy that cheap Chianti you brought last time.”
“OK, OK, I’ll spring for a really good red, maybe some Mad Dog Twenty-Twenty this time,” Shooter said, referring to the preferred drink of the winos who lived in Houston’s Fifth Ward.
“Shooter . . . ,” Matt said.
“All right. How about some hardy Gallo Burgundy?”
“Try some Soave and it’s a deal,” Matt said.
“See ya at seven,” Shooter said, and hung up.
Matt then dialed Sam in the pathology office and made her the same offer.
“You gonna have real anchovies in the Caesar salad?” she asked.
“Jeez, girl, I’m offering you a home-cooked meal of my best dish and you’re quibbling over fish in the salad?”
“All right,” she said, chuckling. Then her voice became more serious. “Do you think TJ should be there? She’s still pretty shaken about what Niemann did to her.”
Matt considered it for a moment, finally answering, “Yeah, I do. After all, it’s her condition we’re gonna be discussing and trying to find a cure for. It’s her right to know all the facts.”
Sam sighed, still unsure of the wisdom of revisiting TJ’s pain. After a moment, she said, “We’ll be there. Can we bring anything?”
“Sure. Could you stop off at the bakery on Rice Boulevard and pick up some of their garlic French bread?”
“That’s a deal,” she answered, adding in a low voice, “But, Matt, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I, babe,” Matt said. “So do I.”
Six
Matt fussed over the meal as only a bachelor who cooked for fun rather than for nourishment could. Matt had always been popular with women, though more for his personality than for his looks. He had never seriously considered marriage—at least not until he’d met Dr. Samantha Scott a few months ago. He’d always figured his career would preclude him giving enough time to a wife and children.
Since meeting and dating Sam, however, more and more he found himself wondering just what life with her would be like. The days when he couldn’t see her seemed to drag on interminably, and his last thoughts at night and his first musings in the mornings were invariably of her.
Now, with the expectation of seeing her for dinner, he hummed and sang to himself as he prepared the meal. Earlier he’d run by Moody’s Meat Market in the Village near his home to procure a healthy supply of both hot and medium hot Italian sausage to mix with the ground round for his meat sauce.
He cut the sausage into inch-long, bite-size chunks and sautéed it over a low flame on his stove along with the ground round. While part of the meat cooked, he fashioned meatballs out of the remainder, adding a pinch of this and a dollop of that, as his mother had shown him when he was learning to cook for himself. The spaghetti itself he would leave until just prior to serving.
As he cooked, he went over in his mind how he would tell the story of Elijah Pike and his amazing, if somewhat distasteful, life.
Shooter, as usual, showed up a bit early. He liked to sit and watch Matt cook and then chat about the day’s happenings on the rare occasions when they were able to get a night off together. They’d been friends for so long they were closer than brothers, with none of the sibling rivalry that confused relationships between blood kin.
Matt stirred the pot of meat sauce and said over his shoulder, “Why don’t you open that wine and let it breathe for a while?”
Shooter grinned. “With this particular wine, it might be better to let it age a bit more first.”
Matt glanced back. “When was it bottled?”
Shooter picked up one of the bottles he’d brought with him and pretended to look at the label. “About six hours ago,” he replied jokingly.
Matt wiped his hands on his apron, which had KISS THE COOK written on it in large red letters, and leaned back against the stove. “Please tell me the wine at least has a cork in it and not a screw-top cap like the last bottle you brought.”
“Oh, it has a cork all right,” Shooter said. “Trouble is, it’s made of plastic.”
Matt laughed in spite of himself. “You’ll never change, will you, Shooter?”
Shooter looked aghast. “I hope not! My women would be terribly disappointed if I did.”
A voice from Matt’s front door called out, “I hope you meant to say ‘my woman.’ ” TJ and Sam walked in.
“Oops,” Shooter said, covering his mouth. “My secret’s out.”
TJ placed a large tinfoil sack containing garlic French bread on the counter and stepped over to plant a kiss on Shooter’s lips, her hand grabbing his throat at the same time. “Are you trying to get yourself strangled?” she asked.
“Just kidding, sweetheart,” Shooter said, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her to him while winking over her shoulder at Matt and Sam.
Sam moved to stand next to Matt and looked down into the pot of simmering meat and sausage. “Mmm, that smells delicious.”
“Yeah, Matt’s not a bad cook, for a guy,” Shooter said.
“What do you mean, ‘for a guy’?” Matt asked, offended. “For a man who can’t boil water, you’re awfully quick to criticize.”
“Hey,” Shooter said, holding up his hands, “have I ever turned down a meal?”
“Speaking of meals, when do we eat?” Sam asked, giving Matt a quick kiss hello. “I’m starved.”
“Put the bread in the oven and I’ll start the noodles. They’ll take exactly twelve minutes.”
Sam opened the refrigerator while TJ readied the bread. “I see the salads are already made.”
“Shooter, set the table while Sam gets the salads out and we’ll be ready to chow down,” Matt said.
“What wine did you get?” TJ asked as she put the bread in the oven.
“It’s called Panama Red,” Shooter said. “And I got a hell of a deal.... Two bott
les for five dollars.”
“What?” TJ exclaimed, turning to look at the bottles on the counter.
“Just kidding,” Shooter said. “Actually, it’s a Cabernet Sauvignon.”
“Whoa,” Sam said, “I’m impressed, Shooter. I didn’t know you spoke French.”
“French?” Shooter asked, a look of surprise on his face. “I thought it was an Italian wine.”
Once the meal was over, everyone congratulated Matt on a job well done.
TJ looked at Sam and winked. “I think you should keep him, Sam. After all, a man who can cook and doesn’t pick his nose in public is a real find nowadays.”
Sam cast a speculative eye on Matt. “Well, to be perfectly honest about it, I have given some thought to making an honest man out of him.”
“You mean you approved of the meal, even without the tang of formaldehyde to spice it up?” Matt asked, referring to Sam’s job of doing autopsies in the morgue.
“Yes,” Sam replied, getting up from the table. “In fact, it was so good, I’ve brought you a present.”
She disappeared into the living room and reappeared moments later with a large box under her arm.
“What’s that?” Shooter asked. “A cookbook for the culinary challenged?”
“No, it’s an espresso machine,” Sam replied. “A reward for you two men who spend your days drinking that awful liquid laughingly called coffee in the squad room and emergency room.”
“Well, crank it up,” Shooter said, his hand automatically reaching toward his breast pocket for the cigarettes he’d left in his Mustang. TJ refused to let him smoke in her presence and was continually after him to give up the filthy habit, as she called it. Shooter was trying, but, to be honest, wasn’t succeeding very well.
Once the coffee was made, the group moved to the living room. TJ and Shooter sat next to each other on the couch, while Sam and Matt took up station on a love seat across the room.
Matt leaned over and picked up the leather journal from the coffee table in front of the love seat.
“What’s that?” Sam asked, running her hands over the wrinkled, ancient leather.
“Nothing less than the journal of the Vampyre Niemann,” Matt said, to stunned looks from his guests.
“You’re kidding!” TJ said, her face paling a bit at the mention of the monster who had tried to change her into one of his own kind.
Matt shook his head. “No. In fact, it makes for some very interesting reading.”
Sam cast a worried look at TJ. “Matt, do you really think we should?”
Matt leaned forward, staring at TJ as Shooter put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll leave it up to TJ.”
“What’s—what’s in it?” she asked, seeming to shrink as she leaned back into the crook of Shooter’s arm.
“I think there are some things here that will help us understand what Niemann tried to do to you, TJ, and perhaps even help us make sure we completely undo what he did.”
TJ glanced at Sam, a look of almost panic on her face. “What do you think, Sam?” she asked in a suddenly small voice.
Sam nodded. “If you’re up to it, TJ, it might do some good.”
“OK, then, tell us what it says,” she almost whispered, a tone of dread in her voice.
Matt took a sip of his coffee and leaned back. “It’s a story not unlike yours, TJ.”
He began to tell the story he’d read in the journal.
“A man named Elijah Pike was born in 1801 in northern Maine. When he was about twenty years old, he was working as a woodcutter. One day, he got lost in a blizzard, and after roaming around the countryside for most of the day, he finally sought refuge in a log cabin. He was half frozen and starving. When he knocked on the door, he was let in by a strange figure who soon fed him some wine. Evidently, the wine was drugged, for he fell fast asleep and dreamed of being forced to drink of the creature’s blood.”
When Matt said this, TJ’s hand went to her mouth and she paled further, a small gasp escaping from her bloodless lips. She remembered how Roger Niemann had opened a vein in his neck with a fingernail and put her lips to the wound. She shook her head, trying to erase the memory from her mind as she wondered again what had made her take the first drink of his tainted blood.
Shooter put her cup of coffee in her hands; Matt waited while TJ took a deep drink, then he continued.
“When Pike woke up the next morning, the man was gone and he was alone in the cabin. The storm broke and he finally made his way home. A few days later, he was seized by a strong fever and nothing the local doctors did could stop it. A week later, he was declared dead and placed in a coffin to be stored in a nearby barn until the ice melted enough for him to be buried.”
“If he died, how did he come to write the journal?” Shooter asked.
Matt’s lips curled in a smile without mirth as he explained. “After a few days in the coffin, Pike woke up to a ravenous hunger. He states he could ‘smell’ or sense people nearby. He climbed out of the coffin and discovered two young people making love in the hayloft. Out of control, urged on by something he calls ‘the Hunger,’ with a capital H, Pike attacked the couple and killed them, drinking all of their blood to assuage this so-called Hunger.”
“Jesus,” Sam whispered, her eyes moving to TJ, whose head was down with her eyes focused on the carpet.
“Realizing he’d become some kind of monster, but not knowing how or why, Pike ran off and left town so as not to be a danger to his wife and children,” Matt continued. “Over the next fifty years, he found he didn’t age and that he had some sort of mental powers that would let him know what others, people he called ‘the Normals,’ were thinking. He also found he could exercise some rudimentary control over their memories so that if he bit them and drank their blood but didn’t kill them, they wouldn’t remember.”
“Christ, I don’t believe it,” Shooter said. “It’s like some bad Bela Lugosi movie.”
“I tend to agree with Shooter, Matt,” Sam said. “After all, how could drinking someone’s blood do all that?”
“Later in the journal, he explains how,” Matt said. “Pike, after many years of living like this, either killing or assaulting hundreds of people for their blood, finally began to search for how this came to be. He discovered he was not alone, that there were others like him, creatures that lived solitary lives, preying on the Normals and trying to keep from being caught and killed by the authorities. Some of these others had banded together and formed some sort of Council to try and keep the existence of the Vampyres a secret. From the council, Pike found out the history of his new race.”
Shooter abruptly stood up. “If we’re going further with this, I’m gonna need something stronger to drink than coffee.”
“Me too,” Sam said.
“Me three,” TJ added.
“OK, that’s a good idea. I’ll fix us all drinks,” Matt said.
“Make mine a double,” Shooter said. “I’ll be right back.”
While Matt made the drinks, Shooter went out to his Mustang, opened the glove box, and took out a pack of Marlboros. When he took one out and put his lighter to it, he noticed his hands were shaking.
When everyone had gathered back in Matt’s living room, drinks in hand, Matt noticed TJ’s color was better, as if she’d somehow managed to get her feelings under control.
Shooter, on the other hand, looked like he was having trouble dealing with the revelations about the man, or creature, who had tried to take over his lover’s mind and body.
“You OK, Shooter?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, but I’m startin’ to wonder just how all this is gonna help us deal with what happened to TJ.”
TJ gave him a smile and entwined her hand in his, giving it a light squeeze to show she was all right.
“We’re coming to that part,” Matt said. “In the next part of his journal, Niemann, or Pike, tells of how the Vampyre race got its start and just how the physical characteristics are generated.”
Sam shook her head, a bewildered expression on her face. “Matt, I just fail to see how genetic characteristics can be passed on by the mere drinking of blood.”
“It’ll become obvious, dear,” Matt said, picking up the journal and beginning to talk.
“According to Pike, the Vampyres are a race descended from a small group of Gypsies who lived in a mountain area in Europe called the Carpathian region.”
“Carpathia?” Shooter asked. “Where the hell is that?”
“I think it’s somewhere in Hungary,” Matt said.
“Anyway, over a period of hundreds of years, due to inbreeding, a mutant gene arose in the Gypsies that caused a rare disease known as erythropoietic uroporphyria.” Matt hesitated and glanced at Sam, “The condition we nowadays call porphyria.”
Sam gave a small smile, as if this explained some things to her, as did TJ.
“What is porphyria?” Shooter asked. “And what does it have to do with—”
Matt held up his hand. “Shooter, the symptoms of porphyria are pale skin that blisters and burns upon exposure to sunlight, phosphorescent teeth that glow in the dark, and congenital hemolysis, or rupture of red blood cells, causing red, bloodstained eyes and bloody tears and a progressive anemia that can be controlled only by infusions of whole blood.”
“You’re kidding,” Shooter said. “You’re describing the typical vampires of the movies.”
Matt nodded. “Exactly. In addition, many of them also have elongated teeth, like fangs.”
“But, Matt, what about the mental abilities Pike talked about?” Sam asked.
“Evidently, the Gypsies of the region had a high incidence of people with second sight, precognition, and even mild mind-reading capabilities, as well as extremely long lives for the times. As the inbreeding grew more severe due to their isolation, these abilities became commonplace in the community and even increased in strength over many decades.”
“Still,” TJ said, her eyes far away as she thought of the implications of what she was hearing, “none of this explains the transmission of these traits by drinking blood. After all, porphyria as we know it is not transmissible this way.”
“Pike explains that by the occurrence of an infection in the group by some sort of mutated bacteriophage that soon included everyone in the village.”
Dark Blood Page 4
