“Now you’ve lost me again,” Shooter complained.
TJ turned to look at him as she spoke. “A bacteriophage is a microscopic viruslike particle that has the ability to transfer genetic material from one cell to another. We use it in the lab all the time to change the characteristics of bacteria.”
“So these little bitty things can change a person’s genetic code and turn them into these monsters?” Shooter asked.
Matt and Sam nodded at the same time. “Yeah. Sam and I discovered some of this while working to cure TJ,” Matt said. “In fact, we used some antibiotics known to be effective against bacteriophages to stop her infection.”
“If that’s the case, then why am I still having some symptoms of the disease?” TJ asked, a look of shame and loathing on her face.
Matt frowned. “That I don’t know yet, TJ, but I haven’t finished studying Pike’s journal. He’s evidently worked on this problem for over a hundred years, and if he’s found out something that might help us, I’ll discover just what it is.”
“Matt, why don’t you make copies of the journal for TJ and me?” Sam asked. “That way, we can all study it for clues that might be helpful.”
“Good idea,” Matt answered.
Shooter stood up and took TJ by the hand. “I think we’ve heard enough for one night, Matt. Thanks for the meal, and the info. It’s certainly given us a lot to think about.”
Matt and Sam walked them to the door. Sam put her hand on TJ’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, TJ. We’ll get to the bottom of this and make you well again.”
TJ smiled sadly. “I hope so.”
“Good night, guys,” Matt said.
As they watched the couple walk down the sidewalk toward Shooter’s car, Matt turned to Sam. “We’ve still got some wine left.”
“The hell with the wine. I need a stiff drink after hearing what was in that journal.”
Matt fixed the drinks and handed one to Sam.
She took a deep draft, sighed, and leaned into him, her head on his chest. “Matt,” she said in a low, husky voice.
“Yeah, babe?”
“Make love to me.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. Sam had never been this forward before.
“I need to get my mind off vampires and blood diseases for a while,” she added.
“Oh, so now I’m medicine, huh?” he teased, leaning back to look into her eyes.
“Of the best kind,” she said, taking him by the hand and leading him into his bedroom.
As they stood next to the bed, he gently unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off her shoulders, revealing breasts unencumbered by a bra.
He cupped one in his hand and kissed her while she undid her jeans and dropped them to the floor.
Within seconds, they were both naked and lying in each other’s arms.
Matt bent his head and took her nipple in his mouth as she caressed him into full arousal.
Suddenly she spread her legs and rolled him on top of her, moaning deep in her throat as he entered her. Her fingernails dug into his back as he moved against her, nuzzling her neck with his lips.
Minutes later, Matt groaned with release and crushed her lips with his.
He rolled over onto his side of the bed, breathing heavily. Sam smiled at him, picked her drink off the nightstand, and drained it.
Then, with a wicked grin on her lips, she leaned over him. As her hair brushed his groin, she mumbled, “Now that you’ve had your fun, it’s my turn.”
Matt raised his head and watched her mouth cover him. “You’re a slave driver,” he said.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she replied, her breath warm on his loins.
Seven
Armed with fake ID, Mary Nichols sat at the bar in a saloon on St. Louis Street, just off Bourbon Street, tears running down her cheeks. She shook her head when the bartender stepped over and asked her what she wanted. She was too pissed off and hurt to order anything. Her asshole of a boyfriend had been acting like a jerk in the last bar, coming on to the strippers as if she hadn’t even been sitting there. She’d run out of the place, turned a couple of corners, and ducked into this place to give him something to think about.
She looked up as a deep masculine voice next to her said, “Bring the lady a white wine.”
The man sitting on the bar stool next to her was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. He had dark curly hair and bright blue eyes, though they did appear a bit bloodshot, as if he’d been having too much to drink. His face was creased in a slight smile, kind but not mocking.
“I find a light white wine is often the best antidote for sadness, don’t you?” he asked gently, his hand finding its way to her shoulder.
Mary dried her tears and nodded, hypnotized by the stare of those ice-blue eyes that looked as if they could see into her very soul.
The bartender placed a glass in front of Mary, and the stranger paid for it with a ten-dollar bill, saying, “Keep the change.”
Oh, Mary thought, kind and gentle and rich to boot, but he looks like he needs to spend a little more time in the sun. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent.
“If you’re alone, please join me at my table,” the man said, and got up off the stool and strolled over to a dark corner of the saloon.
He even walks as if he owns the place, Mary thought. She picked up her wine and followed him to his table.
She sat down and took a deep drink of her wine to give her courage. She was on a senior trip with her French class from Baton Rouge; as a high schooler, she was not really accustomed to letting herself be picked up in bars by strange men.
“Hi, my name’s Mary,” she said, purposefully not giving her last name just in case he turned out to be a pervert.
“I am Jacques Chatdenuit,” he said.
“Chatdenuit?” Mary asked, smiling. “Isn’t that French for cat of the night?”
Jacques smiled and nodded. In the darkness, just for a moment, Mary thought his teeth seemed to glow.
Must be a black light in here somewhere, she thought, and raised her glass to him.
“Thanks for the drink, Mr. Chatdenuit,” she said. “I really needed it.”
“I know,” he said. “I could tell.”
Mary went on to tell him how her boyfriend had acted, and he seemed very concerned.
“Perhaps we should take a walk back to this other bar and let him see you with another man,” Jacques said. “That might make him jealous and cause him to treat you better in the future.”
“That’s a great idea,” Mary said, laughing at the thought of her unsophisticated friends seeing her in the company of such a handsome, worldly gentleman.
“Finish your wine and we’ll go show them all,” Jacques said.
Wondering if she’d voiced her thoughts out loud, Mary upended her wineglass and drained the last few drops. Of course, she must have. Otherwise how would he have known what she was thinking?
Stumbling a little from the effects of the wine, Mary got to her feet and walked out the door with the man named Jacques.
Instead of turning to the left toward Bourbon Street, Jacques put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the right.
“Wait a minute,” Mary protested. “The club is the other way.”
“I’m just going to take you down toward the river to let the night air clear your head a bit before we meet your boyfriend,” Jacques said.
Mary nodded slowly. She did seem to be having trouble focusing her thoughts. Perhaps the night air would do her good, and the river would be very pretty in the moonlight.
Four blocks later, they entered the Woldenberg Riverfront Park. There were occasional couples walking arm in arm, but for the most part, the park was almost deserted at this time of night.
Suddenly concerned at being alone in the darkness with a man she’d just met, Mary glanced around. “Maybe we’d better head back.”
Jacques turned to her, easing her back into the branches of a large bush, his hands
moving to her breasts. “No, I think not, Mary,” he said, his voice changing, from deep and masculine to a throaty growl, like that of a lion’s.
As his hands began to knead her breasts and he pushed his tumescent groin against her, Mary opened her mouth to scream; the scream died in her throat at the horror of seeing Jacques’s face begin to melt and change before her eyes.
His eyes became red and piercing. He opened his mouth to reveal glowing fangs, dripping what looked like blood as he ran a long, pointed tongue over his lips.
With a sudden movement, he ripped her blouse off, along with her bra, and ducked his head to her chest. As his teeth closed over her nipple, drawing blood, Mary’s mind shut down in terror and she fainted, becoming limp in his arms.
Jacques lowered her to the moist, damp earth and tore the rest of her clothes off, a frenzied rending of cloth and flesh. He stripped quickly and knelt over her nude body, caressing her firm young breasts with both his hands and his eyes. She moaned and moved slightly under his touch. When his hand moved to her groin, her eyes fluttered open and she spread her legs and pushed herself against him, though her face still wore an expression of horror.
He flicked his tongue against her lips, probing her mind with his until she wrapped her arms around him with a deep groan of desire. Grinning evilly, he pinned her arms to the ground above her head and sank his fangs into her breast as he entered her violently. While she grunted in pain with each thrust of his hips, he moved his mouth to her neck and began to feast on her blood.
When she was empty and he was satiated, Jacques leaned his head back and howled at the moon, causing several nearby strollers to run in panic from the park.
Jacques stood over her lifeless body, got into his clothes, and wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand. He knelt, picked up her head, and kissed her cold, dead lips, silently giving her thanks for her gift to him.
He glanced once at the moon before strolling nonchalantly toward his apartment in the French Quarter, his Hunger assuaged once again as it had been every night for the past week.
Eight
I finally finished moving into my apartment in the French Quarter. I’d found a nice one with its own enclosed garden on Dauphine between St. Peter and Orleans, one block off Bourbon. It was very expensive, but I still had plenty of money that I’d rescued from my warehouse in Houston before leaving.
I picked the French Quarter for two reasons. First, the French Quarter of New Orleans is an area that thrives on the darkness of night, as I do. My nocturnal comings and goings would hardly be noticed in such a place. Secondly, I’d taken a job at one of the outreach clinics of the Tulane School of Medicine, using my new name, Albert Nachtman. It was located only a short distance from my new abode. There I hoped to be able to continue my research into both the problems of CJD and how to reverse the disease of Vampyrism.
The one problem with my apartment was it wasn’t very close to where I’d docked my ship on Lake Ponchartrain. Lake Ponchartrain isn’t really a lake; it’s more of a large bay off the ocean just to the north of the city. With any luck, however, I wouldn’t need to go to the ship very often, or to the warehouse I’d rented just down the street from the docks.
To celebrate my new living arrangement, I walked the few blocks down Orleans, circled Jackson Square, and moved toward the French Market to enjoy café au lait and beignets at the Café du Monde.
The coffee here is dark and strong with a hint of chicory, and the beignets, small pastries covered with powdered sugar, are supposed to be the best in the world.
I took an outside table to enjoy the early-morning coolness before the ever-present summer humidity made the day miserable. After my coffee and pastries were served, I opened the morning paper.
My heart began to beat faster and my mouth became dry at the headlines: RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN.
I read the news report, my coffee forgotten and growing cold on the table. There had been a series of brutal killings on the fringes of the French Quarter over the past few weeks. All of the victims, young women, had their throats ripped out and their bodies drained of blood. The police were assuming they had a new serial killer working in the midst of the city, but I knew different.
I glanced heavenward and uttered a silent curse. It seemed lately if I had any luck at all, it would be bad. After moving to a new location to avoid the scrutiny of the police, I find there is an apparent Vampyre on a killing spree right in my new neighborhood.
I waved the waiter over and requested a fresh cup of coffee and drank it as I read the details of the killings. From the marked brutality and the very public places where the killings occurred, I wondered if the Vampyre was sick. Only the mental derangement that comes with the final stages of CJD, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, would make one of my kind take such chances of discovery . . . that or a supreme arrogance bordering on megalomania.
I realized I had grown lax in my daily activities of late. I’d been moving around the city with my mental abilities blocked to avoid detection should I happen to run into another of my race. Since my last confrontation with the members of the Vampyre Council, when I’d killed the leader, Jacqueline de la Fontaine, along with some others, I’d tried my best to steer clear of any involvement with the Vampyre organization. I now felt that was a mistake.
If there was, in fact, one of us acting as “the Ripper,” then he was a danger to us all and steps would have to be taken to rid ourselves, and the Normals, of his activities.
I vowed to go about my business as usual, though with my mental abilities unmasked in hopes of finding either the Ripper himself or others of my kind who might help get rid of this scourge. I knew I was taking a chance, since I was almost certainly considered an enemy by the Council members.
Throughout my long life as a Vampyre, I’d shunned members of my new race, both through shame and disgust at what they and I had become, and because I’d always been something of a loner. Now my very survival, and the survival of my race, depended on my cooperating with others of my kind to find and kill the sick one known as the Ripper.
I finished my breakfast and returned to my apartment. In order to be prepared for the day when our paths would cross, I took one of my katanas, the Japanese long swords, and a gallon jug of gasoline and secreted them in the trunk of my car. To kill a Vampyre, one must cut off the head and burn the body, and I wanted to be ready to do just that when the time came.
From the newspaper accounts, I knew the Ripper hunted in the same haunts I did: bars and nightclubs where patrons wouldn’t remember his face when he left with a potential victim. It was time for me to start frequenting such places on a regular basis. Sooner or later, I would find him, for my mental abilities allow me to sense the sickness in a Vampyre as easily as I can smell the stench of decay on a corpse.
I just hoped I would sense him before he sensed me, for surprise is the key in a fight between members of our race.
At nine o’clock in the morning, I went to my office. I’d picked an outreach clinic located in a poor part of town for several reasons. The university has a problem recruiting doctors to work in such places, so they didn’t bother to check my forged credentials too closely. Also, working with the poor and downtrodden salves my conscience somewhat about my need to feed off the Normals and helps me to be able to live with my terrible needs.
As I worked my way through the pitiful patients, mostly homeless people and the very poor, my mind was already on the coming darkness and the start of my hunt for my fellow creature.
I knew I was going to have to be extremely careful. Finding the monster would necessitate unshield-ing my mind in order to locate his, and this would leave me vulnerable to his reading my thoughts as well. My task was going to take all the mental finesse I was capable of. A member of the Vampyre race as mentally unbalanced as the Ripper would be an extremely dangerous adversary, one I need to be careful not to underestimate.
Nine
Matt was in the doctors’ lounge, discussing with Jeff Stric
kland how the medical students were performing on their ER rotation, when the door opened and Dr. Sheldon Silver stepped in.
Strickland grinned and raised his hand. “Hey, Dr. Silver, what’re you doing here? We haven’t lost anyone in the last hour or two.”
He was referring to Silver’s job as professor of pathology and his attendant job as the interim medical examiner of the county.
Silver smiled. “I’m not here to do an autopsy, Jeff,” he said, “though from the looks of those bags under your eyes, I might be seeing you down in the morgue sooner rather than later if you don’t get some rest.”
Strickland got tiredly to his feet. “Comes with the job, Doc,” he said. “In surgery, if you snooze, you lose.”
“Actually, I’m here to see Matt,” Silver said.
“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Strickland said. He turned to Matt. “I’ll get those written evaluations of the students to you by the first of the week, Matt.”
Matt nodded. “No hurry, Jeff. Whenever you get to it.”
After Strickland left, Matt inclined his head at the coffeepot in the corner of the room. “Cup of Joe, Shelly?”
Silver’s expression turned wry and he wagged his head. “No thanks, Matt. I’d rather drink formaldehyde.”
Silver, known as Shelly to most everyone, was as usual wearing white jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, blue with white flowers this time. His only concession to hospital protocol was a wrinkled white clinic jacket with some stains on it that no one had the nerve to question the origin of. Shelly was a rotund five feet seven inches tall. Although he appeared to be fat, he was actually heavyset, with most of his bulk being muscle rather than adipose tissue.
He had a springy, quick walk and moved with no wasted motion. His hair was dark, shot through with gray, and his blue eyes seemed to twinkle when he laughed.
Shelly had been the de facto leader of the so-called Vampire Task Force responsible for the discovery of Roger Niemann and his lair. He was Sam’s boss and also her closest friend, along with his wife, Barbara.
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