Dark Blood

by James M. Thompson

  “We will get started without waiting for Louis, since we have an extensive agenda to cover.”

  Michael snorted, his obsidian eyes boring into hers. “I hope you haven’t called us here for more bullshit about how we should feed and how we need to keep a low profile,” he said. His dislike of taking orders was well known and he rarely tried to hide his disdain for Carmilla’s campaign to keep the Vampyres from killing Normals.

  Carmilla ignored him. “The first item on the agenda is what we should do, if anything, about this killer known as the Ripper.”

  “Are we sure he’s one of us, and not just another crazy Other?” Adeline asked, using another Vampyre term for humans.

  Peter laughed dryly. “If he’s not one of us, then he ought to be, for he certainly appears to like the taste of blood.”

  “I think we have to assume the worst, Adeline,” Carmilla answered, scowling at Peter’s levity.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” Sarah said. “How does this person’s actions impact us?” She looked around at the group. “As far as I can tell, all of us are abiding by the Council’s decision to pursue only nonlethal feeding.”

  “That’s the point,” Carmilla said. “I know that there are members of this body who do not agree with our decision on how to feed inconspicuously.” She stared pointedly at Morpheus as she said this, and then continued. “But so far, everyone has gone along with the decision of the majority. If there is now a rogue out there who doesn’t accept our sovereignty in these matters, then sooner or later, he or she will have to be dealt with.”

  “Does anyone have any idea who this ‘rogue’ might be?” asked Gerald, glancing around at the others. As he spoke, Carmilla got a mental whiff of anger in his mind and made a mental note to check him out later. Perhaps he was one of the members who were leaning toward Morpheus’s viewpoint that the Normals, an inferior breed, were their rightful prey and that they should feed on them at will.

  Everyone shook their heads at Gerald’s question, except Carmilla, who frowned as she surveyed the group around the table, wondering who else might be against her.

  “I have an idea who it might be,” she finally said.

  As all eyes turned to her, she elaborated. “As you all know, a few months back, in Houston, a rogue there named Roger Niemann killed my aunt and several other members of her Council over just such a disagreement—”

  “But,” Peter interrupted, “wasn’t Roger killed by the Houston police?”

  Carmilla shrugged. “That’s the story, but we all know how hard it is for an Other to kill one of us. What if he somehow managed to escape and made his way here to New Orleans?”

  An excited murmur spread around the room, until Carmilla held up her hand. “I yield the floor to Theo. He’s told me something I think you all should be aware of.”

  Theo cleared his throat. “A few nights ago, as I was entering the Café du Monde, a man brushed by me on his way out. I was almost sure it was Roger Niemann, but by the time I’d turned around, he was gone.”

  “Did you scan his mind?” Peter asked.

  Theo nodded. “I tried, but all I got was a blank.”

  “That’s hardly proof it was Roger Niemann,” Michael said scornfully.

  Theo gave him a flat look. “The only minds I’ve ever encountered that I’ve been unable to read have been among the Vampyres. If this wasn’t Roger, then he was one of us.”

  “And if he’s one of us, with nothing to hide, why was he blocking his thoughts?” Carmilla asked.

  “Even if this Roger Niemann is now living here, that doesn’t mean he’s the Ripper,” Sarah said.

  “He ran amok in Houston, and now I’m telling you he’s doing the same thing here!” Carmilla said with some heat.

  Jean reached across the table to put his hand on her arm. “Carmilla, you must admit you’ve been obsessed with this Niemann ever since he killed your aunt. Aren’t you perhaps overreacting?”

  Carmilla took a deep breath. “Perhaps, but the fact remains that my aunt and her followers braced him over such behavior, and were killed for their interference in Niemann’s lifestyle.”

  Michael glanced at the Rolex on his wrist, a bored expression on his face. “Let’s get on with the rest of the meeting. We’ll all keep our eyes and our minds open to see if we can locate Niemann . . . though,” he added, glancing scornfully at Carmilla, “we all know how obsessed you are with this particular Vampyre. I, for one, believe you’re letting your desire for vengeance against him rob you of your common sense.”

  Carmilla’s lips pressed tight at the insult, but she knew he was right. However, she still felt she was justified in her beliefs about Niemann being alive. “Think what you will, Michael, but our next speaker may change your mind. I’d like to introduce a friend from Houston, Ramson Holroyd.”

  From out of the shadows of a corner stepped a large black man, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms. He inclined his head at the group.

  “Why have you asked an outsider to our meeting, Carmilla?” Michael asked. “This has always been a closed association.”

  He just can’t help trying to undermine my leadership, Carmilla thought, but kept her feelings deep within her mind so he couldn’t read them. “He has information that is vital to us all,” she replied.

  Ramson, ignoring Michael’s protest at his presence, spoke in a deep, sonorous voice. “While our Houston Council was investigating the Roger Niemann mess, we came upon some facts that shook us to our very core. Roger had begun the rite of Transformation on a woman he wanted for his mate. It was almost complete when he was attacked and possibly killed.”

  “So what?” Michael asked. “We’ve all done much the same over the years.”

  Ramson smiled slightly. “Yes, but to our knowledge, no one has ever been able to reverse a Transformation once it’s taken place. Our information is that the medical group in Houston that was responsible for Niemann’s killing was able to do just that.”

  There was a gasp around the room and the members looked at each other, expressions of wonder on their faces. “But . . . but that’s impossible!” Peter said.

  “If that is true,” Adeline said with a hint of awe in her voice, “then maybe the same process could be used to cause us to no longer be Vampyres.”

  “Those were our thoughts,” Ramson said. “In fact, before he attacked us and killed several of our members, we had information that Niemann himself was working on just such a process.”

  “Bah!” spat Michael. “So what? Why would any one of us desire to become an Other again? With their mayfly lives and their lack of mental abilities—I’d rather be dead!”

  Adeline turned to him, fire in her eyes. “Yes, but you don’t speak for us all, Michael, as has been shown many times in the past. I, for one, would give anything to be cured of this curse of a lust for blood that consumes my every waking moment.”

  There were several nods around the table, showing general agreement. Carmilla watched her group carefully, trying to figure out who might be on her side and who might be inclined to move with Michael. Of the group, she noticed frowns on the faces of Jean Horla, Sarah Kenyon, and Christina Alario. Christina’s eyes sought Michael’s and Carmilla thought she saw a slight nod pass between them.

  “Ramson has a plan that I think we should all hear,” Carmilla said into the hush that followed his words, still troubled by the seeming split within her group.

  As all eyes turned to him, Ramson began: “I would like the Council’s permission to contact the members of this medical team and to ask them to visit us here in New Orleans and to share with us their secret for reversing the Transformation.”

  “If this is such a good idea, why didn’t your own Council in Houston do it?” Michael asked.

  “My Council doesn’t exist any longer,” Ramson said with a sad, defeated look in his eyes. “Niemann, before he died, managed to kill all the leaders of the Council, and the rest disbanded in disagreement ove
r how to proceed in the future.” He stared at Michael. “Like you all, there were some in our group who felt open war should be declared on the Normals. The disagreement finally led to the disbanding of our Council.”

  “There is a second advantage to having the Houston medical team come here,” Carmilla said quickly. She didn’t want to get into a discussion just yet on the merits of either argument; she needed time to find out who her allies were. “If Roger Niemann is still alive and is here acting as the Ripper, these people who knew him best will be able to help us locate and, if need be, destroy him.”

  A murmur of agreement passed through the room. Michael jumped to his feet, his face flushed with anger. “You cowards sicken me!” he said loudly, scorn dripping from his words. “Sitting around and whining about your need for blood, when fate has made you into beings far superior to those we feed upon. Count me out of your little scheme to become Normals again.”

  He whirled on his feet and walked rapidly from the room without looking back.

  Carmilla watched him leave. She glanced at Jean and Sarah and Christina, half expecting them to follow. When they didn’t, she sighed and turned back to the others. “Can I have a vote on Ramson’s plan? All in favor signify by raising your right hands.”

  “Before we vote,” Adeline interrupted, “we must consider the wisdom of approaching humans and letting them become aware of our existence.”

  Carmilla waved her objection away with the flick of a wrist. “I do not think that is a problem, Adeline. After all, this team we’re discussing is already aware of us through their intervention with Niemann’s mate. Evidently, they’ve either managed to discount the fact of our existence, or they’ve had no luck convincing the authorities of it.”

  “That’s right,” Sarah agreed. “We all know how dumb the Normals are when it comes to the possibility of believing in us. In spite of hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary, they still prefer to ignore our presence.”

  Carmilla nodded, pleased that the mood of the group seemed to be in her favor. “Could we vote now, please?” she asked agreeably.

  Every hand in the room went up, some rapidly, some slowly, as the members of the Council thought about what such a decision might mean to them.

  Eleven

  Matt inserted the key Shelly had given him into the door marked MICROBIOLOGY LAB and pushed it open. He and Sam entered and turned the lights on.

  “Wow!” Matt said, glancing around the large equipment-filled room.

  Sam smiled and began reading the labels. “Hey, Matt, here’s an old electron microscope,” she said, grinning. “I haven’t seen one of these since my med school days.”

  Matt was astounded at the wealth of equipment Shelly had put at their disposal, but after watching TJ at dinner the other night, he was convinced Shooter was right to be worried. Her behavior, though not outrageous, was certainly not normal for her. She was entirely too hungry for bloody, half-cooked meat to suit Matt’s mind; moreover, she seemed listless and distracted lately, not at all the bubbly TJ he used to know.

  As his thoughts ranged back to that night, Sam walked up to him and snapped her fingers. “Hey, are you with me?” she asked, smiling at his dreamy, disconnected expression.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, snapping out of it. “I was just thinking. Do you think TJ will really let us run the tests on her when it gets right down to it?”

  “That’s what I was about to tell you,” Sam answered. “I don’t believe we’re gonna have any problems with her. She woke me up last night, dripping with sweat and with a terrified expression on her face.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Seems she’s been having these dreams, almost every night, and they’ve really got her spooked.”

  “What sort of dreams?”

  Sam bit her lip. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but they concern her acting in an . . . unusual manner.”

  Matt stared at her, trying to read between the lines of what Sam wasn’t telling him. After a moment, he thought he had it. “You mean, she’s been dreaming of sucking the blood out of people?”

  Sam gave a slight nod, uncomfortable even talking with Matt about what TJ had told her in confidence. “That’s pretty close. In any event, the dreams have made TJ want to be checked out. She’s as afraid of becoming like Niemann as we are for her.”

  “When did you tell her we’d start?” Matt asked.

  “After she gets off duty today. Her shift ends at five.”

  Matt glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a one o’clock class to teach; then I’ll go down to the lab and get what we need to draw blood and bring it up here.”

  Sam glanced around at the counters and tables covered with equipment. “Good. I’ll spend my time trying to figure out how to use this stuff. Hopefully, there’ll be some manuals scattered around somewhere.”

  Matt grinned. “If you get stuck, call Shelly. Some of these machines look as old as he is.”

  Sam frowned, taking Matt’s joke seriously. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. After all, Shelly’s probably forgotten more about lab tests and microbiology than either of us know.”

  “Do you think TJ would mind?”

  Sam shook her head. “No. TJ loves Shelly. I’m sure it’d be all right with her, especially since Shelly was in on all this from the beginning.”

  Matt leaned over and gave Sam a quick kiss. “OK, babe, I’ve gotta go.”

  She grabbed him by the front of his white clinic jacket. “No, you don’t mister!” she growled, her voice husky. “I want a better good-bye kiss than that.”

  “You modern women are so demanding,” Matt said, shaking his head. He stepped closer, put his arms around her, and kissed her as she wished to be kissed.

  When they broke, Matt’s face was flushed. “Maybe I could get someone else to give that lecture, and we could . . .”

  Sam shook her head. “No, we’ve got too much to do, big boy. But,” she added with a mischievous smile, “that’ll give you something to look forward to tonight.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Now go teach the med students something useful and then we’ll meet back here to get ready for TJ this afternoon.”

  * * *

  TJ was terrified at the changes she felt taking place in her body lately. Her dreams were filled with visions of blood-drenched necks and bodies torn asunder; her days were spent with a deep hunger gnawing at her insides, a void that could only be satisfied by meat cooked so rare the blood dripped and pooled on the plate around it. The image of Roger Niemann and his black, piercing eyes consumed her mind from the time she awoke until she drifted into fitful, restless sleep. At times, her loins ached with remembrance of the passion they’d shared in his lair when she was his prisoner. She still couldn’t understand how she’d responded to his lovemaking when she despised him and everything he stood for, but she couldn’t erase her memories of their wild coupling.

  The only thing that scared her more than these recent changes was the thought of undergoing more laboratory tests with Matt and Sam. It wasn’t the tests that frightened her, but rather the chance that the tests would determine there was no hope; she feared she would end up like Roger, skulking about in the darkness, looking for hapless victims to assuage her hunger for blood.

  She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, and opened the door to the microbiology lab. Sam and Matt glanced up from a computer on a gray metal desk in the corner of the room.

  “Hey, TJ,” Sam called cheerfully, as if they were two girlfriends meeting for a casual lunch, instead of a doctor and her patient about to undergo tests that would determine her fate.

  “Hi, TJ,” Matt said, barely taking his eyes off the computer screen.

  “Hi, guys,” TJ replied, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.

  “Come on in,” Sam said, beckoning to her. “We’ve just gotten an e-mail from the doctor in Canada that Shelly referred us to. He’s the world’s leading authority on plasmids.”

  �
��Canada?” TJ asked, walking over to read behind Matt’s shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Matt answered, wondering if she’d forgotten their conversation at the restaurant the other night. “His name is Professor Bartholomew Wingate, M.D., Ph.D., and no telling what else. He teaches micro at McGill University Medical School in Montreal.”

  “What’s he say?” TJ asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  Matt shrugged. “He’s asking me to fax him all your previous lab results as well as whatever other information we might have on the origin of your infection.”

  Sam put her hand on TJ’s shoulder; her sympathetic smile showed she understood what TJ was going through. “We’re gonna send him some copies of the journal pages in Niemann’s book in which he tells how the whole thing started, as well as some of the symptoms he describes.”

  “What else does he say?” TJ asked.

  “He attached some of his research papers to the e-mail,” Matt said, clicking on the icon of the paper clip in the upper right part of the screen. “I already had most of them from the Internet, but he included some that haven’t been published yet. Mainly, they deal with different kinds of plasmids that are used to stop conjugation among other plasmids.”

  TJ nodded slowly, smiling as she remembered how Shooter had misunderstood the term conjugation, thinking it had some sort of sexual meaning. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Plasmids reproduce by conjugation; so if we can stop that, all the plasmids left will die of old age eventually, just like blood cells do, and I’ll be cured.”

  “The only problem is, the anticonjugation plasmids are very specific. Wingate says he’ll need to know quite a bit about your particular plasmids before he can grow some anticonjugation ones to combat them.”

  TJ’s forehead wrinkled. “But didn’t the tests you took earlier, when I was really sick, give us that information?”

  Sam shook her head. “I’m afraid not, TJ. About all we could find out was the infection had something to do with plasmids. Our equipment wasn’t delicate enough to determine the specific type of plasmids involved.”

  “What about Niemann’s journal?” she asked, looking from one to the other. “Didn’t he say he’d been doing just this kind of research for many years? Maybe he’s got the answers we need.”