Matt glanced at Sam, a troubled look on his face. “No doubt he did, TJ, but he didn’t put his research results in his journal.”
TJ snapped her fingers. “I know. They’re probably in the warehouse he used as a safe house. We could look there.”
Matt grimaced. “Yeah, we could. Except, Damon told me that someone took all the stuff outta Niemann’s warehouse a couple of days after he was killed. It was picked clean.”
Sam stared at Matt. “You didn’t tell me that,” she said. “Who would do such a thing?”
Before Matt could reply, TJ’s face paled and she stumbled to a seat in front of the desk. “Roger,” she said, her voice croaking on the word.
“TJ, Roger is dead,” Matt said gently.
Her tortured eyes turned to him. “Did the police ever find his body?” she asked.
“Well, no . . . ,” Matt began.
TJ buried her face in her hands. “I knew it!” she moaned.
“TJ, don’t go jumping to conclusions,” Sam said.
She looked up, a haunted look in her eyes. “He’ll come for me. He told me we’d be together forever.” She closed her eyes tight, trying to shut out the memory of his naked body pushing against hers, and of her frantic response to the feelings it stirred in her.
Sam turned to Matt, tears in her eyes at the pain her friend was going through.
Matt came around the desk and laid his hand on TJ’s shoulder. “If he does, TJ, Shooter and the police will get him again, just like they did before.”
Sam knelt in front of TJ to get her attention. “TJ, Roger is dead. There have been no further killings in Houston since the police shot him. If Roger were still alive, we’d know it by the bodies he’d leave behind.”
For the first time, a hopeful gleam appeared in TJ’s eyes. “That’s right. If he were still alive, he’d be feeding and we’d read about it in the newspapers.”
Sam stood up. “Sure, so quit worrying about it. What we’ve got to do now is draw some of your blood and send it to Dr. Wingate so he can start classifying your plasmids.”
“Did he say how long that would take?” TJ asked.
“Unfortunately, several months at least,” Matt said. “It would be much quicker if we could somehow find the results of Niemann’s research.”
TJ grabbed Matt’s arm. “We could go look in the warehouse. Maybe the police missed something or the robbers left something behind.”
Matt glanced at Sam, and then he shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t see what harm it could cause.”
“First,” Sam said firmly, “we’re going to draw some of your blood and get it sent on the way to Wingate. Then we can go to the warehouse.”
“All right,” TJ said, her mood upbeat at the thought of going to look for Niemann’s research papers. She felt sure if they could just find them, they would show a way out of her present predicament.
She brushed aside a momentary dread at entering the place where Niemann had so debased her. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She knew in order to survive the ordeal facing her, she was going to have to be stronger than she had ever been before. But it would be worth it if she could somehow be cured of the curse Niemann had put on her.
TJ sat in a chair and stuck out her arm, grimacing as Matt approached her with a needle and syringe in his hand.
Twelve
Jacques Chatdenuit took his time dressing for his night out. His Hunger, though becoming more insistent, was still manageable, so he was in no hurry. In fact, he thought, anticipation of his hunt and later feed made the actual event even more piquant.
As usual, he put on dark jeans, a dark shirt, and a black leather jacket. Practice had taught him that blood spilled on dark clothes does not show up at night, and he fully intended to spill some blood tonight.
Combing his dark, curly hair before a mirror, he stared into his ice-blue eyes, wondering not for the first time how they’d come to be. His background was French Canadian, and both of his parents had dark eyes and hair, as most of the people did in his native Quebec.
He’d been born in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression. His early childhood years were uneventful, though his family was as poor as most everyone he knew. Things were getting better when he was twenty-five and secured a job on a tramp steamer out of the port city of Montreal. As the ship sailed up the Street Lawrence toward the open ocean, the young man stood on the deck, the salty sea air blowing in his face as he dreamed of the adventures he was going to have.
It was in his first port of call on the western coast of Africa that he decided to go to a waterfront bar in the seedier part of the small city.
While in the bar, a lovely black woman approached him and offered to buy him a drink. One thing led to another, and before long she took him to her house on the outskirts of town.
She seemed intrigued by both his boyish good looks and his brilliant blue eyes, stating she’d never seen such a combination before.
As they made passionate love on her large, down-filled mattress, Jacques started and drew back as her teeth bit into his neck. Soothing him and murmuring sweet words in his ears, she told him to lie back and enjoy the night, for she had something special in mind for him.
For some reason, he didn’t think it strange when she opened a small vein on her wrist with teeth suddenly long and sharp, then placed his lips to the wound. He drank greedily, as if consumed by a thirst he couldn’t understand.
Jacques awoke two weeks later, after she’d nursed him through the high fevers and night sweats and chills of his Transformation.
Then, with loving tenderness, she began to teach him what a great gift she’d given him: immortality and the dominion over lesser beings of the world, who were forever more going to be his prey.
Jacques stayed with her for four years, until the number of people dying of horrible neck wounds began to alarm the local authorities. Though his mate was indeed beautiful, she was uneducated and simple, and Jacques was soon tired of her lack of sophistication. The search by the local authorities for the killers who drank their victims’ blood gave him the excuse he needed.
Sneaking out in the middle of the day, covered from head to foot with long, flowing clothes against the tropical sun, he made his way to the port and secured a job on a freighter headed for the United States.
By the time the freighter pulled into a Virginia port, almost a third of its sailors were missing and the rest were so frightened they’d taken to sleeping with knives by their bunks.
Jacques jumped ship and began to make his way across the United States, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. His mate had taught him that Normals were his natural prey, so he had no trouble with his conscience over his need to kill. In fact, he’d never even given thought to the possibility of feeding without killing.
Occasionally, in his travels, he came across others of his kind, but he avoided any protracted contact with them. His experience in Africa had taught him that two Vampyres drew too much attention. He preferred to live and hunt alone.
When he finally arrived in New Orleans, he found there were already many Vampyres living there. At first, he figured he’d move on, thinking that many of his kind hunting in one place would be too obvious to the authorities. However, he discovered by discreetly reading the minds of his fellow hunters, they’d come to some arrangement among themselves to pursue only nonlethal feeding. Not fully understanding the reasoning behind their reluctance to kill, he decided to hang around for a while and see what he could discover.
Using his own mental abilities very carefully while keeping his innermost thoughts blocked, he realized these Vampyres had formed a Council that decided when and how they could hunt. Disgusted with their timidity and fear of the Normals, whom he considered his rightful prey, he kept apart from the others of his kind. He moved alone through the dark streets of New Orleans and fed as he always had, totally and without pity.
Living among members of his own kind without being discovered meant he had to use
his mental capabilities very carefully, lest one of them “smell” him out with their own psychic abilities. Therefore, he went about his business with his mind locked down most of the time, only unleashing his powers when he was on a hunt. This self-enforced isolation caused him to be lonely, but he had yet to come across anyone who impressed him enough to consider the long process it would take to make them his mate.
After moving to New Orleans, he decided to take a job as a private investigator, specializing in industrial espionage. With his mental ability to see into others’ minds, it was easy for him to acquire the information that heads of companies would pay dearly for, and it had a side benefit of allowing him to use his new skills to find and keep tabs on the other Vampyres in his area without risk of discovery. He knew at some point in the future, such information might be crucial to his survival.
Tonight he planned to go to Pat O’Brien’s, a popular nightclub frequented mostly by tourists and college kids. It was very crowded, always noisy, and almost everyone there was usually drunk. It was an excellent place to find young women suitable for a feed, and the number and closeness of the crowd would shield his use of his psychic abilities should another Vampyre happen to be nearby.
As he walked down Bourbon Street on his way to the nightclub, he hummed a song from his childhood, “Papa Joe’s,” about a famous bar in New Orleans.
Since it was a weeknight, there was no line waiting to enter Pat O’Brien’s, but the room was packed with almost every table full. Jacques shoved his way through the crowd and moved to the left, stationing himself at the bar, which commanded a view of the entire room. In this way, he could observe the patrons without being noticed.
“What’ll it be?” the barman asked.
“Double Jack and Coke,” Jacques said, placing a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. One of the more pleasant aspects of being a Vampyre was the almost total lack of effect alcohol had on him. He could get a slight buzz, but there were no nasty aftereffects no matter how much he drank.
The room was dark, except for the stage upon which two pianos faced each other with middle-aged women singing college fight songs the audience called out for. The darkness didn’t bother Jacques, for he could see as well in total darkness as the Normals could in full light.
He sipped his drink, letting his gaze roam the room looking for his next victim. He would refrain from using his mind until he’d singled out one of the many young women present to be his “date,” as he liked to think of them, for the night.
* * *
I entered the nightclub, the sixth one of the night, and hoped that I would somehow come across the man, or woman, the police were calling the Ripper. I wasn’t searching for him out of any desire to do a good deed for the Normals or to save any lives, other than my own. I knew that if the Ripper wasn’t stopped, before long the authorities would put two and two together and come up with the same answer the Houston police had: there was a monster loose in their city. I wanted to prevent that from happening so I wouldn’t have to move again. I was anxious to get back to work on my research and I wasn’t about to let some crazy Vampyre delay it any longer.
My mouth had an awful taste in it from all the cheap liquor I’d consumed on my quest for the Vampyre killer. Most of the establishments I’d been in didn’t serve Martell brandy, so I’d been drinking house whiskey, usually watered down and raw to the throat.
My nose wrinkled at the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the overly sweet drink served at Pat O’Brien’s known locally as a Hurricane. The crush of the crowd unnerved me somewhat, since I’d long since given up letting myself frequent such places. I guess it was the thought of being in the midst of so many Normals, surrounded and squeezed in, and knowing that they would kill me without a second thought if they knew what I was.
But, unlike me in the days when I used to hunt and kill these innocents, the Ripper seemed to pick his victims from tourists and the well to do rather than the dregs of society as I had. So I was here in the most popular tourist nightclub in the city, nervous and uncomfortable as I searched for a being who would kill me without hesitating if I were to let my guard down.
An older black waiter moved toward me, dancing and jiving to the music. He held a metal serving tray over his head. It was covered with hundreds of coins and he tapped on the bottom of it with his fingers, which had thimbles on them, in time to the music that was being played.
With a wide grin, he leaned over to ask me what I wanted to drink. Suddenly his eyes widened and his face sobered for a moment, as if he could sense I wasn’t the usual type of person he waited on. Even in the short time I’d been in New Orleans, I’d found the blacks in the area seemed to be especially sensitive to mental intrusion, and to have an almost second sight when it came to “smelling” out my kind. Perhaps it was the all-pervasive belief in voodoo that permeated their society and their lack of disbelief in things supernatural that enabled them to sense our presence when more sophisticated white Normals couldn’t. In any case, after a moment, he shook his head and his eyes cleared.
“What can I get you, sir?” he asked, having to talk loudly to be heard over the music and conversation in the room.
I decided to switch drinks. “A vodka martini, with two olives, please.”
“Yes, sir!” he said cheerfully, evidently suppressing his instinct about my wrongness.
While I waited for my drink, I surveyed the room, not knowing exactly what I might be looking for. The Ripper could look like anyone: Vampyres came from all walks of life and were Transformed at all ages, so the creature could be almost anyone in the room. The only way I was going to discover if the Ripper was present was to use my mind, but I wanted to wait for a while so as not to give myself away.
After the waiter brought my drink, I sat back in my chair and continued to observe the crowd, reflecting on the irony of a being such as I, who’d killed hundreds over the years, sitting here trying to stop another from doing what I’d done so many times.
I opened my mind slightly, just enough to receive any psychic vibrations, but not enough to emit any of my own. I don’t know quite how to explain what it feels like to have someone in your mind: almost like a tickle, or a feather stroking the brain, that’s about as close as I can come to describing it. I felt that tickle now and immediately shut my mind down and forced myself to remain calm and centered, at least outwardly.
Inside, I was on red alert. The battle was about to begin....
Thirteen
By seven o’clock in the evening, Matt and Sam had just about finished with the first round of tests on TJ. Matt was bandaging the puncture wound on TJ’s iliac crest, from where he’d drawn a sample of her bone marrow, when Shelly and Shooter entered the lab.
“Look what I found wandering around the halls,” Shelly said, his hand on Shooter’s shoulder.
“You guys didn’t tell me where the lab was, so I had to ask Shelly,” Shooter said, his eyes on TJ as he checked to see how she was doing.
TJ jumped up from the examining table and ran to throw her arms around his neck. “Hey, Shooter,” she murmured in his ear. “I’m really glad you came.”
Matt and Sam both said hello. While Matt packed away the specimen he’d taken, Sam said to Shooter, “TJ’s been a real trouper, Shooter. She let us poke and prod and stick her all day without a single complaint.”
As Sam talked, Shelly noticed the Band-Aid on Shooter’s neck and the spot of dried blood on it. He frowned as he thought of the implications of such a wound, but decided not to mention it, for the moment.
Shooter kissed TJ on the cheek and rubbed the back of her neck with his hand. “You about ready for dinner, babe?” he asked.
She nodded vigorously. “Yeah. I think I’m about a quart low on blood, so we’d better do something to replace it,” she answered.
“You guys want to come along?” Shooter asked.
Matt shook his head. “Not now, Shooter. Sam and I’ve still got some work to do to label and collate some of the samples
we’ve taken. I want to get them packed up and sent to Dr. Wingate in Canada as soon as possible. How about a rain check?”
“You got it,” Shooter answered. He took TJ’s hand and they left the lab together.
As the door closed behind them, Sam noticed the worried look on Shelly’s face.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked. “Trouble in the morgue?”
He shook his head, his eyes still on the door Shooter and TJ had gone through.
“Did either of you happen to notice the bandage on Shooter’s neck?” he asked, turning his attention to them.
Matt shrugged. “No. Why?”
Sam was more astute to Shelly’s implied meaning. “Do you think—”
“I don’t know,” Shelly interrupted, “and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the wound was in the same location as the bites we found on all those vampire victims last year.”
Matt’s eyes widened. “You think TJ’s been feeding on him?” Matt asked.
Shelly shrugged. “Certainly not in the fullest meaning of the word, since Shooter shows no signs of acute anemia. But I wonder if TJ’s not starting to show more serious signs than just an appetite for rare meat.”
“Maybe he just cut himself shaving,” Matt said, though it was plain even he didn’t believe that explanation.
Shelly stared at the door again. “Perhaps.” He glanced back at Sam and Matt. “If I were you two, I’d do those tests just as fast as you can. We may be running out of time with TJ.”
Matt and Sam looked at each other, their minds filled with horror at what they were thinking.
“Shelly,” Sam said, “would you mind giving Dr. Wingate a call and impressing on him the urgency of the samples we’re sending him? We need him to run them through as fast as possible.”
Shelly nodded, his expression serious. “Certainly, though I wonder if he’ll believe what we have to tell him.”
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