Sanguinary (Night Shift Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  They both circled, trying to get me to move away from the wall, to put my back toward the rest of the hallway—presumably so one of their creepy compadres could ambush me from behind. I lunged out toward them with my weapons, forcing them to back away from me.

  There’s no telling how long our little corner face-off might have lasted were it not for the rabid snarl that came from behind the vampires. The remaining vamps turned slightly to look behind them. That’s when I lunged. And it’s also when Reese dove toward us.

  I had just enough time to send up a microsecond of a prayer that Reese wasn’t attacking me, and then I hit the pale vampire and we went down, rolling on the floor. Her claw-like fingers tangled up in my hair and wherever she twisted, I followed. Her other hand kept going for my eyes.

  I waited for the right moment to slam a stake through her free hand, effectively pinning it to the floor. She let out a horrific scream and let go of my hair. I grabbed that wrist and ripped at the remaining strands trapped around her fingers.

  Then I ran a stake through her heart.

  I looked up to see Reese dropping the other vampire. His mouth and chin were covered in red, and he grinned bloodily at me. I glanced at the vampire at his feet. Her throat had been ripped out—arterial blood had hit the wall in a long spray of droplets. She had a stake sticking out of her chest too.

  “Nice work,” Reese said. A red drop slid down his chin and I had to swallow rapidly to keep from gagging. The sick feeling in my throat contrasted oddly with the way my stomach pulled me toward Reese.

  Ignore it, Davis.

  I peered down the hall behind him. Iverson and Jeanie were making their way methodically from one end to the other, running stakes through downed vampires and helping shaky patients to their feet.

  “Hey,” I called out softly. “Any sign of Andre or Garrett?”

  “No,” Iverson replied. “And we’ve checked all the rooms down at this end.”

  I looked around, finally stopping to take stock of the place as something other than a fighting ground.

  Most of the heavy wooden doors were open, revealing tiny rooms occupied by a single bed and bedside table. Many of the beds were covered in blood. The wood floors were slick with it too.

  “What the hell happened here?” I whispered.

  Iverson shrugged. “Feeding frenzy?”

  “But you said vampires come here all the time.” I looked at Reese, who nodded. “That sounds more like a steady food supply,” I continued. “This is a massacre.”

  “Analyze it later,” Jeanie said. “After we find Garrett and Andre.”

  Right. Priorities.

  I eyed several doors at my end of the hall that weren’t open. Reese moved up beside me, reached out to the closest closed door, and turned the knob.

  I expected a bloody mess. I expected vampires. I expected vampire victims.

  What I didn’t expect was Dr. Richards, sitting on a bed with her legs crossed, foot swinging, looking intently at her manicured nails, flicking the ashes off a cigarette onto the floor. But that’s what I got.

  She looked up from her nails and smiled at me.

  “Ms. Carlson. How nice to see you again.”

  Chapter 12

  I stared blankly at her, wondering what the proper protocol was here. How should I reply to that, given that I had spent the last several minutes in this woman’s clinic fighting off crazed vampires out for blood?

  I finally settled for hello. But I’m not sure it sounded as nonchalant as I had intended it to.

  She looked out past me and caught a glimpse of Reese.

  “How lovely to see you too, Reese,” she said.

  He snarled in reply.

  Iverson walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “Who’s this?” he asked me, gesturing into the room.

  “That’s the clinic director,” I said. “Dr. Leah Richards. Want to keep an eye on her while I check the other rooms?”

  “Sure.” Iverson leaned one arm against the doorframe, while Richards went back to examining her nails and smoking.

  I ducked back out of the room under Iverson’s arm and motioned for Reese to follow me to the nearest closed door in the hallway.

  “So you know her?” I asked as the door swung wide. The room behind it was empty.

  “A little,” Reese answered.

  “Seems like you’re on a first-name basis,” I said.

  “Not by my choice,” Reese replied.

  I jerked my chin toward another door. “Open that one.”

  This time, there were two vamps waiting for us. They lunged as soon as the door opened. One of them leapt right into my knife. The other dove into Reese’s grip. They were both dead within seconds. I could feel the bond between us tugging, orienting me to his every move, allowing us to fight as a unit.

  I tried to ignore it.

  “So how did you meet her?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I sighed. “Dr. Richards.”

  “Oh. Her.” He reached around me to push another door open. I ducked a charging vampire, and Reese staked it. “I met her the last time I was here.” He pushed open the last door, revealing another blood-soaked room. This one was empty of vampires, at least.

  I gestured at the carnage. “When you came for…what? A nice hearty dinner?” My stomach turned over—this time not in an electric vampire-connection way—then settled.

  Reese moved. “Nope. To detox. I was a patient here once.”

  “How does a vamp detox?” I asked as we headed back toward Iverson and Jeanie. Jeanie was now helping one sobbing teenage girl stand up.

  “A vampire doesn’t detox,” Reese said. “I wasn’t a vampire then. I was a junkie. A human junkie.”

  I stopped and stared at him in shock. “You were addicted to vampires?”

  He raised one eyebrow at me. “It wasn’t my original plan, but it…happened. And then I was turned while I was here.”

  “I don’t get it.” I gestured at the blood-spattered walls around us. “Why this bloodbath? That’s bound to be noticed, and then the clinic will close. Why would any vamp want to shut down an easy source of blood?”

  “Let’s ask Leah Richards,” Reese suggested.

  “After we find Garrett and Andre.”

  Reese opened his mouth to reply, but his words were swept away by the alarm blaring throughout the building. I could hear people on lower floors opening doors. All the lights went on—not only the ones I had turned on earlier, but every single light in the place. I glanced out a window. Outside, floodlights illuminated the entire lawn, all the way back to the woods.

  “Sounds like Captain James is here,” Jeanie called out to us, yelling to be heard over the alarm.

  Iverson waved us on, and then cupped his hands around his mouth to shout. “I’ll keep watch up here. Send someone up when you can.”

  I followed Jeanie down the stairs, and as I rounded the corner out into a hallway, something whizzed past my head, thunking into a vampire who had been standing in the hall. I heard a slight whine, and then the vamp’s head exploded.

  All over me.

  I scooped goo out of my eyes with my free hand and shook it off onto the floor. It landed with an unsettling plop.

  Some guy in SWAT gear stood in front of me, an enormous, sleek, black, dangerous-looking gun in his hand—a Colt M177. I’d heard we had new anti-vamp ammo for those. I hadn’t realized it exploded.

  Two more SWAT team members were on their way up the stairs, turning to make room for Jeanie as she passed them. They were wearing black and carrying Colt M177s.

  “I like the new rounds.” I pulled my badge out of my pocket and flashed it. “Detective Cami Davis. I need your help. Come with me. You clear the lower floor?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the shorter of the two said. “Nothing down there but civilians. No hostiles.”

  I looked at the two officers closely. The taller had light blond hair shorn close to the scalp and watery blue eyes in a long, narrow face. The
other one was maybe five feet seven, dark hair and blue eyes, muscular and attractive. Neither of them could be more than twenty or so.

  Glad they were willing to play backup as I searched for Andre and Garrett.

  “I’m looking for a couple of undercover cops,” I said. “You guys know Andre Perricone?”

  They looked at each other, and then the shorter one answered. “I recall being introduced to him, ma’am.”

  “What about Quentin Garrett?” I wasn’t hopeful, since Garrett had been undercover for a while. I wasn’t surprised when the two officers shook their heads.

  “Okay, then. You two had better watch my back while I search.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” They both contrived to look even more serious and alert than they already did.

  “What are your names?” I asked.

  “I’m Savage,” the shorter one answered. “This is Bier.”

  We moved down the hallway, peering into rooms as we passed them. In most of the rooms, patients sat quietly on their beds, eyes wide as they peered back at us.

  “All of you stay in your rooms,” I instructed in my loudest I’m-in-charge voice. “If you stay in your rooms until someone comes to get you, you won’t get hurt.” I realized as I said it that it might sound like a threat of some sort. Like a bank robber who tells his hostages they won’t get hurt if they cooperate. That wasn’t the image I was trying to convey, so I added, “We’re here to help you. Please stay in your room until I come back.” That was better. A little.

  At the end of the hall, I pushed another door open and walked into a scene even worse than the one upstairs.

  There was blood everywhere. It ran in red trickles down the walls and dripped onto the floor. Whole gobbets of bloody flesh stuck to the floor—and to the ceiling, I realized, as an unidentifiable piece of someone fell to the floor in front of me with a sickening splat.

  My head spun. This was the hall I had left Andre in earlier that afternoon. “Oh, God, no,” I whispered aloud.

  There were several bodies on the floor, mutilated almost beyond recognition.

  “You two,” I said, pointing at my SWAT guys, “check to see if any of these people are still alive. And get those other two guards out there in here.” They both stared at me with shell-shocked eyes. “Now!” I barked as I started ripping open doors.

  Both officers jumped as if they’d been hit with a cattle prod, and Bier started feeling for pulses.

  The rooms were almost as bad as the hallway, gore dripping from unexpected places. The third door I opened revealed two naked male bodies lying spread-eagle on the bed in a widening pool of blood, their torsos ripped open from their necks to their crotches. I had to breathe in deeply several times to keep from vomiting before I could move around to the head of the bed and look at their faces.

  Their eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. Neither was one of my guys.

  The next two rooms revealed more bodies, more gore. I was almost becoming inured to the sight of so much carnage. I was even noticing the horrific smell less and less. But it was a brittle sort of acceptance, one I knew would crack if I found either Garrett or Andre dead, smeared in his own blood.

  I was about to open a third door when one of the SWAT officers called out to me. “I think we’ve found something,” he said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “This door is blocked from the inside,” he told me, indicating one of the middle doors.

  I hardly breathed. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be the room Andre had been unpacking in earlier in the day. I pushed the officer gently out of my way and turned the knob. Locked.

  “Get a battering ram,” I told the officer who had called me over.

  I knocked on the door several times while I waited, but no one answered.

  It took five or six solid kicks for the hinges to give way. At first glance, the room seemed empty. Bloodstained sheets covered the bed, but no one was in sight. I moved in warily. The window was still covered with bars, so whoever had locked the door had to still be in the room. No closets. That left only one place.

  Holding my gun out in front of me, I carefully squatted down and peered under the bed.

  “Oh, thank God.” I closed my eyes and blew out a breath in relief.

  Andre’s eyes, alive and aware, stared at me from under the bed.

  Chapter 13

  Andre lay on his stomach, a bloody stake in one hand. His other arm was wrapped around someone under there with him.

  “Cami?” His voice was much smaller than I remembered it.

  “It’s me,” I said soothingly. “Come on out.” I turned my head. “Go see if EMS is here,” I instructed the SWAT officers who had knocked in the door in for me. “As soon as you find them, send a paramedic down here immediately.” I peered under the bed again. “And tell them Garrett is unconscious.”

  I extended my hand toward Andre, who took it as he crawled out from under the bed. I handed him off to an officer and reached back down to get a grip on Garrett. One of the other SWAT officers knelt down to help, but I waved him away.

  Then my stomach flipped, sending electric sparks out through my body, and I knew Reese was behind me.

  I let him help.

  We pulled Garrett toward us, grabbing first his shoulder and then gripping him under the arms. His head flopped loosely back and forth, and my breath caught in my throat as he slid out from under the bed.

  I hadn’t realized how thin he’d gotten.

  His legs poked out from the bottom of his plaid boxer shorts like two pale sticks. He looked pitiful, like a sick old man. I felt tears gather in the corner of my eyes. I blinked furiously to keep them from spilling over. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

  I set him down on the floor, grabbing a blood-spattered pillow from the bed and turning it over so Garrett’s head could rest on the clean side.

  I was still holding Garrett’s hand when a paramedic, followed by the officer I’d sent to find him, showed up. The paramedic began checking Garrett’s pulse and breathing.

  “Has he been out since you found him?” he asked.

  “Yes. He hasn’t even moved at all,” I said.

  He nodded. “Okay. It looks like he’s in shock. Let’s get him out to the ambulance.”

  “You”—I pointed at the remaining SWAT officer—“go make sure the rest of the building is clear of vamps. Remember: Shoot as soon as you see the whites of their fangs. Unless it’s this guy.” I gestured toward Reese, who nodded seriously.

  The rest of the EMT team came rolling in past the officer as he left the room.

  “Are there many survivors?” I asked, though I was afraid the question might send at least one of them over the edge into permanent shock—one EMT’s face was already a clammy white.

  Her partner answered me. “Not of the ones who were attacked—most of them are dead, and we’ve stabilized the ones who didn’t die. But there seem to be a lot of patients who didn’t get attacked. We’ve called in social services. Those people are going to need serious help.”

  And I knew whose fault that was.

  I turned to Reese. “I think it’s time for us to ask Dr. Richards exactly what was going on here.”

  * * *

  Back upstairs, I motioned Iverson away from Richards’s doorway. “Andre and Garrett are downstairs. Not seriously hurt. We’re going to see what we can find out from the director.”

  “You and the vamp?” He cut his eyes toward Reese, and then glanced away when the vampire returned the look.

  I nodded. “I’ll be okay. Check on Jeanie? I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  As Iverson headed down the stairs, Reese leaned against the doorjamb of Richards’s room and stared in at her. “Want me to do this?” he asked, narrowing his eyes and lifting one corner of his mouth, just enough for the overhead light to glint off a fang.

  Good cop, bad cop? I’m in.

  I sighed. “Okay. But you can’t kill her. Not until I’
ve had a chance to talk to her.”

  “Okay. I won’t kill her.” He licked his lips.

  “Don’t maim her either, Reese. I mean it.”

  He finally looked at me. “No killing, no maiming. Got it.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” I took a half step toward the stairs.

  Richards sat quietly through all of this, until Reese started to move into her room. Then she scrambled across the bed and shrank back into the farthest corner. “You can’t come in here,” she said. “This is my room, and you are not invited. Not invited!” The last bit rose to a shriek as Reese covered most of the room in one stride and loomed over her, placing his hands down on the mattress on either side of her.

  “No, Leah,” he said, looking into her eyes as she shrank away from him. “You gave all vampires an open invitation when you started your nightly party here. You can’t take it away now.”

  “Not all vampires. Anyway, you can’t hurt me.” Richards’s voice was more shaky than certain, but she sat up a little straighter as she spoke. “The Sanguinary promised to protect me.”

  Bingo.

  Tilting his head so that his cheek brushed against her hair as he leaned in, Reese whispered, “The Sanguinary isn’t here, Leah.”

  She whimpered. “Please don’t bite me.”

  I stepped into the room and leaned one shoulder against the wall, crossing my arms. Richards’s eyes flickered toward me, and then back to Reese.

  “Look at me, not her,” the vampire said. “She can’t help you.”

  I shrugged.

  “They’ll kill me if I talk,” she whispered.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t.” Reese’s grin was filled with an unholy delight as he leaned in and sniffed her neck.

  Richards let out a little moan. “It’s blood magic.”

  Reese pulled back a little. “How does that work?”

  “Every time a vampire takes blood, it draws power too. Magic. You feel it, don’t you? When you take blood, you feel the power it can give you.”

  If I hadn’t been watching so closely, I might not have seen Reese’s split second of complete stillness. He might not have known about the blood magic beforehand, but he knew exactly what the clinic director was talking about. He recovered quickly, though.