“You went to the damned, infernal Feds last night,” she spat. “You told them that you and I had met with Capone.” She jumped off the bed, landing with her legs straddling me. I scooted away from her, finally managing to get my legs untangled from the quilt. My heart was racing and sweat was pouring down my sides. She stood there, raising an accusing finger at me. Had her nails gotten longer?
“You told those two fucking Federal assholes that Capone asked you to get the books for him. And do you know what those two pricks did?”
My back hit the wall and I stood up as I shook my head. “What?” I managed to say.
“They went and arrested Ralph Capone. Dragged him from his bed this morning in front of his family.”
“Look,” I said, holding up my hands. “I didn’t have a choice. They made me tell them what I had done and who I had gone to meet. I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
“Liar,” Moira spat out the word. Her face seemed contorted, and I could see a sharp fang protruding from her lip as she sneered at me.
“It’s the fucking truth!” I yelled. “They said that they could protect my family, so what was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to keep your fucking kike mouth shut and do what I told you to do, you god damn piece of shit.” She slashed out with her right arm. She had moved so quickly that I was caught by surprise. I felt sharp claws rake across my chest, blood instantly welling up and soaking my shirt.
I turned and ran for the kitchen. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when she tackled me and I hit the floor. Her claws gouged my back, then she rolled me over and grabbed my shirt, pulling me up and off the floor. “You were such a fucking waste of my time and energy. Now I have no choice but to do my Master’s bidding and kill you.“ She looked at me, her green eyes seeming to bore into my soul. She licked her tongue across her teeth, flicking over two large fangs.
“You had such promise, Saul.” Her voice was softer now, though there was still an undertone of a growl. “You were going to be my ace in the hole, my ticket to freedom, but now I’m forced to destroy my own creation or be killed myself. Such a fucking waste.”
She casually tossed me across the kitchen, like I was some rag doll. I landed hard on the table, falling onto my favorite chair, which broke under me. The table crashed onto its side. I could taste blood in my mouth. “Moira, you don’t have to do this,” I pleaded.
“Yes, Saul, I do,” she looked at me with a mixture of anger and sadness. “I have no choice.”
She took a step forward and I managed to surprise her as I kicked out with my leg, knocking her feet out from under her. She landed hard next to me and I immediately sat on her, punching her in the face. My mom and dad would be furious that I was hitting a woman—they had raised me better than that—but I had been in enough scrapes in the neighborhood growing up to know that I should never give the advantage to an opponent, even if it was a girl. Besides, with those fangs, claws, and strength, I didn’t know if she could still be considered a woman right now anyway. Monster was more like it.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my groin and I gasped, the sound and air being cut off as Moira grabbed my throat. I tried to pull her hand free, but she had me in a vise-like grip. She leaned close and flicked her tongue across my cheek, and it came back red with my blood. “I could almost consider this foreplay, Saul,” she said, then bit me hard on my right shoulder.
Somehow I managed to scream through her grip on my throat. My vision was starting to grey and I couldn’t catch my breath. I continued to claw feebly at her hand. She brought her face up, my blood ringing her mouth and a small trail of it running down her chin. She seductively stuck out her tongue and licked the blood from her lips. “I’m so disappointed in you, Saul. If you’d only listened to me, none of this would have had to happen. But here we are, and you know what they say, when life gives you lemons…”
She tossed me back down. I hit the already broken chair, which shattered into pieces. I greedily gulped air, trying to breathe. My hands fighting for purchase on the floor, now slick with my blood. My right hand hit one of the broken pieces of the chair; part of the chair leg broken as a thick stake. Agent Wright’s words from last night came rushing back to me. To kill them you have to either stab them through the heart with a wooden stake or cut off their head.
Moira knelt down, her hands caressing my back, the sharp claws casually drawing blood. I grimaced in pain. “Shhh,” she soothed, sounding almost sensual. “Don’t struggle. Struggling will just make it worse for you.”
She grasped my left shoulder and rolled me over. As I rolled, I grabbed the chair leg and shoved it with all my remaining strength at Moira. I must have caught her by surprise. The chair leg hit her just below her left breast, my will driving it hard through her ribs. Blood immediately flowed from the wound, soaking her green blouse and dripping down onto my hand. Her eyes went wide in shock, and a small gasp of air escaped from her mouth, along with some frothy blood. She fell back on her butt, her right hand grasping at the stake, while her left reached out pleadingly to me.
“Saul,” she gasped. “Please, don’t let me die.” Her voice was soft and pleading. I almost felt sorry for her, and thought about trying to pull out the stake, but the past couple of minutes had been a rude, and very painful, awakening as to what kind of creature Moira really was. I wasn’t about to give her a chance to come back and finish what she’d started. More blood bubbled from her mouth, and her right hand was slick as it tried to grip the stake.
“Please, Saul. I love you.” She reached out with a blood-soaked hand toward me.
I looked at her, fear and adrenaline continuing to pump through my body. “I love you too,” I managed to say, then pushed hard against the chair leg, driving it in deeper and causing Moira to fall backwards. “But I think we should see other people.”
Chapter 25
I sat in the middle of my kitchen; blood seemed to cover everything. My body began to shake uncontrollably and I reached out to steady myself on the fallen table. I choked back bile and had to turn away from the sight of Moira. My eyes fell on the card that Agent Truesdale had given me. It must have fallen off of the table during the fight. It was sitting in a small puddle of blood, but I could still read the phone number. I needed somebody to help me, and there was no way that the regular cops would be able to do that.
I reached out and grabbed the card and managed to pull myself up. My head swam, and the room seemed to tilt wildly until I grabbed hold of the icebox. I took a couple of deep breaths and closed my eyes. I used to get really dizzy playing on the merry-go-round in the park as a kid. Each time I did, I would close my eyes and count to ten, and that made the dizziness stop. It worked again this time, too. When I opened my eyes, the room had stopped spinning. I had hoped that the blood and Moira’s body would have also been gone, but no such luck.
I headed out of my apartment and managed to get down the stairs without anybody—especially Mrs. Rabinowitz—seeing me. The last thing I needed was to try and explain why I was covered in blood to Mrs. R. The tenement had one phone in a small booth in the entry hall. It was damned inconvenient to always have to come downstairs to make a phone call, but what do you expect for five dollars a week?
I dialed the number on the card. The phone rang once before it was picked up. “Agent Truesdale speaking,” said a familiar, gruff voice.
“It’s Saul,” I croaked. “Moira and I just had a fight and she just tried to kill me. You need to get over here, fast.”
“She tried to kill you?” Truesdale’s voice asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you. But she won’t be trying again either. She’s dead.”
There was silence for a few seconds, then Truesdale said, “Fine. We’ll be over there right away. Don’t go anywhere.” He hung up.
I looked at the receiver, “And where the fuck wo
uld I go?” I asked as I hung up the phone.
I headed back up the stairs. Just then, Mrs. Rabinowitz came out of her apartment. Damn! She turned to greet me and gave a shout. “Saul, dear God, what happened to you?”
“I cut myself shaving,” I lied. I tried to move past her, but she grabbed me by the shoulders. I grimaced as pain shot through my right shoulder where Moira had bitten me.
“Saul, you need to go to a hospital. What will your mother say?”
I rolled my eyes. Last thing I wanted was to tell my mother. “Look, Mrs. R., I just got off the phone with the police. They are sending people over and an ambulance. I’m fine, really.”
“Why did you call the police? Did you have a burglar? You know I told you to get a second lock on your door.”
“Yes, you’ve told me a million times,” I said in irritation. “Look, I’m going to be fine. I just need to get upstairs and wait for the police.”
She let me go and stepped aside so I could head up to my apartment. I could see a look of determination in her eyes. “And please,” I said, giving her my best sad-eyed look. “Please don’t tell my mother. I will let her know everything as soon as I can. If you say anything, you’ll just scare her needlessly.” Mrs. Rabinowitz seemed to ponder this, then gave me a small nod. I smiled, then headed upstairs to wait for Agents Truesdale and Wright to arrive.
The two Agents arrived about 15 minutes later. I was sitting in my living room with the lights off, shaking uncontrollably. The sun was just setting and I was trying to avoid the harsh sight in the kitchen. Agent Truesdale was the first through the door. He paused in the entryway, and I could hear a muttered, “Jesus H. Christ” come from him. He stepped around the blood and walked into the living room. I stood up on wobbly legs and could see Agent Wright standing in the doorway, crossing himself and glaring at Truesdale.
“You know, Saul,” said Truesdale. “We wanted her alive so that we could ask her questions.”
“Fuck you,” I said, stepping into the light of the kitchen. Truesdale gave me a raised eyebrow as he looked at my wounds.
He pointed at me. “How much of that blood is yours, and how much is hers?”
I looked down at my wounds and shrugged. “About fifty-fifty, I’d guess.”
Two men wearing orderly uniforms walked in carrying a stretcher. They didn’t seem to show any reaction as they looked at the body. Apparently death was so commonplace in Chicago these days that nothing seemed to bother them, even a beautiful dame with a wooden chair leg through her chest. The orderlies opened the stretcher and picked up Moira’s body, placing it on the stretcher. She looked so strange lying there, covered in blood with a chair leg sticking up out of her chest.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked.
“We’ll take her to the morgue, for now. Then we’ll make arrangements to ship the body to Washington so the guys in lab coats can study her,” Agent Truesdale grunted. “We need to get you looked at. That wound on your shoulder looks pretty bad.”
I simply nodded; I guess I was in shock. But my shoulder was throbbing so I wasn’t going to disagree with Truesdale. One of the orderlies pulled the chair leg out from Moira’s chest, then covered her face with a blanket. They lifted the stretcher and Agent Truesdale said, “Let’s get you out of here.”
Chapter 26
“Ouch!” I winced as the nurse applied iodine to one of the wounds on my chest. She just shook her head at me but didn’t say anything. My right shoulder now sported several stitches and had been covered by a large bandage. My back still stung from similar ministrations that the nurse had performed earlier. Agents Truesdale and Wright had taken me to Cook County Hospital for medical treatment and I was sitting in a hospital bed in a private room. Agent Truesdale had used his authority to insist that I be kept away from other patients. I looked at Agent Wright, who was standing just inside the door watching the nurse tend to my wounds.
“I need to get to work,” I said.
“You won’t be going to work tonight,” Wright said. “Not in your condition. You just survived a serious assault. You need to rest.”
“If I don’t go to work I’ll be fired,” I protested. “And if I get fired I can’t get the books and then my family is dead.”
“We’ll take care of that,” Wright said. “We need you to stay put for our plan to work.”
“Plan? What plan?” I stared at Agent Wright. He flushed a bit, so I knew that he had said more than he should have. I winced again as the nurse swabbed another laceration on my chest. With the nurse still here I figured he wouldn’t say anything, so I decided to not press him. “Never mind,” I said. “As long as there actually is a plan.”
Wright looked relieved. “Agent Truesdale is going to talk to your supervisor. You won’t have any problems at work.”
The nurse finished applying the last bandage to my chest. As she cleaned up her materials, a doctor entered the room. He wore a starched white lab coat and was smoking a cigarette. He walked over to my bed without acknowledging either Agent Wright or the nurse and grabbed my wrist to check my pulse. Apparently he was satisfied that I was still alive, because he then roughly pulled off the bandage on my shoulder.
“Aaaa!” I nearly screamed.
My complaint went unnoticed as the doctor probed my wound. I wanted to punch him for the pain he was causing me, even though I suppose that he was just doing his job, but he could have been a bit gentler with his touch. He grunted and was apparently satisfied as he reapplied my bandage. He then pulled down my hospital gown and checked the bandage that they’d applied to my stomach wound. Thankfully he pulled this one off more gently than the one on my shoulder. He tutted to himself as he looked at the wound; I was not relieved by the sound. He then leaned down to take a deep sniff. Is he checking me for gangrene or something? He stood up and reapplied that bandage as well.
“You’re pretty lucky, Mr. Smith,” he said around the cigarette. Smith? Who’s Mr. Smith? He took the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed at my shoulder with it. “That dog bite doesn’t look so bad.” Dog bite? I gave Agent Wright a quizzical look and he merely shrugged his shoulders.
“But that stomach wound looks worse,” the doctor continued. “How long have you had it?”
I shrugged, looking at Agent Wright for guidance. Receiving none, I said, “A couple of days, I guess?”
“How’d you get it?”
“Umm…a neighbor’s dog bit me,” I lied. It was interesting how easily the lies were coming to me now. I must be hanging out with the wrong sort of people.
“You may want to check to make sure it’s not rabid or something.” The doctor pointed again with his cigarette, but to my stomach wound this time. “That wound’s not healing like it should. It’s not septic yet, but we need to keep an eye on it to make sure that it doesn’t get any worse.” He picked up my chart and made some notations on it.
“We’re going to keep you here overnight,” said the doctor, looking up from the chart. “Just to keep an eye on you. I want to make sure that there’s no infection in your shoulder and to see if your stomach wound looks any better in the morning.” He hung the chart on a peg at the foot of my bed. “Have a good night,” he nodded to Agent Wright as he left the room.
The nurse followed him out of the room and I was left alone with Agent Wright. “So what now?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and rubbed his hand across a day’s growth of stubble. He looked as tired as I felt. “We had hoped that your girlfriend would have been able to help us, maybe even give us a lead on Capone that we might be able to use. Now, I don’t know. Without her we don’t have anything.”
“Do you think Capone’s a...you know.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word right now.
“I’m not sure. Until now I would have said no, even though his ruthlessness and ability to charm pretty much anybody seems to fi
t with what we do know about vampires.” He shrugged again. “But no mention of it has shown up in any of our files and we’ve never heard even a whisper from any of our informants. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Agent Truesdale said walking into the room. “He’s one of them. I can feel it in my gut.”
He turned and looked at me. “So, you gonna live or what?”
I guess that was Truesdale’s way of caring. I nodded. My body ached all over, and the bandages were starting to itch, so I figured that meant that I was going to live.
“Good. Stay that way.” Agent Truesdale turned to leave.
“Wait. I need some answers,” I demanded.
Agent Truesdale stopped in the doorway. “No, you don’t,” he said in his gruff voice.
“The hell I don’t!” I shot back. “The reason I’m here is because Moira attacked me. She was going to kill me!”
Agent Truesdale looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then turned around and crossed his arms as if to say, “So what?”
“Moira accused me of talking to the Feds and told me that the Feds had arrested Ralph Capone. So, that means that somebody knew that I met with the two of you. She told me that she was sent by her ‘master’ to kill me because of Ralph’s arrest! So since I assume that you two went and arrested Ralph, then it’s your fuckin’ fault that I’m in here! I think I deserve to know what the fuck is going on!” I ended my tirade practically yelling, causing a passing nurse to stick her head into the room.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “The doctor has given strict orders for this patient to not be disturbed.”
Agent Wright pulled out his wallet and showed her his badge. With a smile he said, “We’re almost done here ma’am,” before politely pushing her out of the room and closing the door. He then turned around and asked, “Did she tell you who her master was?”
Unremarkable Page 13
