The Bloodline Series Box Set

by Gabriella Messina

  “Hey! What about -”

  Vincent whirled around, nearly colliding with Lenny as the other man stalked along behind him. “Listen. The man, for lack of a better word, that is following us, is a werewolf. A vicious, nasty, racist, motherfucker of a werewolf. So are most of the werewolves that hunt for him. I know him and believe me, we don’t want Sam anywhere near him.”

  “He’ll kill her.”

  Vincent shook his head. “Actually... if he killed her, it would be a blessing. No, his plans for her will be much worse. And he’ll make sure we have a front-row seat for it. So, let’s try and get him as far away from her as possible, shall we?” Vincent could see the fear on the other man’s face. Lenny nodded nervously, and the two began to walk quickly up the ramp again.

  27

  SAM PEEKED THROUGH the small opening, her hand gripping the door handle so tightly her knuckles were white. She pushed the door with her shoulder, steadily opening it another half of an inch or so, then froze. The stairwell where she stood, the hallway on the other side of the door, all quiet. Too quiet. Not good, not good, not good. Sam realized she was holding her breath and slowly let it out.

  After leaving the lab on the seventh floor, she had been going from floor to floor via the stairwell, checking each floor as she was checking this one. By her count, this was the fourth floor.

  Sam parted her lips and inhaled, letting the air rush into her mouth and over her tongue, tasting, sensing. Then she smiled. Babies... She quickly pushed the door open and stepped into the hallway.

  Sam moved quietly down the hall. There must be someone or something around. She smelled again. Definitely baby-smell. NICU, maybe? Or just maternity? No, no blood. Only baby wash and baby formula and baby poop. Sam chuckled to herself, speeding up a bit as she moved down the hallway. She moved away from the wall, the tension relaxing out of her body as she hurried along. Nothing to fear from babies.

  The quiet was blissful, with nothing but her own footfalls to mar the peace. Sam glanced down hallways as she passed them, looking for someone, anyone, who could point her in the direction of the E.R., but there did not seem to be anyone on the floor. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be that disturbing; after all, hospitals were strict about regulating who could be in maternity wards and the nursery area. I’m surprised no one has stopped me yet.

  “Excuse me? Are you here to see someone?” Spoke too soon. The female voice was very close to Sam. Too close. Sam instinctively reached for her weapon as she turned toward the speaker, moving so quickly that she nearly knocked the young woman over. She was a nurse’s aide, pert and slight, the smell of the baby spit-up on her pink uniform causing Sam to wrinkle her nose.

  “See someone? No.” Sam reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out her badge. “Detective Sam Karolyi.”

  The nurse’s aide reacted immediately, her shoulders drooping as she gasped and started to shake a bit. “Did you come up from the E.R.? Is everyone all right?”

  “What happened in the E.R.?” Sam grabbed the woman by the shoulders, quieting some of her shakes, before asking again, “What happened in the E.R.?” The woman was breathing raggedly, either getting ready to cry or pass out. Sam didn’t really care if she cried, but she really needed her conscious. Sam stepped closer to her, bringing her face inches away from that of the nurse’s aide. “What’s your name?”

  The young woman swallowed hard and sniffed a couple of times before answering. “Kristy.”

  Sam nodded slowly, “Kristy. Nice to meet you, I’m Sam. Now, Kristy, this is very important. I need to know what happened in the E.R., okay?”

  Kristy took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.” She swallowed again, hard, before continuing. “I wasn’t actually there, so I don’t really know everything, but a nurse that works down there came up here and told us that something happened, a shooting or something. And she said something about a dog.”

  Sam struggled to keep her voice calm, to maintain control, though inside she was screaming. “A dog?”

  Kristy nodded, “Yes. She said that somebody in the E.R. shot it... And it disappeared.”

  “Okay, Kristy. Now, I need you to tell me how to get to the E.R. from here.”

  “But—”

  Sam removed a hand from Kristy’s shoulder, holding it up to stop her. “Kristy, my friends are down there. I need to get there and make sure they are okay. Now tell me which way I need to go.”

  Kristy’s eyes flitted toward a door nearby. “The police shut down the elevators. Take the stairs to the ground floor, all the way down. When you get there, turn left and go down the hallway past the cafeteria. You’ll see signs directing you to the E.R.”

  “Thank you.” Sam glanced at the door then turned back. “Do the patient rooms and the nursery have locks?” Kristy nodded a response.

  “Okay. You tell the nurses on the floor that the police told you to lock all the patient room doors. Don’t alarm the patients, just tell them it’s a precaution since there was an incident in the Emergency Room. Then go to the nursery, all of you, and lock yourselves in until this is over, okay?”

  Sam waited impatiently for the young aide to nod her assent before turning and rushing for the stairwell door.

  The stairwell door swung open and Sam stepped into the dim hallway. Dim. That was odd. Sam glanced to the left, then the right, then back to the left. The ground floor of the hospital, cafeteria nearby... Where the hell is everybody? Sam went left, staying close to the wall as she walked down the hallway.

  She half-expected to see Sister Norma or one of the other nuns from Holy Rosary standing at the end of the hall, watching carefully to make sure you were quiet, to make sure you stayed in a straight line against the wall, to make sure there was no “monkey-business.” No girls giggling... no boys whistling... whistling...

  Sam stopped. Whistling. It was faint, but definitely whistling. She moved forward slowly. The hallway ended at a T-junction up ahead and, as Kristy had told her, there was signage.

  Sam stepped into the junction and looked at each sign in turn: Cafeteria, Family Waiting Room, and Reception to the left; to the right, Radiology, a lab... and the Emergency Room.

  Then she heard it again. The whistling, louder this time, more defined. It wasn’t just random whistling; no, this was a song of some kind, this was a melody. And it was coming from behind her, down the left hallway. Sam turned around and peered down the dimly-lit corridor.

  A light flickered quite a way down the hall, but otherwise it was dark. She sniffed the air; no smell of coffee or breakfast from the cafeteria. That song... she knew that song... Sam took a final look back at the way to the E.R., then drew her gun and started cautiously down the left hallway.

  The whistling was getting louder and more defined. Sam could hear the melody clearly now; Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-sharp minor... The Moonlight Sonata. She remembered hearing it when she was growing up, one of Ivan’s favorite records to play on the old turntable. Ivan... Sam could feel the emotion welling up in her throat at the thought of him, the depth of emotion in the song coming back to her.

  Three days ago, they were sitting in the Seaport, talking about hotdogs and blood moons, and then... “Everything turned to shit,” Sam muttered out loud. Things were about to get a whole lot shittier, too. She reached into her pocket, pulling out her mobile phone and checking the time: 5:52. It would start soon, the change. She didn’t need to be roaming through the hallways of the hospital; she needed to find Vincent and get somewhere safe.

  Sam paused outside the cafeteria door, her hand hesitating over the handle. The whistling sounded like it was coming from inside. Perhaps a cook or a janitor?

  As suddenly as it seemed to have started, the whistling stopped, leaving a disturbing absence of sound in its wake. Sam could feel the hair on the back of her neck standing up but not because of the sound issue. No, something else was wrong. Very wrong. She reached into her pocket, pulling out her flashlight, followed by the H&K Match 9mm and checked the magazine
. Loaded and ready.

  She chambered the first bullet and grabbed the cafeteria door handle, hesitating only a moment before turning the handle quietly and pushing the door open.

  The room was dark. Very dark. Sam raised her gun up, the flashlight laying parallel to the top of the barrel. She switched on the light and began slowly panning around the room. Partially blinded from the glare of the light, she strained to see as the flashlight beam touched tables, chairs, and the metal buffet area near the kitchen. The light beam moved toward the doors to the kitchen. As the beam hit the windows, there was a scuffling sound from behind the doors, followed by a thud that caused the door to sway ever so slightly.

  Sam slowly walked toward the kitchen door, the beam of her flashlight becoming brighter as she got closer to the door. She squinted against the increasing glare and reached out for the door.

  The door swung toward her, knocking her backward and sending the flashlight and the gun flying into the darkness of the cafeteria. Sam struggled to regain her balance and turned back towards the door in preparation for whoever - or whatever – was about to come through.

  Inching along toward the wall, Sam ran her hands along the cool tiles and found a light switch. Hesitating for a moment, she flipped it. The fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker, struggling to warm up and light. She looked away from the disorienting strobe effect of the lights above and out across the cafeteria. She caught the dim light of the flashlight barely ten feet away from her.

  Sam glanced at the kitchen door, then stepped carefully away from the wall and began tiptoeing towards the flashlight. One step, two steps...

  The scraping sound of metal-on-metal punctured the silence mere seconds before a large piece of metal shelving swung through the open kitchen doors. It hit Sam in the back, catching her left shoulder and spinning her around before propelling her backward into the nearest table. The clattering sound of the table sliding across the floor echoed through the empty cafeteria.

  Sam groaned softly, clutching her left shoulder and wincing against the pain that the touch brought with it. Dislocated, maybe? She tried to move her right arm slowly, the pain sharp and intense... but her arm moved. Good. At least I can move it, if I need to. Sam had a bad feeling she was going to need to move it and quick. Using her left hand, she maneuvered onto her knees and reached for the table to try to get to her feet.

  “I should never have told Jack about you.”

  Sam froze, then slowly turned toward the source of the voice. Diane Weber stood in the kitchen doorway, a piece of shelving still in-hand. She tossed the heavy metal off to the side as if it was nothing, then stepped into the cafeteria.

  “Our whole operation... Everything we have been working for years to accomplish... All cast aside the minute he saw your blood. Your filthy, dirty, Zigeuner blood.”

  Sam got to her feet and smiled. “You mean, my Aryan blood?”

  Weber’s eyes blazed in anger and she swung quickly, punching Sam in the jaw and sending her flying across the table and to the floor again. “Bite your tongue, bitch!”

  Sam struggled to her feet again, massaging her jaw, wincing as she spit out blood. “I think I just did.” She stood up and rotated her right shoulder gently. “Hey, I think you fixed my shoulder. Thanks.” Sam glanced around quickly, hoping she could spot her gun and that it would be reachable in a minimal number of moves. “So, is that all you have for me? No epic Adolf uber-speech? Just a petty little racial slur?”

  In reply, Weber hefted a nearby chair and hurled it at Sam. Sam hit the floor fast, the chair clearing her head by only inches. She quickly began crawling along on the floor, feeling her way toward the flashlight and searching for her gun as she went.

  “What we are... The potential is immeasurable, what we are capable of... The ultimate in power. To taint that, to corrupt that with impure DNA would be so wrong. And if Jack Hudson were not so focused on himself and his delusions of scientific grandeur, he would appreciate that and act accordingly. But he has risked the integrity and credibility of the entire operation by not killing you immediately.”

  Sam stopped. The gun was barely three feet away. If she lunged for it now, she could be turned and ready to fire at Weber in... She sensed the hand hovering over her back a split-second before Weber grabbed her up, lifting her off the floor and whirling her around. Her hand quickly went around Sam’s throat. Sam struggled, pulling and digging at Weber’s hands and arms as she kicked and strained to breathe.

  “Jack has gone out of his way to protect you from us. Betrayed his own, marked us for the Wolfmörder’s silver bullets. I should have killed you when I had the chance.” Weber brought her face in close to Sam’s, her mouth near Sam’s ear. “Just like I killed that old man.”

  “You... Ivan... Park...” Sam’s eyes fluttered shut and her movements began to slow. She could feel the unconsciousness coming, like a veil hovering around the edges of her mind, floating and fluttering, making it difficult to think clearly. And yet, what she had just heard remained, like a crystal-clear lightning bolt of vivid color flashing through the opaque black-and-white that was descending on her.

  This was Ivan’s killer, this beautiful, dangerous “woman” choking her to death. The black veil was getting bigger and bigger. Sam smiled inside. She could feel the warmth inside of her... a baseball-sized area in her chest... and it seemed like it was expanding, filling her chest, then her abdomen. Is this what death feels like? It’s not so bad. The warmth was creeping into her extremities, the pain from her injuries melting away. Sam would have sighed if she’d had any air in her lungs to breathe out.

  Then, the warmth reached her head. Something was different. Sam could feel her mind coming back toward consciousness as the warmth got hotter and hotter. It felt like her brain was burning and that burning began to spread back down through her body, replacing the pleasant heat of before with, for lack of a better word, fire.

  Sam opened her eyes very slightly, her vision clearer than she had expected it would be. She could see Weber’s face inches away from her own, her eyes almost black. Actually, they were black. The same black eyes that tracked Ivan, hunted him down, attacked him, killed him.

  Sam could feel the heat building and building, faster and faster. She opened her eyes wide, looking straight into Weber’s eyes.

  Bitch.

  Sam brought her head forward quickly, her forehead colliding with Weber’s forehead. Weber started to stumble back, her hands still around Sam’s throat. Sam brought her hands up onto Weber’s shoulders and followed them very quickly with two knees slamming right into Weber’s chest. Weber gasped, the hit to the diaphragm doubling her over. She released her hands from Sam’s throat, her arms folding quickly across her abdomen. Sam dropped to the floor, staggering backward as she coughed and gasped, taking in deep breaths.

  Weber staggered backward as well. She was looking at Sam, the hint of fear glinting in her black eyes. Weber stumbled toward the kitchen, shoving the door closed behind her as she disappeared inside.

  Sam rummaged through the debris near her, looking for her gun. The heat was still there, deep and intense, as she took measured breaths and felt along the floor. C’mon, c’mon! Almost immediately, she felt the barrel of the gun at her fingertips. Sam lunged for the gun and in the same movement got to her feet. She turned and ran toward the kitchen door. Slamming it open, she stepped into the room; no sign of Weber. Then she saw it: the emergency exit door.

  Sam pushed through the door, stepping into a long bright corridor. Footsteps and the clang of a distant door echoed from the far end of the hall. Sam took off running, her gun in hand.

  At the end of the hall, Sam pushed through the lone door and into a stairwell. Another clang echoed from the floor above. Sam quickly ran up one flight of stairs, then a second, stopping on the landing in front of a door leading out to Parking Level B.

  28

  “WHAT TIME IS IT?”

  Lenny lifted his right arm, flicking his wrist to glance at a wa
tch that wasn’t there... Again. A month now since he’d lost the watch, a month since... Lenny shook his head as thoughts of what transpired on that venerable bridge a month ago came flooding back. Not something he wanted to think about now, with Sam on her own somewhere... Again. Irritated, he glared at Vincent. “I don’t know, six maybe? Why? You have somewhere to be?”

  Vincent stood very still; his chin lifted as he sniffed the air. “Yes, as a matter a fact, I do.” He needed to find Sam. It was nearly time.

  He could feel the pull of the moon himself, though he had long since learned how to suppress his body’s desire to change. Sam, on the other hand, would not be able to control it when it hit. He needed to find her, not just to help her through this process, a kindness that had not been shown to him his first time. He needed to make sure that once she had changed, brief as it would be, that she didn’t do anything she would regret.

  Vincent sniffed the air again. The parking ramp was drafty, the smells of the city wafting in; garbage and gas fumes, fresh bread and coffee, soap and sweat.

  The parking ramp itself, though, was curiously devoid of direct scents. Direct human scents, that is. “Something’s wrong.”

  Lenny heaved an exasperated sigh. “You want to narrow that down a bit?”

  Vincent glanced down at Lenny’s gun. “You have mercury bullets loaded in that, right?”

  “Some. Relax, man. It’s daylight. Dogs aren’t going to bother us out here.”

  Vincent clenched his jaw, taking a deep breath before responding. “Two things. One, werewolves don’t like to be called dogs. We are not dogs. Two, werewolves are not vampires.” Vincent found himself smiling, in spite of his annoyance. “Daylight doesn’t bother us.”

  Lenny looked at Vincent warily, his hand on his gun. “Us? You —”

  “Are a werewolf? Yes.”