The Bloodline Series Box Set

by Gabriella Messina

  Sam quickly slipped off her heavy jacket and pushed it into Ronne’s arms.

  “Sam? What the hell!”

  “I’ll explain later.” Sam took off running before Ronne could say another word, the cold air burning into her nose and throat as she sprinted up Fifth Avenue in pursuit of the two men. Ahead, she saw Camo and then Vincent turn right onto 57th Street and disappear behind Trump Tower. Mentally Sam began running through the buildings that would be there, searching for possible alleyways they might take their impending fight into out of sight of others. She rounded the corner soon after...

  Camo and Vincent... were gone.

  “Dammit!” Sam gasped for breath as her eyes scanned the area, looking for any sign of them. She focused her hearing, always good but infection with the Lycanthropic Virus had made it even keener and she’d acquired the ability to focus it when she wanted to. She tasted the air, looking for any trace of Vincent, knowing where he was Camo would be, too. Calming her breathing, Sam parted her lips, the tip of her tongue touching the bottom lip. It looked ridiculous, like a dog caught mid-pant, but she’d found in the months since her first change it was the quickest way to home in on someone’s scent, to get the greatest olfactory exposure.

  There you are, she thought as the strong, masculine scent of Vincent poured over her. He wasn’t far. Sam turned in a slow circle, inhaling as she did to find what direction the scent was coming from. Then she stopped... It was there, ahead of her maybe fifty feet or so. There was an alleyway up ahead on the right, a sizable one meant for larger delivery trucks to easily back in and leave their cargo, freeing the street from the clutter that made difficult driving on the streets even more complicated. One more inhalation to be sure – and to bask in the scent of the Irishman – then Sam hurried forward.

  As she neared the alleyway entrance, Sam slowed and drew her gun. She didn’t have the hi-tech mercury-filled bullets loaded that Vincent would most likely have, but her standard-issue bullets would slow Camo down, to be sure. She stepped forward quickly and quietly, both hands holding the gun in a lowered and ready position in front of her. She paused to peek around the corner of the alleyway and frowned.

  They were nowhere in sight. There were several dumpsters lining the dark passage, and a medium-sized delivery truck parked close to the loading area of one of the adjacent businesses, but beyond that, nothing.

  No, not nothing... They were still here somewhere, both of them. Sam could smell them, even over the garbagy smells emanating from the dumpsters. And she could hear them now, the sounds of a scuffle coming from somewhere...

  The truck. Sam heard the vibrations of impact, something large and heavy slamming against the inside walls of the vehicle’s cargo area. She couldn’t see the rear of the truck from where she was, but she presumed it must be open and the pair had somehow made their way inside. She scooted forward, her gun still at ready, prepared for anything. Or so she thought. Moments later, there was another heavy impact on the inside of the truck, followed by another, and another. Suddenly, the side of the truck quite literally blew out and Camo came hurtling across the alleyway, hitting the wall of the opposite building... hard. He skittered down the wall, landing in a heap on the ground. Even from her position, a good fifty feet away, Sam could see he was bloodied and beaten thoroughly. She slowed slightly, keeping her gun trained on the unmoving form ahead of her.

  She felt the bullet whiz by her before she heard it, before she saw the impact into the crumpled form on the ground. Sam jerked back, instinctively turning her gun in the direction the round had come from, turning towards the truck.

  Vincent Kremer stood in the opening formed when he hurled Camo through the side of the truck. His hood was pushed back off his head, revealing his head and face. His hair was damply curling into tendrils... Clearly the exertion of beating Camo to a pulp had caused him to break a sweat. His eyebrows, heavy and with a slight arch to them, were currently furrowed as he scowled. His eyes were intensely focused on the body that was beginning to shake, the anaphylactic effects of the mercury ravaging the werewolf’s body from the inside out.

  Vincent jumped through the hole, landing lightly on the ground, his gun still in hand. He eyes flicked toward Sam briefly, but there was no warm greeting or flirty smile. Only the scowl. He stepped over to Camo’s body, watching for a moment as the slight tremors coursing through the body changed into full-on convulsions.

  Sam holstered her gun and stepped forward toward the tall Irishman. She could feel the extreme tension waves rolling off him and was puzzled by his cold reaction. She decided not to address it, though, opting instead for her characteristic flippant style. “We always seem to meet like this, don’t we?”

  He didn’t even look at her, and to Sam it really seemed as if he didn’t even want to. Something was definitely up. I mean, sure... it had been six months since she’d last seen him, six months since they’d spoken...

  “Vincent?”

  Vincent sighed, a soft almost-growl emanating from his throat, as he holstered his gun, pulled the hood up over his head, and turned to leave. He brushed past Sam in silence, stalking away.

  “What the hell?” Sam murmured, watching until Vincent disappeared out of the alleyway. She turned her gaze back to Camo’s body.

  The convulsions had stopped, and the silvery sheen was glistening on his body as it shivered ever so slightly and collapsed in on itself like a soufflé.

  Sam shivered, and quickly made the sign of the cross, her years of religious influence from her grandparents rising to the surface whenever death occurred, even if the dead were monsters, human or otherwise.

  She couldn’t pull her eyes away, though, and watched until it was truly over and the liquefied shimmering remnants of what once had been a human being spread out like a glass of spilled milk and ran toward the nearest storm drain.

  3

  NYPD 9TH PRECINCT

  Sam sighed, running a hand through her damp dark hair. The shower had been tough to get through, not because of any pain or stiffness, or lack of hot water. No, it was watching the soap and shampoo and water run down the drain... just like what remained of Camo had run into the storm drain. She shivered again at the memory and grabbed her brush out of her locker. Sam turned carefully, positioning her back to the locker before bending over, her hair hanging in a swath in front of her, and beginning to brush. The blood rushing to her head made it kind of hard to hear, but the sounds of the male voices on the other side of the locker bank were unmistakable. And loud. And they were talking about her...

  “She’s dangerous,” one was saying... Sam couldn’t recall his name exactly... Wilson, maybe? Her brush strokes slowed as she tried to hear all that was said.

  “She’s a loose cannon. Scuttlebutt is they demoted her after that thing at the hospital... Apparently, she was there... they found her personal piece there on the roof of the parking garage, along with pieces of her clothing... But no sign of Karolyi anywhere. And... when IAB tried to talk to her about it, she said she couldn’t remember anything. Including how she got out of there and how Lenny Jackson ended up half-dead and almost paralyzed a few levels below.”

  “He’s coming back next week.” Sam straightened, using her arm to fluff her hair back and quickly sweep it up into a messy bun. It was Ronne. She hadn’t realized he was in the locker room, too. They hadn’t spoken since she’d run after Camo and Vincent at the parade that morning. When she made her way back to Fifth Avenue and the scene of the initial altercation, Ronne had been unusually quiet, his eyes barely meeting hers. Not a great sign, and Sam kicked herself a bit at that. Ronne was a decent partner, but this had not been the first instance of erratic behavior on her part in the time they’d partnered, and the thought of having to go to the Lieutenant to get lectured and then paired up with someone new again made her stomach knot-up.

  “Yeah, but still... Something’s up with her, she’s—”

  “A damn good cop.” Ronne’s voice raised, as if he intended for the whole o
f the locker room and shower area to hear what he was about to say. “Anybody says otherwise, they’ll have to deal with me.”

  Sam quietly replaced her brush in the locker and grabbed her NYU sweatshirt out and pulled it over her head. She listened to the murmurs and movements of the others as they left the locker room... all but one. Sam adjusted the hood of the sweatshirt, then glanced at the open locker door with a smirk.

  “Hey, Frank.” She closed the locker door, revealing Ronne leaning against the locker doors on the other side.

  Ronne looked at her closely for a moment, then smiled. “I guess you heard some of that, huh?”

  “A little. Thanks... You know, for...” Sam trailed off, feeling suddenly awkward as she brought attention to herself and the whole situation.

  “Hey! No!” Ronne held up a hand, shaking his head vehemently. “Listen, you and me... we’re partners. And partners stick up for each other, help each other, work as a team.”

  Sam nodded. “Thank you.”

  Ronne chuckled. “Don’t thank me yet. That partner thing goes both ways. So...” He glanced around briefly before continuing. “What the hell was going on out there? And what happened to the guy in camo? And who was that Man in Black?”

  Sam grimaced at the label even she had given to Vincent at one time. How was she going to explain all of this to anyone concisely? Ronne was still leaning there, arms folded, looking on expectantly as Sam searched her memory for something, anything that would work to distract him and prolong the inevitable telling of truths that must soon be told.

  “It’s...”

  “Complicated?” Ronne chuckled again, his attractive smile breaking across his face yet again. “Yeah, I get that.” He looked at her a moment, a searching look that made Sam feel a bit self-conscious. “Listen... A couple of us are going to a pub in the Village... You want to tag along? Maybe a couple of beers will make it less... complicated.”

  Sam hesitated. She needed to be careful... But... She nodded.

  “Alright. Where are we going?”

  Ronne grinned. “Just down the street. A dark little dive of a place. You’ll love it.”

  4

  “SCRATCHER”

  209 E. 5th Street

  Sam twirled her cigarette lighter in her fingers, round and round, as she stared at her half empty glass of beer. The bar was a little busier than usual, perhaps because it was a Wednesday night and the students from NYU and the other schools located in the area were drowning their pre-weekend sorrows in a generous supply of ales and liquors throughout the Village. Sam had dug the scene for about five minutes when she was in college, enjoying the nights out with friends and the flirting with random guys. As time went on, though, after her grandmother died and Ivan had become more dependent on her, the friends faded away and random guy flirtations dwindled to practically nothing.

  She took another sip, drawing herself from her reverie and tuning back into the conversation taking place between Ronne and the other two cops who were with them. Thought they had both looked a bit leery when Ronne introduced her upon their arrival, the pair of Vice cops sitting with them had warmed up considerably after twenty minutes and two pints of Guinness. And that was a good thing, because what they were talking about now caught Sam’s attention quickly.

  “They’re calling it ‘PERV-E’,” said the taller of the two. Andersson was 40-something, big and burly and in possession of a carefully groomed blonde beard that would have made Sam’s pognophiliac college roommate melt with sexual ecstasy. His voice rumbled, not loud but deep, chesty, like a Viking or something...

  “It’s meth, plain and simple.” Andersson paused for a sip of his beer, then continued. “However, we aren’t dealing with uneducated meth heads here. These people know shit, know history. Hence, PERV-E.”

  Ronne sipped his beer and shook his head slowly. “Well, count me as uneducated, because I don’t get it. What’s the history?”

  Andersson looked to the female cop with him. Sam remembered Connolly from her Academy days. She was a crack shot and took no nonsense when out on the street. She also was a brain, and Sam recalled hearing that she was going for yet another degree attending an NYU night school program.

  Connolly took a quick sip of her beer and cleared her throat. “Back during World War Two, Hitler was always looking for some new way to fuck with the world, right? You guys no what the Blitz is, right?” Ronne and Sam nodded in response, so Connolly went on. “Right. Well, all the marathon bombing runs were doing the pilots in. Thing is, there just weren’t enough reserves to bring up, I mean, they were fighting a war on multiple fronts, land, sea, air... Plus all the people they had to station in the work camps.” Connolly paused, glancing at Sam. It was common knowledge among most of the “9” that Sam’s grandfather, Ivan Karolyi, had been a survivor of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau...

  And a survivor of much more than that, thought Sam. She flashed a small smile at Connolly. “I’m good. Please go on.”

  Connolly nodded and continued. “So, they needed to keep their guys flying planes and dropping bombs as long as they could. Hitler got his scientists on it in the labs and they came up with a drug. It was speed, essentially... crystal meth in pill form... and they even gave it a brand name... Pervitin.

  “Everybody knew about these guys taking it. Pilots would literally write home to their families asking them to please send more Pervitin.” Connolly paused and took another sip of beer. “Eventually, the U.S. started to catch on. We’re over there fighting these guys that seem to never get tired, never stop moving. Like they were...”

  “Superhuman.” Sam finished the sentence, her eyes focused on her glass of beer.

  “Yep. Once we figured it out, we started doing the same thing on our end, supplying our guys with pep pills to keep them rolling.”

  “So, this PERV-E,” Ronne interjected, tipping his chair backward and wobbling precariously as he spoke. “This stuff is the same thing?”

  Andersson nodded. “Someone broke into Adolf’s kitchen and took his recipe box, because it’s the same. I guess Jackson over in Narcotics has been finding labs all over the Five Boroughs, especially up in the Bronx and over in Queens. That four-alarm that happened last week near the L.I.E.?” He nodded. “Big lab blew up. Those chemicals are... volatile.”

  Ronne drained his glass. “That they are.” He looked at Sam, gesturing toward her nearly empty beer. “You want another?”

  “Sure.” Sam stood quickly before Ronne or the others could. “But I’m buying...” She looked at Andersson and Connolly. “You guys ready?’ Both nodded, and Sam quickly headed for the bar, weaving through the small groups of people gathered along her way.

  Thankfully, there was a bit of a crowd when she got there, giving Sam just the excuse she needed to push her way to the far side of the venerable bar and grab a few moments away from Ronne and the others. She slid in, her slender body squeezing between the bar chairs, and hopped up onto an empty one with a sigh of relief. As noisy as it was over here, it was a break from the effort of trying to maintain a front with her co-workers. Sam sighed and waved over the bartender.

  “What’ll ya have, luv?”

  “Three pints of Guinness for the table over there.” Sam gestured in the direction of Ronne and the others as she leaned on the bar, her chin resting on her hand. “And I’ll have—”

  “A glass of Prosecco... with a strawberry.” The deep, accented voice was familiar, and one Sam had not heard for several months. She felt her adrenalin rush a bit as his scent wafted over her, throwing her thoughts back to a cool October night in the ER downtown... Tall, dark and –

  “Jack Hudson.” Sam plastered a smile on as she said his name, turned slightly in the chair and found him standing much closer than she had anticipated. Even if she hadn’t had a werewolf’s superior sense of smell, she would have been overwhelmed by his scent. Jack Hudson was a rather perfect specimen, all broad-shoulders, muscular form and hair with just the right touch of gray to
give him a look of maturity belying his 40-something years. He smiled at her, his brown eyes dark and glinting slightly in the dim light of the bar.

  “How are you, Officer Karolyi? It is Officer Karolyi now, correct?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed, and she turned her head away as the glass of Prosecco, strawberry swimming inside, was placed in front of her. “I should toss this in your face for that one.”

  Hudson had the grace to look remorseful at that. “I am sorry, that was rude of me.”

  “Yeah. Big time.”

  Sam caught his eye as he was looking her up and down.

  “You look well. How are you feeling?”

  Sam chuckled. “Peachy keen, jellybean, considering my... condition.” She reached for the glass, delicately sniffing the Prosecco before taking a small sip. “So, what’s this about?”

  Hudson frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”

  “Plying me with bubbly, checking me out, dressed up all Country Club chic.” She gestured towards his casual dress pants and polo shirt. “What’s the occasion?”

  Hudson shrugged slightly. “Nothing that I know of. I often come here. I live near.”

  “Oh, I see.” Sam took another more generous sip from her glass, allowing the bubbly wine to tease her tongue a moment before continuing its journey down her throat. “Well, thank you.”

  “Of course.” Hudson took a sip of his whisky before he continued. “Since you’re here, though—”

  “Ah! Here it comes!” Sam shook her head, tipping the glass slightly so she could reach in and retrieve the strawberry. “What do you want? More blood? Skin samples? Bone marrow? What?”

  “None of the above.”

  “So, you’re not here to play doctor?” Sam slowly took a bite of the strawberry, licking the juice from her bottom lip as she stared at Hudson. It was flirting in the extreme, very unusual for her, but from the minute she’d first met Jack Hudson as he cared for Ivan, she’d found herself in a hormonal frenzy whenever he was around.