4 Blood Pact

by Tanya Huff

  She’d heard of Indian fakirs putting themselves into trances so deep they appeared to be in comas or dead and she supposed this was a North American variation on that ability; that when her intruder had found himself trapped, he’d lowered his metabolism to conserve resources. Catherine had no idea what he’d been hoping to accomplish as he seemed, at the moment, totally unable to defend himself, but she had to admit that, minor point aside, it was a pretty neat trick.

  Finally, she had number nine help her remove his leather trench coat and, rolling up his shirtsleeve, she pulled two vials of blood. She’d intended to take three but, with the intruder’s blood pressure so low, two used up all the time she was willing to allow. Closing the box, she headed for one of the tables at the other end of the lab. Running the blood work might give her some answers to this trance thing but, even if it didn’t, she could always use the information later should the intruder happen to die.

  “Look, Detective Fergusson, I’m aware that my mother died of natural causes before the crime was committed and I realize that this makes her a very low priority but . . .”

  “Ms. Nelson.” Detective Fergusson’s voice hovered between exasperation and annoyance. “I’m sorry you’re upset, but I’ve got a murdered teenager on my hands. I’d like to find the asshole who offed him before I’ve got another body bag to deal with.”

  “And you’re the only detective on the force?” Vicki’s fingernails beat a staccato rhythm against the pay phone’s plastic casing.

  “No, but I am the one assigned to the case. I’m sorry if that means I can’t give your mother the attention you think she deserves . . .”

  “The cases,” she snarled, fingers curling into a fist, “are connected.”

  Behind her, leaning on the open door of the phone booth, Celluci rolled his eyes. Even without hearing the other end of the conversation, he had some sympathy for Fergusson’s position. Although she could be surgically delicate with a witness, Vicki tended to practice hammer and chisel diplomacy on the rest of the world.

  “Connected?” The exasperation vanished. “In what way?”

  Vicki opened her mouth then closed it again with an audible snap. My mother has been turned into a monster. Your boy was killed by a similar monster. We find my mother, I guarantee we find your perp. How do I know all this? I can’t tell you. And he’s missing anyway.

  Shit.

  She shoved at her glasses. “Look, call it a hunch, okay?”

  “A hunch?”

  Realizing that she’d have had much the same reaction had their positions been reversed, her tone grew sharply defensive. “What’s the matter? You’ve never had a hunch?”

  Anticipating disaster should the current conversation continue, Celluci used a shoulder to lever Vicki back from the phone, then dragged the receiver from her grip. Scowling, she allowed his interference with ill grace and the certain knowledge that antagonizing the Kingston Police was a bad idea.

  “Detective Fergusson? Detective-Sergeant Celluci. We’ve determined that one of Dr. Burke’s grad students, a Donald Li, at least superficially fits the description of Tom Chen. We’d appreciate it if you could call the registrar’s office and have them release a copy of his student photo so we can check his identity with the funeral parlor.”

  Detective Fergusson sighed. “I called the registrar’s office yesterday.”

  “And they released the photos of the medical students. But Li isn’t studying medicine and they won’t release his picture without another call from you.”

  “Why do you think Li’s involved?”

  “Because he works for Dr. Burke, as did Marjory Nelson.”

  “So. What make you think Dr. Burke’s involved?”

  “Because she appears to have the scientific qualifications to raise the dead as well as access to the necessary equipment.”

  “Give me a break, Sergeant.” Incredulity fought with anger for control of Fergusson’s voice. “How did you come up with raising the fucking dead?”

  Good question, Celluci admitted, ignoring a glare from Vicki so intense that he could almost feel its impact. Making a quick decision—given that the police were already involved—he pulled out as much of the truth as he thought Fergusson could swallow. “Ms. Nelson thought she saw her mother outside the apartment window, two nights ago.”

  “Her dead mother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Walking around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Next thing you’re going to tell me,” Fergusson growled, “is that her dead mother offed my teenie bopper.”

  “No, but . . .”

  “No buts, Sergeant.” His voice clipped off the words. “And I’ve listened to as much of this crap as I’m going to. Go back to Toronto. Get a life. Both of you.”

  Celluci got the receiver away from his ear just barely fast enough to save his hearing from the force of Fergusson’s disconnection. He hung up the phone with an equal emphasis. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk to him.”

  Behind her lenses, Vicki’s eyes narrowed. “And you did so much better? What the hell made you tell him about my mother? About Dr. Burke?”

  Celluci pushed his way out of the phone booth. She stepped back, giving him just enough room to get by. “This is science, Vicki, not one of the weird supernatural situations your undead buddy has pulled us into over the last year. I thought he could handle it. I thought he should know.”

  “You didn’t think we should discuss it first?”

  “You brought it up. ‘The cases are connected.’ Jesus H. Christ, Vicki, you knew you couldn’t support a statement like that.”

  “I didn’t notice you supporting your statements with much, Celluci.” With an effort, she unclenched her teeth. “I assume he’s not going to make the call?”

  Celluci’s scowl answered the question. And then some.

  “All right.” She hoisted her bag off the sidewalk and threw it onto her shoulder. “I guess we do it the hard way.”

  “You’re a lot more philosophical about this than I expected you’d be.”

  “Mike, my recently dead mother has been turned into some kind of grade B movie monster, my—what word to use?—friend who also happens to be a vampire is missing, in the daylight, and possibly captured. When I sleep, I have nightmares. When I eat, the food turns to rock and just sits there.” She turned to face him and her expression closed around his heart and squeezed. “I find it difficult to give a shit that local police don’t see things exactly my way.”

  “You’ve still got me.” It was the best he could offer.

  Her lower lip began to tremble and she caught it savagely between her teeth. Unable to trust her voice, she reached up and pushed the long curl of dark brown hair back off his forehead then turned and strode away from the Administration buildings, heels hitting pavement with such force that they should have imprinted crescent moons into the concrete.

  Celluci watched her for a moment. “You’re welcome,” he said quietly, his own voice not entirely steady. With a dozen long strides, he caught up and fell into step by her side.

  “All right, Catherine, I’m here.” Dr. Burke pushed the lab door shut behind her and walked purposefully across the room. “What is it you’ve found that’s so important I had to see it immediately?”

  Catherine came out from behind the computer console and offered a page of printout. “It’s not that it’s important, precisely, it’s more that I don’t understand what I’ve found. If you could just take a look at the results of this blood work.”

  Dr. Burke frowned down at the piece of paper. “Formed elements sixty percent of whole blood—that’s high. Plasma proteins, twelve percent—high as well. Organic nutriments She looked up.”Catherine, what is this?”

  Catherine shook her head. “Read the rest.”

  Although inclined to demand an immediate explanation, respect for the grad student’s abilities—manipulating the younger woman’s genius had, after all, been a main component of the plan
from the beginning—dropped Dr. Burke’s gaze back down to the printout. “Ten million red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood? That’s twice human norm.” Her brows drew in as she continued. “If this data on the hemoglobin is correct . . .”

  “It is.”

  “Then just what is this?” Dr. Burke punctuated her questions by shoving the paper back into Catherine’s hands. “A replacement for the nutrient solution?”

  “No, although . . .” Her eyes glazed and two spots of color began to come up on pale cheeks.

  Dr. Burke recognized the signs, but she didn’t have the time to allow genius to percolate. She’d had to reschedule an end of term meeting to come here and she had no intention of falling farther behind. “Think about it later. I’m waiting.”

  “Yes. Well . . .” Catherine took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her lab coat. She hadn’t even begun to consider the experimental applications yet. The ability to leap so far ahead, she mused, was what made Dr. Burke such a brilliant scientist. “We had an intruder in the lab last night.”

  “A what!”

  Catherine blinked at both volume and tone. “An intruder. But don’t worry, number nine took care of him.”

  “Number nine took care of him?” Dr. Burke suddenly saw her world becoming infinitely more complicated. She shot a disgusted glance across the room to where both number nine and Marj . . . and number ten sat motionless by the wall. “The way he, it, took care of that boy?”

  “Oh, no! He captured the intruder, and with only the most basic of instructions. There really can be no more doubt that he’s reasoning independently, although I haven’t had time this morning to run a new EEG.”

  “Catherine, that’s fascinating I’m sure, but the intruder? What did you do with him?”

  “I locked him into number nine’s isolation box.”

  “Is he still in there?”

  “Yes. He made a horrible racket at first, very distracting while I was working—especially since I had to do the whole job alone—but he quieted around sunrise.”

  “Quieted.” Dr. Burke rubbed at her temples where an incipient headache had begun to pound. Thank God, Catherine had been mucking about in the lab long after the rest of the world had gone to sleep. Had there been no one around to stop him, they would have all very likely been in a great deal of trouble. On the other hand, Catherine stopping an intruder was a mixed blessing, her grip on the world’s standard operating procedures not being particularly strong. “He didn’t die, did he? I mean you did check on him?” And if he’s alive, what the hell are we going to do with him?

  “Of course I did. His metabolic rate is extremely low, but he’s alive.” She held the printout higher. “This is a partial analysis of his blood.”

  “That’s impossible,” Dr. Burke snapped. With a captured intruder to deal with, she didn’t have time for the grad student’s delusions.

  Catherine merely shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”

  “No one has blood like that. You had to have done something wrong.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then the sample was contaminated.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Unable to break past Catherine’s calm certainty, Dr. Burke snatched the printout back and glared down at it, scanning the data she’d already read, looking more closely at the rest. “What’s this? This isn’t blood work.”

  “I also did a cheek swab.”

  “Your intruder has thromboplastins present in his saliva? That’s ridiculous.”

  “He’s not my intruder,” Catherine protested. “And if you don’t trust my results, run the tests yourself. Besides, if you’ll notice, they don’t exactly register as thromboplastins although there is a ninety-eight point seven percent similarity.”

  “No one has that kind of clotting initiators in their sa . . .” Ten million red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood . . . thromboplastins present in his saliva . . . he quieted around sunrise . . . his metabolic rate is extremely low . . . quieted around sunrise . . . around sunrise. . . . “No, that’s impossible.”

  Eyes narrowed, Catherine squared her shoulders. She couldn’t understand how Dr. Burke continued to deny the experimental results. Science didn’t lie. “Obviously, it isn’t impossible.”

  Dr. Burke ignored her. Heart pounding, she turned toward the row of isolation boxes. “I think,” she said slowly, “I’d better have a look at your intruder.”

  “He isn’t my intruder,” Catherine muttered again as she followed the other woman across the room.

  Palms resting on the curve of number nine’s isolation box—apparently no longer only number nine’s-Dr. Burke told herself she was letting fantasy get the best of both common sense and education. He can’t be what evidence suggests he is. Such creatures exist in myth and legend. They aren’t walking around in the twentieth century. But if the test results were accurate. . . There’s probably a perfectly normal, scientific explanation for all this, she told herself firmly, and opened the lid.

  “Good Lord, he’s paler than you are. I didn’t think that was possible.” She hadn’t expected him to look so young. Much as Catherine had done earlier, she pushed her fingers up against the pulse point at the base of the ivory column of throat. Thirty seconds passed while she stood silently, eyes on her watch, then she wet her lips and said, “Not quite eight beats a minute.”

  “I got the same,” Catherine nodded, pleased to have her figure corroborated.

  She reached to check his pupils but instead, her hand moving almost of its own volition, she peeled up a lip barely tinted with color.

  Catherine’s brow furrowed. “What are you looking for?”

  Her heart beat so loudly she nearly missed the question. “Fangs,” she said softly, realizing she was being one hundred sorts of an old fool. “Fangs.”

  Bending forward, Catherine peered down at the exposed line of white. “Although the canines are somewhat prominent, I wouldn’t go so far as to . . .”

  “Son of a bitch! They’re sharp!”

  Together, the two women watched the drop of blood roll from the puncture in Dr. Burke’s finger. It splashed crimson against the barrier of the teeth, seeped into sculpted crevices, drained into the mouth beneath. So slowly that they would have missed the movement had they not been staring so hard, the young man swallowed.

  In the long moment that followed, Dr. Burke reviewed a thousand rational reasons why this creature could not be what it had to be. Finally, she said, “Catherine, do you realize what we have here?”

  “Incipient percutaneous infection. Better sterilize the puncture.”

  “No, no, no. Do know what he is?”

  “No, Doctor.” Catherine rocked back on her heels and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her lab coat. “I realized I didn’t know what he was when I saw the results of the blood work. That’s why I called you.”

  “This,” Dr. Burke’s voice rose with an excitement she didn’t bother to suppress, “is a vampire!” She whirled to face Catherine, who looked politely interested. “Good lord, girl, don’t you find that amazing? That this is a vampire? And we have him?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” Dr. Burke stared at the grad student in disbelief. “We have a vampire break into the lab and you guess it’s amazing?”

  Catherine shrugged.

  “Catherine! Pull your head out of your test tubes and consider what this means. Up until this moment, vampires were creatures of myth and legend. We can now prove that they exist!”

  “I thought vampires disintegrated in daylight.”

  “He hasn’t been in daylight, has he?” An expansive gesture indicated the wall of boarded up windows. “The scientific community will go crazy over this!”

  “If he is a vampire. So far we can only prove he has a hyperefficient bloodtype, clotting agents in his saliva, and sharp teeth.”

  “And doesn’t that say vampire to you?”

  “Well, it doesn’t prove it. Sunrise may
have caused his metabolic rate to drop, but we can’t actually prove that either.” She frowned. “I suppose we could push him up against an open window and see what happens.”

  “No!” Dr. Burke took a deep breath and leaned back against number eight’s isolation box, allowing the soft vibration of the machinery to soothe her jangled nerves. “This is a vampire. I’m as certain of it as I’ve ever been of anything in my life. You saw how he reacted to my blood.”

  “That was pretty strange.”

  “Strange? It was incredible.” With her left hand supporting the vampire’s hip—he was heavier than she expected—she slid her right hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a slim, black leather wallet. “Now then, let’s find out who you are.”

  “Would a vampire carry identification?”

  “Why not? This is the twentieth century. Everyone carries identification of some kind. Here we are; Henry Fitzroy. I suppose they can’t all be named Vladimir.” Lips pursed and eyes gleaming, Dr. Burke turned over a gold patterned credit card. “Don’t leave the crypt without it, as Donald would probably say. Speaking of Donald . . .” She paused and frowned. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “Well, you see . . .” Catherine laid a gentle hand on number eight’s isolation box. “He . . .”

  “Has that damned tutorial this morning, doesn’t he? And I expect he was long gone before our visitor showed up. It’s his loss, you’ll have to fill him in later. Now then, ownership, insurance, ah, driver’s license. Apparently the myth that vampires show no photographic image is also false.”

  “I just can’t believe we have vampires in Kingston.”

  “We don’t. He’s from Toronto.” Gathering up the contents of the wallet, Dr. Burke tossed them onto a pile of clothes draped over a nearby chair. “We’ll have to do something about his car . . . no, we don’t. He’ll just disappear. Become another tragic statistic. He’s already living a lie; who’s going to look for him?” She patted the back of one pale hand, fingers lightly stroking the scattering of red-gold hair. “Of all the laboratories in all the world, you had to stumble into mine.”