Only a monster would try to kill her own aunt and mother. They were her family—her blood. Though she supposed blood relation didn’t apply anymore, at least not for her. She was nothing more than an evil, soulless creature. It would be better for the world—and her—if she died. If only she knew how. Sunlight, crucifixes, and she assumed garlic as well did nothing against her. A stake to the heart might do it, but she couldn’t do that on her own. She would need someone to do that for her. Becky would probably volunteer for that, or Dr. Dreyfus. Probably even Jim would by now.
She wondered what Jim was doing right now. Had he destroyed his drawing and anything else he had made of her? Would he joke about her to his friends as that weird girl who thought she was a vampire? Or would he simply curse her name and burn any reminder of her?
She wished he could be here right now to hold her and tell her everything would be all right. She wanted to see the way he brushed hair out of his face to smile at her. She wanted to look into those red-brown eyes, to see their love. She wanted to taste his lips again on hers. She wanted to taste him—
“No!” She began to cry again, as she knew she couldn’t see him again. As the shadow woman had said, the beast had become harder to control. It wouldn’t be much longer until it completely took hold of her, until she was like an animal. Like an animal she would stalk and kill the living flesh she needed to survive.
She was still hunched over on the bench when the red lights flashed and the siren roared in her ears. She watched an ambulance scream past, on its way to some emergency or to the hospital. Emma imagined Aunt Gladys in the back, an oxygen mask clamped down over her face as she struggled to breathe. No, she hadn’t hurt Aunt Gladys, had she? She had thrown her aunt into the wall awfully hard.
Emma got to her feet to chase after the ambulance like a wild dog. She couldn’t catch up to it; the red lights faded away. She stopped and doubled over in pain again. It was stupid to think she could catch an ambulance at full speed. She would have to find a pay phone, so she could call her mother and make sure her and Aunt Gladys were all right.
Emma rounded a corner to see the red lights flash again, only now they were stationary. The ambulance had pulled up to Parkdale General. Emma watched as the paramedics took someone out of the back. From the size of the body beneath the blanket, it couldn’t be Mom or Aunt Gladys. She breathed a sigh of relief at this.
As she watched the paramedics rush into the emergency room, the proverbial light bulb went on over Emma’s head. Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? Hospitals had blood stored for transfusions. She could suck on a bag of that. Then she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about killing anyone.
She slipped into the hospital easily enough. The paramedics talked with the nurses at the front counter about a patient named Percival Graves. “Slipped in the shower at the old folks home,” one of the paramedics said.
Emma used this distraction to walk right past the desk, into the emergency room. Her body tensed; the beast began to howl at the smell of so much blood available. It would be so easy to find someone dying from a gunshot wound or knife wound and just finish him or her off, to suck what remained of their blood. What harm would that really do?
She shook her head. No, she couldn’t do that, not yet. First she would try the blood in storage, wherever that was. She tried to maintain her composure as she wandered around the emergency room. No one seemed to pay her much attention; she probably looked as if she belonged in an emergency room at the moment.
At last she found the storage room for the blood. This required a key, but her vampire strength made it easy enough to smash open the locker. Inside she saw rows of bags, all of them full of pure red blood—life. Her fangs lengthened in anticipation as she reached for the nearest of these bags, not concerned with what type it might be.
The moment the blood entered her mouth, she knew she had made a mistake. The blood tasted like spoiled milk. She tried to force it down, but it wouldn’t stay down. She spat the blood on the floor of the room and dropped the bag as well.
She tried another bag and another with an identical result. She couldn’t drink this blood. Eyes that glowed like an ambulance’s lights stared at her from a corner of the room. A pair of white fangs shone in the darkness. “Of course you can’t drink that,” the shadow woman said. “Did you really think it would be that easy? You can only survive on the blood of the living.”
“I’m not going to give in. I’ll find a way to beat this.”
“Yes, you’re doing quite a job of it so far. By tomorrow you’ll be nothing more than a sack of bones. And you’ll smell even worse—if that’s possible.”
“I don’t care.” Despite this, her stomach cramped again. The shadow woman laughed. The laughter continued to echo in Emma’s mind even after she closed the locker and hurried from the room.
Chapter 20
At times like this, Emma wished she did have some of those vampire powers from movies or books, so she could turn herself into a bat or swarm of bugs or something that would make it easy to sneak around. She would have to rely more on old-fashioned cunning though for the meantime. She found a set of scrubs on a gurney and then ducked into a room to put these on. She looked too young to pass for a doctor, but maybe everyone would think she was a nurse or volunteer. To help the disguise, she took a chart from a door; she looked down at this as she walked so she would appear busy.
The disguise must have worked, as no one paid her any attention as she wandered around the emergency room. The smell of blood was stronger. The shadow woman’s words came back to her. She would have to feed on a living person eventually. But maybe if she chose someone about to die it wouldn’t really matter. It would be more of a kindness really, to put someone out of his or her misery.
In an examination room, she saw an old man on the table. He still wore a set of plaid pajamas, though the shirt was open. He was probably the Percival Graves the paramedics had brought in who’d fallen in the shower. She squinted through the door at him; he didn’t seem about to die. But he would probably be in a lot of pain, perhaps for the rest of his life. She could take that pain away from him and in the process save herself.
“Who are you?” the man asked with a British accent as she entered the room.
“A nurse,” she said. She tried to make her voice sound deeper.
Apparently it didn’t work. “You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?”
“I’m still training.”
“Is that a fact? You don’t look old enough to be out of high school yet.”
“I’m nineteen,” she said. She took a step closer to examine him. He didn’t seem in that bad of shape and from what she could see, he was in good spirits too. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.” He tapped his left hip. “This one’s always given me trouble since I hurt it in the war. That’s World War II to you, lassie.”
“That’s too bad.” She reached his bedside and stared at the loose flesh of his neck. “I guess you’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you?”
“I could use an aspirin or two or maybe some morphine if you got it.”
“I don’t, but I have something better.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Just turn your head please.”
“You going to give me a shot?”
“Something like that.”
“You don’t even have a needle.” His eyes narrowed at her. “Don’t try any of that New Age nonsense on me, young lady.”
“I’m not. Just turn your head and it’ll be over soon.”
He stared at her and then said, “I think I’d rather see a doctor first, lassie. Or at least a nurse who’s had her period yet.”
“I told you I’m nineteen.”
“That may be, but I’d rather not have a little girl playing doctor on me.”
The beast became impatient with this. It wanted fed. Now. “Damn it, turn your head or I’ll tear it off.”
The old man hit her in the face with a bedpan with far more force th
an Emma would have thought possible. She stumbled backwards to hit the wall and then dissolved into a sobbing heap on the floor. “Please don’t call security,” she said through her tears. “I’m just so hungry, Mr. Graves.”
“If it’s food you’re wanting, you ought to go to one of them missions. Or fetch it out of the trash cans.”
“I can’t.”
“You too good for that? You don’t smell like it, lassie. Smell like you’ve already been rolling in the trash.”
Emma could see she had made a mistake here. This man wasn’t all that unhealthy, despite the broken hip. To kill him would certainly not be merciful. “I don’t need food like that. I need blood.”
“Blood? What are you, some kind of devil worshipper? You go and skin cats in the cemetery and such nonsense?”
“No, sir. I’m a vampire.”
“Vampire? That’s a good one.”
She opened her mouth, but once again her fangs had turned shy when she needed them. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.” She put a hand to her stomach as it cramped again. “I’m so hungry. If I don’t get something—someone—to eat soon I’m going to lose control.”
“So you came here to eat me? Can’t say that was how I ever pictured I’d go. If you’d like, I could light some candles, maybe fetch a tablecloth from the cafeteria. Pity they don’t keep any vino around here.”
“I’m serious!” she said. “I don’t want to be this way, but I am.”
The man shook his head sadly. “Now see here, young lady, you seem like a good sort. Who’s putting you up to this? Is it some kind of hazing ritual?”
“It’s not a game! It’s real!” She could feel the beast stir at the closeness of the old man; the blood in his veins sung to her. “I thought if I could find someone who was old or already dying it might not be so bad. I could put them out of their misery.”
“We’re all in some kind of misery. Doesn’t give you the right to kill someone, does it?”
She turned to face him, and saw his eyes were hard and cold. He wouldn’t help her, not in the way she needed. “I don’t want to do this, but I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, lassie. Back during the war my squad got lost in the French countryside. It was cold and we were starving. We came across a farmhouse. The family had already run off, but we found some food left behind. As we were about to eat, some wounded Germans came by. Some of the men wanted to shoot them, to keep all the food for ourselves. They were the enemy after all. Sorry to say I was one of those. I was young then, like you are now. I was just thinking of my own survival.
“Our sergeant wouldn’t hear of it. He was a big bear of a man, had some scars from the last war on his face. He made us share the food with the Germans. Of course we didn’t like it, but none of us were brave enough to take him on. He told us, ‘Boys, you might be soldiers, but that don’t mean you aren’t still human.’ You see now?”
Emma understood what he meant. She might be a vampire, her blood might have turned black, but she was still human, at least in her heart. “Thank you.”
“No problem, love. Been a long time since anyone sat to listen to one of my stories.”
She smiled at this. Something about the man—and his stories—seemed familiar to her, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. “I guess I’d better go,” she said.
“Good luck, lassie.”
She walked out of the emergency room and hurried away into the night. As she did, she tried to think of where to go now. No one believed her: not Becky, Mom, Aunt Gladys, or even the old man. There was one person who would believe her: Jim. He had to believe her. Otherwise she knew she would be lost forever.
***
The bus ride into the city was torturous. She was fortunate in that since it was late at night, not many people were on the bus. This allowed her to curl up on the seat in the back, her nose against the wall so that she might not so easily smell the people around her. It didn’t really help much, as she could still sense them. She wanted to leap at them, tear open their necks, and suck them dry.
The old man’s words rang through her mind. She didn’t have to be a monster; she had a choice. She could still choose to be a human being—she knew Jim would help her with that. His love would steady her, remind her of who she was supposed to be.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise that the Rat’s Nest Studio was in the industrial part of town by the waterfront. Emma kept the card cupped in her hand as she walked around the area to search for the right address. The other hand she kept on her stomach, which growled constantly now.
She saw she had finally found the right address. Faded text on an old water tower identified the place as the Dibbler Sausage Company. Someone—probably Jim—had added a fierce-looking rat next to the sausage company name. Emma’s laugh echoed through the night air as she thought rats had probably been in the sausage to start with.
The gates weren’t locked, so Emma could walk right in. The problem then became to locate where Jim might be camped. She didn’t want to shout and wake up any strangers who might be in the area. Of course Jim might not be here at all; he might actually live somewhere else in the city and only come here when he wanted to work.
She had walked completely around the factory and was about to give up hope when she saw a single light on in a window. That had to be Jim. Or if it wasn’t, maybe it was someone who could tell her where she might find him.
She opened the door to what must have been the processing floor from the equipment scattered around. She heard rats skitter around in the darkness and thought of the one she’d nearly eaten in the alley. Did being a human mean she couldn’t eat an animal? Other humans ate animals all the time, as was amply documented by her surroundings. She shook her head and reminded herself of why she hadn’t eaten the rat: she couldn’t take a life, not even that of an animal.
The light came from what had been the office in the factory’s former life. Emma stopped at the bottom of the stairs and took her compact from her purse. She put a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. She looked sixty years old at least, her greasy hair gray and wrinkles tight around her eyes and mouth. As the shadow woman had promised, there was no meat left on her body, only skin pressed tight against bone so that she looked like a mummy.
She dropped the compact as she collapsed on the bottom step. For a moment she stared at her skeletal, wrinkled hands. Then she put them to her face as she cried—or tried to cry, as no tears would come out. Her body was drying out now; it wouldn’t be long before her bones turned to dust.
She couldn’t see Jim now. Not like this. He would never believe it was her; he would probably think she was some crazy old woman who had stolen the real Emma’s clothes. Her only option now would be to hunker down in an alley and wait to die.
“Is that you, Ted? I’m starving,” Jim said from the top of the stairs.
Emma bolted, or at least she tried to. She got halfway across the factory before she tripped on a piece of rusty metal. She pitched forward, onto the jagged remains of some piece of equipment. A shard of metal pierced her chest, through her right lung. She tried to pull herself up, but she didn’t have the strength left. Maybe this is it, she thought.
“Holy shit,” Jim said. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head. He wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her free. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Let me die.”
He didn’t listen to her, as she supposed he wouldn’t. He yanked her free and then helped her to lie down on her back. His eyes widened as he looked down at her. “Emma?”
“No,” she said. She didn’t want him to see her like this. Better that he think of her as some random lunatic who had wandered into the factory.
“I know it’s you,” he said. He put a hand to her hollow cheek. “I know your eyes.”
She tried again to cry, but could only make keening noises. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No, Emma, it’s all right. What happened?”<
br />
“I’m dying. I need blood.”
“Blood?”
She opened her mouth, grateful that this time her fangs remained extended, probably too weak to retract back into her mouth. “You see?”
“Holy shit,” he said again. “You’re a vampire?”
“Yes.”
“A real one? Not one of those Twilight fakers?”
Her attempt to laugh sounded more like a cough. “What do you think?”
“You must be real. Or you have really good makeup.”
He tried to help her stand, but she had become too weak to walk on her own. Even the beast seemed to have given up on her, content to let her wear down to nothing. Though he was shorter than her, Jim scooped her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs to the old office.
Inside was his studio. There were drawings, clay models, and molds with one thing in common: they were all of her. The entire studio was like a shrine to her, or at least as she had been. She saw his first drawing of her on one wall, mounted in a glass frame. There was a major difference, though: he had covered her breasts with a flimsy bra or bikini. She cough/laughed again. “I like it.”
“I was going to show you, but then you know—”
“Is he all right? Did I hurt him?”
“No, he’s fine. Just pissed off. He was going to call the cops.”
“He did?”
“He changed his mind when the director found out what he was doing in the gift shop.”
Emma smiled slightly; it could only have been Jim who had told the director about Dr. Dreyfus trying to take five hundred dollars of merchandise from the gift shop. “My angel,” she said. She wanted so badly to kiss him at that moment, but she was too weak to lift her head.
He bent down to kiss her. She hoped maybe it would be like a storybook, that his kiss would somehow revive her, but it didn’t work like that. She remained as she was: old and feeble, her body rapidly mummifying itself.
Jim carried her across the studio, to a mattress that smelled almost as bad as her. He’d probably taken it out of the trash somewhere and dragged it up the stairs. He set her down gently on the mattress and rested her head on the pillow. He looked down sadly at the floor. “There has to be some way to stop this.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 162
