“Good morning. Are you Amy?” I asked her. She was probably barely eighteen and had an aura of innocence about her. Even though I suspected that she and her boyfriend Troy had most likely lost their virginity at a young age—perhaps when they were freshmen—when I looked at this young woman, I still got the impression that she was a nice girl who went to church with her family every Sunday.
She turned around and looked us over and gave a nod, waiting for one of us to speak again. I could tell she was trying to size us up and wondered what these strange men that she had never before seen might want of her.
“This is Detective Kenny Johnson and I’m Tim Anderson. Do you think maybe we could buy you a cup of coffee or a Coke and have a little talk about what happened to Troy?”
Her eyes lit up a bit. She seemed almost relieved to see us. A smile passed over her face before giving us a nod, directing our attention across the street.
“We can go over to Betty’s,” Amy said.
Betty’s was a quaint little diner in the heart of town and seemed no bigger than my kitchen at home. We took a seat at one of the outdoor tables, settling in under a tent where the ears of nosy neighbors could not hear so easily. In small towns such as Toledo there were always one or two ears lurking around corners or hiding within earshot of people like us. I placed three Styrofoam cups in front of us, each filled with hot black coffee. Bad coffee, I might add. No amount of cream or sugar could repair its damage to my tongue. I leaned forward and asked our young friend to tell us what she could remember about the night Troy disappeared.
Amy took a long breath as she drank her coffee and she would not look at us for the longest moment. But then she began softly and I could see it was hard for her. The story was slowly coming from her. Her pain was very real and obvious in her expressions. Her voice came out shakily.
“I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He never had liked to talk on the phone. He especially didn’t like to talk on the phone while he was in a car. He chose to do most of his talking face to face. He told me he would call me back and he never did,” Amy told us.
“I didn’t think anything of it. Like I said, he never really liked to talk on the phone and especially when he was driving.”
Why was she repeating her words to me? Had she thought that we hadn’t heard them the first time? Or could she truly not remember saying them?
“And he always made a point to get off the phone when he drove through the park. Really bad service there, you know. Always lost the signal going through.”
My eyes found Kenny’s and I could see he was thinking the same thing. This young woman was worn out by her ordeal. Her mind was becoming unreliable due to grief and loss.
“Did he say anything strange or out of the ordinary?” Kenny asked her.
“No, nothing I can remember.”
I took a drink of the horrid coffee and noticed that the girl was wearing a necklace with a Wiccan pentacle symbol. (It was what most people mistakenly call a pentagram, the five-sided star.) I had been doing a lot of reading lately and knew most of the symbols pertaining to the Wiccan religion. I liked the design right off. In fact, that is what I told her in an effort to ground her memories a bit.
“I like your necklace, Amy.” She looked down at it and grabbed it up with two small fingers and smiled as if it made her think of her boyfriend.
“Troy gave it to me,” she told us proudly. “Mostly to scare my parents with all that devil stuff.”
I realized that my assumption that Amy was a good little Christian girl might have been a bit askew.
“Actually, it means just the opposite,” I began. “It’s a protection against evil. It’s really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.”
“Okay, thank you, Anne Rice,” Kenny said as a joke and I read his tone as clear as day. He wanted me to shut up and let her talk.
“Here’s the deal, miss. The way Troy disappeared… something’s not right. So if you’ve heard anything…”
It was the way she responded to those words—something in her eyes that I recognized. It was a glimmer of a clue to all this chaos.
“What is it?” I asked gently.
“Well, I mean with all these guys going missing, people talk. You know?”
“What do they say?” I asked.
“Just ghost stories. And after all those vampire movies came out, people are saying that it might be them too. Supposedly this strange girl walks Jackson Highway. She hitchhikes. People pick her up and then they disappear forever.”
“How long has this been going on?” Kenny asked. He was suddenly into this.
“Well, we’ve always heard the tales, but it’s really only been happening for the last few months. That’s when it got really bad.”
“Do you know any of the other boys that have disappeared?”
“Yeah, one. Tommy Collins. But I think he is still camping.”
“Camping?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah, you should check with the rangers at the park. See if they’ve heard from Tommy at all.”
“What park?’ I asked her, completely lost now. And I could see that Kenny was equally confused as we looked at one another.
“Lewis and Clark State Park.”
Chapter 11
9:00 a.m., May 6
Another moment passed inside the Brain Fingerprinting Lab in Seattle and she dialed the number. The phone rang and rang and she hung up before Kenny picked it up.
As always, the world was divided by time and space. Especially time. She would have thought more about this, had she had a moment to think, but she rarely did. She was over thirty and her small frame still had its shape. Her blond hair and green eyes had always seemed to work for her beauty, but they also worked against the toughness she tried so hard to portray. She was not yet bowed down by years of selfless work, but she was more than aware of her limitations. Her father made it very clear that she had plenty of limitations and that she could never live up to her name.
That wasn’t fair, really. She did better than her best. She did better than most, even her male counterparts. But she did her best to put her pride aside—it was unbecoming of her. Unworthy of her place in the world and certainly unworthy of her promise made to her mother more than twenty years before.
She now had doubts about those promises, but she’d admitted them to no one, not even to her father. He never understood why a woman tried so hard in a world run by men. He never understood why she wanted to be a cop. Her failure to discuss her ambitions was more troubling to him than even she knew. But the secret was not his to know. It was a promise she had made long ago, from one strong independent woman to another, and it was no business of the men that ran the game.
She wondered even now—all these years later—if her father (the stereotypical hardnosed cop) would even understand if she told him why she needed to go into law enforcement. Because she had doubts herself. She was at the age when you seemed to look back more often than looking forward. She was wondering what might have been, despite all her accomplishments and her spotless service record. Would her father be prouder if she had a blemished record? Would her partner, for that matter? He was a man much like her father and just as much of an asshole.
She was Katrina O’Hara, or Kat—just like in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, her father’s favorite play. She was Kenny’s partner and needed to talk to him about the evidence he dropped off for analysis. She really didn’t like being just left behind while he investigated a lead without her.
What was she? His ‘little woman’ better left at home, waiting for his manly return?
They had only been working together a short time but already she didn’t like how he treated her. He wasn’t cruel, but he was overly protective. He treated her like she was delicate and couldn’t handle herself, when in fact she could handle herself just fine. Her father was a cop, and both her brothers were cops, so she only followed suit when she too joined the force. When she was assigned De
tective Johnson as a partner, she looked at it as a good assignment. He had a good service record and had been part of the FBI VICAP team the previous winter. That told her he was a man that could get things done. He was a man with numerous arrests under his belt and could claim several successful investigations that only built up his reputation.
But now she was not so sure. Things had not gone well for her so far in her relationship with Detective Kenny Johnson.
Kenny Johnson did not want a partner and that was most obvious to Kat. She was sure it had nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman. She had seen him with numerous women and he always showed them a great deal of respect and diverted to their fields of expertise. In his last major case, he was after a serial murderer, an FBI agent lost his life, his partner of twenty years retired—and Kenny never talked about any of it, ever.
It had been rumored that the FBI took over the case, and then it was closed. She never had liked guys who didn’t know when to shut up, but she needed a little something from him. Some real information and more than just his usual professional courtesy. She needed Kenny to talk. She needed him to treat her like his partner and not continually treat her like an assistant. Forever sending her out to get this and check on that. She was a good and capable detective and Kat needed him to see that. For if they were ever going to successfully coexist together professionally, she needed his trust.
She had been told that they were running that print against the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS. IAFIS is a national fingerprint and criminal history system that provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent search capabilities, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses for all branches of law enforcement. If there was a match, they would find it. But for now, she would have to wait. Kat knew that this method could take up to a week to get a match, if there was a match at all. She had settled down for a long wait.
Kenny had been very cryptic when he had called Kat several hours ago and told her he had dropped off a print for IAFIS and asked if she could take care of it for him.
“I need to know everything about that print. Please get back to me ASAP,” he had said to her.
But he had said nothing about how he had obtained the vial or what had led to its recovery. It bothered Kat to be left in the dark; she was quickly becoming sick of his testosterone-driven hero antics.
When Kat had checked with Dr. Colleens at the city morgue, Marty had informed her that Detective Johnson was with Mr. Anderson, his former partner. None of this made any kind of sense to her, unless Kenny was cutting her out of the investigation. But Tim Anderson was retired and no longer a police officer and unable to work crimes, unless he was truly just a consultant, like Dr. Colleens had said. Kat did not like it one bit. She didn’t like being ditched like some bad prom date and, most of all, Kat did not like Kenny Johnson.
It was some time before anyone came out to give Kat anything about the print. Finally, a man emerged from the confines of the back labs. He was an older gentleman, graying slightly at the temples but still sporting a look of resolve that told her he was a confident man at any age. He walked with a slight limp on his right side and was taking careful, slightly unsure steps. He stopped just in front of Kat and produced a print-out for her.
“I’m sorry, Detective, but we’ve run that print against every government and city database we have. There’s nothing, so far. We’re going to try Interpol, but to be honest, I’m not holding my breath.”
“Thank you,” Kat said and took the print-out from him.
“I’ll give you a call if I come up with a hit.”
“Yes, please do that,” she said over her shoulder with a sigh as she pushed the door open and then was gone.
Chapter 12
10:00 a.m., May 6
After the morning’s sunshine, the afternoon was quickly turning chilly as a thick mist rolled in over the water. Fabiana’s hair was beginning to drip with moisture as she stood in an open, but barred window of the red and cream building that was the Seattle Mental Health Hospital. She enjoyed the breeze on her face but the security windows were as close to open windows on Fabiana’s floor as they would let her get.
Inside, the place was virtually deserted. Only a few nurses walked from room to room and office to office. Fabiana gazed into their minds as if they were pieces of art hanging on a wall for display. Their thoughts were disorganized ramblings, almost incoherent. She tried to decipher the mess of emotional strife weighing them down and the duty they were sworn to do at the hospital. Fabiana was amazed how any of them could function in their daily lives with so much emotion battling inside them. Love and hate, guilt and jealousy—so much conflict.
How could anyone deal with so much and still retain some form of sanity? How could any of them keep hold of a coherent thought in their feeble little minds and not end up just as she had? How was it that someone as old and powerful and strong-willed as Fabiana could let something like petty emotion consume her in such a way? But those pathetic humans that seemed to ramble aimlessly throughout their daily lives—they could function just fine. They seemed able to go on and not try to take their own lives. It felt completely unfair to her. And as she watched them go about their day, she knew she could truly hate them, given a chance.
Fabiana scowled as she watched the orderlies work and make their rounds from room to room of the hospital. Never having a clue they were being spied upon. Never knowing that their every movement was being watched.
Fabiana’s mind was drifting down halls and corridors, jumping from person to person. A nurse waited in a hall and she walked briskly past the ward doors. Then there were those office walls that reminded her of steel dinner bells. The air felt foul with the stench of death. Fabiana could smell the death on all of them and wished—no, she prayed—it would not be so. The sweet and thick air of death which always felt gassy to Fabiana now made her feel cold like the dead, and the sensation made her sick.
They weren’t going to die. It’s just that Fabiana had been a bringer of death for so long to countless souls… Now that was all she could see on any of them. But not just the people of the hospital. No. That’s all she saw on anyone—even her protector, Tim Anderson. She could smell it on him most of all.
But she prayed it would not be true. Not him. Anyone but him. And Fabiana knew that if it came down to it, she would give her life for him. She would give it all up—all that she had fought for to regain her humanity—if it only meant saving him.
Fabiana was to stay in the 200 Ward, where a red line just inside her door warned patients in isolation not to cross. She looked around at the small hospital bed with its dry hospital blanket and restraints that were not needed at that time. Not that they would do any good for someone of her mental abilities. Why did she not simply escape like the last time?
Well, she had told herself it was for Tim—she didn’t want to run away from him—but in reality, she had no earthly idea why. If Fabiana wanted to leave, she was sure she could do so easily at any time. The metal restraints could be removed with only a thought from her mind. Telekinesis was only one of the abilities she still possessed from her time as a blood collector. After all, that’s precisely what she had been: a true blood collector. And the blood that she had collected had made her intensely powerful, even now in her human state. Fabiana’s mind was still very strong, more so than she wanted to let on. But now the doctors were the ones collecting blood from her. It would be ironic if it wasn’t so depressing.
As Fabiana continued her observation of the hospital from within her room, a snide laugh struck her with its familiarity. At first she couldn’t remember the last time she had heard it, but then it was there in her mind and she wished it had never been. The rain had not relented in Seattle and this had not seemed to deter the spirit, or memory, of a man long gone from her life. He had unexpectedly returned. He was back to remind Fabiana that she was a cold-hearted killer and that she always would
be.
“Who’s there?” she asked, waiting anxiously.
“Have you forgotten after all this time?” the smirking, raspy voice finally spoke again. And now that its words were resonating on the air, she was sure that she knew. Fabiana knew it was him. And she only wanted him to go. To go far away from her and to take his memories with him.
“Claudius?” she asked hesitantly.
“You do remember me, Fabiana the vampire. But not the vampire any longer. Do you remember me as well as I remember you, I wonder?” he asked her tauntingly. “Do you remember this?”
Then Claudius appeared to her, standing over her menacingly, and he didn’t look as small and insignificant as he had in her past. He stood proud with his greasy and stringy brown hair hanging over his blue eyes. A joyful grin was on his unshaven face and his gut was protruding outward more than ever. And he didn’t really look all that different from the last time she had seen him, she thought.
Claudius grabbed her face in his cold hands and it hurt her. It hurt a lot. Fabiana’s mind was overcome with images, her thoughts obliterated like a fragile sandcastle washed away by the relentless ocean with destructive and all-consuming waves.
Do you remember this man, Fabiana?
Claudius’ harsh voice echoed in her mind and she could not stop him.
This poor victim was one of thousands you took. And took for granted. I’m sure he meant very little to you. Just food, right? Well, he’s here with me and so are all the others. We’ve been waiting for this day, you see. This day when we can come for you the way you came for all of us. Your sanity will be our blood. Our hunger is great.
It was 75 years after the death of Christ. In Pompeii, Italy. Do you remember? You were young by comparison—not even dead for 25 years yet, but not that young, really. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Tell me, do you?
The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream Page 7
