‘Can I see?’ Lisa asked.
Leanne backed off so that her friend could peer down the microscope at the virus which made Dione work, and her supplicants feel like they were in Heaven. ‘It’s huge,’ Leanne said. ‘I mean, really huge. Why hasn’t anyone discovered it before?’
‘Vampires are fairly secretive about it,’ Winthrop replied. ‘I’m using “fairly” in an inaccurate manner, obviously. This lab is one of the few places where we have moderately free access to it. Here, let me swap in another you’ll know.’ He busied himself swapping slides. ‘This one is germanicus.’
‘Carpathian,’ Mike said. ‘And they aren’t all like Quade. Eddy Ross is a carpathian, so is Delia, the girl who works for him.’
Leanne blinked at him. ‘Mister Ross? The guy I buy milk from? The guy that runs a grocery store?’
Mike grinned. ‘That was kind of my reaction too.’
‘We’re everywhere,’ Dione said with a menacing tone as she walked in, ‘selling you groceries and driving your taxis. It’s a conspiracy of grand proportions. Could I borrow my partner? I’ve need of some police work.’
‘Oh, he’s not really needed,’ Leanne said. ‘We can get Doctor Winthrop to translate if we remind him. Mike’s just here as eye candy.’
‘I think I’m insulted,’ Mike said, getting up from his chair. ‘What are we doing?’
‘How are you on vice?’ Dione asked.
‘We’re very much in favour of it,’ Lisa said as she peered down the microscope. ‘You know, there’s an obvious difference in shape. This one’s kind of rounded. Pudgy. Dione’s is much more shapely.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Uh, I worked some vice cases when I was in uniform,’ Mike said. ‘Most cops get their shield that way.’
‘There’s a new drug floating around. The one you told me about, Lisa. We think it’s called Apollo, and it seems to make humans feel like vampires to a sensitive, and we need to know more about it.’
‘Okay, well, I have a contact I can touch base with. So do you.’
‘I do… Oh, yes. Leo won’t be selling it, but he may be able to find out who is. How easy is it to get hold of your man?’
‘He moves around, could take a couple of days.’
‘Then we’ll check in with Leo first. He’ll be at his club.’
‘What club?’ Leanne asked.
‘It’s called Kitty Has Claws. He owns a few places, but he likes to do business out of there.’
‘I know it,’ Lisa said. ‘It’s a strip club on the Upper West Side.’
‘How do you know a strip joint on the Upper West Side?’ Leanne asked, frowning at her friend.
‘It’s usually best,’ Dione pointed out, ‘not to ask questions like that. Mike, let’s go clubbing.’
~~~
Mike sensed vampire, more of them anyway, as they walked up to the back door of the club. He figured the feeling was coming from Bar, who stood there like a small, black mountain, accompanied by a smaller man, not that that was saying very much, with narrow, rat-like features who eyed them with suspicion as they approached. Mike figured he could smell cop, but there was also a hint of lascivious glee on his face at the sight of Dione.
‘If you want to see Mister Darius,’ the small man said before Bar could speak, ‘I’ll need to search you. Thoroughly.’
Dione looked him up and down. ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ she said.
Before he could reply, Bar’s rumbling voice sounded from behind him. ‘Miss Dione and Detective Williams are expected, Grimes. If you lay a finger on Miss Dione, I’ll be… displeased.’
Grimes cringed and when he spoke again, it was almost a whine. ‘But the boss said–’ He cut off quickly as Bar rumbled at him.
‘I’ll take you through, Miss Dione,’ Bar told them. ‘Mister Darius is taking a meeting on the main floor.’
‘Oh,’ Dione responded. Then she waited until they were well inside before adding, ‘Mike, you might want to forget you’re a policeman for a few minutes.’
Mike grimaced, but he said, ‘I think I’ve suddenly gone functionally deaf.’
‘Probably for the best.’
The main floor of KHC was, for want of a better term, sumptuous. There was a main runway/stage with the obligatory chromed pole at the end. Around it were tables set up on a tiered floor to give those at the back a better view of the stage. There was a lot of chrome, a lot of rich reds. The carpet looked hard-wearing, but it felt soft underfoot. Off to one side of the room was a long bar with a secondary stage at one end. Mike had been to exactly one other strip club, on a bachelor party outing for a fellow officer, and it had been nowhere near as nice as this.
Leo was seated at a table right at the end of the stage and there was a man sitting with him: white, forties, smartly dressed, but somehow slovenly. There was something about him Mike immediately did not like.
Dione took Mike’s arm and steered him off to one side. ‘We’ll take a seat out of the way until he’s finished,’ she whispered.
Mike nodded. The conversation in the middle of the room was definitely something he did not want to hear. Bar continued into the room to stand beside Leo’s chair with his arms crossed. Right now, Mike believed that if you looked up ‘menacing’ in a dictionary, there would just be a picture of the big man beside it.
‘It has come to my attention, Mister White, that you seem unable to last a week without resorting to violence,’ Leo was saying. ‘Were this brawls in bars, I would consider it a character flaw and await your eventual incarceration. However, you seem to take out your violent tendencies on your girls.’
White swallowed, pulling at his collar as though it was too tight. ‘I gotta be able to keep control of–’
‘A man who has to resort to striking a woman in order to “keep control” is not a man, Mister White. He is not respected, otherwise he would not need his fists. He is vermin. I do not employ vermin, Mister White.’
‘I, uh…’
‘For entirely economic reasons, your methods are unacceptable. A girl with a black eye does not attract customers. A girl with broken ribs cannot work at all. But, more importantly, such behaviour offends me considerably. Bar here finds it particularly offensive, don’t you, Bar?’ Bar obliged by rumbling something which might have been affirmative, or just terrifying. ‘Bar has been known to take considerable offence at a man who strikes women.’ There was another, louder, rumble, and White tried to shrink into his own suit. ‘So this behaviour will stop!’ Leo’s fist slammed down on the table to emphasise the point, and then his nose wrinkled. ‘That’s all I have to say on the matter. This is your last warning. Bar, get this wretch out of my sight.’
Bar walked around the table, grabbed White’s collar, and more or less dragged him out of the room.
Leo sighed as he watched Dione and Mike walk over to his table. ‘My apologies, Detective,’ he said. ‘I’ve put you in a delicate position. I knew you were coming, but that little prick needed to be dealt with urgently. Have a seat. Not the one he was sitting in.’
‘Wet himself?’ Dione asked. ‘Yes, I can smell it from here.’
‘I’ll need to get it cleaned before tonight,’ Leo said with another sigh. A gesture had one of his other men whisking the chair away.
Mike sat down, looked across at Leo, and said, ‘Well, from what I heard, you were asking someone not to hit women. That’s almost a community service. And I didn’t like him the moment I laid eyes on him.’
‘Mister White has that effect on a number of people. Bar is actually quite a mild man, but even he wants to beat White to death with his own spine. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?’
‘Oddly,’ Dione said, ‘it’s a matter of vice.’
‘I am somewhat familiar with the subject.’
‘There’s a drug started cropping up. It’s pretty cheap, possibly goes by the name “Apollo.” It’s a disinhibitor, quite a bad one from all accounts. Lisa told me about it because it made the humans takin
g it trigger her sensitivity.’
Leo frowned. ‘I don’t deal vampire-originated product, obviously, but I know the people who shift Eros and Warrior. I’ve not heard of this new one. You’re sure about the name?’
‘No. It’s what Lisa heard, but it may be going by something else.’
‘I’ll make some enquiries.’ Leo shifted his frown to a smile. ‘Can I offer you a drink before you go?’
‘We have another lead to run down,’ Dione said.
‘Oh, but my next task is so much more pleasant. I have some new girls to audition and your opinion is always valued.’
Dione shook her head, grinning. ‘Why I put up with you I don’t know.’
‘It’s my roguish charm.’
‘Yeah… Come on, Mike, before he has them doing lap dances for me.’ Dione got to her feet, followed quickly by Mike.
‘But that’s the best part,’ Leo called after them.
~~~
Leanne drank coffee and watched the still form of Juliana through the isolation room window. They were taking a break from quizzing Winthrop on all aspects of vampires they could squeeze out of him. Lisa had stayed with the old man to just chat, but Leanne had decided she needed more separation and had gravitated to the medical bay.
She felt rather than heard or saw someone come up to stand beside her and turned to see what very much looked like a cute, brunette teenager in jeans and a T-shirt standing there, eyes on Juliana.
‘Oh, uh, hi,’ Leanne said. ‘I’m Leanne. I’m–’
‘Mike’s girlfriend,’ the girl said. ‘I know.’ Mary had spent most of the last two days avoiding contact with Leanne and Lisa, but Leanne’s apparent concern for the carpathian filia in the isolation room had pulled her out. ‘She’s going to need a lot of help when she wakes up.’
‘I… just can’t imagine what she’ll go through.’
‘You can imagine some of it. You were almost forced into converting.’
‘I guess. I hadn’t thought about it like that. I was scared. Terrified, really, except that I had the virus to soften that. I’ve been so excited about… well, about discovering a whole new area of discovery, I guess, to worry too much about what might have happened.’
‘It’ll hit you. But you’re right, waking up a vampire when you didn’t want to be is hard.’
Leanne got the distinct impression the girl, who had still not given her name, was speaking from experience. ‘She’s religious. Anglican. I’d imagine that makes it worse. And her family think she’s dead so she can’t go back to them.’
‘Mine didn’t care.’ Shaking her head, the girl looked around at Leanne. ‘I’m Mary. Perhaps Mike mentioned me.’
‘Yes. Yes, he did. He plays that shooting game with you. I, um, got the impression you were older.’
‘I’ll be a hundred and forty-five in March. That old enough?’
‘Oh.’
Mary pushed down her irritation: the silly human knew no better. ‘Vampires don’t age. I was sixteen, and under-developed, when I was converted. I’ll look like this as long as I exist. I have an ID card which says I’m twenty-one and documentation saying I have a developmental condition to explain how I look.’
‘Hypogonadotropic hypogonadism?’
Mary’s eyebrows raised a little. ‘Yes.’
‘It can cause development to stop part way through a normal puberty so it makes sense as an explanation.’
‘That’s what Winthrop said.’ Trying to hide the fact that she was a little impressed, Mary turned back to the window. ‘She’ll need help. I’ll do what I can, but she doesn’t know me. Dione thinks you would be… I would like your help in getting her through this.’
Leanne nodded slowly. ‘I’ll do anything I can. It could have been me in there. You, um, didn’t want to be converted?’
‘I don’t talk about it.’
‘Oh, well–’
‘Usually. My father was a Presbyterian minister with a mission in the East End of London in the eighteen eighties. He never really wanted a girl. He had my brother, John, and that was enough for him, but my mother got pregnant again and abortion was obviously out of the question. So there he was saddled with a “whore of Babylon sent unto Earth to tempt the hearts of men.” His words. I was… fourteen when he told me that. I’d just shown the first signs of puberty and he gave me an hour-long lecture on how the local boys would “come sniffing around me” soon and I was not to tempt them. I had my first period when I was fifteen. I know, that was late even then, but the number of times I was kept on bread and water, or sent to bed without supper, I’m surprised I got as far along as this. Anyway, Father told me that this was a sign that Satan had set up shop in my body.’
‘That’s… sick. To do that to your own daughter…’
‘These were different times, Leanne,’ Mary told her, sounding more like someone her real age. ‘That said, if I could have torn the old bastard’s throat out after I was converted, I’d have happily done so. As it was, a pack of wolves took me off the street one day in June. Eighteen eighty-six it was. I was sixteen. They… used me, fed from me. I think they were a little surprised when I converted.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t get all the subspecies… lineages, from Doctor Winthrop.’
‘Wolves are a subspecies of the han, the main oriental lineage. They actually originated in North America, got back into Europe after this place was discovered and trade developed. Normally they’re highly gregarious, prone to depression when alone, and very loyal to the members of their pack. I… didn’t develop quite the same characteristics because my pack didn’t really want me. They chained me up in the cellar of the house they’d set up in. I was fed streetwalkers and lost children. I was so desperate for blood each time they bothered to give me something I would’ve killed babies. Thank God they never thought of that humiliation. I spent two years down there, alone except when one of them wanted to use me. The girls were worse than the boys. I’d been brought up to view homosexuality as worse than murder.’
‘Didn’t anyone look for you?’
‘My disappearance was never reported,’ Mary said in a flat tone which had a lot of old anger hidden under it. ‘Then, in August eighteen eighty-eight, the pack thought of a new game. They targeted street prostitutes, slitting their throats and ripping open their stomachs, steeling some body part to be brought back to cook and eat. They’d killed five women before Dione tracked them to their hideout and ended them. All of them. And she found me in the cellar and… If she hadn’t taken me on as her filia, I’d…’
‘So Dione became your pack.’
‘SCU is my pack. Even Mike now I’ve… got used to having him around. By extension, so are you, but if you ever hurt him, I will pull out your internal organs one by one and eat them in front of you.’
Leanne was not entirely sure what to say to that, so she went for, ‘Uh… okay.’
‘Just so you know.’
‘Uh, of course.’
15th January.
Billie Meers was a scruffy sort of man in his early thirties with lank, black, shoulder-length hair and watery, grey eyes. He was dressed in torn, faded jeans, a T-shirt for some rock band Mike had never heard of, and a heavy, padded coat the colour of mud. Mike spotted him on a corner of 33rd and 5th, apparently just hanging around. He was, in all probability, trying to sell knock-off watches to passers-by, but Billie had a number of lines of business, few of them even vaguely legitimate. As far as Mike knew, Billie had not had a steady job since getting kicked out of high school for dealing drugs to the football team.
Billie was the kind of crook who could smell cop at two hundred yards, upwind. He looked around as Mike approached him and sagged slightly. Or sagged more, depending upon how you looked at it.
‘Detective Williams,’ Billie said with fake joviality as Mike closed in, ‘what brings you down here?’
‘You’re a hard man to find, Billie,’ Mike said.
‘I likes to be on the move. Busy, busy. That’s me.’
‘Uh-huh. Well, I’ll ignore the numerous offences I can probably find just by looking in your coat–’
‘I ain’t got nothing offensive in my coat.’
‘You are in your coat, Billie. Apollo, ever heard of it?’
‘That’s that thing they sent people to the moon in, right?’ Mike stared at him. ‘Okay. New product on the market. Not my thing. Heard people saying it’s good for getting the ladies to put out and I don’t do that kind of shit.’
‘Very noble of you. Who does?’
‘That’s the other thing, see? Supply’s pretty tight. Trust is hard to come by with these people. I know some that are selling to clients, no one that’s selling to sellers.’
Mike looked at him carefully. He could usually tell when Billie was lying, mostly because his mouth was open, but he seemed genuine. Some people, and Billie was one of them, had their limits. He would sell two-dollar watches for fifty dollars to unsuspecting tourists, but if he thought Apollo was a date-rape drug, he would consider it over the line. Mike pulled a twenty from his pocket and handed it over. ‘There’s four more of those if you find me something useful about it.’
Billie’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Thanks. Now go hawk the watches somewhere else, huh?’
‘Ain’t watches,’ Billie said, grinning, which was not a pleasing thing to see. He opened one side of his coat to show off a selection of vari-coloured wallets and purses. ‘Genuine Himalayan yeti leather.’
‘Huh, really? And my boss is a vampire.’
‘Haw!’ Billie broke into raucous, braying laughter. ‘Ain’t they all?’
~~~
‘Is there such a thing as a yeti?’ Mike asked as he settled into Dione’s car.
‘Hunted to extinction in the sixteen hundreds,’ Dione replied.
‘Huh. I found him, finally.’ Mike had taken up the hunt for Billie solo since he had dragged Dione around the informant’s common haunts to no result the day before, and Dione needed to make sure there were no problems with Leanne and Lisa returning to work at the hospital. ‘Billie’s heard of it. Apollo, that is. I guess that confirms the name. I said I’d give him something if he got me more useful info.’
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