As I gave the dispatcher Ryan’s address, I popped the gray cap and withdrew the negatives. There were a half-dozen strips of various lengths, all high-quality black and white, 35 millimeter. When I hung up, I uncurled them and held them, one at a time, up to the light.
The stills were from long-distance surveillance. They weren’t unusual in themselves, documenting people and places. What was unusual was the sense of menace that pervaded the images, images that were otherwise mundane. It was a visceral response that had little to do with what was actually in the pictures.
Without a magnifying glass, some of the pictures were indecipherable. However I had very clear pictures of a number of cars, most focusing on the license plates. One was of a dark van with no plate that could have been the same vehicle that’d slammed into Sam’s car.
Another was a dark BMW with a vanity plate, “RYAN 1.”
I had also taken pictures of Ryan’s house. There were other houses I’d photographed, some of which seemed run-down and abandoned, but the only place that I knew was the doctor’s.
I had also photographed people, young people for the most part. I suspected they were either members or candidates for Childe’s little cult. In addition to faces that I could not remember, there were three faces that I did know. I had a picture that was recognizably Leia, and on a separate roll I had a picture of the same leather-clad teenager that had jumped onto Sam’s car.
My short-circuited memory made a series of connections—
In front of a mausoleum, standing upon a field of black snow, a teenager smiles at me with a mouth invisible under night-black blood ...
With a millstone voice, the same teenager speaks from the shattered window of Sam’s car, “Aren’t you dead, my friend?” Washed by the car’s flasher, he smiles at me with lips that appear alternately black and soaked with gore.
That same gravelly voice speaks from Childe’s answering machine. “I hear you look for a woman of certain qualities, ” it says. “There will be one at the ritual tonight, I’ve told her to look for you. ”
A van plunges out of the darkness and sideswipes me. I’m thrown into a drift.
I’m dragged into the van, and the same stony voice says, “... if you remember us, this, anything, you shall surely die ... ” After which I smell rusty leather, and hear a heavy wet sound....
The fragments wrapped within my memory to place this teenage vampire in a role as the leader of Childe’s thralls. Childe’s lieutenant, I thought. He was at the right hand of the black-cowled Childe at the mausoleum. He had called Childe to deliver Cecilia. He had led the attack on Sam’s car. Somewhere in my black memory, he had attacked me, made me what I was.
All that made it even more troubling to me that, in the picture, this kid was clearly talking to Bowie.
25
Outside, the cab honked its horn for my attention. During the wait I had searched for any sign of Bowie, and had found none. When I went out to the cab, I was still racked with contradictory memories. I still recalled little of the time between Kate’s death and my own subterranean waking. However, I now remembered the first time I had talked to Bowie.
I told the cab to go to University Circle. I sat in the back, staring at the lightly snowing evening.
“I’ve seen you talking to Childe’s people,” I tell him over a cup of Arabica coffee.
“And you think?” He shakes his head at me. “You don’t know how wrong you are, man.”
“Why are you talking to these people then?”
“You’re supposed to know your enemy, ain’t you?”
“Childe’s your enemy?”
“He fucked with someone I care about....”
Even as I remembered it, I found that I wasn’t so ready to believe him now as I had been then. Though, if he was Childe’s tool, why had he helped me as far as he had? If he wasn’t, why did I now have the impression that his message on my voice mail had set me up?
Thralls did occasionally kill their masters. Perhaps Bowie was Childe’s, and had killed him off. Loss of a leader could do strange things to a cult, perhaps even spark a flaring of atypical violence.
That didn’t explain why Kate and I had been targets. Had I been close to finding out something? If they had been trying to conceal their vampire nature, they’d done a lousy job of it.
“Maybe Childe’s still around, and they’re setting him up,” I whispered. His own thrall had picked out Cecilia as a potential victim. As far as I could see, she was the first of Childe’s people to have disappeared with someone to miss them. Everything since seemed to have been designed to draw Sebastian’s attention.
The taxi pulled up in front of Sam’s building, and I paid the cabby off with the little cash I had left. I entered Sam’s building, thinking that I had almost figured out what was going on.
Gail opened the door a crack to talk to me. The funeral had been hard on her, I thought. Her face was pale and drawn. “Hi, Dad,” she said through the crack in the door.
“How are you dong?”
“Not too great,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Can I come in?”
Gail looked back into the apartment and paused. “We should let Sam sleep.”
“Is there something wrong?”
She looked at me and said, in a voice thick with irony, “I don’t know, Dad, Mom was buried today, what should be wrong?”
I felt sick at what I said. The new sense of empathy I had—the sense of a psychic wind carrying emotional heat and cold through the aether—carried ripples of confusion, of grief, and of sadness from Gail. I had a sense of clarity beyond anything I’d felt before, and with it came a feeling of loss from my daughter beyond any I had felt myself. “Forgive me, it was a stupid thing to say.”
She stared at me, and I felt a sense of something that Gail wanted to say, and wasn’t saying. “Whatever happens, I love you, Dad. It isn’t your fault ...” I stood there, waiting for some revelation. Instead she said, “I forgive you.”
“Okay.”
“The Chevette’s in the lot out back. Go find what you’re looking for, okay?”
“Okay?”
She closed the door leaving me with a feeling of unease. I was unsure where my normal parental concern ended, and my paranoia began. I wanted to break in the door and ask her what the problem was, but I told myself that I’d seen her, and she was all right, and she was safe with Sam.
When I left, the press of my hunger was bad enough that I could almost smell blood.
I was sick for blood, and I didn’t want any more lives on my hands. I needed to take care of it immediately. I had an idea I wanted to test, so I drove by University Hospitals. I parked the Chevette on the street, straightened my jacket to cover the holster and the bullet holes in my shirt, and headed for the emergency entrance.
I walked in, past a reception desk and into the hospital proper, concentrating on projecting an aura of belonging there. I don’t know if it was my attitude, any vampiric powers, or simply that the nurses running the desk were too overworked to notice me, but I slipped in without hearing any comment or objection.
A security guard paced the halls, but he faced away from me, and I followed the corridor in the opposite direction from him.
So far so good, but I soon found that at least one part of my plan was ill-conceived. I had intended to slip into the hospital and steal some of their whole blood supply. That was easy to say in the abstract, but now, as I wandered the night-emptied corridors of the hospital, I found it a little difficult to follow through on the premise when I had no idea where anything was. I could feel hunger eating away inside me, making it harder for me to think clearly.
I ran across a few directory maps, but none had a convenient label saying “find blood here.”
After about half an hour of random searching, all I had succeeded in discovering was that I could do a pretty good job of mentally convincing inattentive
humans that I wasn’t there. That was useful, but it didn’t help my hunger, which had grown even worse with my mental effort. The hunger was an ache in my joints, a pressure at the back of my skull, a fire searing behind my eyes.
I wandered deep into the hospital complex, away from the constant activity around the emergency room. This corridor was empty enough that I must have let my guard down for a moment, because, just as I was washed with a stunning wave of hunger that near-doubled me over, a tall woman stepped in front of me.
“Pardon me, but can I help you?”
The woman confronting me was thin, and maybe an inch shy of six feet tall. That, combined with her intense gray eyes, invested her with a quiet authority. I glanced down to her name tag, stitched on her white coat over her left breast. “Dr. Nicholson.”
I felt warmth, heat, and life inside her. I knew—I could feel—that what she carried within her could fill the void that was eating a hole inside me. We were separated by six feet, but I already felt the strength of her pulse under my fingers. Something savage inside me told me I wanted to grab her right there and sink my teeth into a vein.
She was becoming impatient with me, I could sense irritation rippling within her. “Can I help you find something?” There was a note of demand in her voice that almost hid the subliminal fear. She knew I wasn’t supposed to be here, and the strength of my hunger was so intense that even she had to feel it on some level.
I took a few steps forward, and she said, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I took another step.
“Do I have to call Security?” The fear was reaching her voice now. I felt a tidal pull toward her.
I stared into her eyes and felt my words push into the deep gray pools I saw there. “That won’t be necessary.”
I felt a spike of fear accompany her answer. “No, it isn’t.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
I heard her swallow. “I’ll try.” I felt the emotion dim somewhat, but it didn’t disappear. That was interesting. What exactly was I doing? If it was control, it wasn’t absolute.
She kept staring at me, as if fascinated. I can take her here, I thought, and she won’t resist. She’ll feel panic, and fear, but she won’t stop me.
I almost reached for her—
Then I heard Gail’s words, “Were they innocent?”
Instead of grabbing her, I spoke. “I need whole blood. Take me to where you keep it.”
She nodded. “Follow me.”
As she led me off, I tried to imagine what was going on inside Dr. Nicholson’s mind. I still fought the frightening impulse inside me that made me want to take all of what she had inside her. When she finally took me into a darkened lab and opened a refrigerator for me, I got a nasty surprise.
Of the bags of whole blood I saw filling the refrigerator, none of them bore the heat of life. I was desperate in my hunger, and I grabbed one of the bags. The fluid inside seemed black and dead to me, I gently bit into it, to taste the contents.
I heard a sharp intake of breath from the doctor, who still held the refrigerator door open.
The taste of the blood made me gag—like bile in my mouth, like death. I threw the bag down in frustration, and a tiny stream leaked out of the hole my tooth had made. It made a black trail on the linoleum floor.
I looked up at the doctor, and the sense of the life within her was overpowering. As was her fear. “I’m sorry,” I said.
There was no way around it, I had to drink from a living person. All I could hope for was, as Gabriel had said, it didn’t have to be fatal.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
We stood apart, the light from the refrigerator the only barrier between us. I could feel the pull of her blood, and I could feel the skin begin to tighten around my jaw. “I won’t hurt you,” I said, with difficulty. I hoped it wasn’t a lie.
I stepped forward, and she let go of the refrigerator door. It closed neatly all the way, leaving only a sliver of light between us.
I touched her neck, and felt the shiver of a racing pulse. “Please calm down,” I said, as gently as I could manage.
“I can’t,” she said.
I felt for her, for her vulnerability. She didn’t deserve this, but my own remade nature insisted that nether of us had a choice. I leaned forward.
My lips almost brushed her neck, but I held myself back. I didn’t want to injure her. “You take blood, show me the vein you use.”
In the ghost-dim light I saw her shake her head. Her arms were folded across her in a protective gesture. My will was holding her here, but she was afraid. I didn’t blame her.
I took her hand, gently, and drew it out in front of her. “Show me. Please.” The heat this close to her body was intoxicating. I could smell the life, and every vibration of her pulse sent a tremor through my own body.
After a long pause, she reached down and rolled up her sleeve.
“Forgive me,” I said. I leaned over and kissed the crook of her arm, the vein a hot brand against my tongue. My remade teeth bit into the skin almost on their own. Her life, her warmth, filled my mouth. I heard her breath come in shuddering gasps as I drank.
The blood filled weaknesses I hadn’t been aware I’d been feeling, the nagging pain evaporated, the fatigue drained away. As soon as I realized that the thirst no longer was a weight within me, I forced myself to stop. It took an effort to pull myself away from her arm, but I managed it. I had refused temptation on a much grander scale last night.
As I pulled away, I was grateful to find that my victim was still standing. As I broke, she sighed and collapsed against me. I had to scramble to keep her upright.
I was beginning to worry when I heard her whisper in my ear. “Who are you?”
“No one important,” I said, walking her into the light out in the hall. I looked down at her arm. It was pale and still bleeding, but not badly. I sat her down on the first chair we came to.
She was conscious and seemed to be all right. She looked at me with a wistful expression that made me nervous. “Who are you?” she repeated.
We were out in a corridor, apparently alone. “Just a random nut,” I told her. “You should forget about me.”
She nodded. She had her arm bent upward, and was putting pressure on the wound. Whatever I was doing mentally, this woman was still in possession of all her faculties. Again, I wondered what was going on inside her mind.
She looked up at me and nodded. “But will I see you again?”
I was stunned by the question for a moment. In response I just shook my head and said, “I don’t know.” Then I got out of there as quickly as I could.
I wasn’t thinking about much of anything as I wove my way back out of the hospital. I wasn’t concentrating on not being seen. I passed a small alcove of vending machines, and shortly afterward I heard feet running after me. “Kane? Kane Tyler? Is that you?”
It was a female voice that I barely noticed as familiar. I had conflicting urges to draw my weapon or run, but I turned to face the person.
My first thought was, what is she doing here?
She slowed to a stop, still holding a Styrofoam cup of hospital coffee. “I thought that was you. If you’re here to see him, you missed visiting hours. He’s asleep anyway.”
I stood there blankly staring at the woman. I knew her, though I could not remember her name. She was in her early thirties, blonde, and wore a dark flowered print dress that was at odds with the weather outside.
She was Sam’s girlfriend. Seeing her here gave me a sick feeling of who she was talking about. “What happened?”
“Oh,” she looked surprised. “You didn’t know? Well, don’t worry, the doctors say he’ll be fine. They managed to deal with the blood loss in time.”
I wanted to shake her. “What blood loss?” “From the accident. They let him go home and one of the sutures burst open while he slept.”
I shuddered. “When? When did this happen?”
“Some
time last night—”
I was running for the car before she finished her sentence.
Gail wasn’t there to buzz open Sam’s apartment. At this point I had lost all concern for subtlety. When she didn’t answer, I kicked in the door to the lobby. I ran up the three flights to Sam’s apartment, cursing my own stupidity. I had known something was wrong, I had felt it, and I had left her there.
I had even smelled the goddamned blood.
I pounded on Sam’s door and received no response. I drew the Eagle and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I felt the copper taste of fear in my mouth, a taste that reminded me of blood.
I pushed the door open with my foot, covering the apartment with the Eagle. The living room was empty, but the smell of blood was there—ferric and sharp-tasting.
“Gail!”
I received no answer as I swept the apartment with my gun: living room, kitchen, bathroom....
The blood-smell came from the bedroom. I stood in front of that door a long time before I had the courage to open it. I couldn’t take it, not if Gail....
I kicked in the door to Sam’s bedroom. It was dark and motionless in there, but my night eyes quickly adjusted. The bed was soaked with blood, blood that was cold, dead, and black.
Gail wasn’t here.
“You bastards!” I yelled at the walls. “Where is she? What are you doing?” My voice spent, I whispered, “Why did she lie to me?”
Looking around, I could see the chaos made by the para-medics when they’d grabbed Sam. From the bloodstains on the bed, I could picture the opening of the wounds in his face, spilling across the pillow.
I couldn’t picture it as accidental.
I tore the place apart, looking for some clue to where Gail had gone, but I found nothing of hers in Sam’s apartment. The only thing I did find was on the floor next to the bed. It was a dirty, folded, piece of paper that looked as if it had spent a long time in someone’s pocket, only to slip out when its owner knelt over Sam’s bed.
Blood & Rust Page 22
