Blood Hunt

6

Hunger woke him, violent, racking cramps doubling him up in bed. His throat burned with a thirst that refused denial. Icy dread replaced the mere chill he felt falling asleep. The time had come to face the problem he had refused to think about before: food.

Tonight he had to…eat.

Garreth staggered down the hall to the bathroom and doubled over the washbowl gulping down water. Neither hot nor cold water slaked the thirst, just eased the cramps enough to let him stand upright.

In the mirror his face loomed pale, unshaven, and gaunt. No longer square, he noticed. Cheekbones showed where none had before. He grimaced. After the times he tried to shed a few pounds…

Thought of weight vanished as he stared at his reflected teeth. Drawing back his lips in the grimace revealed fully grown canines…narrower than his previous ones and grooved at the back, his exploring tongue found. As he opened his mouth for a closer look, they extended a half inch or better. As he relaxed, they retracted again. He thought of Marti and gave thanks she had at least been saved from seeing him like this!

The length of his stubble astonished him. How long had he slept, he wondered as he turned on his razor.

Shaving made him feel better…and look better, he decided. Almost human. Which thought made him eye the bandages on his neck. He unwound them. Beneath, only scars remained…silvery pale. Count the recuperative powers of the vampire as fact, then.

But a human could not heal that fast, so after using a pair of nail scissors from his shaving kit to cut and remove the sutures, he carefully replaced the bandages.

The cramps started again.

Garreth slugged down more hot water until he could stand and walk…then put on clean clothes and made his way downstairs.

Voices drew him to the kitchen and a familiar scene. Harry and Lien seated at the peninsula, Harry with coat and tie off, eating a supper kept warm by Lien. But more than the aroma of sweet-and-sour pork drifted into the hall and Garreth halted, recoiling. Blood. If he went in there he would be surrounded by the smell of it. How could he hope to act normal, when he ached with hunger?

He shook himself. Come on, Mikaelian…man up! You’re not a blood-sucking zombie like Miss Lucy. Lane obviously had self-control, despite the club being awash in blood scents. He needed to develop it, too, if he wanted to pass as human.

Garreth forced himself forward…through the doorway.

Lien looked around and smiled. “It lives!”

Harry also turned…for some reason appearing relieved.

“I told you.” She patted his shoulder. “Harry here kept wanting to call an ambulance because he’d look in on you and think you’d stopped breathing. I told him not to worry, that you were the same way the other day, that you’d wake up and be fine. Now here you are. And starved I expect.”

Panic exploded in Garreth. She knew! She had figured him out! Run!

“There’s still plenty of sweet-and-sour and rice left.”

The words needed a moment to reach him through the thunder of blood in his ears. When they sank in he swore silently…in relief and chagrin. What was that Biblical quote: The wicked flee where no man pursuith.

He took a breath to calm himself…regretted it when their scents filled his nose and burned down his throat. “I’ll take tea; otherwise I’m okay for now. I’m still sore from Chiarelli’s punch and trying to go easy on my stomach.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. Nine. It had been a shorter sleep than he thought. “I guess you didn’t notice I made myself a sandwich this afternoon about an hour after we got back from church.”

“Yesterday,” Harry said.

Garreth blinked. “What?”

Lien glanced around from filling the tea kettle. “We went to church yesterday. This is Monday.”

He slept thirty hours? “Yeah, I can see that might worry you. I guess it was good for me.” He gave them a lying smile. “I feel almost normal again.” God…the smell of their blood! Hunger screamed in him. He sat on the stool at the end of the peninsula to keep from doubling with a cramp.

Get a grip, Mikaelian!

“Speaking of normal…” Harry reached over to his coat and dug keys out of a pocket. “…here are your car keys back. Also, your med exam is set for Friday morning. Then you see the shrink after lunch. So eat up and rest up.”

Med and psych exams in daylight! How much power could he exert then? And how could he even think about strategy while fighting hunger?

So think about something else, man.

One distraction occurred to him. Never mind that it violated Lien’s no shop talk rule. “Harry, how are the cases going? Have you caught Wink O’Hare yet…or found any sign of Lane Barber?”

Harry glanced at Lien, who nodded. “Neither one yet. For Barber we’ve got APB’s out for the Barber name and Alexandra Pfeifer.” He paused. “Odd alias, isn’t it? I suppose it sounds more authentic than the standard Anglo-Saxon ones. But it’s all crazy. We dusted her apartment and the only prints we found belonged to your name on the letter, Madelaine Bieber, and she turns out not to be Barber, but a sixty-seven-year-old woman who was arrested for assault in 1941. We can’t find her, either.”

Garreth bit his lip to keep from telling them that Lane and Madelaine Bieber were the same woman. Once he accepted Lane as a vampire, it followed that her apparent age bore no relation to her actual one. No wonder Lane hunted so efficiently; she had decades of practice. “Did the lab recover anything from papers burned in the fireplace?”

Harry shook his head. “Not much…just a partial postmark on an envelope with two of the ZIP numbers, a six and a seven.”

“That doesn’t help?”

Harry grimaced. “It might if we knew for sure where they are in the ZIP. If the ZIP is sixty-seven something, the letter came from the middle of Kansas. If it’s something sixty-seven something, it could have been mailed in any one of nine states. I had the fun of going through a ZIP directory to check the possibilities.” He laughed. “Isn’t being a detective exciting?”

“Anything else useful left of the postmark?”

Harry dug his notebook out of his suit coat thrown across the stool next to him…thumbed through, and handed it to Garreth. “I copied it, thinking maybe I’d look at it and have a brilliant insight, or my artist wife would.”

The drawing showed a postmark circle with the two visible numbers at the bottom. At the top of the circle, partials of three letters also remained. A dotted line indicated the edge of the fragment. Below the postmark Harry had drawn an elaborate M.

He pointed at it. “That was written, not printed, so it had to be part of the address on the envelope.”

The address on the envelope Garreth saw in Lane’s apartment started with an M…Madelaine Bieber. So Lane burned the letter before leaving…or at least the envelope. What did she consider dangerous for them to find? Too bad the return address and so much of the postmark were destroyed. Addressed to her real name, it must have come from someone who knew her well and from a long time back.

“Did you learn anything useful from her driver’s license or car registration?”

“Just that the information given for the license was false.” Harry frowned. “We ran her through NCIC, and asked for Wants on anyone fitting her description. She was in the wind so slick she’s got to have done this before. She’s wanted somewhere for something.” He sighed. “Anyway, that’s where we are now.”

Garreth wished desperately for a way to slip away, too. The simplest solution that did not involve just running, or trying to hypnotize both Harry and Lien, was wait for them to go to bed. Except that meant trying to ignore blood scents and hunger for several hours yet. Cue the distractions.

He tapped the postmark. “Maybe we can get more out of this. Let’s see if we can figure out what these letters are.”

They bent over it. That close, their scents overwhelmed him. He forced his focus to just the sketch.

Harry sighed. “Even if we decide what they are, we don’t know where in the city name they are.”

“No,” Lien said, “this first letter is the first letter of the name. As long as you copied everything exactly, there’s enough space to its left to show there’s no letter there. And the letter has to be a B or D…curved bottom line with a straight edge on the left.”

The next letter ended in two slanted feet. An A or X.

“Unless I didn’t get it exact and it’s an H,” Harry said.

“I don’t think many town names start BH or DH,” Lien said.

Garreth said, “Not BX or DX, either.”

She nodded. “So I think Harry copied correctly and it’s an A…DA or BA.”

The curve of the last letter, they decided, made it a C, O, or U.

“Or maybe a G,” Lien said, “because a little is cut off the right side. It might even be a Q, depending on the font.”

Frustrating, because any of these letters worked with the first two.

Harry closed the notebook with a sigh and shoved it back in his coat. “Well, it was worth a try, but it didn’t get us anywhere.”

Not until they knew more about Lane. In the meantime, the exercise used part of the evening and distracted Lien from the fact he had still not eaten anything. Garreth committed what they had of the ZIP and city name to memory…for when it could be useful.

The rest of the evening crawled by in an agony of gritting teeth against the hunger. Garreth drank enough tea to float a freighter. Lien started pressing him to eat something. Finally he gave in, but insisted on serving himself. Out in the kitchen he took a helping of rice and the pork and heated it in the microwave so she and Harry would smell it from the family room. The aroma also helped mask blood scents for a while.

He tried salving the hunger by imagining himself eating the rice and pork, remembering the sauce’s sweet tang, the crisp coating on the pork nuggets…even as he carefully buried everything at the bottom of the trash.

The hunger refused to be tricked.

Finally he began faking yawns. “Thirty hours sleep or not, I’m ready to hit the rack again.”

He retreated to his room, where he stood at the open window sucking in air free of any blood scent. While waiting for Harry and Lien to come up, too, he removed the bandage from his neck. Just in case of…trouble. As unobservant as witnesses tended to be, they did remember things like bandages. When he listened at their bedroom door and finally, finally, heard the even breathing of sleepers, he sneaked downstairs and out the patio door.

Vaulting the fences to the end of the block and heading for the nearest bus stop, Garreth found he could still not think about what he intended to do…or how to do it. Or where. He let his body take him, guided by its new instincts. With little surprise, though, after several transfers he found himself in North Beach amid streaming humanity.

Of course…Lane’s turf, rich with game. The rigid isolation he imposed on himself on the bus shattered, flooding him with the sounds and smells around him. Smells of perfume, aftershave, deodorant, sweat…but above all the rich, salty hot scent of blood. It ignited a renewed frenzy of hunger.

He stumbled down the street, eyeing everyone…the hunger urging him to pick someone, the rest of him heartsick, hating that urge. How could he bring himself to attack another human being as Lane did? What if he refused? Would starvation kill a vampire?

Occasionally a woman passed whose scent seemed especially strong and he turned toward her like a compass to north…only to pull back, afraid. How long had it been since he last picked up a girl? Before he met Marti. He had been turned down a fair number of times in those days, he recalled. A refusal now meant more than a blow to the ego; it meant no supper. Worse, what if she came with him? What if he killed her?

He could not do it. He just…could…not…do…it!

In panic, he turned up a side street and ran away from the crowd, away from the blood smells fanning his hunger, and did not stop until the next corner. There he leaned against the wall of a building, swearing at himself. Some vampire he made. What was he going to do?

Gradually, he became aware of voices around the corner, sharp, full of anger and fear. A man’s: “Richie says you’re holding out on him. He don’t like that.”

“I’m not,” a woman replied. “I do the best I can. I swear.”

Garreth recognized Velvet’s voice. Edging up to the corner, he peered around it. The hooker stood backed against the building by a man waving a switchblade under her nose.

“Well you better do better, baby, because Richie says you’re running in the red. You ain’t cost-effective. So unless you get your act together, you will be running red. I’ll fix your face so you can’t get a job ushering at a dogfight.”

Good old Richie, Garreth thought.

He rounded the corner. Two long strides put him on top of the muscleman, clamping a hand on the wrist of the knife hand just as the man registered Garreth’s presence and started to turn. Garreth bent the wrist back. The forearm gave with a sickening crack. He let go of the wrist and smoothly took the knife as the muscleman collapsed screaming to the sidewalk.

Garreth stepped over him and put a hand under Velvet’s elbow. “Come on; let’s get out of here.” He hurried her away.

Her eyes looked the size of dinner plates. “Why’d you do that? He wasn’t going to cut me this time. Now Richie will get mad.”

“Tell Richie the muscle was getting carried away and about to use the knife for fun when a friendly flatfoot came along. Better yet, drop a dime on him and we’ll nail him to the wall before he does have you carved up.”

She bit her lip. “Sometime, maybe. For now, thanks.” She glanced sideways at him. “Say, what’s the story on you? First I hear they found you stiff in an alley with your throat torn out, but here you are walking around breaking arms with one hand. You look younger somehow, too.”

He restrained a grimace. Drink blood, the Elixir of Youth. “I owe it all to clean living and a pure heart,” he said aloud.

The blood ran hot in her. He smelled it: fear-driven, richly salty, and with it, the near audible hammering of her heart, just now beginning to slow after the terror. He drew a deep breath and, folding the switchblade, dropped it in his pocket. His hand shook with the driving urgency of his hunger.

He felt her looking at him and saw her smile knowingly. She had noticed his increase in breathing and misinterpreted it, he realized.

“Hey, baby. Maybe you’d like to party?”

He shook his head. “Don’t make me run you in for soliciting a cop, Velvet.”

“Did I mention money? This is on the house. Call it saying thanks. Come on.” She reached up to ruffle his hair. “Let me show you blondes really do have more fun. Not just a head job in an alley, either.”

He started to say no, but something else in him, something controlled by the ravenous thirst, made it to his tongue first. “Okay.”

She tucked her arm through his. “It isn’t far. You’ll like this.”

The same thing Lane said to him that night. An inward shudder at the memory almost made him walk away.

He should have. Hunger aroused him even more than if he felt desire, and its effect impressed even Velvet…but the sex brought no release with the blood smell of her filling his head, burning his throat, making his teeth ache. Until hunger took all control from him and forced him to her neck…kissing it, exploring, fangs extending. Under him, she sighed in pleasure as his tongue found the throb beneath her skin.

The sound goaded him. He bit down, and…

Nothing! Only a drop of blood rose to tantalize him where each fang pierced. He had missed the vein! A scream of frustration echoed through his head, then screamed at him to just go at her, to rip and tear until he found the blood.

Garreth recoiled, scrambling away from her in revulsion at that image. Do to her throat what Lane did to his…no! The guilt he felt coming with her paled beside the self-loathing flooding him now. So he thought he could still be the person he was before? Like hell. Look at him, a ravening monster!

Velvet stirred drowsily on the bed. “Don’t rush off, baby. I actually enjoyed that and you look ready to go again.”

He struggled into his clothes, desperate to leave before the monster consumed what humanity remained in him. “I’m sorry; I have to work.” He buckled his belt.

She sat up, frowning irritably. “Well, wham-bam-thank-you ma’ am.”

He grabbed his coat, not daring to look at her. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Thanks. It was good for me, too.” Which came out like the lame afterthought it was.

“Cops.” She snorted. “Always in a hurry to come and a hurry to go.”

He fled. In the street he pulled on the coat while walking away as fast as he could and gulping night air to clear her scent from his head. He kept walking, paying no particular attention to the direction, as long as it led away from the crowds and bright lights.

Missed! He could not believe it. Who ever heard of such a thing? See the vampire miss the vein. See him miss supper. Poor hungry vampire. Maybe he should hire a dowser to find veins for him.

How many necks did a neo-vampire have to mutilate before learning the quick, clean bite? The thought of learning curve carnage horrified him. There must be a way to avoid that and still eat.

A car’s horn blared. Garreth realized he had halted in the middle of the street. He dashed on across. Then he noticed his surroundings. He stood on the bay side walkway of the Embarcadero. A man passed him, jogging, a sleek Doberman loping at his side. They trailed scents of sweat and blood.

Garreth’s throat tingled. He turned to watch the dog. They had blood, too. Could he live on animal blood? Lane drank human blood and legend said that was the vampire diet…but blood was blood, surely.

The idea of preying on dogs did not really appeal to him…pets, loved by someone. Cats, too. Besides, he had no idea how much blood they could lose without dying. However — he turned to eye the piers along the Embarcadero — the city did have one species existing in profusion, that would not be missed, and that he did not mind killing. The idea of touching a rat, let alone biting one, revolted him, but people had eaten them, and worse, to survive. Better to feed on rats than people.

He jogged south, checking each pier, assessing their hunting potential. He wanted rats but no humans, no one to observe him. After passing under the Bay Bridge, he found a pier that looked promising…a dark interior reassuring him of human absence, light passing traffic reducing the number of potential witnesses seeing him go in. Just one problem…a heavy chain mesh gate pulled down across the entrance. Iron gates blocked access to the dock along each side, too. Garreth pressed against the mesh gate, fingers wrapped around some of the chain. Legend attributed great strength to vampires so he might be able to break through. Hunger pushed him to try. But…leave evidence of an intruder? No. If this worked, he needed to be able to come back again. He needed an undetectable way in.

Wrench!

Something seemed to tear Garreth all directions at once. Pain sent him crashing to his hands and knees. He huddled, gasping. What the hell just happened? Why? Mind churning, he groped for the gate, to pull himself to his feet.

Only his hand found no chain. He looked up to discover the gate had disappeared from in front of him. Because, he realized, looking around, it had moved behind him. He knelt on the ground inside the building.

He stared at the gate. So…vampires really could move through closed doors and windows? If they did not mind…what?…feeling like some brutal Klingon transporter ripped apart their atoms? And though the pain was fading, did leaving here mean enduring it again?

The hunger interrupted that unpleasant thought, snarling: HUNT! Climbing to his feet, he started down the length of the building, through a dark turned to mere twilight by his vision, his ears tuned for every possible sound. The building creaked around him. Outside, traffic mumbled and water slapped pilings. Then, amid other sounds, he caught the scrabble of tiny clawed feet and the squeak of a rodent voice. One turn of his head pinpointed the sound. He moved that direction, climbing over crates in his path.

The rat’s form appeared among the shadows between more crates ahead. It must have heard him, too, because it grew suddenly still. Only its head moved, turning to look up at him. The tiny eyes met his.

Garreth froze in place, too. At least ten feet lay between them. Could vampire speed — if that were real, too — cover it before the rat escaped? It had not moved, still staring him in the eyes. What if, he wondered, he had hypnotic power over animals, too.

Holding its gaze, he slid a foot forward. The rat remained motionless. Step by step, he crossed the space between them. The rat never twitched. Within reach of it, Garreth squatted on his heels. The smell of the rat reached him, a musky rodent odor, strong but not as strong as the tantalizing scent of its blood. He steeled himself to touch the creature. Blood is blood. He drew a breath, smelling that blood…and reached for his prey.

The rat’s fur felt spiky in his hand. He waited for it to struggle, but the creature hung quiescent in his grasp. One wrench would break its neck, or a bend of his elbow bring it to his mouth, but he hesitated. Rats carried disease. How did pathogens affect the undead? They must drink diseased blood once in a while. Was it like buzzards, who he remembered someone telling him could eat infected flesh without sickening? Oh, yeah…it had been Marti’s girlfriend Janice the walking encyclopedia, the time she and her husband drove to Las Vegas with Marti and him and they spotted the birds eating roadkill along the highway.

Maddened by the rat’s blood smell, the hunger grabbed for control. Bite! Tear! Drink! Garreth fought back. All right…but do it his way, not the hunger’s. He remembered the switchblade in his pocket. That would keep him from having to actually bite the rat. Then what?

The rat remained quiet. Draining the blood into the palm of his hand and licking it up from there sounded not only slow but primitive. There must be a more…civilized solution.

Garreth stood, looking around for inspiration. His gaze fell on a trash barrel. He carried the rat to it and peered in. Almost on top of the litter sat a coffee carry-out foam cup, lipstick on one side of the rim.

After this he would know to bring a cup of his own, maybe one of those collapsing things for camping, that fit inconspicuously in a pocket. For now, necessity ruled. He set the cup on a crate then, using both hands, broke the rat’s neck and brought out the switchblade.

The blade sprang open. He cut the rat’s throat and held it over the cup by its hind legs. The stream of blood set his throat and stomach burning in anticipation, even while his brain still recoiled. Blood is blood, he reminded himself. Blood he needed. And when the rat stopped dripping, he resolutely picked up the cup, lipstick away from him, and gulped down the contents before he had time to think further.

With the first taste, all revulsion vanished in a savage appetite for more. At the same time, the blood tasted flat, lacking, as though he drank watery tomato juice when he expected the peppery fire of a Bloody Mary. His skin crawled. All blood was not created equal, then, and what the hunger demanded was human blood.

Suck it up. This is all you’re getting.

He drained the cup to the last drop and went hunting another rat.