What appeared to be an old man lay in a hospital bed in the middle of the room. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, only a slither of daylight coming in. The old man was wired up to a series of machines, all of which showed steady signals. Other tubes went into his throat. His face was sunken, shallow, and pale from a lack of outdoor exposure. His chest fluttered with each shallow breath.
Clare moved to the side of the bed. In a hushed voice she asked, “Who is he?”
Dominic came to stand beside her. “Clare Rosser, may I present Jarret Logan, or at least what's left of him.”
It took only a moment. “Jarret… Logan? Detective Logan?”
“The very same.”
“How long's he been like this? What's wrong with him?”
“Massive internal trauma just about sums it up. He's been this way the best part of a decade. I've only been on the team for the past five.”
“Team? What team?”
Dominic beckoned her away from the bed, to an adjacent room in what turned out to be a suite. The nurse, who had remained silent and unobtrusive when they entered, joined them.
“Clare, let me present my sister, Ellie.”
Ellie smiled and for the first time Clare noticed the same blue eyes and dark hair.
“Strong resemblance,” Clare observed.
“Good genes,” Ellie replied and shook Clare's outstretched hand. “Dom's not kidding about the trauma. Jarret's been in a coma for the entire time we've known him. He survives on nutrients passed into his stomach through that tube, fluids by drip and oxygen into his lungs. He's basically a tomato plant in a bed.”
“Has he ever given any sign of coming round?”
“We don't expect him to. What you see here was built to protect him after he was attacked.”
“You mean he was found in this state?”
Dominic and Ellie exchanged glances. Dominic finally turned to her and took her hand in a gesture of reassurance. “He was tracked to the outskirts of Ashby, where he was found unconscious in the woods. Something was attached to him, draining the fluids from him.”
“Something?”
The records are sketchy but yes. It was described as humanoid in nature but bloated and pale, with bright, glowing eyes. It held onto him like this.” Dominic grabbed Clare by the upper arms, clenching tight. “The records show that upon discovery the creature fled at inhuman speed. It's nearly impossible to detect anything other than fluid excretions.”
“I have some.”
“You do?” Ellie became animated. “If we could get those samples and cross check them. You don't happen to have seen the results?”
“Sure. They were damned weird. The fluid we found was bereft of almost everything except blood plasma and waste products. It was like as if everything useful…”
“…had been stripped out of the blood,” Dominic finished.
“Exactly.”
“There's more,” Ellie added. “Take a look at his arms.”
The three of them crossed the room to the unconscious Logan, whose arms rested atop the bed. Ellie folded back the sleeve of his pyjamas up to reveal a series of horrific scars. Clare counted five of them, in an arc below a raised circular scar that looked to have never healed.
“Any theories?” Ellie asked.
“I have a couple. First that there's a guy, a janitor, in Worcester P.D. that's attempting copycat killings based on ancient folklore.”
“Do you believe that?” Dominic asked. “I mean do you really believe it, right down in the depths of your soul?”
Clare looked down upon the living corpse beneath them. The eyes were partly open. Underneath the pupils were dilated enough to show there was never any hope for poor Jarret Logan. No soul rested in those eyes. Elvis had well and truly left the building. “No. The evidence, as much as I wish it, points to another conclusion. I found this website only this morning called grail dot com that describes ancient myths and legends. I saw the bodies of the children, so twisted and empty. No man, no copycat could do that. I found mescaline traces in fluid at one of the crime scenes but it was natural, not manufactured. I'll bet that's what killed my parents. I'll bet…”
“Go on,” Dominic urged. “You're ready to take that step. Science is not enough. Belief is a powerful tool in the right hands.”
“I think those marks are where the murderer injected mescaline into the body of the victims and the circular scar above is where it sucked the life out of them. Cut a hole or something.” Clare pulled the FBI file from her bag and flicked through. “But the reports state that my parents died of hypervolemia.”
“When they found Jarret, the creature was still on him, feeding. No more contact than hands on his arms, in the exact place of the scars. Jarret had eluded the man chasing him, the man that spoke to Wilf in Bernardston. Yet he couldn't elude the creature. Viruñas hunted him down and caught him out in the open. The creature incapacitated him, filled him with its own fluid which would normally cause heart failure, and drained him.”
“But he didn't die.”
Dominic smiled. “Jarret has a strong heart. We estimate the creature knew it was being hunted and didn't have time to complete the feeding. It was right. It only executed a partial procedure but that was enough to render Jarret the way you see him.”
“Why show me all this?” Clare moved her hand around the room, indicating the horrific scene about them. “I'm hunting this thing too, but if it is what you say it is, how do I stand a chance?”
Ellie looked to her brother for evident approval. Getting the nod, she said four words that bound Clare's next choice in unbreakable chains. “Logan was becoming diabetic.”
Chapter Eighteen
“It wasn't a surprise. Jarret was chosen because he was displaying the right signs. An initial blood test confirmed the early stages of type one or juvenile diabetes. From there Jarret knew he only had so long before he would become incapacitated.”
“But what has this to do with diabetes?”
Dominic took her hand. “Viruñas hunts diabetics. Specifically it appears to hunt those who have not yet been diagnosed or in rare cases, those who are having trouble coping with the illness. Anybody already on an artificial insulin regime is ignored. They tried luring the creature with diabetics off their regular dose. It didn't work. Come look at what we know.”
Clare followed Dominic out of Logan's room into another lined from floor to ceiling with shelved books. “Nice reading material,” she observed.
“Sometimes there's not a lot to do. I've read most of these. Look at the desk.”
By a grand window exposing the autumn forest outside, a desk was burdened with stacks of documentation in paper files.
Clare pulled out the copied Federal document and placed it on top of the rest. “I think this belongs here.”
“Keep it. We already have a copy.”
Caution overcame intrigue. “Who are you? Who do you work for? Why are you here and not Alden?”
“Who I work for is not for me to say. Trust me that they want the same thing you do though: an end to the killings. Why I'm not at Alden? They believe I'm at another location. I have a cover, of sorts.” Dominic picked up various files and showed them to her. “We have infants, teenagers, and adults. All have been taken and drained. Every decade without fail this happens, going back centuries. The creature emerges, takes half a dozen and then disappears. It must have gotten easier lately. The rise of diabetes is alarming.”
Clare looked through the proffered files. “These people are quite old.”
“True. Juvenile, or type one diabetes hits kids a lot but it's not limited to the young. Sometimes you are genetically predisposed to get the disease. Your body might catch a virus and react for example. Many who were perfectly normal and did nothing wrong in their lives become afflicted by the disease. It was only when the creature made a mistake and let a victim escape that it came to our attention. It sucks the goodness out of its victims, absorbing the nutrients and
most importantly, the concentrated blood glucose. We suspect that it cannot absorb nutrients by the usual method of ingestion and developed vampiric tendencies. Diabetics make perfect victims. They are already weak, disoriented, poisoned by the by-products of their own body by the time the creature takes them. They don't put up much of a fight. It's those specific by-products the creature needs, foremost of all, the concentrated levels of blood glucose. Undiagnosed diabetics give off an aroma in their breath akin to pear drops or nail polish remover. We believe the creature tracks them using this with advanced scent receptors. That's how it stayed ahead of the game with poor Logan in there. The plan was to put Logan in the creature's path, and trap it. But the creature fed on him. By the time we caught up it was almost too late.”
“Have you tried faking the aroma? Surely that's safer than placing an already-ill person in harms' way?”
“It was tried back in the seventies. Strategically-placed 'victims' were left in the area of the creature. It avoided them completely. Viruñas isn't feeding mindlessly. It is conscious, self-aware, and very, very dangerous. The plan was to find someone who knew the risks and was willing to go the extra mile. It took thirty years for the hunting cycle to coincide with someone willing and able.”
“That's why he was at my house. Logan was tracking the Viruñas.”
“From what we understand, he was hoping to get in the way of the creature. He was, however, delayed.”
Clare barked a laugh. She knew exactly where this was going. “Harley.”
“He's involved all over the state. The guy is a pain in the ass. He has people everywhere, including Ashby. It's a good ole boys network round here.”
“Can't you do anything about that?”
“Not directly. He has a role in this that has yet to be determined and there aren't enough of us involved to be able to ferret out his secrets.”
“Oh he has secrets all right. At the moment, he's working his way to becoming the chief of police in Worcester. Harley has ambitions above his station. You put that man in politics and he's gonna do all sorts of damage to the city.”
“He's doing worse than that. He's linked somehow with the creature.”
The temptation was too great. Clare realized she was being led into this but the faces stared up at her from all the folders. Lives extinguished before their time, ill or becoming so; all had deserved a chance at life. Diabetes should never have been the end of them, not if they were careful.
“Can I sleep on it?”
Dominic leaned over the files, looking up at her. “Of course you can. Terrick needs time to recover. Tomorrow we'll take you out to where Logan was found. It might put things into perspective.”
Saturday morning came far too quickly. Although the bed was soft and the room dark and comforting, Clare felt ill at ease in a house set up as a hospice for just one man. Jarret Logan had no quality of life here. His body was a shell, being kept alive by people guilty of losing him. Clare found sunlight greeting her through the dense foliage that pushed at her window as she considered her next move. Risk becoming another soulless almost-corpse, or seek the medication she now knew she had to have.
Wandering the house, Clare eventually found the kitchen by way of the scent of cooked food and fresh bread. Breakfast was laid out and Terrick sat at the grand mahogany table. It was far too splendid a room for something as mundane as breakfast. Framed artwork decorated the maroon wallpaper and yet more bookshelves filled one end of what appeared more like a drawing room in an Edwardian mansion than a kitchen in a secluded log house. Terrick looked every inch the beaten man, slumped over his meal.
“How do you feel?” Clare asked as she sat down and helped herself to coffee and toast. She downed a glass of orange juice, barely noticing the taste as the liquid filled her stomach.
“Like I've been kicked in the gut several times and someone barrelled into me.”
Terrick's deadpan humor wasn't lost on Clare and she smiled in response. “Could've been worse.”
“True. They tell me nothin's broken, though I'm bound to ache for a few days and pass blood every which way but how. Truth be told, those deputies were so overweight they got in the way of each other tryin' to get in a good kick. I've had worse, given better.”
Clare didn't doubt this for a second. Terrick was a tough old nag and had probably taken a beating or two in his life.
“What about you?” He pointed at her. “They wouldn't tell me anythin'.”
Clare raised her hands in a gesture of defeat. “Diabetic; According to the blood sugar readings I'm headed to the morgue if I don't sort myself out. My body's eating itself alive but the situation is much more complicated than that now.”
“What's more complicated than getting yourself to hospital? Sort it out, girl. If you aren't here this goes away and everybody forgets.”
“Come with me.” Clare stood.
Terrick groaned and stood to join her. She led the way to Logan's room, opening the door. The body was alone.
“Who's he?” Terrick asked, staring past her but not entering.
“He's Detective Jarret Logan. He was diabetic and the creature got to him. It's real, Terrick. He was a lure intended to draw it out and he perished in all the ways that matter. That's a breathing corpse in there, nothing more; A meat sack.”
Terrick gave her a suspicious look. Clare didn't need to ask what he was thinking. “I haven't made my mind up yet.”
“But you're thinking about it.”
“I am. Nobody has asked me outright to commit to this but there have been four deaths which means there are two more to come. Always six kills and last time Logan was the sixth. After that this thing disappears for a decade. What you see here is guilt over the failure to protect a human life already in the balance. If I can do something about it, why should more people suffer and die?”
“Noble, Clare, but what if the same thing happens to you?”
“Let's make sure it doesn't.”
It's not like I really have a choice.
The pair resumed their breakfast, Clare consuming far more than was good for her. She figured at least hunger wouldn't affect her as much as thirst, though both were becoming more of an issue as each day passed. Dominic joined them in the lobby of the house when they had finished.
“Ready to go?”
Terrick looked to Clare, his face questioning.
“Sightseeing,” she replied. “It might help put things into perspective.”
“Whatever. This quest of yours for answers is at an end. Get to the hospital already. Let others deal with the monsters in this world.”
“Will you at least take a look?”
Terrick nodded. “Looks like I ain't got a choice. Those dumbass Ashby cops probably have my car, if they didn't already smash it to bits.”
Dominic laughed. “They're nothing if not petty and vindictive,” he agreed. “Don't worry. The next journey is not far for you, and we have you a new ride. One even the sheriff's wife might like.”
The reference to his title caught Terrick off-guard. “How do…”
“Don't bother,” Clare said by way of cutting off the obvious and unnecessary question. “They know everything. We've been playing catch up the entire time. If I had to guess, I'd say they knew about my illness before I did and engineered our route.”
Dominic gave her a mysterious wink and opened the front door. Outside, a brand new silver Chrysler sedan waited for them, engine already running. The windows were tinted, preventing anybody seeing inside. “For you sir; A replacement for the car you lost, and your inconvenience.”
Terrick was struck dumb. He pointed at the car, his face alive, mouth attempting to form words.
“Yes it's yours. You drive, Sheriff, we'll sit in the back.”
“Is it safe?” Clare asked as they got in the car. The leather seats were unblemished. Clare had never owned a new car. Everything felt unusual, sterile. “Won't they be on the lookout for us?”
“They'll be watching for
a damaged black van, one that no longer exists. They won't see a couple of new sedans cruising through town. These things are a dime a dozen round here. Drive on, Sheriff.”
Terrick encouraged the car forward with a little gas. “Where are we?”
“North of Ashby, where nobody ever looks.”
Clare glanced behind. A four by four in a shade of deepest metallic green stayed close. “Our guardians?”
“In a manner of speaking. They will be useful in discouraging anybody from following us. It's a shame the local police found you before we did or they might not be necessary.”
The gates opened and Terrick took them down the track they had entered the day before, pulling back onto the highway after checking it was clear.
“Just drive through town,” Dominic instructed. “Don't do anything crazy. There's an incident brewing at Worcester County jail and they've sent several officers down there to help quell the unrest. But they've still got a presence here.”
Terrick's beaming grin emerged for the first time since they had arrived in Ashby. “Don't tempt me, lad. I might do so just to see what your boys are capable of.”
Dominic's face showed concern and Clare took his hand. “He's joking. Really.”
Her back-seat companion nodded but remained holding her hand. Clare really felt skeletal in his presence. She looked inside herself. There were the usual aches, the constant need to pee and a hunger that just never appeared to be satisfied. Overall she felt a weariness; a fog that would not lift. Now it was all linked, all pushing her toward her destiny. Her pain now had a name: Diabetes.
Buildings passed by as they came to the main street of Ashby. The police station was a strange converted trailer, cars lined up outside including the car crumpled by the van.
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