Dark Changeling

by Margaret Carter

  “How open?” This speculative field seemed odd for such a levelheaded woman. “Do you accept the whole gamut of paranormal phenomena—clairvoyance, telepathy, past life regression, psychokinesis, astral projection—?”

  She finished, “Not to mention psychic healing, sympathetic magic, and human spontaneous combustion? I don't—accept’ any of it, in the absence of concrete proof. But some of the anecdotal evidence is highly suggestive.”

  By the time he had made his disdain for anecdotal evidence perfectly clear, they'd reached the attorney's office. The lawyer was a woman, no surprise to Roger, who had noticed the faded E.R.A. bumper sticker on the back of his new associate's car. The front bumper, urging the reelection of President Carter, branded her a liberal on other issues, too. Roger decided he could live with that aberration, considering her numerous good qualities. A third sticker, proclaiming, “Places to Go, Heads to Shrink,” he decided simply to ignore.

  On the way out of the attorney's West Street office, Dr. Loren said with a grin, “Well, we're stuck with each other now. How about a nice relaxing tour of historic Annapolis?”

  “Relaxing” wasn't the word Roger would have chosen. He might have enjoyed the drive up the narrow, brick-paved Main Street and around Church Circle, with its colonial church at the center of town, if she'd conducted the tour after sunset. As it was, he had to endure the glare of the afternoon sun while chugging along tourist-choked streets in a Volkswagen beetle with inadequate leg room. “How many months a year does your weather stay like this, Dr. Loren?” he asked as they inched past the city dock a couple of minutes later. From there, they turned onto the shady campus of the Naval Academy, providing a slight break in his discomfort.

  “Missing New England already? Don't try to con me—I've met your mosquitoes, and your summers are as muggy as ours. Yes, if you're partial to winter, we get our share. Even snow.” She gave him a sidelong glance as she stopped the car near the chapel to make way for a squad of jogging midshipmen. “And since we're starting a long association—we hope—how about calling me Britt?”

  Well aware that the gesture was a meaningless social amenity, Roger nevertheless felt warmed, a minute later, when she spoke his given name in her rich alto. The tingle at the roots of his teeth reminded him that he had to keep her at a distance. Indulging his appetite with a coworker would invite catastrophe. He began by politely refusing Britt's invitation to join her at dinner to celebrate their contract. He claimed a health condition that restricted his diet (true enough), insisting that he wasn't hungry (by now, an outrageous lie) and would dine alone later.

  He did exactly that after the hotel quieted down for the night. Crossing to the other wing of the Hilton, he prowled until he found an unaccompanied woman just unlocking the door of her room. It took him only seconds to catch her eye with a casual remark, then lull her into a trance. He followed her inside, took what he needed, and put her to sleep with a command to forget the encounter.

  In the morning he met with a real estate agent before heading to the airport. When he made the move, scheduled for Labor Day week, he wanted to spend as little time as possible stuck in a hotel. The return flight, though only a short hop from B.W.I. to Boston, affected Roger as badly as airline trips usually did. Being trapped in a vehicle over which he had no control, with a pack of nervous, sad, or exuberant people, taxed his undeveloped psychic barriers. He had never learned to shut out such stimuli, except by ingesting heavy doses of alcohol.

  After several drinks he managed to fall into a shallow, dream-haunted doze. This time, however, he suffered neither his usual amorphous anxiety dreams nor the violent nightmares he dreaded. Instead, he plunged into a lurid vision of Britt Loren lying in his arms, her magnificent red-gold hair unbound, a single scarlet drop adorning the smooth whiteness of her neck. He awakened with his jaws aching and his heart hammering in frustration.

  Too many of those over-romanticized vampire movies,he decided, calling the flight attendant for another Scotch.What is the matter with me today? I'm not even hungry.

  Noting the word that he'd unthinkingly used brought him up short.Hungry? I'm already thinking like Sylvia. That young woman is dangerous!

  Yet he knew he wouldn't break with Sylvia; she intrigued him too much, and she provided something he'd never had be-fore—one person with whom he could freely discuss his secret. As for his reaction to Britt, his longing for her must be a tem-porary aberration. Nobody fell that fast, that hard. Since the desire couldn't be consummated, the sooner he crushed it, the better.

  He returned home to an additional stress, the folder of case notes and medical examiner's reports O'Toole had sent him over the weekend. Roger forced himself to study the black and white copies of autopsy photos, with their images of torn throats and lacerated breasts. When he read the reports, two anomalies, in addition to the corpses’ low blood volume, struck him. The only clue to the attacker's identity, the saliva in the wounds, made no sense; analysis of the saliva collected from the earliest victim—admittedly a small amount, hence vulnerable to laboratory error—revealed no recognizable blood type. Furthermore, not only did the autopsies turn up no semen samples, they recovered no specimens of the killer's skin or blood from the girls’ fingernails. At least one of the victims should have managed to claw her attacker before dying. It looked as if the girls hadn't struggled, none of them.

  Could they have been killed by someone they all trusted, catching them off guard? Unlikely, since investigation had revealed no connection among the victims. Perhaps the murderer had solicited trust in some other way, such as wearing a uniform. Or perhaps he used hypnosis, like Roger.

  No! There's no resemblance!

  “Liar,” Roger said aloud into the silence of his home office. He shifted his attention to another oddity of the cases. In each instance, the pattern of post mortem lividity revealed that the girls had not died where the bodies had turned up. So the perpetrator, at increased risk to himself, had transported his victims away from the murder sites after death. To make sure they would be found distant from some location that could be linked to him? Or to flaunt his contempt for the authorities by leaving the evidence in conspicuous places? Abandoning that young blonde in front of the Old North Church certainly looked like a gesture of defiance.

  If he's that bold, sooner or later he'll give himself away.From the file cabinet next to his desk, Roger pulled out a thick file of xerox copies and notes on blood fetishism. A few of the classic cases resembled the current series of murders. He glanced at and dismissed his material on John George Haigh, the “Acid Bath Vampire,” for some authorities suspected Haigh of commit-ting his crimes solely for profit, inventing his tales of blood-drinking in support of an insanity plea. Roger also set aside the cases in which ingestion of blood served as a prelude to rape rather than a substitute for it.

  Krafft-Ebing's account of Vincenz Verzeni, a nineteenth-century Spanish serial killer, more closely paralleled the Boston murders. Instead of raping his victims, Verzeni had experienced sexual release in the mere strangling and biting of women, and he had claimed a total lack of interest in—indeed, ignorance of—female genitalia.

  Roger paused to consider whether he might be reading too much into the sketchy information provided by O'Toole, projecting his own lusts onto the killer. Certainly the resemblance between himself and the unknown criminal did not extend to theirmodus operandi . Roger's morbid introspection had never unearthed impulses within himself that reflected the unknown's obvious delight in pain and death.

  On the other hand, intuition told him he wasn't imagining the similarities in their sexual preferences. Roger's libido had expressed itself atypically—be honest, why don't you, abnormally!—from the beginning. Unlike O'Toole's shadowy killer, who seemed to crave negative emotions, Roger fed on erotic arousal.

  Sylvia claimed she knew the murderer. Had she simply read about the crimes and appropriated them as part of her fantasy? Or could she, properly approached, offer a solid lead?

 
Chapter 4

  SATURDAY NIGHT Roger again hunted with Sylvia in the Cambridge area, this time in his own car. At her request, he picked up another teenage girl for her, a Radcliffe student in search of a lift back to the dorm. Before Sylvia lulled her into a trance, the girl remarked that she was a freshman, not yet turned eighteen. By getting out of the car and walking around until Sylvia finished, Roger resisted the temptation to share this prey with her.

  Afterward he asked Sylvia, “Why do you tend to pick on such young victims?” He didn't completely abstain from girls under twenty, but they weren't his first choice.

  “I wish you could hear yourself, Roger,” she said with a contented wiggle. “You sound like the father in a fifties sitcom scolding his daughter for staying out past midnight. I take teenagers, when I can, because their emotions are so intense. I get a fantastic charge out of those bubbling cauldrons of hormones.”

  Silenced by his distaste for her blatant hedonism, Roger drove across the Longfellow Bridge to Sylvia's downtown apartment. For the first time, she invited him to come up for a visit. They greeted the uniformed doorman, walked through the lobby past a wall of mirrors, and rode the elevator to her floor. Although the building itself screamed “money,” he found no Wedgewood and crystal here. Braided rugs and beanbag chairs covered the apartment's living-room floor, horror movie posters the walls. The thousand-dollar Japanese stereo system shared department-store metal shelves with stacks of paperback books, which also colonized the rug in wobbly mounds.

  Scanning the room, he said, “So this is your lair. Where do you keep the coffin?”

  “Ha, ha.” Sylvia plucked a plaid shawl off the only solid piece of furniture in the room, a low divan, and slung the garment onto one of the chairs.

  Roger accepted the implied invitation and sat down, avoiding a heap of newspapers and a copy ofAnalog that had been hidden by the shawl. How could anyone live in such clutter? Aside from a little dust, though, the place was clean. The only taint in the air was a not-unpleasant animal scent.

  Its source stalked around the corner from the adjoining kitchen. A black Persian cat. She circled Sylvia's legs and emitted a meow of greeting. “You got fed before I left,” Sylvia said, “so don't try to snow me with any of that ‘hungry’ stuff.” Picking up the cat, she joined Roger on the couch. “Meet Katrina. She's a pet, not a snack.”

  “Good grief, what kind of barbarian do you think I am?”

  “Sorry—after all, I don't know much about you yet.” When Katrina squirmed, Sylvia loosened her hold, and the cat minced toward Roger. Instead of hissing and running, as he'd expected, the cat sniffed his hand, then placed her front paws on his thigh, whiskers twitching. She stretched up to bump against his shoulder and allowed him to rub her chin. “Strange—animals don't like me.”

  “Most of them don't like me, either,” Sylvia replied. “Katrina's different because I raised her from a kitten. She's weird—can't stand ephemerals, likes vampires. More evidence that you're one of us.”

  “More likely she senses you approve of me.” Dropping the argument, Roger gave himself up to the unaccustomed pleasure of smoothing the silky fur over lithe muscles.

  “I'd like to have a human pet someday,” she said, “but the addiction risk scares me.”

  Instead of getting sidetracked by the concept of a human being as a “pet,” he asked her about the term “addiction.”

  “If we use the same person too many times,” she said, scratching under the cat's chin, “we can get fixated on them. It's not just psychological; it's a chemical thing.”

  He marveled at the complexity of the background she'd imagined for herself. “Not something I have to worry about,” he said. “I don't—drink—often enough for that to happen.”

  “How about now? Are you sure you're all right?” Sylvia asked. “I don't feel any need in you, but maybe you're just good at hiding it.”

  Roger didn't care for the vulnerability of being read with such ease. “Since you are the first person I've met who's claimed any degree of clairvoyance, I've never learned to hide it. I'm fine, but I could use a glass of milk.”

  Sylvia went into the kitchen, leaving him with Katrina, who had homesteaded his lap. Roger flipped through the magazine and scanned the opening page of a Spider Robinson story. He heard the beep of a microwave oven, and a moment later Sylvia returned with two earthenware mugs. “I thought you'd prefer it warm. I always do.”

  “Yes, thank you.” He sipped the milk. Body temperature. He didn't dwell on the coincidence that she shared his taste in late-night drinks. “If you insist you're a vampire, I suppose blood and milk make up your entire diet.”

  She smiled at his transparent attempt to catch her in a contradiction. “No, I drink beef broth, too, sometimes with ground meat in it. How about you?”

  “I've found that suppresses the—hunger—up to a point. So does animal blood from butcher shops.”

  She grimaced. “I resort to that myself if I have to. Yuck—like an ephemeral eating frozen TV dinners.”

  “Then you don't take human blood every night?”

  Seated next to him, she said, “Of course not. I hunt live animals, too.”

  “So do I—better than preying on people.”

  “You take this guilt thing seriously, don't you?” She sipped her milk. “For some things animals really are better than human prey. With a rabbit or a deer, you can let yourself go, enjoy the chase and the kill, gorge yourself. We need that release some-times. You can't do that with people unless you want to end up like our cousin the serial killer.”

  “No cousin of mine!” Roger took a long drink of milk to settle his stomach. “Do you think he feeds on—human prey—every night?”

  “I wouldn't be surprised. Every other night, at least, I bet. The cops don't find all his kills, only the ones he doesn't bother to hide.” She tucked her legs under her on the couch and offered her mug to the cat, who lapped at the surface of the milk. “I'm sure he has no trouble luring victims. Ephemerals can't resist us when we focus on them. And as you've noticed yourself, when we're hungry they flock to us even if we're not trying.”

  “I never admitted to noticing anything of the sort.” The way she picked up subtle cues in his behavior and speech, feeding them back to him as “facts,” struck him as uncanny. She would make an outstanding therapist—or con artist.

  “Yeah, right, you're totally human. Drinking warmed-over blood for midnight snacks doesn't mean a thing.”

  “However, I also eat solid food. Face it—I'm an ordinary man with a few peculiar habits.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile at his own understatement.

  “And those allergies Mrs. Bronson mentioned? I bet they include sunlight and garlic.”

  “Along with a tedious list of other things,” he said. “You're selecting the data that fit your hypothesis and ignoring all the rest.”

  “Have it your way,” Sylvia said. “Care to listen to some music?”

  “I can't stay long. I have to get a nap between now and church tomorrow morning.”

  “You really go to church? And participate?”

  “Why not? I was brought up Catholic.” He would have laughed if her consternation hadn't been so deep; she stared at him as if he'd confessed to drinking a cup of hemlock every day for breakfast. “Sylvia, you aren't afraid of crosses, are you, like the vampires in those idiotic films?” He gestured toward a blown-up photo of Bela Lugosi, black cape billowing, on the opposite wall.

  She nodded, avoiding his eyes. “I know there's no objective danger, but I can hardly stand to look at one. If a cross touched me, I'd freak.”

  “But that's ridiculous. You're letting a lot of superstitious tripe have psychosomatic effects on you. We both know you're not a corpse reanimated by the Devil, so how can you believe religious symbols have power over you?” He cut the lecture short; as a psychiatrist, he ought to know the futility of trying to talk someone out of a phobia. “You know, that problem might be curable.”I should be urging her to ge
t therapy for more than just the phobia. But that would mean admitting I need the same treatment, wouldn't it?

  “No, thank you, Doctor! I don't need to have my head shrunk.”

  “That's a matter of opinion.” He consoled himself that, while she might not be quite so harmless as the fellow in the movie who claimed to hang out with a six-foot invisible rabbit, in any rating of dangerous psychotics she scored pretty low. Finishing his milk, he let his eyes roam over Sylvia's slender curves. Despite the smallness of her bosom, her long-legged, feline grace gave her an erotic appeal no man could fail to notice. Still edgy from watching her seduce her victim, Roger almost wished he had ignored his scruples and joined her.

  “You want something from me,” she said. “What is it?”

  Damn, I'll have to learn to shield my emotions better.Her keen perception made him feel naked. He set his cup on the floor, and Katrina leaped down to lick at the dregs. Roger put his arm around Sylvia, who purred—that was the only word for it—deep in her throat and reached up to stroke his cheek.

  Clasping her hand, he brushed his lips across it to confirm what he thought he'd felt. “You have tiny hairs in your palm.”

  She laughed softly. “So do you.” He caught his breath when she captured his free hand and tickled the sensitive center of his palm with her thumb. “Cilia, really—or vibrissae, like a cat's whiskers. And you still think you're not like me?”

  “I still haven't decided which of us is psychotic—or possibly both.” He didn't want to deal with the implications of this discovery right now. After all, the strange trait, though rare, fell within the normal range of human variation. “But I can't help thinking of that first night, when I—took—from you. It felt different from anything else I've experienced.”

  Sylvia rubbed her head, catlike, against his shoulder. “And you want another taste? All right, I don't mind. We sometimes share blood with our own kind, in friendship or mating. Just don't mark my throat again.”