Tainted Blood

by DC Malone

  “I’ll just look like the stubborn pain in the neck that I am,” I finished.

  Luka nodded his agreement.

  Chapter 8

  It was three days later and for all the world it looked like the case had passed away gently in its sleep. Maggie still hadn’t returned any of my calls, and my multiple visits to her apartment had only turned up an empty residence. I still had her door key, and I had even checked to make sure they hadn’t been inside ducking me. They hadn’t been. And it didn’t look like the place had been visited since I saw Mark there three days ago.

  Hiram’s research had also been a bust so far. His contacts hadn’t gotten back to him, and if the invisible creature Maggie had described were in fact real, we were no closer to knowing what the thing might be. He had been particularly miffed at being ignored by what he now called his circle of former colleagues.

  So, in the absence of anything constructive to do, I sat in the middle of my apartment blindfolded and practicing the latest Necromancy skill Hiram had deigned to attempt to teach me.

  He called it the sight, and it was similar to the visions I got when I came into contact with the recently dead or their blood. Only, it wasn’t nearly as vivid, and I didn’t need an actual dead person for it to work. Hiram described it as seeing glimpses through the eyes of the dead. Nearly every place on earth had been walked over by million upon millions of shades, and a gifted Necromancer could glean some of what they saw if she concentrated hard enough.

  Of course, all of that was completely academic because, so far, all of that concentrating had only given me an extremely vivid vision of a pounding headache.

  I sighed and reached for the knot on the back of my blindfold. A calm and emptied mind was, according to Hiram, the key to the sight. The goal was to let the spirits in and let them share their stories of the current location and its history or whatever.

  But my mind wasn’t calm, and I didn’t want to know anything about my apartment or the restaurant below it. I wanted to know what was happening with the Bessons—with Maggie, specifically. For all I knew, that wasn’t even Mark I had talked to the other day…

  I pulled the cloth from my eyes and stared around at my little apartment as my eyes adjusted. It was nearly two in the afternoon, and the sunlight was pouring through my living room window in twin shafts of bright yellow-orange.

  Which… wasn’t right at all.

  My windows faced out toward the northeast, and the only time sunlight came through like that was when the sun was starting to set. So, unless I had nodded off for several hours while I was blindfolded, which didn’t seem likely, things were screwy.

  I got up and padded toward the windows to take a look. The air seemed thick somehow, like I was wading through water instead of walking across an old hardwood floor. I managed two steps, feeling like I was about the hurl the whole time, before I noticed the windows were no longer mine. And neither was the apartment.

  The light was still streaming through, but now it was lighting a much larger, and more expensive-looking, room. The place felt familiar and alien at once. I recognized the sparsely decorated room and its sleek, minimalist furniture. But my head was swimming, and it took me several moments and several long breaths to realize where I was.

  It was the Bessons’ apartment.

  My first instinct was to bolt for the door. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t right, and the lizard part of my brain told me to run far and run fast.

  But I couldn’t run. Literally. I no longer had any control over my body, and, more to the point, I didn’t think I was even still in my own body. The vantage point for my vision was about a foot higher than usual, and there was nothing of me in my peripheral vision. Stranger still, there was nothing of any body in my peripheral view, which was more disturbing than it might sound. After a lifetime of it, a person gets used to all the ignored visual information they see—the blurred darkness of their surrounding eye sockets, the tops of the cheekbones, the ever-present nose in the middle. But what I was seeing was like seeing through eyes set in a glass skull.

  No, that’s not right. It was like seeing through eyes set in an invisible skull.

  The revelation hit me like a punch in the stomach, and the urge to run returned and redoubled.

  I was seeing through the eyes of that invisible thing that had been harassing Maggie and Mark.

  Just as I started to come to terms with that fact, the view pivoted and began to lope in the direction of the kitchen off the living room. The since of déjà vu and an extreme motion sickness forced me to squeeze my eyes shut as I—we—zeroed in on the fridge. Unfortunately, I didn’t even have that much control, and my eyes stayed pried open as an invisible arm pulled open the sleek stainless-steel door and started rifling through the various food items.

  The creature went for the meat, just like Maggie had said, first pulling open a small tub of ground beef and hammering it into its invisible mouth, and then going for a flat of chicken drumsticks. After several long minutes of frantic eating, which sounded like the burble of an organic garbage disposal, the creature gathered the excess packaging and tossed it in the kitchen bin.

  At least the thing had some manners…

  As my vision tilted back toward the living room, I noticed a clock on the kitchen wall that read a few minutes after six. That fit with the sunset light I saw in the living room, but I wished I could catch a glimpse of a calendar. Instinctively, I knew that what I was witnessing wasn’t the present—the time didn’t match up—but I had no way of knowing precisely when I was experiencing.

  My forced view shifted toward a darkened hallway, and we began the slow journey to the back of the apartment. The creature didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and nothing in its deliberate steps or kitchen etiquette seemed to suggest I was in the presence of some beast or animal-like monster. If anything, it seemed perfectly happy to move at a casual, leisurely pace.

  We ignored the first door in the hall and moved straight to the Bessons’ closed bedroom door. The brushed nickel doorknob seemed to turn by itself, and the creature and I pushed through and into the dimly lit room beyond.

  Maggie and Mark were both there and in bed, which seemed odd for the hour. Neither of them was actually dressed for bed, either. Mark was still dressed for a day at the office with a full suit and even his shoes on. Maggie looked prepared for an exercise or yoga session, wearing leggings and a tank top.

  They both appeared fast asleep on their backs and on top of the still-made bed.

  It was like watching the unfolding of a nightmare. Nothing made any sense, like the dream logic that only added up until you woke and realized how crazy it all was.

  We crept closer to the sleeping figures, and I braced myself for what was about to happen. The creature stood above Mark on the left side of the bed but didn’t immediately move to do anything else. It was rather tranquil, standing there watching them sleep, if you didn’t think too hard about what was happening.

  After a moment, the dim light through the room’s closed shades began to flicker. No, that wasn’t right. It was the area around my field of view that began to darken. Within the space of a second at most, the invisible border around the eyes that were not really mine took on the customary solidity. Dark, inhuman limbs and a hint of a skeletal torso flitted into view at the same time.

  Now visible, the lurking creature still did not act. Maybe it enjoyed watching over its victims before it fed, or maybe this was only part of some inscrutable ritual it had observed during its countless sessions with untold numbers of people all over the city. Who could say?

  I knew it was useless, but I tried to call out to the Bessons. It didn’t matter that what I was seeing had probably already happened, that what I was attempting was pretty much the same thing as screaming at some hapless character in a horror movie. I still had to try.

  The words I tried to yell cut off in my throat without so much as a squeak. I was completely powerless here, just a passenger along for the gruesome rid
e and forced to watch.

  But even though my warning never came, Mark began to stir and his eyes slit open and immediately locked onto the creature above him. That moment of waiting before understanding bloomed in the man’s eyes was like an icicle in my chest. Chills danced through me as I watched for the flood of terror that would soon consume Mark. I couldn’t imagine what my own reaction would have been, waking up to a living nightmare stooped above me, but I didn’t think an immediate heart attack would have been unlikely. But Mark’s reaction was beyond anything I could have anticipated.

  He simply smiled up at the monster, then closed his eyes again.

  That seemed to be the creature’s cue. Its wiry, blackened-bone hands reached down and deftly parted the buttons of Mark’s white dress shirt. When the porcelain-white flesh of the man’s chest was sufficiently revealed, the creature and I dipped our combined heads down and began to… drink.

  Being forced to watch was one thing. My eyes were too close to the victim to make out much more than a dark, blurry form. But being forced to listen was absolute torture. My stomach already felt like I was halfway through my tenth ride on a Tilt-o-Whirl, and the monster’s continuous greedy slurps were pushing me right over the edge.

  That loud, wet sound became my world, thundering through my head like some disgusting wordless chant. Actually, it wasn’t wordless. There was a pattern that I could almost understand.

  Meredith.

  My blood froze as I heard my name in those ravenous animal sounds. But my name wasn’t the only thing I heard there.

  I focused all of my will on the pattern of words coming from that horrifying sound, and it began to take shape.

  Meredith. Meredith, wake up.

  The nightmare before me dissolved into the brightly lit form of my apartment. I was still standing in the middle of my room, grasping the blindfold that I had removed. It felt like that had been hours ago. For all I knew, it had been.

  “Meredith? Are you okay?”

  My senses slowly returned, and the real world began to flood back over me. Still, it took me several seconds to locate the thin, tall figure speaking to me from my right. Hiram wasn’t quite within touching distance, but he was a lot closer than he ever liked to be.

  A wave of pure relief hit me, and I realized I hadn’t been completely sure I would ever break out of whatever had had a hold on me. The thought of existing forever as that creature’s voyeuristic passenger was something I didn’t want to dwell on.

  I opened my mouth to offer my thanks to Hiram, but my morning’s breakfast beat my words out of the gate.

  Chapter 9

  I sat on the edge of my futon, cradling my head and waiting for the world to stop spinning. Vomiting had helped some, but the bear growling from my stomach said I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

  “Here, try this.”

  A cool, damp cloth touched my forehead, and I clasped my hands over it gratefully. Cold was just what the prickly sickness inside me wanted.

  “I… couldn’t find a washcloth, so I used a sock,” Hiram said, moving to the farthest corner of my little room. “It was in the basket in your bathroom, so I’m pretty sure it’s clean. Probably.”

  “Thanks.” Honestly, the thing felt so good against my pounding head, I wouldn’t have cared if he’d just removed it from his foot.

  “Care to fill me in on exactly what that was all about?” Hiram asked. “You seemed utterly entranced… I had been trying to snap you out of it for several minutes, at least.”

  I shook my head, then regretted the movement. “I don’t know what happened. I was trying out the vision stuff that you taught me, but I wasn’t having any luck with it. So, I gave up, and the next thing I knew, I was looking through the eyes of that monster Maggie Besson told me about.”

  “That’s not possible,” Hiram said. “The vision lets us see with the eyes of the dead, and that creature is very much alive. You know as well as I do that the realm of the living is not our domain. We—”

  “We deal in death,” I finished. “I know. But I also know what I saw… and what I felt and heard. It really happened.”

  “If it were any other Necro telling me this, I would have no doubt that they were mistaken. But you… have historically been something of an anomaly. You don’t get Proximity Sickness, which is unheard of. And even though you’re completely ignorant of the world around you, you still manage to stumble in the right direction more often than not.”

  “You’re making me blush.”

  “I’m only saying that I believe you,” Hiram finished. “Were you able to learn anything useful from your vision?”

  “Maybe.” Some of it was jumbled in my mind, but those last moments when the creature was feeding on Mark Besson were still crystal clear. “I think I relived the first time the creature fed on the Bessons. At least, it was the first time it fed on Mark.”

  “What makes you think it was the first time?”

  “His chest didn’t yet have any of the weird bruising I saw on Maggie’s,” I said. “There wasn’t a mark on him.”

  “No pun intended,” Hiram smirked.

  “But the really strange thing is that he seemed to be completely aware of what was about to happen. He even smiled when he saw the creature.” I shuddered at the recollection. It was somehow far worse that he had been complicit in what happened there on that bed.

  “Hmm. That could be important in helping us narrow down what we are dealing with.” Hiram paced the length of the room, tapping his fist against the back of one long leg. “It’s certainly more than we had before.”

  “Hey, you don’t look as queasy as usual,” I said, watching him pace back to where he started. “You finally getting used to me or what?”

  “Took a handful of Dramamine on the way over. It makes me feel like I’m about to fall asleep at any moment, but at least I’ll keep my lunch down. Speaking of which, how are you feeling now?”

  I sat up and considered. “Not nearly as bad as before.”

  “Good. Typically, the vision isn’t nearly as vivid and consuming as what you described. I imagine that would have been… taxing.”

  “Let’s just say it’s not something I want to jump back into any time soon. But why are you here, and how did you even get in?” Now that I didn’t have my head tucked between my knees, it began to dawn on me how weird it was that Hiram had shown up in person. Our conversations were almost always over the phone unless it absolutely couldn’t be helped.

  “Getting inside wasn’t much of a chore,” Hiram replied. “Your door was unlocked… I would have thought a former burglar might know better.”

  “Oh… guess I forgot. And why did you punch the word former? I’m just an average member of the rat race now—completely reformed.”

  Hiram nodded but didn’t look overly convinced. “As for the why of my presence, I…” Hiram paused for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m probably just being paranoid.”

  My ears pricked up at that. If Hiram thought he was being paranoid, it was probably because there was something real to be paranoid about. And if it was enough to bring him this close to me…

  “You know those contacts that I had mentioned?” he said. “The ones who were taking their sweet time getting back to me about our invisible monster problem?”

  “Sure…”

  “Well, I kept pushing. Leaving multiple messages, calling mutual acquaintances, that sort of thing. Their silence had started to vex me, so I made myself as much of a nuisance as I could.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I still wasn’t getting anything back. That is, until this very morning. All three of my colleagues I reached out to called me back this morning.”

  “What did they say? Do they know what this thing might be?”

  “It is the nonsensical prattling of a Norm. Either done for attention or because he or she is mentally unstable.”

  “Well, we know that’s not the case,” I said. “Not after what I just saw.”
/>   “And I knew it well before,” Hiram replied.

  “How?”

  “They all told me that. Almost used that exact phrase, even. Then, each to a one, went on to assure me that there had never been such a creature as the one I described.”

  What Hiram was telling me finally clicked. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks…”

  Hiram touched a spindly finger to the tip of his hawk-beak nose. “And do you know what I think?”

  “That some faction within the Congregation is using its considerable influence to convince any interested parties that everything’s business as usual. Nothing to see here…”

  Hiram arched an eyebrow. It made him look just a little like Mr. Spock. “That’s rather astute. You really are cut out for the sleuth’s life.”

  “I’d like to take credit for it,” I said. “But it’s not my idea.”

  I told him about my bar talk with Luka and his suspicions about someone within the Congregation.

  “And you’re only now sharing this with me, Meredith?” He ran his hand back through his dark, spikey hair. “Three days you’ve been sitting on what I’ve only just puzzled out… Anything else you’re holding back from me? Assassins at my apartment later!?”

  “Jeez, I didn’t think it was something you needed to know—”

  “Oh, so the information flows in only one direction, is that it? Let Hiram dig up what he can, but keep him in the dark on everything else… Exactly what kind of partner does that make me?”

  “You’re my partner?”

  “Yes, of course. Well, no, not exactly. But still… I’m—”

  “That Dramamine is working a number on you, isn’t it?”

  Hiram reeled off a stream of rude words under his breath. And a few more not-so-under his breath. When he was finished, he slumped into the straight-backed chair across from me.

  “Maybe it is working on me,” he said. “A little. But you still should have pulled me into the loop. I was worried enough, hearing what I did from my colleagues this morning. Had I known what you already knew, I wouldn’t have been kicking the proverbial hornet’s nest for the last few days. Whoever’s pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes is trying to be subtle right now. But there may come a time when they decide to be less subtle, if you catch my meaning.”