Hayes found himself blushing. “There is a downside,” he said. “We could end up being flooded with false identifications. It could be expensive tracking them all down.”
“Expense isn’t an issue. It sounds well worth doing. Bravo, Donald, I am quite impressed.”
She must’ve put the phone down. He could hear her clapping on her end. Then the light tinkling of her laughter.
Hayes’ blush deepened. He also felt himself hardening between his legs. It was amazing the effect her voice could have on him—more powerful than a handful of Viagra. He was grateful more than ever that he had that tattooed and pierced freak of a waitress waiting for him.
“We could also get her sketch in newspapers across the country and offer a reward for information. It would be expensive, but we’d probably find her in a week or less—”
“No, Donald, your other idea sounds more than adequate. Newspapers would draw too much attention. But I am very pleased with your progress. Very much so. Please do continue to keep me informed.”
She hung up.
Hayes let loose with a loud exhalation, then shook his head smiling grimly to himself. He wished he had some idea where Jim and his girlfriend had gone off to next. More than ever he wanted to find the sonofabitch and be done with the case. He checked his watch and sighed heavily. It was nine-ten. Almost four hours before that waitress would be off duty. He got back in his car and drove the two miles to the murder site. Before leaving his car he took the safety off his 9 mm and slipped the sap under his belt so he’d have easy access to it. He walked back into the alley hoping to come across someone who might’ve seen something the night Devon Wilkerson was killed. He waited patiently without any luck until quarter to one, then headed off to his date.
Chapter 4
Metcalf’s private lab was reminiscent of some nightmarish scene from the Island of Dr. Moreau, and like Moreau’s laboratory, was a place of pain and abomination. For Metcalf, the lab served dual purposes; it helped him gain insights into the effects of the virus, and it acted as a deterrent to the other vampires in the compound from thinking about challenging his authority. The test subjects were all infected with the vampire virus. Some were originally brought in as “cattle” and had the misfortune of being chosen for this capacity—which was a fate far worse than being milked until illness or anemia set in; others were members of the compound who needed to be made examples of. All of the test subjects had their arms and lower halves removed; which made them appear like grotesque doll-like creatures. Some were pinned to their tables by spikes through their shoulders, others were chained along the walls. All of them were in the midst of experiments that would’ve made even the infamous Joseph Mengelev cringe in horror.
Metcalf strolled casually around his lab examining his experiments. Those that were capable of screaming out fought hard to hold their tongues; they knew their situations, however horrific, could be made worse. Moans escaped from a few of them, whimpers from a few others, but most kept quiet. Metcalf stopped at a table where a test subject had reached six months without being fed. The subject had shriveled to the point of looking more like a prune than anything that could’ve ever been human. Its eyes appeared dead, its mouth gaping open. Metcalf pulled the spikes out from its shoulders and carried it to a scale. Only thirty-four pounds. Before the experiment was started, the subject had weighed more than double that. Metcalf brought it back to its table and pounded the spikes back where they’d been. Not even a whimper. Metcalf had doubts whether it was still alive. If it were dead it would be the first time that he witnessed a vampire dying due to starvation. Using an eyedropper, Metcalf squeezed a drop of human blood into the thing’s gaping mouth. A sucking sound came from it.
“Still alive, huh?” Metcalf noted.
He squeezed the remaining blood from the eyedropper into the gaping hole. The glaze over the vampire’s eyes faded and a flicker of life shone in them. Metcalf slowly fed it an ounce of blood, and as he did so, the vampire plumped out like a raisin that had been dropped in water. It stirred slightly, its tongue pushing out, then choking noises rattled from its throat as it pleaded for more blood. Metcalf continued to feed it blood until it was restored to its former condition. Four ounces of blood had brought the vampire fully back. The vampire lay with its chest heaving sucking in oxygen. Metcalf scribbled notes on a clipboard that hung on the edge of the table.
“Please, no more…I’m begging…end it…please…end it…” the vampire forced out, its voice not much more than a hoarse whisper.
Metcalf looked up and made a shushing noise to the vampire before moving on to check on other experiments. Although some of the vampires were made into these “guinea pigs” to teach the others in the compound a lesson, Metcalf took no sadistic pleasure in what he did, but neither did he feel the slightest hint of remorse. As far as he was concerned, these creatures didn’t even rate as lab mice, and he felt the same compassion towards them that a scientist might towards bacteria that was being examined under a microscope. These experiments allowed Metcalf to understand the virus at a more practical level, and that was all that mattered to him.
Smiling, he thought about how he could write a book on the subject…
Hell, make it a set of encyclopedias…
Early on he discovered that vampires could be killed fairly easily, at least easily for him, by cutting off their heads. Other than that method, which few other vampires had the strength to do without very sharp blades, they were damn hard to kill. Like goddamn cockroaches. Suffocating them, whether by drowning, gassing or simply sealing off a vampire’s nose and mouth, didn’t kill them; it only caused them to slip into a comatose state until oxygen became available. Metcalf had kept experiments submerged for months in tanks of water only to have them revive within seconds of being removed, and showing no discernable damage from their oxygen deprivation. He could burn them to death, but only after he had bought a cremation oven and was able to get the temperature to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking a vampire long enough in a microwave oven also did the trick, but again, like requiring a cremation oven, it was impractical. The virus created a kind of super-immunity to lethal viral infections: Ebola, bubonic plague, hantavirus, and all the other viruses Metcalf exposed his test subjects to had little effect. Neither did exposure to deadly bacteria like meningitis or anthrax, nor any of the poisons that Metcalf had so far injected into their blood systems. Ingesting poison caused the same short-term violent reactions that ingesting any food would cause, but nothing more than that.
Metcalf stopped in front of one of his test subjects. Two days earlier he had injected the vampire with an ounce of venom from an Australian Brown Snake, which was enough to kill over ten thousand people. Outside of being somewhat dried out, the vampire looked no worse for wear.
“Would you like to be fed?” Metcalf asked it.
The vampire nodded glumly and Metcalf squeezed an ounce of blood into its mouth. After that ounce, the vampire appeared the same as before the snake venom injection. Metcalf scribbled notes on the clipboard next to the test subject. Over the course of a year, Metcalf had injected snake and spider venom, arsenic, cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, and numerous other poisons into this subject, all with little if any damage. As with viruses and bacterial exposure, poison seemed to have no real effect against the super-immunity caused by the vampire virus.
“You are a monster. A monster,” drifted in from behind him, a seemingly disembodied voice, barely a whisper. “You will burn in the fires of damnation. What you are doing to us will be done to you a million times over.”
Metcalf strained to hear where the voice was coming from and followed it to one of his vivisection experiments. Mildly disappointed, he understood why the test subject dared to speak out. It had nothing left to lose, or little, anyway. Metcalf had months earlier cut the vampire open and spread the skin apart so its insides were exposed, and over time had removed most of its organs. Spleen, liver, kidneys, esophagus and stomach were gone. Not much was re
ally left other than its heart and one of its lungs.
The vampire’s jaundiced eyes held steady on Metcalf’s.
“You think you are a God?” it asked, its voice haltering, ghostlike. “You are nothing. Less than dirt, that’s what you are. Some day there will be justice and you will suffer worse than you’ve made all of us suffer.”
“That may be true,” Metcalf said. “But you know something, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion.”
Metcalf reached into the vampire’s chest and squeezed its heart in his fist. A sick gurgling noise escaped the vampire’s lips and its eyes rolled up into its sockets. Metcalf decided to alter his experiment. He took a loose spike and drove it into the vampire’s heart. Unlike the supernatural myth associated with a vampire, a spike through the heart didn’t kill it. The virus would cause the damaged heart to regenerate its tissue as it tried to heal itself. From personal experience Metcalf knew the pain would be excruciating. If the spike were removed, the heart would completely regenerate in seconds and be as healthy as before the injury, but with the spike in the way the newly generated tissue would wrap itself around the metal in a fruitless attempt for recovery. No, one spike through the heart wouldn’t kill a vampire, but maybe more than one would. Overtime Metcalf would discover how many it took, but he planned to stretch this experiment out and make it last years. He watched while the vampire writhed in agony, its mouth twisting as it tried to scream but in too much pain for any noise to escape. Satisfied that his point had been made to the other “guinea pigs”, he turned to the room and addressed them, asking if any of them had any other comments they’d like to share.
“Well?” Metcalf asked. “Most of you still have your tongues. Come on, if you have anything to say, let’s hear it.”
All he got back in response were a few soft moans.
He moved his gaze slowly around the room. Like the “cattle” in the feeding pens, the vampires pinned and chained around the lab looked away from him, none of them willing to meet his eyes.
“No complaints, huh? That’s good. I like to think I treat my lab rats as humanely as any other scientist. But I am always open—”
His phone interrupted him. The compound was thirty feet underground, but he had it built with a network of antennas and signal enhancers so that it allowed for cell phone reception. He took out his cell phone and saw that Serena was calling him.
“Jim was in Kansas City four days ago,” Serena said breathlessly.
Metcalf lowered his head into an open hand and rubbed his eyes. Christ, he wasn’t in the mood for this.
“So?” he asked.
“So? What do you mean so? We’re only four days behind him! We’re finally going to catch up to him!”
Metcalf rubbed his eyes some more. “Four days is a long time, Serena. He could be half way across the country by now.”
“Always the eternal optimist, huh? Let’s say he is. It doesn’t matter. My little private eye has a spectacular idea on how to flush him out.”
Metcalf’s patience was quickly eroding. He never liked the idea of having a private detective snooping into their business, but he agreed to let Serena hire one a year ago. He didn’t think anything would ever come of it and at the time it seemed the best way to mollify her.
“Serena,” he said, trying hard to keep his annoyance in check. “This obsession you have with Jim is not healthy, and this whole private eye business—”
“Metcalf, darling, who the fuck are you to talk to me so condescendingly? Fuck you, my darling! Aren’t you the one who’s constantly harping on how we need to keep the virus contained? That we can’t afford as much as a single rogue vampire or we’ll all end up starving to death? Isn’t that the tune you keep singing?”
“Serena—”
“Answer me!”
“Okay, yes, that’s the deal, but Serena, let’s be reasonable. Jim isn’t out there spreading the virus—”
“How do you know that?”
“Look at what he’s been doing. The way he’s been feeding. Going from city to city, leaving dead bodies—”
“How do you know that’s not just a smokescreen? That he’s not secretly building his own army and planning to come after us?”
Metcalf stopped to rub his temples. Her normally soft melodic voice had turned into a high-pitched nails-on-chalkboard type screech and it was giving him a headache.
“A little paranoid, are we? Come on, Serena, we both know it’s not in his nature—”
“You of all people! The most paranoid fuck alive, and you dare to call me that!”
Her voice had become like a tattoo needle the way it pricked at his brain. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to slow down the throbbing deep in the back of his skull. Goddamn it! She knew she was full of shit, but he couldn’t argue with her. Technically she was right. The deal was no rogue vampires. Fucking bitch.
“Tell me how your private detective is going to flush him out,” he said as calmly as he could.
“Not to worry,” she cooed, her voice all at once back to its soft hypnotic tone. “It won’t draw us any attention. But we will be finding him soon.”
“If you say so.”
“Yes, my Darling, I do say so. And when we find him you will do as you promised?”
“Yeah.”
“Marvelous. Make sure to clear some space for him in that special room of yours. He’ll be a guest with you soon enough. Ta-ta for now.”
She hung up. Metcalf grimaced at the phone before slipping it back in his pocket. Nothing like a phone call from Serena to put him in the proper mood. In his mind’s eye he pictured her as one of his guinea pigs pinned to one of the lab tables. Ah fuck, the experiments he’d run on her. Thinking about it brought a thin smile to his lips, then he sighed and shook his head, trying to get his thoughts back on the present. A man can dream, can’t he? But Christ, thinking about what he would do to her did ease away some of the tension that had built up in his neck. He filled his lungs up, expanding his chest, and let loose one last sigh before turning back to his experiments.
* * * * *
Serena handed Zach her cell phone, then put her hands on her hips and stood naked examining herself in a full length antique mirror that was sheaved in decorative gold leaf and carvings of cherubs. Gregory and Wilfred relaxed behind her on eighteenth century red satin chaise lounges. The room they were in was mammoth in size—taking up the top floor of the seven story motel in Union Square that Serena had bought and converted six years earlier. With its Tommaso Geraci sculptures and Antonello de Messina paintings, along with its working stone fountain, the room could’ve been taken right out of a villa from her native Palermo, as opposed to a midtown Manhattan building.
“What do you think?” she asked them.
“A vision,” Zach said.
“Absolutely gorgeous,” Gregory offered.
“Stunning,” Wilfred agreed. “Just looking at you is giving me a boner like you wouldn’t believe.”
Serena smiled at that. “Later, my darlings.” She had to agree with them. While her tits had shrunk to almost nothing, she had the long legs and thin narrow waist that would be the envy of any model. And her ass—she dared anyone to find a fifteen-year old girl with a smaller or tighter ass than hers! She turned enough so she could admire the way her hair flowed halfway down her back. Like with all vampires, the infection had turned it white but she dyed it the same coal-black it was before. For a few years she thought the white patch of pubic hair growing between her legs was an amusing contrast, but had since become self-conscious about it and was now keeping the area shaved. She liked the prepubescent look it gave her, and besides, it seemed to be the current style.
“So how was our brutish friend?” Zach asked.
“An absolute bore, but we have his blessing,” Serena said, laughing bitterly.
Gregory made a face. “It’s insane that we have to beg him for his permission.”
Serena took a deep breath, shrugged.
“I can’
t tell you how glad I am that he’s out of New York,” Gregory added. “But if you ask me three thousand miles isn’t enough.”
“A few thousand more would be better,” she said, her smile as bitter as her laugh had been. “If only we could drop him in the middle of the Pacific. But to be fair he does serve his purpose.” She paused to press a hand over her stomach, feeling how completely flat it was without even the slightest bulge, then ran her hands over her narrow hips. Her smile grew. This infection did have its advantages. “What color do you think for tonight?” she asked the three other vampires.
“Mahogany would be sublime,” Wilfred suggested.
Zach nodded his approval.
Serena took several steps towards Zach so she could caress his cheek and brush her lips against his ear. “Be a dear,” she asked him. While Zach went searching for her mahogany-colored outfit, she joined Wilfred on his chaise lounge and draped one arm around his shoulder while settling in his lap. Both their hands wandered towards each others’ genitalia. As they caressed each other, Gregory watched and masturbated. Zach returned several minutes later holding a reddish brown pair of leather pants and shirt in one hand and a pair of boots in another. His eyes widened as he looked from Serena and Wilfred to Gregory, and then back.
“Once again I’ve been left out of the action,” he complained with a rueful smile.
“Oh Darling, don’t be such a spoilsport. We’ll find you a tight little thing for later tonight,” Serena said.
She unwrapped herself from Wilfred so that Zach and Gregory could pull the leather pants over her. After the pants were on, they zipped her shirt up from behind and then helped her with her knee-high stiletto boots. While they did this, Wilfred prepared the heroin. The leather fit Serena like a second skin, the outline of her navel and nipples clearly visible, as was the thin slit of her vagina. She ran a hand over the leather, feeling the softness of it. Zach and Gregory did the same. Wilfred brought over a mirror with thin lines of heroin dividing it. He snorted one of the lines before handing the mirror to Serena. She did her line and then passed the mirror on. After three passes each of the mirror, the heroin was gone. Serena ran her tongue over the polished glass to pick up any of the residue, then closed her eyes to feel the rush from the narcotic. A warmness flushed her skin bringing her body temperature temporarily above that of a corpse. She could feel her heartbeat slowing, and then the euphoria. The infection dulled the effects of narcotics and made overdoses impossible, but it still did some good. She opened her eyes and smiled at Zach, who smiled lazily back at her. She could see that his pupils were already starting to constrict.
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