Blood Crimes

by Dave Zeltserman

  She got off the chaise lounge. She noticed his erection and smiled thinly at him.

  “The dead has risen from the ashes, I see,” she said in that same sing-song melodic voice he had heard in the club.

  He tried to tell her how much his throat hurt, but he couldn’t get anything out other than a rasping sound. She shushed him.

  “I know, my pet. You’re so thirsty and your throat hurts so much. Let me take care of everything.”

  There was a baby’s bottle sitting on a table nearby filled with a thick congealing red fluid. She brought it to him and placed the nipple in his open mouth. He wanted to be repulsed at the thought of what she was offering, but he drank from that bottle as if his life depended on it. When he was done, he felt better, his throat less raw.

  “That was blood,” he croaked out in a low whisper.

  “Yes, my pet. How very observant of you.”

  “What type?”

  “What type do you think?”

  At some level he wanted to gag, but at a deeper more fundamental level, all he wanted was to drink more blood. His wrists and ankles were still manacled. As he lay helpless, she crawled on him so that her pubic area pressed against his mouth, then started to fellate him.

  He tried not to breathe in that sickly-sweet scent of hers.

  He tried hard not to taste her.

  Fuck, he wanted to throw her off him.

  More than anything, though, he didn’t want her to stop.

  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that it was a different woman than Serena on him. He tried to think of his old high school girlfriend, and that he was someplace else entirely. It didn’t work. All he could think about was Serena and that night in the SoHo nightclub. About her biting him and the intense sickness that came afterwards. He knew he had changed. He could feel the difference in his body. He had seen on waking that he had become leaner and more narrow. He could feel that his head had changed shape. In his mind’s eye he could picture what he now looked like. At some level he knew what he had turned into. The word vampire kept bumping through his brain. He didn’t want to think about it. He tried not to think about it… He tried not to want Serena as much as he did…

  Christ, he was hungry. Without even realizing it he had bit the inside of her thigh. It took a lot of effort to break the skin, and he just kept biting down harder, and it made her squirm and suck harder on him. Finally he broke the skin. He licked up the drops of blood that formed from her wound. A violent intense spasm wracked his body. For a long moment he couldn’t breathe. His body became so tense he couldn’t move. Then he started gagging.

  Serena had rolled off him.

  “If it was only that easy,” she said, sighing. “We can’t feed off of infected blood, my pet.”

  She waited until he stopped gagging. Then caressing his cheek, asked, “Are you feeling better now?”

  Jim nodded, his face contorted into a tight grimace.

  “Good. You can bite me all you want. I like it. But if I bleed, don’t lick my blood. It’s not good for you.”

  It didn’t take much effort on her part to bring back his erection. And then she was back to what she’d been doing, although with more excitement. Right before he was about to climax, he could feel the violence of her being ripped away from him. He opened his eyes and saw that Metcalf had a grip of her long black hair and was pulling her off the table.

  “You son of a bitch!” she swore at him as she tried to pull free. Metcalf let her fall to the floor.

  “Me?” Metcalf asked, grinning, although his eyes were as dull as sand. “For Chrissakes, Serena, can’t you even show an ounce of self control? You know full well we have an indoctrination protocol.”

  “Asshole,” she spat.

  She rubbed her head gingerly before grabbing a robe lying nearby and covering herself.

  Metcalf’s eyelids lowered as he turned to her. She noticed it and moved over to the chaise lounge. Avoiding his stare, she told him to get on with his indoctrination.

  “Thank you.”

  She didn’t bother to respond, instead curled her fingers on her right hand and studied her nails. Metcalf turned his attention to Jim. He sat down on the edge of the table Jim had been manacled to, and pulled a stiletto knife from his belt. He let Jim get a long look at it.

  “This is an incredibly sharp knife,” Metcalf said, admiring it. “You’d be amazed at how sharp this really is and what it could cut.”

  Even though he knew what the answer was going to be, Jim couldn’t help himself from asking Metcalf what he was going to do with the knife.

  “Only a demonstration,” Metcalf said. He looked bored as he ran his thumb along the edge of the blade. “If my skin were like any normal person’s my thumb would’ve been sliced open to the bone. But it’s not. And you’ve probably noticed you’ve changed also, am I correct?”

  Without waiting for a response, Metcalf spun around and plunged the blade into Jim’s chest, and kept pushing downwards until the knife was buried. Jim stared dumbly at it. A low creaking noise escaped from him, then his body jerked into spasms. His back arched as if ten thousand volts were being shot through him.

  “Right through the heart,” Metcalf said. “Hurts like hell doesn’t it? If you were normal you’d be dead now. But you’re not. And if you want the pain to stop, you’ll figure it out.”

  Jim strained frantically against his chains. One of them snapped, and with his hand free, he pulled the knife out of his body.

  “You fucking asshole,” he forced through clenched teeth.

  Metcalf got a laugh out of that. “Only proving a point, guy,” he said. “My demo takes a hell of a lot less time than trying to convince you about the changes.”

  Serena rolled her eyes. “My dear, Metcalf, I think you do this little demonstration of yours because you’re a sadist. No other reason.”

  Any amusement Metcalf had been showing dried up quickly. He glanced impatiently at Jim and ordered him to break himself free of his other chains.

  “You’ve got ten seconds to get off that table before I repeat my demonstration.”

  Jim snapped the chain restraining his other wrist, then broke the chains attached to his ankles. He pushed himself off the table by the time Metcalf had counted to nine, and stood wobbly for a moment before regaining his balance.

  “Why aren’t I dead?” he asked. The searing pain that had been slicing through his chest was now more of a dull ache. He found himself able to talk more normally again. “You stabbed me through the heart. What the fuck have I turned into?”

  “What do you think?”

  Half under his breath, Jim muttered the V word.

  That brought a grim smile from Metcalf. “For your information, that’s a dirty word around here, but no, not in the classic supernatural sense. Thanks to Serena, though, you have been infected with a virus that mimics some of those legends.” He glared at Serena, his mouth shrinking to a small slit. Serena appeared not to notice. She had picked up a file and was nonchalantly sharpening her blood-red painted nails. Metcalf’s eyes dulled as he turned back to Jim. “That’s it for questions. Put some clothes on and follow me so we can finish your indoctrination. I don’t have all fucking day.”

  The knife wound had already scabbed over. Only a scar the size of a quarter had been left behind. A pair of khaki draw-string pants and a matching color tee shirt were folded next to the table. Jim slipped them both on. They were several sizes smaller than his normal size, and they hung loosely on him. Metcalf waited impatiently. Serena looked up from her nails to eye the way he looked in the clothes, and licked her lips.

  “Where the fuck am I?” Jim asked.

  “The place you’re going to spend the rest of your life. Just shut up and follow me.”

  The windows in the room had been painted black, as they were in the hallway Metcalf led Jim through. From the layout, the art deco decorations and the antique elevator that they stepped into, Jim’s thought was that this was a converted turn-of-the-
century hotel. He had to guess they were still in Manhattan. With the windows darkened and only artificial light filtering through the hallway and rooms, he had no sense of time. It could be midnight or noon for all he knew. He couldn’t shake this image in his head that they were in a large coffin.

  Metcalf had them get out at the basement level, and before too long they were stepping into hell. Emaciated men and women sat in cages, each looking withdrawn and defeated. The scene could’ve been snapshots from a Nazi concentration camp. Jim felt a sickening horror as he looked from face to face. None of the captives were able to meet his eyes. Metcalf casually explained that these were the cattle pens.

  “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

  Metcalf raised an eyebrow at his tone. “I’m giving you this one warning,” he said. “In a few minutes I’ll be making it clear to you what will happen if you raise your voice to me again.” He waved a hand toward the cages. “And before you act all high and mighty, didn’t you think about where the blood came from that Serena fed you earlier?”

  Jim shook his head.

  “Bullshit.”

  “No. There’s no way I could’ve imagined something like this.”

  “What did you expect then? That we turn on our faucets and blood pours out instead of tap water? Sorry, guy, it doesn’t work that way. But I’ll tell you what. If you’re so offended by this, you don’t have to drink the blood we milk for you. You can starve if you want—”

  “I don’t get it. Why human blood?”

  Metcalf smiled cruelly. “You want to try eating something else, you name it, sport. Steak, pizza, chocolate, anything you want, and I’ll get it for you. We’ll see how well you do with it. But all that’s besides the point. This isn’t why I brought you down here.”

  Metcalf continued to the opposite end of the room where he unlocked a door and beckoned Jim to join him, a grim smile showing as Jim approached.

  “This is my private lab. If you’re smart this will be the only time you get a chance to see it.”

  Metcalf turned on the overhead lights. The inside of the lab was a chamber of horrors. What at first looked like grotesque armless mannequins cut off at the waist turned out to be living beings. Some were chained to the walls, others had spikes driven through their shoulder pinning them to tables. A few were sliced open as if they were in the midst of being dissected, but even these were still alive. They all seemed to be in agony.

  “I use this lab to study the limits of our infection,” Metcalf said, his lips pursed with amusement as he observed Jim’s reaction to the room and its inhabitants. “It serves other purposes as you can probably guess. There’s one thing in particular here that I’d like to show you.”

  He brought Jim to an empty area at a lab table between two of the dissection experiments. Jim caught the eye of one of the partially dissected vampires. It mewled softly to him before looking away.

  “Any idea what this is for?” Metcalf asked.

  Jim couldn’t keep himself from nodding.

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  Jim started to answer him, closed his mouth.

  “Superstitious, huh?” Metcalf asked. “You’re afraid to say it? Okay, I’ll say it for you. This spot’s reserved for the next resident here who pisses me off.”

  “It looked to me like Serena was doing a good job of that.”

  A glaze fell over Metcalf’s eyes. “She has her privileges, but you sure as fuck don’t. If I were you I’d watch my mouth. Understand?”

  Something about the way Metcalf was staring at him told Jim he was seconds away from being made one of his experiments. As shaky as he was feeling he knew he’d have no chance against this vampire. Maybe if he was feeling stronger and had a knife, he’d have a shot, but not now.

  “Yeah,” Jim said, his eyes shifting downwards and away from Metcalf.

  “So what did you learn here?”

  “Don’t piss you off.”

  Metcalf nodded. “Congratulations. You pass your indoctrination and get to walk out of this room. Not all of our new recruits can say that. Now get the fuck out so I can get to work.” He sniffed and glanced sideways at Jim as he was leaving. “I’m sure Serena will fill you in on the rest of our rules, but before that don’t try to do something stupid like leave this building. You do, we’ll hunt you down and I’ll make you one of my very special projects.”

  During the next five months Jim played along. At first he refused the blood being offered him, and to the amusement of the other vampires accepted Metcalf’s offer for other food—first trying fresh fruit and vegetables, then fish, and finally cow’s blood, and each time paying a heavy price, the reaction being the same as when he had tried licking up drops of Serena’s blood. After several days of this he was left near crazed with hunger and drank what Serena brought to him. He tried hard not to think about where it came from. Instead he did what he had to during those five months to survive, including putting on an act of complete submissiveness. The reality was his survival instincts had kicked into full drive. It was like he was back in Iraq, moving silently among the enemy and gathering whatever intelligence he could. During that time he avoided Metcalf as much as possible—not that it was that difficult given how that psycho son of a bitch spent most of his waking hours playing in his lab.

  He had been right about the building being a converted hotel, and also about it’s location—it turned out to be in the heart of Union Square. After a month of being cooped up inside of this glorified tomb, Serena took him clubbing with her and her posse. By this point he had become more than just her sex toy. While she was still engaging in orgies with her posse, she was spending her nights alone with Jim, confiding secrets, and at times even appearing vulnerable. He knew this special treatment didn’t play well with the other members of her inner circle, especially Zach, and he was careful when he was alone with them. When they went out clubbing, Serena spent less time eyeing other men, and mostly focused on Jim, whispering in his ear and rubbing her body against his. His own feelings towards her were a mix of hate and lust. As much as he was disgusted by her, she could make him hard simply by looking at him. Sex with her was always a thrill ride, and he kept his true feelings about her hidden.

  After five months he was satisfied with the intelligence he collected, and when he had his next opportunity to escape, he took it. Like every night when they went out clubbing, Serena and her posse doped themselves up first with heroin, and that night they snorted extra lines and were more lethargic than usual. At the club, Zach was brooding over some imagined slight, which attracted Serena’s attention enough for Jim to slip away. He left through a back door and kept running until he was out of Manhattan and crossing over the Queensboro bridge into Long Island City. The first night he spent in a condemned tenement building. He could hear the rats squealing as they fled. After that night he found a studio apartment off of Queens Boulevard to rent. The place was a dump, but it didn’t matter. The cockroaches and other pests emptied out of it within seconds of him showing up. Besides, he didn’t expect to be there long.

  During his time in the vampire hotel, or tomb, as he had come to think of the place, he had worked out some initial plans of how he was going to free the “cattle” being held in the basement, and destroy Serena, Metcalf, and the other vampires living there. He knew that while it was difficult to kill an infected person, it was possible. With enough explosive force he would be able to blow off their limbs, and then cut off their heads as they lay helpless. The plan he worked out was basically a suicide mission, which was okay with him as long as it left the other vampires dead. Hell, he always thought he left Iraq with one last mission left in him. The only piece of intel that he was missing that bothered him was the source of the infection. He never was able to identify whether the virus started with Serena, Metcalf, or a third party, and he would’ve liked to have known that when he was done the virus had been fully eradicated. But he was going to have to leave this one loose end.

  He had taken twe
nty grand from Serena the night he went on the run. As far as Serena was concerned money was of no object and that twenty grand was nothing but loose change to her. One of the residents of the tomb was a billionaire founder of a dot-com company whom she had infected so she could make him transfer all of his assets to her. Now that he was in Queens, Jim was using most of the twenty grand to purchase explosives, but it didn’t go nearly as far as he had hoped. He needed more money to carry out his plan, and he started searching out drug dealers to rob. They were easy. He didn’t kill them, but he roughed them up and took their money.

  He had blueprints for the hotel, and was close to having what he needed when one night while wiring up bombs, the door to his studio apartment was kicked in and standing outside were two vampires. They were thicker and darker than the other vampires he had seen, but he knew from the shape of their heads that they were infected. He didn’t recognize them, but he didn’t know all of the residents of the tomb. It was also possible Serena infected them to send after him—she had no qualms about infecting people to get what she needed. Jim would later learn from the newspapers that that was what happened—that these two were Mafia hit men who were missing for ten days before showing up at his studio apartment. They were both carrying big-ass pistols that Jim would later learn from the papers were Magnum .357s. Without a word they lifted their guns and started firing at him, hitting him pointblank in the chest with bullets that he’d also later learn from the papers were armor piercing. The force of the bullets blew him out of his seat and against the wall. One of the bullets must have ricocheted off his chest and hit a stick of dynamite. The room exploded into flames and he was blown through the wall and sent into the street. More explosions followed. A searing heat rolled over him. As he lay on his back he saw the building collapse onto itself.

  His whole body ached, but he was still in one piece. People started to pour out of the buildings nearby. Jim used the ensuing panic to search through the rubble. He found one of hit men with his legs blown off at the knees. The vampire had been blinded by the smoke and dust, and was trying to stagger away on his stumps. Jim used a piece of metal as a makeshift sword. The first swing went a few inches into the vampire’s neck. It took a half dozen more swings before he had the head mostly cut off. Before he could pull his makeshift sword loose, he was tackled from behind and found himself rolling among the rubble with the other hit man.