Tilting smoke out of his nostrils with a contented smile, Shooter nodded. “I am. TJ’s been on my back something fierce about it, but”—he grinned—“she’s not here right now, is she?”
Matt, who’d been trying to get up his courage all night to broach the subject with Shooter, decided now was the time. “Hey, let’s sit here and talk for a minute,” he said, laying his cue stick down and moving over to a nearby table.
“Sure pal,” Shooter agreed, sitting across from him. “The slower we play, the less money I lose. What’s the problem? You need some advice from the master about you and Sam?”
“Not exactly,” Matt said, staring down into his gin and 7-Up and trying to suppress a grin. Shooter, who’d never had a relationship last longer than a two-reel movie until he met TJ, was the last person to give advice about how to keep a woman happy.
Shooter took a final puff and stubbed the butt out in the ashtray, chasing the smoke with a long pull on his whiskey and water. “Well, what is it, then?”
It was now or never, Matt thought. He took a deep breath. “Shooter, do you ever feel yourself getting bored with your job after what we went through the last year or so?”
Shooter looked surprised for a moment, and then his eyes softened and he stared at Matt with an appraising look. After a moment, he shrugged. “I guess so, a little at least. The adrenaline rush of going after a bad guy who’ll fall down dead when I shoot him is just not quite the same as facing one of those fanged monsters that can take a full clip and come back for more. About all I have to worry about nowadays is getting shot or stabbed, not having my throat ripped out and my blood sucked up by some character from a Stephen King novel.”
He looked deep into Matt’s eyes. “Why do you ask, pal? Are you tellin’ me you miss the thrill of the chase all of a sudden? Is saving lives on a nightly basis getting too tame for you?”
Now it was Matt’s turn to shrug, and he looked slightly embarrassed. “Shooter, I’m just an ordinary guy, doing what is for me an ordinary job. Sure, I love the excitement of a really challenging case, one where what I do may mean the difference between life and death, but . . .” he hesitated, trying to find just the right words. “I guess it’s just not the same when I don’t have anything personal at risk on the case. After all, if I screw up or fail to save someone, about the worst thing that can happen to me is to feel really guilty or to be sued by some asshole lawyer. I don’t lose my life.” He gave a large sigh. “Like you say, there’s something about staring your own death in the face, especially a horrible, excruciatingly painful death, and coming out on top that gives you a whole new appreciation for being alive.”
Shooter gave a low chuckle as he took another sip of his drink. “You remind me of that old Chinese curse, pal,” he said, smiling. “When the Chinese wanted to really give someone a hard time, they’d say, ‘May you lead an interesting life.’” He leaned back in his chair, his smile fading. “But believe me, Matt, sometimes, boring is better.”
Matt decided now was the time to get to the crux of the matter. “Well, cowboy,” he said, his face serious, “I think our lives are starting to get interesting again.”
Shooter’s expression grew wary. “What do you mean?”
Matt looked up into Shooter’s eyes and pointed at his neck. “First, why don’t you tell me about those scabs on your neck?”
Even in the relative darkness of the pool hall, Matt could see Shooter blush as he answered. “Uh, well, I don’t really remember how they got there. I figure I must have cut myself shaving and not noticed it at the time.”
Matt snorted through his nose. “Bullshit, pal,” he said, a sad smile taking the sting out of the words. He fingered the Band-aid on his own neck and added, “You and I both know how you got those puncture wounds.”
Shooter’s eyes widened as he noticed Matt’s wound for the first time. As astute as the detective was at picking apart a crime scene, worrying over clues like a hound dog with a bone, he was equally oblivious when it came to things that were not job-related. “Did Sam do that to you?” he asked and his fingers unconsciously went to the scabs on his own neck, exploring them lightly as his usual insolent grin was replaced by a puzzled frown.
Matt sighed, his eyes sad. “Yeah, she must have. I thought at first it was just a bad dream. We’d just finished some rather vigorous lovemaking and we’d both fallen asleep. Some time later, a vision of her bending over me with her fangs dripping blood brought me wide awake. When I looked over at her, she had blood on her lips and I had these wounds on my neck.”
“Jesus,” Shooter whispered, his face pale as he absentmindedly pulled another cigarette out of his pack, tamped it on the table, and placed it slowly in the corner of his mouth.
Matt nodded solemnly. “And that’s not the worst of it, Shooter,” he said.
Shooter’s eyes narrowed as he stuck a match and held up under the cigarette, waiting to hear what could be worse than that. “Yeah?” he asked around a mouthful of smoke.
“A few minutes later the phone rang,” Matt said, his voice breathless as if he’d just run a mile. “It was our old friend Michael Morpheus on the line,” he said. “Yes, that same vampyre who kidnapped Sam and tried to turn her into one of his kind in New Orleans last year.”
“Morpheus?” Shooter said incredulously. “But, he’s dead! Sam and TJ said they saw him eaten by the alligators in New Orleans.”
Matt shrugged. “That’s what they said, Shooter, but we both know the police there never found any parts of his body. There should have been some evidence of him if he’d been killed by gators. Evidently he survived somehow.”
Shooter eyed the cigarette with a scowl, as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite for it. He stubbed it out viciously in the ashtray. “Well, assuming you’re right and it was him, what did the son of a bitch want?”
“In short, he said that Sam was still his mate and that he’d be coming for her soon,” Matt answered, his voice sounding hollow to his ears, as if it came from a tomb.
“If that bastard shows up here I’ll personally cut his head off and shove it down his neck!” Shooter said. “Since that’s the only sure way to kill a vampyre.”
Matt shook his head, his eyes on his empty drink glass. “I thought we were through with all that, Shooter, and now Sam and TJ are both showing signs of continued infection with the vampire virus and to make matters worse that asshole Morpheus shows up wanting Sam back.”
Shooter rubbed his chin, his eyes also going to his empty glass. He licked his lips. “Let me get us a couple more drinks and we’ll talk about this.”
When he got back, carrying drinks for both of them, he found Matt slumped in his chair, his eyes empty and vacant, staring off into the distance.
Shooter plopped the drinks on the table and tried to make the best of it. “Cheer up, pal,” he said, taking a deep swallow of his whiskey. “Maybe the girls just need a higher dose of the antibiotic you’ve been treating them with to cure the vampire bug. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re reverting back to . . .” he hesitated, unwilling to say the words even to his best friend.
“They’re both at the highest dose they can safely take now,” Matt answered. He shook his head. “No, we’re gonna have to do something different. I guess I need to call Dr. Wingate in Canada and see if he has anything else to offer to get rid of the plasmids that are infecting them.”
Shooter reached over and moved Matt’s drink toward him, encouraging him to take it. “I really don’t see what you’re so worried about,” he said. “So what if both TJ and Sam get a bit carried away when we’re making love to ’em? Maybe it is a remnant of the vampire bug. They both told us how being infected with the plasmid-whatchamacallits increased their sex drive.” He sat back and tried a half-hearted grin. “Hell, I kinda like it myself, and maybe Dr. Wingate will have the answer you’re looking for.” He hesitated, and then he added, “At least they’re not running around the city and killing people like the other vampyres do, so the trea
tments are doing that much anyway.”
Matt’s eyes moved to Shooter’s. “Maybe, but even so, even if we can live with the girls taking a little of our blood every so often, what are we going to do about Morpheus?”
Shooter’s shoulders squared and his lips tightened into a thin line as the smile faded from his face. “I don’t know yet, but we’ll think of something.” He took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I will tell you something, though. If he comes after Sam or TJ, he’s gonna have to come over my dead body!”
Matt gave a short, sarcastic laugh. Interesting lives indeed! “I have a feeling, pal, that is just what the son of a bitch wants—our dead bodies!”
He thought, but didn’t add: And Sam’s live one!
Three
I finally managed to get my freighter, Moon Chaser, berthed at the commercial docks in Vancouver just as the sun was rising over the mountain peaks to the East. It had taken me the better part of three months to bring it from New Orleans across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, and up the western seaboard to the port in British Columbia, Canada—not a bad time since I had to manage the vessel by myself with no help from a crew.
I retreated to the safety of the darkness of my cabin and away from the searing rays of the morning sun, rays that would make my skin burn and itch in spite of the heavy layer of sunscreen that coated it.
Too exhausted by my long voyage to sleep, I fixed a steaming cup of herbal tea and sat at my desk, my gaze falling on the leather-bound journal lying there. The journal was a record of my life that I’d kept for more than two hundred years. It’d been lost two years ago when the police in Houston confiscated it, but my friend Matt Carter returned it to me after the unfortunate occurrences in New Orleans a few months ago.
I ran my hands over the weathered, cracked surface of the leather, letting my mind travel back in time to the days of my youth, so many years ago. I’d been born Elijah Pike in the small town of North Waterford, Maine, at the turn of the century. Not this century, the one before it. My father was a woodcutter and my mother took in boarders to help make ends meet, especially in the lean winter months when the snow was too deep to go out into the forest and cut lumber for the logging companies.
Like all boys of my time, I swam in the frigid waters of Long Lake in the summer, climbed Hawk Mountain in the fall and threw stones down at the ever-circling hawks while wishing I could soar on the wind currents as they did, and rode sleds down Pike Hill in the winter while I waited to grow into manhood.
In the twentieth year of my life, while working as my father did as a woodcutter, I got lost in a blizzard in the deep woods north of town. Taking refuge in a secluded cabin to wait out the storm, I met a man who gave me a strange tasting potion to drink that put me fast asleep. During my slumber, I had dreams of him making a cut in his wrist and putting the wound to my lips. The blood tasted both salty and sweet and had a strange coppery smell.
This event changed my life forever, turning me into a creature known to all as a vampyre and bringing with it the curse of a never-ending Hunger for human blood.
I shook my head to clear it of such unwelcome memories and opened the journal. Skimming through the early pages, where I’d set down the circumstances of my Transformation, I came to the section I’d written after a trip to Europe to discover the origins of my new race. Red-tinged tears came to my eyes at the sight of the words I’d written so many years before, when I was still naïve enough to think I would find the cure to my illness by studying the history of my new race:
My research has finally paid off. I believe I have discovered the origins of the race of creatures known as Vampyres. This is how I think it all started: Hundreds of years ago, nestled in fertile valleys between towering crags of the Carpathian Mountains, lived a tribe of Hungarian gypsies. Due to the forbidding location, travel was rare and the tribes in the area became increasingly inbred as years went by, allowing infrequent genetic mutations to spread throughout the community.
The first of these was a rare condition that imbued certain of the inhabitants to have so-called “second sight”—psychic abilities including rudimentary telepathy and telekinesis and even slight mind control over others.
The second genetic mutation, not nearly so favorable, was a disease known today as erythropoietic uroporphyria. Symptoms of this disease included pale skin that blisters and burns upon exposure to sunlight, phosphorescent teeth that glow in the dark, and a congenital hemolysis or rupture of red blood cells causing red, bloodshot eyes and bloody tears from tear ducts and a rapidly progressive anemia. The inhabitants of the villages soon learned to control this anemia by feeding infants whole blood mixed with milk.
Over time, the naturally long-lived villagers’ average life span grew to over a hundred years. At some time during this period, an infection of bacteriophage occurred in the villagers, a microscopic viruslike particle capable of transferring genetic material from one cell to another.
As the villagers began to travel throughout Europe, the ones affected by these illnesses became known as Vampyri. Many legends grew up around them, along with an almost pathological fear when it became known they drank blood to survive.
With the infection of the bacteriophage and its ability to transfer genetic information, erythropoietic uroporphyria and the other genetic traits of the Vampyri did not have to be inherited, but could be transferred to another by a ritual that came to be known as the Transformation. By being forced to drink the blood of one of the Vampyri, a human could be “infected.” If he survived the ordeal, he would become one of the new race with all of their abilities and characteristics, along with the never-ending curse of being forever dependent upon the consumption of human blood to survive—a curse known as “the Hunger” to the Vampyres.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and slowly closed the journal. If there was one thing I’d learned after almost two hundred years of living through the hell of being a creature shunned by all, forced to live in darkness and to drink blood from innocent humans to survive, it was that there was nothing to be gained by crying over past events.
My eyes wandered to the wall of my cabin. There was a movie poster of Bela Lugosi dressed as Count Dracula hanging there. He had his arm held up under his cape and was staring over it out of the poster with intense, frightening eyes. A poor joke perhaps, but it’d been given to me as a going-away present by my new friends, Matt, Shooter, TJ, and Sam after our adventures in New Orleans. They’d all signed it in red ink, as if in blood.
My lips curled in a smile and then in full-out laughter as I remembered that last night with them. Liquor had helped rid our memories of the monsters Morpheus and The Ripper and how we’d had to kill them to save Sam from their depredations. Michael Morpheus had earlier kidnapped Sam and had performed the Rite of Transformation on her, intending to make her his mate, as I had on TJ the previous year. Even though I’d given up on the idea of keeping TJ as my mate, I’d helped her transform into one of us to help me kill Morpheus, The Ripper, and others in their gang. Thank God the treatments prescribed by Dr. Bartholomew Wingate had cured them of this curse I’d borne for so long, even though the same treatments hadn’t seemed to help my own condition.
I finished my tea and moved toward my stateroom. I wanted to be in bed and asleep before the Hunger came and forced me off the ship to hunt for an evening meal. Though I’d long ago given up preying on innocents, even the draining of those that deserved it had no attraction for me tonight.
I still had an adequate supply of vials of blood I’d taken from my patients while working as a physician in Houston, and though the “canned blood” as I called it was weak and unsatisfying, it would hold the dreaded Hunger at bay if I didn’t let it get too strong a hold on me before eating. So, after sucking down a couple of vials, I climbed into bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and tried to sleep without dreaming of TJ and the everlasting life we might have had together. As usual, I was unsuccessful in my attempt to deny my love for her.
Such moral imperatives of sparing the lives of innocents did not intrude upon the vampyre Michael Morpheus’s mind as he prepared to Hunt. Morpheus was single-minded in his belief that Normals, as he referred to humans not infected with the vampyre bug, were the rightful prey of the Vampyri. He felt that he and his kind were of a superior race and as such were entitled to Hunt and kill the Normals for their food. He was not alone in this belief, and he was in the process of gathering around him like-minded vampyres in the hope of forming a cadre of true believers who would transform the entire vampyre society from a passive, pacifist organization into a proactive, forceful one that would take its rightful place in the world.
However, this night, vampyre politics were not on his mind. The Hunger was upon him and he was ready to find someone to feed upon and the sooner the better.
As he dressed for the Hunt, he cursed when his withered left arm got tangled in the dark coat he was trying to put on. When Elijah Pike and his crazy mate, the one named TJ, had attacked him and his cohorts in New Orleans, Morpheus had tried to escape by diving over a balcony and into the bayou that flowed next to his den.
Unfortunately, the alligators tried to eat him, and a large bull gator had taken his left arm off just below the shoulder before he could get away. His vampyre body’s natural recuperative powers had saved his life, but not even the supercharged ability of his vampyre blood could completely repair the total loss of a limb. The attack had left him with a withered, crooked left arm that was practically useless to him most of the time.
That defeat, which cost him his arm and his rightful mate, Samantha Scott, had left him with a bitterness so galling that his every waking thought was of vengeance upon those who’d dared to oppose him. Tonight, as he readied himself to feed, the sight of his ruined arm caused the fiery hatred to flame within him and he gritted his teeth until his jaws creaked.
He shook his head, putting all thoughts of revenge out of his mind as he stormed out of his current house. He needed a clear mind if he was to attract and then kill a suitable subject this evening.
Immortal Blood Page 3