“Shooter,” Damon said, his voice growing hard. “You still haven’t told me what the hell is going on here, or how you and your friends are connected to the case. Have we got another. . .” he hesitated, and then finished under his breath as if he were afraid someone in the office would hear him, “another vampyre killer?”
“Chief, remember when we went down to New Orleans last year to check out those Ripper killings they were having there?” Shooter asked.
“Yeah, but you told me when you got back The Ripper had been killed and the case was closed,” Damon said.
“He was,” Shooter said. “But we think the man who assaulted the girl in the park and who probably killed this prostitute, was a friend of The Ripper’s. We think maybe he’s come down here to exact vengeance on us because of our part in killing The Ripper.”
Shooter looked over his shoulder at the others and shrugged as he gave this slightly edited explanation of why Morpheus would be after them.
“Jesus, Shooter!” Damon exclaimed. “I don’t want another one of those crazy blood-sucking psychos killing people in my city again.”
“I know, Chief,” Shooter said, trying to placate his boss. “Let me talk this over with my friends and we’ll see if there’s not some way we can put a stop to this guy before he kills again.”
“Well, you’d better come up with something, and sooner rather than later, Shooter, or there’s gonna be hell to pay,” Damon yelled and hung up the phone.
Shooter turned to the others. “I guess you heard,” he said. “Morpheus has killed again, and he dumped the victim’s body in front of Sam and TJ’s apartment to send us a message.”
“Shit!” Matt said, his face ashen.
Sam glanced at TJ. “I’d better call Shelly and tell him what’s been happening.”
“Yeah,” Shooter agreed. “I don’t think it’s gonna be safe for you or for TJ to go back to work, not with Morpheus on the warpath and looking for you.”
“And, we need to talk to Elijah,” TJ said. “Maybe he’ll have some advice on how to handle this, if he’ll return my call.”
Sam picked up the phone and dialed the number of Shelly’s office.
When he answered, Sam explained that one of the vampyres who’d been involved in the killings in New Orleans had come to Houston and was looking for them and that he’d already assaulted one girl and killed another.
Shelly, who’d been involved with them in the first series of vampyre killings in Houston the previous year, was silent for a moment after Sam finished.
Finally, he spoke. “I think it would be best if you and your friends left town for a while, Sam. It’s just too dangerous for you to stay around here with one of those monsters after you. I’ll get on the phone and make some arrangements with the chief of TJ’s department. I’ll make up some story about her having a relapse of her illness and get him to let her have some time off to undergo treatment.”
“Thanks, Shelly,” Sam said, relief evident in her voice.
“Uh, Sam,” Shelly said, hesitantly. “This Morpheus fellow wouldn’t happen be a black man, would he?”
“No, Shelly,” Sam answered. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, there was this man here looking for you. He said it was urgent that he get in touch with you, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I just said you were out of touch and that I’d give you his number and have you call him when you checked in.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“Yeah. He said his name was Ramson Holroyd and that he was a friend of someone you knew in New Orleans.”
“Who?”
“A woman named Carmilla de la Fontaine,” Shelly answered.
Sam took a deep breath, her heart pounding at the mention of the name. “Give me his number.”
“What’s going on?” Matt asked, concerned at Sam’s shaken expression as she thanked Shelly and hung up.
“A man came to see Shelly asking for me. He said he was a friend of Carmilla de la Fontaine’s.”
“The leader of the vampire council?” TJ asked. “But, she’s dead. Morpheus killed her last year.”
“I know,” Sam replied. “He said his name was Ramson Holroyd and he left a number where he could be reached.”
“I don’t think we should have any contact with him,” Matt said. “He’s undoubtedly a vampyre and he’s probably in cahoots with Morpheus.”
“I don’t think so,” TJ said, slowly. “If he were working with Morpheus, why would he openly go to Shelly and leave Carmilla’s name?”
“Who knows why those crazy bastards do anything?” Shooter asked, looking around at the group.
“What can it hurt to call him?” Sam asked. “Maybe we can find out something useful by talking to him, and if we’re careful not to give our location away it shouldn’t do any harm.”
Before anyone else could answer, TJ’s cell phone began to ring.
They all jumped and stared at the ringing phone on the table as if it were a snake about to bite.
Fifteen
I fortified myself with a strong mixture of whiskey and soda, not that it would ever make my vampyre body drunk, but it would take the edge off the trepidation I was feeling about the call from my friends in Houston, and I took a seat in the lounge chair in my compartment on the Canadian and Pacific Railway car.
I gazed out the large window to my right at the magnificent snow-covered craggy peaks of the mountains as they flew past and wondered if I was doing the right thing by returning TJ’s call, or if I should just fade out of my friends’ lives into the obscurity of the Canadian wilderness as I’d planned.
After a couple of sips of my drink, I decided to call. They contacted me so they must feel they need my input on something. Perhaps the treatment Dr. Wingate had recommended for the girls to combat the vampyre bug in their blood wasn’t working and they just needed to see what I thought about changing the formula.
At this hopeful thought, I snorted and smiled grimly. When had anything in my long and tortured life ever been that easy?
With a sigh, accepting once again whatever fate had in store for me, good or bad, I dialed TJ’s cell phone number.
“Hello?” a voice answered.
She sounds scared, I thought. Not a good sign.
“Hello, TJ. This is Elijah.”
“Oh, thank God you called,” she said quickly, sounding relieved to hear my voice.
It was a new experience for me. For most of my life, the sound of my voice had meant pain, degradation, and even death to those who heard it. Relief had rarely been called for or expected. That was one of the reasons I’d been a rogue, a loner even among my own people for so many years.
“What’s going on, TJ?” I asked, tipping my glass and taking a deep swallow. Somehow I knew the news was going to be bad.
Breathlessly, TJ began to tell me what had happened. When she got to the part about Michael Morpheus calling Matt and then assaulting and killing a woman and dropping the body on her and Sam’s front lawn, I knew my premonition had been correct. I knew I should have made sure Morpheus was dead when TJ and I attacked his house. After all, hadn’t I myself been thought dead once only to rise like Lazarus from my watery grave?
“You’re sure it is Michael Morpheus and not someone pretending to be him?” I asked, though I was sure I knew the answer, for a creature as evil as Morpheus does not easily die.
“Oh, yes,” TJ said, her voice as dry and dusty as a crypt. “And Sam says she can almost sense his presence sometimes.”
I could almost hear her shiver over the phone. “TJ, could you hand the phone to Sam, please?” I asked, hating to give up my contact with TJ, to lose the sweet sound of her voice, but there were some things only Sam could tell me, since she was the one Morpheus had transformed.
I could hear muffled voices, and then Sam said, “Hello, Elijah.”
“Hello, Sam. I need to ask you some rather personal questions, is that a
ll right?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Has Morpheus tried any mental contact, or control with you?” I asked.
There was a long pause, with only the faint static of the cell phone in my ear.
After a moment, Sam replied slowly. “No.” Then, after another brief hesitation, she asked, “Do you think that likely?”
Not wanting to alarm her any more than was absolutely necessary, I answered shortly. “It’s possible. There is always a slight residual mental bond between one of the Vampyri and someone he or she transforms. However, since he never quite finished the Rite of Transformation with you, then perhaps no such bond exists.”
She whispered into the phone, “I hope not. Such a bond would make me feel . . . unclean.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. After I had performed the Rite of Transformation on TJ, just such a bond had been formed. Whenever I was within sight of her, it was if her mind and mine were linked together. What she thought or felt, I did also. I had never mentioned this to any of TJ’s friends, and especially not to her lover, Shooter, and I’d often wondered if she had told them about it.
Sam paused, and then she asked, “Is there . . .”
I didn’t let her finish her question. “No, Sam,” I lied, “there is no such bond between TJ and me. Remember, I didn’t get the chance to finish her Transformation either.”
Now it was my turn to pause. “I just mentioned the possibility of such a link between you and Morpheus so that you could be on guard against the possibility of any attempts at mind control.”
“Now,” I added, “tell me the rest of it.”
Sam went on to tell me about the call from Ramson Holroyd, who claimed to be a friend of Carmilla de la Fontaine, the leader of the Vampyre Council in New Orleans whom Morpheus had raped and then slaughtered.
“Do you think we ought to call him back and ask him what he wants?” Sam asked.
I knew Holroyd. He’d been one of the members of the Vampyre Council in Houston run by Jacqueline de la Fontaine, Carmilla’s mother, when the council had attacked me and tried to kill me. I’d retaliated by killing Jacqueline, a fact I thought Holroyd might still hold against me. However, I didn’t know what part Holroyd was playing in their little drama, or how he had come to be acquainted with Carmilla de la Fontaine in New Orleans. Typically, members of the vampyre race stayed fairly close to their home hunting grounds, unless they were vagabonds and rebels as I was.
“No,” I answered. “Let me call him and see just what he has to do with Michael Morpheus, and I’ll try to figure out whether he is friend or foe. Then I’ll call you back.”
Sam gave me Holroyd’s phone number and then she asked me what they should do about Michael Morpheus.
I decided to tell her what I’d learned living as a fugitive for so many years. “First you need to get out of town as fast and inconspicuously as you can. Do not under any circumstances let anyone know where you’re going and do not go back to your apartments or houses to get anything. Just get in your cars and get as far away from Houston as you can.”
“But what about our jobs?” Sam protested.
“Sam, you can’t very well do your jobs if you are dead, can you? And make no mistake about it. Morpheus wants all of you dead—all of you except one, that is.”
I heard Sam give a slight gasp at the implications of my last remark.
“You mean he might want me for something else, don’t you?”
“Sam, it is only under extraordinary circumstances that one of the Vampyri will ever give up his mate. The very act of the Rite of Transformation binds them together for life. Morpheus will do whatever it takes to get you back under his control, no matter how long it takes.”
“But,” and her voice dropped to a low whisper, “You gave up TJ.”
I sighed, not wanting to get into the fact that it had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, or to tell her that I thought and dreamed of TJ almost every day of my life.
“Yes, I did, but I can assure you that Michael Morpheus will not. His ego and his very evilness will not allow him to let you get away, not as long as he’s alive.”
“Then, how can we stop him?” she asked, a note of hopelessness in her tone.
“Only one way,” I replied grimly. “We have to kill him, and this time I will personally make sure he is dead and gone to hell.”
* * *
After promising to call them back as soon as I’d talked to Ramson Holroyd, I broke the connection. I fixed myself another drink and sat staring out of the window at the passing scenery without seeing it as I thought about what I was getting myself into. Of the two types of vampyres, solitary and social, I had always been extremely solitary. I’d moved through my life, disgusted with my need to feed on the blood of innocents and trying every method I could to find some way to eliminate the Hunger. That was the main reason I’d studied medicine and had become a blood specialist, so that I might have a better chance of understanding what had befallen me and how I might best overcome it.
Now, just when I’d decided to go back to my old ways of being a loner and working on the problem in solitude in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, I was being drawn back into the intrigue and machinations of the Vampyre Councils that I’d always avoided.
I had a momentous decision to make: Was my love for TJ and my friendship for Sam and Matt and Shooter enough of a reason to become fully involved once again, or should I play the game from the sidelines, giving occasional advice but otherwise remaining alone?
I finished my drink in one quick draught. Hell, there was only one option and I knew it. My love for TJ was deep and abiding and would be with me for the rest of my life, no matter how many hundreds of years I lived. And, since I could count the number of true friends I’d had my whole life on one hand, abandoning Matt and Sam and Shooter wasn’t really an option either.
I shook my head and chuckled as I picked up my cell phone to dial Holroyd’s number. “Hell, like the British say, in for a penny, in for a pound,” I muttered as I punched in the number.
There was one good thing about not having a choice in the matter, I thought as I listened to the phone ring, you can’t second guess yourself if things turn out badly.
Sixteen
A deep voice with just a trace of a southern accent finally answered my call, bringing with it a mental picture of a large, heavily muscled black man with a dignified manner and incongruously kind brown eyes.
“Ramson Holroyd.”
“Hello, Ramson,” I said, keeping my voice even and devoid of emotion.
“Hello, Roger,” Holroyd replied, using the name he’d known me by in Houston, his voice tightening and becoming less friendly. “Or should I call you Albert?” he asked, trying out to the alias I’d used in New Orleans.
Since no one but TJ and her friends knew I was using my real name of Elijah Pike now, I decided to let him think I was still using the name Albert Nachtman. “Albert will be fine, Ramson,” I answered. “Some mutual acquaintances told me you’d called and asked for them and they wanted me to see just what it is you want.”
“I wanted to see if they could get in touch with you, Albert.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I have some news that I think you should hear.”
“If it’s that Michael Morpheus is alive and on the warpath, I already know that,” I said dryly.
“That’s part of it,” Holroyd answered, a note of surprise in his voice at my awareness of Morpheus’s actions.
“Then, there’s more?”
“Yes. Morpheus is . . . how shall I put it? . . . quite upset that you and your Normal friends are working on a cure for vampirism.”
“Now, why does that not surprise me?” I responded with a low chuckle, as if what Morpheus felt mattered not a whit to me.
Holroyd returned the laugh. “Oh, I guess it shouldn’t really. But what you probably don’t know is that Morpheus is calling in the troops. He is in the process of contacting every vampyr
e he knows or can find and is trying to enlist them in a sort of holy war against you and your friends lest you manage to decimate our race with your vaccine.”
I laughed at that. “I guess you know the real reason Morpheus is so intent on finding us is to exact vengeance on the woman he transformed, the woman who later betrayed him and helped me try to kill him.”
“Ah,” Ramson said, “I’d heard something about that, but it is so rare for one of our mates to desert us, I hadn’t given the rumors much credence.”
“Believe it, Ramson. Morpheus doesn’t give a shit about any vaccine, real or imagined. He’s in this for a personal vendetta, nothing more.”
“Well, no matter what his real reasons are, Albert, he’s certainly working very hard to get the entire vampyre community up in arms against you and your friends, and I can tell you for a fact there are plenty of our race out there who are concerned about you working on a vaccine and who are willing to go to any lengths to prevent it from happening.”
I held my tongue for a moment as I thought through the implications of what Holroyd had just told me. Eluding Morpheus, with his mental bond to Sam, was going to be difficult enough; if he managed to co-opt a large number of other vampyres into his quest, it would be damn near impossible to remain hidden for very long.
“Why are you telling me this, Ramson?” I asked. “From what I remember in my discussions with the Vampyre Council in Houston, you were one of the ones who said you were proud to be a member of the vampyre race and that you would never avail yourself of any vaccine that might make you Normal again.”
Holroyd’s voice became harder, almost harsh when he responded. “Do you have any idea of what it was like to be a black man two hundred years ago, Albert, in the time of slavery?”
“No,” I answered slowly. “There were very few blacks where I grew up in Maine, and no slaves whatsoever.”
“Well, I do, and I still remember the rule of the bullwhip. I still have scars on my back that even the vampyre bug couldn’t erase,” Holroyd said bitterly. “There was no choice for a black man then, other than to take it or die.”
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