The thought of TJ under Morpheus’s control made me break out in a sweat, even though the temperature in Banff was only in the low thirties and there were already snow flurries in the air. Giving up my mate so that she could live the life she wanted had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and it would be ironic if my selfless gesture had now been the cause of her death . . . or worse.
* * *
Ed Slonaker arrived at work at the Mountie headquarters precisely at eight in the morning, feeling fit and rested after his vacation and the welcome home meal from the previous night.
“Morning, boss,” John Ashby called, sitting at his usual place behind a computer monitor in the operations section of the station.
“Good morning, Johnny,” Ed said, striding to his desk and making a face at the stack of paperwork piled in his In basket.
“How’s Kim this morning?” John asked, glancing around to make sure none of the other men in the office could hear him.
Ed winked. “Much better. In fact, she is in great shape thanks to your present.”
John smiled. “I thought that would perk her up. There’s nothing like a good meal to make you kick up your heels and bay at the moon.”
“Especially when you haven’t eaten anything worth speaking of in ten days,” Ed replied as he shuffled through the papers on his desk. When he found there was nothing urgent in his messages, he stood up and walked over to stand behind Ashby at his computer.
“By the way, anything of interest on the name Elijah Pike?” he asked.
John wagged his head. “Nothing, nada, zip!” he answered. “I checked all of our databases, including VICAP, and I can’t find hide nor hair of anyone by that name registered anywhere. There are lots of Pikes, especially up in Maine, but only a couple of them named Elijah, and none of them fit the profile you gave me. One thing’s for sure,” he added, “he’s never paid any income taxes under that name.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Ed mumbled, his eyes staring at the computer screen but his mind on the man who called himself Elijah Pike.
“Why the sudden interest?” John asked.
“There was one of us infected with the Sickness on the train coming back to Jasper,” Ed said, keeping his voice low. “Once I discovered him, I was getting ready to take appropriate action, when the son of a bitch disappeared.”
“You’re sure he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?”
“There was no doubt. His mind was so rancid you could smell him a block away.”
“But, what does that have to do with this Pike fellow?”
Ed shook his head, biting his lower lip as he thought back. “I’m not sure. It’s just that I thought I noticed him paying particular attention to the sick one, and since neither Kim nor I could get any sort of reading from his mind, it just made me wonder about him.”
“Is that the body the Canadian Pacific reported found along the tracks the other day?” John asked.
“Yeah, and I just can’t figure out how a Normal, if that’s what this Pike is, would be able to kill one of us, even one as sick as this one was.”
John leaned back in his chair, frowning. “Well, if he did it, then he’s either one of us or he’s a Hunter,” John said, referring to the very few Normals who were aware of the vampyres among them and who took particular pleasure in ferreting them out and killing them.
Ed looked at him, doubt in his eyes. “John, there hasn’t been a reported Hunter in Europe for over a hundred years, and we’ve never had one in the States or Canada. You know the present day Normals don’t believe in us anymore.”
John shrugged. “Just trying to figure it out, boss. But for my money, he’s either one or the other.” He stared at his computer screen for a moment, thinking, and then he added, “Of course, one other possibility is he’s a fugitive of some sort traveling under an alias.”
Ed shook his head. “No, I don’t buy that. A fugitive would be keeping a very low profile, not traveling as a doctor and planning to do research with our Interior Department.”
John spread his hands. “Then, he’s got to be one of us, there isn’t any other possibility. And you know, we ain’t all that rare up here.”
Ed’s eyes narrowed. “That’s true, but I wonder why he’s come all the way up here. The Hunting is much easier in one of the large United States cities, where a few more bodies would hardly be noticed. Hell, transients who won’t be missed are scarcer than hen’s teeth up here in this wilderness.”
John’s eyes flashed and his lips curled in an evil grin. “Well, why don’t you and I pay him a little visit late tonight. We could make him talk.”
Ed pursed his lips, thinking. “No, not just yet. I’m gonna give him a day or two and then have him out to the house for dinner; you’ll come, too. He’ll either talk then, or he’ll be the main course.”
“That sounds real good,” John said, grinning. “I haven’t had one of us for more twenty years.”
Ed laughed, knowing that John thought vampyre blood something of a delicacy, having as it did the flavors of so many Normals to add spice to its own natural taste.
“Until then,” Ed said, moving toward his desk and the work piled up on it, “keep busy on the computer. We may turn up something on him yet.”
Thirty-one
“Bitch!” Morpheus screamed into the suddenly dead phone, and he whirled and flung it across the room against the wall, shattering it.
How could he have ever considered making that foul-mouthed cunt his mate? he wondered, pacing back and forth in his living room, mumbling and cursing to himself.
Jean Horla and Peter Vardalack sat on his living room couch, trying to keep their eyes averted from their leader as he stormed around the room cursing all women in general and Samantha Scott in particular.
After a few moments of this, Jean looked at Peter and shrugged. “Uh, I take it from your reaction the news wasn’t good?” he queried, keeping his voice flat and devoid of any hint of any sort of judgment, lest Morpheus turn on him.
Morpheus stopped, took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. Now was not the time for blind, unreasoning anger but for quiet reflection and careful planning he told himself, trying to quiet the rage that ate at him like a hungry wolf. “Yes, you are correct, the news was not good.”
He moved to take a seat in one of the overstuffed easy chairs in the large room, leaned back and crossed his legs, his fingers steepled in front of his lips, calm now for the first time since the phone call from Sam.
“That was Samantha Scott, and according to the caller I.D., she was calling on Simon Hunter’s cell phone.”
“What?” Jean asked, leaning forward in his seat, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes puzzled. “How could she be calling from Hunter’s phone?” he asked.
Morpheus’s eyes were dark and dangerous as they turned to Jean. “Because she and that bitch friend of hers killed him and took it from his dead body, I suppose,” he answered.
“Jesus,” Peter whispered, his eyes wide. “Hunter was supposed to be a mean son of a bitch.”
Morpheus smirked as he stood up and went to a sideboard to fix himself a drink, even though it was barely noon. “He wasn’t mean enough, though, was he? But, at least he was smart enough to check in with us before he was killed, so we have a good idea where the group is headed.”
“You said he told you they were near Sandpoint, Idaho,” Jean said, “and you think that means they’re going up into Canada?”
When Morpheus nodded and took a deep draught of his drink, Jean added, “Why Canada? Why couldn’t they be going someplace in Idaho?”
Morpheus laughed. “Because no one goes to Idaho unless they’re movie stars or they want to join a militia group.” He shook his head. “No, Canada makes much more sense for someone who’s on the run.”
He went back to his chair. “Now, just what assets do we have in Canada, especially near the border with Idaho?”
Jean thought for a moment, trying to visualize a map of the states. “The
closest big town to where they are is Banff, in Alberta Province. There’s a fairly active council up there in a town called Calgary, though there aren’t too many members who actually live in the immediate area.”
“I wonder why that is?” Peter asked, innocently.
Jean gave him a flat look. “You ever live where it gets fifty below zero for months on end?”
Morpheus interrupted their discussion before Peter could answer. “Get in touch with the leader of the council in Calgary and any other nearby cities and have them see what they can find out. Two couples traveling together shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
“I don’t know about that, chief,” Jean argued. “There are still plenty of tourists from the United States traveling around Canada due to the weakness of the Canadian dollar.”
“I have a question, Michael,” Peter said, jumping in before he could forget what had just occurred to him. “So far, we’ve assumed this group of people are on the run, just trying to get away from you so that you won’t hurt them and take the one named Sam back for your mate.”
“Yeah, so?” Morpheus said, upending his drink and draining it dry.
“There’s another possibility we haven’t considered yet,” Peter went on. “What if they’re not just running randomly to get away? What if they’re going to meet someone?”
“Who would they meet?” Morpheus asked, showing interest for the first time.
Peter stared at Morpheus, wondering if his desire for vengeance against the woman he wanted for his mate was blinding him to another obvious connection. “As I recall, there was another male vampyre involved in the attack on you and the others at your place in Louisiana—the man who was calling himself Albert Nachtman at the time. Wasn’t this group of people you’re after working with him on a cure for vampyrism? And didn’t they band together to kill some of our friends in New Orleans at the same time they tried to kill you?”
Morpheus opened his mouth to say something and then he shut it without speaking, thinking. Surprisingly, what Peter said made sense. This group had been working with Nachtman, who had also been known as Niemann, so it would make sense if they were trying to join up with him again.
“That’s a good thought, Peter,” Morpheus said. “When I asked our friends from the other vampyre councils to help us locate Sam and her friends, I also told them to try and find this Nachtman character so that eventually we could prevent him from perfecting his vaccine against vampyrism, but it seems he dropped completely out of sight after his attack on me. I haven’t given him much thought since, because I wanted to take care of Sam and her friends first. I figured we’d get to Nachtman later.”
He hesitated while he thought the problem through. After a few moments, he continued. “But, now that you mention it, it would make sense for them to go to him for help.”
“So, what do you want us to do?” Jean asked.
“Well, since all of our contacts have had no luck in locating him here in the states, it may well be that he is in Canada and that our little group is heading up there to meet up with him. The trouble is, there’s no telling what name he’s using now.”
Jean scratched his chin for a moment, and then he snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him. “I could alert all the councils in Canada and Idaho to be on the lookout for a rogue, one of us who’s new to the area and who fits the general description of this Nachtman. If he knows you and others who feel as we do about his vaccine are after him, he won’t be anxious to make any overt contacts with the councils wherever he is.”
“There’s something else,” Peter added, proud that his idea had been accepted so readily. He knew his rather unprepossessing appearance hid a fine mind, but not many others had ever taken the time or effort to discover that fact.
Morpheus and Jean looked at him expectantly.
“If this Nachtman and the group is planning on continuing their work on this vaccine, then they’d have to have access to medical or laboratory facilities. Maybe we could alert the councils to pay special attention to doctors and hospitals and research facilities.”
Morpheus gave Peter a smile. “Really good thinking, Peter,” he said, and then he ruined the compliment by adding, “I never knew you had it in you.” Ignoring the hurt look on Peter’s face, he turned to Jean. “Why don’t you do that, Jean? Meanwhile, I’ll give Ramson Holroyd a call. As I remember, his council in Houston had some rather unsatisfactory dealings with Nachtman when he was going by the name Niemann and, in fact, when Holroyd came to Louisiana he was seeking revenge against him. Maybe he’ll know some other names Nachtman might be using or where he might be holed up.”
* * *
While Jean was on the phone with his contacts in Canada, Morpheus made his call to Holroyd. After a few minutes on the phone, Morpheus slammed down the receiver.
“That pompous, ignorant son of a bitch.” he muttered, his voice dripping with venom.
“He won’t help, huh?” Peter asked.
“No, the bastard says he doesn’t know where Nachtman is or what name he’s currently using, and even if he did he wouldn’t tell me. He even went on to say he’s having second thoughts about the vaccine. He thinks it might not be such a bad idea for members of our race to have a choice about how they live their lives—the stupid fuck!”
“Jeez,” Peter said, looking worried. “Holroyd is a pretty important guy, especially in the Houston area. There’s talk that he will probably take over leadership of the council there. If he’s against us, that’ll really hurt.”
“Oh, shut up, Peter,” Morpheus growled. “Don’t you think I know all that?”
Jean looked up as he disconnected his cell phone. “Good news, guys,” he said. “I just talked with one of the members of the council in Calgary who happens to live in Banff, and he’s ready to help us. In fact, he says he may already have a line on Nachtman.”
“What . . . so soon?” Morpheus asked, thinking that finally something might be going right for him today.
“Yeah, he said he’d let us know in a day or two. In the meantime, he’s going to make arrangements for us at a hotel up there. He says we ought to come on up, ’cause he’s fairly sure he’s right.”
Morpheus stood up, smiling for the first time in what seemed like hours. “Get your shit together, men, we’re headed for Canada.”
When he was halfway up the stairs to his room he stopped and turned around. “Oh, and Jean.”
“Yeah?”
“As soon as you’re packed, get on the phone to all of our friends and tell them to meet us in Canada. We’re going hunting!”
Thirty-two
The drive through Kaniksu National Forest was both exciting and frightening for the couples. Snow blanketed much of the forest and the roads hadn’t yet been cleared by snowplows, so much of the trip was spent slipping and sliding on inches of snow-covered ice along the twisty, turning roads of the park.
“I can see why Pike suggested a four-wheel drive SUV,” Shooter said to Matt who was riding in the front seat with him.
Matt, who had a white-knuckled grip on the dashboard, was sweating even though the temperature outside was just above freezing, and he didn’t take his eyes off the road when he nodded his agreement. He knew Shooter was an expert driver, having been through the tough police driving school, but Texas boys like them weren’t used to driving on ice, and Matt had visions of them plunging off one of the beautiful scenic mountainsides and crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet below.
When they finally emerged from the national forest onto more level ground just before reaching the Canadian border, Shooter’s jaws unclenched for the first time in fifty miles.
The border guards on the American side just waved them through toward the Canadian guards fifty yards down the road.
A man dressed in the blue uniform of Canadian Customs leaned in the window as Shooter rolled it down.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said courteously, though his eyes were sharp as they flicked over everyone in the vehi
cle. The Canadians, stung by American criticism of the looseness of their border procedures, were making sure no terrorists entered their country. “Are you U.S. citizens?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Shooter replied, trying to sound nonchalant but only managing to sound nervous.
The guard’s eyes narrowed slightly at this, but his expression remained bland as he examined the group a little closer. “Are you carrying any weapons or drugs?” he asked, his voice a bit less bored than before.
“Uh, no sir,” Shooter replied, his voice a little more assured as he got it under control.
“Could I see your passports, please?” the guard asked, holding out his hand to Shooter.
Sam glanced at TJ in silent communication and they both leaned forward against the rear of the front seat. Matt glanced back at them and saw both their foreheads wrinkle with concentration.
“Officer,” Sam said in a sweet, feminine voice, “we really don’t need passports, do we? We’re just going across for the day to do some shopping.”
Matt looked at the guard and saw his face change, becoming flacid and blank, like someone who is dead drunk and has no expression at all. After a moment, the guard wagged his head, “No, ma’am, of course not. You don’t need passports.”
“Then, we can go right on through, can’t we?” Sam asked, still in the same soft, low voice.
“Pull your vehicle right on through,” the man echoed, his eyes empty and flat and his mouth hanging slack, drooping down at the corners. He looked so idiotic, Matt almost expected him to drool.
Sam tapped Shooter on the shoulder. “Go, Shooter, go,” she urged in a tight whisper.
Shooter didn’t hesitate. He put the car in gear and pulled out of the guard station and onto the road leading to the north.
“Jesus,” Matt said, wiping sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. “That was impressive.”
Immortal Blood Page 20