I sat, pointedly ignoring Quan behind me, as if he posed no threat. Jacqueline arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow as I leaned back and crossed my legs. “Elijah, we have watched you over the years as we watch all of the Vampyri. We have always tried to let our brothers go their own way, as long as they don’t endanger the rest of us.” She paused for a moment as she lit another cigarette and took a sip of her drink.
“Unfortunately, our race is threatened on several fronts. There is, as you know, a crisis brought about by the advent of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Over fifty thousand of our brothers and sisters have had to be . . . put out of their misery due to this scourge. As if this weren’t enough, your recent actions have begun to put all of our lives in jeopardy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have drawn the attention of the authorities to our . . . special needs. Elijah, you are an intelligent creature, and we do not understand why you have suddenly begun killing in such a manner as to force the authorities to become aware of our existence.” She looked into my eyes as if challenging me to answer.
I thought about it for a moment, before shrugging as if it would take too much effort to concoct a lie. “I suppose it was boredom as much as anything else.”
There was a crash as the glass Akeem was holding exploded in his hand. “Boredom? You risked all of our lives and the continued existence of our species because you became bored?”
I could feel fear-sweat break out on my forehead, gleaming pink in the light from the fire. “Yes. Two hundred years of sneaking around, taking a little blood here and there, but always avoiding the supreme thrill of the chase, and the kill.”
I stood and moved so I could watch all of them at once. “You do not know what you’re missing. You sneak around and take a few sips, covering the evidence of your feeding with your psychic commands.” I waved my arm at them. “Ha! There is nothing like the taste of blood rich with the flavor of fear and terror, and finally the acceptance and welcoming of death. You live on water while I feast on wine, and you dare to come here, to my territory, and summon me like some supplicant to your throne?” I asked, believing none of the bullshit I was feeding them, but trying to gain some time to make a break for safety.
My voice began to gain power as I prepared myself for the final confrontation. I stabbed my chest with my thumb. “Well, I’m the alpha male around here, and you’d better not forget it!”
At the challenge, the others stood and began to circle around to try and surround me, as I knew they would. I snarled and growled as I began to change. My face melted and my fangs grew as I crouched with my back against the wall. I observed the others as they began to change and stalk me, noting that Jacqueline alone of all present had not moved or changed. She sat there, serenely waiting for the kill.
By artificially working myself into a frenzy, I’d gained a few precious seconds on the others. I lunged at Quan, catching him by surprise, and swatted him aside with ease. Before he could recover, I dashed over to the sofa where Jacqueline sat, enjoying the look of surprise and terror on her face at my approach. I lifted her easily and drew her to me. I wrapped one claw in her hair, the other around her chest, and fondled her breast as I growled, “Stay back! If you don’t let me pass, I’ll rip her head from her body before she can change, and you’ll lose your leader.”
Akeem growled, his voice almost unintelligible, “Give it up, Elijah, you can’t possibly win against all of us.”
I stretched Jacqueline’s neck and placed my fangs near her throat. “No, Akeem, I can’t win, but I can do unimaginable damage before I lose.” I bent and flicked my pointed tongue against Jacqueline’s neck. Then I nicked her lightly with one of my fangs, just enough to cause a tiny vermillion spot to appear over her jugular vein.
Akeem saw the terror in her eyes and grabbed Quan by the shoulder, holding him back. “What is it you want?”
I hugged Jacqueline tighter to me and began to edge toward the door. “I’ll make a deal with you,” I snarled, my voice sounding as if it were fashioned of broken glass and razor blades. “I’ll leave town. That’ll stop the investigation and when the killings stop, the authorities will forget their suspicions. Without me, there will be no proof of our existence.”
Akeem glanced at Quan, then at the others. As they all nodded, he looked at Jacqueline, waiting for her reaction. She moistened her lips. “If you’ll let me into your mind before you leave, then I’ll know you speak the truth.”
I laughed. “Of course, but not here . . . not with all of your subjects present.” I lifted her until her feet no longer touched the floor, backing out of the door into the corridor without taking my eyes off the others. I slammed the door shut and loped down the hall to the stairs. Half dragging and half carrying her, I bounded down the stairway until I was several flights below the penthouse.
I whirled her around and slammed her back up against the wall. Holding her there with one hand on her throat, I used the other to rip the gown from her body, leaving her naked before me.
I grinned, baring two-inch fangs. “Now, you want to enter my mind? Well, go ahead. . . .” And I opened my mind to her as I rammed my penis into her and fastened my fangs on her neck. She gasped and tried at first to struggle. After a moment, against her will, her legs wrapped around me and her hips began to move with my rhythm.
She changed just as the orgasm racked her body, exchanging her moans for howls of ecstasy. As I pumped my semen into her, she ripped her neck from my mouth and pulled me to her breast, suckling me like a child while she sank her fangs into my neck and tasted my lust through my blood.
When it was over, she picked up her dress, holding it before her bruised and bleeding body. “Go in peace, Elijah. If you keep your bargain, we will not bother you again.”
I turned to go, and she added, “But if you do not, then you will suffer as no one has ever suffered in the history of our race.”
I loped down the stairs toward the ground floor, knowing I had not seen the last of Jacqueline and her group.
Thirteen
Brennan’s is located on Louisiana Street, just off Highway 59, an easy fifteen-minute ride from the Bellaire subdivision. Shelly and Sam arrived at the restaurant at the same time Matt did. Clark hadn’t arrived yet.
The building is an imposing brick structure, with dark green ivy covering most of the walls. Even at that early hour and with a steady drizzle falling, a line had formed at the front door. In spite of its expensive menu, the restaurant is immensely popular both with tourists and Houstonians.
As they entered, a young lady dressed as if she were going to the opera walked up to them with a clipboard in her hand. “Name, please?” she asked.
Shelly looked around at the crowd waiting for tables. “Any idea of how long it’ll be?” he asked.
She looked at him as if it shouldn’t matter how long they had to wait for the privilege of eating there. “Oh, about an hour,” she said.
Shelly frowned and Matt figured he was about to tell her to forget it. Shelly was famous for never, ever waiting in lines for anything. He’d once said his time in the army soured him on lines forever.
Just then, Damon Clark and Shooter walked in the door. The mâitre d’ came rushing over, his hand outstretched, almost shoving the hostess aside in his haste to welcome Damon.
“Mr. Clark, so glad to see you, sir. How many in your party?” he said with an oily smile.
Damon said, “Five, for smoking please, Jacques.”
“Follow me,” the man said, snapping his fingers at the nearest waiter and pointing at the stack of menus on a table near the doorway.
He led them through several dining rooms, each about the size of a normal room in a house. On the way, Matt recognized several doctors from the medical center.
Shelly waved, taking a few minutes to banter with the doctors, most of whom knew him from his teaching lectures. Matt hadn’t realized how popular he was with the staffs of the various hospitals, and was doubly impressed that he
knew most of them by their first names.
At another table, Matt saw two third-year students sitting with older couples, probably their parents. The students were on ER rotation at the Taub and waved to Matt, but he didn’t remember their names. He resolved then to try and become better acquainted with the students on his service. Shelly was both a good example and a hard act to follow.
As they moved through the restaurant, Matt also noticed that the male patrons all seemed to have their eyes on Sam. He realized it was easy to be ignored when walking with her.
Finally, the mâitre d’ seated the group in a small, open courtyard under an overhang so the rain wouldn’t be a problem. There were trees and brightly colored flowers and bushes around an area floored with bricks that resembled the ancient streets of New Orleans.
Matt had been there once before, but it was evidently Sam’s first time. She glanced around the courtyard, her eyes wide. “This is beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Damon followed her gaze, as if seeing it for the first time. “Yes,” he agreed, “it is. And the food is quite good too.”
A waitress appeared and placed steaming cups of coffee in front of them without asking, before moving off to take an order at a neighboring table.
Damon smiled. “The coffee is chicory, just like they serve in New Orleans. If you’re not used to it, you may be surprised at the flavor.” He reached across the table and added heated cream to his brew. “You might want to add extra sugar and cream to dilute it a bit.”
Matt noticed for the first time that Clark looked haggard; his eyes were bloodshot and he was unshaven. Even his trademark three-piece suit looked as if it had been slept in. This case is really getting to him, Matt thought as he added the warm cream to his own coffee.
Clark took out his cigarettes and lighter and placed them in front of him on the table. He shook out a cigarette and lit it. After he took a deep swig of his coffee, he sank back in his chair with a sigh. “Doctors, were any of you in the service during the war?”
Shelly blinked, then answered, “Yes. I spent two years in Vietnam, at a field hospital.”
Matt shook his head no, mumbling that he had been in his residency at the time. Sam just smiled and said, “No, I was still in high school.”
Clark grinned at Shelly. “Then you know what it’s like to walk through a minefield.”
Shelly nodded, and Matt thought, I wonder where this is going.
“Doctors, I’m an experiment,” Damon said, out of the blue. He took another drag and watched the cloud of exhaled smoke rise, to be eaten and spit out by the ceiling fans over the courtyard. Finally, he continued, “I’m the first black man to rise to the rank of chief in the Houston Police Department, and chief of detectives is the most highly visible of all of the departments in the force.”
Matt nodded, while Shelly just looked at Clark, waiting for him to make his point in his own way.
“There are a thousand pairs of eyes watching every move I make, and at least half of them are hoping I’ll fall flat on my face.” He rubbed his eyes, making them even redder.
After they ordered breakfast—Damon recommending the eggs Benedict and pancakes with blueberry syrup, a Brennan’s specialty—the waitress left. As they sat and drank coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice, Damon said, “In the past two weeks we have had two rather spectacular murders, murders in which Dr. Silver and his associate”—he nodded and smiled at Sam—“say the perpetrator drank the victim’s blood.”
Shelly held up his hand. “Wait a minute, Damon, we haven’t made that determination about the killings tonight yet.”
“Doc, I’ve seen a lot of murders and a lot of wounds, and I caught your comment about the lack of an appropriate amount of blood at the scene tonight.”
Shelly started to interrupt. “Yes, but . . .”
Clark waved his hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it, but I agree. There should have been more blood, a lot more blood.”
He lit another cigarette off the butt of the first, his hands shaking slightly, betraying the tension he was under. “Let’s assume, for the moment, that your findings on this case are the same as on the other one. That means one of two things.”
Matt thought about the implications of that for a moment while the waitress served them. After she left, Sam said, “I think I see what you mean, Chief Clark. We may be seeing the first in a series of serial killings.”
Clark nodded and mumbled around a mouthful of poached eggs on an English muffin covered with hollandaise sauce, “Very good, Doc.”
“But, what’s the other possibility?” Matt asked.
Clark washed his food down with more coffee, then said, “That we’re in the middle of a series of serial killings that hasn’t been noticed until now.”
Shelly began, “That’s imposs . . . Wait a minute, you think there may have been more killings like these and the medical examiners and the police both failed to notice them?” He leaned back and said, “I find that hard to believe, Chief. What about you Matt? Do you recall any other murders like these coming through the emergency rooms in the past few months?”
“Well, the killing the other night was pretty spectacular, but I guess it’s not too unusual for a weekend at the Taub. If the residents or medical examiners were seeing similar killings, they’d notice a pattern.”
Clark stabbed a slice of pancake and stuffed it in his mouth. After he chewed and swallowed, his eyes on Shelly the entire time, he continued, “Not necessarily, Doc. Listen a minute. . . .” He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “This city has a population of over two million people; twenty thousand cops patrol forty square miles of territory divided into twenty separate precincts. If the murderer was smart, he could spread out his kills. Chances are, none of the different officers involved would ever see more than one case, so there would be no reason to suspect a serial killer.”
“But, Damon, you’re forgetting the medical examiner’s office,” said Shelly. “They would notice and make a connection between such . . . unusual murders as these.”
Sam put her hand on Shelly’s arm to get his attention. “Just a minute, Shelly.” She sat there, lost in thought for a moment, before going on as if talking to herself. “There are seven pathologists in the medical examiner’s office, not counting the ME, who rarely does autopsies himself. They probably each work two or three murders a day, five or six days a week.” She looked at Shelly, then over at Chief Clark. “To be honest, if the autopsy the other night had been done by the ME’s office, I’ll bet it would have been signed out as a routine slasher case.”
Matt had to agree. With the increasing amount of carnage on Houston’s streets, it was easy to see the medical examiners being inundated into a sort of trance, where the unusual was missed in the never-ending procession of maimed and mutilated bodies passing through the morgue.
“Okay, Chief, we concede that it’s possible, and that Sam may be right. However, that still doesn’t explain why you involved me. Why not someone from the ME’s office?” Shelly asked.
“Shelly, I told you before how political this job is.” He leaned forward again and put his elbows on the table. “I know the ME to be a fair and impartial man, and I trust him. But, now that he’s out with a heart attack, there’s no one left over there that I would trust with information this sensitive. If we do in fact have a serial killer on our hands, I need some time to get a handle on him before his existence becomes public knowledge.”
He spread his hands. “You’re the only man I trust to work on this and keep what you find confidential.”
“Why?”
Clark pursed his lips and examined Shelly through narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide how much to tell him. “First of all, you’re apolitical and have no ax to grind with either the police department or me. You are smart and observant, and you noticed the strangeness of the first murder. More important, you weren’t afraid to state your findings in an official report.”
Shelly held up hi
s hands in surrender. “Okay, you’ve flattered me into accepting the job. But tell me, why have you involved Matt in this—not that I’m complaining, you understand.” He looked over at Matt and smiled. “He’s got a knack for this forensic stuff, and I can use his help.”
Clark glanced at Matt. “Matt, I asked Shooter about you when I found out you two were friends. He said you can keep your mouth shut, and you have your fingers on the pulse of all of the emergency rooms in the medical center. I’ll need you to pass the word, discreetly, among the residents and private docs about what kind of murders we’re looking for. We need to know how often and when this madman is striking if we’re going to figure out his pattern and track him down.”
Matt could see why Clark was so successful as chief of detectives. He had a way of cutting through a mass of seemingly unrelated facts and finding the nuggets that would make his case seem plausible. He was also that rare breed of man, a born leader. With nothing more than a couple of possibly unrelated murders to go on, he had succeeded in convincing both Shelly and Matt to help.
Matt found he was excited. His second choice, after a career in medicine, had always been to be a detective—a modern Sherlock Holmes—and to follow in his father’s footsteps. Now Clark was giving him a chance to do both and be involved in what seemed to be the tracking down of a bizarre serial killer, the hardest type of criminal to catch.
Clark grabbed the check and stood up. “Let me get to work on the computers this morning while you arrange for the autopsy on the two latest victims. I’ll be in touch with you later today to let you know if we’ve found any pattern of killings with this MO.”
As Clark walked away, Shelly looked at his watch and said, “Uh-oh. I’m due to give a lecture to the freshman students in fifteen minutes. We’re gonna have to hustle, Sam.”
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