Royal Blood

by Debra Dunbar

Mom rolled her eyes. “What is it with you and the Philippine supernaturals? I’m leaning toward it being a Dearg-Due.”

  Dad grinned. “Okay you’re right. Mandurugo fly. But they tend to take the most convenient prey, and the homeless are certainly convenient.”

  “How would I kill it if it were a Mandurugo?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “Stab it. They’re pretty fragile as supernatural creatures go. Stab it in the chest, or cut off its head.”

  I winced at the thought of cutting off a young beautiful woman’s head, even if she was killing someone.

  “But if it’s a Dearg-Due…” Dad frowned.

  “If it’s a Dearg-Due, we’re in trouble,” Mom added.

  I turned the book around and read the summary. A Dearg-Due was a combination of vengeful spirit and ghoul. Abused and tortured during her life, she came back from the grave each night and took her revenge—first upon those who had witnessed her abuse and never stepped forward to help. After she’d killed them, the Dearg-Due went on to kill others, sucking the air from their lungs to incapacitate them, then draining them of all their blood. There was no mention of which body part she preferred to do her blood-sucking from, but the article did say the Dearg-Due had very sharp, needle-like teeth she used to puncture flesh and drain her victim’s blood, so I was assuming their site of attack could appear to a human as if the victim had been a recent drug user.

  “It’s in keeping with the neat appearance of the body,” Dad noted. “Dearg-Due don’t chew or maul. They just drain blood.”

  “How do I kill it?” I asked, flipping the page.

  “Schumer says to stack rocks on the grave, but a guy in Dungarvan told me that was a waste of time,” Mom said. “Sometimes they still get out of the grave, and even if the stones hold them, all it takes is one tourist or teenager dare, and you’ve got a Dearg-Due on the loose again.”

  “Best to enlist a necromancer then,” I murmured, eyeing the photos that accompanied the article. From what Schumer said, it was a sort of ghost, so I was thinking Russell would be better suited to handle the situation than me slapping rocks on a grave.

  “Maybe, but I don’t trust necromancers,” Mom commented. “Dig her up, burn the body and replace it in a lead-lined casket, then salt the grave with an End Times blessing. That’s what I’d do.”

  Mom was the expert. Dad did the research. Mom did the killing. Or in this case, the containment.

  So I had three theories running around in my brain right now. One, a Dearg-Due was loose. If that were the case, then this body would only be the first in a whole lot of dead men. Two, a group of mages were doing spellwork that required a whole lot of blood. To check the plausibility of that theory, I’d talk to Chuck and possibly see if Reynard would return my call. Three, some humans had a blood-for-money scheme and were trying to get rich draining homeless people who had a rare blood type. If that theory were the case, then this whole thing got dumped in Tremelay’s lap.

  It didn’t escape me that the most implausible of the three theories was the human one. The logistics of identifying who had the appropriately valuable blood type, then finding them among the homeless seemed a whole lot more farfetched than a vengeful blood-drinking ghoul or some sort of overkill blood magic.

  Either way, I already had plans to meet with Russell for the séance and could ask him what he knew about Dearg-Due.

  But in the meantime, there was a turkey sandwich in the kitchen calling my name, then a long drive home, and an early morning tomorrow.

  Chapter 9

  The coffee shop was insanely busy. I got there at five thirty and there were people standing outside the door, right in front of the “we open at six” sign, demanding to be let in for coffee. Seemed we weren’t the only ones opening at six, and half of Baltimore wanted to be fully caffeinated before hitting up their Black Friday deals. There were no breaks for us, and I was pretty sure as I eyed the clock, that I wasn’t going to be getting off work at noon as originally planned.

  Turning to take an order, I saw a familiar face across from me.

  “We need to talk,” Tremelay announced, placing something on the counter.

  It was the second time this week someone had slapped crime scene photos on the counter in front a bunch of customers. I shot a quick glance over at my manager, thinking that I was probably on the edge of getting fired here.

  At least these weren’t of a corpse on a morgue slab. These were closeup shots of someone’s arm—an arm with two big-ass holes in it.

  There was also a ruler helpfully placed next to the holes. Picking up the photos, I looked closer at the marks, my mind cycling through everything I knew about vampire feedings. Their fangs were sharp and needlelike, leaving much smaller holes than this. The goal was to quickly pierce the skin and vein, allowing their euphoric venom to cover up any of the donor’s pain as the vampire drank. There was an anticoagulant in their saliva that allowed them to quickly consume a pint of blood before clotting began—a fast feeding reducing the chance of detection at a rather vulnerable time for the vampire.

  If they wanted more than a pint, they could bite a second time either from a different or the same location, or they could bite deeper, widening the puncture marks and allowing for a more rapid blood flow—although with that technique, there was a significant risk that the pain to their victim would overcome the euphoria of the venom, and that the fang marks would be very noticeable afterward.

  Unfortunately I knew that personally. Simon had bitten me deep, not caring about my pain or leaving a scar. In fact, that had been part of the thrill for him. He’d not just widened the puncture marks on my neck, but chewed the flesh, ripping and tearing it so my scar looked less like a vampire bite and more like the savage attack that it was.

  The marks in the photo were not what I would have expected for a stealthy vampire feeding. From the diameter of the holes, a vampire would have sunk his fangs in practically to the gums. Beyond these, there were no signs of other teeth marks or damage in the area of the photos. Interestingly, the measuring device showed the marks at two inches apart. If this were a vampire, he had a really wide jaw and some tusk-like fangs. I was pretty sure a dude like that would stand out.

  It all made me believe this wasn’t a vampire attack, but something else. I wondered briefly how big Dearg-Due fangs were. Hmmm. I might need to call Dad on that one later.

  I looked up to see Tremelay scowling at me. “What? Why are you looking at me that way? I didn’t do this.”

  “I know you didn’t do this. I’m just tired and grumpy because I spent most of Thanksgiving on this case. And I’d like to know who our leak at the morgue is, because waking up to ‘Homeless Man Found Dead and Drained of Blood’ as the headline in the paper this morning along with these very same pictures didn’t do much to help my mood.”

  I winced. Poor guy. “Go yell at Janice, because I don’t know who her contacts are.”

  “Well, she wasn’t wrong, but now I’ve got my lieutenant breathing down my neck because people are flooding the hotlines with calls about satanic neighbors, vampire co-workers, and mutant giant ticks from South Africa—none of which I’d rule out given the weird shit-show of cases I’ve had in the last few months.”

  I blinked. Mutant giant ticks? Was that a thing? Should I call Dad and ask him about South African tick-monsters, or perhaps these were a genetic experiment gone bad? Glancing over at Sean, I held up the pictures. “Do you think I can grab a quick break?”

  He looked at the line behind the detective, then at the pictures. “Fifteen minutes max, Aria. Try to make it quicker. We’re swamped.”

  I nodded, smiling in appreciation as I led Tremelay away from the curious eyes and ears of our customers and to the back room where we tended to take our breaks. We’d barely gotten seated in the hard wooden chairs before Tremelay began.

  “Here’s what I’ve got so far. The first three people I showed you two nights ago were long-term addicts who had been on the streets for several years. As I
said, anemia was a contributing factor to their deaths, but not the main cause. They appeared to have been down a couple pints of blood in volume, which the M.E. says could have been due to an unknown underlying illness as no blood donation site would collect from an active drug user.”

  I nodded, thinking that was in line with what he’d mentioned Wednesday night at my place.

  “This man here. He doesn’t show any signs of habitual drug use, and he basically was drained of blood, as the rather sensationalist headline in today’s paper announced.”

  “This is the guy I found, right?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “Yep. We’ve got an ID on him, and he’s not homeless like the other three. He’s not even from Baltimore. His name’s Melbourne Cassidy. He’s a financial analyst at some company I’ve never heard of in Chicago. He’s not even supposed to be in Baltimore. His wife said he’d flown out Monday for a consulting gig at some firm in Philadelphia and was due to return home next week. She didn’t even know he was missing until a uniformed officer showed up at her home to give her the news.”

  I caught my breath, wondering how the heck a man on a business trip ended up on the sidewalk of a sketchy neighborhood in Baltimore.

  “Didn’t she worry when he didn’t text or call her or anything?” I asked, knowing I’d be worried. But then again, sometimes a few days went by without my seeing Dario depending on what was happening. I hadn’t heard from him beyond a quick text Wednesday and Thursday night, but I’d still be concerned if he didn’t check in at least every few days.

  “She says when he’s doing these consulting gigs, he’s buried in spreadsheets and focused. He let her know he’d landed and checked into his hotel, and texted her that he’d see her this coming Monday.”

  I nodded, acknowledging that she’d hardly expect her husband to lose his life looking over accounting files for some corporation. Not like that job was particularly high on the list of risky careers.

  “She’s on her way out here now,” Tremelay added. “From what I can tell, this Cassidy guy landed in Philly, checked into his hotel room, then never showed up the next morning at the company he was supposed to be working with. They called his firm, but with the holiday and everything, they figured maybe they got the dates wrong and he’d show up next week.”

  “So he went missing sometime between Monday and Tuesday morning,” I mused.

  Tremelay nodded. “Given that you stumbled across him Tuesday morning and the suspected time of death, we’re thinking Monday, probably soon after he checked into his hotel.”

  I looked at the pictures again.

  “There’s more,” Tremelay continued. “They found faint traces of a sedative in the blood sample they took from his organs but, as I said, there was no sign of habitual drug use at all. His wife says he’s clean as a whistle, and it wouldn’t be like him to suddenly decide to shoot up out of the blue.”

  “Something really bad was going on in his life and he turned to drugs?” I asked. Sometimes people lived a life that their spouses knew nothing about. Although why the man would need to come all the way to Baltimore to get high was beyond me. There were plenty of dealers in Philly for that sort of thing.

  “According to the wife and his company, he gets regularly tested at work because of the financial nature of the projects he’s working on, so it seems unlikely.”

  I frowned. “Either way drug use doesn’t explain the blood loss.”

  Tremelay sat back in the chair. “But here’s where it gets weird. The wife insists he’s not a drug user. She said the only needles that have ever been close to her husband’s arm were for blood donation, which he did regularly according to her. Evidently he’s got some rare blood type and a strong sense of moral duty around giving blood. Twice a year, like clockwork. I’m verifying it with the American Red Cross, but she texted me one of those little booklets they give out and he’s got more stamps than frequent flyer miles. The guy gives a lot of blood.”

  I frowned, thinking that Dad’s implausible blood-for-money scheme was looking more and more plausible. “Any idea what’s so special about his blood?”

  The detective took his notebook out of his pocket and flipped through a few pages before finding what he wanted. “Rh-null. He’s one of forty known people in the world that are Rh-null. It makes him slightly anemic, which is why he’s only allowed to donate twice a year. Plus, if he’s ever in an accident and needs an emergency transfusion, he’s pretty much screwed since he’d need Rh-null blood. His wife says because of that he always was a careful driver, and not much of a risk taker as far as hobbies and activities. She gave that as one more reason why he’d never have turned to drugs—especially IV drugs.”

  I shook my head, perplexed by the whole thing. “I get the rare blood thing, but with only forty known people in the world with this blood type, I can’t imagine it would be in so much demand that a blood-for-money scheme would be profitable. I mean, they’d need to figure out Cassidy had the blood type they needed, plan to grab or entice him and transport him from Philly to Baltimore, then basically take every bit of blood in his body. Seems like a lot of work for blood.”

  “I hear ya.” Tremelay flipped a page in his notebook. “Unless there was an Rh-null rich guy who needs ten to twelve pints for open heart surgery.”

  I nodded. “I guess. With forty people in the world with that blood type, it shouldn’t be too hard to track that sort of thing down.”

  Tremelay rubbed a hand over his eyes. “That’s what I’m hoping. I’m trying to see if there’s been any blood flown out of the country in the last few days, and trying to get a list of any surgeries that happened Wednesday or today, or are scheduled for the next few weeks that might require this much blood and which Rh-null was a requirement in the transfusions. Fresh blood only keeps for four weeks, so whatever someone was doing with this blood, they’d need to use it pretty soon after collecting it.”

  “So this isn’t supernatural after all, but the equivalent of a black market kidney operation? Only with rare blood?” I looked down at the picture again. “Those punctures look way bigger than the ones I get when I’ve donated blood. Are you sure about this?”

  “They’re needle marks,” Tremelay assured me. “I was scratching my head over this Thanksgiving, so I asked Kyra to take a look at them.”

  “Lovely Thanksgiving dinner conversation,” I teased. “Hey Kyra, take a look at these morgue photos and tell me what you think. Oh, and pass me the sweet potatoes.”

  He laughed. “She’s a doctor. I’m a cop. That’s pretty much been our dinner conversation since the day she went to college.”

  I nodded, thinking it was pretty close to the dinner conversation I’d grown up with at my house, only we were usually debating whether the wounds we were looking at in photos were caused by a wraith or a ghoul.

  “So what’s her take on it? If they’re really needle marks, then why are they so huge?”

  “First, my theory is that he was either lured down to Baltimore with some sort of emergency that needed his specific blood type, or he was nabbed and hauled down here. I’m putting my money on the first, because kidnapping someone and driving them down from Philly has a whole lot of risk. Plus I get the idea based on what the wife says, that if Doctor So-and-So called his hotel with a medical emergency, he’d want to do the right thing. It’s a short drive from Philly and I’m willing to bet his rental car shows up in the city in the next few days. I’ve got patrol officers looking around the hospitals, thinking that would have been the best place to lure and grab this guy.”

  “That makes sense. But why are the needle marks so big?” I pressed.

  “I’m getting to that. Be patient, Ainsworth.”

  I was so not patient, especially with my allotted break time slipping away, but I knew that arguing with Tremelay would only waste more precious minutes so I waved him to go on.

  “The human body holds five to six liters of blood, and it wouldn’t have been easy to get that all out of his bod
y. There’s no way for the blood to exit aside from these puncture wounds on his arm.”

  I frowned down at the picture. “Would they have used a pump or something? I’ve given blood before and they’re having me squeeze rubber balls like crazy just to get a pint out of me before it clots and stops flowing.”

  “I checked with Kyra, and she said if someone wanted to take a large quantity of blood from the body, they’d need to do it fast before clotting set in. If they didn’t care whether the person lived or died, then they’d go for an artery and use a large bore hollow hypodermic needle and possibly an anticoagulant to keep clotting to a minimum.”

  I stared in shock, thinking how painful that would have been. Although from what little experience I had with sudden blood loss, the guy wouldn’t have been conscious for long.

  “Twelve gauge,” Tremelay continued. “She said from the photos showing bruising, she thinks they restrained the guy, but he clearly didn’t fight hard or for long. It would have taken a while, even with the large bore needle and an anticoagulant. The multiple marks mean as the blood clotted and slowed they moved to a different spot. She also said they’d need to use negative pressure, and as the heart slowed, possibly gravity by elevating and tipping the body to get as much blood out as possible.”

  This was horrific, with such a careless disregard for this man’s life. It was almost on par with the brutality shown by the death mages. Their victims had died fast with a knife wound to the heart, but they’d still been terrified, knowing that their death was coming. I’m sure it was the same with this man. He’d been restrained, painfully stuck with a thick needle in an artery. He’d probably lost consciousness fairly quickly, but he had to have known these men meant to kill him.

  Tremelay picked the photo back up. “The M.E. report isn’t finalized yet since they’re waiting on lab tests, but I trust Kyra’s expertise on this. She’s taken enough blood samples to know her way around an IV.”

  “This means whoever did this knew what they were doing,” I commented. “They had access to databanks of rare blood types. They knew to use a large bore needle and had access to them. They knew how to hit an artery. They had access to anticoagulants. They knew to apply negative pressure. And they had the means to collect, store, and transport the blood in a safe and sterile manner.”