Blood Hunt

by Christopher Buecheler

  Jakob grinned. “People who live for hundreds of years make lots of friends.”

  Rhes shut his eyes, shook his head, and said, “Jesus, Sarah, wake me up, would you? This is just too fucking bizarre to be real.”

  “I was about to ask you to do the same thing,” Sarah replied. “To be honest, part of me is dead-convinced that this is all some sort of massive, elaborate joke on the blind lady.”

  Rhes made a noise of discomfort. “Where’s your friend, Jakob? I don’t think I can actually stand up for much longer, wall or no wall.”

  Jakob glanced up the street. “I believe the Cadillac sedan three lights up is hers.”

  “Good.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and then Jakob said, “So. Your friend is not home. She has not yet been abducted by the Burilgi, unless they were uncharacteristically subtle about it. That begs the question: where is she?”

  “Out walking. It’s what she does,” Sarah said.

  “Do you know where she walks?”

  “I think it’s different every night. Random. She’s looking for people like you.”

  Jakob rolled his eyes. “Fantastic. So we’ve only a few million people to comb through.”

  “She always comes home,” Rhes said. “Can you post someone to look out for her?”

  “I can and will.”

  “Why do you care if one human gets killed by these Burilgi things, anyway?”

  Jakob glanced over at Rhes. “She killed a … a demigod that had been ruling our council for several hundred years. Whether that deserves prosecution or some sort of reward is a matter of some debate. In either case, I know many people who would like the opportunity to talk with her.”

  “Judging from what she told us of Abraham, go with reward,” Sarah said.

  Jakob shrugged. “It’s not my decision to make, at least not alone. Come, my friend is here.”

  Struggling against the pain, Rhes shifted his weight back to Jakob’s shoulder and let the vampire help him toward the car.

  * * *

  Jakob was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, speaking to someone on his cell phone. He had not introduced the car’s owner to Rhes and Sarah, nor had she made any greeting of her own. Rhes was stretched out across the back seat, his head in Sarah’s lap, only half conscious.

  “I don’t care if she left orders not to be disturbed, Karl,” Jakob was saying. “I need the number to Naomi’s private cell, and I need it now. Something has happened that will be of great interest to the council.”

  “You suppose that’s Theroen’s Naomi?” Sarah asked Rhes.

  “Whuh?” Rhes looked up for a minute, then put his head back in her lap. Sarah stroked his hair.

  “Never mind, baby. Just relax.”

  “I asked you to marry me, right?” Rhes asked, his voice fuzzy.

  “You did, Rhes.”

  “You said ‘yes,’ right?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Good deal.” Rhes seemed to settle into sleep.

  Sarah laughed to herself. Yes, good deal, she thought. Good deal if we ever get out of this bullshit and back to anything resembling a normal life. Me and Rhes and Molly, and maybe a little brother or sister for Molly to—

  “Oh, shit!” she said out loud.

  “One second,” Jakob said into the phone. “What is it, Sarah?”

  “Our … we have a girl who lives with us. She’s still at home. Is she safe?”

  Jakob looked concerned. “Probably, yes, but I’d rather not take any chances. I won’t have anyone wake her up, but I will put her under guard. Karl, are you listening? Yes, two of them. Ay’Araf. Where do you live, Sarah?”

  Sarah hesitated for a moment, and then gave him not only their address, but the safety word that she and Rhes had worked out with Molly for emergencies. Jakob gave this information to Karl, and said, “If you can’t get me Naomi’s number, at least tell her to call me if she checks in.”

  He hung up the phone and glanced at his friend, who kept her eyes on the road but slowly shook her head.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Jakob. “How is he?”

  “Asleep. Still breathing. Thanks for the help, Jakob. Does your friend have a name?”

  “She is not comfortable with humans. I’m sorry … bad experience about sixty years ago with an overzealous priest. She’d prefer to remain anonymous. It’s best if you think of her as a taxi driver on this occasion.”

  Sarah raised her eyebrows. “OK, then … well, thanks, ma’am. For what it’s worth, not all of us are going to start digging out the garlic and crosses the minute we come in contact with a vampire.”

  “She knows. Please do not take offense, Sarah.”

  Sarah shrugged. “You’re helping Rhes … far as I’m concerned, you could have Hitler driving the car.”

  Jakob smiled, nodded, said something to his driver in their vampire language. The woman laughed. Sarah considered asking about the joke and decided against it. What did she care? These people were not like her, and it really didn’t matter if one of them didn’t care to make friends.

  She felt the car slowing and guessed that they had reached their destination. Jakob confirmed this, saying, “We’re here. Is he all right?”

  “Beats me. He’s still alive. What’s the story? What am I telling them?”

  “Take the cash out of his wallet. We were at a bar, he was meeting us there. When he didn’t show up, we went outside to see where he might be. We found him in the alley, beaten up and robbed.”

  “Works for me. Think they’ll buy it?”

  “Depends on how well you sell it,” Jakob said. He got out of the car and opened the right-side passenger door, near Rhes’s feet.

  “Rise and shine, sweetheart,” said Sarah, tapping Rhes on the shoulder. Rhes groaned.

  “I’m going to let these people decide how to get him out of the car without causing him undue pain,” Jakob said. He went inside.

  “My whole … fucking … body hurts,” Rhes said from her lap. He sounded groggy, but better than he had since they’d left Two’s apartment. “I’m not kidding. I mean every last thing. Pick a thing. It hurts. Guarantee it.”

  “Toes?” Sarah asked.

  “Yep. Those hurt.”

  “Small of the back?”

  “That too.”

  “Roof of your mouth?”

  “Burned the shit out of it this morning with a cup of coffee.”

  Sarah laughed. “Poor Rhes. They’ll have something good for you inside, hon. Darvocet or Vicodin or something.”

  “Mmm …” Rhes murmured.

  Sarah could hear clattering outside. Jakob’s voice said, “They’re bringing a stretcher.”

  She felt Rhes’s head leave her lap and heard people speaking to him as they transferred him to the stretcher. A man’s voice near her said, “Ma’am, your friend says you can’t see. Can I help you out of the car?”

  Sarah shrugged and held out her hand. “Hey, sure, why not. Be careful with my boyfriend, please. I’d like to keep him.”

  The man laughed. “We’ll do our best.”

  * * *

  “Eleven stitches in the leg, five in the eyebrow. Two broken ribs. Broken finger. Two black eyes. Abrasions all over the place. Light concussion … and enough bruises that he looks like a patchwork quilt. Forgive me, Ms. Taylor, but the term we normally use for this is ‘had the crap beat out of him.’”

  The doctor was young. Sarah could tell by his voice and manner of speaking that he wasn’t much older than she or Rhes. He seemed to be in a decent mood, which helped Sarah relax. She leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, let relief wash over her.

  “So there’s nothing terrible?” she asked. “He’s not bleeding internally or about to barf up his own spleen or anything?”

  The doctor, Jamison was his name, laughed. “No, nothing like that. He needs two weeks of rest – no hitting the gym or even lifting anything heavy at home – and another couple weeks of light effort so those ri
bs can finish healing. That’s about it. They really stomped him. Did he see anything?”

  Sarah didn’t like lying for Rhes, but he was out cold in the hospital bed to her left, exhausted from the beating and the painkillers. “He said they jumped him from behind, and he never got a good look after that. It was dark out there.”

  “Unfortunate. I’m sure you’d like to press charges.”

  “I’m just glad Rhes is safe. People like that usually get what’s coming to them eventually.”

  Jakob was standing behind her, in the corner at the far side of the room, looking out the window at the city below. He made a coughing noise that Sarah thought was a laugh.

  “You didn’t see anything, did you, sir?” Jamison asked.

  “I’m afraid they were gone by the time we got there. They were probably gone before we even went out to look for him. The gentleman at the door said no one had come running by, so they must have gone the other way.”

  The ease with which Jakob’s lies rolled off his lips amazed Sarah. He sounded so convinced of what he was saying that she found it difficult not to believe his sincerity despite knowing the truth.

  “All right,” Jamison said. “Well, I’m afraid visiting hours are over and I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Mr. Kasavan. Sarah is his fiancée, but you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not. That’s not a problem, doctor.”

  Sarah heard Jakob start across the room. He brushed against her coat on his way, slung over the foot of the bed, and Sarah’s hearing, honed to pay attention to things that sighted humans might not bother with, heard something drop into the folds of fabric. Jakob continued moving, stopping next to her.

  “He’ll be fine. I will call you later, Sarah.”

  Sarah nodded. “OK, Jakob. Thanks for your help.”

  “It was nothing.” Jakob left the room.

  Dr. Jamison spoke up. “I’ve got to move on, but I’ll be back to check in later this evening. I’d like to keep Rhes here overnight, just to monitor him. He can go in the morning. Just keep him out from behind the wheel of a car while he’s on painkillers.”

  “That’s easy – we don’t own one,” Sarah said.

  Jamison laughed again. “We’re at low capacity at the moment, so Rhes gets his own room. You’re welcome to the second bed, if you want it. But my guess is—”

  “I’m not leaving this chair,” Sarah said.

  “And there we go. I’ll talk to you later, then.” She could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Thank you,” she said as he left.

  It was less than ten minutes later when the cell phone that Jakob had dropped into her coat began ringing. Sarah reached over, picked it up, and flipped it open, hoping that would answer the call.

  “Yeah, it’s Sarah.”

  “I didn’t have time to get your own number, so I gave you my phone,” Jakob said. “I’ve had some updates. Molly is asleep, safe and under guard. We don’t know where your friend is, but nothing we’ve heard suggests that the Burilgi have taken any special prisoners this evening. We will watch her apartment and wait for her return.”

  “Good.”

  “When you and Rhes are discharged, what are your plans?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it. We’re going to go home, he’s going to call in to work and go back to sleep. I’m going to figure out what to tell Molly. Are we in danger?”

  “Not during the day. Sarah, I know you don’t trust me and I take no offense, but I will make you an offer: we can guard you at night, at least until we find out what has happened to your friend and know whether you are in any further danger. You will not see us unless you are attacked, but you will be kept safe.”

  “You know where we live now, Jakob. I already trusted you with that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you come by tomorrow night and we can talk things over. You can also pick up your phone.”

  “That would work. Is eleven too late for you?”

  “Eleven is fine. We’ll expect you then. Thank you again for saving us. We may not trust you completely yet, but we know we owe you our lives.”

  “I’m glad I was there to help. Try to get some sleep, and I will see you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

  “I will. Goodbye, Jakob.”

  Sarah hung up the phone and blew air through her pursed lips. Vampires, beatings … this might be old hat for Two, might even be what the crazy girl was out looking for right this second, but Sarah wanted nothing more to do with it. She had a life in which she was largely happy. She had a fiancé with whom to share that life. What did she need from vampires?

  Protection, it seemed. Sarah wondered if Jakob was really any safer than the creatures that had attacked them earlier, and she decided it didn’t matter. Fate had delivered them here, into the hands of a vampire who at least seemed intent on keeping them alive. There was little she could do about it.

  The night wore on. Sarah called the nurse’s station and asked if some food could be brought up from the cafeteria. Twenty minutes later she received a surprisingly good cheeseburger and some french fries. Dr. Jamison checked in and said that Rhes seemed fine, and that they should be dismissed whenever he was ready in the morning. Sarah thanked him again.

  Some time in the night she took his arm in hers and wrapped it up. She drew her knees under her, rested her body against the side of the chair she was sitting in, leaned her head against his shoulder, and slept.

  Chapter 10

  Expensive Tastes

  “What in the fuck happened here?!”

  Two stared in awe and dismay at what had once been her living room. Where before there had been giant glass windows looking down on the streets of SoHo, there were now only heavy plastic tarps duct taped to the window frames. Scattered below these on the carpet were thousands of shards of safety glass. Her furniture was overturned, and there were huge maroon splotches on the carpet and walls.

  Stephen was squatting by the stains, inspecting them. “Don’t touch anything. It looks like there was a fight, and someone got hurt … probably killed. This is blood, and a lot of it.”

  “Who the hell was in my apartment getting killed?”

  “Hopefully, no one you knew,” Naomi said. She was standing near the door, by the police tape, making sure that no one was coming.

  “Well, no shit,” Two replied. She peered around the room, still too shocked to do much else. Stephen had moved on to inspecting the windows.

  “Do you see the way this glass is spread out? Someone knocked this window in from outside.”

  “What could do that?”

  Stephen glanced over his shoulder at her. “I could, if I had the right equipment, but my bet is a Burilgi … a lot of them have nasty fingernails. Good for climbing.”

  “So you’re saying vampires broke into my apartment.”

  “That’s what I’m guessing, at any rate.”

  Two laughed. “That’s great. I spend five fucking months searching, and get nothing. I finally find two of you, and a bunch more come looking for me in the same damn week.”

  “I told you that you might have encountered Burilgi and not known it,” Naomi said. “It is very possible that they knew you were searching for them, saw it as a threat, and came here to stop you.”

  “Well, that would explain the break-in at least. What about the blood?”

  “Someone else was here,” Stephen said. “Someone with a knife of some sort. See the blood sprays on the walls? They’re too thick to be claws or teeth; sheets like that would have to come off a good-sized blade.”

  “You train as a cop or something?” Two asked.

  “I’m a warrior, as I’ve mentioned. I know about fighting, and the results thereof. I’ve seen men hacked to pieces with machetes in Zaire and claymores in Scotland. It looks like this.”

  “So someone wasn’t just killed but was chopped up in here?”

  “Multiple someones, I think. My guess is two or three.”

  “Well, what the h
ell does that mean?” Two was peeking her head into the other rooms of the apartment. They were dark and empty.

  “It means we need to get in touch with the council, right now,” said Naomi.

  “Why?”

  “Should be obvious,” Stephen told her.

  “Pretend like I’m stupid.”

  “Pretend?”

  Two extended her middle finger. Stephen grinned at her.

  “What can kill two or three Burilgi vampires, Two? There’s not much. Another group of Burilgi vampires? Possible, but though they often fight amongst themselves, it’s unlikely that they broke in here to do it. A skilled Ay’Araf could handle three Burilgi with ease. So could an Ashayt or an Eresh, but the former aren’t much for fighting and there’s presently only two of the latter in the entire city, so it probably wasn’t them.”

  “That,” said Naomi from the hall, “is precisely why we need to contact the council.”

  “Wouldn’t they call you?” Two asked.

  “Only two or three people know my private number, and I asked not to be disturbed. To be honest, Two, before you dropped in on us, I’d been planning on taking a vacation. It’s been a while since I saw France.”

  “France. That’s right … Theroen said you and Lisette were both French.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to go someday.”

  “Perhaps we can do so together.”

  Stephen moved past Two, touching her on her shoulder as he went, signaling for her to move toward the door.

  “That’s all well and lovely, but it can wait,” he said. “Right now, let’s be gone, before someone calls the police back. Did you need anything from here, Two?”

  “Well, I was gonna grab some clothes, but … no, I’ll buy new stuff. Better not to take anything, right? I’m probably a missing person and I think I’d like to keep it that way for now.”

  Naomi nodded. “A wise policy. If our guesses as to what transpired here are correct, then the council can help you straighten out this issue. They will give you an alibi and ensure that no legal action will be taken against you. I do not detest the Burilgi the way that Stephen does, but you’ll find few members of the council that are particularly sympathetic to them, especially if they’re threatening you.”