“It’ll probably depend on just what’s in these samples we’re sending him,” Matt said. “If, as I suspect, TJ’s bone marrow is infected with the plasmids, it will mean our original treatment failed and we don’t have much time.”
“I’ll call him first thing in the morning and tell him the samples are on their way,” Shelly said.
* * *
Shooter and TJ stopped at a small steak house on Westheimer for dinner. TJ, as usual, ordered a sirloin steak, rare, while Shooter had a New York strip, medium.
While they waited for their food to arrive, Shooter studied TJ in the low light of the eatery. She seemed pale and drawn, with bloodshot eyes, as if she wasn’t getting enough sleep.
He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “Are you still having those dreams?” he asked gently.
TJ’s eyes dropped and she nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Are they still too bad to talk about?”
She glanced up at him, her eyes watery with tears. “Oh, Shooter. I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she moaned. “I used to be so happy . . . so carefree. Now it’s as if I have the weight of the whole world on my shoulders.”
He squeezed her hand, trying to smile. “Don’t worry, babe. We’ll get through this together. Before you know it, that doctor in Canada will send Sam and Matt some medicine that’ll make all this go away.”
TJ smiled back at him sadly. “I hope so, Shooter. I want us to have a good life together.”
“We will, sweetheart, I promise.”
After the meal, Shooter and TJ walked to his car. “You want me to take you home, or would you rather stay the night with me? I’m working the late shift tomorrow, so we can sleep in.”
For the first time that night, TJ smiled happily. “Let’s go to your place. I need you to hold me.”
Shooter grinned lasciviously. “In that case, you’ve come to the right man.”
When they got to Shooter’s apartment, TJ walked straight toward the bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse as she went. “I don’t know about you, but I feel grimy after spending all day in the lab. I’m gonna take a shower.”
Shooter was right behind her. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he shouted, stripping off his shirt before he finished the sentence.
He stepped into the shower, turning the water on as hot as he could stand it, knowing that’s how TJ liked it. As the steam billowed up in thick clouds, fogging the shower door, TJ entered with him.
He turned, letting the water cascade off his back, turning it the color of a fresh-cooked lobster, and stared at her. She was naked, standing in the open door, hip cocked in a provocative pose, staring at him.
Shooter felt himself harden at the sight of her nudity and couldn’t keep his eyes off her breasts as the water splashed over them, tiny droplets hanging from her nipples, which were hard with desire.
As he opened his arms, she moved against him, nuzzling his neck with her lips as her hands took hold of him, gently massaging and kneading and stroking.
She let go long enough to pull the bandage off his neck and place her lips against the small twin scabs where she’d bitten him the night before. She licked and sucked until his blood began to run again. The taste made her wild; she grabbed his shoulders and hoisted herself up onto him, spearing herself upon his manhood as he gasped in sudden pleasure.
The steam prevented him from seeing how her teeth slowly elongated and her nails grew into claws as her features began to change and coarsen under the influence of the blood on her tongue.
She ground her pelvis against his, grunting and growling deep in her throat, visions of the Vampyre Niemann in her mind as she recalled a similar coupling in the shower of his lair months before.
Shooter, unaware of the changes taking place in his lover, grasped her buttocks in his hands and pulled her tight against him as his penis swelled and exploded inside her.
TJ had to use all her willpower not to rend and tear his back with her claws as she sucked his neck and continued her wild pumping against his pelvis.
Finally, she leaned her head back and howled as she came with him, clutching him tightly with her legs around his waist.
Shooter, exhausted with the effort, fell back against the wall of the shower, eyes closed in ecstasy and fulfillment.
TJ laid her head on his neck as the water from the shower washed the remnants of blood off her mouth, and her features gradually changed back to normal.
“Jesus!” Shooter whispered into her ear. He turned the water off and carried her, still pressed against him, into the bedroom. He laid her, still dripping wet, on the bed, and flopped down on his back next to her. “That was incredible.”
TJ opened her eyes, still dazed from her visions of Niemann and the violence of her orgasm. She saw twin drops of blood ooze from the wound on Shooter’s neck and slowly trickle downward. Her nipples hardened and she felt her sex throb and become wet again. Rolling on her side, she placed her hand on his groin and slowly moved it back and forth.
Shooter turned his head to stare at her. “You want more?” he asked incredulously.
“Not just yet,” TJ said in a husky voice. “I’ll give you a few minutes to recover.”
“A few minutes, hell. I may need a week,” Shooter protested weakly.
TJ felt a stirring beneath her hand, and she grinned up at him. “Oh, I don’t think it’ll take quite that long,” she murmured, burying her face against his neck and rolling on top of him, pressing her breasts against his chest.
As he entered her, Shooter grabbed her hips and gasped in pleasure, hardly noticing the stinging in his neck.
Fourteen
I slowly let my eyes wander over the crowd in the bar; sipping my drink, I searched as if I were just another horny tourist on the lookout for a willing date.
Finally, I found him. He was sitting at the bar and the stench of his blood lust was so strong I wondered why the Normals couldn’t smell it. He was young-looking, with dark curly hair, and his blue eyes sparkled as he panned them over the young women in the club. I had no doubt he was trying to decide on just which one to pick for his meal of the night.
My fists clenched under the table in disgust at what he was doing, though I’d done the same thing thousands of times before. It’s odd how perversion in others seems so much worse to us than our own sins do. Perhaps it’s because we can almost always find a suitable excuse for our own transgressions against others, no matter how disgusting.
I forced myself to look away, lest he notice my attention. I’d already risked far too much by using my mental powers to smell him out, and I had to be careful not to tip him to my presence now. If my plan to kill him was to succeed, I had to catch him by surprise.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him get to his feet and carry his drink over to a table where three young women were sitting. He smiled and gestured at the empty chair and took it when one of the girls nodded at him.
I could tell by the way his eyes glittered when he looked at the young lady it wouldn’t be too long before he found some excuse for them to leave, so I threw a couple of dollars down on my table and walked outside.
Hurrying to my car just down the street, I opened the trunk and took out my katana and slipped it under the edge of my overcoat. I grabbed a one-gallon can of gasoline and carried it with me as I walked back to an alley just past the door to Pat O’Brien’s. I eased back into the darkness, where I could see the door, unnoticed, and waited. I knew it wouldn’t be long now.
As I waited, I tried to figure out whether I was really doing this to protect myself from his drawing unwelcome attention to our existence, or whether I was in some obscene way trying to kill the very thing in him that I detested in myself. After a while, I came to the conclusion it really didn’t matter one way or the other, so long as he was stopped before he could kill again.
I was right. In less than fifteen minutes, my quarry emerged from the club with the young woman from the table on his arm. She was laughi
ng and talking animatedly, clearly excited to be with such a handsome man. I wondered briefly what her thoughts would be if she knew what he had planned for her this night.
My fingers found the hilt of my katana under my coat and I was surprised to find they were damp with sweat. I guess it’s never easy to kill one of your own kind, no matter the provocation. Always before when I’d done this, it’d been to put one of my fellow Vampyres suffering from CJD out of their misery. Never before had I killed for such a selfish reason.
I stepped from the shadows and unshielded my mind, issuing a mental command to halt.
The Vampyre stopped, his eyes momentarily confused as he searched the darkness for the origin of the mental shout.
When his eyes found mine, his lips curled in a sneer and he half-turned to his companion. She stopped talking and her eyes became blank at his psychic order. He left her standing in the middle of the sidewalk and slowly approached me.
“What do you want, interloper, and why do you interrupt my quest for prey?” he asked in a harsh voice, as if to intimidate me by his manner.
“You endanger us all by your indiscriminate killing,” I answered in a low, calm voice as I pulled the sword from beneath my coat.
He stopped, the sneer leaving his face to be replaced by an expression of doubt.
“Are you one of those Council lapdogs?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine as he tested my strength with a mental command to give way.
I brushed his order aside, noting it was weaker than I’d feared. “No. I am here on my own.”
“Then I suggest you go on your way and mind your own business if you value your life,” he said gruffly.
“Not until I put an end to your existence.”
Now he smiled, glancing around at the people walking along the nearby sidewalks. “In front of all these Normals?” he asked, spreading his arms wide.
I slowly shook my head, issuing at the same time my own mental command for him to go into the alley.
His smile melted and he showed his teeth in a grimace as he fought to resist, but my mental strength was greater than his. With halting steps, he moved slowly but steadily out of the light of the street and into the semidarkness of the alley.
I followed and set the can of gasoline on the concrete as I drew back the katana for a killing stroke.
The Vampyre’s face contorted with supreme effort and he forced me out of his mind for a moment. He bent and quickly picked up a length of pipe lying on the ground next to him and swung it at my head.
Surprised by his ability to overcome my mental control, I ducked and parried his blow with my blade, sending sparks glittering into the darkness.
I whirled and swung backhanded at his head, missing him by inches when he threw himself backward against a wall behind him.
I had readied myself for another strike when I heard a shout from behind me, “Put your weapon down and step back!”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a New Orleans policeman crouching and holding his pistol in a two-handed grip—it was pointed at me.
I lowered the blade and saw my opponent take off at a dead run down the alley.
“I said, put the weapon down, now!” the cop repeated in a loud voice.
With another mental command, I froze him for the briefest moment—when awaking, he wouldn’t even be aware of this inconvenience. Then I took off after my prey, holding my blade in front of me against a surprise attack.
After running for a block, I turned a corner and came out onto Royal Street into a crowd of drunken revelers. The Vampyre was nowhere in sight, but I caused quite a stir in the crowd when they saw my sword.
I hurriedly stuffed it out of sight under my coat and continued running until I was out of the crowd and on a dark side street.
Damn, I thought to myself. I’d alerted the creature to my plans and he wouldn’t be nearly so easy to find again. I decided to leave my car for a while and go back for it after the police had left the area.
I headed for my apartment to shower and change clothes before returning to pick up the car, shielding my mind and keeping a close lookout in case my quarry was still nearby. There was no way I was going to let him find out where I lived.
* * *
William P. Boudreaux, the chief of detectives, stepped from his car and let his eyes take in the scene before him. There was the usual crowd of gawkers and interested bystanders, five or six radio patrolmen milling around trying to look busy as they chatted with any pretty girls who happened to be in the crowd, and, the bane of his existence, TV news reporters.
Bill, as he was called by almost everyone, took a deep breath and motioned one of the patrolmen over to him.
“Yes, sir?” the man asked.
Bill checked his name tag; he made it a point always to call his men by name, a fact that made him very popular with the uniforms. “Sonny, would you get me a cup of coffee from that diner over there while I go face the vultures?”
Sonny glanced over his shoulder at the newspeople and grinned. “I see Melissa Faraday is there, Chief,” he said, referring to a very pretty blond woman holding a microphone in her hand and talking into a camera. “If you want, I’ll handle her for you.”
Bill grinned, enjoying the double entendre. He replied in his deep Southern drawl, distinctive to people who’d been born and raised in New Orleans, “That’s OK, Sonny. You just get me my coffee an’ I’ll take care of Ms. Faraday.”
“Yes, sir,” Sonny replied, and walked off toward the diner down the street.
Bill, who stood six feet four inches tall and had a barrel chest and shoulders as wide as an ax handle, hitched up his pants and pulled the edges of his suit coat together. He noticed the coat was getting tight around his middle and vowed for the hundredth time to start a diet . . . tomorrow.
He sauntered toward the crowd, letting his eyes roam over the people, knowing that often a perpetrator of a crime would hang around to see the excitement he’d caused.
He noticed a rat-faced, thin man moving through the people, and he called out, “Jimmy, come here a minute.”
Jimmy Fingers looked up, a furtive expression on his face. Jimmy was a well-known pickpocket who worked the tourists in downtown New Orleans.
“Uh, hi, Chief,” Jimmy said, his beady eyes looking everywhere except at Bill.
“I hope you’re not here working tonight,” Bill said evenly, staring at the man whose head barely came up to his chest.
“No, sir, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Good, ’cause it’s much too nice a night to spend in our jail.”
“Uh, I was just leaving, Chief,” Jimmy said, and moved quickly off into the darkness.
Bill felt a hand on his arm and turned to look into the bright green eyes of Melissa Faraday, who immediately poked a microphone under his chin.
“Chief Boudreaux,” she began in the stilted voice of one who is on camera, “could you tell us what happened here tonight?”
Bill smiled for the camera. Though he detested reporters in general, and Melissa Faraday in particular, he made it a practice to try to stay on good terms with the media as much as was possible.
“Good evening, Ms. Faraday,” he said agreeably. “Now, as you can plainly see, I’ve just arrived here at the scene. Why don’t you give me a little while to get up to speed on what happened and I’ll be more than happy to give you an interview when I’m done.”
Faraday made a cutting motion with her finger across her throat to the camera and smiled sweetly up at Bill. “You promise?” she asked.
“Of course. When have I ever lied to you?”
She laughed, low in her throat in a sexy manner that Bill was sure she’d practiced in front of a mirror for hours. “Only when you think you can get away with it, Bill.”
Bill chuckled and moved off, not letting her know how much it pissed him off when she called him by his first name.
Sonny appeared and handed him a cup of steaming coffee.
“Chicory?” Bill asked as he t
ook a sip.
“Of course,” Sonny said. Everyone knew the chief drank only chicory-flavored coffee.
“Good. Now see if you can get that crowd cleared away,” Bill said.
He walked over and stood next to a heavyset man in a plaid sport coat who was talking to an elderly couple; the seniors were obviously tourists.
Jim Malone, detective second class, was the officer in charge and was the one who’d called Bill away from his home at this ungodly hour.
“Hey, Chief,” Malone said.
“What’ve we got, Jim?” Bill asked. “Where is the body?”
“Excuse me a minute,” Malone said to the couple, and pulled Bill off to the side where they could talk.
“There ain’t any bodies, Chief,” Malone said.
“Then why in hell—” Bill began, until Malone held up his hand.
“Hold on a minute, Chief. Like I said, there ain’t any bodies, but you said to call you on anything that might be related to these Ripper killings.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed and his heart beat a little faster. “Go on,” he said, taking another long drink of his coffee.
Malone inclined his head toward a young woman off to the side who was being checked out by a couple of paramedics. “Seems that couple over there came upon that girl standing on the sidewalk in a sorta daze. When they approached her to see if they could help, they heard a commotion in the alley and saw a couple of men fighting there.”
“So?” Bill asked.
“Uh, one of the men appeared to be attacking the other with a sword,” Malone answered.
“A sword?”
“Yep.”
Bill took a deep breath and let it out, his excitement fading. “You sure it wasn’t just a machete? You know how some of the sugarcane workers fight with those.”
“Not unless the machete is four feet long,” Malone answered.
“Well, what makes you think this is Ripper related?”
Malone pulled a small notepad out of his coat pocket and read his notes. “Looks like that girl was picked up in Pat O’Brien’s by this fellow. When they left the club to go listen to some jazz, this other fellow stepped outta the alley and braced the first guy.”
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