Matters of the Blood

by Maria Lima

  I nodded. It would have to be. I wasn't about to let him get away with anything. Besides, my brother would be there.

  * * * *

  The building looked much the same as always. Quiet, secluded. A beautiful structure, two stories of red brick and soft gray-green shutters making it look more like a large comfortable home instead of a house for the dead. Marty's grandfather built it when the family had first settled in the area almost one hundred years ago.

  Carlton parked his truck in the front. We pulled in directly behind him. He'd wanted us all to ride together, but I'd wanted an escape route, just in case things got ... difficult.

  One end of the yellow police tape across the door had come loose and the strip hung diagonally in front of the round stained-glass window, reminding me of an international “no” sign. All I could think of was “no death.” Yeah, right.

  "Do you have keys?” I asked, a little belatedly, already turning to go back to my car for the set I kept in the glove box.

  Carlton nodded. “I got them from the janitor. You wouldn't happen to know which key it is, do you?"

  I shook my head. “No. I have a set, but I've never had to use them. I didn't exactly come by here very often."

  Carlton was having trouble finding the right key. Evidently, none of them were marked.

  "I locked the door when we left this morning,” he said. “After ... there, I got it."

  The lock clicked open and the three of us walked into the hush of the lobby. It seemed quieter than normal, if that was even possible. No sounds broke the silence, not even the hiss of the ventilation system. It was truly a house of the dead now.

  Damn it. I really did not want to be here, even with my brother. Marty's body was inside, cold and still, decaying with every passing minute. If I were smart, I should just leave it all the hell alone. Let the medical examiner's office come in the morning and pick him up, cut him open and make the official determination. We'd find out in a day or two. Carlton didn't really need us, he could just as easily sort through files all on his own.

  But some piece of the darkness deep inside me made me come here; some morbid curiosity or just plain need to regain control over my discombobulated life. I needed to know.

  "Is the prep room locked?” I asked, my voice over loud in the silence.

  "Not exactly,” he said. “I didn't know the combination to the door, so I left it propped open in case I needed to get back in there."

  Oh, great. My perverse brain suddenly pictured the room wide open, police tape strung across the entrance like the velvet rope in a museum diorama. In this corner, the bloody table ... at the far left, ladies and gentlemen, if you look closely, you can even see the body of the deceased. Step up now, don't want to miss the show.

  Get a grip, Keira Kelly, I thought. Dead bodies weren't exactly unusual around here. Even if this one had been the proprietor.

  A piece of duct tape was stuck across the locking mechanism of the prep room door; a small metal trash can kept it from closing. I started to step through and abruptly stopped. Carlton had followed behind me, he was so close now, I could feel his breath on the back of my hair. Tucker was behind the sheriff.

  "I need to do this alone."

  "I don't think you should go by yourself, Keira. I can—"

  "Tucker can come with me, Carlton."

  He stepped back. I didn't look at him. I couldn't.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I am.” I'd never been more sure of anything.

  "I'll be in the office."

  I let him leave, then took a deep breath, trying to will myself to move across the floor. The air smelled dry, a touch of formaldehyde lingered, mixed with a slight scent of something I didn't recognize ... not blood. My body hesitated, not wanting to make the move toward the stainless steel door at the far side, just opposite the no-longer-gleaming embalming table. There was the source of the odor. Smudges of black fingerprint powder smeared across the once shiny surface, dulling it. Everything was grimy with it, the work counter, the sinks and most of the equipment at that end of the room.

  I stared at the table, wondering if Marty had felt anything when whoever began draining the life from him ... and the blood. Carlton hadn't lied. There wasn't a trace of blood anywhere. Just the dirty black powder. But I was letting myself get distracted.

  "I don't smell anything.” My brother's voice was over-loud in the silent room.

  "Anything like what?"

  "Like what could have killed him,” he said. “The place is so ... sterile."

  "Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “All those chemicals."

  I looked across the room. “Shall we?"

  "After you, dear sister.” He smiled and sketched a polite bow. Gee thanks, I thought. Let me go first.

  After what seemed an eternity, we reached the heavy metal door that was the only barrier between me and the true Dead Zone—the refrigeration unit. Instead of wall cubbies with drawers that slid out bodies like loaves of bread on a proofing rack, this was a walk-in model. Four corpses, no waiting. The unit sat tucked into the far left corner of the prep room, its shining door hiding the fact that behind it lay the ultimate indignity of humans. The end of their sadly short lives, laid out like the daily butcher's special cut, $9.99 a pound, today only.

  But this wasn't just any anonymous corpse. This was what was left of my cousin. A body now, not a person anymore, just a thing that had already begun breaking down into its essential elements, ready for the earth to swallow it back up and disintegrate into nothing more than molecules.

  I took a deep breath before I opened the door. Strangely enough, the unit was bright, not intimidating in the least. For some reason, I'd imagined a spooky cavern, lined with shelves of the dead, kind of a cross between a restaurant's sub-zero walk-in and the Catacombs. But this was just a plain stainless steel room, a couple of shelves on the right wall, both empty. The room's sole occupant lay on a gurney in the center, wrapped in its very own giant economy-sized Ziploc.

  Damn. This was for real now. What was in that bag wasn't the remains of the Jolly Green Giant's fried chicken lunch, but my cousin. Before I stepped over the threshold and committed myself to this foolishness, I double-checked the door. Good, it opened easily. I wasn't keen on the possibility of being locked in here, even though Tucker was here and Carlton was just down the hall.

  I had to move, but felt as if I'd been dipped in wet cement that was now drying. My muscles didn't want to reach over there and do what needed to be done.

  Tucker started to step around me.

  "No,” I said, putting out a hand and stopping him. “I need to do this."

  He stepped back without comment.

  Eons later, I allowed myself to pull down the zipper on the body bag, trying to be as careful as possible. As the plastic fell away from Marty's face, I cringed. I'd expected his skin to be discolored, but instead, it was white and waxy looking—unreal. He didn't even have enough blood left to turn him gray. At this point, he looked even less human than me.

  Okay, Keira, damn it. You got this far. Now what? Had I hoped to have an automatic vision of who'd killed him? I wish. But that kind of power wasn't so easily tamed. Even if I did end up a clairvoyant, the likelihood I'd be able to control my farseeing was about as probable as Marty rising from the dead. Well, less likely. With the right spells and a powerful necromancer, the rising part could actually happen. A necromancer who could call up the dead. My uncle couldn't, but there was a woman I might be able to call. She lived somewhere in Missouri—St. Louis, if I recalled correctly. But she was expensive and usually booked solid for days. I had no idea if I even still had her contact information. I suppose if I needed to, I could track her down.

  I took another experimental sniff, but couldn't scent anything but me, the odor of the plastic around my cousin's body and a weak hint of blood, dried blood, nothing fresh.

  "Tucker?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Something's not right."

  "What do you mean? />
  I told him what I'd seen in my vision, blood dripping across Marty's body, along the drainage channels of the embalming table.

  "Shouldn't there be more blood? A fresher scent?"

  "Probably,” Tucker said. “But are you sure the vision was accurate?"

  "No, but even if I'm wrong, Carlton said they found Marty with a tube sticking from his neck. Again with the draining.” I pointed. “Look. He's clean. Pale, but clean. No spilled blood."

  The alarm bells dinged in my brain. Suddenly, the ante had been upped. Way up.

  I leaned in to get a closer look at the wounds on my cousin's neck.

  "Damnitalltohell and back again."

  My brother leaned over me and saw the same thing I did.

  The marks in my cousin's pale neck had absolutely not been made by any machined device. Those punctures were just the right space apart to have been made by a jaw. A human-shaped jaw with non-human teeth.

  "Fuck.” My brother was nothing if not succinct.

  "My thoughts exactly, big brother,” I said.

  Now what? Was I going to go out and tell Carlton that my cousin Marty was probably drained by something that most people thought only existed in movies and novels? Not bloody likely. I was sure there was an end to Carlton's suspension of disbelief. Telling him that my cousin may have been murdered by a vampire was a little far-fetched.

  "Vampire?"

  I shrugged. “Maybe, I can't be one-hundred percent sure. They don't exactly leave little signs behind saying ‘Vlad was here'. But I'll lay odds that it was."

  "You're probably right, Keira. But let's not forget, some of us might go for a quick blood-suck instead of a traditional ripping out of the throat. Much neater that way."

  "Yeah, but damn it, Tucker, it sure looks like a vampire bite. Look, check this out.” I pointed to one of the wounds. “This hole is bigger, torn. That must be where they put the drainage tube. The other one's too neat. It's classic."

  "Classic bite, yeah,” my brother said. “But we can't exactly jump to any conclusions. Just because we think something supernatural killed him, we can't be sure."

  He was right, we couldn't shut the gates of possibility on any other theory. Just in case.

  "Keira? Tucker. Are y'all okay in there?"

  I shot a look at my brother who quickly pulled the plastic back over Marty's face and zipped up the bag. The door opened.

  "I'm sorry,” he said. “I was worried about you two. You've been in here a while."

  "Thanks, Carlton, but we're fine. It's just ... we needed a little time to digest this.” I let my shoulders drop, trying to look dejected and sad. Tucker put an arm across my shoulders.

  "We're done now. Thank you."

  "Come on,” Carlton said. “Why don't we go back to the office and y'all can help me sort through files."

  I let him lead us out of the room and down the hall, wincing as each door shut behind me, so very final. Tucker walked behind me, his solid presence oddly comforting.

  "What are we looking for?” I asked Carlton.

  "I'm not really sure,” he said, “We searched the rest of the place pretty thoroughly. Nothing but the usual mortuary supplies. Some of that stuff I didn't want to look at any closer. I'm just glad there weren't any bodies or anything."

  "Did you search upstairs?"

  "Marty's apartment?” Carlton looked at me as if I were a two-year-old asking useless questions. He obviously thought better of what he'd been on the verge of saying and nodded. “Yeah. We can go up there if you like, it's pretty messy."

  "That's nothing unusual,” I said. “Marty is ... was a pig."

  "Nice entertainment system, though,” Carlton said.

  I looked at him. “What?"

  "The big screen TV, Surroundsound and all that electronic stuff. Haven't you seen it?"

  "Hold that thought.” I took the stairs two at a time, Tucker right behind me.

  Marty's rooms were just as messy and uninviting as Carlton said. Clothes piled all over the floor of the bedroom, unmade bed, stacks of junk mail and newspapers teetering on the edge of the second-hand coffee table I'd given him when I'd first moved to London some ten years ago. In fact, every piece of furniture was one of my hand-me-downs. Except, that is, for the giant sixty-inch big screen TV and brand-new entertainment center gracing the far wall of the small residence.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  "What the hell kind of game was Marty playing?” I asked out loud.

  "What do you mean?"

  "This,” I motioned. “Fancy stereo equipment. Top of the line speakers, components. Bang & Olufsen? Marty could barely afford K-mart. I wouldn't be surprised if whatever he was up to was illegal."

  Tucker grimaced and poked at one of the many remotes scattered across the cheap coffee table.

  "Not too big of a leap, Keira. How much you want to bet Marty was playing with the big boys—vamps, predators or just someone not so nice? He probably did something stupid and got killed for it. Maybe he owed money?"

  Now that made a kind of sense that shouted Marty's name.

  Especially when my pity-poor-me always-broke relative had somehow managed to outfit his shabby home with enough equipment to put the average household in debt for the next several years. All this in a twenty-by-thirteen living/dining room combo.

  I was furious. Not at myself anymore, but at my cousin. Whatever he'd gotten himself into had gotten him dead.

  "Carlton, Marty could not have afforded all that equipment up there,” I said as Tucker and I came back down the stairs. “Especially not after doing all of this, too.” I waved my hands around.

  Carlton looked at me. “All of what?"

  "This,” I said, pointing things out. “New paint, new furniture, everything. This is all brand new, Carlton. When I was in here yesterday I figured that business must be picking up, but I can't imagine there was enough to finance this plus the electronics."

  "Shit,” Tucker exclaimed. “He decorated, too?"

  "That's what I want to look for,” Carlton said. “Reasons he might have been killed. If he's suddenly been flashing cash, he's had to have gotten it from somewhere. Do you know what he was up to?"

  I opened my mouth to say something about the phone call yesterday, but then thought better of it, remembering what Marty had said. Blood ties and family—not something to concern our Sheriff and most probably something to do with the vampire or whoever ended up killing him. Shit. Shit. Shit. He hadn't been exaggerating and I'd ignored it. But it was my business. I'd tell Tucker, but not Carlton. I just shook my head.

  "No idea."

  The three of us went into Marty's office and Carlton motioned to the desk. “Keira, why don't you sit there and look through the drawers. See if you think anything's missing. Tucker, can you sit here and help sort?"

  My brother pulled a chair over to my left. Carlton scooted the other one close to my other side. I pulled away a little, already feeling the buzz surrounding him. Damn it, my shields should be better than this; he wasn't even touching me. Since being around Adam, it was like I was a little more sensitive to everything, a little more thin-skinned. Until yesterday, I'd have taken bets that seeing Carlton again wouldn't be any big deal, that he could no longer affect me. Now I wasn't so sure. I didn't feel any attraction toward him, though. I could just feel his energy against me, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

  Tucker's elbow poked me in the side. I looked at him briefly, making a face, then turned my attention to the contents of the drawers. “I never really kept up with what was here, but I'll give it a try,” I said, ignoring my brother. I knew he could feel Carlton's energy, too. As a shapeshifter, he was better at it than I was. He also wasn't above a little teasing.

  I started to pull out what I found, passing it over to Tucker so he could stack it next to the desk. Mostly junk in the first drawer, advertising fliers, office supplies, and trade show giveaways, including a black “gimme” cap stating “Any Day Above Ground Is a Good Day.” I plopp
ed the cap on the desk and continued to dig through the files. I wanted to take it home with me. For some reason, its dark wit appealed to me.

  Carlton smiled when he saw it. “Gotta love mortician humor. Anything worthwhile in there?” His voice drawled out the question.

  "Not so much,” I said. “Mostly junk and blank forms.” As I spoke, I glanced down at the handful of blue sheets I'd just dug out from underneath the pile of junk. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Maybe I was wrong,” I said. “From the looks of these, business really was pretty brisk."

  "What are those?” Tucker asked.

  "Looks like first-call logs and copies of contracts,” I answered. “Marty filled out a log whenever he got a call to pick up a body. It opens the file on a service. Hmmm. A lot of these are fairly recent—from the last couple of months or so, maybe he's just behind in his filing. Looks like a bunch of cremations."

  I nodded my head in the direction of a two-drawer filing cabinet in the corner of the room. “We should really check those files out. I think that's where Marty kept the completed records for funerals."

  The cabinet was unlocked. Carlton pulled out a stack of files and brought them back to the desk, piling them on the floor between us. None of us spoke as we sifted through the folders; the silence unbroken except for the quiet whirr of the ventilation system fan coming to life and the sound of us shuffling paper.

  This was going to take a while. So much for tidiness and logic. Marty obviously didn't believe in it. There were thousands of pieces of paper in these files and not a whole lot of order to them. Bank papers were mixed in with advertising fliers for mortuary supplies and even completed funeral contracts. I wondered how his accountant could even stand working on his books. I'd begun sorting the piles into stacks, separating the obvious junk from the financial information. Both Carlton and Tucker were making their own piles.

  "Okay,” I finally said. “I think I've got it all sorted out.” I pointed to a pile on the left. “Those are bank deposits by month, in reverse chron. Here's a printout of the last twenty or so funerals, just the bottom line stuff. Looks like an accounting report of some sort."