Blood Demons

by Richard Jeffries

  “Just about,” Gonzales said, already heading for a wall of computers. “Think the others’ll be happy about it?” He plugged the phone in, and his fingers started dancing on a keyboard.

  “I think Morty, at least, will be ecstatic,” Key estimated. “They’ll be his license to thrill shamelessly and fearlessly.”

  “Like he didn’t have that already,” Safar cracked as he joined Gonzales by the monitors.

  “You waiting for initial intel?” Gonzales asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Let me know if-and-when,” Key said, already backing away. “Next stop, the queen’s clinic.”

  Gonzales and Safar were already so intent on their work that neither bothered with a parting quip. So Key marched to the appartement de la reine, otherwise known as the Queen’s Private Apartments. In reality, it was a suite of rooms that Cerberus had made into “The Rahal Clinic”—modeled after the wing where Eshe Rahal had served at the Oman Medical College. Only now it was a cutting-edge facility with patient wards, operating rooms, and laboratories that put Frankenstein’s Castle to shame.

  Key found the attractive young Arab woman in the medical examination room, staring down at the child corpse they had taken from the Sujanpur morgue. She was wearing her usual uniform of scrubs and a lab coat. As soon as she saw Key, she embraced him with relief. After sending him into the nest of a Queen Arachnosaur in Shabhut, Yemen, she was always delighted he made it back to her in one piece.

  They took a moment; then, as was Key’s wont, got back to business.

  “I thought you’d be further along,” he admitted, noting that the child was still wholly intact.

  “I,” Rahal began, obviously looking for a way to explain her delay. “I didn’t want to dissect her until I exhausted every other means of examination.” She blinked apologetically. “I mean, once they’re open, there’s really no closing them again, right?”

  Key looked beyond her compassionate face to the little girl on the slab. Even from that distance she looked exactly the same as she had in Punjab: almost glowingly, preternaturally angelic. It stirred something in him, something that he found himself fighting against.

  “Now don’t go all maternal on us,” he said slowly. “Whatever she was, she isn’t anymore. Think of her as an encyclopedia we have to learn. And we can’t without cracking the cover, right?” He found himself holding Rahal’s shoulders, remembering her warmth and tenderness.

  Rahal nodded, with just a hint of embarrassed shame.

  Key should have left it at that, but, for some reason, felt like nailing a tack with a sledge hammer. “Don’t get all moony about the pilot,” he said, wondering why he was saying it even as he was saying it. “She’s already left her ship, okay?”

  “Understood,” Rahal assured him in a far more certain way than he deserved. They took another moment to observe the little girl on the table, each trying to comprehend the monstrosity of her fate in their own ways. Key looked away to find Rahal looking up at him with big eyes. “What do you think?”

  “Better question is what do I fear?” he sighed. “Bloodless corpses. Creatures who are impossibly fast and strong. Creatures who don’t appear clearly on camera. Does that ring a bell?”

  Rahal sniffed. “You aren’t seriously considering that, are you?”

  Key looked down at her. “You know about vampires?”

  Rahal shrugged and shook her head slightly. “My mother told me of the Ekimmu as a child. They could be walking corpses, winged demons, evil shadows, or even malevolent winds. But what they all had in common was a lust for life force and blood.” She looked back up at Key, her expression changing from childhood fear to adult reason. “But those were fables used to keep us safe and obedient.”

  “What if she told you about giant spiders whose webs made men explode?” Key asked pointedly.

  That didn’t faze the professor. “But at least prehistoric insects were real. We found fossils. They’re part of the natural world. Vampires? Vampires are supernatural. They’re not real.”

  Key resisted the urge to grip her by the shoulders again. “Eshe,” he said reasonably. “I believe everything, everything, anyone believes has a basis in fact for some reason. Cerberus was created for those reasons.”

  Again he should have shut up. But there was something about this child corpse’s energy that was unhinging his usual control. “I know you’re a scientist,” he heard himself almost pleading. “And for many so-called rational people, seeing is believing. But sometimes believing is seeing, too. We have to come at this with open minds. Fables might be science we don’t understand yet.”

  Her look of almost pitiful sympathy finally stopped him. “Okay, okay,” he sighed. “I get it. I’m sorry. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She was already turning to the exam table and putting on a pair of rubber gloves. Her actions seemed almost dismissive. “Do you want to observe?” she asked as a sort of consolation prize.

  “I would,” he confessed, “but I have to meet with great Caesar’s ghost.”

  She nodded absently, turning further away, but he couldn’t help noticing her relief when he left for the appartement du roi—the King’s Quarters, which should have been adjoining, but given the reality of royal life just prior to the French Revolution, was all the way on the other side of the manor.

  He also couldn’t help noticing his own relief, and the way his mind seemed to click back into shape the farther he got from the clinic. That troubled him more than almost anything else that had happened since he got the assignment.

  Naturally, the King’s Quarters had become retired General Charles Lancaster’s offices. How big his desk was, and what it was made of, was rendered irrelevant by all the communication, information, and surveillance equipment that was surrounding, encroaching, and covering it. As with everything that touched Key’s life, which was everything, he had researched his new boss.

  Lancaster’s life after retirement from the military was the stuff of legend. Starting with a security company, he had built a conglomerate with pragmatic common sense that spread to all areas of business—rewarding the best minds and ignoring the worst. And one of his favorite pastimes was rooting out genius inventions that corporations sought to suppress to protect their antiquated bottom lines, then using them exclusively for Cerberus.

  Since everyone outside these walls thought he was crazy, they let him get away with it—especially since a crazy man might even fight back. And nobody wanted Charles Leonidas “Lionheart” Lancaster fighting back. History dictated that was a fight the attacker would lose.

  “You looked pissed,” Lancaster commented, his eyes seemingly everywhere at once. “That’s not like you.”

  Key stood in front of the desk, looking over a bank of three monitors. He was already used to the retired general’s seemingly fragmented, but actually laser-intense, focus.

  “Got any thoughts on Aafir’s game? What’s his deal?”

  Lancaster chuckled. “Oh stop it, Josiah,” he suggested. “Only I should be able to do the ‘elaborate’ trick. If I had the time I’d give you the same look you gave me back in Logan-ville when I used it on you for the others’ benefit. You know, the one that said ‘you know damn well.’”

  Key nodded, lowering his head. He breathed deeply, then fessed up. “Eshe just read me the vampire riot act. I have to admit I’m not used to getting dressed down.”

  Lancaster sighed, choosing to ignore the possible sexually oriented “dress-down” joke. “’Love makes fools of us all,’” he quoted. “’Big and little.’”

  “Shakespeare?” Key guessed.

  “Thackeray,” Lancaster corrected. “William Makepeace Thackeray. But close enough.” He leaned over to a monitor on his left. “What she thinks is not as important as what she does, and it would be good for you to know that your little talk at least got her back on track.” He mot
ioned for Key—who was not at all surprised by, or resentful of, Lancaster’s intimate knowledge—to come around the desk, then pointed at the video feed that was coming from the medical examining room.

  Key got there in time to see Rahal preparing her autopsy tools—just as the child on the table behind her sat up.

  Chapter 5

  The event elicited a scream from Rahal that could be heard out in the gardens.

  Before it even started, Key was charging for the appartement du roi doorway, while Lancaster was stabbing buttons to establish ear-comm contact with the others.

  “The clinic, now, with whatever restraints you can find!”

  The screams continued, changing from surprise to terror, as Key raced down the Hall of Mirrors, passing even Nichols as she came in from the south, and then Gonzales coming in from the east. They didn’t call him Speedy for nothing.

  Daniels and Safar soon joined the race, the straps the Arab was holding and the spear Daniels was carrying slowing them down.

  “What, what?” the big man called from the back of the pack.

  Key was too intent on speed to answer, but not Lancaster, who came running up from behind Daniels.

  “You know that dead child?” he grunted between huffs.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s not dead anymore,” he gasped.

  The information hit Daniels like a water balloon, straightening his posture and doubling his speed.

  Nichols was just a few steps ahead of Key as they reached the examination room, and what the redhead saw caused her to slide across the floor, waving her arms to maintain balance.

  Key grabbed the side of the door to make sure he wouldn’t make things worse—giving him just enough time to register the image of Rahal whirling around the room, waving her arms as if she were being attacked by wasps, while the angelic, naked child was tearing at her hair and face with her little claws.

  “Fuckaduck!” Daniels bellowed as he all but inadvertently launched Gonzales into the room. The mechanic used the momentum to try grabbing at the child’s tiny waist to pull her off Rahal, but as soon as his fingers touched the flesh, the child launched itself onto him instead.

  “Hijo de puta!” he all but screamed as the tiny fingernails clawed at his eyes. He staggered back, clutching at the thing scrabbling around his shoulders—scraping down his neck and chest with her curled toes.

  Rahal had dropped to the floor, clearly in shock, but she was still not so far gone that she couldn’t turn to look at the others in astonishment. A part of her mind had wanted Key to catch her, or at least comfort her, but he was too busy yanking the others inside.

  “Close the door, close the door,” he seethed. “Don’t let the thing out!”

  Lancaster, who didn’t think of protecting himself for a second, yanked the door closed behind him. “Fan out,” he barked. “Surround it. Surround him!”

  Nichols was on the other side of the area before Lancaster had even stopped speaking. Safar looked helplessly at the straps in his hands, but he didn’t drop them. Key scoured the room for anything that could effectively help, as Daniels jumped forward, dropped the spear, and clamped onto the child atop the lurching Gonzales with both meaty paws.

  But in the moment between the time his hands slapped and his fingers constricted, the child let out an unearthly yowl, squirmed and spun at the same moment, then whirled away from them—smacking into the floor and sliding under a Multix Digital Radiology Imager. They all heard her hit the wall with a solid thud.

  Daniels yanked the disoriented Gonzales behind him protectively. Nichols skidded backward, bending down to see if she could spot the child. Lancaster stood tall, with his back to the door, his phone to his ear, his thumb ready to dial. Safar looked from the machine to Key and back again. Key stood in the center of the room, equidistant from the door to the machine, his back bent, his hands out in an “everyone chill” position.

  The only sound in the room was Rahal’s repeated gasping breaths.

  Then Key pointed at Safar, and when Safar nodded, Key pointed at the scrubs bin—the laundry receptacle Rahal used to put her dirty clothes in—then held up a forefinger in a “wait” position.

  “Maybe she’s unconscious,” Rahal started to whisper, but stopped when Key made a sharp “quiet” motion.

  He then tapped Daniels on the back. When Daniels looked at him, he made a slow “follow my lead” motion as he started edging toward the digital imaging machine. A moment later, Daniels moved unerringly behind Key, like a baseball umpire behind a catcher, while Safar started edging along the far wall toward the scrubs bin.

  Lancaster saw what Key was planning, and didn’t like it. But because he could think of no better alternative, he stayed silent.

  Key, Daniels, and Safar took another step—Nichols watching their progress carefully, ready for anything.

  “She’s just frightened,” Rahal started to suggest, but then hushed when Gonzales urgently gripped her shoulder as he kneeled painfully behind her.

  Key paused, so the others did as well. They held their breaths as he breathed deeply, then quickly dropped to his stomach and shoved his right arm under the machine.

  For a second, nothing happened, then Key’s face tightened as he swept his arm back and forth under the machine as if he were trying to scrub the floor clean. Then they all heard an enraged, trapped hyena squeal, and saw Key convulse on the floor before he yanked his arm back.

  The child was the barracuda, Key’s hand was the worm. Key hurled the child back with such force that it flew off his fingers, leaving a spurt of flying blood, directly into Daniels’s arms. But the big man didn’t try to run with it. Instead he immediately hurled it back the way it had come—only this time directly at the maw of the laundry bin that Safar was holding up toward him like an expert lacrosse player.

  By then Key was there, grabbing the top of the bag, twisting it closed, and knotting it.

  “Hold it, hold it!” he barked at Safar as the bag started twirling and scrambling around the floor.

  “It’s not holding!” Nichols yelled. “She’s tearing through it like rice paper!”

  It was true. The child was hardly in the trap before her little fingers started shredding the cloth like razors.

  But then Nichols was there again, shoving the straps Safar had dropped back into his hands. Safar started frantically wrapping the tearing bag with the leather bands. But as fast as he could buckle them, the child was starting to rip them with both her hands and her teeth.

  By then Rahal was scrambling through the closest medicine cabinet, her trembling fingers trying to prepare a sedative injection. “Hold her,” she cried. “Just a few seconds more—!”

  Key slapped Daniels toward the child’s feet as he dropped to his knees by her head. Both grabbed at the thrashing child’s ankles and wrists, but they were just too small, slippery, and surprisingly strong. The thing was snarling like an animal that was not even close to being trapped, and Key could see why. Despite their size, age, intelligence, experience, and all their efforts, they were losing. It was only a matter of seconds before the child would be free again.

  Like a slippery eel, it was just about to clear their hands, straps, and cloth when a large, lattice cross-hatched, metal can slammed down over it like a cage, trapping it on the floor.

  Charles Lancaster sat heavily on top of it, keeping it tight over the squealing child. It was the wrought-iron garbage can from his office. He had had it made extra large and extra heavy because of the sheer amount of refuse he created. As the child managed to slide it, and Lancaster, an inch back and forth, Gonzales and Daniels jumped forward to hold the edges down with all their might.

  Key fell back, Rahal crouching by him, holding the prepped sedative raised in her right hand. Nichols helped a shaken Safar off the floor. Then they all stayed where they were, trying to comprehend what had
just happened. They looked to Daniels for a wisecrack that would relieve the tension, but even the big man seemed at a loss.

  But then the room filled with the last sound any of them expected. It was the most plaintive, mournful, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking sobbing they had ever heard. They looked down, incredulously, to within the wrought-iron cross-hatching where the naked, angelic girl was curled into a fetal position, crying like a lost child.

  * * * *

  “Shit.”

  Morty Daniels said it like it was a three-syllable word from where he lay in the intensive care unit of the clinic. They were all in there—in, or on, separate beds. The Chinese doctor Lancaster had on call—an amazing woman who insisted they call her Helen—had marveled at the equipment on hand, tended to Rahal, and was waiting in the cafeteria.

  Now Rahal was testing each of them thoroughly, whether the child had broken their skin or not. And, given what they had just experienced, they all sat still for it. But several of them would swear that they could hear Key’s brain whirring. Lancaster apparently had a better muffler.

  The anesthetized child was in the quarantine unit—“wrapped up and strapped down,” as Daniels put it. Lancaster had the Q.U. built to exacting specifications—ones he had personally double-checked, given the reputation of certain Chinese construction engineers.

  “Don’t worry,” he had assured Key. “The bad ones are executed.”

  “The bad ones who are caught are executed,” Key had reminded him. Even he knew about the train bridges and elevated highways that had collapsed from rampant under-bidding, inferior materials, and bribery in the recent construction boom.

  But the Cerberus Q.U. was designed to contain everything from germs to any other prehistoric predators they might encounter. Key couldn’t help feeling that this child might be a bit of both. “Shit indeed,” he echoed Daniels. “What’s the protocol?” he asked Lancaster.

  Rahal answered. “I’ll be checking your vitals every hour. Dr. Helen will be checking mine.”