Blood Harvest

by Michael Weinberger

  “This is not negotiable, Detective. Speak again and I’ll drag you out myself.”

  Steve looked at the blood on his hand as he stood up straight and reached for Ellen. She blocked his grab and twisted Steve’s arm behind his back in a hammerlock, forcing him face first into the elevator wall. The car rocked slightly from the impact as it continued its descent.

  “Some men never learn,” Ellen warned as she wrenched upward on Steve’s arm.

  Steve found himself pinned to the wall by the blonde Amazon behind him. Damn, she was another one. She was another member of Pharmanetics security and probably some well-trained mercenary who had been covering him since she had come out of the elevator earlier. He had completely missed all the signs, possibly because she was female and attractive. He had been caught off guard and underestimated her so severely she was now in complete control, really putting it to his arm. It felt as though it might pop at any moment.

  “Too bad you had to attack me in the elevator,” Ellen pulled out a small two shot Derringer and placed it against the back of Steve’s head, “self-defense, ask any one of the witnesses.”

  The deadly seriousness of the situation became immediately evident. Steve let his body go slack under the woman’s grip in mock surrender as he reached for the Emergency stop switch, pushing it from left to right with a click and a snap. The elevator car lurched to a stop, sending Steve and Ellen toppling onto the floor as alarm bells blared.

  Steve recovered and rolled to his feet as Ellen kicked herself up to a standing position. The concussion he had suffered a couple of days earlier screamed to life as the effort of regaining his footing shot pain into his head and sent his equilibrium into a tailspin. His head cleared enough for him to realize that Ellen had maneuvered behind him and encircled an arm around his throat.

  Steve could feel her bear down and try to sink the chokehold; however, her efforts were suddenly laughable compared to the strength and skills he had at his command. Effortlessly, and almost mockingly, Steve flipped her over his shoulder and threw her against the far wall of the elevator. Ellen groaned as her body collapsed motionless to the floor and Steve stood over her as he flicked the emergency stop switch back to the off position. He felt the elevator come back to life as it once again continued its descent while he watched the illuminated numbers count down toward the lobby.

  A sudden sound explosion erupted within the elevator car. Steve felt an intense burning in his side. As he reached down to his right flank just below the rib, his hand came away wet with blood. Steve turned to see Ellen holding the tiny Derringer she’d just fired, one of its two .38 caliber rounds had struck point blank into his side.

  The elevator made a “ding” sound as it came to a full stop and the doors opened to reveal Chris standing there waiting to get on board.

  “Oh!” Chris smiled when he saw Steve, “What’s….?”

  Chris’ words caught as he saw Steve collapse to his knees and then shifted to the corner of the elevator where a woman was pointing a tiny handgun directly at Steve’s head.

  “Wait!” Chris cried out, but Ellen was either too stunned or was simply ignoring him as she used her thumb to cock the hammer, ready to shoot again.

  “No!!!” Chris awkwardly leapt forward. Ellen finally took notice of him as her eyes went wide with surprise and shock. Chris’ momentum carried his body into hers like a ton of bricks, flattening the startled woman and smashing her head into the wall of the elevator. If she were dead or simply unconscious was unimportant to Chris. He quickly picked himself up and began to drag Steve out of the elevator. Steve stifled a scream of pain as Chris pulled him into the lobby. A wave of dizziness washed over him; Steve’s eyes closed and total darkness ensued.

  Chapter 15

  The smell of detergent and bleach gave Steve the unusual impression he was in a laundromat. Something else lingered in his mind about his surroundings, something he noticed in the air, something foul. Groggy, he opened his eyes then immediately shielded them from the blinding luminescence from a tower of floodlights directly over his head. Spots flashed in his mind, impressions left by the powerful lights. He kept his eyes closed and fumbled for a handhold to help pull himself up to a seated position. He was lying supine on top of some kind of smooth metal table, cold to the touch.

  Finding the edge of the table he grasped the side with his right hand and struggled to a seated position. Ever so slowly he opened his eyes in order to survey his surroundings; the sight only exaggerated his disorientation. He was in what appeared to be a large surgical theater complete with stainless steel trays and medical cases. Instead of electrical monitoring equipment surrounding one operating table there were several tables evenly spaced throughout the room. Stranger still, each table looked more like a giant washbasin or sink with hoses attached to showerheads hanging overhead. It all seemed vaguely familiar, but his head was still swimming.

  “Hello?” Steve called out and his voice echoed slightly through the room.

  He tried to clear the fog from his head as he thought back to the last thing he could remember. Rubbing his eyes, he winced when he touched a sore spot on his nose. He immediately remembered the fight in the elevator and getting punched and then shot by the Amazon.

  Steve reached for his cell phone, which he discovered missing from its usual place on his belt. Without warning, reality settled in and his situation fell upon him like a ton of bricks. He was in the morgue and the tables were autopsy tables! Steve’s stomach turned as he realized he was sitting in the place where he had seen corpses eviscerated and prepared for burial. Desperate to get out of the table/sink, he flailed as he tried to squirm over the rails, which sent him and the table crashing to the floor in an explosion of sound. He landed shoulder first on the linoleum floor with a thud. He grunted as he landed, being especially careful to keep his head from hitting anything as he rolled with the force of the impact.

  The door to the morgue shot open and Chris stood there with a panicked look on his face as he observed Steve on the floor near the fallen table.

  “No! Don’t move!” Chris screamed as he ran to Steve’s side. “I removed the bullet, but I haven’t had a chance to close the wound yet. Just lie still….”

  A look of intense fear and confusion covered Chris’ face as he viewed Steve’s exposed side. The wound had closed on its own and although still raw and angry looking, it was basically sealed.

  “That…that should have taken at least two weeks to get to that stage of healing!” Chris looked up at Steve and for the first time in all the years he had known him, Chris looked frightened.

  “Maybe now would be a good time to tell me again that you aren’t really a vampire.”

  Steve pressed his lips together in frustration; he had never had the courage to be fully honest with Chris, or anyone else for that matter. It wasn’t all mistrust; the truth was he didn’t have all of the answers either. The only person who might was Alpha. Steve had promised himself he was done with that part of his life. He would eventually discover the answers on his own, although he hadn’t had much luck in the ten plus years since he went his own way.

  “Okay, would you mind finding me a chair?" Steve asked meekly, his tone slightly alleviating Chris’ apprehension. Chris nodded and retrieved a folding aluminum chair from across the room.

  Steve sat in the chair and proceeded, "Chris, what was I doing in a sink?”

  With a mildly confused look on his face Chris answered, “After your incident at the Pharmanetics building some wanted to take you to the hospital and others wanted to take you to the police station. I was granted custody and brought you here.”

  Steve thought about it for a second then asked again, “Why was I in an autopsy sink?”

  “You needed to sleep it off, so I put you in one of the sinks.”

  Incredulous, Steve repeated what he had just heard. “You put me in one of the sinks so I could sleep off the effects of the concussion.”

  “Yes. What’s the matt-”
r />   “You put me in an autopsy sink so I could sleep?!?”

  Recognizing that Steve was reacting poorly to his little maneuver, Chris responded with an “Uh, well…I…that is…I made sure it was perfectly clean before…Stop trying to change the subject!” Chris was getting that fearful look again.

  Steve held up a hand, “Okay, okay. Calm down.”

  “I will as soon as you start talking.” Chris reached under his shirt and pulled out a necklace bearing a small crucifix. “Here, touch this.”

  Steve’s face screwed into a disbelieving frown that quickly formed into a half smile, “Seriously?”

  “C’mon, it’ll make me feel better.”

  Steve let out a long exasperated sigh as he reached over and gently closed his hand around the crucifix.

  Chris’ eyes were fixed on Steve’s hand for a few silent seconds before Steve asked, “Happy now?”

  “Happier than I was a minute ago. Start talking.”

  Steve nodded. “All right, okay, so I guess I should start by telling you I don’t have all of the answers, but I will tell you what I do know. When I’ve talked about my ‘family’ in the past I have been referring to a collective group of people who share a similar genetic disease called Porphyria. From what I have been able to learn the clan formed in the early 15th century and was founded by Count Alphonso Diemo.”

  “You have got to be shitting me! An actual ‘Count’ started a vampire clan?”

  “Yeah, Bram Stoker wasn’t nearly as creative as people gave him credit. Anyway, people with our condition do need to take in blood, as you know, but in the 15th and 16th centuries my kind were hunted down as vampires and demons. Alphonso Diemo gave dozens of us a place to live and a kind of family. For decades Alphonso and his followers thrived in London where they worked as barbers.”

  “They were hair stylists?” Chris interrupted, “I didn’t know they had those back then.”

  Steve gave Chris a flummoxed look. “No Chris, they worked at a type of hospital where Alphonso performed bloodletting services for his clients. Remember, back then this was a widely accepted form of healing the injured and the sick.”

  Chris was wide-eyed at this revelation. “That…that is friggin’ brilliant! They became respected members of the community while taking the blood they needed without anyone batting an eye.”

  “Exactly, but as I said, the whole thing eventually came crumbling down, after which my people traveled from place to place always staying on the outskirts of society and totally off the grid.”

  “How many were there when you lived with them?”

  “Nearly two thousand.”

  “Two thousand! Where the hell could two thousand people live and manage to stay off the grid?”

  Steve’s face contorted; he felt torn between telling his friend everything and revealing those few secrets he still felt obliged to keep. Chris noticed the turmoil on his friend’s face and held up his hand.

  “No, don’t tell me if it’s going to make you uncomfortable. Sorry to interrupt the history lesson, please continue.”

  Steve shook his head, “Not too much more to tell really. I was born into that community and learned how to adapt to life with my condition. It was a good life really, maybe a bit more rural than the urban existence I’ve since adopted, but a good and happy life nonetheless.”

  Chris looked at Steve as if waiting for something. When Steve was obviously done speaking Chris said, “I am still waiting to hear the part about how you are not really a vampire. All you have really told me so far is that there may be as many as two thousand of you.”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “C’mon Steve! Look at your side! How is it you managed to heal up without stitches or staples? How is it I have seen you do over two hundred pull-ups without even breaking a sweat? Strength and speed healing aren’t exactly textbook traits of Porphyria.”

  “The strength is explainable,” Steve said in a confessionary voice, “but the healing part is something I only have theories about.”

  “Well start with the strength part.”

  Steve nodded. “All right. Remember how I said my people were living outside of society and off the grid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, deep running cave systems and abandoned mines serve that purpose extremely well.”

  “And how does…ah, I see.”

  Steve carefully stood and walked over to a wall where a planter shelf was cut in the junction between the wall and the ceiling. Steve jumped and grabbed on to the shelf with one hand. He hung there suspended by his four fingers and looked at Chris expectantly. Then he released his little and ring fingers and began to pull his body up and down the wall using only his index and long fingers. When he reached thirty he dropped himself back down to the floor.

  “Rock climbing wasn’t a sport or recreation for me growing up. It was a vital part of life and I was doing it to some degree before I could walk. A couple of decades later I seem to have developed an above average level of strength, which I try to maintain as best I can. It helps in my work as well as the fact that someday I….”

  Steve’s words trailed off as memories of his childhood flooded back to him.

  Chris watched Steve’s face change and finished his thought. “Someday you might want to go home again?”

  Steve looked up from his daydream as his eyes began to well up. He turned away from Chris and sat back down on the bed.

  “No, I can’t go home. That part of my past is dead to me.”

  Chris looked down at Steve, as the two men remained silent for a long moment. The he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

  Steve looked up. “For what?”

  “For doubting you, I mean, you still haven’t explained the healing thing which still makes me wonder about you being a real ‘dyed in the wool’ vampire, but I shouldn’t have called you out like that. If there is one thing I know about you, one thing I am absolutely sure of, it would be that you’re my best friend…vampire or not.”

  Steve looked at Chris skeptically then a smile broke out across his face. “You’re gonna try to kiss me now aren’t you?”

  Chris lifted one eyebrow as if pondering the idea: “No, a quick reach around maybe, but no kissing.”

  They both laughed until Steve raised a hand to his temple at the effort.

  “So what’s our next move?”

  Steve thought a minute, “What time is it?”

  “Close to 10:00 P.M., why?”

  Steve shrugged. “At this point I want to stake out The Inferno and see if anyone turns up.”

  “Why?”

  “Plain and simple; I don’t have anything else to go on at the moment. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  With a nod, Chris helped Steve out of the chair and steadied him as the two walked to Chris’ office outside the operating theater. Chris helped Steve into a soft leather chair and began to scurry around the room collecting papers, a laptop computer, cellular phone, a messenger bag and a long rectangular case. Steve knew what the case held and he couldn’t believe Chris kept it in his office in the morgue.

  “Can you manage or should I put this stuff in the car and come back for you?” Chris asked.

  “I can manage. I think my sea legs are coming back to me.”

  The two walked from the building and into the underground garage where Chris had parked his car. Chris bought and sold his cars at an astonishing rate, always seeming to have a new car. Steve looked around for the Ford Excursion he’d ridden in less than six months ago, but saw no sign of it. There were only a few cars in the garage at this hour; Steve shook his head and laughed as they walked directly toward a brand new metallic green Hummer H2. GM made the automobile but they had now somehow managed to create a super SUV for the general public, retaining some of its bulletproof, industrial aesthetic from the original military Hum-Vee.

  “What?” Chris asked when he saw Steve laughing.

  “How long do you keep your cars anyway?”

&n
bsp; “Long enough and not one moment more,” Chris responded as he unlocked the rear hatch and loaded the equipment from his office into the back of the H2. Setting the rectangular case in the rear compartment, he snapped the latches open and withdrew a sawed off double barrel shotgun, cut way below the legal limit. He also removed a box of shotgun shells and a pair of leather gloves.

  Steve walked up next to Chris and peered into the H2. Sitting in molded foam was one of the most exotic looking rifles he had ever seen.

  “I’ve been on the force for years now and I haven’t seen anything like this.”

  “And you never will anywhere else. That baby is a completely custom AR-74 rifle with multiple capabilities depending on what you want it to do. I can put a short .223 caliber barrel on the end and use it as an assault rifle or I can stick on a high velocity .30-06 caliber barrel and it becomes the most accurate hunting rifle I have ever had the pleasure to shoot.”

  “Hunting? When did you start doing that?”

  “I haven’t ever shot at anything other than targets, but I am a dead shot at 500 yards with the telescopic sight.”

  “That’s sharpshooter range!”

  “Yeah, I’m not sneaky enough to be a sniper, but I guess a sharpshooter would be an accurate description. Of course, the only handgun I’ve used in the last few years was the one that came with my Playstation game.”

  “Ergo the sawed off?”

  “You got it.”

  Chris loaded two shells into the shotgun and placed a handful of shells in the cover flap of a messenger bag. Most of the papers and a laptop computer rested inside the main compartment of the bag, which Chris checked after he placed the shoulder strap across his body. He then tossed the keys to the H2 over to Steve without looking where he was throwing them. Steve caught the keys cleanly in his right hand.

  “Good. Your head seems to be clearing pretty well.”

  “I feel pretty good, but should I be driving?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Having said that, Chris walked around to the passenger side of the H2 and jumped into the front seat.