Blood Work

by L.J. Hayward

  Chapter 19

  I whipped my head to the side as he lunged in for the bite. At the same time, I shoved the knife into his back as hard as I could. He was scrawny, compared to other humanoid things. The blade on the knife was seven inches, more than enough to get his heart from behind.

  I guess I missed.

  Saif howled. Eating me alive not an option anymore, he settled for the second one. His hands tightened around my neck. He’d strangle me, bury me properly this time and dig me up when I was fermenting away nicely. Over my dead body.

  I twisted the knife. He growled and rolled his shoulders, trying to dislodge it. Whatever he did wouldn’t move the knife. I tried to pull it out for another stab, but it was stuck good between two ribs. Air was starting to be an issue. Tightening my hold on the nightstick, I began belting him about the head with it. Had about as much luck with that as I had with the gun against Afzal.

  The gun.

  Abandoning the knife, I fumbled around his waist. I kept up the beating on his noggin with the stick so he wouldn’t have time to think or try to bite my face off again. My hand found something hard in his groin. Ack! Not the gun. There it was, cool and metallic. I jerked it free, spun the handle into the palm of my hand, flicked off the safety and shoved the barrel into his mouth.

  The explosion of the gun was deafening. Saif jerked a little bit. His eyes went wide, mouth quivering, the hard thing against my thigh went soft. The hands around my throat tightened, but only for an instant, then the ghoul dropped onto me, heavy and smelly and with only the front half of his head still attached.

  I stayed there for a moment, breathing hard, and thankful for it. Then I pushed him off and rolled onto my stomach, forcing my aching body to its knees. They protested so I slumped over onto my arse and just sat there for a moment longer.

  There was a rustle in the gloom. I scrambled to my feet, spinning around, Cougar at the ready. On the far side of the room, Kermit hauled himself to his feet.

  “You killed Saif,” he wheezed.

  “Give me one reason not to kill you too.”

  Standing on one leg, he held up both hands. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “That’s what you said before. And see where it got us.”

  “I knew Saif was there, listening.” He titled his narrow head to the side. “Come on, little man. We’ve had a good relationship in the past. Let’s forget this one tiny—”

  The roof of the lair caved in on his head. He went down in a bone cracking heap. A dark shape landed on top of him, flung aside great clods of dirt and pulled him up. The attacker wasn’t tall enough to lift him off the ground. In fact, it was barely large enough to get him to his knees, but it was strong. Kermit was flung against a wall and held there by a little white hand at the end of a little white arm attached to the little, black clad body of Mercy.

  “Mercy!”

  She whipped her head around to look at me. Her eyes flashed like headlights in the dark. Lips peeled back from her fangs showed streaks of red on her teeth.

  “Matt, I found you.” Her voice was husky, straining around the gnawing hunger swamping her mind.

  She’d eaten, but not a lot. Enough to get her head working straight, but not so much that she’d actually killed someone. At least, I hoped.

  Leaving the post-game analysis for, well, post-game, I said, “You did real good, Merce. Thank you.”

  Mercy grinned, a scary sight. Against the wall, Kermit squirmed, more to let us know he was still there than to try to escape. Ghouls were disgusting but they weren’t dumb. He knew he couldn’t escape a vampire.

  “Let Kermit down.”

  The grin vanished. Her eyes sparked silver. “But he was going to hurt you.”

  “Not anymore. Drop him.”

  Really, it was more of a contemptuous throw. Kermit hit the coffin-couch with a crash and disappeared in a cloud of broken wood, dust and bones long since picked clean. He clambered out of the destruction and huddled on the dirt floor, arms wrapped around his knees. There was bone sticking through the skin of the knee I’d whacked, little cuts in his neck where Mercy’s nails had dug in and black patches about his shoulders, bruises forming where Mercy had slammed down on him from above.

  Mercy stalked to where he sat. She wore black leather pants and a tight black sleeveless shirt with glittering printing on it. ‘Live Fast, Die Pretty.’ She crouched on the remains of a coffin, perched over him like some vengeful bird of prey. Her fingers flickered toward Kermit and he cringed. She just smiled.

  “Right, Kermit. You were about to tell me everything. Start with when Martínez asked you to sell me to him.”

  Wary of Mercy, Kermit leaned away from her. “It wasn’t me. It was Saif. He’s the one Martínez caught and made him promise to find you. Saif found your address and when he went to Martínez with it, the vampire told him to get there and take you out. He was done with trying to reason with you.”

  “He calls surrounding me with a mob of vampires reasoning? He’s lost his marbles.”

  Kermit tried to shrug, and winced. “That one never had many marbles to start with. Even before he was turned he was a psychopath.”

  “So you really don’t know where he’s set up?”

  “Saif knew.”

  I looked at the corpse of the ghoul. “What luck.”

  “Hey, if it helps, it was somewhere on the river, maybe to the east of here.”

  “Yeah, that might help. Very generous of you, Kermy. Mercy, get my watch off him.”

  She moved faster than I could see. Kermit’s arm was bent backwards almost immediately and she carefully removed the Rolex. The ghoul’s eyes rolled in pain, mouth gaping. When Mercy released him, he tipped over to the side, arm hanging limp.

  “We’re leaving,” I said to her and she stepped down from her perch to come to my side.

  I gathered up my weapons, tucked them away and then stopped by Kermit.

  “You ever, ever, try to backstab me again, Afzal, and I will rip your lungs out and make you eat them. Got that?”

  He nodded pathetically.

  Mercy stood beneath the hole she’d made into the lair and jumped straight up. She vanished over the edge, then reappeared, leaning over, hand held out. I jumped as high as I could, she caught my arm and hauled me out. I took a moment to brush as much of the grave dirt off my clothes as possible, then we headed out of the cemetery.

  “Who’s Martínez?” Mercy asked.

  “A Red vampire. Pretty old, very strong. A colonel or something, apparently.”

  “And he’s after you?” There was a hard, protective edge to her voice. Made me feel safe, and a little awed.

  “In actuality, he’s after both of us, but I think that if he can’t get me alive, then he’ll settle for just you. And me dead.” I kept watch on the night around us even though it was pointless. Mercy would know if anyone or anything approached long before I would see it, but still. Old habits and stuff.

  She tilted her head. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re special.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, not really wanting to answer. “Well, I guess because you’re different to other vampires. You’re not typical.”

  “I know that,” she muttered. “I’m stronger than most of them, aren’t I. I mean, sometimes, it’s hardly fair on them. Like the other night.” She made a dismissive sound. “Eight of them? They were nothing. Even you managed four mature ones last night.”

  Did I say awed before? Change that to feeling like I was being condescended to. Roberts was right. Mercy was developing something a smart mouth. I guess that was bound to happen though. Roberts isn’t exactly lacking in the sarcasm department.

  “No, I think it’s more than that,” I said, hands shoved in my pockets. “I think it’s got something to do with how I treat you. Giving you the blood I do.”

  At the word ‘blood’, Mercy flinched and licked her lips nervously.

  “Mercy?” I used my best reaso
nable-but-deadly-serious voice.

  “When you didn’t come home, I got really hungry. I wanted to eat so much but I couldn’t get into the fridge. I knew you would get it for me when you came home, but you didn’t come home.” She said it in a fast babble, a touch of accusation in the last couple of words.

  “So you came looking for me?”

  “So you could feed me.” Her tone turned a little bit desperate, repeating herself like a child trying to lie to a parent.

  I stopped walking and put my hands on my hips. “Mercy, have you eaten anyone?”

  She closed her mouth very fast and shook her head.

  “Don’t lie to me, young miss.”

  Mercy resisted, but I forced the link open between us and all the thoughts she was trying to keep from me rushed through.

  Gut clenching, painful hunger. A need that burned through her like a swarm of wasps sizzling in her blood vessels. It couldn’t, wouldn’t, be ignored. Thoughts warped by hunger, spiralling down toward the abyss of primitive compulsion—eat eat eat—she had managed to latch on to the memory of me handing her bags of blood, food that satisfied one hunger but not the other. Hunt, catch, caress, feed. She would hunt me, she would find me, then she would feed.

  The terrible, driving need swamped her. I fed her. I would feed her tonight.

  Dear God. My legs grew weak.

  Then the reason why I wasn’t dead at her feet right now slapped me across the brain.

  Flashing lights behind her; a loud, whirring, grinding noise battering at her, somehow drowning out the screaming demands of her stomach. Vague memories of being in the car with me when I’d been pulled over made her slow down, stop on the side of the road. My scent still burning in her nose, she swung off the Moto Guzzi, let it drop to the ground and met the cop halfway.

  He tried to tell her to go back to the bike, to wait for him there, but she stalked him, circling, prowling. His mouth moved, talking to her, tone hardening, hand reaching to his waist for something. She couldn’t hear him, didn’t want to hear him. I was her desire but he was right there. The blood in his body was hot and divine and right there.

  The cop didn’t even see her when she attacked. Her psychic whammy hit him a moment before she did. He crashed to the bitumen, eyes glazed, body slack as Mercy straddled him, mouth fastened to his neck.

  It was like the blood was pouring down my own throat. Rich, coppery, thick as chocolate sauce and just as delicious. It pumped from his torn jugular, hit the roof of my mouth, slid over my tongue and I couldn’t swallow fast enough. My mouth filled to overflowing, warm tendrils leaking from the corners of my lips. The flow slowed but I wasn’t satisfied yet. I locked my mouth over the wound and sucked, desperate for every little drop.

  Then a high-pitched squeal. Bright, white light speared into my eyes. I jerked back as car doors slammed and people began to yell. The world blurred and I was racing away on the bike, the powerful engine roaring, the last of the blood still tingling on my tongue, seeping into my empty veins.

  No!

  Not my veins, not my tongue. I tore away from Mercy’s mind with an effort that left my head spinning. My legs finally gave way and I hit the ground hard. Pain flared in my knee but it was quickly lost in the confusion of disgust, horror and warm, tasty pleasure.

  “Matt.”

  I don’t know what I said or did, but it sent her jumping away from me. She landed in a defensive crouch on a headstone a dozen meters away, her eyes silver, fangs bared. Her hunger was still there, appeased but not completely sated. She’d been interrupted before she could get more than a litre and change from him. Enough to kick start the higher functions of her brain, to let her remember I was a source of food, but not that sort of source.

  Still, the memory of the sensation was there. The desire to hunt, to track me down and consume me the way she was meant to. The way she had tried once before…

  Yet, even as I reached for the needle of tranquilizer that wasn’t where it usually was, the memory began to dissolve. The stolen blood was still working its way through her body. It eased the desire for the hunt, it curled through her veins, reassuring her she wasn’t starving. Following it was a vague feeling of lethargy, the weariness that came after a big meal, where all energy is turned inward to digest the food. But in this case, it was the beginning of a transfusion reaction. The cop’s blood type was incompatible to Mercy’s. The red cells would slowly be destroyed and she would sleep—excuse the poor quality of pun—like the dead.

  She titled her head, eyes dimming from predator bright. “Matt? Are you okay?”

  I scrambled back to my feet, not yet ready to talk. The tang of blood still seemed to linger in my mouth. I hawked up a load of phlegm and spat, purely a psychological response. There was no blood in my mouth.

  Mercy slinked off the tombstone and took a couple of cautious steps toward me. I held up a hand, keeping her at a distance.

  While she stood statue still in the moonlight, I pulled out my mobile phone. “Where did the cop stop you?”

  “Near Southbank.”

  I called Roberts. He was at work. That is, he was at a nightclub so I had to wait while he went outside.

  “Yeah, what’s your problem?” he asked when the noise had dropped several hundred decibels.

  “Mercy had a little indiscretion with a cop near Southbank,” I said as calmly as I could, which wasn’t very. “Can you find out if he’s alive?”

  “Shit,” Roberts said. “How did she get away from you?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Can you find out?”

  “Sure. Give me an hour or two.”

  I hung up before he could ask any more questions.

  Mercy eyed me warily.

  “You know what you’ve done,” I said softly. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Soon you’re going to be like the wild vampires, feeling the effects of the wrong blood type. It’ll make you tired and weaker. You’ll want to find somewhere to go to sleep. But you’re not a wild vampire, Mercy. You don’t know how to find somewhere secure outside of the house. And you won’t just sleep through the day this time. You’ll be truly knocked out. Utterly defenceless.”

  Her slender shoulders shivered as she looked around, worried frown pinching her brows together.

  “You know I always protect you from the sunlight, don’t you.” I didn’t make it a question and didn’t wait for an answer. “Now, can I trust you to ride the bike home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t take off on your own?”

  “No.”

  I believed her. She’d never lied to me before, didn’t know how to. And right now, she looked like nothing more than a severely chastised and repentant child, scared into behaving.

  This was what I’d learned to do in the early months of our strange relationship. Beat her down, make her scared and then remind her I was her only protection. I made her believe that without me, she wasn’t able to survive. Then I’d told her that if she ever disobeyed me, I’d kill her myself.

  Only one other act would result in a death penalty for her—if she killed a human.

  Quiet and meek, she walked ahead of me to where I’d left the car. The bike lay on its side behind it.

  “Stay in front of me the whole way,” I said, tone firm.

  She nodded, righted the bike and waited for me to get into the car. When I had the engine turned over, she kicked the bike into gear and pulled out, very sedate. Usually, she would have been popping wheelies and skidding tyres.

  It was an uneventful trip home. Didn’t mean I relaxed for one moment. I couldn’t let myself breathe easy until she was in her cage and locked up securely. Retreating to the lounge, I waited for Roberts to call back. Meanwhile, I turned on the TV and scanned channels for any word about dead or injured cops.

  The next thing I knew, the phone was ringing and glorious sunlight streamed in through the front windows. TV still babbling on with some morning news show, I grabbed
the phone and rolled off the couch, back protesting the entire way.

  “What did you find out?” I asked, limping into the kitchen.

  “Got good news and bad news,” Roberts said without preamble.

  I stopped at the fridge, frozen to the spot. “What’s the good news?” My voice was barely audible. I would need the good to buffer the bad. If the bad was what I feared it might be, I didn’t want to face it just yet.

  The thought of killing Mercy twisted my guts into a knot. I wasn’t sure I could do it. She was… innocent. Ruled by instincts that had no place in civilised society. It wasn’t her fault her base compulsion was to hunt humans. But I couldn’t leave her alive if she killed someone. They put dogs down for much less.

  “The cop’s alive.”

  I grabbed onto the fridge to keep on my feet. Relief sapped all the tension fear had given me.

  “Lost a lot of blood,” Roberts continued, “but he’ll be fine. As of half an hour ago, they’re not looking for anyone matching Mercy’s description. They think it must have been a man, someone big enough to knock the cop down and keep him down.”

  “Do you know if they got the bike rego?”

  “No, but I’d keep it tucked away for a while though.”

  Pulling out a chair, I sat at the table, head resting in my free hand. “Thanks, mate. That’s the best news you could have given me.”

  He snorted and it wasn’t a happy snort. “Ready for the bad news?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Tough. When I tapped my source about Mercy’s dinner, I found out something else. What was the name of the doc who patched you up the other night?”

  “Nolan. Why?”

  “He was killed last night.”