by A. J. Aalto
“What?” he asked.
I turned the mug to face him. Kermit had black fangs scribbled on in permanent ink. Batten's idea of high comedy, a prank from the last time he'd been a guest in my home. The marks hadn't faded, despite vigorous scrubbing with both bleach and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Frog's teeth are stubborn things.
He dragged over the other chair and sat across from me. “You're not the only one whose temper goes off the rails now and then.”
“When I get mad, I don't deface other people's personal property,” I pointed out.
“No.” A knowing smirk. “You kick old ladies in the crotch.”
“That was months ago. I've got people skills now,” I pointed out. “Also, it was a punch. Also-also, it was self-defense. And, also-also-also, it was your fault she was here, anyways. So there.”
He just smiled at me. I hated his smile, because it was so rare, I couldn't do anything but try to keep from jumping him to appease the flare it kindled wherever I didn't have any common sense. Instead, I warmed my hands on Kermit's fang-besmirched face and blew on the espresso. We were quiet for a while, studying page after page of documents from the crime scene and the ME's lab. There were workups on forensic chemistry and serology, UnBio samples, dental reports, skin scrapings, and more mundane stuff, like fingerprints and hair and fiber analysis. We drank our bad coffee in silence. The pictures of Cosmo Winkle's gutless body made me incredibly thankful to be alive.
All at once, I couldn't believe I'd let Harry talk me into going in that water.
A tapping at the window behind me made me think of the rosebushes, losing their blooms to the late August night. Plunk-tap. Screeeeee. I strained to hear what wind would be moving branches around, but the night air was quiet. Still, there were scritch-scritches against the glass and a coo. Unable to solve the mystery sounds, I gave up and went back to the reports, mulling them over for a good fifteen minutes in silence.
“You see something,” he deduced finally. “Tell me.”
I watched him over the rim of my cup. “Not a revenant.”
He finished his drink in one gulping mouthful, his eyes flicking to the window over my shoulder and then back at the papers. He hears it too. He seemed to dismiss it as easily as I had. I got up and shifted the blinds, then paced to the office door, where I paused to consider the possible consequences of shutting the office door, closing us in together; I shut it anyways.
“Explain,” he said.
“Revenant feeding introduces the morphinomimetic peptide ms-lipotropin—”
He held up a hand. “Slower.”
“Reh vuh nant fee ding—hey!” I jumped back, grinning, when he smacked me with an empty manila folder. “Break it down,” I said patiently, sitting and bringing my feet up to tuck them under my bum on the chair. “When a revenant feeds, there's a chemical in their saliva that mimics opium, morphine, or heroin, depending on the age of the revenant. Increased age equals increased potency, and therefore increased effect on the recipient. Once ms-lipotropin enters the bloodstream, it never completely leaves.”
“All right, Doctor Baranuik, go on.”
I ignored the dig. “As I was saying, feeding introduces ms-lipotropin into the mortal bloodstream, ‘ms’ from the Latin mortuus somes for dead body. Even the new undead create significant amounts in their saliva. Ms-lipotropin—and its synthetic replacement, oxy-lipotropin—targets and binds at opiate receptors in the human brain. This alters mood, offers pain relief, causes relaxation, often euphoria.”
“And with long term exposure, addiction,” he finished for me, with a cop's understanding.
“Preternatural biologists call this addiction Rapture of the Blood. I don't know if there has been any formal study done on whether these analogues are as addictive as the real thing.”
“Do you think they are? You get sucked a lot.”
“Keep up the talk like that and you won't be.” Don't think of his cock, don't thi-- oh sweet Dark Lady. I dragged my thoughts back out of his pants. Barely. “I've never tried hard drugs, so I wouldn't have a baseline for comparison. Also, I'm not a smack-head for Harry's feeds, if that's what you're suggesting.” True, I got headaches if I didn't get him to feed regularly, but I hadn't had too many occasions where we'd been separated for long periods. “Withdrawal from even short-term use has been reported to include detox symptoms, like mood swings, insomnia, inability to taste or smell. Agonizing pain. Strong men weep for the mercy of ms-lipotropin once they've had a regular diet of it. So, you know, you should watch your ass in case I spike your coffee when I make it. Also, it won't taste like sugary shit.” I smiled sweetly.
“Vamps do this on purpose,” he said, propping his boot on the bottom rung of my desk chair, bridging the gap between us with one long leg. “Hook people. Like drug dealers.”
We both looked away; during our last case, Chapel had fed Harry, and Chapel's own withdrawal from ms-lipo had not been pretty.
“Revenants don't control what substances are in their saliva any more than you do.”
“So you're saying it's God's will that they hook people?”
I threw my hands up. “Whoa, when did I bring Him into this? I don't talk about Him. And since He didn't create revenants, I'm sure He had nothing to do with their spit.”
“Sorry,” Batten said firmly, sitting forward to punctuate his point. “Sorry. Go on.”
“My point is, there was no ms-lipotropin found in Winkle's tox screen. It would have popped up, even if it was one feed that drained and killed him. However,” I sat back, the slow creak of my chair the only noise in the room. I appreciated that Batten just waited, watching me get comfortable. “They did find signs of necrosis inside the abdominal cavity, and preliminary tests indicate signs of flesh-eater plague, yersinia sarcophaginae.” At his expectant blink, I expounded, “All undead creatures carry exotic strains of bacteria. Preternatural bacteriologist Paul Varney coined the term ‘scourge strains’ for them. Most revenants carry crypt plague, yersinia sanguinaria, spread by their saliva, blood and semen—”
“Thought you said revenants couldn't…” he lifted his eyebrows meaningfully.
“I said they have dead sperm. They still make the rest of the ejaculate.”
“Why?”
I choke-laughed with an exaggerated shrug. “May as well ask me why they burn in full sunlight, or why they store fat without metabolizing it, or why they sink into VK-delta for the afternoon. I have no fuckin’ idea. No one knows. One of the many mysteries of UnDeath.”
“But without blood pressure or a circulatory system…”
“Correct, they can only get an erection if they feed.” I nodded. “After which, for a while, they do have a fully functioning circulatory system.”
“So does Harry, you know, when he…”
Ack! Abort! Abort! Temperature critical! “Is this information relevant to the case, Agent Batten?”
“Sorry.” He put up one hand to indicate he was letting it go. “Vamps spread crypt plague, got it.”
“Other forms of walking dead carry either creeping plague, yersinia repens, or flesh-eating plague, yersinia sarcophaginae. Cosmo Winkle showed an infection of the latter.”
“Other forms of walking dead,” Batten repeated. He dragged his chair closer to the desk and studied the toxicology reports. “Whatever put its mouth on Cosmo Winkle was undead but not a vampire.”
“Why do you insist on using the fucking V-word to me after all this time?” I asked. Getting the blank-face routine from him, I sighed. “None of the kinds I know of carry more than one of the scourge strains; it's generally an either/or situation. Ghouls carry neither, so we can rule out a ghoul.”
He leaned his meaty frame into his chair, studying me with a cop's dissecting eyes. “You really know what you're doing.”
“Gee, thanks for noticing. Your vote of confidence is always gratifying,” I assured him with full-on sarcasm. “Yersinia sarcophaginae causes rapid wasting and blurry vision in the living. Once Cosmo was i
nfected, it would only have taken a few minutes to set in. Poor guy probably couldn't find the shoreline, assuming he could swim at all. The M.E. found water in his lungs. He might have been unconscious when whatever it was started eating him. For his sake, I hope he lost consciousness and drowned. Because otherwise… that would be a horrible way to die.” I pictured the young man flailing his arms in the dark lake, disoriented and stiff below the hips, flushed in the cheeks, spikes of heat rocketing up his chest while his legs became useless, the bedraggled costume fighting his efforts to swim even as his strength fled.
“Amazing.”
“Not the phrase I'd use for disembowelment and scourge plague, but okay?”
“Amazing how you can be smart with the science stuff but so idiotic in every other aspect of your life.”
I pressed my lips together hard. I wondered if he watched me clench my jaw the way I watched him do it. People skills, Marnie. That meant not punching him in the old yam bag. “Thanks, Agent Batten, I think highly of you as well, what with your ability to walk upright and use complete sentences despite having shit for brains.” Okay, more people skills were probably needed, but Batten already knew what I thought of him. I was demonstrably idiotic when it came to the two of us.
“You know what I mean, Marnie. Why don't you use this brainy side more often?”
“Careful. All this smooth talk will go right to my head.” I warned. “We should send scrapings to the National Center for Preternatural Parasitology and Bacteriology. Cosmo scrapings. Sounds like the worst sundae topping ever. Blerg.”
Batten collected up his jacket, checked his gun, the Colt .45 this time. I wondered how many guns this guy had, and then pictured a whole war room in his apartment. Right next to a whole bedroom full of…
“What was the bacteria guy's name again?”
“Oh, you'll never get Paul Varney,” I shook my head. “Last I heard, he was in Namibia. But the Center will have other experts to handle it.” I swept the lab reports together and went to the kitchen. “Gonna need more caffeine. Looks like I'll be up all night with this stuff.”
“I think you better get some sleep. Not a good plan for you to be compromised.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back. “Sure thing, Boss.”
“Seriously, get some rest,” he ordered, putting one hand in his pocket for the key to the cottage next door. “And uncross your fingers, you're not fooling anyone.” He paused at the mudroom. “If a vamp was responsible for Winkle's condition?”
“Revenants don't eat flesh.”
“I've seen it,” Batten said. “Quebec, 1998, Canada's Special Handling Unit, their highest super-max prison. The unit manager at the SHU thought he could hold a vamp in custody in a cell made for humans. Pretty sure he didn't buy the thing was actually a dead guy. He found out the hard way. Vamp woke at dusk, snapped the cuffs, and bent the bars of its cell. Did not react to pepper spray. Killed eight guards, cracked open thirteen other cells and drained twenty-one prisoners, violent offenders in their own right who could be held in no other prison. The vamp then walked through a rain of gunfire to take down the unit manager and his last guard. We found it polishing off the manager's heart.”
“You staked him.”
He nodded to confirm. “They called me. I staked it.”
“How old was he?”
“Does it matter?” he fired back automatically, as if he'd expected me to ask. It did matter, to me, but I could see what he was getting at. Kill-Notch's motto was “the only good monster is a dead monster.”
“He wasted all that blood just to have the heart. It makes no sense.”
“He wasted whole lives, Marnie. Inmates or not, a human being's life amounts to more than a few pints of blood on a cement floor.”
“I just meant that he must have been crazy. No revenant would trade drinking hot fresh blood for eating muscle meat, that's unheard of.” Unless he was in denial, my brain tittered at me. Like Wes, right Marnie?
“I watched the thing do it,” Batten insisted. “It dug around in the open chest cavity and took out a hunk of deflated lung.”
I shuddered, went ahead and answered the next logical question. “Yes, if Cosmo Winkle was killed by a revenant, there is a safe spot nearby for a revenant to rest during daylight hours. Shaw's Fist has a fifty-five-foot drop-off with a ledge, right off the end of our dock. The sun wouldn't penetrate all the way down, and the beetles andspiders won't venture in to get them. You'll have to look in one of the deeper spots along the south cleft.”
“When were you going to tell me about the deep spot?”
“I was going to tell you earlier, but you distracted me with cock-talk and insults.”
He scratched at his chin and let it go, but I sensed this was a temporary reprieve. “Dr. Edgar will be the one to stay here tonight. Fraternization rules apply to him too, got it?”
“Hey! Since when am I going to molest Declan Edgar? What am I, some mystical hooker? The department bicycle?”
He held up his open hands. “Five men in and out of your house tonight; Dr. Edgar and Chapel were the only non-related ones you haven't fucked. Math don't lie, babe.”
I sucked my teeth. “Forty percent isn't a majority, you fucking toolbox. Of those five, two are dead and the other shared my pain. The one who's still alive and within junk-punching range might wanna rethink shootin’ his fool mouth off and invest in a calculator.”
He nodded once, in tired agreement. “You are a formidable force. Marnie Chaos Baranuik.”
I made an uncertain noise, moved past him to get a diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge. “Guess I'm badass like that.”
He stopped me with a casual arm-bar, and when I looked up questioningly, he dropped his mouth onto mine. I was so surprised that I sank into it without even thinking. I never imagined anything about Mark Batten could be soft; the lips that slipped ever-so-gently against mine were tentative and my brain promptly dissolved, the world ebbing away into a warm, waning darkness, until the only thing that remained was the tender pair of lips on mine. I couldn't see straight; when he stopped I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to walk without flipping ass over tea kettle.
“If you got yourself killed before I could do that, I'd never forgive myself,” he said.
I uncrossed my eyes and blurted, “What do you want?”
He ran a big thumb along the line of my chin. “Let's start with you not getting yourself killed. Stay out of the damned lake.” After a thought, he added, “Pretty please.”
“Digging the manners,” I said, dog-paddling back to the shallow end, where humor was my life preserver.
“Taking a page from the Marnie Baranuik playbook. New and improved vamp hunter, now with people skills.” He grinned, a genuine Mark Batten smile, touching the corners of his eyes. “Get some sleep, Snickerdoodle.”
I saluted, and said, “Aye aye,” knowing there was no chance I'd be getting any sleep at all. I didn't even give him shit for the V-word.
CHAPTER 23
WE ALL, MUNDANE OR NOT, surround ourselves with magic of a sort, good totems to ward away discomfort and define our place, whether it be favorite framed photos of loved ones or velvet Elvises (Elvii? Elven?), or soothing landscapes – misty mountains, lush forests blanketed with moss, maybe a stretch of quiet beach – where we imagine our peace and tranquility lies waiting. For me, it was my froggy collection, and Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise standing guard on the back of my bedroom door. You know, in case those papery scritch-scratch sounds outside my window presaged an attack by the Borg. Resistance is futile; you will be creeped out and irritated.
The wind had a way of sneaking through the old wood around the window frames, especially the one in my bedroom. In the winter, I had plastic sheet insulation to seal them off, but, since the cabin didn't have anything as decadent as central air conditioning, I usually left them open in the summer, for both the fresh air and the soothing night sounds of the forest. Unfortunately, tonight, the sounds wafting into my bed
room were anything but relaxing. In addition to the persistent scratching noises, I had the rattling of glass to contend with, and cool air moaning as it drew through the crevices to stir Harry's antique, Irish lace curtains. Most of the time I found this sound delightfully spooky; tonight I needed it to stop. I was wound up, and not in the mood for spooky.
I snapped on my lamp (new garage sale find, 70’s flocked velvet with tassels and everything, two bucks) and imagined everything would be all right; Captain Picard would watch over me. I told myself that I could sleep, but there would be none of that, so I rolled over and flipped through Marie-Pierrette's journal instead, landing on a random page close to the beginning.
May 13, 1611. He is most impassioned when he must hunt me, and then, how he does tear through the house like a madman, fervor throbbing from him to fluster the very underpinnings of my heart. The ghostly creature is eager and determined like the tide upon the shore, and so I hide… not out of fear, or shame, but out of devoted compassion for his desires and my pleasure at thrilling my Master.
Hunting. Huh. What was it that Declan said about the Dreppenstedt line? He'd called the Prince a chasseur inepuisable, an Inexhaustible Hunter. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the rush of being chased by my Cold Company, instead of my fairly inane attempts at seducing him. Harry, impassioned? Tearing after me like a madman? I had a moment of lightheadedness, during which my libido plotted various scenarios that I yearned to act out, and my body thrummed in reply. I put the journal next to my Beretta Cougar mini gun and my purple vibrator, Mr. Buzz; it was a far more reliable lover than any of the real men in my life. I didn't want to dwell on what that said about me. Brain still toying with the journal entry, I slipped out of bed.