Blood Sugar

by Kat Turner

  “What happened with the chair?”

  “It had restraints, and these robed dudes strapped me in. They were dancing and bowing and chanting ‘Sirius.’ That’s when a giant ball of light appeared in the middle of the room. It was so bright, like a star. Four points stuck out of it, like one vertical line and one horizontal going all of the way through. Next thing I know my chair is hurling into it. I wake up in the woods, my hands and feet tied with rope and secured to posts stuck in the ground. No idea how much time has passed. Everyone had on robes and masks, but I heard my mom’s voice underneath one of the costumes. This fucker was lying next to me, dead and nailed to the ground.” Chin trembling, Lacey pointed to the jittery animal beside her.

  “Then they killed you.”

  Lacey lifted her soiled dress above her chest, revealing a red gash running from sternum to crotch. Black sutures held her incision closed. “It hurt like hell. They took out my organs. I screamed, but it didn’t matter. They kept on cutting and pulling out parts of me. Then the pain ended, and so did I.”

  Why remove Lacey’s vital organs? If these guardians took things out of her, did that mean they wanted to make room for something they wanted to put in? “I’m sorry they did that to you. I’ll find you some peace. I promise.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry, too. That I was hassling you and sending this freak show to disturb you. I thought being a vampire would solve my problems, and I didn’t want to let go of the idea. But mostly I’m just tired.”

  Eve shrugged a shoulder. “Hazard of the trade. Why do you suppose your mom has flipped on her bosses?”

  “She’s dumber than shit and twice as foul. And unpredictable. I can only see what you see up there in the world, so I’m guessing she thinks she can extort them for money to pay for her opioid addiction. Hold their Pollyannas hostage, threaten to burn them up unless she gets more and more cash.”

  Made sense. Addiction was a powerful motivator. “Why does she want vampire blood so badly when she already has an entire case of it under those tanks?”

  “She has this theory that the stuff they send her is diluted. No idea if it’s true or not, but she thinks if she can get the real thing, directly from the source, the Pollyannas will grow faster and get bigger. And as a result, be more valuable as hostages.”

  Awareness of the blood-soaked towel hovered like a specter over Eve’s head. But she consoled herself with the assurance that she would do whatever it took to keep Jonnie safe from Susan’s nonsense. “Thanks for talking to me, Lacey.”

  “No prob.” A hint of a smile curled the zombie’s mouth. “Give these Guardian assholes hell for me.”

  Eve finished reciting Reach the Unpeaceful, and the dead girl and her familiar sank back into the ground. Perhaps Lacey gave up as a result of Eve nailing the spell. Perhaps the girl needed to speak her truth and have her story heard before she could rest, like the other souls Eve assisted. She chose to attribute the success to both factors.

  Walking up the steps, Eve thought about the teleportation portal Lacey had described. It hit her, the reference to Sirius. These shadowy, unseen people at the top used star power to harness, teleport, and move energies. To possess celebrities and make them into the ultimate commodity fetishes.

  Breaking into a run, she willed herself to exit the hypnotized state. She needed to have another look at her printout of the conglomerate’s various subsidiaries and their holdings.

  Each of the four arms aligned with one of Sirius’s four points, but what about the fifth? And who or what inhabited the middle sphere, the magic sphere, and how much did Susan know?

  Eve shook herself awake in the firm linen chair, dashed to the bedroom, and plucked the printout from her purse. Time to take this research to the next level.

  Twenty-One

  Facedown on his pillow, Jonnie stirred from a dead sleep. He turned his head, eyes adjusting to morning brightness. The day’s yellow slivers sliced through fluffy shrubs beyond his guest room window.

  Brewing coffee filled his nose with perky, mouth-watering aromas that stirred memories of lazy weekends with scones and records. The faint hiss and gurgle of the pot chimed in with its unmistakable contribution to the universal signal of morning. In his dreamlike state, he imagined one of those perfect mornings with Eve. Happy, sweet, and slow.

  Blinking, he groaned as the fantasy drained away and reality poured in. He sat up, groggy mind marinating in confusion as he worked to process his surroundings.

  Computer paper lay strewn everywhere. Sheets of it, lined with black lettering, covered the floor and hung on the walls. Was he still asleep and dreaming after all? His thoughts scrabbled to make sense of things as he looked around. Christ, it was like he was living inside of a papier-mâché mask.

  Pen notes marked several of the papers on the floor, stars and underlines others, while yellow highlighter stained the text of still others. And he didn’t have to wrack his brain too hard to determine the mastermind of the great paper deluge. “Eve, love?”

  She whisked through the doorway a moment after he spoke her name, more pages in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Dark circles ringed her eyes, though they shone with a fierce sparkle. A few black fingerprints smudged her pajamas with traces of printer ink.

  Blowing clouds away from the top of her mug, she sat on an open patch of carpet and looked out over a fan of sheets. “Any arm can be the fifth, depending on the project they’re focusing on at the time.”

  Jonnie slid off the bed, coming to join her on the ground. The point emerged as he surveyed the parachute of documents before his feet. Several showed graphs like the one they’d looked at in her office. On each, the fifth arm was streaked with yellow marker.

  He scooted closer to Eve and urged a crinkled sheet from her fingers. Cupping her face, he looked into weary yet blazing eyes. “You haven’t slept, have you?”

  Hazy dream recollections returned in fits and starts. He and Eve had met in the third place, a brief encounter, before going their separate ways. And from the looks of things, Eve’s journey had been productive, if exhausting.

  She rested her head on his shoulder, a welcome gesture of intimacy amidst unexpected morning chaos. “No. But I’m okay. I found Lacey and learned some new things. I read up on our favorite shadow organization a bit more.”

  Jonnie’s conversation with Brian floated back into his half-awake mind. He picked up a printout of a web page for an organization devoted to banning drinking straws. His gaze flicked from the thin white slip in his hand to the marked files on the floor. Mental lights flashed as he looked among the paper and the circle and line graphs with highlighted fifth arms. “They’ve manifested a kind of siphon. The fifth arm is a straw that sucks up magic.”

  “Bingo.” Eve flopped onto her back. “Cosmic magic, and they’ve figured out how to channel, take, and redistribute it for their corporate holdings. Lacey told me about some ritual. Robed people made starlight appear in a basement, and it teleported her. All their projects involve dipping into an interstellar power and using it for the advancement of their various companies. The graph represents the star Sirius, and as best I can tell that’s their source. When they want to use celestial energy for ritualistic purposes, they do their incantations to draw its cosmic magic into their hands and imbue their companies with it.”

  Elsewhere in the house, Tilly’s dogs barked. “Morning, babies.” The teen spoke in her faint flutter of an English accent, voice thick with sleep. A door opened and closed, taking the yaps out with it.

  “I don’t quite see how knowing any of this helps us. What you need is a spell that will put this girl to rest so you can move on, yes?” But as Jonnie scanned the papered room, a new possibility took shape within him. The documents talked about medical interventions. Radical treatments. Cures for cancer. Cara’s face, plump with health from before she’d gotten sick, flashed in his mind.

  “I took care of that in the third place, but remember how her mom is mixed up with one of these companies.
I’m worried about her involvement.”

  Jonnie slid an article in his direction and read. Eve had circled the name of the subsidiary involved in conducting some cutting-edge clinical trial involving DNA modification to cure certain kinds of cancer.

  His breath sped as he read the article, the rate ratcheting more as he glanced to a highlighted page showing the graph. Sure enough, the company names matched.

  “What’s your stake in what her family is doing now that you’ve helped Lacey?”

  “Like I said before, I might need to do one more thing to finish the job.” Eve’s vocal timbre pitched high and tense when she spoke, and she pushed out her words in a forced effort.

  He tried to snatch eye contact, but she was looking at a piece of her hair.

  Jonnie slid her a quizzical glance. She wasn’t being forthright about her investment in the girl’s family. He’d fine-tuned his bullshit detector over the years, and it was time to admit that Eve was shoveling some rubbish his way. “Did she threaten you with something, the time you dropped by?”

  “No.” Tone crisp, Eve turned away and locked her jaw.

  He took her hand. “If you’re afraid, if something’s going on, you can tell me. I’m here to help.”

  “I…yes…um. It’s overwhelming is all, being possessed by a spirit of someone I was responsible for and failed. But I can handle it.” He voice cracked, chin dipping as her posture slumped. She rubbed her earlobe.

  A shiver of adrenaline rippled through him. His heart jumped. The first words she uttered—the I, yes, and um—contained more truth than the others. They were spoken in her natural tone, while the rest of them jolted out in quick stammers. She’d pinched off a confession before delivering it, stopping short of the truth.

  “We shouldn’t have secrets right now.”

  She lifted the mug to her mouth and looked into it before taking a drink. Her eyes popped, like she’d drunk while the liquid was too hot to give herself distraction, a means to avoid engaging with him.

  A pattern emerged in Jonnie’s mind, a pattern to Eve’s evasive behavior. Though rare enough to allow him to forget, it was consistent. She’d gotten weird one other time they did research on Pentagroup, the time in her office. But not so much at his New Orleans flat. What had changed?

  Jonnie swallowed a noise of frustration along with his suspicion. The last thing he wanted to do was accuse her of something and push her away. Besides, he had no concrete basis for calling her out. She could be acting odd due to stress or lack of sleep. He routed his thoughts onto a different track. “In theory these people could help Cara.”

  “Really? How?” She sat up straighter, brightening as her words flowed out in a gush of relief.

  He forced himself not to overanalyze her reaction or indulge paranoid or cynical musings. Living a life of fame, having lived so much of his life under the eye of fame, played tricks on Jonnie’s mind now and again. Made him hypervigilant, attuned to catch instances where others were lying to him or seeking to gain an advantage. These defense mechanisms served as assets for protecting himself from predatory entertainment industry types but became detriments when he sought closeness and authentic companionship outside of his tight inner circle.

  With a deep breath, he stilled his mental chatter. Most people, normal people, didn’t have hidden agendas, didn’t plot or scheme or approach others as prey. And certainly not Eve. Not sweet Eve, not his Eve. And it wasn’t fair to her to map his aversion to Hollywood ghouls and their tricks onto her motivations.

  She inched closer and rubbed his back, kissed his cheek. “Don’t leave me hanging. What’s the good news?”

  Dogged by a stubborn, sinking feeling, he shrank away from her as he gathered his evidence from the heaps strewn about the carpet. “I need to read more, but from the looks of things, they’re in cancer treatments. Wondering if I could have my manager make a few phone calls.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek. The thought of doing more business with these sketchy Pentagroup types than he already had gave him no pleasure, but it was his only lead at the moment. Perhaps he could track down Connors. Or maybe Brian knew something by way of his involvement with Joe Clyde. Endless moving parts twirled by in a kaleidoscope, but for Cara he’d exhaust any and all possibilities.

  “Holy shit,” Eve said.

  Jonnie turned to see her reading something, her lips parted and her eyes zipping back and forth over text.

  “You were right.” She snatched up a second sheet, mouth moving as she read it to herself.

  A rush of energy lifted him. He scooped up the paper she’d dropped. In his excitement, the words of the fringe article ran together, but his crackling mind retained enough to get the gist. He made himself slow down and digest the information.

  Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous, met with us to discuss the myriad ways in which the projects of various Pentagroup holdings and affiliates cross-pollinate.

  “It’s a hydra whose many heads feed each other,” he explained. “So their far-out scientists mutate animals in labs, then their sorcerers and mages conjure demons to implant dark forces, sinister energies into those creatures. They harvest the blood for their Vampivax eternal youth treatment, and the injections modify human DNA as well as inflict upon the patient a kind of watered-down demonic possession. That’s all a vampire is. A human-demon hybrid. They need fresh blood to live because Pentagroup hasn’t yet found an innovation to get their bodies to fully accept the Vampivax treatment.”

  Once the vampirism process is initiated, our source tells us, associates of Pentagroup corporations stay close to manage the patient and control the process. Because toxic vampire blood—a certain amount of blood must be removed before a fresh injection will take—has a multitude of other uses. They feed it back to their monsters to prolong their life span and increase the amount of damage they can inflict.

  Our source went on to elaborate how this interconnected system touches other branches of the Pentagroup tree.

  “Vampire blood has medicinal properties. They involve it in their biotech, inject small amounts into their anti-carcinogenic chips. Which kills the host’s cancer cells and modifies their DNA in the process. So we get people mutating into shifters and vampires. Bonus for Pentagroup when their defense contractor subsidiary needs a fresh supply of supernaturals to scoop up and ship overseas for the latest pointless, for-profit war.”

  Meaning poured into Jonnie like the voice of God.

  “I need to get to Cara.” He jumped to his feet. “Get her my blood.”

  “Hold on.” Eve sprang up and joined him, laying a hand on his forearm. “None of this is substantiated. It’s an anonymous source from a conspiracy theory paper. We should cross-reference.”

  Indigestion curdled in his stomach. Heat sizzled under his sternum. Was Eve trying to stop him from reaching Cara? What was her problem, anyway? “So why did you print it out in the first place?”

  “You don’t trust me. You think I’m on their side or something. I can see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice.” Her chin trembled, fists balling as her shoulders bunched. She brought one clenched hand to her lips and held it there.

  He exhaled some tension. “It’s not that. But I’m going to be perfectly honest when I say that something doesn’t feel right here. The last couple of times we’ve done this research, you’ve clammed up. And it’s hard to work together and, well, be together as a couple without a climate of full honesty. Especially now. Especially with all of this.”

  They faced off in silence, a sheen in her eyes stark in the sunlit room. A tense pause zeroed in on the crux of a moment of truth more than any words could. Chills seeped through Jonnie’s veins, followed by an acute, instantaneous sense of loss akin to the string of a balloon slipping through one’s fingers.

  As a light fled from her eyes, a sting under his ribs transformed into a dull ache. An invisible wall of barbed wire flew up between them.

  She moved her hand and let out a whimper. “So being
with me is hard. Some great burden. I see. Tell me how you really feel.” Her vocal inflection was hard and caustic, though it wobbled.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. “No. All I mean is that we need to be forthright with each other right now. Transparent. And if I’m being totally honest, I can tell something is off. Up. I tell myself I’m imagining things, but to be quite honest, I’m hideous at denial. You get cagey when we do this research, or you have the last couple of times. And if you keep secrets from me, I can’t help you. I can’t help us.”

  “So you are accusing me of something.”

  “It’s an observation, not an accusation. I know you, Eve, and I can tell when you aren’t being yourself.”

  “You claim to know me, but at the end of the day I don’t think you do.”

  “Why are you pushing back like this? Of course I know you. I know how the tone of your voice changes when you talk about Meg versus your job. I know you like to cycle for the escape. I know you’re adventurous, yet cautious and so empathetic that setting boundaries poses a challenge. I know you’re sensual and affectionate, but you struggle like the devil to trust. You love your family despite deep ambivalence.”

  She shook her head, her teeth clamped in a vise.

  “I know you’re your own worst enemy, Eve. You get in your own way and sabotage yourself, your happiness. Why? Because it’s familiar? Because it justifies that nasty little voice inside your head that says ‘I told you so?’ That tells you you’ll never be good enough?”

  Pleading her to listen, drawing from everything he had, Jonnie reached for Eve’s hand.

  She took a step back.

  A sinkhole of defeat swallowed his energy, leaving him scuzzy and drained. He laid both hands on top of his head. Time was a vat of quicksand. They drowned in it together, immobilized, no escape in sight. “Go ahead and put your wall up if you must. But tell me the truth. Once and for all.”