Hector Munoz stood patiently in the corner, rubbing his jaw. “I thought you said he’d be easy to handle.”
“He’s changed.” The question in Lance’s mind was—what had happened to Knight that had caused him to change? It was a mystery, and Lance didn’t like mysteries.
He strode out of the room and down the length of the hallway, knowing that Hector followed him. Not many knew it, but he and Hector had been childhood friends. He was glad when Hector found them in the jungle that night; happy with his decision to have the chupacabra kill his friend. Not only did it prove, beyond doubt, the professor’s theory that humans killed by chupacabras turned into vampires, but it gave Lance another like himself—a member of the undead who had a military background. Hector, he knew, would follow orders.
He gazed at the three bodies at his feet—Patterson, Brown, and Kinsley. They’d rise on the following night, and he’d know then whether they would be equally obedient.
“Stay with them, and I’ll go see how the good professor did tonight.”
He didn’t wait for Hector to answer, but left the room and retraced his steps down the hallway, this time going to the opposite end. Walking into the last room, he found the professor fussing over the two creatures and rolled his eyes at the sight. The professor treated the things as if they were his children.
“Were you successful?” Lance asked without preamble.
The professor didn’t jump, and Lance knew he’d felt him coming through the mind link they shared.
“Yes. I collected twenty bags tonight, and tomorrow we should do even better. As the word gets around, we’ll have homeless lining up from all over the city to sell us their blood.” The professor sounded tired, which Lance attributed to the coming of dawn.
“Fine.” He glanced at his watch. It was only 3:00 A.M. There was still plenty of time, if he moved quickly, which he was quite capable of doing. “I’ll get more money and supplies.” It would be so much easier, he thought, to just lure the homeless to them and feed until they were dead, but he didn’t want their bodies lying around, rotting and stinking up the joint, and he couldn’t very well dump them elsewhere. The last thing he needed was to leave a trail of corpses for Knight to follow.
Part of him wondered if he’d received enough of the creature’s venom to be able to convert the dead into vampires himself, as the professor had once suggested, but didn’t think so. He and the professor had killed those men in Taribu and then later, after they’d arrived in D.C. and Hector rose, the three of them had fed off several homeless men. He thought that if any of the deceased had risen, he’d have heard about it by now—and so far he’d heard nothing.
He turned his thoughts back to more pressing matters. Getting money to pay the homeless was easy—for now. All he had to do was hit the nearest ATM machine. He’d never married and had no family. There was no one to mourn his passing and, more important to his immediate needs, no one to notify the bank and close his account.
Getting the blood bags and supplies was more difficult. He’d have to sneak into a different hospital this time to steal more. Soon, though, he’d have the help he needed. He wouldn’t have to do everything himself.
He walked over to where several filled blood bags lay stacked on a small side table and stared at them. “I thought you said you collected twenty bags,” he said, doing a quick count and coming up with twenty-five. “Where’d the extra come from?”
“I found a couple of stray dogs roaming the alley, so I filled a few extra bags—for the chupas.”
Lance picked up a bag containing blood that appeared a little darker than the others and flipped it over. The word dog was written in pen on the label. The adult chupacabra, lying on the floor near him, lifted its head and peered up at him.
Hunger.
He glared at the creature and dropped the bag back onto the table. “I’ll let you know when you can eat again,” he told it.
“It’s not healthy for her to ingest so much human blood,” the professor argued. “In fact, I think it may have already caused some damage. I don’t think she’s well.”
“Then you’d better hurry and find that substitute for the venom, hadn’t you?” He glared at the professor a moment longer, then turned to the creature. Follow me. He ignored the professor’s disapproving look and the way the creature seemed to turn to the professor for help. So far, the creature had not refused a direct command, and he wondered if there would ever come a time when it would. Like most things in nature, it was the strongest who prevailed, and Lance was determined that he would be the strongest.
He directed the creature to a remote room some distance away and told it to wait for him. There was one last thing he needed to do. He left the creature and returned to where Hector stood watching the others. With dawn so close, he saw the other man’s eyelids fighting to stay up.
“Come on, my friend. It will be dawn soon, and I’m sure you’re tired. It’s time for you to rest. I have a room for you.”
Hector followed him out and as they walked, Lance sent the other man images of moving down the hall to a nearby room while, in fact, he led the man up a flight of stairs to a room on the upper landing. Finding the room he’d prepared earlier, Lance walked in and gestured to the pallet on the floor. “This is for you.”
A puzzled expression crossed Hector’s face as he looked at it. “You don’t want to sleep here?”
“No. I still have a few things to do before I find my rest. Sleep well. I’ll see you at dusk, and we will decide then what to do about Knight.”
Hector nodded and crawled onto the pallet. Lance felt a moment’s guilt wash over him but quickly squelched it before the emotion leaked out and the other man picked up on it. Lance walked out of the room and headed back to where the chupa waited for him, a little thrill of excitement coursing through him. The professor had proved very helpful in answering a lot of questions about this new state of their existence, but there was one question to which neither of them had an answer. What happened if they were exposed to full sunlight?
Lance’s military background required him to know all his weaknesses before going into battle, and that’s what he intended to do. Hector would be asleep soon—might even be asleep already—and would not notice the slats missing from the room’s window. He wouldn’t realize that when the sun rose in a couple of hours, it would shine fully onto the pallet. In Lance’s mind, Hector’s inability to notice the trap was one of the reasons he was expendable. Lance would not tolerate any disobedience or weakness on his team.
Lance smiled to himself as he strode into the room where the adult creature awaited him. It eyed him cautiously, but did not approach. Lance had discovered, quite by accident when the creature had attacked him a second time, that he grew stronger with each infusion of venom. He was determined, now, to be the strongest of his kind—the strongest and most powerful of all vampires.
He called the creature to him and bent his neck. It was impossible for the creature to “kill” him, but still, he had to quell the tiny spurt of fear that raced through him just before the creature lowered its head and pierced his throat with its teeth.
He felt unconsciousness pulling at him, but knew that tomorrow night, he would rise again, stronger than before— and when he did, he’d go check on Hector—or what was left of him.
Dr. Clinton Weber stroked the head of the baby chupacabra, all too aware of what Lance was doing in the next room. The man was crazy, in the worst possible sense, and part of Clint worried that the psychosis had not been there before, but was a result of the chupacabra’s attack, for which he felt directly responsible.
That was one of the reasons he’d stayed with Lance—he hoped to find a cure for him. He’d convinced Lance that they needed to study the chupacabra’s venom and possibly duplicate it. Lance had gone along with the suggestion, helping Clint to purchase and steal the supplies needed for a crude lab. They’d even secured a generator to provide the electricity off which they ran the various appliances and m
achines. Clint had been impressed with how resourceful Lance was—and how quickly he’d been able to secure the things Clint needed.
Clint’s intentions in studying the venom were different from Lance’s, however. Clint was hoping to analyze the venom for its healing and restorative properties. Perhaps the cure for cancer and AIDs, even their own vampire state, lay within it.
Lance, on the other hand, was interested in the venom for the special powers it gave him—the increased speed and strength, the incredible night vision, control over the chupacabras, immortality. He didn’t seem to mind the price they paid in return—surviving only on blood, giving up the sunlight and their humanity. Clint fought nightly to hold on to the latter, worried that it would fade completely before he finished his work.
The baby chupacabra nuzzled the palm of his hand, and Clint realized that he’d stopped scratching the creature’s head. “You like that, do you, Gem?” He smiled down at her and knew there’d been another reason he’d stayed with Lance. He’d wanted to study the creatures further. Now he felt a need to save them from Lance’s abuse. Their systems were not designed to live off human blood. They could tolerate it in small doses, but Lance had been feeding the adult chupa a steady diet of human blood—specifically, the blood of the men he’d chosen to convert into vampires like himself.
Already, Clint saw deterioration in the health of the adult. He knew he had to do something to help her, and finding a synthetic venom seemed the only solution, but he worried that he might find it too late.
He gave the small chupa a final scratch, feeling the lethargy of the coming dawn slowing his thought processes as well as his physical movements. There was time, he thought, to recheck his earlier tests.
He crossed to the small refrigerator, opened the door, and pulled out two tiny vials, not for the first time grateful that Lance knew nothing about biochemistry. He set the vials in a test tube holder while he gathered the rest of what he needed.
Pulling the stopper out of the first vial, he took a dropper and extracted a small amount of liquid, which he squeezed onto a microscope slide. Then he took one of the bags of blood and, using a syringe, drew a small amount of blood from it, which he then added to the liquid on the slide. Though he’d not told Lance yet, he’d managed to create artificial venom that matched the chupa’s in every way—except one. The venom contained a substance he’d never seen before, and it was that which stabilized it.
Peering through the microscope, he watched as the cells in the sample started to change shape, growing larger and healthier. Everything looked much as his own blood now did under a microscope—until he tapped the slide with his finger. The slight vibration from his finger caused a disturbance among the cells, which suddenly started to burst. Clint shook his head. The artificial venom was unstable, and he couldn’t figure out why.
Sighing, he wiped the slides clean and placed them in the plastic tub of glassware to be washed later. Getting out another slide, he once again placed a drop of venom on it. This time, though, he added a drop of liquid from the second vial. He looked through the eyepiece of the microscope and watched the tiny cells of the second liquid gather around the larger venom cells. Soon, the larger cells were completely surrounded. As Clint watched, the smaller cells started to pulse as they attacked the larger cells. Within a second, the activity on the slide ended and the venom cells were gone.
Clint removed the slide, satisfied with the results. The antiserum had totally denatured the chupa’s venom. Now came the real test. Picking up a sterile needle, he stabbed his finger. It took a lot of squeezing to generate the single drop of blood, which he gingerly placed in the center of the slide. He picked up the dropper and allowed one drop of the antiserum to fall and mix with the blood. He used the end of the needle to stir the two together and then placed the slide on the microscope.
The cells of his blood were healthy and plump, but as he watched, the tiny cells of the antiserum moved in as they had on the earlier slide. There was a flurry of microscopic activity, and when the attacking cells finally quieted and drifted apart, the blood cells were gone—completely destroyed.
As he disposed of the slide and stored the vials in the refrigerator once again, he thought about the implications of the antiserum. If injected into a vampire, the antiserum would attack and destroy all the chupa’s venom in the vampire’s bloodstream; venom that now resided in the vampire’s blood cells, sustaining life and providing immortality.
Clint presumed that the lack of venom would result in the vampire’s permanent demise, although without actually injecting it into a vampire, he couldn’t verify that. Images of him injecting Lance flitted through his mind and were quickly followed by the image of Lance killing him when the antiserum proved ineffective. If he died before he perfected the solution, all would be lost.
Just then, a noise at the door drew his attention. Clint turned and saw the adult chupa drag herself into the room, Lance’s blood still dripping from her mouth. He watched her walk across the room and settle down next to the baby. He fetched a bag of dog’s blood and held it so she could drink from it, hoping it would dilute the effects of the human blood. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but she seemed grateful for it.
Fatigue now beat at him, and he knew the time was near. He lay down beside the two chupas and absently stroked them, his thoughts turning to his daughter. He missed her and was sorry for the worry and heartache she had suffered because of him. When he’d seen her in Taribu, he’d not wanted to leave, but he’d been too afraid of what Lance would do to her if he had refused. Now he felt that his only hope of seeing her again lay in helping Lance—or in destroying him.
Though he couldn’t see it, Clint sensed the sun rising in the sky and just before he lost consciousness, he felt the cool texture of stone beneath his fingers.
Chapter 12
Lanie woke, glanced at the clock, and saw that it was already four in the afternoon. She was starting to feel like a vampire herself, sleeping all day and up all night. It wasn’t a hard adjustment, she thought. She was already used to being up at night because of her work with the fire department.
Thinking of it, she realized that she needed to make a couple of phone calls. Climbing out of bed, she walked to the connecting doors. They were open a crack, and peeking into the other room, she spotted Mac still in bed. She didn’t know how long he’d sleep, but she decided not to wake him. Instead, she closed the door to her room and crossed to the desk, where she found the room-service menu and quickly placed an order. She was starving and wasn’t going to start another new “night” without something substantial to eat. As a last-minute decision, she ordered extra for Mac. Then she set about brewing a pot of coffee because she needed the caffeine rush to jump-start her brain.
She showered while it brewed, and by the time she was dressed and the coffee was done, her food had arrived. She signed the bill, tipped the delivery guy, and then sat down to enjoy a nice normal meal in silence. She didn’t even turn on the TV, too afraid there’d be another story about what the media were now referring to as the “vampire” murders. If they only knew how close they were to the truth.
When she finished her meal, she called the library in Houston and talked to her boss, briefly telling her that there had been problems surrounding her father’s death and she was now in Washington, D.C., helping to sort them out. Once again, her boss had been understanding and told her to take as much time as she needed, but Lanie knew her vacation time was running out. Pretty soon, she’d have to go back or risk losing her job. At least it was summer and there were enough students looking for summer work to help out, so the library wasn’t suffering from her absence.
Next she called the fire station and talked to one of the guys. She told him an equally vague story and asked him to pull her name off the roster until further notice. He assured her that while things had been busy, they were managing. She promised to call as soon as she was back in town and hung up the phone.
Guilt hit her. They needed
her help back home, and she was refusing to return because she wanted to stay here—where Mac and Dirk didn’t need, or want, her help. Not that she could blame them. After all, what could she do? She wasn’t specially trained like they were—all she knew was first aid, fires, and research.
That was it! She found her father’s laptop and set it up on the desk, plugging it into the data port. She called the front desk and made the necessary arrangements for accessing the Internet. She was soon so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear the connecting door open an hour later.
“What are you doing?”
She looked up and felt her cheeks burn at the sight of Mac standing in the doorway between the two rooms. He’d pulled on his jeans but hadn’t bothered with either socks or a shirt, and Lanie struggled not to stare. He looked disheveled with his hair mashed down in places and at least two days’ growth of beard covering his jaw. Lanie thought he’d never looked better.
“Hi.” She glanced down at her screen, afraid he might see how much the sight of him affected her. “I wanted to help, so I thought I’d see what I could find on the Internet that might be of use.”
“You did, did you?” He gave her a lazy smile as he walked toward her, and there was no hint of his earlier limp to mar his easy gait or the enticing motion of his hips. The memory of those hips pressed against her almost pulled a sigh from her.
As if sensing her thoughts, he came to stand behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders as he bent his head close to hers in order to look at the screen. Then he turned to her. “What did you find?”
She felt herself drowning in the depths of his eyes and had to blink several times in order to break the spell. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
He smiled, and she sat enthralled as he leaned closer still. It was a gentle kiss, not meant to seduce or arouse—though it did both. Lanie closed her eyes and focused all her attention on the warm, tender feel of his lips, his tongue brushing against hers. After a moment, the kiss ended and he pulled back, licked his lips, and smiled. “Is that coffee I taste?”
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