Bloodlinks

  1

  Bloodlinks

  by

  Lee Killough

  ISBN: 978-1-927476-93-2

  Smashwords Edition

  Published by:

  Books We love Ltd.

  (Electronic Book Publishers)

  Chestermere, Alberta , T1X1C2

  Canada

  http://bookswelove.net

  Copyright 2012 by Lee Killough

  Cover art Copyright 2012 by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any for, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Chapter One

  He dreamed of death, and Undeath. Homicide Inspector Garreth Mikaelian pressed against the wall of an alley in San Francisco's North Beach, held by the hypnotic gaze of glowing red eyes. Red light glinted in the vampire's hair, too...not a beautiful woman, but Lane Barber used her clothes, body language, and long legs — seeming even longer in high-heeled boots that made her tower above his five-eight — to appear beautiful.

  “You're going to like this, Inspector,” she whispered. “You’ll feel no pain.” She tipped back his head and her cool lips moved down his jaw to his neck, sending a wave of pleasure through him, even when the kisses became bites pinching his skin in hard, avid nips. “You won't mind a bit that you're dying.”

  Her mouth stopped over the artery pounding in his throat. She bit harder. A distant sensation told him her teeth broke his skin, but he felt no pain, only a slight pressure as she sucked. A spasm of intense pleasure lanced through him. Catching his breath, he strained up against her mouth.

  Presently, though, as cold and weakness spread through him, concern invaded the ecstasy, a belated recognition she was sucking his blood. Sucking his blood! At least two other men connected to her had died of exsanguination. He tried pushing her away, but to his dismay could not move. Her body pinned him against the wall despite his greater weight. The fear sharpened to panic.

  Use your gun, you dumb flatfoot, a voice in his head snarled.

  Her grip blocked him from reaching the weapon. Abandoning pride, he sucked in a breath to yell for help, but her hand clamped over his mouth. In desperation he sank his teeth into it...bit deep. Her blood filled his mouth...scorching tongue and throat as he swallowed in shock at the liquid fire of it.

  The vampire sprang away, ripping his hand and throat in her retreat. He collapsed as though drained of bone as well as blood.

  She laughed mockingly. “Goodbye, Inspector. Rest in peace.”

  Her footsteps faded away, leaving him face down in his growing pool of blood....listening helplessly to heartbeats and breath that slowed, stumbled, and stopped.

  Garreth woke shaking.

  Shit. What made him dream that? As if the memory always lurking in the back of his mind while wide awake were not enough.

  Memory, not mere dream.

  And a year and a half since that 1983 attack had blunted none of his remembered terror, nor the horror that followed.

  Waking up in the morgue.

  Realizing Lane made him a vampire, too.

  Struggling to hide it from everyone else.

  Then worst of all, being responsible for the near fatal shooting of his partner Harry Takananda...because he could not enter a dwelling uninvited, not even that of a murder suspect.

  He had Lane’s blood on his hands, too, though he killed her in self-defense. Learning her real name, Madelaine Bieber, he had tracked her here to Baumen, the little Kansas town of her birth, to arrest her, only to have her come after him with a bow and arrows. Arrows, after all, being wooden stakes. It had been as terrifying and desperate a night as being in that alley. And surviving had to be followed by manipulating the evidence to hide Lane’s identity and sex and have her buried without an autopsy as a John Doe.

  Now... Garreth folded his hands behind his head and lay staring at the ceiling. Destroying Lane — Mada, rather, as he was careful to call her here — had not magically restored his humanity. So now he lived on. Hiding what he was. Making a tolerable life for himself and even still managing to be a cop.

  A uniformed officer again, true — a glance across his studio apartment above Municipal Court Clerk Helen Schoning’s garage found his tan shirt, dark brown trousers, and ballistic vest hanging in the open closet — but patrolling from 8:00 pm to 4:00 in the morning suited him just fine.

  His father accused him of burying himself. Maybe. There were far worse places to be buried than Baumen...where they attributed his oddities to being from California, and the surrounding hills pastured cattle who never missed the blood he took to fill the quart bottles in his bar fridge.

  Some vampire lore was myth. He did not have to drink human blood.

  So what made him dream about Lane’s attack? A conscience afraid of complacency? Despite every swallow of blood, every lung-paralyzing whiff of garlic wafting from the Pioneer Grill, and every dawn reminding him he lived a lie. Daylight did not fry him as happened in the movies, just — contrary to the weightlessness its name suggested — tried to crush him.

  Speaking of which, not an ounce of it remained outside. He felt only darkness beyond the apartment walls and blackout curtains...and heard none of last night’s rain that accompanied him to sleep at dawn. If only winter’s early sunsets and long nights could last all year.

  Thirst tickled his throat.

  Garreth swung onto his feet, smoothed the sheets over the flannel mattress pad with its thin packets of earth secured by the quilting, and folded up the sofa bed.

  In the bathroom he shaved without turning on the light to keep his eyes from turning red in the mirror. Vampires did have reflections. But while familiar grey eyes and sandy hair looked back at him, the face could still catch him by surprise...a stranger’s, thin and boyish instead of the square one he spent so many years seeing.

  As he pulled on his uniform, the tickle in his throat flared to full-blown hunger. He filled a coffee mug, noting he would soon need to refill the bottles, and leaned against the counter sipping the blood. Grimacing. Blood should be blood, yet animal blood lacked something...like drinking watered-down tomato juice when Hunger wanted the peppery zing of a Bloody Mary.

  Hunger he forced himself to ignore. He could not give in to it, would not turn people into cattle as Lane had! Though the Hunger never gave up. Could that be the source of tonight’s dream, an attempt to shake his control?

  “Well it won’t work! This is all you get. Ever!” He emptied the mug in a gulp and rinsed it out. “Accept that.”

  If only he and the Hunger could.

  Chapter Two

  Beyond the landing outside his door, dripping oaks in Helen’s back yard and swamped low areas beneath told Garreth the rain had continued most of the day. A clear sky stretched overhead now, however, with a silver dollar moon in the east. And in a twist typical of Kansas’s capricious weather, instead of the wintry reminder in last night’s temperatures they had air warm and balmy as spring.

  So...a beautiful March evening...no need for his winter jacket. He snagged his slicker before locking up, however — being Kansas, before the end of the night they might have more rain — and walked the three blocks to work with the slicker over his shoulder. At the police department’s end of City Hall, the keypad by the rear entrance admitted him to the hallway between Chief Danzig’s office and the locker room. After a stop in the latter to buckle on his duty belt and collect his briefcase, he continued on into the office.

  Lingering uneasiness from the dream gave way to contentment as he surv
eyed the room... desks, files, form rack, radio rack, cork-panels on the walls shingled with notices and wanted posters...smelled familiar odors: the smoky taint of Lieutenant Kaufman’s cigarettes, coffee simmering down to tar, faint scents of urine and disinfectant that managed to leak down from the four cells upstairs. Layered, today, with the smell of wet boots rather than the aroma of chocolate chip cookies Sue Ann Pfeifer, their dispatcher, usually brought but had given up as she tried another diet. No matter that he smelled her blood scent and that of the one officer present, Sergeant Nat Toews — pronounced Taves — here he stopped being a fraud. He was home, just what he claimed to be, a cop.

  Nat, long and lanky, easy to imagine on horseback at the head of a posse, raised a hand in greeting without looking up from his typewriter. “Be with you in a minute.”

  To brief him on wants and warrants and the day’s activity.

  “Not yet!” Sue Ann called from the far side of the communications desk separating this section of the office from Dispatch and the front counter. “Garreth, babysit the radio for me while I go to the john!”

  She headed for the locker room.

  Garreth piled slicker, briefcase, and ball cap on a desk and circled the far end of the communications desk to Sue Ann’s chair. “So, what’s today been like?”

  “Very, very soggy until about five.” Nat pulled a report from the typewriter and zig-zagged a finger down it, proof-reading. “A fender bender at Dillons, some traffic violations, a forged check at the Sport and Spinner, a couple of domestic disturbances — neither very serious — and a bicycle theft, otherwise pretty quiet. Maggie’s still out taking the theft report.”

  Maggie Lebekov, their female officer and one seventh of the sworn force...and several of the reasons he liked Baumen.

  “Got a couple of BOLO’s, neither local.”

  Garreth saw them posted by the radio, one state, for a bank robbery suspect from Topeka and one national for two men suspected of robbing a South San Francisco bank, during which a guard and customer were killed, and of subsequently murdering a highway trooper in Nevada.

  While listening to the radio traffic of police and sheriff departments in the surrounding counties, Garreth checked other notices around the desk. Descriptions of stolen vehicles; a list of warrants; several pictures of missing children. Also the picture of a missing hunting dog and the name and fax number of a sheriff’s dispatcher in Stony Creek, Arizona, with the notation: send recipe for chili-chocolate cake. That had to be a connection Doris Schoning, their night dispatcher, made through skip, radio signals reflecting off layers in the atmosphere late at night...sometimes originating from very distant sources.

  “Five, Baumen.” A voice from a local source, Officer Ed Duncan.

  Garreth keyed the mike. “Go ahead, Five.”

  After a pause, Duncan came back in a deep voice: “Yo, Mama, your voice is changing. I warned you all that red meat would put hair on your chest.”

  Nat rolled his eyes heavenward.

  Garreth cut off the nonsense. “What do you need, Five?”

  Duncan’s voice returned to normal. “What? Oh...a new case number.”

  Garreth read it off Sue Ann’s clipboard.

  He finished logging the call in time for Sue Ann to reclaim her chair. “Thanks a ton, Garreth. I’m supposed to be drinking lots of water with this diet and it makes me pee all the time.” Her plump face twisted wryly.

  “Six, Baumen,” the radio said. “I’m 10-7.” Maggie, going out of service.

  Shortly she came through the rear entrance...curly dark hair, slim and tautly fit. After a visit to the locker room she reappeared minus her duty belt and slicker, laid her briefcase on a desk, and giving Garreth a warm smile, tossed him car keys. “It’s ready to go, including a full gas tank.”

  Nat said, “One last thing. There’s a blood drive in Bellamy this coming Wednesday and Danzig ‘encourages’ us all to participate.”

  Not an order, but everyone knew how much Danzig, who would go, liked his department demonstrating public spirit.

  The briefing over, Garreth picked up his gear and started out.

  “Beware the ides of March,” Sue Ann called.

  Garreth glanced back, feeling his neck prickle. Not her usual be careful out there or stay safe. “It’s only the seventh, Sue Ann. The Ides are the fifteenth.”

  She grinned at him over the communications desk. “Oh? I didn’t know that. It just seemed like a cool intellectual kind of thing to say.”

  It might come of impulse for her, but after growing up with his Grandma Doyle, who had Second Sight, combined with last night’s dream, it felt threatening.

  So while he accepted Maggie’s word about the patrol car being ready, he still checked the equipment in the trunk, and the shotgun locked in place above the windshield. Then he tossed his slicker in the passenger foot well, laid his briefcase on the passenger seat, and switched on the ignition preparatory to testing the lights and siren.

  All hell broke loose. Above him the siren screamed. Red and white lights flashing across the building and the other cars in the lot told him the light bar was on, too, and the left turn signal. Both the car and police radios blared at top volume and the windshield wipers scraped across the windshield at full speed. The air conditioner blasted him with icy air.

  A knee cracked against the steering column in his startled jump.

  With the pain, initial panicky confusion — what did he turn off first? — gave way to rational thought. He switched off the key, then opened the door to lean out and glare back at the department's rear entrance at a wickedly grinning Maggie. The car had been ready for him all right.

  “You’re dead, Lebekov!”

  She thumbed her nose at him... “Take it out on me later!” ...and jumped back inside.

  Meaning she intended to be waiting for him when he came home after the shift. Nice. For that, she was always welcome to pull a practical joke.

  Smiling, he shut off all the switches before starting the car again.

  Chapter Three

  Reflex turned Garreth left out of the parking lot, heading the two blocks to Kansas Avenue, mainstreet, while reflecting on blood. To please the boss and play his role, of course he intended to endure daylight and go to the blood drive. Donate, though? Hell no. Lane believed a virus created vampires. A healthy person’s immune system destroyed the small inoculations received in saliva during a bite, but with continued inoculations, or if virus-rich blood entered a weakened body — as when he bit Lane’s hand then bled out — the virus took over. Renovating its host, creating an instrument for its survival and reproduction. Except no way would he assist the latter. So he counted on his vampire-low blood pressure to once more excuse him from donating.

  At Kansas Avenue, Garreth crossed its two southbound lanes and halted on the Maple Street crossing of the railroad spur running up the middle of the street. A good vantage point for a quick survey of the downtown area while listening for his number on the radio. This being Thursday, the stores stayed open late, giving Baumen more traffic than most weeknights. Farm families in particular took advantage of the evening hours, and shoppers from Lebeau — a wide spot in the road at the north end of the county — who opted for Baumen over driving all the way down to the county’s biggest town, Bellamy. So cars, vans, and a large number of pickups filled parking spaces on both sides of the street and along the tracks.

  On the radio a Bellamy deputy ran a registration check. A Russell deputy reported an open pasture gate.

  Not all the vehicles belonged to shoppers, he knew. During the week customers in the bars and members of the VFW up the street danced more than they drank, but as the one am closing time approached he would still watch for drivers who seemed unsteady.

  He fingered his gear shift, debating whether to drag Kansas as the local teens would tomorrow and Saturday night, checking for expired tags and suspicious behavior. Or remain here for a bit, which still met Chief Danzig’s dictate to “maintain a presence”...ke
ep visible to the public.

  So many of whom he knew by now. Automatically his internal file ID’d passing faces. Denise Schaller: daughter of Schaller Ford’s owner Daniel, driving her vintage T-bird convertible, top down tonight. Gene Eberhardt in his Dodge RAM, who married the boss’s daughter to become virtual owner of Gfeller Lumber. Jeremy Spicer, sixteen, in his chopped and lowered matte black ‘39 Ford, dressed in black, too, hair slicked back, trying to look badass.

  As he passed Garreth he revved his engine to let the pipes roar. Just show, knowing full well his father would confiscate the car keys and ground him for a moving violation.

  And, oh goody...Officer Edward Duncan...weight-lifter, crack marksman, and swaggeringly proud of his faint likeness to Robert Redford.

  Duncan pulled onto the crossing and braked with his window opposite Garreth’s. The biceps of the arm resting on his window strained his uniform sleeve. “Yo, Frisco.” He paused. “Um...” Paused again.

  Garreth blinked. Uncertainty? From Duncan? He waited. This had to be good.

  Finally: “What do you know about the Brit in town asking about your grandmother?”

  Meaning Mada Bieber...the root of the lie he lived. A chill erased any amusement at Duncan’s discomfort. “What Brit? What kind of questions?”

  “You don’t know?” That brought back the Duncan he knew...smirking...clearly pleased at being one up. Being another victim of Lane’s arrows had not bonded Duncan and him the way shared peril often did. “He’s a writer researching a book about World War II and he wants to know where your grandmother is so he can ask her about her experiences over there then.”

  The chill became a jolt of fear. Beware the Ides of March. How did he know Mada had been in Europe then? How much did he know about her time there? “Did you tell him she’s dead?” True enough...just the where and when being a lie.