Blood Hunt Read online

  He shivered. Son of a bitch. What was happening to him?

  Before he had a chance to answer the questions about himself, Serruto arrived with tape recorder to ask official ones. The statement taken, Garreth was moved to the medical floor and left to sleep. But the huge weight pressing him into the steaming sheets gave him no chance...no peace.

  Garreth did not even attempt lunch. The mere scent of it nauseated him.

  Lien came for a short visit in the afternoon. “You look terrible,” she said, “but at least you’re alive. I had a frantic call from your mother yesterday morning.”

  Garreth’s stomach tightened. “They heard about me on the news?”

  “No, it hadn’t been broadcast yet. She said your grandmother Felt you’d been killed, that Satan tore out your throat.” Lien paused. “I’m happy she’s only part right this time. Unfortunately, at that time we did think you were dead, so the happiest phone call I’ve ever made was the one later to let your mother know you’re alive after all. She said to tell you they’ll be up in a couple of days to visit.”

  He would like that. Maybe Judith would let them bring Brian, too.

  Lien chattered about her job and art classes, relieving him of the necessity of saying anything. While she talked, she distracted him from his discomfort.

  Which all came back once she left. He resumed fighting aches and searing sheets. To make matters worse, his upper gums now hurt.

  He eyed the cushioned chair by the window. That might be a helpful change; it would be a change anyway. So he threw back the covers and eased over the side of the bed.

  In two steps he had fallen flat on his face, giving himself a bloody nose and — he discovered with horror — loosening his upper canine teeth. They wiggled when he touched them with his tongue.

  He was trying to crawl back into bed when an aide found him.

  Dr. Charles wasted no time with sympathy. “That was a stupid thing to do. You’re still too weak to get out of bed, and when I decide you’re ready — when I decide — you will be helped in and out. Under no circumstances are you to do it alone. I presume that as a police officer you know how to take orders. Well, I’m giving you one. Stay in bed. Do nothing without permission first. Is that clear?”

  Garreth nodded meekly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. We have the barium study scheduled for you tomorrow. We’ll get a dentist to check your teeth as well.”

  Though he never managed to sleep, he dozed, and toward nightfall not only felt much better, the desire to sleep vanished.

  He turned on the TV.

  A nurse, coming in to check his vital signs, turned it off. “Dr. Charles wants you to sleep.”

  As soon as she left, however, he switched the set back on, keeping the volume as low as he could and still hear. That proved to be very low indeed. It seemed that his sharpened hearing persisted. He used it to listen for nurses in the corridor, so he could shut off the set before they came in.

  After midnight, Channel 9 started its Friday Fright Night feature, three horror movies in a row. Garreth settled back to watch, as he often had since Marti died. However melodramatic, the movies diverted him. Tonight’s offerings began with Dracula.

  He sighed. How appropriate. His entire life these days seemed to revolve around blood, or the lack of it.

  Into the movie, with everyone worrying about Miss Lucy’s mysterious wasting disease, Garreth reflected that his one complaint with these shows was the way the characters waded up to their necks in clues and yet never realized they had a werewolf, demon, or vampire loose among them. On the other hand, perhaps that was reasonable. In real life no one would guess such a thing, either. They would hunt a rational explanation. Like with Miss Lucy. They thought the broach on the shawl caused the punctures on her neck. No real-life person would consider a vampire bite as —

  The thought ended in a paralysis as profound as when he lay in the morgue. He could not move, only stare at the TV screen with mind churning. No, that was impossible...a crazy thought! He was losing his mind. Lane Barber might be psychotic and a killer, but a human one, certainly. Nothing more or less. How could she be anything else? She slept all day because she worked nights. If she kept no food in her apartment, maybe she hated to cook and always ate out. He kept little more than snack food and microwave dinners at home himself. Yes, she bit men she made love to and some of them died, but two men with punctures in their bruises did not mean punctures in every bruise.

  On the TV, Dracula’s bite turned Miss Lucy to a vampire driven by mindless bloodlust.

  Thirst started to burn in Garreth’s throat and he reached involuntarily for the bandage around his neck.

  No! He jerked his hands away. That really was impossible! If every vampire bite made a vampire, the world would be hip-deep in the creatures. Look at all the men Lane had bitten.

  He turned off the TV with a decisive stab of his finger. The blood loss must be affecting his mind. Vampires did not exist. He had no insatiable urge to bite the nurses, did he, despite his thirst and their attractive blood scent? He had not developed a desire to don a black opera cape and take the form of a bat. He just happened to feel better at night.

  But cold continued to run up and down his spine, and knots worked uneasily along his gut.

  Anger flared in him. This was nonsense! He would end it once and for all.

  Easing out of bed, he groped his way to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. To his relief, he saw the same face he did every morning while he shaved.

  So that settled that! Everyone knew vampires did not reflect. His teeth, though sore and loose from his fall this afternoon, looked no longer than usual.

  Then he realized he had not turned on the light.

  He quickly flipped up the switch...and wished he had not. The eyes in the mirror, perceived before as normal gray, now reflected the light as Lane’s had, flaring red. Fire red, hell red...blood red.

  Garreth slammed down the switch in a spasm of panic and clutched the edge of the washbowl for support, trembling. No! This was insane. Impossible!

  And yet...

  He sat on the closed lid of the toilet. Yet, how was it that he, who always woke with the sun, now felt better at night? Why could he see in the dark? Why did he smell the blood in people and throw up solid food? On the other hand, if he had become —

  The thought stumbled and died before a new flood of panic. Run! a voice screamed inside him. Run! It brought him off the toilet to the bathroom door, where he clung to the jamb, breathing hard. He had to get out of here. There was a logical explanation for everything but he needed somewhere to think. Somewhere quiet. He could not do it in this reek of blood and voices shouting up and down the halls and everyone coming to poke and prod him.

  How to get out, though? While they could not keep him against his will, demanding to be released in the middle of the night might make them consider him irrational. He could hardly walk out in a hospital gown, either.

  But he had to get away somehow!

  Shaking, he made his way back to the bed and pushed the call button.

  “May I help you?” a female voice asked from the speaker above the bed.

  “I need to go to the bathroom. Will you send an orderly to help me, please?”

  A female aide appeared a few minutes later, not an orderly. She opened the cabinet beside his bed.

  “Please, not the urinal,” Garreth said. “I feel much better. Can’t you let me use the bathroom if someone takes me there?”

  “I’ll see,” she said.

  While Garreth waited, crossing mental fingers, he ripped the draw sheet on his bed into several long strips and wrapped them around his waist under his hospital gown. When the door opened again, he smiled in relief at the brawny orderly.

  “You’re sure you want to try this?” the orderly asked.

  Garreth nodded. He had no trouble making the gesture sincere.

  “Okay.” Putting an arm around Garreth, the orderly helped him out of bed and suppo
rted him across the room into the bathroom.

  The orderly’s cheerfulness stabbed Garreth with guilt. He consoled himself with the thought that if all went right, no one would be hurt.

  The orderly left him in the bathroom. Garreth waited a few minutes, running the water, then sat down on the floor and called for help.

  The orderly hurried in. “Did you fall? Are you hurt?”

  “Help me up, please.”

  As the orderly leaned over to do so, Garreth threw an arm around the muscular neck and tightened down.

  The orderly collapsed flat on the floor in Garreth’s neck lock.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Garreth said, “but if you don’t shuck your shirt and pants in one minute, you’re going to have the biggest pain of your life in your neck.”

  “Mr. Mikaelian, you — ” the orderly began in protest.

  “Strip.”

  It was hard with both of them lying on the floor, but the orderly managed. Garreth tied his hands with the strips from the draw sheet, gagged him with another strip and a washcloth, and tied him to the pipes of the washbowl, out of reach of the call button beside the toilet. Then Garreth changed into the orderly’s clothes, rolling up a cuff to shorten the trousers to his length. He helped himself to the orderly’s shoes as well, though large for him.

  “I’m sorry about this, but I want a quicker discharge than I think the doctor is willing to give me. At least I’m leaving you your skivvies. I’ll see the other clothes are sent back.”

  The orderly sighed in combined disgust, anger, and bewilderment.

  Garreth walked out, shutting off the light and closing the bathroom door.

  No one looked twice at him in the corridor. He took the elevator down and walked out of the building without being challenged. On the street he hailed a cab. The resolution that let him walk without staggering ran out. He slumped back in the seat.

  “Hey, buddy, you okay?” the cabbie asked.

  Oh, God. The cabbie smelled of blood, too, though with the reek of sweat and cigar nearly overwhelming it. The combination sent waves of nausea through him. “I’m fine.”

  The ride home seemed interminable. Keeping the cab waiting, he unlocked the door with his hidden spare key and changed clothes. A sweater with a turtleneck reaching almost to his ears hid the bandage on his throat.

  He went to the gun safe for the Charter Undercover revolver he liked carrying off-duty and strapped the .38 to his ankle, then dropped the extra set of car keys, his ATM card, and cash from his desk drawer into the pocket of a sport jacket. He had to endure another ride in the cab to an ATM, then to the lot where he parked the ZX.

  It was with relief that he paid off the cabbie, adding a twenty for him and tucking a couple of twenties into the orderly’s clothes. “See that these reach an orderly named Pechanec at General will you?”

  Then he was free, on his own. He started the car. But he hesitated before backing out of the parking slot. Where did he go now? “On his own” it occurred to him, this time meant alone...very, very alone.

  3

  Garreth drove blindly, not caring where he went. Some place would feel right, and there he would stop, and think. Rational answers he had overlooked before would become apparent. Then perhaps he could make the terrified child within him realize there was nothing to run from, nothing to be frightened of.

  Eventually he found himself in a deserted parking lot, but it was with shock that he looked up and recognized Mount Davidson. The white cross atop the hill loomed above him, his strange new night vision seeing it luminous with icy fire against the night sky. Relief and triumph followed surprise. This proved his imaginings false. How could he possibly have come to a place like this if he had...changed.

  Climbing out of the car, he made his way up to the cross. No lightning struck him. No terrible agony engulfed him. If anything, each step made him feel better. Sitting on the ground at the base brought sheer relief, all the aches of the past several days draining away. Garreth stretched out full length and buried his face in the grass. The earth felt delicious, so cool, so clean and sweet-smelling. Funny. He had never liked sleeping on the ground as a kid on scouting camp-outs, but now it felt better than any bed, certainly better than that torture rack at the hospital. What a joy it would be to just to continue lying here, to pull the earth over him and —

  He sat bolt upright, shaking, horror and gut-wrenching fear flooding back. What the hell are you thinking, man! He really was going wacko. He had better take himself back to the hospital before his delusions had him jumping some unsuspecting jogger. But Garreth could not make himself move, even though his presence defiled the hill. The earth drew him. It even soothed the thirst growing more ravenous by the hour.

  The sun, he decided. He would wait for the sun. If nothing happened when it rose, there was nothing wrong with him except that he had gone bananas and needed a room at the funny farm. And if — well, it would be a clean end with no one having to know what a foul, damned thing he had become.

  Garreth crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap, and waited. Eventually the sky lightened. His heart pounded. Feeling it, he scolded himself. Don’t be a fool. Nothing’s going to happen. But his heart continued to slam against the wall of his chest while the sky grew brighter. Pulses throbbed in his aching, burning throat, in his arms, legs, temples.

  The upper rim of the sun appeared over the horizon. Garreth braced himself. A beam of light lanced westward to the great white cross above him. He fought an urge to bury his face in his hands and made himself lift his chin to meet the sun.

  It brought no agony, no searing dissolution. The light burned through his eyes, however, turning the throb in his temples to a pounding headache. A great weight pressed down on him, draining his strength, dragging at his limbs. The earth beckoned to him, called him to the sweet coolness that would shut out this miserable, blinding, exhausting sun —

  “No!” He lurched to his feet. “Damn you!” he shouted at the sun. “Kill me! You’re supposed to kill me. Please! I won’t be...this...what Lane is!” He screamed into the gold and pink sky of dawn. “No! No! NO!”

  Screamed in fury and despair, over and over and over.

  Garreth did not recall running down Mount Davidson or fishing trooper glasses from the glove compartment of the car and gunning the ZX out of the parking lot, but he found himself driving again, with mirror lenses hiding the eyes of his image in the rearview mirror. Driving where, though? He slowed down, groping for orientation. And slowed still more as a patrol car passed him going the other direction. He carried no driver’s license; that sat in the Property Room along with the rest of his billfold contents, state’s exhibits.

  A street sign finally told him where he was. The Sunset district. His reflexes were taking him to Harry and Lien’s place...to Lien, who had kept him sane the last time his life crashed down around him.

  Garreth parked the car around the corner at the end of the block Harry did not pass on the way to work and climbed over the fences separating the yards behind the neighborhood houses until he reached the Takananda’s. There he sat down behind the big oak tree shading the flag-stoned patio and settled against the trunk to wait.

  From inside the house came the sounds of morning: a shrill electronic beeping of the alarm clock, running water, the murmur of voices. The telephone rang. Harry’s voice rose. Moments later the front door slammed and the motor of the car roared to life. Tires squealed around the corner at the far end of the block.

  Garreth pushed to his feet and came around the tree onto the patio.

  Lien saw him from the kitchen. Her almond eyes went wide.

  “Garreth!” She ran out of the house to him. “What on earth are you doing?”

  He managed a wry smile. “Visiting.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Don’t lie to me, Garreth Doyle Mikaelian! Harry just had a call about you. Come in this minute and sit down! You look ready to fall on your face.”

  He followed her gladly and dropped i
nto the closest chair.

  She sat on the hassock in front of him, frowning in exasperation and concern. Her nearness brought a warm wash of bath-talcum scent overlying that of blood. “Why did you run away from the hospital?”

  He could give a half-truthful answer. “I couldn’t eat their food or sleep in their bed. I wanted out.”

  She stared. “Have you lost — “ She broke off to resume in a patient voice, “Garreth, you almost died. You’re in no condition to be going anywhere. You need medical care. Come on; I’ll drive you back.”

  She started to rise.

  Garreth reached out to catch her wrist. “No! I can’t go back. I — I’m — ” But the words caught in his throat. He could not tell her what a monster he had become. Hell...he could not even say the words to himself. Thank god for the glasses so she could not see the animal glow of his eyes. “Lien, I have to sleep and I haven’t been able to since I went into that place. Let me stay here today, and promise you won’t tell anyone where I am, not even Harry. Please!”

  She stared from his face to her wrist and said softly, “Garreth, you’re hurting me.”

  He let go as though stung. Shit. “Damn! I’m sorry.”

  Lien rubbed the marks left on her wrist by his fingers. “I never knew you were so strong.”

  He swore at himself. How could he be so thoughtless? He had seen some of his strength when wrestling the orderly. “I didn’t realize — I never meant — I’m sorry,” he said miserably.

  “Garreth!”

  He looked at her.

  She patted his arm. “You can stay on one condition. That you do nothing but rest. Do you promise?”

  He nodded.

  She smiled. “Fortunately it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work, so you won’t be alone. Harry went off without breakfast. Would you like his waffles?”

  His throat burned with hunger but the thought of waffles brought a spasm of nausea. He grimaced. “I’m not hungry.”

  Lien frowned at him “Garreth, you — ” She sighed. “All right. Now get yourself into bed in the guest room.”