Twenty-five
TJ’s eyes opened, blinked twice slowly at the blackness that surrounded her, then closed again. She shivered, as if cold, though the temperature of the room was quite comfortable. Unable to see, she stretched her arms out and felt around her, looking for something, anything to give her a clue as to where she was and what had happened to her. She remembered being attacked in the car, then nothing. Suddenly terrified, she uttered a small gasp when she discovered she was naked and lying on a thin mattress on a cold cement floor. Shivering violently, she wrapped her arms around herself, as if to keep danger away, and called out in a small voice, “Hello? Hello, is anyone here?”
The hunter struck a match, and the flare of light in the darkness blinded TJ for a moment, making her squint and turn her head to the side. When she regained her vision, there was a candle flickering on a wooden table a few feet away. She could now see that she was in a small room, no more than ten by ten feet, and she was not alone.
TJ held her hand up, trying to shield the glare from the candle, but all she could make out was a pair of legs, crossed at the knees, and a face shadowed by the brim of a hat.
She crossed her arms in front of her, covering her breasts, and said, as defiantly as she could manage, “Who are you and what do you want with me?”
The figure in the dark chuckled, a sound like bat wings rustling together. “Tabitha, I think you know who I am, or should I say, what I am.”
The bile rose in her throat at this confirmation of what she had suspected, but she decided to try and bluff her way out of this trap. “What do you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.” She started to get up. “Now, why don’t you get me my clothes and let me go . . .”
“Oh, little one. I think you know that’s not possible.”
She sank back down, tears of fear and frustration slowly coursing down her cheeks. “Why me . . . why am I here?”
The hunter pursed his lips while he contemplated what to say. “You’re right, we should have no secrets from each other.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward on the chair. “Actually, you’re my second choice. At first, I had planned to take Samantha Scott as my mate.”
At the word mate, TJ gasped and put her hand to her open mouth.
“However, at the last moment, I decided to take you instead. For my . . . particular needs, a doctor trained in internal medicine will be much more advantageous than a pathologist. You see, Tabitha, you and I are going to unlock the secrets of the universe together. I intend for us to solve the mystery of two great scourges of mankind—we are going to work on curing both CJD and the living hell of the curse of the Vampyri.”
In spite of her terror, TJ managed a short laugh. “Oh, is that all?”
He barked out a command, impaling her with his voice and causing her to freeze in place. “Let’s not play games with each other, Tabitha! Soon we’re going to know each other very well, and there will be no place for derision or scorn.” He stood and approached the naked girl, towering over her in the flickering light of the candle. His voice got huskier and he seemed to have trouble forming his words, as if his tongue had grown thick. “Now, why don’t you tell me what you and your friends have found out with all your meddling? Exactly how much do you know about me?”
As he said this last, TJ could feel his words invading her mind and could actually feel herself want to answer, want to please the insistent voice. A gnarled hand with clawlike nails reached out of the shadows and grasped her neck, pulling her to her feet. The thumb pushed up under her jaw, tilting her head up and back, so that she had to look down to try to focus on the shadowy face approaching her. The candlelight gleamed and reflected off the fangs as they reached for her neck, drooling sparkling scarlet saliva.
In spite of the terror screaming in her mind at the invasion, her body betrayed her and responded sexually to his mental commands. Her nipples tightened and sprang erect on her breasts, aching to be touched and caressed. Her sex became hot and wet with secretions, throbbing in anticipation of the delicious invasion. Her body strained toward him against her will.
She fought with all the strength within her against his commands, but still the monstrous teeth moved closer and closer, until they pierced her jugular vein. With that, her will crumpled and she began to moan and pulsate in violent orgasm, her thighs quivering and opening in invitation to him, and he began to thrust his erection against her and growl deep in his throat in unison with her cries of passion.
* * *
The meeting at Clark’s office was not going well. Shooter was out of his mind with guilt and fear and couldn’t be reasoned with. Shelly and Barbara Silver had joined Damon Clark, Shooter, Officer Sherry Landry, and Sam and Matt in a meeting to try and decide what could be done to find and hopefully save TJ.
Sam, eyes red-rimmed from crying, was sitting on the couch next to Shelly. He was dry-eyed, but had a haunted look, and his expression was so intent that Matt was afraid that he was going to break at any moment. Damon had just spent fifteen minutes bringing Sherry up to date on their theories concerning the serial killer, and on the assumption that he had kidnapped TJ from the car earlier that evening.
Sherry frowned. “Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me that y’all believe that these killings have been done by a vampire?”
Damon glanced at Shelly, shrugged, and nodded.
“You mean a blood-sucking, supernatural creature that has returned from the dead and now stalks the city by night, killing and draining his victims of their blood by biting them on the neck?” she asked, her expression clearly showing her disbelief.
Clark raised one hand. “I know it sounds crazy, Sherry, but . . .”
She practically shouted, “You’re damn right it sounds crazy.” She took another look around the office. “If I didn’t know you all so well, I’d think you were drunk or on drugs.”
Shelly stood up and crossed to the window to look out, but the glare from the lights reflected back in his face and mirrored the room. He turned. “Sherry, calm down and listen to the facts; then you can make up your own mind.” He wiped his face with his hands, his exhaustion evident. “Believe me, if you can find a rational explanation that fits all the facts, we’ll jump on it. None of us has come easily to believe in this supernatural creature, but the facts have left us little choice in the matter.”
“Okay, Doc, convince me.” She folded her arms across her chest.
Shelly perched on the edge of Damon’s desk and addressed them all. “Okay, here’s what we know. We have over one hundred murders in the past year with the same, or very similar MOs: severe neck wounds and most or all of the blood missing from the bodies. A man was found, decapitated and burned, whose flesh tested to be dead for over twenty years, and I’ve just gotten a report he was suffering from CJD.”
“CJD?” Sherry asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a degenerative mental disease caused by eating the flesh of an animal that has the CJD organisms in it. It causes progressive insanity and both physical and mental degeneration.”
“Oh,” she said, obviously still not understanding.
“Also,” Shelly went on, “at the scene of one of the crimes, the perpetrator was shot with a high-powered pistol. We know the perp was hit because bits of his flesh were found adherent to the bullet, in spite of the fact that there was no sign that the wound caused him to bleed, or even slowed him down. The perp’s flesh that was found on the bullet also tested to be over one hundred years old.”
Sherry interrupted. “Was the flesh normal, or was it dead also?”
Shelly frowned. “There’s some confusion about that. The tests initially showed the flesh to be nonliving, but on further examination, some low-level life activity was found. The lab said they’d never seen anything like it before and didn’t know quite how to classify it.” He paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’m in the process of having a colleague of mine repeat the tests to see if he concurs.”
She nodded. “Okay, go on.”
Damon took up the tale. “Sherry, there was also evidence at the scene that the killer had tremendous strength. He had twisted a steel knob off the door and splintered the door with his bare hands.”
“And you should see the door to my car,” Shooter mumbled without looking up. “It looks like it was hit with a wrecking ball.”
Shelly continued. “The other night at my place, we made a list of all these things and of the actual events of the eye-witness report. The man is about six feet in height, has black hypnotic eyes, cold and clammy skin, and is strong as a bull.”
“Anything else?”
“From the number and dates of the killings, it appears that he kills about every two weeks or so, and Shooter was told that he apparently was called Doc by one of the victims.”
When Shelly said that, a half-forgotten memory forced its way into Matt’s mind. He shivered, thinking over the implications as the conversation continued.
“That’s not much,” answered Sherry to Shelly’s statement about what they knew about the killer.
“You’re right. We don’t know if he can change into a bat, or sleeps in a coffin, or if he casts a reflection in a mirror or is afraid of a cross.”
Shooter jumped up and began to pace. “We do know that the son of a bitch has TJ, and that she doesn’t stand a chance unless we find her.” He whirled around and pointed at Damon. “And we’re not going to do that sitting around this office.”
Damon stood and started to shout back, when Sam interrupted softly. “He’s right, Chief.” They all turned to stare at her. It was the first sound she had made all evening. “We need a plan, and we need it fast if we’re to have any hope of finding TJ alive.”
Damon swallowed his anger and sat at his desk, thinking. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Sherry, I want you to run every victim’s name through the computers to see if they have anything in common . . . arrest records, associations with known criminals, anything. I also want you to check the times of death—see if they all occurred at night.
“Matt, I want you and Sam to do the same at the hospital. Check and see if any of the victims had been treated for any strange illnesses lately, or if they had any medical records at all.”
“I don’t know, Chief. That’s a real long shot. Nothing of any note medically showed up on any of the postmortems,” Matt said.
Barbara spoke up, hesitantly. “Shel . . .”
He looked over at her. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Do you remember the meeting we had at our house the night Chief Clark asked you to help with the investigation?”
“Yeah, babe, what about it?”
“We were discussing the body of the man who had been set on fire and who had been dead for twenty years. You said then that you thought the vampire killer had killed that man, and that he was probably a vampire too.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, what you said just now got me to thinking. If this vampire drinks someone’s blood, wouldn’t he be risking getting this CJD or whatever you call it if the victim had it?”
He frowned and started to reply, then clamped his mouth shut and sat there deep in thought for a moment. Finally, he turned to look at Matt. He shook his head; he simply had no idea. He looked back at Barbara. “That’s a great question. To my knowledge, no one’s ever studied the possibility of acquiring CJD by drinking blood, but I don’t know why it couldn’t be transmitted that way.” He looked around at the group. “You know, every time we learn something about this killer, it opens up more questions.”
Shooter sneered. “Yeah, but how does the fact that the killer may be at risk for CJD help us find TJ? We know from his tissue on the bullet that he doesn’t have it.”
What had been at the back of Matt’s mind suddenly burst forth. He was struck by an idea. “Don’t you see? His very success at not having gotten CJD, or any other blood-borne disease, is important. What would you do if every time you ate something there was the possibility it would kill you, or at least make you very sick?”
Sherry interrupted. “What’re you getting at, Matt?”
Sam jumped up. “You’d test it first to make sure it was safe.”
Matt smiled. “Jackpot, sweetheart. Since this creature has been able to avoid CJD and other diseases in spite of the fact that every week or two he’s drinking some stranger’s blood, then he’s got to be testing his victims’ blood before he consumes it.”
Shooter looked puzzled. “How do we know that? Maybe he’s just been lucky.”
Matt shook his head; that wouldn’t fly. “Sherry, didn’t you say that the reason this killer went undetected for so long was that the majority of his victims had been from the street people—the prostitutes, the drug addicts, and the homeless?”
“Yes. Until recently, anyway.”
“Well, these are the very people who have the highest incidence of CJD, and AIDS and every other disease in the city. I’ll bet it’s close to a mathematical impossibility to pick even twenty of these people at random and not have one with one of those illnesses. Therefore, it’s almost certain that he somehow knows which people are safe and which aren’t.”
Barbara interjected. “Of course, he might have some sort of extrasensory power that tells him the potential victim is safe, or maybe he can ‘smell’ the sickness if they have some blood disease, like dogs who won’t eat tainted meat.”
“That’s right,” Matt snapped with some irritation, “any of those things could be true. But speculating on what this creature may or may not be able to do doesn’t help us. All I’m saying is that if he’s testing them for blood diseases, perhaps we can use that fact to track him down.”
“There’s only one lab that does CJD and AIDS testing,” said Sam, “the state lab in Austin.”
Shelly held up his hand. “Well, not quite. It’s true that the state lab is the only lab that actually does the testing, but all the reference labs in town send their tests to the state lab, so we’ve just got to see if all of the victims had their tests sent in from the same reference lab.”
“There’s something else to think about,” added Barbara.
“What, Barbara?”
“Shelly, you’ve often complained about the laws concerning lab testing, and about how the results are so secret that sometimes doctors can’t find out a patient’s results without a signed consent.” She looked around. “If the access to the results of blood tests is so limited, how could the killer find out the results?”
Matt concentrated for a moment, working it out in his mind. Suddenly, he realized that made their task even easier. “Of course. The blood tests are coded, and the results are confidential. Very few people know both the results and the identity of the patient.”
“And who might that be?” asked Damon.
Matt glanced around the room but Sam answered for him. “The patient, the doctor who ordered the test, and the employees of the reference lab that drew the blood.”
Shooter snapped his fingers. “And our witness said one of the victims called the perp Doc. All we have to do is get the state lab to check and find out if our victims had blood tests, and who ordered the tests, and we’re halfway home!”
“Right!” Matt said. He went to Barbara and took her hands in his. “Thanks, Barb. Your questions will help us catch the killer.”
Sherry was listing on her pad what they had to do. She looked up. “Doctor Silver, if you’ll get on the phone and start waking people up in Austin, I’ll crank up the computers at police headquarters and with any luck we’ll have some solid leads by the morning. I can have the computers link up via modem and run a cross-check on the names of people we think may have been victims and see if they had laboratory tests in the recent past for this CJD or AIDS or anything else exotic.”
Matt held up his hand. “Just a minute.”
Damon looked up. “What is it, Matt?”
“I hesitate to bring this up, but when we left the house earlier, I felt like we were being watched.”
Shooter jumped to his feet, hands clenched into fists. “What? Why didn’t you say something?”
Matt shrugged. “Shooter, I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I just didn’t think it meant anything.”
Shelly frowned. “And what made you change your mind, Matt? Maybe it was just a coincidence after all.”
“I don’t think so, Shelly. It would be a tremendous coincidence that the killer just happened to be at the same location as three of the people investigating his activities, and just happened to kidnap someone close to one of the investigators.” He stood and faced the group. “No, I think it means that he has somehow become aware that we are tracking him. It’s much too soon for him to be killing again . . . he’s not due for another week and a half.”
Shooter’s face was full of anguish. “Then why did he take TJ?”
Matt glanced at Damon, who said grimly, “It can only mean that he took her to try and find out how much we know, how close we are to catching him.”