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ENVELOPED IN DARKNESS, Greyson stood in the corner of a private room in Vassar Brothers Hospital Center, watching the rise and fall of a six-year-old patient’s chest. Attached to a ventilator, the boy didn’t breathe on his own. The rhythmic whoosh and click of the machine was a melancholy lullaby. Greyson listened. And waited.
Admitted to the hospital a week earlier for untreated pneumonia that had worsened to a blood infection called “sepsis”, Tyler Hansen had been placed on life support to give the intravenous antibiotics and other medications a chance to work. Greyson had read his chart. He knew all the drugs that were being administered. He’d also seen, noted among the pages of comments from a team of doctors tending to him, that Tyler was the child of a single mother who’d lost him twice thanks to calls placed to the Department of Children and Family Services. Margaret, or Meg, as she was called, was a well-known addict and a frequent visitor of the emergency room. Her visits included two overdoses, four soft-tissue infections from heroin needles, one abortion she’d attempted on her own at home that resulted in a D and C and a three-day stay, and two sets of stitches. Tyler, Meg’s son, who was lying before Greyson, had suffered in so many ways. Pneumonia that had gone unnoticed and untreated for weeks had caused his condition to deteriorate rapidly. Still Meg had sent him to school, according to his chart. It wasn’t until he’d passed out in class and an ambulance had been called that he’d been seen by a doctor and given treatment.
Yes, Tyler had suffered. The life of a child born to an addict was one marked by chaos and maltreatment. The boy before him had been no exception. Page after page of reports Greyson had accessed by slipping in and out of doctor offices and nurse stations like a wraith, unseen and unheard, had told Tyler’s horrific story.
But even now, in the seemingly safe hospital where he was receiving treatment, Tyler was not safe. A predator loomed, stalking the sick boy and waiting to act. To end Tyler’s life once and for all.
Her nametag read “Vanessa”. Greyson held his breath and studied her intensely as she snuck into the room and darted toward the patient with the skilled silence and dexterity of one accustomed to stealth. To evil. He felt her iniquity, felt it pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. Staring down at Tyler’s inert form, the boy so pale and fragile, Vanessa grinned, the expression ripe with wickedness. The blue light cast from the monitor to her side deepened and darkened shadows on her face, lending her an even more ghoulish appearance. She reached a hand in the front pocket of her smocked top and started to retrieve an object. Every muscle in Greyson’s body tensed, twitching and ready to act in the space of a breath. She stopped, however, and Greyson wondered whether she was reconsidering. She looked over her shoulder, pausing as if she’d heard something, then dashed to the door. Closed so that just a sliver of anemic light passed through, the heavy, wooden door softened most sounds. But she’d seemed alarmed. He watched her as she approached the threshold. Peeking out the door and into the hallway, she looked left then right, careful to stay concealed by the dark. She remained, completely still, until she was certain the hall was empty.
Vanessa had no business being in Tyler’s room. Everyone in the hospital would know it. Vanessa knew it. And Greyson knew it, too. If she were seen or caught, she’d have to explain her presence, which she wouldn’t be able to do. After all, she didn’t work in this unit or on this floor. She was an emergency room nurse. Yet here she was, skulking around in the room of a boy who was unconscious and who no one came to visit.
Greyson continued to observe Vanessa, hoping against hope that she wasn’t there to do what she’d done at least twice before in the last six months, but he could feel deep within the marrow of his bones she was. His instincts screamed in warning. Predators sensed other predators. And she was, in fact a predator.
Like a black widow spider with her prey ensnared, she scuttled from the door, closing it the rest of the way, and hurried back to Tyler’s bedside. Eyes wide as she glared down at the sick boy, Greyson could hear the tempo of her heart speed in excitement. She smiled down at him, a grim, sinister smile, then slid her hand into her pocket once more. First, she pulled out a pair of vinyl examination gloves. After fitting them onto her hands, she withdrew a glass vial, and then a syringe.
Vanessa looked from one item to the next then to the boy again. She chuckled to herself and stabbed the pointed tip of the hypodermic needle into a vial, drawing back the plunger and filling the barrel with clear liquid. The liquid in the vial was labeled clearly. Greyson could read it, even in the dark and at the distance from which he watched. The word “Epinephrine” had been marked on a label printed by the manufacturer. Epinephrine. A lethal dose of epinephrine was inside the barrel of the hypodermic needle. Vanessa took a final look at Tyler, her eyes dead and her expression as calm as a coiled snake, then she lifted the needle and gripped his IV hose line. She was about to pierce it just below the drip chamber when Greyson lunged.
Closing the distance between them with the speed and quiet of a gust of wind, he was behind her and gripping her before she knew what was happening. The syringe fell to the floor. Vanessa flailed and began screaming. Hand flying over her mouth, Greyson stifled her screams.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned. His voice was a low growl at her ear. “If you scream, people will come. They’ll see what you were doing.” Feeling her pounding heart trate accelerate further, he released his grip on her mouth.
“I’m just checking on a patient,” she lied as he removed his hand.
His chest was still pressed to her back. “We both know that isn’t true, don’t we,” he said calmly.
Vanessa stiffened. He could practically feel her mind whirling around how she’d play her position. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” She tried to sound indignant as she attempted to manipulate the situation and place him on the defensive. She clearly had no idea who—or what, rather— she was up against. “I’m going to get security!” She made a move to turn.
Greyson laughed. The sound was bitter and filled with derision. He gripped her upper arm, his hold iron-clad. “No you aren’t.” His voice was even, matter-of-fact.
“I’m not?” Now it was she who laughed. The sound was strident and maniacal. “Just watch me.” She jerked her arm forward. He released it, giving her a false sense of victory, a false sense of safety.
“I’ll watch, but you know as well as I do that if you call security—if you call anyone—you’ll have to explain what you’re doing here.” He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
She spun and faced him, gasping silently when she saw his face. Her dark eyes searched his. He heard her pulse ratchet up again. Her features softened. “I was checking on him.” Her voice pitched up and her tone sweetened. She brushed a lock of pale-blonde hair from her forehead. “Are you a family member?” She cocked her head to one side and licked her lips, her attention focused on Greyson’s face as she tried to steer the conversation. “I’ve never seen you here. I’d remember you if I had.”
Greyson smiled. “Oh, I’ve been here before. And I’ve seen you.”
Vanessa’s features brightened, her heart pattering so loudly in Greyson’s extra-sensitive ears, it rivaled the machines around him. “You have,” she smiled and asked flirtatiously.
“I have.” Greyson nodded.
“I didn’t see you, but you saw me.” She twirled a piece of hair, fully entranced by the charm his kind had been genetically endowed with. When hunting, no one was immune to it. No one, it seemed, except Alex. “Were you stalking me?” she asked, thinking it was somehow cute to be stalked by him or anyone else.
“I was stalking you,” he admitted honestly.
“You were?” Delight trilled in her tone.
“I was. And that’s how I learned you don’t even work on this floor.” Greyson smiled.
Vanessa’s eyes rounded. Her brain struggled, working in vain against the intense pheromones he emitted and direct eye contact with him. Dario had once said that locking eyes with their kind was more effective than an injection of sodium pentothal, known colloquially as truth serum. He’d been right.
“And,” he reached out to her and slipped his hand in the front pocket of her scrub top with inhuman speed that was likely a flash of blurry color to her. He produced the vial of epinephrine. “Since you’re not his nurse and you don’t work in this unit or on this floor, why were you about to shoot this into his IV?”
Vanessa’s gaze was pinned to his. She couldn’t look away, though he sensed she wanted to. “I-I,” she stammered.
“Filling a syringe with this much epinephrine and injecting it into Tyler’s IV would cause cardiac arrest.”
Vanessa simply stood, staring at him, trembling.
“Once the hospital finds out what you were about to do here, an investigation will be launched. It won’t take long for them to realize that the other two children who died in this hospital in the last six months were because of you.” Greyson looked away from her, breaking the connection and allowing her thoughts to permeate the haze of his beguilement.
He also looked away because he needed a moment. What he saw in her sickened him.
“What is it you want from me?” Vanessa demanded, slightly huffier than before.
Greyson’s gaze was low, staring at the floor as his brain prepared for the last part of their encounter. He looked up finally, holding her hostage with a penetrating gaze. “The truth.”
Eye glazed and returning to a trancelike state, Vanessa repeated the word “truth”.
“I want you to admit what you were doing in here. I want you to tell me how many times you’ve done this, how many times you’ve killed?”
“I’ve killed eight kids, total. Not including my sister,” she said as freely and easily as she’d have reported the weather. “Same way I was going to kill him.” Her hand absently gestured to Tyler, as if the boy were not a person but an afterthought.
Venom burned within Greyson, searing his insides until it blazed up his throat. “A lethal dose of epinephrine?”
“Yes. Always epinephrine. Always a sick child.” She shrugged casually, her nearly black irises flat, devoid of life. Of humanity.
“Why?” Greyson asked, though he was loath to hear the answer.
“My sister,” she replied as if that was a sufficient explanation.
“Your sister?” Greyson leaned forward, his body mimicking his mind’s inclination.
“Yes. She was my first.” Vanessa smirked. “She was sick all the time. Bedridden a lot. She was born with a congenital heart defect, so she required a lot of attention.” Vanessa huffed and rolled her eyes.
“You killed her because you were jealous?” Greyson felt her resentment. She exuded it, weeping it like pus from a festering wound.
“Ha, ha,” Vanessa’s laughter was pure malice. “Jealous? No. I passed jealousy when I was four and my birthday was forgotten because she had to be hospitalized. Ha! Jealous. That’s rich!” She chuckled again. “I hated the bitch. Hated her weak, pale little body, hated her mousy brown hair and weepy blue eyes. I hated her room that had a bed like this.” She tossed her thumb over her shoulder toward the hospital bed in which Tyler lied, pale, weak and with dull, ashy brown hair. “And I hated the way she smelled. Like sour mash. I suppose it was her disease leaking out of her pores.”
Funny, Greyson understood what she’d said about the stench. She emanated one, well. The stench of her wickedness.
“By the time I was twelve, I’d had enough. My parents had missed everything that had to do with me. They were never there for me. It was all about her.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I fixed that. I had an EpiPen, which is an epinephrine auto-injector because I’m allergic to nuts. I’d been reading the patient handout after my mom had absently handed me my twin pack and saw the side effects. If one dose was administered, it taxed the heart like strenuous activity. For a normal person that wasn’t too bad. For my sister, it would be terrible. Two doses would kill her, which is exactly what I wanted to do.
“I waited until my parents went to sleep then crept into my sister’s bedroom. I had both EpiPens under my nightgown. I turned off the volume on the portable heart monitor, then removed the seal on one of the pens. The first prick woke her. The medicine is fast-acting so her heart immediately began to race. The second one exacerbated matters.
“I stood and watched her eyes widen then placed a pillow over her face to muffle the strange gasping sounds she made. They were annoying.” Vanessa bobbed one shoulder then continued. “I removed the pillow and looked at her as life left her. Once I was sure she was gone, I turned the volume up on the monitor and went to bed.
“The next morning, my parents woke and found her. They were crushed. Devastated. And guilty because they slept through her monitor’s alarm.” Vanessa smiled broadly at the recollection. “It was a truly wonderful morning.”
Greyson looked away, allowing the realization of all that she’d just said to settle upon her.
“I-I don’t know why I just said all that.” Vanessa looked confounded. “What’ve you done to me? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to never do it again. I want you to never kill again,” he said levelly.
Vanessa’s eyes flickered to his face, but avoided linking with his gaze. “Huh?”
“I’m here to make sure you never do it again,” he smiled first then allowed the transformation. He felt the change overtake him, knew that she was seeing it, that any and all charm and allure he’d possessed to reel in prey or lull them into confessions had ended. The veil between monster and human had fallen. Greyson the vampire, the planet’s deadliest killer, stood before her.
Vanessa opened her mouth to scream, but the scream was smothered by his powerful hand clapping over her mouth. He reached out and snatched her, spinning her in one swift motion and forcing her back to his chest. Snarling from someplace deep in his chest, his lips peeled back and revealed long, sharp canines. He descended on the exposed flesh of her neck, sinking his fangs deep into her carotid arteries, feasting on the fresh blood pumped right out of her heart. Drawing from her slowly at first, need overtook him. Feverish and frenzied, he drank greedily, draining her.
When Greyson had finished, he slung her body over his shoulder and moved with speed so quick he’d been no more than a gust of air passing the nurse’s station and just a blur of color on any cameras that may have caught sight of the movement. He disposed of Vanessa’s body in the Dumpster in the back of the hospital. It seemed a fitting place of rest for her. He replaced the full syringe and empty vial into her pocket, along with a note stating she’d used lethal doses of epinephrine to kill the two other children who’d died at the hospital that year. He’d used her gloved hand to pen the short letter.
Feeling substantially stronger and energized, Greyson ran with lightning speed to his car parked eight blocks away. Once inside and with the engine started, he glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was past eleven o’clock. “Dammit!” he swore. He’d been to the diner at eight every night for the last week. He’d promised Alex he’d be back. Maybe his words hadn’t meant anything to her, but they’d meant something to him. He wanted to see her. He needed to see her. As good as he felt physically, inside he was in turmoil. He’d killed a human being. And while she, like the others, hardly deserved to be classified as such, the same question that plagued him each time he took a life continued to plague him: were his vigilante kills okay? They’d felt right at the time. He’d satisfied two needs at once. One served the community and the other kept him alive. But it never felt quite right afterward. Was it right for him to act as judge, jury and executioner?
His mind raced, swimming dizzying laps around the same maddening question. He needed to quiet his brain. He needed peace. And the only time he’d felt peace since bearing the burden of his ghastly transformation from human to monster had been when he’d been with Alex. But as he looked at the time, he worried she’d be gone already. It was Friday night. He knew the diner was open until one in the morning. But that didn’t mean her shift continued that long. Shifting gears from park to drive, Greyson supposed he’d just have to find out.
“Please be there, Alex,” he begged the universe out loud as he peeled out of his parking space and tore off into the night.