Eighteen
After seeing my last patient and telling my staff good evening, I closed and locked the front door to my clinic. I turned off the lights and went into the back room where we kept our blood samples taken during the day until they could be sent to a lab for analysis.
Opening the refrigerator, I took out a rack of test tubes containing a variety of blood samples and set them on a table. From my coat pocket, I took out a list of patients’ names that I’d previously tested and found to be free of both the CJD prion that causes spongiform encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease, and of the virus causing AIDS.
I took the vials from the patients on the list and arrayed them before me and sat at the table. Looking at the blood-filled vials made my stomach growl and the Hunger within me begin to grow.
My hands trembled and I could feel my face and hands begin to change into my Vampyre form as I uncapped the first vial and raised it to my lips. It’d been almost a week since I’d fed and my mouth was watering already at the coppery scent of the blood.
As the blood poured onto my tongue, it had a bitter taste due to the chemicals in the vial, which prevented it from coagulating, unlike the sweet, spicy taste of blood fresh from a victim’s neck.
I shuddered at the taste and forced myself to swallow the life-giving fluid. Soon I’d emptied all of the vials known to be safe from disease and the Hunger subsided enough to let me think clearly.
I fought the urge to sweep the vials off the table and head out onto the streets and rend and tear the first person I met and take a blood feast sweetened by the heady aroma of adrenaline and fear.
My mind, when the Hunger was not in control, knew rationally that if I was to live in New Orleans and continue my research into finding a cure for Vampyrism, I would have to feed like this for the foreseeable future. It was not something I looked forward to.
I leaned back in my chair and let my mind remember kills of the past, when I’d fed on fresh blood whenever I felt the Hunger. My loins grew heavy with remembered lust and I could feel the Hunger stir within me once again.
I shook my head and sat up, forcing the images of my victims from my mind. I got up and went into my office and booted up my computer, loading my research program.
The Hunger subsided as I pored over my notes and some of the papers on plasmid research I’d downloaded off the Internet. I knew there must be an answer here, if I could only find it.
* * *
Michael Morpheus pulled his Lincoln Navigator to the corner and waited while Jean Horla, Sarah Kenyon, and Christina Alario climbed in. Jean got in the front seat and the women in the rear.
As he pulled back out into traffic, Jean looked at him. “Just why did you ask us to meet you, Michael? Does it concern Council business?”
“In a way,” Michael answered, an enigmatic smile creasing the corners of his lips.
“Are we going to meet the other members of the Council?” Sarah asked.
“No, this meeting is just between us and must remain a secret,” Michael said. “Now sit back and relax. All of your questions will be answered shortly.”
He turned the next corner and got up on the freeway headed out of New Orleans toward Baton Rouge. After driving for about twenty minutes, he took an exit toward a town named Liberty.
Just before he entered the city limits of the small community, he turned down a dirt road and drove for another five miles. Finally, he pulled to a stop in front of an old wooden house set back in a grove of oak trees.
As they got out of the car, Jean looked at the place skeptically. With hands on hips, he demanded, “Why in hell did you bring us all the way out here?”
Michael smiled and gestured toward the front door. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
He unlocked the door and stood aside as they entered. Inside, the house was furnished comfortably but not extravagantly.
Michael led them through the living room and kitchen and out the back door onto a porch overlooking a dock that stretched out into a small bayou.
Christina laughed low in her throat. “Have you taken up fishing, Michael?” she asked, leaning on the porch rail and staring down into the water ten feet below.
“Not exactly,” Michael replied. “I want to show you something.”
He stepped into the house and returned a few moments later with several dead chickens in his hands.
“What the hell?” Jean said. “You’re not going to perform some weird voodoo ritual, are you?”
Michael shook his head and then pursed his lips, letting out a loud whistle. Suddenly, from the banks of the bayou, several dark forms materialized and moved slowly into the water, causing ripples and small waves to form.
Michael held the chickens up for a moment before pitching them out into the bayou.
The dark water seemed to come alive as three large alligators rose to the surface and began to tear the chickens apart, writhing and churning the water with their tails.
His guests gasped and stepped back from the porch rail at the sight of the ferocity with which the gators tore into the meat.
Sarah looked at Michael. “Does all this have a purpose?” she asked.
“Come inside and let’s talk,” Michael said.
He showed them into the living room and poured them all glasses of wine as they sat on his couch while he remained standing.
“First, a toast,” he said, holding his glass up. “To the Vampyres, long may we reign.”
The others glanced uneasily at one another before finally drinking the wine.
After the toast, Michael took a seat in an easy chair across the room from the others. “During the last several meetings of the Council, I’ve probed each of your minds enough to know that you all are unhappy about the restrictions on our feedings imposed by Carmilla de la Fontaine.”
Jean glanced at the women sitting next to him and frowned. “That may be, Michael, but we are also realistic enough to know that nonlethal feeding is the only way to keep the authorities from finding out about our existence.”
Michael held up his hand. “What if there was some way to feed as we used to and still remain safe?”
Christina shook her head. “That’s impossible, Michael. With the advances in forensics and the way the police departments are all linked together by computers, it would be impossible to hide our killings from the authorities for long.”
“Let me suggest a way,” Michael said, noting the effect his words had on his guests. “I rented this place from a Realtor in Baton Rouge, making all the arrangements over the phone under an assumed name and paying the rent for a year in advance. For the past month, I’ve trained the alligators in the bayou to come to my call, ready to eat.”
“So what?” Jean asked. “What do they have to do with our method of feeding?”
“Let me finish. There are two main problems with feeding as we were intended to. First, there is the problem of the bodies. As Christina says, there is no way to hide the fact that we leave behind bodies drained of their blood. Even if we fake an accident to account for their deaths, the lack of blood in the bodies would leave a trail the police would soon follow. Secondly, the procuring of victims is problematic. Most people will be missed by someone, sooner or later, leaving yet another trail for the police to follow.”
Sarah nodded impatiently. “Yeah, that’s the reason Carmilla has decreed we engage in only nonlethal feedings.”
“What if I tell you I’ve solved both problems?” Michael asked.
Jean leaned forward in his seat, becoming more interested. “Go on.”
“There is an entire class of people who live off the radar screen of the authorities,” Michael said. “Poor people who live in rural areas, criminals and deviants who rarely if ever go to the police for help, and transients who have no family or friends to be concerned if they turn up missing.”
Jean smiled. “I think I see where you’re going with this.”
Michael inclined his head at a hallway leading off the living room. “I have four bedrooms in the rear of the house. In each of them, I’ve placed such a person. People whose absence will never be reported to the police, or if reported, are of such insignificance the police will expend little energy searching for them.”
“What kind of people?” Sarah asked, turning her face toward the hallway and sniffing as if she could smell their blood through the walls.
“Two of the women are prostitutes, the man is a Vietnam veteran who lived on the streets, and the third is a young girl just off a bus from a small town in Alabama, a runaway.”
He raised his glass in another toast. “I shall let you take your pick of the delicacies I’ve procured.”
Sarah, whose sexual predilections were well known, stood up, her eyes glittering. “I’ll take the runaway female,” she said, scarlet drool already dripping from her lips.
Christina stood up and fluffed her hair. “I’d like to try the man.” She smiled grimly. “I’ve always loved soldiers.”
Michael grinned at Jean. “That leaves the other two women for us, Jean.”
Jean smiled without speaking, a bulge evident in his pants from the Hunger/lust that was building. “I can hardly wait,” he said, his voice husky. “It’s been so long since I’ve fed properly.”
Michael stood up and took some keys from his pocket. Each had a tag with a number attached. “The rooms are numbered,” he said, handing each of them a key. “And don’t worry if your . . . guests become noisy. There are no other houses nearby for anyone to hear their screams.”