Blood Work (12 page)

I ended up
between Big Red’s legs. Face sizzling, he glared down at me, eyes
silver. He roared and reached for me. I had a split second to think
‘gun or stick?’ I rammed the nightstick into the bastard’s balls.
Yup. Vampire balls still work and that makes them vulnerable. Big
Red doubled up. I thrust up with my hips, got my calves around his
neck and dropped. He came over like a freaking freight train. What
can I say? Life is all about balance. You don’t got it, you gonna
go down.

Sadly, he went
down on my left knee. Something akin to lightning slashed my leg. I
growled, the only sound I could manage. That was the level of the
pain.

A vampire
grabbed my jacket and ripped me out from under Big Red. I popped a
paintball in Red’s neck on my way past, though. Take that. I was
tossed back to the ground. My sight whited out for a second, then
it came back red.

Pain? What was
that? Something I was going to dish out to these bastards.

I rolled and
flipped to my feet. Gun and stick still in hand, I turned on the
remaining creatures. Four left. No great numbers advantage. Pity
for them.

We closed. I
spun the stick through a three-sixty and brought it across the face
of one of them. I shoved the Eagle in another’s chest and tore a
hole halfway to his spine. One of them bit down on my gun arm. She
slashed her head from side to side, clawing at my belly and face
with her hands. The gun flew out of my grip. I slammed the stick
down on her head. Another one landed on my back. I went down under
them.

The next thing
I remember was standing in the middle of the stinking remains. My
body was trying to haul in enough air to kick start my brain. I
bled from I didn’t want know how many wounds.

How many
coats? One, two, three… My vision blurred out of focus. No. Don’t
fall over. Are they all down? That’s the issue with going berserk.
You don’t often remember what happened. Did I get them all or
not?

Pain lanced up
my left leg. I collapsed on the spot, right into a steaming puddle.
Didn’t care. Everything went intensely bright with the pain. The
edges of my vision hazed out. All I could see was a circle of night
sky, stars twinkling, a few branches waving at me from on high. All
I could feel was the fire eating me from the leg upwards. The sound
of traffic boomed too loud, then faded.

A face came
into my line of sight. A young woman, pale and concerned. She said
something. Couldn’t hear it. Could see her though. She tried to
hide it, but I saw them. The fangs flashing between her lips. She
saw the truth in me. Her eyes went silver and her lips peeled back,
no subterfuge now. She lunged toward my neck.

Her teeth
scored my throat, then stopped. She stiffened, back arched in pain.
Predator eyes wide, she looked at her chest.

My SAS knife
was suck to the hilt between her breasts.

Some of the
legendary things really do work against vampires. Garlic. Holy
anything. Ye olde stake through the heart, too. But it doesn’t have
to be wood. Pierce just about anything’s heart with anything long
enough to get in there and it kills them.

I kicked her
off and suffered through her dying stench. The ground felt really
nice. Just like a bed. So comfortable.

No. Get up.
Get away.

Nah. Passing
out always feels good. Let’s do that.

What if there
are more vampires?

Mate, you’re
the
Night Caller. You got them all. How could you not?

Because you’re
delusional and I’m in some freaking mind bending pain. Lord, it
could even make me start talking to myself.

Somehow, I
rolled over. My knee protested somewhat.

Go to your Zen
place, go to your Zen place.

Right now, my
Zen place was somewhere with a truck load of painkillers. And what
do you know, I was right outside a hospital.

ED was around
the back. I was closer to the front. No way was I getting that far,
so I hauled my protesting leg to the front door and through a
monumental amount of searing agony, hit the—oh so appropriately
called—night call button.

I passed out
before anyone came to the door. I woke up when they lifted me onto
the stretcher though. I think I woke up the whole hospital, in
fact. It alerted them pretty quick to the whole knee situation,
which was helpful. I was once again thankful it was a slow night
for the ED staff. I would have hated being passed over for some
other poor sot.

An hour or two
later, doped out of my head on some serious shit, I could sit up
and chat.

“Man, you
should bottle this stuff and sell it,” I said to Dr Nolan, who was
looking over my knee.

Given a
choice, I wouldn’t have accepted the morphine. It was the Devil in
a liquid state. Nasty stuff. Heaven in a bag. Pure bliss in a jab.
After getting out of hospital I’d sworn to never touch the stuff
again. I’d become addicted while recovering, faking major pain when
a codeine would have sufficed. Did such a brilliant job of it the
doctors wanted to open my knee up again to see what was wrong.
Guess I wasn’t as far gone as some, because I didn’t really want
more pain in order to warrant the morphine. It was a miracle. The
pain got less and less and after a while, I really had forgotten
why I thought I needed it so much.

To this day, I
think the canny bastard who’d worked on me knew it all along and
threatened the surgery to scare me off. It kind of bites that it
worked.

But here I
was. Surfing the happy wave again. I wasn’t so out of it I couldn’t
argue about why I didn’t like the stuff, but I was far enough gone
I just didn’t care.

Nolan grinned
at me. Young bloke, for a doctor. All doctors should look like that
guy who played Dr Who, the one with the curly brown hair and
dubious habit of offering strangers jelly babies. Nolan didn’t look
like that. He was tall, slender without being skinny, wore torn
jeans and an Eskimo Joe T-shirt. I liked him.

“It’s some
good stuff, isn’t it,” Nolan said. “What happened to your
knee?”

“Smashed it up
couple of years ago. That’s a genuine titanium artificial kneecap
in there. What can we get for that on the market?”

“Not so much
you would make a profit, I’m afraid. We’ll wait for the X-rays to
confirm it, but I don’t think anything’s broken. It’ll be inflamed
for a while though.” He picked up a clipboard and jotted down a few
things. “We’ll get you started on some antibiotics then send you up
to the ward. Anyone we can call?”

“Ward? I don’t
want to be admitted.”

He cocked an
eyebrow. “I can’t see you walking out of here any time soon. You
got beat up pretty well. Twelve stitches in your arm, four in the
back of your head. Some pretty impressive gashes on your chest and
back. Not to mention the damage done to your knee.”

“You just said
there was nothing broken.”

“I
think
there’s nothing broken. But you’ve had muscular and
tendon damage. That’s going to keep you down for a week or
two.”

“But does it
have be in here?”

“If you have
the insurance, you can be transferred to the private hospital if
you wish.”

I grimaced.
“And they’re the only options you’re giving me?”

“’Fraid
so.”

“Get me a
phone then.”

Nolan smiled
and stuck his head out of the cubicle to ask a nurse for a phone.
“So good of you to cooperate.” He sat in a chair beside the bed,
long legs stretched out. “Care to tell me what happened?”

“Told you.
Smashed my knee a while back.”

“Tonight. I
think we need to call the police. You have bite marks, nail
scratches and close to a dozen bruises that aren’t going to fade
any time soon. You’re lucky you didn’t come out with any broken
ribs. Or a worse head injury. Who did this?”

“Would you
believe me if I said vampires?”

I’m going to
blame it on the drugs.

Nolan stared
at me steadily. And here it comes. The exasperated sigh, the weary
shake of the head, the subtle hint that maybe I should have a
little chat with this nice lady from the mental health unit, now
let me tighten those restraints, for your own protection, of
course.

“Did you
win?”

Whoa. Did I
just hear that right? Yeah, and it wasn’t sarcastic. It was quiet,
grim, determined.

“I survived. I
guess that means I won.”

Nolan gave a
single, sharp nod. “Good. Fucking bastards. I’m getting sick of
seeing their leftovers.”

No. This
wasn’t happening. He was jerking my numbed up leg. “Are you
serious? I mean, you believe in vampires?”

“Hard not to.
You see two or three people come through here with puncture marks
in their necks or wrists or thighs, with low red cell and
haemoglobin counts, you start to wonder.” He shuddered. “The
patients talk. They babble, all of it scared. After a while, you
can’t put it down to imagination or hallucination. Most people in
the ED train themselves to forget about it, to ignore it.”

“Defensive
blindness. It’s the only way some people can cope.”

The doc rubbed
a tired hand over his face. “Yeah. I guess. Sometimes, it feels
like they’re being gutless. But, I go along with it because I like
my job.”

I nodded.
“Safe path to take.”

“But it
doesn’t help you when you’re walking through a dark car park at the
end of a long, tiring shift.” He waved toward the array of gear
taken out of my pants pockets. “All this works?”

I surveyed the
weapons. Nightstick (a lovely nurse had washed it for me), hip
flasks of Holy water, a cross, garlic salt (get it in their eyes
and hello) and sheathed SAS knife. No Desert Eagle. Probably lost
for good.

“Yeah.”

“I have a
shopping list then.”

Sheesh. I
didn’t want the poor guy to get all Van Helsing on any mugger that
jumped out at him. “Listen, I don’t think you have too much to
worry about. The ’Cliffe is pretty quiet for these sorts of
freaks.”

He cut me a
daring glance. “How many jumped you tonight?”

“That doesn’t
matter. They were after me specifically. Unless you’ve done
something to piss them off, I think you’re okay.”

Nolan sighed
and stood up. He was at the opening in the curtain around my
cubicle when he said, “I saved your life. I think that might piss
them off.”

A nurse brought me a cordless phone
and I waited pointedly for her to leave before dialling Roberts. He
answered on the eighth ring, mumbling something that should never
be repeated let alone have come from his mother-kissing lips in the
first place.

“Hey, tis
I.”

Another
comment much along the lines of the first one, a little bit
rougher, if you can imagine.

“I’m sorry,” I
said as earnestly as I could with the drugs swirling around my
brain. “But I’m in a spot of bother. Just wondering if you could be
a good chap and come help me out of it.”

“Spot this,”
he muttered, along with a presumed rude gesture.

That’s the
problem with only having one friend. The favours kind of all stack
up in one place.

“I’ll buy you
two new suits.”

“Matthew
Hawkins, I don’t think you get the idea. I’m not alone.”

“Hey, bring
her along. Make it a family affair.”

There was a
some rustling, a sleepy enquiry in a sweet female voice and a
grunted reply. Roberts walked somewhere and shut a door.

“Are you
insane? I’m not bringing her to a vampire toasting.”

I laughed.
“The vampires are all gone. Toasted them without help. I just need
a lift home. Well, actually a lift out of here and into your car,
then home.”

“What’s got
you so chipper at
God-doesn’t-get-up-at-this-hour-of-the-freaking-morning
o’clock?”

“I’m so
whacked out on morphine it’s a miracle this isn’t a reverse call
from the moon.”

Roberts took
the phone away from his mouth for a while. I vaguely heard some
thumping, thrashing and smashing. Then he came back, voice all
calm.

“Okay, where
are you?”

I told him,
asked him to hurry, pretended not understand what he called me and
hung up. Nolan came back in carrying my X-rays.

“You’re a
lucky guy,” he announced. “No breaks, just tissue damage.”

“Mild enough
to send me home with a couple of ibuprofen?”

“Not quite.
I’ve ordered you a bed.”

“To go?”

He gave me a
smile that said ‘this is getting old, get over it’. “It’ll be ready
in an hour or so. Is there anything we can get you?”

“Um, let me
think. A wheelchair.”

The smile
turned into a frown that said all the same things, only harder.

“Okay, a drink
would be nice, thank you.”

“I’ll get
someone to bring it in.”

An hour. Time
enough for Roberts to get out here. I just had to wait it out.

So, Nolan
turned into something of a tyrant. I got my drink. Ten minutes
later I had to piss. He wouldn’t let me zoom on into the toilet on
my own. He handed me a bottle. A bottle. A man shouldn’t have to
piss in a bottle unless he’s really, really drunk and there are no
handy walls about. I held on as long as I could. The sum result
being that I was letting loose in the bottle when Roberts and his
lady friend arrived.

“Oh, man.
Jeez.” Roberts pushed his little blonde friend out of the cubicle,
asked her to wait at the car, and then tore the curtains closed
behind himself. “They need to put a sign up or something. You’re
disgusting, Hawkins.”

“You’re the
one with the bad timing.” I tapped off and made myself presentable.
I wasn’t even blushing. Score one for the morphine.

“You’re just
lucky I’m here at all. Did you see that girl? I could have stayed
at home and got tangled up in that, not this.” He looked me over.
“What happened?”