Blood Work (21 page)

Saif did this
freaky little thing where he seemed to just lift straight up off
the ground and land on top of me. His lipless mouth peeled back
from his sharp teeth. Oh Lord. His breath stank. That alone was
nearly the end of me. His long fingers wrapped around my throat,
holding tight but not choking off my air. Ghouls liked their food
one of two ways. Rotting or screaming. No real in betweens for
them. Saif’s mouth opened wide and then, ugh, hyper-extended. I got
a good view of his black tongue curling back in his mouth, which
was now wide enough to eat my whole face in one very foul
swoop.

Gross.

I whipped my head to the side as he
lunged in for the bite. At the same time, I shoved the knife into
his back as hard as I could. He was scrawny, compared to other
humanoid things. The blade on the knife was seven inches, more than
enough to get his heart from behind.

I guess I
missed.

Saif howled.
Eating me alive not an option anymore, he settled for the second
one. His hands tightened around my neck. He’d strangle me, bury me
properly this time and dig me up when I was fermenting away nicely.
Over my dead body.

I twisted the
knife. He growled and rolled his shoulders, trying to dislodge it.
Whatever he did wouldn’t move the knife. I tried to pull it out for
another stab, but it was stuck good between two ribs. Air was
starting to be an issue. Tightening my hold on the nightstick, I
began belting him about the head with it. Had about as much luck
with that as I had with the gun against Afzal.

The gun.

Abandoning the
knife, I fumbled around his waist. I kept up the beating on his
noggin with the stick so he wouldn’t have time to think or try to
bite my face off again. My hand found something hard in his groin.
Ack! Not the gun. There it was, cool and metallic. I jerked it
free, spun the handle into the palm of my hand, flicked off the
safety and shoved the barrel into his mouth.

The explosion
of the gun was deafening. Saif jerked a little bit. His eyes went
wide, mouth quivering, the hard thing against my thigh went soft.
The hands around my throat tightened, but only for an instant, then
the ghoul dropped onto me, heavy and smelly and with only the front
half of his head still attached.

I stayed there
for a moment, breathing hard, and thankful for it. Then I pushed
him off and rolled onto my stomach, forcing my aching body to its
knees. They protested so I slumped over onto my arse and just sat
there for a moment longer.

There was a
rustle in the gloom. I scrambled to my feet, spinning around,
Cougar at the ready. On the far side of the room, Kermit hauled
himself to his feet.

“You killed
Saif,” he wheezed.

“Give me one
reason not to kill you too.”

Standing on
one leg, he held up both hands. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to
know.”

“That’s what
you said before. And see where it got us.”

“I knew Saif
was there, listening.” He titled his narrow head to the side. “Come
on, little man. We’ve had a good relationship in the past. Let’s
forget this one tiny—”

The roof of
the lair caved in on his head. He went down in a bone cracking
heap. A dark shape landed on top of him, flung aside great clods of
dirt and pulled him up. The attacker wasn’t tall enough to lift him
off the ground. In fact, it was barely large enough to get him to
his knees, but it was strong. Kermit was flung against a wall and
held there by a little white hand at the end of a little white arm
attached to the little, black clad body of Mercy.

“Mercy!”

She whipped
her head around to look at me. Her eyes flashed like headlights in
the dark. Lips peeled back from her fangs showed streaks of red on
her teeth.

“Matt, I found
you.” Her voice was husky, straining around the gnawing hunger
swamping her mind.

She’d eaten,
but not a lot. Enough to get her head working straight, but not so
much that she’d actually killed someone. At least, I hoped.

Leaving the
post-game analysis for, well, post-game, I said, “You did real
good, Merce. Thank you.”

Mercy grinned,
a scary sight. Against the wall, Kermit squirmed, more to let us
know he was still there than to try to escape. Ghouls were
disgusting but they weren’t dumb. He knew he couldn’t escape a
vampire.

“Let Kermit
down.”

The grin
vanished. Her eyes sparked silver. “But he was going to hurt
you.”

“Not anymore.
Drop him.”

Really, it was
more of a contemptuous throw. Kermit hit the coffin-couch with a
crash and disappeared in a cloud of broken wood, dust and bones
long since picked clean. He clambered out of the destruction and
huddled on the dirt floor, arms wrapped around his knees. There was
bone sticking through the skin of the knee I’d whacked, little cuts
in his neck where Mercy’s nails had dug in and black patches about
his shoulders, bruises forming where Mercy had slammed down on him
from above.

Mercy stalked
to where he sat. She wore black leather pants and a tight black
sleeveless shirt with glittering printing on it. ‘Live Fast, Die
Pretty.’ She crouched on the remains of a coffin, perched over him
like some vengeful bird of prey. Her fingers flickered toward
Kermit and he cringed. She just smiled.

“Right,
Kermit. You were about to tell me everything. Start with when
Martínez asked you to sell me to him.”

Wary of Mercy,
Kermit leaned away from her. “It wasn’t me. It was Saif. He’s the
one Martínez caught and made him promise to find you. Saif found
your address and when he went to Martínez with it, the vampire told
him to get there and take you out. He was done with trying to
reason with you.”

“He calls
surrounding me with a mob of vampires reasoning? He’s lost his
marbles.”

Kermit tried
to shrug, and winced. “That one never had many marbles to start
with. Even before he was turned he was a psychopath.”

“So you really
don’t know where he’s set up?”

“Saif
knew.”

I looked at
the corpse of the ghoul. “What luck.”

“Hey, if it
helps, it was somewhere on the river, maybe to the east of
here.”

“Yeah, that
might help. Very generous of you, Kermy. Mercy, get my watch off
him.”

She moved
faster than I could see. Kermit’s arm was bent backwards almost
immediately and she carefully removed the Rolex. The ghoul’s eyes
rolled in pain, mouth gaping. When Mercy released him, he tipped
over to the side, arm hanging limp.

“We’re
leaving,” I said to her and she stepped down from her perch to come
to my side.

I gathered up
my weapons, tucked them away and then stopped by Kermit.

“You ever,
ever
, try to backstab me again, Afzal, and I will rip your
lungs out and make you eat them. Got that?”

He nodded
pathetically.

Mercy stood
beneath the hole she’d made into the lair and jumped straight up.
She vanished over the edge, then reappeared, leaning over, hand
held out. I jumped as high as I could, she caught my arm and hauled
me out. I took a moment to brush as much of the grave dirt off my
clothes as possible, then we headed out of the cemetery.

“Who’s
Martínez?” Mercy asked.

“A Red
vampire. Pretty old, very strong. A colonel or something,
apparently.”

“And he’s
after you?” There was a hard, protective edge to her voice. Made me
feel safe, and a little awed.

“In actuality,
he’s after both of us, but I think that if he can’t get me alive,
then he’ll settle for just you. And me dead.” I kept watch on the
night around us even though it was pointless. Mercy would know if
anyone or anything approached long before I would see it, but
still. Old habits and stuff.

She tilted her
head. “Why me?”

“Because
you’re special.”

“Why?”

I shrugged,
not really wanting to answer. “Well, I guess because you’re
different to other vampires. You’re not typical.”

“I know that,”
she muttered. “I’m stronger than most of them, aren’t I. I mean,
sometimes, it’s hardly fair on them. Like the other night.” She
made a dismissive sound. “Eight of them? They were nothing. Even
you managed four mature ones last night.”

Did I say awed
before? Change that to feeling like I was being condescended to.
Roberts was right. Mercy was developing something a smart mouth. I
guess that was bound to happen though. Roberts isn’t exactly
lacking in the sarcasm department.

“No, I think
it’s more than that,” I said, hands shoved in my pockets. “I think
it’s got something to do with how I treat you. Giving you the blood
I do.”

At the word
‘blood’, Mercy flinched and licked her lips nervously.

“Mercy?” I
used my best reasonable-but-deadly-serious voice.

“When you
didn’t come home, I got really hungry. I wanted to eat so much but
I couldn’t get into the fridge. I knew you would get it for me when
you came home, but you didn’t come home.” She said it in a fast
babble, a touch of accusation in the last couple of words.

“So you came
looking for me?”

“So you could
feed me.” Her tone turned a little bit desperate, repeating herself
like a child trying to lie to a parent.

I stopped
walking and put my hands on my hips. “Mercy, have you eaten
anyone?”

She closed her
mouth very fast and shook her head.

“Don’t lie to
me, young miss.”

Mercy
resisted, but I forced the link open between us and all the
thoughts she was trying to keep from me rushed through.

Gut clenching,
painful hunger. A need that burned through her like a swarm of
wasps sizzling in her blood vessels. It couldn’t,
wouldn’t
,
be ignored. Thoughts warped by hunger, spiralling down toward the
abyss of primitive compulsion—eat eat eat—she had managed to latch
on to the memory of me handing her bags of blood, food that
satisfied one hunger but not the other. Hunt, catch, caress, feed.
She would hunt me, she would find me, then she would feed.

The terrible,
driving need swamped her. I fed her. I would feed her tonight.

Dear God. My
legs grew weak.

Then the
reason why I wasn’t dead at her feet right now slapped me across
the brain.

Flashing
lights behind her; a loud, whirring, grinding noise battering at
her, somehow drowning out the screaming demands of her stomach.
Vague memories of being in the car with me when I’d been pulled
over made her slow down, stop on the side of the road. My scent
still burning in her nose, she swung off the Moto Guzzi, let it
drop to the ground and met the cop halfway.

He tried to
tell her to go back to the bike, to wait for him there, but she
stalked him, circling, prowling. His mouth moved, talking to her,
tone hardening, hand reaching to his waist for something. She
couldn’t hear him, didn’t want to hear him. I was her desire but he
was right there. The blood in his body was hot and divine and
right there
.

The cop didn’t
even see her when she attacked. Her psychic whammy hit him a moment
before she did. He crashed to the bitumen, eyes glazed, body slack
as Mercy straddled him, mouth fastened to his neck.

It was like
the blood was pouring down my own throat. Rich, coppery, thick as
chocolate sauce and just as delicious. It pumped from his torn
jugular, hit the roof of my mouth, slid over my tongue and I
couldn’t swallow fast enough. My mouth filled to overflowing, warm
tendrils leaking from the corners of my lips. The flow slowed but I
wasn’t satisfied yet. I locked my mouth over the wound and sucked,
desperate for every little drop.

Then a
high-pitched squeal. Bright, white light speared into my eyes. I
jerked back as car doors slammed and people began to yell. The
world blurred and I was racing away on the bike, the powerful
engine roaring, the last of the blood still tingling on my tongue,
seeping into my empty veins.

No!

Not my veins,
not my tongue. I tore away from Mercy’s mind with an effort that
left my head spinning. My legs finally gave way and I hit the
ground hard. Pain flared in my knee but it was quickly lost in the
confusion of disgust, horror and warm, tasty pleasure.

“Matt.”

I don’t know
what I said or did, but it sent her jumping away from me. She
landed in a defensive crouch on a headstone a dozen meters away,
her eyes silver, fangs bared. Her hunger was still there, appeased
but not completely sated. She’d been interrupted before she could
get more than a litre and change from him. Enough to kick start the
higher functions of her brain, to let her remember I was a source
of food, but not
that
sort of source.

Still, the
memory of the sensation was there. The desire to hunt, to track me
down and consume me the way she was meant to. The way she had tried
once before…

Yet, even as I
reached for the needle of tranquilizer that wasn’t where it usually
was, the memory began to dissolve. The stolen blood was still
working its way through her body. It eased the desire for the hunt,
it curled through her veins, reassuring her she wasn’t starving.
Following it was a vague feeling of lethargy, the weariness that
came after a big meal, where all energy is turned inward to digest
the food. But in this case, it was the beginning of a transfusion
reaction. The cop’s blood type was incompatible to Mercy’s. The red
cells would slowly be destroyed and she would sleep—excuse the poor
quality of pun—like the dead.

She titled her
head, eyes dimming from predator bright. “Matt? Are you okay?”

I scrambled
back to my feet, not yet ready to talk. The tang of blood still
seemed to linger in my mouth. I hawked up a load of phlegm and
spat, purely a psychological response. There was no blood in my
mouth.