Blood Work (26 page)

Still damp, I
went inside and back to the books. I hadn’t managed to eat much and
my stomach grumbled. My head ached, whether from the lack of food
or Erin’s intense eyes, I didn’t know. They were this fantastic
array of blue and grey and silver and I had liked the way she
looked at me when she didn’t know me. There had been this almost
coy sultriness in them, tinged with a little wildness, as if she
wasn’t in complete control. My imagination went off in all
directions thinking about her out of control.

Argh. This
wasn’t getting any work done.

Just in case
she was hanging about the ’Cliffe, I took the motorbike out.
Bypassing the pub I went to a little Italian place on the
waterfront up the road a bit. I got a pizza and ate it out on the
pier. There were a couple of old guys fishing and a woman with two
toddlers. I kept looking back toward shore, didn’t know why, but
guessed it had something to do with maybe wondering if Erin had
tracked me down again.

Sated, I went
home and kept reading. The books I had on weres were all thick, big
things with lots of pictures, some of them pretty graphic. It
seemed that no one felt so so about were-creatures. They either
loved and romanticised them—the tragically cursed man or woman who
fought valiantly against their alternate natures only to fail and
be killed by their lover, brother, mother, you name it. Or there
were those who could only proclaim their utter evilness—men so
violent in their souls it took them over, turned them into vicious,
rampaging animals that slaughtered without discrimination.

Yeah, that one
touched a little too close to home.

The were
phenomenon wasn’t confined to wolves, though they seem to be the
most popular. Given the variety of ways a person could be turned
into an animal, partially or fully, it was not surprising to learn
the variety of animals you could turn into was as broad as the
ecology. There were records of werewolves, weretigers, werelions,
werebears and were-just-about-any-predator-you-could-think-of. It
seemed big, powerful animals with lots of teeth and claws were the
were-creatures of choice. But there was also mention of wereswans,
wereowls, werehorses, wereantelope and so forth and so on.

But nowhere
did it mention animals turning into were-animals.

I gave it up
for a pointless effort, thought about calling Tony back and telling
him it was a bust. Didn’t though. Couldn’t face the thought of
hearing him be disappointed in me. I had another day to do
something more productive on it, so I didn’t burn my bridges
yet.

On to the
other problem.

Kermit had
said he thought Saif had come from the east, on the river. East was
the mouth of the Brisbane River. I pulled out my street directory
and checked it out. A lot of industrial area. Good place to find an
empty warehouse or building to hole up with a big mess of vampires.
I mightn’t have the whole of Brisbane to look in any more, but
Kermit hadn’t exactly pinpointed it to an actual street or suburb.
Still, I had a vampire detection kit.

Issue was, did
I feel comfortable letting it back out of the cage?

Maybe I would
be able to think clearer after a rest. Didn’t really think I would
sleep, but lying down seemed like a good idea.

I did sleep. I
dreamed even. Of Erin. Depending on your point of view, they were
either fantastic dreams or really, really bad ones. Either way, I
woke up with a smile and… ah ha, something else. I grabbed a quick
hot and cold shower, hot for the knee, cold for the… yeah.

My head was
clearer. On certain things, that was. I grabbed a bag of blood from
the hidden fridge, went to Mercy’s room and unlocked the door. She
was still asleep and would be for a while longer, but I had this
niggling little desire to show her I did still trust her. Falling
off the bag-of-blood-wagon last night hadn’t been her fault. She
hadn’t killed the guy (yes, I was ignoring the whole
interrupted-before-she-could deal) and she had done very well in
getting my arse out of a tight spot. For that at least, she needed
some reward.

I put the bag
on the arm of the chair by the bed and let my fingers trail over
the dark hair. It was silky soft and warm. Not what you would
expect from an instinctual killer. She was fanatical about her
shampoo and that was one of the many reasons I hadn’t put her
down.

Roberts showed
up not long later.

“What’s the
plan for tonight?” he asked as if the phone conversation that
morning had been a totally different one.

I was more
than willing to buy into the delusion. We sat down at the kitchen
table with a map of the Port of Brisbane, red pens and rulers. I
got him up to speed on things while we laid down a search grid on
the areas I wanted to check out. Roberts was pretty quiet
throughout, only speaking once I’d been done for a couple of
minutes.

“You like
her.”

“Sorry.
What?”

“This
investigator chick. You like her.”

I put down my
ruler and stared at him, hoping he didn’t hear the uncertainty in
my voice. “I spent maybe fifteen minutes with her, and she thought
I was someone else. Hardly time to decide if I like her.”

“Pah. If you
got out more, with humans, not Mercy or ghouls or whatever, you
would realise that fifteen minutes is more than enough time. Five
minutes after saying hello to Gale and I was ready to lay down my
life for her.”

I snorted.
“You were not. More like just lay down.”

“Well, okay.
But I sure knew I wanted to get to know her better. I’m betting
that you, a misguided, tragically romantic fool, would throw
yourself in front of a bus for this woman.”

“That’s
nothing. I’d throw myself in front of a bus for you. And you’re not
my type.”

“Yeah, but
you’d think about it first. And you asked her if she liked
seafood.”

“So? I was
making conversation.”

“No, you
weren’t. You were gearing up to the old ‘I know this little
restaurant’ line.”

“No, I was
going to tell her about how Redcliffe has some great seafood on
offer. If she liked it. You know, being nice and welcoming to the
out of towners. It’s called being polite, Roberts, look it up.”
Snatching up my ruler, I slapped it down on the map, mere
millimetres from Roberts’ fingers. He jerked back and scowled at
me.

“Me, Erin and
buses have nothing to do with what’s happening tonight. Can we
concentrate on that, please?”

“Who’s Erin?”
Mercy wandered into the kitchen. Her hair was sleep tousled and she
yawned so wide her fangs looked particularly huge. She wore one of
my old Divinyls T-shirts.

I pointed to
the corner of my mouth. She got the hint and licked the smear of
blood off her lips.

I glanced at
the window. The sun was barely down. “You’re up early.”

“Couldn’t
sleep anymore.” She was listless, falling into a chair at the table
and slouching back.

“Erin’s Matt’s
new girlfriend,” Roberts said.

Mercy’s dark
eyes flashed. “Girlfriend?”

I glared at
Roberts. “No, she’s not. She’s just a woman who’s looking for us,
Mercy. I don’t know why and if we have any luck, we’ll never see
her again.”

She looked
between us, suspicious. “Is she with the Reds?”

“No.” I told
Mercy about the hit on the Ipswich house and how Erin was caught in
the middle of it. “I believe she’s separate.”

“Why didn’t
you ask her why she’s looking for us?”

“My question
exactly.” Roberts’ eyes glimmered with the urge to tease but he
kept his trap shut, thankfully. I didn’t think I could handle a
jealous vampire at the moment.

“There wasn’t
time and I didn’t want her to recognise me.”

“But she did,”
Mercy said.

I pushed away
from the table. “She did. Merce, you hungry?”

It wasn’t a
change of topic. It
was
a guilty question inspired by my
worry Mercy would want to chow down on any neck she saw.

She shook her
head and patted her belly. “Watching my waist line. If I eat any
more I’ll get a blood belly.”

Roberts choked
on his Coke.

“Go get ready.
We’re going hunting, Mercy.”

She bounced
out of her chair. “Hunting at clubs?”

“No, in the
industrial parks around the port.”

“That doesn’t
sound like fun. Why can’t we go dancing?”

Dancing. Mercy
loved it. I didn’t think it was a vampire thing. I’d certainly
never seen another blood sucking fiend on the floor at any club I’d
been to. It was probably a left over from her previous life, which
both disturbed me, because there was so little she actually
remembered, and encouraged me. Maybe I was doing the right thing
with her if she could remember even that much.

“No dancing,”
I said.

She
deflated.

“Probably.
Dress appropriate for both activities.”

Which was like
giving her the keys to the blood fridge. Open licence, man. She
clapped her hands, gave me a hug (tricky business that, she’d
broken ribs in the past) and dashed off to her room. The shower was
going before I’d even sat down again.

“You sure
about that?” Roberts asked.

“Last night
wasn’t her fault.”

“So you’re not
worried at all?” The question was so loaded it would have been
confiscated at a rifle appreciation club meeting.

“One little
mishap. I won’t let it happen again. Besides, it was due to
circumstances out of my control.”

I knew Roberts
knew it was all just so much bullshit. Thankfully, he didn’t
mention that he knew, knowing that I already knew that he knew and
that because we both knew, there was nothing to talk about.

“What about
the Reds?” he asked instead.

“They’re not
going to attack in a club.”

Roberts
shrugged. “You only say that because they never have in the past.
But they’ve never tried to bargain with you before, either. This is
different, man. All the old rules are out the window and run over
by an eighteen wheeler.”

“What did the
cops say about your apartment?” Now that was a conversation
change.

“The usual.
They’ll do everything they can, but without much to go on, don’t
get your hopes up. Spent the afternoon putting in insurance claims.
Now that right there is pure evil. Forget your vampires and trolls.
Insurance paperwork is the Devil’s toilet paper.”

We finished
our search grid and then girded our loins for war. Roberts had
picked me up a new paintball gun. Or should I say paintball
semi-automatic assault rifle. Wowsers. The thing was like something
out of a cop movie, you know, in the great big blow out at the end,
when all bets are off and the two hardened, bloodied cops pull out
the serious toys and just go to freakin’ town? Every boy needed one
of these things.

Mercy came out
just when the heavy lifting was done. She might be a vampire, but
she’s still a woman, too. We’d packed our gear in the back of
Roberts’ Prado and both of us leaned against the car and watched
the vampire approach.

I think she
was wearing a skirt. Couldn’t really say for sure, though, because
she had about half a cow skin slung around her hips in the form of
a leather belt with buckles and studs and slip rings all over it. A
little fringe of tartan material might have been poking out from
under the belt, you know, just enough to cover her butt. There were
fishnet stockings and knee-high boots with heels thick enough to
crush necks. On top, she had on a bra, a pearly, lacy thing with
‘half cups’ I’d been certain had mistakenly ended up in Mercy’s
closet instead of an adult shop, and a very see-through, white
blouse that ended somewhere around her belly button. The
maybe-skirt and belt deal didn’t start until well below that.

Roberts
swallowed hard.

“Is that what
you’re wearing out?” I demanded.

Mercy perused
herself. “Yes.”

“I said
something appropriate to both hunting and maybe, possibly, very
slim chance of dancing.” I waved at her outfit. “That’s… it’s…
Jesus, Merce, it’s hardly there at all.”

She put a fist
on one hip and stuck said hip out at me like a challenge. “I’ve
seen you watching those music film clips. You like this kind of
outfit.”

Roberts
snickered.

“Sure, in film
clips. But I can’t have you out there looking like that. Every Y
chromosome in the place is going to go crazy.”

“Um,
actually,” Roberts murmured. “Probably not. You haven’t been out in
a while. That is pretty much what a lot of girls are wearing these
days.”

“Way to help,
mate.” I turned back to Mercy. “What if we find a mob of vampires?
Hmm?”

She displayed
her boot. “Got my vamp stamping boots on.”

Roberts
snorted, then damn near collapsed in absolute gales of laughter. I
ran a hand through my hair.

“I’ve lost
this argument, haven’t I?” I asked the world in general.

“Never had a
chance,” Roberts gasped. “Come on, let’s get going.”

It had been years since Erin had
walked into a club in civilian clothes. She had spent some time in
them while in her police uniform, but this was an entirely
different thing. No one shifted nervously, no one outwardly judged
her because of her clothes. No one got out of her way, either. She
had to shoulder her way through the crowds, wait while others
shoved in front of her and stand trapped between three guys working
out where they would meet up later. They didn’t seem to notice her
wedged in the middle of their conclave. Ivan and Brad on the other
hand…

Brad had
insisted on coming out with her and Ivan. He’d actually insisted
Ivan stay home while he took Erin out, but Ivan wouldn’t be left
out of it. And the pair of them had a magical ability to just ease
on through the claustrophobic room, slipping this way and that as
if they had some preternatural sense of where a space would open up
and allow them through.