Blood Work (34 page)

Whether
subconsciously or not, I guess I ODed. I totally zoned out for I
don’t know how long. Came back to reality with a busting bladder
and dry, dry, dry mouth. Managed to take care of the first with
only a little mess, but the second was a bit more of a challenge. I
weaved my way back into the bedroom, strapped on a knee support and
managed to stand.

Okay, this
wasn’t going to work too good. I rummaged in the closet and pulled
out Old Faithful. Stick all but glued to my leg, I hobbled out to
the kitchen, collapsed into a chair and drank water straight from
the bottle.

It was about
then I saw the time.

Fantastic.
What a brilliant end to a completely blasted day. Erin was going to
be pissed. Didn’t think she’d appreciate me showing up three hours
late. I suppose I should really find her card and give her a call.
Try to find an excuse for why a man could walk away from such a
fight as she’d witnessed with no issues, but be floored by pain the
next day. Somehow ‘my vampire’s anti-pain compulsion wore off and
she was catching a snooze so couldn’t fix it’ didn’t feel like it
would go down too well.

I made it to
the bed, found my pants from the night before and Erin’s card. It
was half soaked in vampire blood. Couldn’t read the number.

With a
terribly manly effort, I lugged myself into the library to get the
number from the website. All my books on weres caught my eye.

Damnshitbugger.

I plonked down
in my office chair and rolled back to the bedroom, found my phone
and called Tony. It rang out and went to message bank. I left a
message. Then promptly rang again. I mean, you never know. Hoping
he was at the movies or at the vet having the mutt put down, or
just low on battery, I scooted back to the library, turned on the
laptop and got the number for Sol Investigations from the website.
Erin stared at me from the screen, daring me to not call. I turned
my back on her and called her office.

Another no
answer. I considered leaving a message but decided against it.
Might put a dint in my mysterious air. I’d try on Monday. They
probably wouldn’t be at the office this late on a Saturday anyway,
especially if the day’s work hadn’t come off well. Settled for
trying the kid again. Still no go.

All these
people I needed to talk to and no one was talking back. Well, my
stomach was. Apparently word in the lower torso area was that the
throat had been cut. I ordered a pizza over the net and spent the
wait calling the kid over and over. By the time I whizzed on out to
the front door to get the pizza, I still had no answers.

I went through
all my books again while eating. No more enlightening than the last
time I’d looked. I know my collection was far from complete where
any supernatural beastie was concerned but my guts still told me
there was nothing freaky about this kid’s dog. On the other hand, I
had a little nagging sensation I hadn’t exhausted every avenue of
research.

The sun was
touching off the west horizon when the morphine dropped to levels
conducive to real thinking and I remembered Aurum.

“Mr Hawkins,”
he answered before I’d even announced myself. “I was wondering when
I’d hear from you again.”

“Don’t like to
be too predictable,” I said.

“Did you
discover anything more about Big Red?”

I had a nasty
little surge of superiority. “Spies not catch last night’s
episode?”

There was a
speculative pause. “No, they didn’t. Did you locate him?”

“Not even
close.” I gave him a quick rundown on what Kermit had told me and
my spectacular and daring escape from their trap. Aurum didn’t seem
that impressed.

“Ghouls.” His
tone was akin to that used to comment on the dog shit on the bottom
of your shoe. “You should know better than to trust them.”

“Yeah, that’s
the popular consensus. Kermit isn’t so bad, been around the block a
time or two and he knows the score. If he wants to survive in this
world, he’s got to work at blending in some.”

“He tried to
kill you, Mr Hawkins.”

“Gosh, so does
Staphylococcus aureus
, but I don’t hold that against it
personally. It and Kermit are just opportunistic diseases.”

Aurum sighed.
“Hardly comparable, I should think. Still, it is your city. You may
deal with its infections as you see fit.”

I nearly
choked on my gratitude. “Thank you so much. I really needed to hear
that.”

He ignored my
sarcasm. Or maybe like Mercy he didn’t get it. “You encountered
Martínez last night?”

I told him
about searching the industrial areas on the southern side of the
river mouth. He made appropriate noises in appropriate places. Got
really keen when I told him about Mercy sniffing out Big Red and
tracking him down. I glossed over a lot of the details of the
fight, but one thing jumped around for Aurum like a wounded
antelope to a lazy lion.

“This woman,
who is she to you?”

I’d very
carefully avoided mentioning Erin in any terms other than ‘the
woman’. Aurum didn’t have to know about this other issue.

“What makes
you think she’s anything at all to me?”

I could almost
hear the smug bastard smiling that
don’t-shit-me-boy-I-knew-that-game-before-your-grandfather-ever-wondered-what-your-grandmother’s-knees-looked-like
smile he did so well.

“The fact that
you took such care to make me aware of how unrelated she was to
you, and the fact that Martínez went to the trouble of hunting down
someone who would catch your attention.”

“Now, see, I
don’t think that was his whole intention. I think he was looking
for someone who knew me so he could, ah hem, pump them for
information. He put a major weight compulsion on her. She felt it
when he was hit with Holy water.”

That gave
Aurum something to think about. “In that case, I think you’re
correct. A feeding compulsion is not that binding. You’ve heard the
term thrall?”

The pizza made
little uneasy movements in my guts. “Yeah, heard it, know it. I
thought that was just fiction.”

“Oh, really,
Mr Hawkins. You have a scientific mind. Use it for once. Take what
you know and extrapolate. I should have thought after our first
meeting all this would be clear to you.”

I knew what he
was getting at. Psychic links between vampires, a link between me
and Mercy. Psychic links between vampires and their food to keep
the humans docile. Yeah, yeah. Obvious and all.

“Scientific
minds can also suffer deniability and the subconscious loves the
term ‘plausible’,” I said. “It’s not like I’ve had a relaxing three
days to ponder all this crap. Next time you want to rock into town
to give me a lecture and exam, do it when the freaks are on holiday
or something.”

“Send me a
memo,” he shot right back.

“Don’t worry,
I will.” And for a change, I was the one to pull us out of the
school playground. “So, why I was calling. Do you know anything
about werewolves?”

If Aurum
minded the topic change, he didn’t say so. Did nothing phase this
geezer?

“A bit. What
is your question?”

“This is going
to sound a bit stupid, but can an animal become a
were-creature?”

Aurum’s snort
was delicate and utterly refined. “What do you think humans are if
not animals?”

“Yeah, okay,
got me. But I mean something like, oh I don’t know, some kid’s
floppy eared, totally domesticated dog?”

“If the dog
was bitten by an infected creature, then yes.”

I swallowed
hard. “How? Infectious agents rarely cross species.”

“What are
considered to be ‘normal’ infectious agents, yes. But the were
virus is not normal. It was unleashed on our world by demonic
forces. Dogs becoming werewolves is rather common, actually. It’s
just not that well known because people are more prone to killing
animals that act strangely than they are their friends or
family.”

My stomach
ended up somewhere in my toes. And I’d told Tony there was nothing
to worry about.

“Thanks,” I
mumbled and hung up.

I rang the
kid’s phone again. Still no answer. Fuck.

It was about
half an hour off nearly complete dark. Mercy would be getting up
soon. She could track weres as well as she could track vampires. I
guess we’d just have to do our best and hope a whole lot. I rolled
into my bedroom to get dressed and was in the en suite before I’d
thought about it. This time, I measured the dose and aimed just to
stave off the pain and not get high. And felt sick the entire
time.

Erin pulled up beside the gate to
the Rollins residence. It was a low set brick house sitting back
from the road on several acres in Logan Reserve. A thick screen of
tall trees separated the house from the road. There were two houses
across the road, but otherwise, the area was still bush land. The
clock on the dash read 21:13. Courey had taken several hours to get
back to her with the street address for the IP address Ivan had
found. Then it had taken her another hour to reach the place. The
full moon had swayed through the eastern quarter of the sky while
she drove, drifting behind a fringe of clouds.

Behind the
screening trees, the property was circled with a standard height
chain link fence, but it had been extended up with hastily applied
chicken wire. There were rows of barbed wire along the front.
Someone didn’t want uninvited visitors, or escapees.

Erin checked
the magazine on her Glock and then slipped it into her shoulder
rig, not bothering to secure it in place. Getting out of the car,
she studied the house. Lights shone through several of the windows
and the flickering blue light of a TV highlighted one end of the
house. There was an old hatchback in the driveway, something a kid
with a fresh licence might drive. The car sat in deep shadows, all
the lights on at the other end of the house.

It was too
quiet. A breeze rustled the trees and the faint murmuring of a TV
came from across the road. There was no traffic. It was chilly and
she was thankful for the jacket she wore to conceal her weapon,
though she resisted the urge to wrap it tight. There was no point
in carrying the gun if she couldn’t get to it as quickly as
possible.

Thanks to the
extensions to the fence, the gate was hard to open. A hole just big
enough for a fist to pass through had been cut into the wire. Erin
gingerly put her hand through and unlatched the gate. Once
released, the whole structure leaned precariously outward and Erin
stepped back to keep the barbed wire from snagging in her hair. She
had to grip the inside edge of the fence and lift it a couple of
inches off the ground to swing it open enough for her to squeeze
through.

Erin walked up
the driveway at a slow, deliberate pace. All noise from the houses
across the road was muffled by the trees, leaving her in even
deeper quiet. Halfway to the house, she drew her gun. It hadn’t
been a conscious choice, but once the moulded grip settled into her
hand, she knew it had been right.

She watched
the bright windows as she approached. There was no movement inside.
While she hadn’t vocally announced her presence, the gate scraping
open should have done a sufficient job in the strange quiet.
Someone should have come to the front door, or to a window. There
was nothing.

It wasn’t
right. Something was very wrong. Stomach quivering, Erin turned
side on, gun raised in both hands as she side stepped toward the
house. It was time to get active.

“Hello?” she
called. “Mr Rollins? Mrs Rollins?”

Nothing
changed. If anything, the air dropped several degrees. Erin’s
shoulders wanted to shiver but she suppressed the urge.

“My name’s
Erin McRea,” she continued. “I’m with a private investigation firm.
I have some questions for your son.”

More
silence.

Then a
noise.

Heart slamming
against her ribs, Erin pointed the gun toward the hatchback. It had
been a little noise. A soft click. Possibly a large insect landing
on the metal. Possibly someone trying to be quiet as they hid
behind the car.

“Hello?” Erin
took her left hand off the butt of the gun and reached into a
pocket for her torch. She lifted it, rested her right hand on her
left wrist and pointed gun and torch in the same direction. “Who’s
there?” She clicked on the torch.

It rose up
from the shadows behind the car. Almost as big as the car itself.
The thin, pathetic beam of Erin’s torch highlighted a circle of
dark fur that rippled as the muscles concealed beneath it bunched
and tensed. She had enough time to think ‘What the fuck?’ and then
it leaped.

The wave of
almost physical cold hit her a split second before the animal. The
cold swept through her, peeling away layers of strength and
certainty and conviction. Erin dropped under the assault and the
creature sailed over her head. A rasping, bone cracking snarl
trailed it, digging into the empty spaces created by the initial
freezing wave.

It landed
behind her with quiet ease, the sound of four paws touching down
the only noise. On her belly, Erin tensed, getting ready to gather
her arms and legs under her so she could jump up and run. Before
she could, the creature moved. She knew it turned around to face
her by the sudden sensation of ice trickling down her back. Then
its breath, hot and metallic, rich with fresh blood, parted the
hair around her neck. It snuffled at her prickled skin. She could
feel its weight hanging over her. Although she looked straight
ahead, trying desperately to judge the distance to the car so she
could crawl under it, she knew it stood over her, paws to either
side of her head and feet.

The beast was
massive. It pushed its giant muzzle into the back of her neck and
its mouth was large enough to swallow her whole head in one
bite.