Blood Work (38 page)

“Hawkins?
What’re you doing?” Erin sank down beside us, wary of the dead
beast, but curious and concerned. She’d picked up her gun, held
ready.

“She needs
blood. She’ll die without it.” And because I could feel the world
around me rushing back to zero and my starting post roaring toward
me, I began babbling about blood. “Mercy’s group is O positive.
Ideally, she should get some of that, but we’re fresh out. I’m A
pos, not so good for her. Won’t really help her heal too fast, but
it will keep her alive until I can find some O group. I would kill
for some O group blood. Positive or negative. Either one would be
fucking brilliant.” All the while I was working at my sleeve,
pushing it up to reveal the bandage around the last vampire
bite.

“I’m O
positive.”

I don’t think
Erin meant to say it out loud. But she did. It clamped onto my
brain like a vice grip. I went through a very quick and dirty
internal battle. It was entirely fair to say some nasty guerrilla
tactics were launched by the dark side of my personality against
the nicer side. A sneak attack from whatever it was that inspired
and fuelled that berserk rage I tried not to acknowledge but found
myself relying on too much. Sad to say, the bastard won.

Abandoning my
sleeve, I grabbed for Erin’s arm.

It took her a
moment to realise what was happening. Most of that time was
probably spent regretting whatever impulse had made her open her
mouth. The rest of it was consumed with pulling away from me. I
caught her hand, though, and jerked her back. She vented a
wordless, furious denial and twisted her arm in my hold. It broke
my grip and she rolled away.

Sliding Mercy
to the ground, I gave chase. She scrambled backward on her arse,
kicking at me with her feet. I half crawled, half loped after her.
Remembering the gun in her hand, she raised it, pointed it right in
my face.

“Back off,”
she screamed.

I ignored the
weapon. Whether I didn’t think she’d fire or just didn’t register
the threat was beyond my capability to decipher. All I knew was she
had something I needed. I would get it.

She didn’t
fire and when I took a swipe at it, the gun flew out of her hand
far too easily. I got her wrist and dragged her back toward me.
Fighting and screaming, she came very reluctantly, but come she
did. I dragged her back to Mercy’s side and shoved the sleeve of
her jacket up her arm. Her efforts to get away redoubled then. I
punched her in the face.

Dazed, she
slumped to the ground. When I shoved her inner wrist onto Mercy’s
fangs, she jumped and tried to pull away, but I held on hard and
milked the blood from the wound into Mercy’s mouth.

I don’t know
when my thoughts began turning in voluntary circles again. It might
have been when Mercy’s lips closed over the wound and worked to
pull out the blood. It could have been when Erin’s last protests
died and she went completely limp, narcotized by Mercy’s saliva.
Whatever happened first, I just suddenly realised what I had done
and had to work hard to keep my stomach from purging itself through
my mouth. I fell away from what I’d caused to happen, staring in
horror as the vampire fed off the human.

It was a gut
deep, visceral repulsion, like watching a cat crunch down on a
still struggling mouse. This wasn’t the awe-inspiring chase, the
wonder of watching a creature perfectly crafted for the hunt and
pursuit. It was the savage result, the bloody aftermath that was
the whole reason, the point, the sum total of life. This was an
apex predator doing what came natural to it, a primitive experience
humankind had deluded itself into thinking it had escaped. Watching
it made us cringe and despair over the lost life and wonder what we
could do to stop it.

I knew what I
could do to stop this. It was the side of Mercy I hated, that I had
refused so hard to believe I’d twisted her into something
unnatural, for a vampire. She was weak, close to mortally wounded.
It would be easy. Erin’s gun was just there. I could pick it up,
bang, right in the brain, dead. No one would ever be in danger from
her again. But I would effectively be killing Night Call along with
her. She was Night Call. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t the car. And
without Night Call, I’d be nothing.

Throwing
myself forward, I pulled Mercy off Erin. The vampire struggled,
reaching for her victim again, but she was still fragile. I knocked
her back easily.

“Enough.” I
snapped it down the link as well, getting a satisfying flinch from
Mercy.

Without
putting my back to Mercy, I checked Erin. Her pulse was still
strong, but her skin was frightfully pale, her breathing shallow. I
worked fast, tearing a strip off her shirt and binding the ragged
wound in her wrist. Mercy prowled around us, on all fours, watching
me like a challenger to her territory. In a very real way, I was,
but I was the dominant and I let her know it with hard glares and
the occasional slap through the link. I was exhausted though and
knew I couldn’t keep it up for long.

“Get my
knife,” I told her. “It’s in the wolf.”

She hissed at
me, but slunk off to get it. The greater wounds bled sluggishly
now, fuelled by Erin’s donation. Mercy was still in need of blood
to heal properly. Even with an unlimited supply of the right group,
she’d probably need days to close the wounds, weeks to regain all
of her strength.

While the
vampire was occupied, I made sure Erin was going to be okay. She
had no broken bones, not even from my punch. A small trail of blood
marked the line from one nostril to her chin. She’d probably get a
nice black eye from it, but nothing worse. Still, it was bad
enough, made even more horrible by the fact that I’d been the cause
of it.

“I’m sorry,
Erin,” I whispered as I laid her on the ground and straightened her
limbs. “I told you I was too dangerous for you.”

Searching my
pockets turned up a battered business card. I slipped it into her
jeans pocket. After this, she deserved the chance to call me up and
abuse the living daylights out of me. And if she didn’t, I’d call
her and make sure she did.

Erin stirred,
eyes half opening to stare at me blankly.

In the
distance, sirens began to wail. I was surprised, but only because
it seemed a lifetime had passed since we’d got here and began
disturbing the peace.

“You’ll be
fine,” I told Erin, brushing the hair out of her face. “The cops
will be here in a minute or two. They’ll take care of you better
than I can. Tell them about Tony Rollins and the dog. Tell them you
took it down yourself. You’ll be a hero, get on the news and
everything. Tell them that and I promise to never bother you
again.”

And for some
strange, totally whacked out reason I still don’t understand, I
kissed her. A feather light touch on her forehead. When I lifted my
head, I nearly toppled over from wooziness. Great. I’d probably
just laid down a compulsion of my own.

It was done
and the sirens were only getting louder. I stood, fended off
another bout of light headedness, collected Mercy and we stumbled
back to the car. Mercy was all but falling over when we reached it.
I had to drag her the last dozen yards. The morphine was really
gone and my leg sent a memo that it was going to its union if
conditions didn’t improve soon.

The one good
thing about this mess going down in the suburbs was that there were
plenty of little side streets to lose myself in. I got us
thoroughly lost and didn’t care because no flashing lights
followed. The down side was that by the time we got home, I was all
but asleep at the wheel and Mercy was delirious with spiking hunger
again. I had to carry her inside to her room and while wishing I
could just crawl into bed, I fetched the last bag of O pos from the
fridge. Putting the bag through a rapid warm up, under my arm,
basically, I made sure she was eating before locking the cage
door.

I hoped that
between Erin’s fresher than fresh blood and the bag of packed
cells, she would have what she needed to heal, but right then, my
hope was a fragile thing.

For myself, I
bypassed the kit with the last two ampoules of morphine and stood
under a scalding hot shower until I was about ready to faint. Then
I scrounged around and found every heat pack I owned and strapped
them around my knee.

I couldn’t
sleep. I didn’t want to sleep. The action was over, the vampire was
mending, the poor bystander was hopefully in hospital by now,
babbling about how she took down a psychotic, giant dog. And me?
What was I in all this mess? A sarcastic prick who got a kid
killed.

I shouldn’t
have brushed Rollins off when he first called. I should have taken
the time to listen, to think, to apply a cool, logical process to
what he told me. It was all so apparent now. Aurum had only put a
spotlight on something I should have stumbled over in the dark.
Instead I’d acted like everyone else when faced with something they
didn’t understand. They rationalised it away, they ignored it, they
said it wasn’t real and went on about their lives. I should never
have done that. I knew better.

Yet when I
tried to not think about Tony Rollins, tried not to see his
mutilated body wherever I looked, all I could see was Mercy feeding
on Erin. Another situation that would never have happened but for
me. It would be easy to blame that dark instinct lurking in the
deeper parts of my brain chemistry that made me go berserk. Easy
and at least partially correct. The fact remained, I had known
exactly what I was doing.

Saving
Mercy.

The thought
was there, though, that it hadn’t been necessary. Mercy had been
wounded in the past and she’d been fine. Perhaps she could have
survived until we got home. Or perhaps she would have died halfway.
Mere days ago I had been contemplating her death, conducting it
myself. Put her out of her misery was how I would rationalise it
away. If there was any hint of the old Mercy, the real Mercy, even
a trace of Susan Grayson left, would she like what she was now?
Could she tolerate the hunger, the instincts to hunt and fight?
What would Susan want if she could see Mercy?

I walked a
fine line in my own life, between being a calm, rational person,
and slipping into the abyss of frustration and fear that became
all-consuming anger. Knowing this before I’d ever laid eyes on
Nasty Kitten and falling head long into an unhealthy obsession with
Mercy Belique, I’d still thrown myself into yet another balancing
act when I decided to do anything and everything I could to save
Mercy from her vampiric transformation. I tempered my dark side by
nurturing Mercy’s. At least, I tried to. And it was sort of
working. With semi-regular releases of my savage half while
executing jobs for Night Call, I wasn’t beating up on helpless
girls, or turning into a homicidal maniac in traffic. I even had a
friend.

So why had I
brutalised Erin? When all was said and done, she was just an
innocent bystander, there only because she was good at her job. She
hadn’t deserved to be dragged into the situation with Rollins’ dog,
and she certainly hadn’t deserved to become dinner for a vampire at
my insistence. So why had I done it? Had I wanted to save Mercy? Or
myself?

I couldn’t
answer the question and that scared me.

Pain relief
was too good for someone that stupid. I pried the heat packs off my
knee and tossed them across the room. Abandoning the bed and
walking heartlessly on my bad leg, I went into the living room,
slumped on the couch and turned the TV on.

A big, black
dog jumped at the screen, snapping and growling. I flicked channels
without realising it, heart slamming against my ribs in totally
unwarranted but hopefully understandable panic. The next channel
was a guy desperate to sell me a vacuum cleaner. The next, cartoons
not good enough to make it into a time slot after dawn. Then an
evangelist imploring me and other nutcases unable to sleep to
acknowledge the sin in our souls and repent. What the heck. Maybe
he had a point. I let his impassioned oration numb my thoughts.

While I sat
mindlessly before the TV, my knee wasn’t so lucky. It was swollen
from the night’s efforts and throbbing with a dull, penetrating
pain I felt in my teeth. I should have strapped it up, even if I
was going to continue with the stupidity of denying myself pain
relief. But I didn’t think I could get up now to go hunt down a
support.

I was on the
verge of dragging myself to the en suite and the waiting ampoules
of liquid oblivion when a few words from the TV caught my
attention. Somewhere along the way, the sun had risen and the
evangelist had been replaced by a morning news broadcast. What had
snagged at my ragged thoughts was the blurb of an upcoming story. A
woman grievously injured while saving a quiet suburb from a
rampaging dog.

The commercial
break was about an hour long. Plenty of time for my brain to slog
past the fogging pain and chuck a few conclusions at me. Erin was
fine. Alive and well enough to speak to the media, or some
intermediary who then spilled the beans. The authorities believed
her. No word of Tony Rollins though. If they’d found the body, that
would have been a major head line, not just an ‘after the break’
teaser. The last titbit that slotted into place was this—damn, the
media don’t waste any time.

Finally, ads
for toothpaste and toilet cleaner out of the way, we returned to
the news. The story was, of course, suitably sensational with
confident recitation of the animal’s size and violent tendencies.
Erin wasn’t named, but I doubted there were a great many private
investigators who used to be in the police force working in
Brisbane. She was being lauded as a hero who’d struck a pre-emptive
strike against a potential threat to citizens. As the news reader
then launched into the commerce report, I wondered how the story
would change when word of the death got out. I wondered what was
the real speculation behind the scene in the park. No matter what
I’d done to Erin’s mind, there was little chance the police would
believe she’d shot it God knows how many times, then broken its
back before impaling it with a bit of pipe.