Blood Hunt (9 page)

He did not sleep, but in spite of himself, he must have dozed because the sound of approaching feet startled him. He never heard the door open. Light blinded him as the sheet came off.

“
What clown put this stiff on his side?” a voice demanded.

If he raised upright, would they faint, Garreth wondered. He wished he could find out, but gravity dragged at him, weighting him. He went without resistance as they rolled him on his back again and rearranged the sheet over him.

“
Hurry,” another voice said. “This one’s a cop and Thurlow wants to get him posted as soon as possible.”

Garreth worked his hands to the edges of the gurney and clamped his fingers around the rubber bumper. Even if he could not move fast enough to attract their attention and they missed the faint motion of his chest, they could hardly overlook this.

The gurney halted stopped. An attendant pulled off the sheet. Hands took him by the shoulders and legs and pulled...but Garreth’s grip held him on the stretcher.

“
What the hell is going on?” snapped the voice of the medical examiner.

“
I don’t know, Dr. Thurlow. His hands weren’t like that when we put him on the gurney.”

Now that he had their attention, Garreth forced open his eyes. Half a dozen gasps sounded around him.

He focused on Dr. Edmund Thurlow. “Please.” The whisper rasped up his throat with a plea from his soul. “Get me out of here.”

2

Why were the doctors out at the intensive care unit desk talking so loud, Garreth wondered. Every patient in the unit could hear them.

“
I tell you he was dead,” Thurlow said. “I detected no vital signs, no heartbeat or respiration, and his pupils were fixed and dilated.”

“
It’s obvious he couldn’t have been dead,” a hospital doctor said. “However, that’s beside the point now. The question is, can we keep him alive? We’re pouring blood and ringers into him as fast as we can but his blood pressure is still almost nonexistent and he’s hypothermic and bradycardic. His breathing is so slow only the monitor tells me he’s breathing.”

Garreth looked up at the suspended plastic bags, one clear, one with contents the same dark red as Lane Barber’s hair. His eyes followed the tubing down to his arms. The blood made him feel better, but still not good. Exhaustion dragged at him. He desperately wanted to sleep, but could not find a comfortable position, no matter how he shifted and turned.

“
What about the throat injury?” Thurlow said.

“
A few skin sutures are all he’s needed,” came the reply. “The trauma isn’t nearly as severe as you described, Dr. Thurlow.”

“
We have
photographs
of what I saw.” Thurlow sounded defensive. “Both the left jugular and common carotid suffered multiple lacerations, almost to the point of complete severing. There were also multiple lacerations of the trachea and left stemocleidomastoid muscles.”

“
I’ve seen your photographs, so I believe you...yet twelve hours later the muscles, vessels, and trachea appear intact.”

They went on talking, but Garreth tried to ignore them. Careful not to move the arm with the needle in it, he shifted position again. The cardiac monitor above his bed registered the effort with an extra bleep. Moving proved pointless, however. Nothing made him comfortable. His bed stood near the window, and the glare of sunlight added to his discomfort.

Footsteps approached. If it was the nurse, he decided, he would beg for something to drug him to sleep.

Then he smiled weakly as Harry and Lieutenant Serruto appeared around the curtain across the door.

“
Hi.” he whispered.

“
Mik-san,” Harry replied in a husky voice. His hand closed hard over Garreth’s.

Serruto said, “They’re letting us ask you a few questions.”

“
Yes. What the hell were you doing up there?” Harry demanded. “I’m your partner. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing?”

“
Easy, Harry,” Serruto said.

Garreth did not mind. He heard the frantic worry beneath the anger and knew how he would have felt in Harry’s place. “Sorry.”

“
What happened?” Serruto asked.

Talking hurt. Garreth tried to find a short answer. Reaching up to the heavy collar of bandages around his throat, he managed to whisper, “Lane Barber bit me.”

They stared. “She bit you! That’s an understatement. How did it happen?”

How could he explain the loss of will that allowed her to stand him passively against a wall and tear his throat out? Damn, that light hurt. He shut his eyes. “Please. Close the curtains. Sun’s too bright.”

“
There’s no sun,” Harry said in a tone of surprise. “We’ve been socked in with heavy fog since midnight.”

Garreth opened his eyes again in astonishment. Noises that sounded overly loud and light that hurt his eyes. Bleeding to death produced one hell of a hangover. But to his relief, Harry closed the curtains. It helped a little.

“
Lane bit Mossman and Adair,” he said with an effort. “Drank their blood.”

“
Christ!” Harry shuddered. “The barmaid thought Barber might be kinky, but she’s really bent.”

Barmaid? Garreth did not ask the question, but he raised his brows in query.

Serruto explained. “We went around to the Barbary Now. Harry thought that you might have been there. The barmaid told us what you two talked about.”

If that were so, Harry must have made the same connections he had. He looked questioningly at Harry.

Harry sighed, shaking his head, indicating to Garreth that they had not arrested Lane.

“
She’s skipped,” Serruto said. “Caught a plane to be at her mother’s bedside, she told the manager.”

Harry said, “Something spooked her. When she came to work, she told the manager that she might have to leave suddenly. She’d even arranged for another singer to come in. After her walk with you, she sang a second set, then made a phone call — to her family, she told the manager — and said she had to leave.”

Garreth’s visit that afternoon spooked her. She saw him taking down the license number of the car. “Search her apartment?”

They nodded. “Nothing,” Serruto said. “No personal papers in the desk or trash. Some had been burned in the fireplace. The lab is seeing what they can recover from them. Refrigerator and cupboards bare. She left a closet full of clothes. The manager has no idea where her mother might live.”

A nurse came in. “Lieutenant, that’s enough for now.” When Serruto frowned, she slid between him and the bed and herded both the lieutenant and Harry away.

Harry called back, “Lien sends her love. She’ll visit as soon as it’s allowed.”

When they were gone, the nurse moved around the bed, tucking in sheets. “For someone so weak, you’re a restless sleeper.”

For the first time in his life. “Not comfortable. Sleeping pill?”

“
Absolutely not. We can’t allow anything that depresses body functions.” She leaned across him, pulling up the covers. As she did so, the smell of her filled his nostrils...a pleasant mixture of soap and fabric softener and something with an odd but strangely attractive metallic/salty scent. “How about a back rub. That may help.”

It did not. The sheets felt hot and sticky every place they touched him, with razor creases. He twisted in vain looking for a cool spot. However futilely he hunted a comfortable position, however, unit of blood reduced his feeling of weakness. The dragging weight of his body lightened and he moved with less effort. A thirst that had persisted all day turned into hunger and he looked forward eagerly to supper. An eagerness evaporating abruptly when he saw the broth, gelatin, and tea they allowed him.

“
I don’t get real food?” He thought longingly of fried rice and Lien’s sweet-and-sour pork.

“
We don’t want to strain your circulation by making it work at digestion.”

Maybe
we
did not, but
he
wished otherwise. Then again, maybe she was right. After eating, his stomach churned uneasily, as though debating whether to keep the offering or not.

Garreth lay quiet, willing the nausea away. Could this be part of last night, or was it an aftermath of Chiarelli’s punch?

At length, the nausea subsided...and Garreth discovered he felt much better. Full of new blood and a symbolic meal, he felt surprisingly normal. Though he still needed sleep, he found some of the aches had subsided. He wished he had a TV to watch.

A doctor appeared later in the evening, introducing himself as Dr. Charles. Garreth recognized the voice from the group at the desk earlier. “You’re looking much better, Inspector. Your blood pressure is steadily improving. Now, let’s check a few other things.”

He used a stethoscope and rubber hammer and tongue depressor, listening, peering, tapping, probing. While he worked, he hummed. Occasionally the hum changed key, but Garreth could not tell if that had any significance or not. What he did notice was the same metallic/salty odor about the doctor that he had noticed on the nurse. Did they all wear the same antiperspirant or something?

“
You’re doing much better. What you need now is a good night’s sleep, and if you’re doing this well in the morning, we’ll move you out of Intensive Care,” the doctor said. He discontinued the blood and fluids.

Garreth, however, did not feel the least like sleeping now. He wanted a TV or visitors. Lacking both, he could only lie in bed listening to the heart monitors bleeping in ragged syncopation in the other rooms. He closed his eyes, but opened them again when his mind began replaying the nightmare in the alley. Where had she learned that perversion?

Why did they keep Intensive Care lighted so brightly at night? he also wondered. How could anyone sleep in a glare like this?

He lay awake when dawn came, and then, astonishingly, for what must be the first time in his life, the first rays of the sun brought an intense desire to sleep. Only he could not. Just as suddenly, he rediscovered all yesterday’s aches. The sheets heated up and Garreth found himself once more in a ceaseless hunt for a comfortable position. Worse, when breakfast came, his stomach voted against it. It came back up almost before he swallowed.

On his morning rounds, Dr. Charles frowned gravely at that. Garreth told him about Chiarelli.

“
We’ll schedule for a barium series tomorrow and see about your stomach.”

In the meantime, they returned to intravenous feeding. After the morning bloodwork, they decided he needed still more blood. He lay with clear liquid running into one arm and blood into the other. He would look like a junkie by the time he got out of here, he reflected.

The air filled with that metallic/salty scent, stronger than ever. Only this time, with none of the staff around.

Sniffing out the source, Garreth discovered that it came from the tube feeding blood into his arm.

The hair on his neck rose.
That
was what he was smelling,
blood
? He smelled the
blood
in people?

He shivered. Son of a bitch. What was happening to him?

Before he had a chance to answer the questions about himself, Serruto arrived with tape recorder to ask official ones. The statement taken, Garreth was moved to the medical floor and left to sleep. But the huge weight pressing him into the steaming sheets gave him no chance...no peace.

Garreth did not even attempt lunch. The mere scent of it nauseated him.

Lien came for a short visit in the afternoon. “You look terrible,” she said, “but at least you’re alive. I had a frantic call from your mother yesterday morning.”

Garreth’s stomach tightened. “They heard about me on the news?”

“
No, it hadn’t been broadcast yet. She said your grandmother Felt you’d been killed, that Satan tore out your throat.” Lien paused. “I’m happy she’s only part right this time. Unfortunately, at that time we did think you were dead, so the happiest phone call I’ve ever made was the one later to let your mother know you’re alive after all. She said to tell you they’ll be up in a couple of days to visit.”

He would like that. Maybe Judith would let them bring Brian, too.

Lien chattered about her job and art classes, relieving him of the necessity of saying anything. While she talked, she distracted him from his discomfort.

Which all came back once she left. He resumed fighting aches and searing sheets. To make matters worse, his upper gums now hurt.

He eyed the cushioned chair by the window. That might be a helpful change; it would be a change anyway. So he threw back the covers and eased over the side of the bed.

In two steps he had fallen flat on his face, giving himself a bloody nose and — he discovered with horror — loosening his upper canine teeth. They wiggled when he touched them with his tongue.

He was trying to crawl back into bed when an aide found him.

Dr. Charles wasted no time with sympathy. “That was a stupid thing to do. You’re still too weak to get out of bed, and when I decide you’re ready — when
I
decide — you will be helped in and out. Under no circumstances are you to do it alone. I presume that as a police officer you know how to take orders. Well, I’m giving you one. Stay in bed. Do nothing without permission first. Is that clear?”

Garreth nodded meekly. “Yes, sir.”

“
Good. We have the barium study scheduled for you tomorrow. We’ll get a dentist to check your teeth as well.”

Though he never managed to sleep, he dozed, and toward nightfall not only felt much better, the desire to sleep vanished.

He turned on the TV.

A nurse, coming in to check his vital signs, turned it off. “Dr. Charles wants you to sleep.”

As soon as she left, however, he switched the set back on, keeping the volume as low as he could and still hear. That proved to be very low indeed. It seemed that his sharpened hearing persisted. He used it to listen for nurses in the corridor, so he could shut off the set before they came in.

After midnight, Channel 9 started its Friday Fright Night feature, three horror movies in a row. Garreth settled back to watch, as he often had since Marti died. However melodramatic, the movies diverted him. Tonight’s offerings began with Dracula.

He sighed. How appropriate. His entire life these days seemed to revolve around blood, or the lack of it.

Into the movie, with everyone worrying about Miss Lucy’s mysterious wasting disease, Garreth reflected that his one complaint with these shows was the way the characters waded up to their necks in clues and yet never realized they had a werewolf, demon, or vampire loose among them. On the other hand, perhaps that was reasonable. In real life no one would guess such a thing, either. They would hunt a rational explanation. Like with Miss Lucy. They thought the broach on the shawl caused the punctures on her neck. No real-life person would consider a vampire bite as —

The thought ended in a paralysis as profound as when he lay in the morgue. He could not move, only stare at the TV screen with mind churning. No, that was impossible...a crazy thought! He was losing his mind. Lane Barber might be psychotic and a killer, but a human one, certainly. Nothing more or less. How could she be anything else? She slept all day because she worked nights. If she kept no food in her apartment, maybe she hated to cook and always ate out. He kept little more than snack food and microwave dinners at home himself. Yes, she bit men she made love to and some of them died, but two men with punctures in their bruises did not mean punctures in every bruise.

On the TV, Dracula’s bite turned Miss Lucy to a vampire driven by mindless bloodlust.

Thirst started to burn in Garreth’s throat and he reached involuntarily for the bandage around his neck.

No! He jerked his hands away. That really was impossible! If every vampire bite made a vampire, the world would be hip-deep in the creatures. Look at all the men Lane had bitten.

He turned off the TV with a decisive stab of his finger. The blood loss must be affecting his mind. Vampires did not exist. He had no insatiable urge to bite the nurses, did he, despite his thirst and their attractive blood scent? He had not developed a desire to don a black opera cape and take the form of a bat. He just happened to feel better at night.

But cold continued to run up and down his spine, and knots worked uneasily along his gut.

Anger flared in him. This was nonsense! He would end it once and for all.

Easing out of bed, he groped his way to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. To his relief, he saw the same face he did every morning while he shaved.

So that settled that! Everyone knew vampires did not reflect. His teeth, though sore and loose from his fall this afternoon, looked no longer than usual.

Then he realized he had not turned on the light.

He quickly flipped up the switch...and wished he had not. The eyes in the mirror, perceived before as normal gray, now reflected the light as Lane’s had, flaring red. Fire red, hell red...blood red.

Garreth slammed down the switch in a spasm of panic and clutched the edge of the washbowl for support, trembling. No! This was insane. Impossible!

And yet...

He sat on the closed lid of the toilet. Yet, how was it that he, who always woke with the sun, now felt better at night? Why could he see in the dark? Why did he smell the blood in people and throw up solid food? On the other hand, if he had become —

The thought stumbled and died before a new flood of panic. Run! a voice screamed inside him.
Run
! It brought him off the toilet to the bathroom door, where he clung to the jamb, breathing hard. He had to get out of here. There was a logical explanation for everything but he needed somewhere to think. Somewhere quiet. He could not do it in this reek of blood and voices shouting up and down the halls and everyone coming to poke and prod him.

How to get out, though? While they could not keep him against his will, demanding to be released in the middle of the night might make them consider him irrational. He could hardly walk out in a hospital gown, either.

But he had to get away somehow!

Shaking, he made his way back to the bed and pushed the call button.

“
May I help you?” a female voice asked from the speaker above the bed.

“
I need to go to the bathroom. Will you send an orderly to help me, please?”

A female aide appeared a few minutes later, not an orderly. She opened the cabinet beside his bed.

“
Please, not the urinal,” Garreth said. “I feel much better. Can’t you let me use the bathroom if someone takes me there?”

“
I’ll see,” she said.

While Garreth waited, crossing mental fingers, he ripped the draw sheet on his bed into several long strips and wrapped them around his waist under his hospital gown. When the door opened again, he smiled in relief at the brawny orderly.

“
You’re sure you want to try this?” the orderly asked.

Garreth nodded. He had no trouble making the gesture sincere.

“
Okay.” Putting an arm around Garreth, the orderly helped him out of bed and supported him across the room into the bathroom.

The orderly’s cheerfulness stabbed Garreth with guilt. He consoled himself with the thought that if all went right, no one would be hurt.

The orderly left him in the bathroom. Garreth waited a few minutes, running the water, then sat down on the floor and called for help.

The orderly hurried in. “Did you fall? Are you hurt?”

“
Help me up, please.”

As the orderly leaned over to do so, Garreth threw an arm around the muscular neck and tightened down.

The orderly collapsed flat on the floor in Garreth’s neck lock.

“
I don’t want to hurt you,” Garreth said, “but if you don’t shuck your shirt and pants in one minute, you’re going to have the biggest pain of your life in your neck.”

“
Mr. Mikaelian, you — ” the orderly began in protest.

“
Strip.”

It was hard with both of them lying on the floor, but the orderly managed. Garreth tied his hands with the strips from the draw sheet, gagged him with another strip and a washcloth, and tied him to the pipes of the washbowl, out of reach of the call button beside the toilet. Then Garreth changed into the orderly’s clothes, rolling up a cuff to shorten the trousers to his length. He helped himself to the orderly’s shoes as well, though large for him.

“
I’m sorry about this, but I want a quicker discharge than I think the doctor is willing to give me. At least I’m leaving you your skivvies. I’ll see the other clothes are sent back.”

The orderly sighed in combined disgust, anger, and bewilderment.

Garreth walked out, shutting off the light and closing the bathroom door.

No one looked twice at him in the corridor. He took the elevator down and walked out of the building without being challenged. On the street he hailed a cab. The resolution that let him walk without staggering ran out. He slumped back in the seat.