Blood Crimes: Book One (16 page)

      “Oh, I think I do.”

      There was another long pause. Then, “This isn’t worth arguing over. Your PI is heading to Cleveland, right?”

      “That’s what I told you.”

      “Fine. Let’s wait and see if he finds him.”

      “And when he does?”

      “If he does then I’ll go to Cleveland as promised. In the meantime get yourself under control. The odds are that someone else did this killing. And for God’s sake, don’t do something stupid.”

      “Like what, darling?”

      Another soft, static-like sigh. “You know full well what I mean.”

      “No, darling, I’m afraid I don’t. I’m too stupid to know what you mean. We’re not all as brilliant and razor-sharp as you.”

      “Cut the shit, okay, Serena? You know exactly what I mean. Don’t go to Cleveland. We don’t need the attention. Just stay put until you hear from your PI. If
Jim
’s there, I’ll keep my word.”

      “We don’t need the attention? But it’s okay for you to snatch famous scientists.”

      “Jesus Christ. We’ve been over this…”

      Serena swallowed back what she was going to say. Instead, her voice fell back to its normal sing-songish lilt, the crackling glass quality from a few seconds earlier gone.

      “Don’t worry, darling,” she said, laughing. “I won’t be doing anything to get us in trouble. I’ll stay put in
M
anhattan. There’s a new club opening tonight that I desperately want to go to, so don’t worry.”

      “Good. Have fun with your opening.”

      “Oh, you know I always do.”

      Serena made sure to hang up before him, not wanting to give
M
etcalf the opportunity to get the last word in. She stood frozen, her eyes hard angry slits.

      “Who the fuck does he think he is?” she said, her crackling glass voice back. “The bastard thinks his word is God?”

      Zach gave her a sympathetic smile. “
M
etcalf’s been on this God-complex bullshit for years, but the guy’s nothing but an asshole. Let’s just be thankful he’s long gone from New York. So what’s next?”

      Serena’s face scrunched up as she considered that. She caught Wilfred sullenly rubbing his jaw and her face relaxed into an apologetic smile.

      “Oh, darling, I did that, didn’t I? I wasn’t even aware.”

      “That’s okay,” Wilfred mumbled, still pouting.

      Serena moved over to him and touched his injured cheek, then her fingertips moved lightly down his chest before sliding into his pants. While she was showing Wilfred how apologetic she was, she stopped for a moment to tell Zach that they were going to Cleveland.

      “Sure, I’ll book us a flight for tonight,” Zach said.

      “No need to wait, darling. Arrange for a limo pickup. That way we can bring everything we need with us.”

      “We could do the same with a private flight.”

      “I know but there’s no reason to wait. Would you be a dear and arrange a pickup? Oh, and
Gregory
, I’m going to need you to stay behind so our little inmates here don’t run wild.”

      
Gregory
made a bitter face at that. “Why me?” he asked.

      “I need someone I trust to watch over our little hive, but
Gregory
, darling, it wasn’t nice of you to take pleasure out of poor Wilfred’s discomfort. Families don’t do that.”

      
Gregory
nodded, his eyes lowered in shame. Serena turned back to Wilfred to finish making things up to him.

      An hour later a Lincoln Continental limousine with darkened windows and shades drawn parked in front of Serena’s converted hotel. Zach, decked out in the hot hazy August New York morning in a head to toe leather outfit, dark wraparound shades, and a NY
M
ets baseball cap, loaded the limo with luggage, several coolers, and a duffel bag packed with five antique Samurai swords that were bought through auction and made by the famous sword maker, Hizen Tadahiro. Once the limo was loaded, Serena dashed from the hotel to the Lincoln, along with two martial arts experts that Serena had infected two years earlier in preparation for
Jim
being found. Wilfred and Zach joined them.
Gregory
stood in a darkened doorway brooding. The limo pulled away from the curb and
Gregory
waved half-heartedly at it before heading back into the building. 
 

Chapter 7
 

      Duane Posey’s murder was a big story in Cleveland. Partly it was because of the grisly nature of it; his jaw and mouth completely obliterated and most of his blood gone, but the interest was also because of his long history of violence and suspected sexual assaults. When Carol was out getting breakfast,
Jim
turned on one of the local news channels and caught the story. According to the reporter at the murder scene—an attractive twenty-something blond whose wavy shoulder-length hair appeared shellacked, and who looked even downright diminutive compared to Carol—made sure to keep a dour frown frozen on her face as she reported how Posey had been arrested for over a half-dozen rapes during the past five years, but that the charges were dropped in each case. She didn’t spell it out, but it was clear that the victims had been intimidated to where they were afraid to cooperate with the DA. A police spokesman interviewed talked about how this was a bad guy and even though the streets might be safer without him, no one had the right to take the law into their own hands and that the Cleveland police were going to aggressively pursue his murderer. He hinted that given Posey’s violent past, this was more likely a revenge or drug killing than something ghoulish, but he had no explanation about what had happened to the dead man’s blood. There was no mention of the bar Carol had met Posey at, and thank God, nothing about Carol. But shit, what could they have, anyway?
M
aybe Posey had accosted Carol in that bar, but he accosted another woman there also. Still,
Jim
couldn’t help feeling like he had a dodged a bullet. He and Carol had been getting careless.
M
ost of the bodies he fed off of were disposed of afterwards, the ones that were left behind he made sure wouldn’t be found for days, and that there would be at least a plausible explanation for what had happened to the missing blood—such as it washing down a sewer grate.

      The story ended and the next story up was about the local baseball team’s recent six-game losing streak.
Jim
turned off the set. He sure as fuck did dodge a bullet. The police found Posey’s body only an hour after the killing thanks to a prostitution sweep. Forget about how they could’ve been entering that alley while
Jim
was feeding; with them there so quickly after the killing all they would’ve had to find was one homeless person hidden in a doorway who had spotted Posey grabbing Carol and that could’ve led them to finding out about Carol and Posey meeting in that bar, and then a police drawing of Carol being splashed across the news. The thought of that made him wince. While there was never any risk of these predators hurting Carol—he was never more than a heartbeat away from her—he had been in denial over the police somehow tying her any of his killings. He made a decision then. He wasn’t going to use Carol as bait anymore.

      He had quit smoking when he joined the Army, but right then he could’ve used a cigarette. Or more accurately, he could’ve chain smoked through a carton. The thought of how close he came to putting Carol in jeopardy left him jittery as hell. Over the last three years he had selfishly rationalized that she wanted to be part of what he did. It wasn’t anything they ever talked about, but he knew that this was tied to her being attacked in Newark; that being involved with killing these predators gave her a release from the anger that she carried. Because of that, he went along with it, but it still wasn’t right for him to include her. Fuck. A shiver went down his spine.
Never again
.
Never fucking again
. He knew she was going to fight him tooth and nail over it, but he was never going to subject her to that type of risk again. He would just have to suck it up and stop tormenting himself over what he needed to do. He knew what these people were, he could smell it off of them, fuck his conscience. He would just do what he had to, and be satisfied with knowing that in his own way he was making the world a better place. That police spokesman was full of shit.

      Another shiver ran through him.

      What the fuck did he almost do to Carol?

      He shook his head as if by doing so he could shake those images of what could’ve happened out of his brain. Never again. Yeah, Carol was going to put up a stink about it, but never fucking again.

      He breathed in deeply, held it, and tried to calm the noise buzzing through his mind. It was over. They dodged the bullet. Carol was safe. Time to move on.

      He picked up the money roll from where he had tossed it the other night and peeled off several hundred dollars from it. The roll was still thick enough to choke a bull. He got off the bed, lifted it and stashed the roll underneath the wooden frame. Unless someone was going to drain the mattress, the bed weighed a good five hundred pounds, and no one was going to look under it for any money.

      He couldn’t shake this his restlessness. He walked over to the window, pushed the curtains away so he could peek outside. The sky was gray, overcast, as if it were going to start raining later that afternoon. With the sun mostly hidden, he could probably go outside without getting sick, or at least not as sick as the sunlight usually made him. He didn’t feel like staying cooped up in this dingy motel room, but he also didn’t want to miss Carol when she got back. He closed his eyes and tried to decide what to do. Finally, he came to a decision and headed to the shower. The water was lukewarm and came out in a drip, but he cleaned up as best he could, although he couldn’t help feeling that no amount of scrubbing would ever remove the smell of death from his skin; that even if he scoured himself with steel wool, traces of his killings would still be left behind. While he dried off, Carol came back, found him in the bathroom, and got on her toes so she could kiss him hard on the mouth.

      “That was really nice last night,” she said. “You had my head pounding. I thought I was going to pass out.”

      It was always like that after a killing. She’d get so turned on, so excited, so much stuff pent up that needed to be released. All that rage inside needing an outlet. And here he was, using her as bait for predators so she would be perpetually feeding her anger and never able to move past it. What the fuck was wrong with him? What the fuck could he possibly have been thinking?

      “I can’t take all the credit for last night,” he said, a tentative smile moving across his face as he tried hard to keep his self-loathing hidden from her. “The waterbed helped a lot.”

      “No, Hon, it wasn’t the waterbed.”

      She moved her hands from behind his neck and rested them on his hairless chest. Before becoming infected, he had a small forest growing there. He smiled sickly to himself thinking how if the infection spread it would put all the laser hair removal outfits out of business.

      “You feel good, Hon,” Carol breathed lightly. “So cool and so good. I’m burning up right now. Why don’t we go back to bed so you can cool me off.”

      
Jim
gave her a quick kiss on her lips, his smile weakening as he slipped past her so he could get to his clothes.

      “We’ve got nine grand burning a hole in my pocket,” he said. “I was thinking you deserve a shopping spree. It’s been a while. We could save the other activity for later.”

      Her eyes turned guarded. “I don’t feel like being away from you right now,” she said.

      He slipped on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, both of which he had washed in the sink the night before and left hung up to dry. They were both damp, and with his body temperature at around seventy degrees, they were going to stay that way.

      “I was thinking we’d make this a date. Do some shopping, catch a movie, you know, typical couple stuff.”

      “I don’t want you to have to go outside. It was tough enough seeing you suffer yesterday.”

      “It’s overcast. I’ll be fine. What do you say we go out and spend some money and have some fun?”

      She didn’t say anything.

      “Come on.”

      She nodded without much enthusiasm. “Sure, okay.”

      “Great, let’s go find us a mall.”

      
Jim
squeezed her hand and felt a moist heat from her skin. He was always amazed at how much heat she produced. It was like a furnace working overtime inside her. They continued to hold hands as they left their motel room. Even with a gray and murky sky there was enough sunlight filtering through the clouds to make him nauseous. He pulled his baseball cap down further over his head and tried to keep his discomfort from Carol. It didn’t take long for them to find a mall, and once they were inside among the artificial fluorescent lighting he was fine. Carol quickly loosened up and got into her shopping.
M
ost of her purchases were really for
Jim
; black stiletto pumps, sheer negligee, a perfume that she had him pick out, but he also convinced her to buy a few things for herself, CDs from bands he had never heard of, bath salts, lotions and a few other small luxury items. The mall had a California Pizza, and after they had gotten seated, Carol was absolutely buoyant, maybe happier than
Jim
had ever seen her. It was like all the hard years together had been stripped away from her, and it made him realize the type of life he was stealing from her when a day like this was an unusual extravagance for them.