Blood of Eden (5 page)

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Authors: Tami Dane

BOOK: Blood of Eden
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The waitress brought our food and hurried away.
I read over my notes as I ate a few bites of my sandwich. “So we have two victims, dead from two different infectious diseases. And so far, the only thing they share in common is a pair of puncture wounds on their necks.” That sure didn't sound like a vampire on a rampage to me. But that didn't mean it wasn't weird or suspicious either. “Could this be a bizarre coincidence? Statistically, it seems so improbable, but ...” But what?
“How many people have you seen today with a pair of puncture wounds on their necks?” JT took another bite of his sandwich. He had a little smear of mustard on his lip. I kept staring at it.
“Two. And they were both dead.”
He pointed a fry at me. “Doesn't sound like a coincidence to me.”
“Okay, but what are we dealing with then?”
“I don't know. Hopefully, by tomorrow morning, we'll have more information.” JT dabbed his face with a napkin. No more smear. But I still kept staring at his mouth.
“That doesn't leave us with much to do tonight,” I said, a little sorry the day was coming to an end.
JT pushed his plate away. There wasn't much left on it. “I'm going to head into the office for a while, do some more reading. And I need to take a look at some maps. But I'll probably call it a night before ten.”
“Sounds like a plan. Tomorrow's going to be another long day.” Sensing that JT was ready to go, I waved at the waitress, who happened to be at a nearby table, and asked her for a box. “Ready to hit the road?”
“Yeah.” After I packed what was left of my food into a foam box, JT gave me another one of those looks, the kind both of us had to know he shouldn't be giving me. “It's good having you on the team, Skye.”
“It's good being here.”
I tried not to think too much about that I-like-you look. Not as we drove home in silence, and I pretended to read
The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures.
Or when I ate the rest of my lunch/dinner at my new desk, my Netbook's screen glaring at my tired eyes. Or when I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and slowly sank into a shallow slumber.
 
 
It was in the room with her again. She always knew it was there. The air turned cold and dead, like everything had been sucked out of it. She squeezed her closed eyes harder and silently prayed for it to leave her alone this time.
Why her? What did it want?
A frigid gust drifted over her, making the hairs on her nape stand on end. Goose bumps prickled the skin of her arms, back, and shoulders. The feeling of death was growing stronger. The scent of rotting flesh filled her nostrils and her eyes teared.
Please leave me alone. Please.
Something hard, sharp, scraped down her arm and she shivered.
Please go away. Not again. Oh, God, not again.
 
 
Beethoven's Fifth was playing. Somewhere close by.
My phone.
I lurched upright. My eyelids snapped open.
I shook off the memory of that creepy dream. Clearly, this vampire stuff was getting to me.
Hands trembling, heart pounding, and eyes squinting against the light, I rocked forward, shoved my hand in my purse, and dug for my cell phone. After I'd rescued it from the deepest corner, I checked the number and hit the button, answering, “Hey.”
“You scared me to death!” Katie yelled into my ear. “Why didn't you call me? Where are you?”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after eleven, but it felt like it was three in the morning. “It's been a long, long day. You have no idea.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but it's about to get longer.” I couldn't miss the laughter in Katie's voice. “Your mother was disassembling small appliances again.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. “What did she do now?”
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.
—Charlie Chaplin
4
I smelled the smoke before I'd reached my apartment door. But that was nothing new. Katie was always burning something. However, as I stumbled inside and shut the door, I was surprised to learn the lights in the living room didn't work.
That
was new.
I dropped my bag by the door and picked my way across the room, toward the kitchen. I successfully maneuvered around a chair and the coffee table, and a basket full of unread magazines. Just when I thought the coast was clear, I slammed into something big and hard, and down I went. Like a bag of rocks. I cracked my head just before I went totally horizontal.
“Shit, that hurt.” I lay prostrate on the floor, cradling my pounding head, pretty stars twinkling in the blackness. I blinked a few times, waiting for my head to clear.
Something—sharp—poked my belly.
“Don't move or I'll skewer you like a shish kebab,” a voice said. I knew that voice.
Oh, no. Not again.
“Mom, it's me, Sloan.” I didn't budge, didn't flex a muscle. Didn't even blink. If my mother was in the throes of a full-on psychotic episode, she could very well live up to her promise. Then I'd end up with an unwanted piercing. A very deep one, at that. When the sharp thing jabbing me in the belly didn't move, I repeated, “Mom, it's Sloan. Why don't you turn on a light and you'll see it's me.”
“The lights aren't working.” Her hand found my head, ran down my face, fingering my nose. Her sigh of relief was echoed by one of my own. “You have your father's nose. I would know it anywhere.” At last, she removed the weapon, and I breathed freely, without worrying a deep inhalation might cause a fatal injury.
“What happened to the lights?” I asked, slowly and carefully sitting up.
“I tried to warn you,” Katie called from somewhere to my right.
I turned toward my roommate's voice. “You said she was disassembling a few small appliances.”
“Yeah, well, that was before she decided to use the parts to build some crazy contraption, and
plug it in.
She fried the wiring. The power isn't just out in our unit. It's out in the whole building, Sloan.”
“How was I to know the transformer from your microwave oven was defective?” my mother snapped, sounding insulted. “It could've caused a fire, you know.”
I could imagine her features twisted into her trademark injured look, the one she'd used so many times before with great success. She really did know how to push my buttons. But now that I couldn't see her face, I was slightly immune to her manipulation.
I emphasize,
slightly.
“I'm going to bed. I have an early class tomorrow,” Katie grumbled.
“Good night,” I said, fingering the sore lump forming on my forehead. Katie was normally a roll-with-the-punches type of girl. Lately it seemed her patience with Mom was wearing thin.
Shifting onto my hands and knees, I felt around me. I found the big thing I'd tripped over. The thing beside it, the one I'd smashed my head into, was the wood side table, which usually sat in the room's corner. “Mom, we've talked about this before. You promised you wouldn't plug in your inventions before I've had a chance to check them out.”
“But I kept my word ... for a long time.”
I sent some seriously mean eyes at the dark blob standing about five feet away. “In the past twelve hours, you've broken your promise twice. And you've fried the electrical systems in two buildings. I've all but emptied my bank account, paying your landlord off so he won't evict you. And now this!” My voice was rising, and I didn't like that. But the pain drilling through my head and the exhaustion weighing upon my shoulders was getting the better of me. I was furious, frustrated, and slightly panic-stricken. I wouldn't be getting a paycheck from the FBI for a couple of weeks. If our landlord was going to come knocking, looking for compensation for this catastrophe, we were all going on a crash diet, whether we wanted to lose weight or not.
Truth be told, I could stand to lose a few pounds, anyway. But not my mother. And definitely not Katie.
“I'm sorry, Sloan. I was only trying to help.”
I'd heard that line once, twice ... okay, a million times. Many eons ago, I quit asking my mom why she felt she needed to “help” with anything (or more importantly how her inventions would help). My mother's logic never made sense to me. I assumed it was more a failing of my nonschizo-phrenic mind than a deficiency in her reasoning. When I reached the hallway, I drummed up the nerve to stand. For safety's sake, though, I leaned back against the wall for support. “Mom, are there any surprises in the hallway?”
“No. But about the sleeping arrangements ...”
“Yes, of course, you can take my bed, and I'll sleep on the couch.” My room was at the end of the hall. I curled the fingers of my left hand around the door frame and waved my right arm in front of my body as I blindly picked my way across the room to the dresser. I pulled the first garments I found out of my pajama drawer, a T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts.
The mattress creaked. “I'm sorry about the power,” Mom said from the general vicinity of the bed.
I wanted to scold her again, but I knew it was useless. My mother did what she felt she needed to do, regardless of any warnings, dangers, or laws. Nothing I said would ever change that. The truth was, in her twisted logic, her actions made sense because she believed she was protecting me. From what, I suspected, I'd never figure out.
Schizophrenia was a real bitch.
“Did you take your medicine today?” I asked as I rolled off my panty hose and threw them, wadded up, onto the top of my dresser.
“Yes, Sloan. I took every pill. I always do.”
That was the frustrating part. She did take her medication, exactly as prescribed. Her doctor had changed her prescriptions so many times, I'd lost count. And each time, she'd be better for a little while—the voices and delusions easing for a few months—but then they'd come back as strong as ever. This time, the quiet had only lasted a little over two months. I had more than a sneaking suspicion things were going to head downhill from here. The doctor had already warned me that they'd exhausted all drugs currently approved for treating my mother's disease. However, because I was an optimist at heart, I decided to put in a call to his office in the morning. Maybe there'd been a new drug approved by the FDA since our last visit? Unlikely, sure. But I could dream.
I shrugged out of my outdated polyester suit jacket and laid it flat on the dresser. Off came my skirt, my blouse. It felt like heaven getting into the comfy shorts. “Okay, Mom. We'll talk about it tomorrow. I need to get some sleep. I had a big day.”
“All right. Good night, Sloan.”
“G'night, Mom.”
This time, I had some idea where the danger zone was as I staggered and groped my way across our living room. I managed to get to the couch without seriously maiming myself. I only added a single painful bruise on my shin to my list of injuries. I set the alarm on my cell phone, after checking the battery to make sure it wouldn't die before morning; then I settled on the couch, hoping I wouldn't have another one of those bizarre nightmares.
 
 
I didn't have any nightmares, thank God. But I couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that somebody was watching me all night long. I must've woken at least a dozen times. Each time, I glanced into the deep shadows clinging to the room's corners. I peered out the window. Eventually I fell back into a dreamless slumber.
When my alarm went off at six-thirty, my eyelids felt like they were swollen. My eyeballs were scratchy, like they'd been plucked out, rolled in sand, and stuffed back into my sockets. My head was foggy. I needed another hour of sleep, and after that, caffeine. Lots of it.
Katie had already left for class by the time I dragged my weary self off the couch at seven-thirty. I put the side table back where it belonged and hauled Mom's invention to the coat closet—it weighed a freaking ton. I shoved it as far back as I could so she'd be less likely to mess with it. I rubbed my eyes as I padded barefoot into the kitchen, rummaged in the back of the cabinet for the instant coffee, and lit the gas stove to boil some water.
Mom joined me just as I was guzzling my second cup. I set a clean mug on the counter and motioned to the hot kettle. “Water's hot. Help yourself. I need to get going.” Over my shoulder, I motioned to the cupboard. “For lunch, you can cook some noodles. Add boiling water, let them sit for three minutes, and you're good to go. I'll call the office a little later and find out how long we'll be living like Neanderthals.”
“Thanks, honey. Again, I'm sorry about the accident.”
Twisting, I gave my mother a wilted semismile over my shoulder. I swear, if I didn't love that woman as much as I did, I'd have gone ballistic on her ages ago. But I did love her, and I couldn't be cruel to her. No matter how much trouble she caused. “Promise me, you'll keep your word from now on. No powering up your inventions until I've tested them.”
Mom smacked her right hand over her heart. “I swear I won't get anywhere near a wall outlet until you tell me it's safe.”
I headed into the shower, wondering how long she'd keep her word this time.
 
 
The big red numbers on the digital clock hanging on the conference room wall read twenty-five hours, fifty-nine minutes, and thirty-three seconds, and it was counting backward. To what deadline, I had no clue yet. But it was safe to assume it wasn't counting down the hours till the season finale of
The Bachelor
or the premiere of the next
Twilight
movie.
I wasn't the last to hurry into the conference room for our morning meeting. That made me feel a little better. Chief Peyton, the only member of the team who wasn't waiting in the conference room, was in her office, on her phone. But I knew I had to have been the last to arrive at the unit, thanks to a side trip to my apartment complex's office.
Good news: the official “cause” was faulty wiring—I wasn't about to argue, especially with my bank account balance approaching zero.
The bad news: no power for another day or two.
JT gave me a half grin as I settled into a chair. His dark, come-hither eyes said something I didn't want to try to interpret right now. So, to avoid thinking too much about how charming he looked this morning, I busied myself, setting up my Netbook, gathering a pen and notebook to jot notes, and sneaking bits of a stale granola bar into my mouth. I'd forgotten about putting that in my purse a couple of months ago, thank goodness.
The chief rushed in just as I swallowed the last mouthful of chocolate and granola. She pointed at the clock and announced, “This is how much time we have until the next victim dies.”
It was all very Hollywood.
Absolutely, I was extremely skeptical about this whole thing. Who wouldn't be?
Granted, because I'd dragged in much later than everyone else, I had to assume I didn't know everything the other members of the team did. In my book, the deaths were strange, perhaps a little fishy, but hardly clear-cut murders.
“This is what we have so far.” Chief Peyton clicked her laptop's mouse and an image displayed on the white wall behind her.
Nifty. PowerPoint.
The chief pointed at the picture of the Baltimore victim. “Jane Doe Two. Approximate age, thirty-five. She collapsed a few minutes before ten yesterday morning in Baltimore, within walking distance of a hospital. Cause of death, complications of malaria.” She clicked the mouse again, and this time, an image of the woman from the morgue we'd visited yesterday displayed. “Hannah Grant. Collapsed and died outside of a coffee shop in Frederick, exactly forty-eight hours before Jane Doe Two. Age, thirty-one. COD, complications of typhoid fever.” She clicked the mouse a third time, and another photo appeared. It was of a dead woman who looked a great deal like the first two. “And this is the unsub's first victim, Jane Doe One. Age, early thirties. Collapsed and died outside of a fabric store in Arlington, exactly forty-eight hours before Hannah Grant. COD, complications of dengue hemorrhagic fever. That's three women, very close in age and appearance, all with identical bite marks on their necks. Each died within forty-eight hours of the previous from an infectious tropical disease. The one victim who has been identified has not traveled outside of the United States, and thus the mode of infection is unknown. Also, she didn't seek medical care because, according to family members and coworkers, she didn't show any symptoms prior to her collapse.”
Okay, when Chief Peyton put it like that, I had to admit there did seem to be something going on here. But I still felt we weren't the right team to solve this case. It sounded more like some kind of epidemic.

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