Blood Red (25 page)

“Yeah, I can see it from here.”

“Is someone named Leticia coming on?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Don't let her in the room,” Sean said.

“Um, actually, that would be a problem, Lieutenant.”

“Why is that?”

“She just walked in. She's here right now,” Bobby told him.

The pulse in the throat, he had told her. “Find the pulse in the throat. You're a nurse, so you won't have any problem. You're starving, and you will be in this pain until you fill yourself with what you need, but you must be careful. There is only one who can stop your pain. You must go to her room. There will be someone there, so you must be careful, but you are a nurse, and you can go right in and ease your pain.”

The words pounded in Leticia's head. She had very little memory of exactly what had happened; she only knew that she was supposed to do as she had always done. Go to work. Sign in. Once she had done what he had commanded, all would be well. He would find her again. She would be rewarded as she had never been rewarded before.

She found the patient, Deanna, who was lying there in silence. There were also two men in the room, one sitting by the bed and watching Deanna intently. The other was a cop, but he was on the phone. She had seen him in the room before. Bobby. The cop's name was Bobby. For some reason, evern though so much was a blur, she knew his name.

She walked over to the bedside and replaced the IV drip, just as she normally would. Then she leaned lower. She could hear the pounding of the woman's heart, could see the pulse in her throat.

She felt a streak of agony worse than anything that had plagued her so far. A hunger unlike anything she could have imagined before. It tore at her insides like a razor blade. It demanded satiation.

She opened her mouth, and she felt another stark and terrible pain as her teeth actually…stretched. Somewhere, in the very back of her mind, she knew that biting another woman and seeking to drain her of their very last drop of her life's blood was wrong.

But the hunger…

The hunger was unbearable….

She paused suddenly, terrified.

The pain continued to brutally tear at her stomach, but something worse, something as powerful as an atomic bomb, had exploded within her mind.

She was nearly blinded.

Yet she saw.

There was a chain around the woman's neck.

A chain and a cross.

Leticia remembered Aunt Judy and Pete, how she'd wanted to be a nurse to save lives, how she had loved to sing with the choir and…

No! The pain raked her and made her bleed inside. She was insane with hunger, ravenous. She had to feed.

She leaned lower, her fangs closer…

And then heavy hands fell on her shoulders, and she screamed at the agony tearing her apart.

It took Lauren so long to smooth things over between Barry and Heidi that she was ready to scream at them both when Barry at last agreed to speak with Heidi again.

They were on the phone, cooing away to one another, when she finally felt able to leave, Big Jim Dixon accompanying her.

She was glad of his company. Big Jim seemed to take everything in stride, and he didn't talk much; she was happy just to be with him.

He drove her right up to the front door of the hospital. “Are you coming in?” she asked him.

“I want to get back to the house. I don't like to leave Stacey alone,” he told her. “Heidi seems just fine,” he said, noticing the way she quickly looked at him. “Honestly,” he added firmly.

“Of course,” Lauren said. “Thank you for driving me here.”

“We watch out for one another here. You go on up and see your friend. She won't be alone. Bobby will be with her.”

Lauren walked through the halls and down to the elevator. People said hello all along the way, and she greeted them politely in return. New Orleans really was a great place—if you just discounted the vampires.

She reached Deanna's floor, where there was the usual activity at the nurses' station. It was a busy place. Doctors, orderlies, nurses, all going about their business.

She walked down the hall.

There was no officer outside the door..

She felt a little leap of fear, then remembered that Bobby was on duty, and he would be in the room with Deanna.

But when she reached the room and walked in, there was no one there.

Just Deanna, sleeping as usual. So beautiful, so peaceful, like the fairytale princess awaiting her lover.

The windows were open, the drapes blowing inward.

There was no sign of Bobby, or even Jonas.

As she stood in the doorway, puzzled, a scream echoed from down the hall.

M
ark didn't dare take “Nefertiti” to Montresse House—there was no way he would invite her into the home where Lauren and her friends had found safety. Nor could he take her out to Sean's house, for the same reason. He would never risk the lieutenant and his fam ily's safety by bringing such a creature in.

At least she seemed to have decided that he was dangerous to her, and she was quiet and well-behaved, accepting his lead as he moved down the street, trying to find a café with a courtyard and plenty of room—and sunlight.

She protested when he chose a place and picked ouut a table. His chair was in shadow. Hers was not.

“Sit,” he commanded.

“I'm sitting.”

“Talk.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want to know where you go to sleep.”

“I sleep…different places.”

“Who did this to you?” he asked her.

She waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Who knows? Someone with money.”

He leaned back, shaking his head. “You're a liar. You never worked in that club until you became a vampire. And you go somewhere in particular at night.”

She stared at him sulkily just as a waitress came to their table and looked enquiringly at Mark. “Order,” he said with a shrug. Nefertiti smiled at the waitress. “He's so rude. But he's so good in bed that I don't care,” she said sweetly.

The waitress, an older woman with graying hair, stared at the two of them as if she'd just been faced with the dregs of society.

“An ice tea, please,” he said.

“I'm hungry,” Nefertiti whined.

“Then eat.”

“He really is so commanding,” she told the waitress. “I'll have a hamburger.”

“Medium? Medium-well?” the waitress asked.

Nefertiti offered her a sugary smile. “Raw, please.”

“You mean…rare? The health code suggests—”

”Not rare. Raw. No bun, thanks.”

“I can't give you a raw hamburger. The health code—”

Mark slapped a large bill on the table. “Please just bring her a raw hamburger.”

With a disapproving look, the waitress left them.

“Where are you from?” Mark demanded, leaning closer to her.

“Bourbon Street.”

“Where are you from?” he repeated.

She smiled. “Houma, originally. But now I'm from Bourbon Street.”

“So you were created on Bourbon Street?”

“Ooh. Smart fella.”

“So where do you go at night?”

“Wherever I choose.”

He had the water pistol aimed at her beneath the table and let go with a short spray. She nearly jumped out of the chair. “Bastard!” she hissed at him.

The waitress returned with a plate holding a raw hamburger. It was barely on the table before Nefertiti was digging into it with her fingers. The waitress made a soft sound, clearly not intended for them to heard, that was filled with disgust.

“Maybe you can be helped,” Mark suggested when the waitress had gone.

Nefertiti stopped eating for a moment and stared at him, then shook her head. “No. I died, and I rose. There is no help.”

He realized suddenly that she was looking past him, over his shoulder. He turned around but saw nothing. In that split second, she was up and running.

“Stop!” he shouted.

She only kept running. He followed, practically leaping over a table to keep up with her. She turned down a side street, then into an alley. “Stop!” he yelled again.

At that moment a toddler came running out of a door onto the sidewalk in front of her.

Nefertiti stared, then grabbed the child and turned to look Mark straight in the eye.

The little boy started to cry. From inside the house, they could hear a woman's voice calling, “Ryan? Ryan! Where are you?”

Nefertiti shook her head at Mark with a curious, almost wistful smile.

“Don't!” he cried.

She opened her mouth and began to lower it, fangs extended, to the crying toddler's throat.

He shot her with a long, continuous spray. She let out a screech of agony and dropped the boy. Smoke and steam rose from her skin, and she fell, hardly recognizable anymore as a human being but instead a writhing, shifting form, wretchedly decayed.

He heard the sound of police sirens.

Disgusted, Mark turned and quickly escaped the alley. He heard the mother shouting, calling the boy's name, then screaming in bone-chilling horror, no doubt as she stumbled onto Nefertiti's remains..

As he turned onto Delphine Street, Mark saw a police cruiser, lights flashing, pass him.

And he heard the flutter of wings overhead.

As he walked quickly away, he thought over what had happened and realized that the woman who called herself Nefertiti had preferred extinction at his hands to facing her master and being branded a traitor.

As he walked, he remembered hanging up on Sean back at the club. Cursing, he drew out his phone and punched in the lieutenant's cell number.

Lauren was torn. The scream demanded—
self-preservation demanded
—that she run. At the same timer, she needed to know why someone was screaming. But most of all, she knew that if Deanna were to have a chance, she couldn't leave her alone again.

That last option won out. She rushed over to Deanna's bed, wondering if whatever was happening was only a ruse to trick everyone into leaving her friend alone and vulnerable.

Deanna's IV was still connected to her arm. She still lay on her white pillow and sheets as she had for what seemed like forever. The princess. Unmoving.

Swallowing, her fear nearly paralyzing her, Lauren picked up Deanna's hand and fumbled for the pulse in her wrist.

It was there, regular and strong. She breathed a sigh of relief.

But what the hell was going on?

Lauren had been concentrating so hard on Deanna that it was several seconds before she realized that someone had come into the room behind her.

As she turned around, wary and tense, she heard the door to the room slam shut.

He
was there.

Stephan. Stephan Delanskiy. Standing now at the foot of the bed. Ink dark hair fell over his forehead, contrasting with the doctor's white coat he was wearing. “How is my patient?” he asked very softly.

Lauren looked toward the open window. Shouts and cries were coming from the hallway; the hospital seemed to have turned into Bedlam. But Stephan Stephan Delanskiy seemed oblivious to all that. She didn't know where he had come from, if he had stepped into the room from the hall, or if he had come through the window.

But it didn't really matter. All that mattered was that he was there.

She stared at him and flipped the cross she was wearing out from under her shirt.

He smiled. “That will not stop me, you know.”

“Maybe so, but you're there, and I'm here.”

“Because you must come to me.”

“I will never come to you.”

“Eventually, you will.” He laughed softly. “I have my ways of doing things. Methods. Even madness, you might say. You see, this is a war. Whatever skirmish I may lose to my enemy, in the end, it is a war, and I will win. And you
will
come to me, because I know you.”

“You cause suffering and death,” she told him. “You hurt people. You nearly killed my friend. You're evil, and you will not win.”

He smiled and shook his head, as if explaining things to a small child. “What in life has ever led you to believe that what you call ‘evil' cannot win? Take that silly cross around your neck. I have seen it before, and it failed to stop me then, just as it will now.
He
is not the salvation you think he is. And I am not death, but rather, eternal life.”

“Tell that to the women you've beheaded,” she said softly.

He made a dismissive sound. “They did not deserve to live.”

“You're wrong. They didn't deserve to be murdered.”

They could both hear footsteps then; someone was running down the toward Deanna's room.

“You
will
come to me,” he told her again, his smile cold and certain.

There was the sound of something slamming heavily against the door. Instinctively, Lauren looked in that direction just as the door burst open.

Mark was there, stranding in the doorway, his gaze quickly darting around the room. He rushed over to her, drawing her close to him, his arms around her.

“He was here,” he said huskily, his tone certain.

“Yes.” She couldn't help it. She was trembling, even though Stephan had vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared.

“Deanna?”

“She seems to be all right.”

“And…you?”

“I'm fine, too.”

He let out a sigh of relief. For a moment he seemed so weary that she longed to hold him forever, but now, more than ever, she was afraid to leave Deanna's side.

“What's happening here?” she demanded.

As if in answer, another scream echoed from down the hall.

Even between them, Sean realized, he and Bobby couldn't manage to hold the woman.

Leticia Lockwood was slim and delicately built, but at this moment her strength was unimaginable.

“I can't hold her!” Bobby cried.

Sean had gotten off the elevator just in time to see Bobby trying to wrench Leticia away from a gurney, where she was rabidly attacking a bag marked Type O Positive that was attached to a line transfusing into an apparently post-op gentleman of advanced years. Bobby was already sporting a swollen jaw, and hospital employees were scurrying just to get out of the way.

“Hey,” Sean said firmly, grabbing hold of Leticia's shoulder as she writhed like an animal beneath Bobby.

She screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that was horrible to hear. Then, with astounding ease, she threw Bobby clear across the hall.

“Damn it, stop! I don't want to shoot you!” Sean roared.

He might as well not have bothered. Leticia was up and flying at a hapless intern who was standing by, aghast.

“Shit!” Sean swore and went tearing after her.

He tackled her, and they hit the floor together.

She shoved him, and he fared no better than Bobby.

She was off again, this time making a leap for the frozen and panic-stricken head nurse, who was standing behind the desk.

Wincing, Sean drew his weapon and fired a warning shot.

Everyone screamed—except Leticia, who didn't even pause.

Before Sean had a chance to shoot again, Mark Davidson came running out of Deanna's room. He saw Leticia, saw her intended victim, and took a flying leap over the desk. He caught Leticia by the shoulders and shoved her forward, crashing into a rolling cart filled with medications. Bottles and vials went flying everywhere.

Sean waited, expecting Davidson to go flying just as he and Bobby had, but there was only silence.

Nothing.

He strode to the desk and looked over. Mark was straddling the girl, staring down at her and talking soothingly. “Someone get her something quickly—a major league tranquilizer,” Sean said.

The head nurse, who had appeared almost catatonic with fear, suddenly sprang to life. She fumbled on the floor, searching through the wrapped needles and the different vials. In a second she was at Mark's side. Leticia began to thrash again, forcing her back, but Mark seized the hypodermic from her, and quickly inserted the needle. In a second, Leticia's wild and frantic eyes closed, and she went limp.

Mark stayed as he was for several long seconds. Then he eased back.

Sean strode over to him. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly hospital personnel were everywhere.

“I can't believe it,” the head nurse said, stricken. “It's Leticia. She's one of our finest nurses.”

“She went insane,” one of the interns said.

“Like a rabid dog!” another claimed.

“Let's get her into a bed,” an intern said.

“You're going to find that she needs a transfusions, and she needs it fast,” Mark said.

“Are you a doctor, young man?” the head nurse demanded.

Mark looked up at her. “I know what she needs,” he said quietly. The nurse frowned as Mark rose and lifted Leticia into his arms. “A room?” he said.

The head nurse just nodded. The young intern who had first suggested that she needed a bed followed Mark into an empty room and spoke quickly to the nurse. “Pull up her chart. Her blood type must be on record.”