The Empty (16 page)

Tresset continued to move forward through the crowd.

“Sir, I am going to hafta ask you to leave.”

The man was nearly upon Tresset now. He reached out to grab Tresset’s shoulder with that pudgy disease-laden hand. Tresset would tolerate no such insult. He whirled, his right hand shooting up to the man’s neck. But he did not draw anything from this man. No. None of this man’s lowly essence would course through Tresset’s veins. This was self-defense. Nothing more. The guard emitted a subtle gasp as Tresset, nearly a foot shorter, lowered him into a nearby molded plastic chair.

“You are an imbecile,” said Tresset as the man’s wide eyes finally took in the inhuman face before him. “You are an imbecile who has relinquished the right to draw breath.” With that, a retractable claw from just above Tresset’s index fingernail extended into the man’s neck. Avoiding the jugular, Tresset cut directly into the windpipe. There was a sudden sputtering hiss of expelled air, and the man’s eyes showed panic as he grasped at his throat. His mouth moved, but no sound came forth. Tresset calmly turned away, wiping his hand with his cloth. The strike had been swift and silent. He was nearly halfway across the room before he heard the first scream.

Humans, he thought, so predictable, so weak.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jimmy Harrison’s eyes, though still cloudy, were responsive and alert. He’d regained his customary smile and even a bit of his wry humor. But his color was poor, his respiration shallow, he was losing hair. Julia concluded her examination with a smile and asked how he felt.

“Weak,” he said, his voice raspy. “But alive. For a while there I wasn’t so sure about that.”

Julia nodded, resting her palm gently on his forearm, her mocha skin a sharp contrast to his near snowy complexion. “Can you tell me anything else about your experience? Anything about the attack or what you felt afterward?”

Jimmy sucked a piece of crushed ice from a paper cup and shook his head. Even this seemed an effort. “The attack, no. Just a blank. Afterward, after I’d started to come out of it, I felt swimmy, like everything was moving at a different speed than me. My throat was dry. Very dry. Still is.”

“What about your neck where the man grabbed you?”

“Feels like a rash. Burns. Itches.”

“You look better. Your vitals are more or less stabile, your fluid intake and output are beginning to normalize.”

Jimmy eyed her curiously. “Except?”

Julia pursed her lips. This was the dicey part. “Jimmy, you’re my friend. You’re also an EMT. I’m going to be straight with you.”

Jimmy nodded. “Gotcha.”

“Your hemoglobin is all wrong. Your white blood cell count is so low Dracula would probably try to give
you
blood. You’re losing more hair by the hour. We still don’t know what happened to you. Some freak briefly grabbed you by the neck. He did no damage to the windpipe. There was no bruising as with strangulation. Yet, you fell into a coma. You displayed a strange pattern of puncture marks on your neck where you were grabbed, yet your tox screens reveal no foreign substances. But, at the point of contact, we’ve discovered some damage at the cellular level. Minimal, nothing cancerous. But, it exists. Truthfully, we’ve found nothing to explain any of this.”

Jimmy seemed dazed for a moment. Julia thought perhaps he’d drifted off to sleep again. But then he blinked, made eye contact, and nodded.

Julia bit her lower lip and considered what she was about to say. “Jimmy, when you first regained consciousness, there were three visitors in your room. Do you remember them?”

Jimmy furrowed his brow as if attempting to access the memory. “I was still pretty foggy. Why? Who were they?”

That, thought Julia, was exactly what she wanted to know. “I’m not sure. One of them was a pompous Harvard type. Mr. Chips meets Night of the Living Dead. Strange guy. He seemed quite knowledgeable about your condition. He told me his name, where he was staying, but evaded my questions as to why he was here and what he knew of your attack.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t remember.”

With this, his eyes fluttered. He offered a weak grin. And then he was asleep.

* * * *

Once in the hallway, Julia exhaled and massaged her temples with her right hand. She was missing something, some key element. None of the normal causes for any of these symptoms panned out. Jimmy was not stable, his condition much more volatile then she’d led him to believe. And she had no clear diagnosis. Her iPhone vibrated. She lifted it from her right lab coat pocket. It was Charles, her husband. She slipped the phone back into her pocket letting it ring through.

Twenty minutes later Dr. Raul Martinez found Julia seated at the nurse’s station as she pored over Jimmy Harrison’s File. Raul was a young intern, bright, dedicated, with an offbeat sense of humor. Julia liked him. He was a thinker, willing to question established assumptions. Medicine needed people like him. “Yes, Raul, what is it?”

“I just learned about your case. Jim Harrison, the EMT.”

“Yes. What about him?”

“I think you’d better take a look at these files. Both are fatalities I handled earlier this week.”

* * * *

Julia groaned at the sight of Charles leaning against her silver Lexus LS Hybrid. She didn’t have time for distractions. Especially not this distraction. She’d gone over the files provided by Raul Martinez, questioned the young intern doggedly, done some additional research on her own, and become more perplexed than before.

“It’s late,” he said with his Denzel grin. “I was wondering if you’d ever get out of that place.”

Julia unlocked the car via remote and marched past him to the driver’s side door. “Go take a dive off the Stratosphere, Charles. See if you can make some pretty spatter patterns on Las Vegas Boulevard.”

“I’ve been calling. You haven’t responded.”

“Huh. Can’t imagine why that would be.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Okay, maybe you don’t want to talk. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to talk.”

The car door stood open, but still Julia turned to face her soon-to-be-ex-husband. “What could we possibly need to talk about? Oh! How’s your new girlfriend? She going to give you a baby yet? Hey, here’s an idea—why don’t you get ten girlfriends, and then they can all make you a daddy in the same month.”

Charles didn’t respond right away. Rather, he stared at her. He looked good. He always looked good. Wasn’t that part of the problem? There he stood, dark close-cropped hair, bushy black eyebrows that could dip into intensity or arc into wonder in a second’s time. His deep brown eyes were somehow accentuated by his forest green polo shirt. There was something in his expression, though. Something unfamiliar. Something very un-Charles-like. Somehow her cocky, self-assured man looked lost.

Julia moaned. “What is it, Charles? What is so important that you need to stalk me in a parking lot at night? Do you want to start negotiations already? Are you angling for the HD TV, or are you going straight for the jugular and asking for the house?”

“I’m not sure we should go through with it.”

“Go through with what? What shouldn’t we go through with?”

Charles looked down, possibly focusing on his booted feet, a sure sign that he was uncomfortable. The last time she’d seen him this ill-at-ease, he’d proposed. In a way, that’s what he was doing again now. “The divorce, Julia. I’m not sure we should go through with the divorce.”

The man had to be out of his mind. “Charles, you initiated this. You said it wasn’t working, you swore there was no other option.”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe you were wrong.”

“I mean, you know, maybe we should rethink—”

“Get out of here. Just get out. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

“Will you at least—”

“Go! Now! Before I plow you down.” Julia threw the stack of files onto the front passenger seat, plopped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, and started the engine.

Charles Chambers decided it best to move.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Shane contemplated Taz from across the table—her lively darting eyes, her intense, yet energized expression, the way she folded her lower lip beneath her teeth while concentrating. It was now early evening. They sat in a booth at a small Chinese restaurant on West Charleston Avenue after parting company with Donald Baker some two hours earlier. Taz alternately sipped egg drop soup and scribbled notes in her ever-present binder. Despite himself, Shane couldn’t help but smile. The girl’s infatuation, her dedication to the reyaqc was endearing.

“What are you grinning at?” she said as she lifted the spoon to her lips.

“Nothing.” He paused. “Okay, at you. Sorry. I just think it’s cute. You haven’t stopped scribbling in that thing since we sat down.”

“I’m trying to get everything entered before I forget it. I’ve described Donald Baker. I’ve attempted to quote all that he said with as much accuracy as possible. I’ve also described the patient, his condition, what Dr. Baker suggested.”

Shane nodded. “Like I said, cute.”

She smiled. It was broad, warm, full of vigor. This girl embraced her passions like few Shane had ever seen. She wasn’t the type of girl he normally fell for; she was too…unpolished, perhaps, maybe too quirky. But the more he looked at her the more he studied her eyes, so vibrant, so full of vigor, the more he thought… No. He was just tired, excited about the events of the day. There was no real attraction.

“You’re next, you know,” said Taz.

“Me?”

“You’ve got a great story, Shane. Your experience with the reyaqc, someone could write a book about it.”

Shane shook his head and then pushed his soup bowl away. He’d never cared much for the stuff. “I don’t think my story would fill a chapter—definitely not a book.”

“Well, whatever. It’s still interesting.” She leaned a little closer, her deep brown eyes locking with his, her lips curling ever so slightly at the corners of her mouth. Her right hand twitched. It seemed she’d almost reached across to clasp his fingers, but decided better of it. “I want to hear it. I want to know what it was like.”

Shane grinned. “What if I tell you all about it in the car?”

Taz cocked her head and offered a curious smirk. “What are you thinking, Shane Daws?”

“I’m thinking that maybe I know how to find the rogue.”

* * * *

Shane Daws turned the same corner for the fourth time. This was the neighborhood where Jimmy Harrison, the EMT, found the naked reyaqc. This was where the rogue had been hiding, where he’d chosen to hunt. Shane was hoping this was a habit and not simply a one-time event. There had been the three attacks on humans as well, not in this specific neighborhood, but nearby. If he didn’t find any sign of the reyaqc soon, he’d move on to the closest attack site, and then the next. The reyaqc had gone somewhere. A rogue would resurface. Shane hoped he could be there when this occurred.

Taking a sip of Pepsi, Shane glanced at Taz, seated in the passenger seat, and biting at a nail as they rounded another corner. Until this morning, the girl had never actually seen a reyaqc face-to-face. She’d longed to do so for several years, ever since her uncle had regaled her with stories of strange encounters in the jungles of Vietnam. And now, largely through her own intuition, she had landed in the middle of a rogue hunt. Taz’s brown eyes were wide, scanning the shadowy streets with excited, wary, exuberance. Her binder sat in her lap, her pen in hand as she documented each step of the search. Who knew how she would respond if they actually found the thing? Who knew how Shane would react either? Despite his previous experience with reyaqc, this was new to him as well.

Shane didn’t know Taz well. It had begun as an online relationship. They’d met face-to-face only a handful of times prior to this day. He didn’t regard her as pretty, at least not in any traditional sense. She was too tall and leggy. On some woman these attributes might launch a successful modeling career. On Taz it simply made her appear awkward. Her hair was lifeless, her face unremarkable. She wore no make-up. Her choices in clothing did nothing to accentuate what natural beauty she might hold. But as he looked at her now, in the dim light, her eyes wide and curious, her bottom lip curled under her upper teeth in rapt anticipation, he felt a sudden stirring for her. He couldn’t quite explain it. Maybe it was simply that she was a kindred spirit, someone whose admiration for the reyaqc rivaled his own. But she suddenly seemed, well…appealing.

“Are you staring at me again?” she asked with a sly grin. “That’s the second time I’ve caught you in one day.”

He shrugged and flushed. “Do you think the rogue will be able to communicate?” he asked, ignoring the question. “Or will it be too far gone?”

“Most believe that rogues have reverted to a more primitive state of being, leaving intellectual capacity dormant.”

Shane nodded. “Probably because they infuse from too many sources. Compatibility issues, right?”

“Maybe. Though, I doubt there’s any scientific data to support the thought.”

Shane nodded. “But, what caused this reyaqc to land in the hospital? There were no signs of injury, no blood, no wounds. Was he empty?”

Taz flipped back through her notebook pages, scanning for the incident, though Shane had a feeling the girl already had the answer lodged in her head. “Not empty,” she said finally. “At least, not if we can believe the witness statements.” Taz read from her notes. “‘The naked man admitted to the UMC emergency room, though with unremarkable characteristics, appeared entirely human to the hospital staff. He had nose, mouth, ears, even hair. His skin tone was pale but not translucent.’” Taz looked up from her pages, offering Shane a subtle grin. “The reyaqc may have been depleted, but not entirely empty.”

“Exactly,” said Shane. “What caused him to lose consciousness in the middle of the street? Think about it. The EMTs get there. The rogue’s examined, transported in an ambulance. He had IVs inserted into his veins. He’s pronounced dead, Taz. Dead. Then all of a sudden, in the emergency room, poof! He comes to. Had he infused something poisonous? Had one of his victims had bad blood? I don’t know—maybe a drug addict or AIDS victim? What happened to him?”