Blood Hunt (15 page)

“
Mikaelian!”

Serruto’s voice, hard as steel. Garreth could not look at him. He kept his gaze riveted on the surgery doors.

Serruto grabbed his arm...hauled him up and out down the hall to a corner by the elevators. “What the hell happened?”

What could he say. He stared at his feet. “It’s my fault. I froze.”

Serruto glared. “Froze, hell. What the fuck were you doing there in the first place! Being a fucking cowboy? Why the fuck don’t you follow orders!”

Garreth did not remember Serruto ever using that much profanity before. He burned as fiercely as he had at Wink’s door.

“
I can’t believe Harry was fool enough to take you along.”

Anger snapped Garreth’s head up at that. “Harry’s in there maybe dying and you’re accusing him of — I told you, it’s
my
fault. I talked him into letting me come.”
Forced
Harry to take him. Because he
was
a fucking cowboy and used his damn vampire power for what
he
wanted without knowing what the hell he was doing and without ever considering the consequences!

Serruto’s eyes narrowed. “Of course you feel guilty, and damn well should, but Harry — ”

“
You don’t know shit how I feel.” He heard the despair in his voice, a despair sharpened by the realization of how true that was. Serruto could not know. No one normal, no one human, no one who was as he used to be could ever know how he felt.

And it was staring across that now-perceived abyss between himself and everyone he knew that Lien came running white-faced out of an elevator.

She stopped in front of him. “How bad is it?”

A constriction in Garreth’s throat made speech impossible. He could only shrug.

Serruto answered her. “We don’t know.

“
How did it happen?”

“
I’m sorry.” Garreth forced the words out. “It’s all my fault.”

He expected anger. He deserved it. Instead, her forehead creased in concern and she reached for his hand.

Before she could speak an officer appeared from the direction of the waiting room. “A doctor came out for a minute. Harry’s still alive.” A withering glance flicked over Garreth. “The bullet missed his heart. They’re working on stopping the bleeding and patching the holes.”

Pain twisted in Garreth. If Harry lived, it would not be thanks to Garreth Doyle Mikaelian. And if Harry lived this time, what about the next? Because if he came back on duty, there would be a next time...another dwelling, another impenetrable barrier or some other vampire barrier he had yet to discover. He might as well accept a hard fact: the...creature he had become could not be a good cop.

He had no badge to turn in. Instead Garreth pulled the tie pin from his lapel and held it out to Serruto. “I shouldn’t have this.” The words stabbed like a knife in his gut.

Serruto frowned. “Mikaelian — “

The lieutenant did not take the pin. Garreth let go of it anyway, before he lost his courage to give it up. It fell to the floor at Serruto’s feet.

Lien, Serruto, and the officer stared startled at him. The tie tack seemed to stare, too...a tiny seven-pointed star, the half of his soul remaining after Marti, glinting on the floor.

“
Mikaelian...”

“
Oh, Garreth!”

Their voices reached out for him, like nets or webs, seeking to snare him. An elevator opened. He spun and bolted into it, pushing past a man in an electric wheelchair coming out...stabbed the Down button. The wheelchair blocked the way long enough for the doors to close.

Tears blinded him. What did he do now? Or should he do anything? He wanted to die. He hated this life. He hated the way it hurt people he loved.

He walked blindly away from the hospital, considering how he might kill himself. Shooting himself in the head or jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would do the job except they were clearly suicide methods. It needed to look like an accident, to spare his family and friends...not likely to be easy with what he had become. If only Lane killed him that night.
Damn you, why didn’t you!

He stopped short in the middle of a street. Brakes screamed and horns blared unheard around him. Because Lane had made him what he was, Harry got shot. So indirectly, she was responsible for that.

An angry voice swore at him. Garreth finally heard and moved on to the sidewalk.

She had destroyed his life, maybe killed his partner, taken away his job, and removed him from his friends. She had destroyed more lives than his, too, when he counted the families of Adair and Mossman. He had no way of knowing how many others she killed in her lifetime. The tally must be high. All those lives over all those years, and she still went free, to kill and destroy again, laughing at law, sidestepping justice. Growing up with a cop father, working as a cop himself, Garreth believed in law and justice as the foundation of civilization. Without them, nothing remained but barbarism and chaos.

He took a deep breath. He knew now what he could do...the same job he had been doing before. Before he found some way to end this unwanted unlife, he would hunt down the red-haired vampire. It takes one to catch one might be truer for this case than any. He would hunt her and he would make her accountable for what she had done to Adair and Mossman and to Harry and him. If it took him to the end of the earth and time, he would find her.

Hunter

1

Lit by the single light above the sink across the kitchen, the liquid in the cut-glass tumbler had the rich, dark red of Burgundy. Garreth, at the table, turned the tumbler in his hands, wondering sardonically what Marti’s Aunt Elizabeth would think of the end to which her crystal wedding gift had come. The sodium citrate suggested by the Crime Lab tech as an anticoagulant worked. In the refrigerator four half-gallon plastic milk bottles — carried empty to the pier in a backpack — sat filled with still-liquid blood, enough to last him at least a week. A lot of drained rat bodies fed the fishes tonight but the slaughter was worth it.

He sipped the blood almost idly, playing with it as a wine taster might.
This Rattus ‘83 is a bold vintage, speaking to the palate with lively authority, while
—

Garreth cut off the thought, ending the game. He played not for amusement, he knew, but to delay, to avoid considering the problem he had set himself. Just as he had avoided it yesterday afternoon and most of today by focusing on obtaining the sodium citrate. Now he faced it: how could he hope to find Lane Barber on his own when the combined facilities of the department were failing to? Had his melodramatic resignation been premature?

No, he had no choice. He endangered fellow officers’ lives. Even if he managed to pass a psych evaluation and be allowed to carry a badge again. Besides, as a “free agent” he could spend all his time chasing Lane, and since he knew what she was he might think of leads not considered by humans. Perhaps he could learn how she thought, too.

He emptied the glass, rinsed it clean, and started pacing the apartment.

First question: Where could she go?

Unfortunately, probably anywhere. In forty-odd years of singing, she must have made many connections. She could no doubt travel to any large city in the country, or perhaps even around the world, and through those connections find a new job. She could change her identity, something she must have honed to a fine art.

One thing in his favor: habit. The famous modus operandi. She drew her food supply from customers where she worked...small, intimate clubs which offered ample opportunity for meeting customers. The Barbary Now and several other clubs the agent named where Lane had worked were all that type. How many such bars and clubs existed within the United States? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

Garreth sighed. Finding her in North Beach had been simple compared with the task that faced him now. Her bite gave him all the time in the world for hunting her but his bank account did not. He needed to find her before his money ran out. And he knew too little about her to narrow down her possible avenues of escape.

The blinking light on his answering machine caught his eye. Anger flared in him. Someone had been in the apartment today and plugged in the phone he unplugged on coming home from the hospital. Police, he felt sure...admitted by the landlord for a “welfare check” since he left untouched the notes they put on his door yesterday afternoon and evening. The department was looking for him, of course...not out of concern this time but to talk about the shooting. Something he could not endure right now.

As he had yesterday, Garreth unplugged the phone and deleted the messages without playing them back. Even if one concerned Harry. He could not bear to hear if Harry died, nor deserve to know if he lived.

Turning his back on the phone, he resumed considering what he had about Lane. Names, for one. She called herself Barber now, but the name on that envelope had been Bieber, and that on the car registration and driver’s license, Pfeifer. They sounded German. Did she choose those names from familiarity with them? Could she have come from an area populated by people of German descent?

As if an answer to that helped. There had to be hundreds of Germanic settlements across the country. Tomorrow — well, Monday, he needed to find someone who could tell him where large Germanic groups had settled. Maybe one with a 67-something or something-67-something ZIP code.

Or perhaps he could learn all he needed the one place she might shed her facade...home. He still had a couple of hours to daylight, time to search her apartment. Except...could he get in? It was a dwelling and his invitation in came before she killed him. Now...

Every fiber of him recoiled at the thought of facing that fire again. Better to take no chances and get someone to invite him in.

He made himself lie down on his pallet and rest...but not let daylight pull him into sleep. At eight o’clock he looked up the number of Lane’s landlady and called her. “Mrs. Armour, this is Inspector Mikaelian. We met at your home last week.”

“
And you’re just as much an early bird today.” She paused. “Some people sleep in on Sunday.”

In the mild tone of reprimand he heard what he had not before, a touch of southern belle. So...give her a touch of gentleman in return. “I know that, ma’am, and I’m so sorry to disturb you...” Though picking up on the second ring revealed she had been awake. “...but this is a murder inquiry and we really need to look at her apartment again. Can you meet me there with the key?”

“
I already gave a key to an Inspector Takananda,” she said in a puzzled voice.

“
Yes, ma’am, but my partner is out on another case and left the key locked in his desk. It’s an big imposition, I know, but this is important.”

Her sigh came over the wire. “All right.”

He took the bus, leaving his conspicuous car at home. Experimentally approaching Lane’s door confirmed his fears about entering. Fire licked out at him before he even touched it. He backed off to wait for the landlady.

Mrs. Amour drove up minutes later dressed for church. Rolling down her window, she held out the key. “Will you return this as soon as possible? It’s the only other one I have to the apartment.”

Not helpful. Leaning down to the window, he pulled off his glasses, and, despite the searing memory of what this did to Harry, stared her in the eyes. “Please walk through with me.”

“
All right.” She climbed out of the car.

He put back on his glasses. “I can see you’re going to church so I really appreciate this. It’s so helpful to have someone along who’s familiar with the apartment.”

She looked simultaneously flattered and impatient. “Will it take long?”

“
It shouldn’t.” Once he was in, she could leave any time.

After unlocking the door, she pushed it open.

He kept back. “After you, ma’am.”

She walked in and began switching on lights. When he still hung back, she frowned over her shoulder. “Well, come on in. I don’t have all day.”

The pain vanished. Garreth quickly followed her into the livingroom. “Tell me if you think anything is missing. What she’s taken might give us some idea where she’s gone.”

Mrs. Armour turned around in the middle of the room. “She has lovely things, doesn’t she? She collected them from all over the world.”

Spent good money, too, Garreth judged. Though no art expert, he recognized quality in the paintings and some small pieces of sculpture. Toys resting on the bookshelves between sections of books drew more of his attention, however...several old-looking dolls, a miniature tea set, a cast-iron toy stove. Items from her childhood? He studied a type tray hung on the wall, its sections turned into shelves holding an assortment of small objects that reminded him of the “treasures” he had collected in an old tin tackle box as a boy.

She had no broken pocketknife, but there was a top — wooden, not plastic — and some marbles — more beautiful than any he had, he noted with envy — a big molar from a horse or cow, a tiny rodent skull, and various stones: colored, quartz-like, or containing shell and leaf fossils. He could not identify one group of objects, though. He took down the largest to study.