Cajun Gothic (Blood Haven) (6 page)

“Yeah, fine.” I wasn’t and had no idea where that
was coming from.

All I could think was… Sasha. Sasha with the long
legs and soft little girl voice, staring up at me with baby blues so sweet I’d
about melted. Even now my cock hardened, remembering leaning in, imagined
tasting those ripe lips, making a promise to help.

“Damn it.”

“What?” O’Hearn was shrugging into his shoulder
holster, fumbling with the ammo carrier. He was a lefty.

“Nothing.”

My rig still lay on the small end table by the
hallway. The tee-shirt I’d slept in was sticky with sweat. The leather straps
ground the wet into my skin as I slid it over my shoulders. It’d been a Walmart
special but the Sig P239 nine liked it just fine and the swivel plate in the
back made adjustment easy most days. This wasn’t going to be one of them.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“With you.”

He didn’t argue and that told me volumes. We took
the stairs two at a time and rolled out the door onto a street oddly quiet; but
a few lights winked on, upper floors, as solid citizens tumbled out of bed to
tackle the beginning of another work week.

O’Hearn’s piece ’o shit ride was parked out front of
my building. How he’d managed that was a miracle. He chirped it open and I slid
into the passenger seat. Fingering the dash-mounted strobes, he weighed in on
being annoying or running silent. It was unlikely we’d hit much traffic this
early in the morning. He made the right choice for which I was grateful. I
wasn’t awake enough for the drama.

I still didn’t know the time. Not that it mattered
but curiosity got the better of me so I glanced at the display. Four seventeen
in the fricking a.m.

He pulled out without looking and headed us uptown.
I had a rough idea where we’d be going. Most of the street action centered on
midtown east, though with the advent of the internet a lot of the higher-end
girls booked early and conveniently from the comfort of a pimp-provided
boudoir.

Not ‘my girls’ though.

The first two had been deposited around the usual
locations, between fortieth and fifty-ninth. The last one, the one in the tub,
had been discovered in a fairly upscale boutique hotel a few blocks north.

That was the one I’d seen… and wished now I hadn’t.
It’s one thing to look at a body on a slab, listen to Chen chatter on about
lividity, watch her point a blunt, blue latexed finger at puncture wounds in
the neck… and quite another to stare at a body still cooling down. What
bothered me was the lack of mess—a few streaks of blood on the tiled wall, a
bit about the vic’s mouth, like a mannequin in quiet repose. There was nothing
ritualistic about it.

That was the thing… it’d been utilitarian. Like a
meal you consume without thinking on it much. Eat ’til you’re full, and then
discard the rest, just shoving the plate aside for someone else to deal with
the remains. Like… garbage.

And that’s what pinged my sub-conscious. Mythology.
The vamp subs valued the bites, evidence of favor and commitment, wearing the
wounds like a badge of honor. Like Svetlana had done.

Trina.

Trina had scoffed. No, more than
scoffed. She’d been pissed, in a way that made no sense to me.

Why?

Twice… twice that I could
remember clear as day, Trina and the tall stranger at Haven had sucked me into
world class orgasms, taking deep pulls off my vein, shutting down all feeling
except the heat pulsing in my neck…

With a fist braced against the cord in my neck I
turned and rested my head against the cool glass, eyes blind to all but an
inner vision, a memory playing out behind a veil, leaving me with indistinct
images. And a desire so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat.

Micah, she’d crooned in that
breathless voice, mesmerizing me. Let me help.

No… no it was, I vant for you to
do this, I vill help…

And the talon pricked the vein,
her vein, and she’d teased me with a taste, the first among many… it had to be.
More than once, the bouquet, the fulsomeness of the thick honeyed scent like a
tidal wave of pleasure, then pain… my body erupting, revolting, reviling my
choices and my lust.

She’d marked me as hers, leaving only
psychic wounds to nourish my vanity, all traces of our passion removed with a
flick of her tongue, her spittle on my thumb rubbing gently on her swan-like
neck.

It was her way… their way. The poseurs, the faux
fang bangers, never went far enough, could never, ever get it right.

The hookers all had visible, unaltered puncture
wounds. Left alone it would have taken forever for each of them to bleed out.
No, they’d been suctioned dry.

Like the four hookers in New Orleans. Except that the
blonde Goth girl hadn’t been a hooker, of that I was sure. A misguided kid
maybe, acting out… much like me at age nineteen. Wanting to be a part of
something bigger, more dangerous, more
alive
. Wanting to throw off the
tedium of growing up under a belt, and later fists, until the reason I stayed
took refuge and freed me to leave.

While I traipsed down memory lane, O’Hearn and cop
central kept up a running commentary. We were on Second Avenue bisecting
Stuyvesant. The Medical Examiner’s office was off Thirtieth and First. I still
didn’t know exactly where we were going, then Tom mumbled something about St.
Vartan’s Park, and it took all I had to hide my sigh of relief. That was not
Sasha’s turf.

I asked, “Did they find the body in the park?” He
nodded, keeping his eyes peeled for cross traffic as we hurtled through a
yellow. “Which end?” If my guess was right, it would make a big difference.

“West end, near the benches.” He swung right on 34
^th
,
the one ways forcing him to loop around the Cathedral and come up on the park
from the south side. Before I could question him further, Tom said, “Guy walking
his dog around three a.m. found her. 911’d it in.”

We angle parked by the black and whites and got out.
O’Hearn flashed his credentials to a female officer. We followed her into the
park.

The Parks Department and FDR Drive buttressing the
East River were the only things blocking the skyline. Dawn lightened the
heavens, leaving us with enough ambient light to see the body and surrounds
without need for floods.

The body—the carcass—lay braced in the crook of a
wrought iron bench seat. Another bench sat at ninety degrees to it. Both
nestled in a quiet copse of trees, relatively isolated from the playgrounds and
tables set out for the lunch time crowds. During the day, kids with trykes and
moms with baby carriages would rule in manicured splendor. The place was
upscale and safe. Mostly. As shifting as the red light district was, St.
Vartan’s wasn’t known for being a hot-spot for pick-ups.

“Do you know her?”

Did I? I wasn’t sure. I crouched down to get a
better look. She was vaguely familiar, the same high forehead and full, pouty
lips, brows darkly arched over almond-shaped eyes. Eyes staring sightless,
filled with terror. Still.

I’d interviewed at least a dozen working girls, all
either Ukranian, Russian or Armenian. And most with ties to the BDSM and Goth
subcultures. The odds were good I’d talked to one of her friends, if not to her
directly. And, yes, I’d passed out business cards, instructing them to call if
they remembered anything, saw something suspicious.

O’Hearn had his cop face on, eyes hard, sharp,
watching me with interest. He cocked an eyebrow, ready to press for answers.

I offered, “I think I know why she’s here,” meaning
‘not somewhere else’, away from her usual haunts.

I got up with an effort, my belly growling. Neither
of us had had anything to eat or drink. I wanted coffee even more than I wanted
answers.

O’Hearn must have read my mind. He sent one of the
uniforms off to find us sustenance while I paced in a small circle, thinking
hard over what I knew.

Chen approached, so we backed off to let her do her
job. She’d confirm later what we already knew.

O’Hearn took my elbow and led me away from the crowd
and said, his voice sharp, “Talk to me.”

Running a hand through my unruly mop, I said, “You
saw what was on the counter,” reminding him of the summary sheet I’d made for
the incidents in New Orleans nearly a year ago. “Four hookers. All drained.
Just like this. Three blacks, one white. Two from the same stable, one probably
a runaway and the other… who knows.”

Tom said, “This one is number five. You said you
knew why she’s here,” he waved a hand to indicate the park, but I shook my head
and motioned him to be quiet while I thought it through.

He was cop patient, giving me what I needed:
breathing space.

Finally I said, “I went to Brighton Beach on
Saturday afternoon. Interviewed the friend of the third vic, Svetlana. The
first three, I’d done my poking at night, canvassing street corners, not trying
to pretend to solicit, just doing straight up twenty-questions.”

What I didn’t mention was the conviction that I’d
picked up a tail in Brighton Beach. It put a different spin on the evening, and
the next victim.

“You still haven’t…”

We were standing at the intersection of 35
^th
and the Queens Midtown Tunnel entrance street. The dome of St. Vartan’s Cathedral
loomed like a sentinel in front of us and to our left.

“Most of the working girls I saw were Eastern Block.
I suspect this one was in the Cathedral, praying, whatever…” That made sense so
he didn’t interrupt. “I think your girl there,” pointing back to a now empty
bench, “…
that
one is number four.”

I explained that tonight’s draining was consistent
with the pattern established elsewhere—an available supply of women ready and
willing to get into cars with strange men or to follow them into hotel rooms. A
simple case of opportunism, with victims society cared little about and service
providers easily replaced with the next wave of illegal immigrants. And while I
couldn’t rule out some extremist religious fanatic targeting women of the
night, the simple fact that the mode of death sat solidly in a weirdo land of
the paranormal argued against such a simplistic theory.

Tom picked up the pacing routine, running the
numbers. He had no argument with my assessment and said so. Then he asked the
question that had my gut in a knot. “What’s that make the Haven victim?”

“A message.”

“For who?”

Unfortunately, I knew the answer to that. Figuring
out why was going to be more challenging. Those gaps in my memory could come
back to haunt me, big time.

The uniform on coffee duty finally returned with
extra-large sludge. It tasted like toxic waste but beggars couldn’t be
choosers. We did a mutual grimace and sipped the scalding brews.

The party wound down slowly. The ambulance had
carted the body off and Chen was on her way to the office. She’d give this one
priority, if for no other reason than her curiosity was piqued. One incident
might be an anomaly, two was unfortunate, but four was pushing her limits of
credibility. We both hoped five was the last straw number.

It was hard, damn hard, to focus on who, when the
how was giving all of us heebie-jeebies.

Tom asked, “How much blood’s in a human body?”

“Five, maybe six quarts, dunno exactly. Why?”

He didn’t respond but it wasn’t hard to figure where
he was going with that.

The first pull had been… odd.
Intoxicating in its essence, warm silky stickiness coating my throat and
esophagus. The second swelled my cock, hardening it like a rock until every
nerve balanced between the suckling at my mouth and the violent thrusting of my
hips, driving deep, deeper. When the shock wave hit it’d been the highest of
highs, waves of pleasure coiling me inside out. What followed was a cataclysm
of vomiting, retching up brownish red bile until I thought… I wanted to die.

And then do it all again, and
again, and again.

My tolerance increased gradually. A cup, maybe two.
But a quart, two, five? No way. Not for a human.

Not for a… human.

Turning to stare at the now empty bench, O’Hearn put
his hands on his hips, shoulders tense, adding it up. He had to be wondering if
more than one perp was involved, given the mechanics, and the evidence, facing
him.

Ritual. Occult. Paranormal.
Group…

These would be new terms to add to the white board.

Tom steered me back toward our ride, muttering to
himself. He got in while I stood outside, debating next steps. My relief at the
dead hooker not being Sasha was palpable. So was the urge to hop the subway and
see for myself that she was safe and sound.

Glaring at me through the windshield, Tom mouthed
well
?

I opened the door and said, “Listen, I have some
stuff I need to do. Call me later when the results come in from Chen, okay?”