Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (16 page)

By now, uniforms were milling about
, s
ome searching the sky with shotguns
and flashlights
,
others staring
dumbfounded
at Melody’s
headless
corpse. The only thing I could think
to say
was
, “
You
believe me now
, don’t you
.
”

*
*
*
*

C
aptain
Bledsoe
paced back and forth
along
the narrow space between his desk and the wall, three
long strides
from filing cabinet to table, turn and three back. He wrung his hand
s
clasped behind his back. He
face bore a sour look
, as if he had been sucking lemons. In fact, he had been sucking up to the Mayor who had dismissed his story of a murderous flying creature as preposterous, called him a drunk and hung up on him. While it was true that the
c
aptain had once been a boozer, that was years in the past. He stopped pacing long enough to look
over
at me
with
a touch of sympathy in his eyes. My right arm
was back
in a sling
and I still had
scabs on my forehead and chin. I stared back at him vacantly.
Only part of me was in the room. Another part was reliving Lew’s death.

“It couldn’t have been someone in make up?”
he asked.

I laughed.
He was
grasping
at straws, refusing to believe what
half
a dozen people
had witnessed
.
“Flying? No, it was a real freaking monster
all right
. I’ve got three dead girls, a
rookie
cop, a detective and a coroner’s assistant’s bodies to prove it.”
My
tone
was bitter
, m
y speech
blurred
by the painkillers
coursing through my system
.
I didn’t like taking sedatives but the pain had grown too unbearable to ignore.
The
pills
also dulled the pain in my mind but could not erase
the image of Lew’s dead body
with the creature standing over him
.
I would wear it like a tattoo until the day I died.

Captain Bledsoe
shook his head slowly. “Doctor Munson swears he saw it too, so I can’t call you crazy, but the Mayor sure as hell doesn’t believe it.” He
jabbed his
finger
at the phone
sitting at the edge of his desk
as if it was the villain
.

I leaned forward.
My words were bitter.
“
The place was crawling with reporters thirty minutes after forensics arrived.
They know something strange happened. They could smell it.
When the
press
get
s
to the Sattersby girl, and they will,
the Mayor will
believe it then or he’ll be looking for another job. This thing took almost two clips and three blasts from a shotgun and
flew off like it enjoyed it.” I leaned back in my
chair
, the
same chair
in which I had received many such chewing
-
out
s
.
This time it was only half-hearted. I had lost my partner but had saved
Sasha
Sattersby
, no matter that she lived only because the creature had let he live
. For a while
,
we would be the darlings of the press, that is
,
until
Sasha Sattersby
talked.

He
raised a finger and waggled
it back and forth.
“
Now, w
e can’t cause a panic. We need to keep this under wraps
for
as long as possible. We can keep the Sattersby girl
quiet
on one pretense or another. She
’s
a material witness
and she needs medical treatment
.
We can keep her incommunicado in a guarded hospital room.
We have to find this thing and destroy it.” He slammed his fist down on his desk
, causing the phone to jangle
, startling him
.
He glared at it
for a moment.

“A cover-up?” I moaned
breaking his trance
. “You want a cover-up until we catch it. What are you going to say if it scoops up another girl and drops her on the front steps of City Hall?”

He looked frightened as he visualized that
ghastly
possibility
.
He reached for a bottle of antacid tablets sitting on his desk
placed
strategically beside the phone
.
He
popped two into his mouth and
chewed them slowly while he thought about what I had said.

I continued. “We need more firepower.
We need men on rooftops at night.
We need a specialist in this sort of thing
, a priest or someone
. A week ago
,
I would
have
call
ed
anyone
crazy
who took these things seriously. Now, I don’t know.”

“A priest?” he asked
, almost choking on his antacids
.

I could tell by his expression that idea
of bringing in
someone from
the
Catholic
Church
did not sit well
, but
I
did
n’t
care
. I pushed harder.

“A priest, a historian
, a biologist
… someone who might have a clue as to what the hell is going on.”

He stopped pacing and sat, or rather collapsed into his chair. He leaned across his desk with his hands folde
d
prayer-like
, his blood-shot eyes pleading
. “
Hardin, p
lease be discrete or we’ll both be walking a beat.”

I took that as tacit permission to call in outside help. I just didn’t know
whom
to call
.
I didn’t know Van Helsing’s phone number
and the kid at the vampire shop was too young to recruit
.
I would have to make a few inquiries
, but first I had a funeral to attend
, two funerals
in fact
.
And it was still raining.

7

Back at my desk
after two days off
to recuperate
and attend Lew and Mel
ody’s
funerals
,
I was going through some of Lew’s things
, trying hard not to tear up,
when
a young officer escorted a woman to my desk
.
I watched her cross the room in a very languid, sensual manner, turning everyone’s head
, no easy task in a squad room.
She was in her mid thirties with jet
-
black hair,
liquid green
eyes and a nice
ly curved
body hidden
beneath
a
business-like
gray tweed skirt and jacket
, although h
er powder blue blouse was having a difficult time restraining her breasts. They pushed up invitingly
through
the top two
undone buttons
.
When she spoke, I noticed a slight accent
I could not
immediately
place
.

“May I speak to Mr. Atwood, please?”
she asked
pleasantly.
She looked at me expectantly.

I choked up as I answered
,
“I’m sorry, Mr. Atwood is dead.”

There was moment of silence
before she gushed,
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. Mr. Atwood contacted me about an article I had written for a New Orleans magazine.
When did he die?
”

“
He didn’t …” I was about to say ‘die’ but dropped it. “
T
hree
days ago
,
”
I answered instead.
I didn’t add that if she wanted to see him, she could find him buried beneath an old chestnut tree at the northeast edge of the cemetery.

She looked slightly embarrassed as she asked,
“How
did he die
?”

I ignored her question
as none of her business
.
“What kind of article?”

“It was about a string of unsolved murders.”

I was intrigued. What had Lew been up to? “What kind of murders?”

“
All y
oung
women
, s
ix or eight
of them
every two or three years
over
at least the last
ten years
.”

I stared at her. “Ten years?”
Had this creature been at it that long
?

“That’s when women
first
started disappearing in Sao Paolo. I think
scores
more may have disappeared
from
the jungle
villages
but
were never accounted for.”

Brazilian! That was the accent
.
“Why did my partner contact you, M
iss
…?”
I fished for a name.

“Alvarez, Joria Alvarez from Sao Paolo.
He wanted to know what I had meant about
the
peculiar circumstances
surrounding the deaths
. When I read about the disappearances here, I
immediately
booked a flight. How many have there been
so far
?”

“Look, we have enough reporters fantasizing their own facts
about these murders
. We don’t need another one.”

She
threw her head back,
look
ing
offended. “I am not a reporter
, Detective
. I am a Doctor of
Cryptozoology
with the Heisman Institute of Sao Paolo. My father began his study
of this … killer
sixteen years ago. I took over upon his death five years ago.”

“What study is that?”
The way she had said ‘killer’ led me to believe
that
she might know more
about this creature than I did, which wasn’t much.
I leaned back
in my chair
and invited her to sit in Lew’s. My arm was out of the sling but just shuffling papers had it aching
again
. I tried to massage it without her noticing.
She sat primly,
back
ramrod
straight
, her
entire
attention focused on me. I found her
dark
green
eyes riveting
and a little unnerving
.
I could
n’t
help staring at her. She was tiny, barely over five-four, but her petite frame packed quite a body
in a small package
.

“My father
was an anthropologist
,” she continued
.
“
W
omen
of
the indigenous native
tribes
,
such as the
Yanoma
n
i
, the
Kayapo
and the
Kapirape
were
disappearing
in alarming numbers
. At first
,
he
considered
slavers,
there are still a few around
,
but the natives claimed the
women
were
being murdered and
their bodies
stolen
away
in the night
by spirits
. He began to investigate. The natives had legends of a creature that drank blood, the
Chupacabra
.
”