The Formula for Murder (38 page)

“Heel,” I repeat, in a softer tone.

They come up to me growling, anxious and excited, but still confused and unsure of how to act. Suddenly the male whines and I kneel down so I don’t tower over him and carefully reach out and let him sniff my hand. The female snarls and he turns on her snapping, causing her to back off.

“Com’ here, baby,” I tell her.

She hesitates but reluctantly comes up to me and sniffs my hand.

I reach out to both of them and scratch them behind the ears.

I hear crashing in the bushes and I get back up and bolt down the hill. Running full speed down, the dogs gallop alongside me.

“
Bitch!
”

I don’t turn around to look, I just keep running in pure panic. I know it’s Burke, with his cowboy boots and ice pick.

I stumble and fall forward as I come onto the flat area, my momentum carrying me forward faster than my feet can keep up. The ground is soft and moist and I quickly get back up as I hear him closing in fast behind me.

I dash with a burst of panic and suddenly a shock runs through my entire body as if I’d been hit by lightning—
the ground is spongy.

I slip on the wet surface and suddenly Burke is at my back, crashing into me, sending me sprawling. I scream as I hit the soft flora and feel suction against my whole body. The dogs are bounding about, excited, snarling.

The thug hovers over me, an ice pick in his hand. “She won’t let me kill you yet, but I’m going to poke out both your eyes so you can’t escape again.”

The big male mastiff gets in between us and leaps up at Burke, snapping, sending the man lurching back.

“
Get away from me, you bastard!
” I yell.

He swings out at the dog with his ice pick, smacking the dog not with the sharp end but with the side of his fist holding the weapon.

Burke jerks backward and gasps as his right foot suddenly sinks beneath the surface with a
pop
sound. As he jerks his foot back up, his other foot goes down, halfway up to his knee, each time sinking him deeper and deeper in the muck.

He screeches, realizing what is happening to him as he frantically jiggles his feet, pulling them up and down in short bursts, but in seconds the muck is up to his knees and he is unable to pull his feet up more than a few inches.

His features are twisted with terror.

Sweat has broken out on his face and his breathing comes in frantic gasps.

I scoot back up, on my rear, feeling the softness of the bog moss covering, keeping as much of my body spread out on the surface as I can as I watch the man working his legs with a frenzy, but sinking deeper.

“
Don’t fight it,
” I yell. I don’t know why I bother, he’s a murderer who seconds ago was going to blind me and take me back to be drained of my blood, but the advice came out.

The dogs are still excited and moving about and I call to them as I am squirming away, keeping my body flat. I don’t want them to get sucked in and I yell to them, “Shoo, go over there, shoo, shoo.”

When the man is up to his chest, still clutching the ice pick, he stares at me. His mouth gapes open. “Help,” he pleads.

I can’t. I’m still in danger of sinking myself and there’s nothing for me to grab and hand to him.

“Stop struggling,” I shout. “Try to lay sideways, flat.”

It’s no use, he doesn’t understand and even if he did, it’s too late to maneuver into a flat position because three-quarters of his body has been sucked in.

There are no sticks, nothing to throw him. If I can get onto solid ground and back up to the woods, I might be able to find a branch to hand him.

Still moving slowly off the surface that is trembling from Burke’s frantic struggles, I see Hare, the other gang member running down the hill toward us.

He stops at the bottom of the slope where the ground becomes flat and stares down at his own feet. He takes a quick step back, as if he were jumping out of a fire.

“
Get a branch,
” I yell.

“
Hurry!
” Burke, now up to his shoulders, shouts. “
For the love of God!
”

Hare looks quickly around and then stares at his mate and shakes his head—there are no long branches about. Burke is too far from him and too deep into the mire to save him without risking his own life.

So much for honor among thieves.

I watch sick and paralyzed as Burke goes under, still screaming for mercy and rescues. I turn my head and close my eyes to the horror.

Turning over onto my knees as I feel the firmer ground beneath me, I crawl until the trembling beneath stops and get to my feet.

I take a few steps and a blow between my shoulder blades sends me dropping to the ground, the breath knocked out of me.

I’m flat on my stomach and unable to breathe as Hare grabs me by the shoulder and rolls me over, an ice pick in his hand.

“
Leave her alone!
”

Hailey comes up behind him and jumps on him, the force of her body pushes him off me.

Dr. Lacroix is suddenly with us.

“
Stop,
” he commands the man, then gestures at me. “Get her back to the house. We need her blood for the countess.”

66

As I walk to the house I am beaten and defeated, exhausted physically and mentally. Stone cold, dead inside and out. I can’t focus. My mind is racing wildly but my thoughts are not about escape, they’re not even coherent. I only know one thing: There are too many of them to fight and no one is around to help me … there is no way out, no chance to reason, everything is too insane.

I know my friends are searching for me, but the countess is right—who would suspect a duke’s manor house? What local police officer would even approach the place without hat in hand and mumbling apologies?

I can see from Hailey’s troubled features that the sheer stupidity and naïveté of her actions are finally coming home to roost. Once again I have the urge to grab her and shake her and scream, “
What were you thinking?
” but I already know she wasn’t thinking rationally.

Whatever spell Dr. Lacroix casts on women had worked twofold on Hailey. Fulfilling his need for blood because he is a bleeder gives her a chance not only to be a martyr, but in her naïve conception of the world it provides a genuine medical basis to justify the madness of his rejuvenation work.

Even though we have fallen behind a bit from the two men, I don’t dare try to escape again. It will just give Hare an opportunity to stick an ice pick in my eye, which I’m sure he would be more than happy to do. Instead, I use the distance to ask Hailey a question she hadn’t answered earlier.

“Why was I lured all the way from America? There has to be plenty of blood over here for that crazy woman to use. And they don’t even know if she’s compatible with my blood.”

“You are healthy, have more energy than most people, you’re intelligent, and you cut yourself once when we were together. You sucked the wound and told me that it was no bother, you heal very fast.”

“You just described attributes for most of the people my age. It has to be more than that.”

Hailey looks straight ahead. “Yes, you are always so perceptive. Your real name is Cochran. Your father’s heritage was that of the Scottish Lowlands. Countess Lucrezia was born in Italy but her mother was also a Cochran, the daughter of a Lowlands earl. When I told Anthony that your mother was a Cochran, he said they had been tracing the countess’s Scottish ancestors because he believes that the blood from a common ancestral pool has more chance of being compatible than that of someone randomly selected. He believes you and the countess share a common ancestor.”

“God, I hope not. That woman was spawned by Satan. Couldn’t he find people in the Lowlands?”

“He has, several times, but to no avail. As I was telling you, he has developed a method to take tiny amounts of blood and inject it into a person so they only feel slightly ill rather than violently ill or dying if the blood is not compatible. He thinks over time by using tiny amounts he can build up an immunity in people to whatever is bad in some blood. He started taking samples to use, but silly rumors started up about vampires and they began investigating and the process had to stop. They even seized his samples. He was nearly arrested.”

“So when you told him that I would come over to take care of your funeral arrangements, he decided I would be a perfect guinea pig. But first you joined him in this crazy scheme.”

“He tested my blood after asking me questions about my background and found out it is compatible with his own. He asked me to join him in his research and not just because of my blood, but because I immediately understood the high aims of his goals and what a benefit it would be to society if he succeeded. But since he was having so much trouble with the police, he decided it would be best if he disappeared so he could work in peace. And that I should disappear, too, be thought of as dead, so there wouldn’t be talk that always erupts about his blood work.”

That she would have to disappear, be considered dead, to keep down rumors didn’t make sense to me.

“No, Hailey, I don’t believe it. He didn’t fake your death to avoid rumors. How are rumors going to spread out here, in the middle of nowhere? He did it because people have a tendency to die around him. He desperately needs your blood, but he can’t afford another police investigation if you die.”

“He’s not—”

“Stop telling me he’s not a bad man. Look who he keeps company with. It’s
his
blood research that’s left a trail of death. He’s a fanatic, so caught up in his research, in his drive to play God with people’s lives that he’s lost control. He lets Radic and the countess do his dirty work because it keeps him free to experiment. I don’t believe that girl I saw in the morgue was a prostitute who killed herself. With his track record, I’ll bet you she died when he experimented with her blood.”

I grab her arm to get her to look at me. “He has been experimenting with children, hasn’t he?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Tell me the truth, Hailey.”

“I told you before, he wouldn’t hurt a child. There is some belief that the blood of children revitalizes older people.”

“Well, I know for sure he’s been experimenting with children, no matter how much you want to avoid admitting it. I’ll tell you something else. I bet if I have the body in the morgue that’s supposed to be you reexamined, they’d find a mark on it from the blood he took. No one bothered to look closely because they believe she was a suicide.”

“Please…”

She sounds sick, but she has to face the horror that she has gotten herself involved in and the terror she has dragged me into.

She is my only hope and even at that, I have no idea what she can do to save me. Even though she doesn’t have an ice pick at her throat, she is also a prisoner. She just doesn’t know it.

I get another horrible thought.

“The woman in the morgue was pregnant. He stuck needles in her to draw out the blood from her unborn child.”

Hailey stumbles, weak-kneed, and I hold her up with a grip on her elbow. I’m not going to let her avoid the horror with a swoon.

“He’s like those priests back during the days of the Inquisition,” I hiss, “the ones so obsessed with the demons in themselves, they tortured women into making false confessions of being witches.” I lash out at Hailey. “He’s a zealot so driven by his mission he has become unbalanced, mad. The dream he’s pursuing is a nightmare to the rest of the world.”

“No,
please
—please stop, I love him.”

I don’t have the heart to keep pounding on her. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. There is nothing she can do for me. Finding a compatible blood supply from a willing supplier, Dr. Lacroix would do everything he can to keep her, even resorting to force if he needed.

As we neared the carriage house, my own knees get weak and I tell her, “I don’t want to die.”

67

I am to take the place of the chimp. As the poor creature is unstrapped and carried to its cage at the back wall, I look around desperately for something to use as a weapon. The hair on the back of my head is grabbed and my head jerked back. The sharp point of an ice pick goes against the side of my neck.

“Don’t even think about escaping,” Hare’s rough voice whispers in my ear. “I’m not finished with you for killing my mate.”

“He died because you’re a coward.”

“Stop it.” The commands comes from the countess. “Tie her down. It’s time for my treatment.”

Hare forces me onto my back on the table. A strap is put across my chest and tightened until I can hardly breathe.

Hailey is suddenly beside me. “She needs to breathe.” She loosens the belt so I get my breath. Wiping sweat on my brow, she leans down and whispers, “Forgive me, I’ve been so stupid.”

Hailey moves away as Dr. Lacroix comes to my side. He talks as he unbuttons the dress cuff on my right arm and moves the sleeve up.

“Transfusions have been tried for centuries, but with bad results because the practitioners didn’t know how to do them. They tried putting the blood of animals into humans to give people their traits, make them strong like a bear or a bull, make them calmer with the blood of a lamb, but it usually results in the death of the person.”