Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) (13 page)

Stroud nodded. “Thanks, Ashyer.”

“Not at all, sir, now if you like--”

“I'd like to look into getting some cleaning men in to completely sanitize this place. Like to restore it. Will you see to it?”

“If it is your wish, sir.”

“It is, Ashyer ... it is.”

-10-

Abraham Stroud wondered about the bars on all the windows and the coincidence of those planned to be installed over Timmy Meyers' windows.

What did old Magaffey know that he did not know? Why was the old man reluctant to speak his mind completely and freely? Why did he speak in riddles? Were the bars here at the manse erected to keep people in or keep people out?

Ashyer had left him--a walking mystery himself. The damned house was filled with mysteries--so many in fact he felt he might live a lifetime and never discover them all, certainly not uncover the meanings behind them all. “Sort of like life itself,” he concluded aloud to the watching eyes of his great-grandfather.

Stroud returned to the window covered with bars taller than himself. He opened the windows inward, studying the workmanship of the bars more closely. He wiped away clinging nests of leaves and webs of debris as well as spider webs. Even in the dark, the intricate pattern of spears and crosses that had been created by the craftsman was impressive. It was the kind of work he might expect to find on the gilded ships of the Edwardian era, or perhaps the first grand houses built in New York or Chicago at the turn of the century. Simply beautiful wrought-iron work in thick, powerful proportions.

The tops created a wall of spears garnished with metal leaf outcroppings on either side of the spear point. A third of the way and midway up the spears there was a series of ornate, old world crosses of the type seen in the more orthodox Catholic churches, particularly Greek and Roman. They might even be copied from an ancient era, he thought.

In a dark, heavy-handed, old world way, the bars had a beauty of their own.

Stroud had four, maybe five hours before his planned outing with Ray Carroll. He decided he must put the time to good use and concentrate on Stroud Manse. He must, he told himself, learn as much as possible about the house and its history--bars and scars and skeletons and all. For instance, the strange covered old helicopter that sat in back of the stables on its own pad. Whenever he went near it, the feeble-minded stableboy, Lonnie, became agitated to the point of crying.

He needn't go to the library to search. Stroud Manse had its own library, several in fact. His grandfather had a business area in a den down the hall from where Stroud was sleeping. He had still not been able to take the old man's master bedroom on the floor above, continuing to like the cozier, smaller bedroom where he had slept as a boy, and which he had equipped with video, stereo, and TV equipment as well as an aquarium recessed in the wall. But the old man's bedroom was yet another library, the walls lined with books.

Then, too, there was the circular room in the bowels of Stroud manse, the books there apparently the oldest and the most used, treasured, and valued. Stroud hadn't had time before to peruse them, but now maybe it was time.

Dr. Oliver Banaker paced before his staff, who were assembled in the briefing room reserved for the dissemination of information vital to them all. But today his message was short and to the point.

“I am aware of the problem and who is at the root of it. With this man Stroud in our community, we must be doubly cautious, people! You all know what his forebears have done to our kind--set us back years when this man's grandfather destroyed my father.”

Pamela Carr spoke up, her concern the same as most present. “Doctor Banaker, can you put an end to ... to the killings?”

“It has been done. Worry no more on that score.”

“Then, perhaps Stroud is no longer a threat,” she suggested.

“He is of a kind, just as we are, my dear.... No, he lives to threaten us. Stroud's coming is no accident. On the contrary, it is very much by design.”

“But if we just left him alone, and if the ... the terrorizing is ended--”

“Pamela, the man is dangerous to us. No two ways about that. So long as he remains in that house, living near us ... he poses a threat. Think of all that would be lost if we were exposed now? What would happen to Banaker Institute? Our research?”

“Not to mention your precious food sources,” said Dolphin Banaker. “I can't believe you allowed him to roam freely about the hospital, Pamela.”

“I had nothing to do with that!” she protested.

Dr. Cooper, the newest member on staff, searched about nervously, expecting Dolph to make some remark about his encounter with Stroud near the morgue, and here it was.

“And you, Cooper, chatting with the fiend in the corridor outside the morgue. Christ, why didn't you just invite him in for a better view?”

“You're the one who told the interns they could have at it with old Mrs. Lowenthal! It wasn't proper, Doctor Banaker! She wasn't fully prepped and here they come tearing in. Your son's got everyone breaking the rules! Hell, Oliver, she was still alive ... hell.”

Banaker's back stiffened and his eyes glowed with anger. “Dolph has been trying everyone's patience lately ... but then, is not that the mandate of youth? To test the boundaries, push back the perimeters? He is a bit wild, yes ... not unlike myself when I was younger. I expect great things from Dolphin, people. If something should ever happen to me, he will carry on my work.”

Dolphin gave Cooper a cold, animalistic glare from across the table. Spoiled devil, Cooper thought. Pamela feared for Cooper. One day the weaker man who still pined for his lost boy would be devoured by Dolphin. There'd be no place at Banaker or anywhere else for Cooper.

More important than Cooper, or Dolph, or Banaker himself, however, was the work.

Years of painstaking study and literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours had gone into the research and education of the “family”--Banaker's euphemism for what they were.

At Banaker Institute everyone was regarded as part of what he jokingly called the “Corporeal Family.” Everyone at Banaker shared the same blood. Fed from the same vats that purified and strained the fluid of life. The Institute's true work was not in patients and billing, but in carrying on a race so alien to most humans that some very wise forebears of the race had created children's stories and fiction around them so that they might continue to thrive and multiply. But no one had done as much for them as Banaker and his father before him. Banaker had uncovered secrets that made living among human beings virtually second nature to members of his family. They could come and go, day or night, as they pleased, without fear of detection or harm, as from the otherwise killing rays of the sun. No longer a problem, thanks to Banaker research, and the special genetically altered mix of Banaker blood plasma.

But now all their work--everything Oliver Banaker stood for--was jeopardized by the recent spat of killings and near killings that had erupted like a plague epidemic in the community. No one in the family seriously doubted that it was one of their own. Reverting back to the old ways, one among them had done the horrible deeds that could expose them all.

Outbreaks such as these had occurred before. They all knew the thin line each of them walked. Any one of them might fall prey to the ancient desire for fresh and hot and pumping blood taken from a cowering victim. Any one of them ... maybe even Banaker himself.

All of them knew the real meaning behind the much touted Devil of Andover, the black panther creature that was carted out every so often in the neighborhood to explain away the unexplainable, the unspeakable.

Everyone who worked at Banaker knew the dark secret. All of them had the lust and craving. It was in their blood, so to speak, to become such a creature as the one who'd taken the Cooper offspring, and more recently the Meyers boy, as well as the couple from Missouri.

The people from the “Show Me” state, Pam mused, had been shown....

“So, we all know the consequences. What is at stake here? Peace, my children ... peace and cohabitation in our little corner of the planet! Our forebears were wiped out, literally made extinct ... but we are making a dramatic return ... rather like the gray whale, I'd say. Then for one of us to go rabid on the scent of man, for the sake of our god, people ... Is a moment's passion worth all the risks to your fellow family members? Not to mention the several hundred disease organisms contained in the blood of mankind. AIDS is rampant. The most disturbing new development in our Andover Devil is that 
this one
 appears to cannibalize on our own kind! As attested to by ... by--”

Cooper suddenly bolted from the room, unable to hear anymore.

“Cooper, Doctor Cooper!” said Banaker.

“I'll drag the wimp's ass back here,” said Dolph, about to pursue.

“No, no! Let him go, Dolph.”

“But, Father!”

“Dolph! Sit down.”

“I'm not a dog you can order around, Father!”

“We will speak of this later, young one!”

Dolph's color raged in his face, his huge nostrils flaring in and out, but he said no more.

Pamela saw the leer on Dolph's face when he caught her staring at him. He flexed his huge biceps and planted his elbows back on the table.

His father continued the weary speech. “Do you wish to trade all you have in this place for one moment of passion? Take that message to your children as well.” He saw that everyone had stopped listening. “Very well,” he said with a sigh. “See to your duties, everyone, and continue to set the fine example you do to the others.”

Everyone began to depart.

“Oh, Pam, if you will. I'd like a word.”

She held back as Dolph, holding onto the door, looked back inside at his father and Pamela. He winked at her and disappeared. “I have a special task for you, Pamela, and forgive me, but I will be asking much of you.”

She knew he had wanted her to flirt with Stroud, and now she knew he wanted her to take it further when he said, “You're happy here, aren't you, Pamela?” He didn't expect or want an answer. “When is the last time you ... 
had a man,
 Pamela?”

“I swear to you, Doctor Banaker, I'm not the one. I swear to you--”

He laughed. His laugh was so full and resounding it filled the room. “Please, Pamela, I don't for a moment suspect you of being the cause of our, and Andover's, problem.”

“Oh?”

“Now, answer the question.”

“The question?”

“When was the last time you 
had
 a man?”

She swallowed hard, feeling it was a test. “You ... you have my records.”

“Must I go to the trouble?”

She shook her head. “When I was eleven. It was just after you 
had
 me.”

“A long time.... Do you remember it?”

“Very much.”

“Pleasantly?”

“Somewhat. I was ... you know ... awkward, afraid ... unsure...”

“First time, a joy. Suppose I told you I wanted you to do Stroud?”

She shivered at the suggestion from intense agitation and an overwhelming desire to do exactly as he asked, but if she did so and somehow it was misconstrued by the others ... wouldn't it come back to haunt her? Suppose Banaker needed someone to take a fall? Suppose Banaker knew who the man-eater really was, but he didn't want him caught and punished? Suppose he needed her as a scapegoat?

“Calm all your fears, Pamela, please.” He knew what she was thinking. He had that capability. He had more power than any of them. “It's Stroud I want. I owe his family a great deal, you see. I owe it to him to give you to him.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight ... tonight. He'll welcome you into his arms and you'll take his life--all of it. No holding back, Pamela. No storing him away somewhere for later drams; no show of pity; no turning him into your fucking pet, all right? All or nothing. What do you say? It could get you moved up on the ladder here. I happen to be most influential, you know.”

She also knew he did not tolerate mistakes or failures very well. “What if he doesn't, you know, welcome me to him?”

He laughed again. “What 
man
 could resist you?”

“But if something happens to--”

“Get him for me, Pamela,” he said sternly, his eyes freezing her in place. “Kill Stroud.”

There were levels in Banaker's “family” just as there were in any family, a natural pecking order. There were the weak drones at the bottom rungs, most like zombies, some of whom worked out of the brain-dead condition to improve their status--especially if they followed Banaker's prescription for improvement: his Pire Regimen. It started with ox blood and iron and ended with human blood, large quantities of plasma and his secret ingredient. Some were content to remain as they were, however, acting as gofers and go-betweens, never acquiring full status or recognition in the “Pire Family.” Others were hard-working, and then there were the 
driven
 like himself--few and far between. His father had been driven. He was obsessively driven, never sleeping, always at the helm of his empire. But Dolphin he worried about.

Dolphin's mother was gone and the loss had shattered the boy. Dolphin's mother had died at the hands of Ananias Stroud, trapped by him outside the sleeping place, dissolved in the then killing rays of the sun. Dolphin never understood the reasons until he was older, and he still did not fully appreciate the benefits of research that had armed him and his kind with additional resistance to such things as light.

“You and the others,” Dolphin had shouted at him once, “you're just becoming like 
them
! More and more like humans every day! Where's the dignity and heritage in that, my father? Safety ... all you think of is safety so you might hide in full view of them.”

Banaker had slapped his son hard across the face and the boy had stormed out that night. The next morning he hadn't returned, had holed up somewhere he would not discuss, and the newspapers told of Dr. Cooper's missing son.

Cooper had been a remarkable project himself. He was one of them, but he had married a human and they'd sired little Ronnie. It was not a first, as it had been accomplished in the distant past, but it was rare. The attention showered Ronnie over the years had caused a jealousy to build in the much older but vulnerable Dolphin and Banaker knew that Dolph hated Ronnie and his father.