Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) (29 page)

“You're okay,” he told himself as he lay there still stricken, feeling a numbness down his spine from the pain inflicted by the creature. “You're okay....”

“Much work to do,” he heard his grandfather's voice, encouraging him on.

“Come on, son.” He heard Magaffey as clearly as if he was standing at the entranceway to his office. “We're counting on you.”

But when he tried to get up the intense pain sent him into a faint. His last conscious thought was of being late to the rendezvous point and letting Wilson and Ashyer down.

* * * *

When he awoke, Stroud had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but he recalled vividly what he had been thinking the entire time. As a former policeman working his way up to detective status, he'd had to do a lot of reading. For reasons obvious, he had thought anew about a book by Cesare Lombroso, a man some considered the father of modern criminology. It had been his lifelong belief that there existed among the human species the type of born criminal who was a throwback to his primordial ancestors.

Lombroso, who lived between 1836 and 1909, had to have been a vampire hunter, for his description of such types as the “primordial” killer resembled Banaker and his people so closely: low cranial capacity, retreating forehead, a thick-boned skull, tufted, almost crispy hair--animallike--and large ears. The nose was his finest feature, aqualine like the beak of a bird of prey, Lombroso wrote in his famous 
Criminal Man
. Lombroso said that the primordial killer's eyebrows tended to be bushy and would meet across the nose. He'd thought again of Banaker and of something Dr. Magaffey had said about Banaker: a man who can kiss a woman's hand even as he counts her pulse ought to raise questions of confidence. Even more so, it ought to raise questions of ancestry. How old was the vampire?

It was obvious that modern times and discoveries had pleased the primordial breed, making the attractive fascination of the monster ever stronger to the unwary. The blood exchange between monster and mankind had over the years, no doubt, poisoned the hearts and minds of the human race as well. If this were the case might not evil reign everywhere on the face of the earth like a disease, spread to all corners? Might this not explain the condition of a world which had never known peace? A world rife with murder, poverty, hunger, hatred, and malice? Would it explain the bizarre: showers of blood and spontaneous combustion of human beings? The supernatural and the preternatural?

As an anthropologist and archeologist the questions raised by the startling conclusion fascinated Stroud, but at the same time he hadn't the time to waste worrying over them. He must rifle through Magaffey's offices for the large jar of S-choline said to be here. He must then race to his second stop before dawn would fully break.

He got to his feet, whoozy and wobbling on his legs. His shoulders and neck where the talons had dug in and lifted him off the ground were still throbbing with pain. He crashed into a wall and held onto his head and his equilibrium, wondering if the beast had injected some sort of stunning venom into him at the point of contact as many creatures in nature were apt to do. He recognized the symptom's of an alcoholic hangover. He tried to shake the grogginess and the headache, and he wondered if a third vampire were anywhere on the premises.

It seemed unlikely, as he would no doubt have been killed where he lay amid the remains of the other two. Just the same, he armed himself with the pointed staff that had destroyed his first attacker before going deeper into the house.

Stroud found the office with no difficulty and he passed through it and into the doctor's workroom and lab. Beneath a cabinet he found the weapon he was looking for, the S-choline, exactly where Magaffey had told him it would be. Magaffey had told him of this after he was dead--it had to have been after Magaffey was dead, because none of them knew of its destructive power against the vampires until Ray Carroll was killed by it, none but Lonnie Wilson who claimed that the notion and the action of striking out at Carroll just “popped” into his head. Later, Magaffey's disembodied spirit had told Stroud where a supply could be located. He'd done so without words. It had been a picture that fired off like a flashbulb in Stroud's mind when he saw Magaffey's apparition before him.

Stroud searched about for a supply of hypos, laid several out side by side, opened the S-choline and began the labor of filling each in succession, his time running out by the minute. He glanced at his watch to learn that he was ten minutes behind schedule. He found a roll of adhesive tape and rushed back for the other spears he'd brought, four in all, and taped a hypo to each end firmly and completely, leaving the mechanism free to be pressed down in the event the lance missed the heart. He somehow knew that, given their strength and the fact their hearts seemed to supply all that power, these creatures could walk, or fly, away from a hit to the stomach, back, or other area that would kill a man.

Stroud then saw a dart gun looking much like a staple gun behind Magaffey's glass case. He found the case locked, broke it, and grabbed up the gun and the darts that went with it, filling each with the S-choline.

Finished and pleased with his finds, Stroud trundled off with half of the large jar of vampire poison under one arm, the dart gun loaded and ready in one hand, the lances balanced in the crook of his other arm. He was behind schedule, and wondered if he should not see to his wounds before racing headlong to the Institute. If he stopped to do so, it would put him a half hour behind instead of the ten or fifteen he had already lost.

Abe Stroud half stumbled, half walked, rushing from Magaffey's and returning to his Jeep. Every ink-blotted corner of the yard and the garage might hold another attacker, every tree and every ceiling for that matter. Stroud had been lucky--he had killed Briggs's two men before they'd gotten a chance to call for help.

He raced for the Institute, reviewing in his mind what he thought he knew about the area where the special bone marrow elixir was produced and packaged for the vampire colony. As he drove for his destination, Stroud wondered what properties in the S-choline were so effective against the vampire. He'd read his grandfather's books and not a word about any special medicines ever having been used effectively against the vampire existed. There were only old herbal medicines to combat the fever and pain of the bite, to stanch the blood flow. His own blood continued to flow, and now he wished he'd taken a few moments to clean and dress the wounds. He recalled some mention of the wild rose having some anti-vampire properties, but there was no explanation as to why, other than the rose's origin and its general association with Christ. He knew that the wild rose was the rarest flower in the Holy Land. Jesus had said that He was the rose and the lily of the valleys in Song of Solomon 2:1.

His grandfather's voice came into his head as clear and as strong as if he were in the backseat of the Jeep, startling him, and making him wonder if he would ever get used to this ghost. His grandfather said, “
Land Beyond the Forest
 by Emily Gerard.”

What of it?
 Stroud thought but did not say aloud.

“Page one hundred eighty-six.”

Damn it, I don't have the books with me!
 he shouted in his head, but said nothing aloud.

“Tells of the custom in Transylvania of laying a thorny branch of a wild rosebush across the body during burial.”

“For what bloody reason?” Stroud said aloud.

He didn't hear the answer, but he knew it: to prevent the body from leaving the coffin.

Stroud had never thought of himself as a soldier of Christ, and he wasn't certain he wanted to start now. Never had he been a particularly religious sort, never had he maintained even a semblance of ritualistic function in this regard. Yet here he was, carrying the modern equivalent of the wild rose in a test tube, carrying on the modern equivalent of a crusade.

Still, Stroud also knew that the loss of blood he had sustained, and seemed to continue to be sustaining, had not only produced a quicker heartbeat and respiratory rate, but had clouded his judgment as well. Fewer red blood cells to the brain. A normal respiratory rate was fourteen to sixteen breaths per minute. A mental check of his own rate had him up around thirty-five. He was still losing blood, and his wounds continued to throb so that he feared touching them. He feared looking at the wounds, knowing that to see them could be a worse shock to his system than not seeing them.

He fought back the pain, trying desperately to reduce his breathing rate, perspiration coursing down his face as he tried to consciously slow his heartbeat as well. A check of his own pulse where he held onto the wheel revealed that it continued to race--this long after the period in which he had put together the weaponry in Magaffey's office. He could not understand why. He could not understand it and almost instinctively his right hand went up to his shoulder to where one of the gashes seemed to be splitting with pain and opening farther. His hand went into a squirming morass of worms at the wound. Worms, 
like a mindless army of ants, keeping the wound open for their dead master.
 The shock of this realization, that the nerves about all the wounds were deadened and filled with maggots that kept it both clean and open for the vampire's pleasure, sent Stroud into a spin at the wheel. He and the car came to a screeching halt in the parking lot at Banaker Institute, but not before slamming into a parked car.

-22-

The Jeep tore into the side of a car that looked like an unmarked police car, and the noise caused enough of a stir around the doors to the emergency center to bring out curious, white-coated onlookers. Stroud grabbed all that he needed, his cloth bag filled with plastique explosives, enough to get the job done. He slid out and crouched amid the parked cars, making his way to a service entrance he saw in the distance. As he did so, he saw a small crowd of them inspecting his Jeep, and amid the crowd stood Chief Briggs. Of all the luck, Stroud thought now. He'd run directly into Briggs's unmarked vehicle.

He kept one eye on the curious ones combing his Jeep for clues to his whereabouts, and another on the escape door. Or was it a trap door?

The noise of the crash had brought the pseudo-humans out, some staring down from windows high overhead. One of them might've spotted Stroud; one of them might be Banaker.

Behind him, Briggs, his .38 extended, grabbed hold of the Jeep door and tore it open. All of them were trying to understand the situation and, no doubt, Briggs could not believe the nerve Stroud showed in coming here like this after all that'd gone before.

Stroud quietly sprinted for his objective.

Briggs stood staring at the maggot pool on the seat of the abandoned Jeep, saying, “Can you believe this? The nerve?”

“But look,” said one of the white-coated attendants from Emergency, “the worms.”

“That must mean ... maybe he's now one of us,” said the other one.

“Don't be stupid,” said Briggs. “I mean, if he was one of us, the worms wouldn't be just left here to go unused, to die, would they?” Briggs lifted a handful and popped these into his mouth like popcorn. The others took what was left and did likewise.

“He could still be one of us, if whoever got to him took enough of a bite out of him,” ventured the first attendant.

Briggs thought about this. He thought about his two men at Magaffey's, and he wondered who'd been the one to inflict pain on Stroud, and if he'd live to tell about it, and what rewards Banaker would bestow on the one who brought Stroud either down or into the fold.

“Phil could be right, Chief,” said the second attendant.

Briggs bit his lower lip and nodded, giving them a noncommittal maybe. Then he said, “I'll just make a call and we'll see. Tell you one thing, whoever gets the son of a bitch's going to please Banaker to no end.”

Briggs's time as a policeman wasn't completely wasted. He had learned a thing or two, and one was that physical evidence spoke reams if viewed carefully. While the two attendants were wishfully hoping Banaker's problems with Stroud were over, he reserved judgment for good reason. Some of the worms on the driver's seat of Stroud's Jeep were dead. No pire would willingly kill his parasitic helpers. Briggs also knew that if Stroud were still the enemy, and if he, Briggs, were to bring Stroud down, then there would be an eternal thank you and reward that the high and mighty Dr. Oliver Banaker would be bestowing on him.

Briggs had learned via the Institute grapevine that Dolphin Banaker had not returned from Stroud Manse, and rumor had it that Stroud had tortured the young pire to death using some holy and sanctified torture chamber there. Briggs had to go to the other side of the vehicle to reach inside his car for the police radio. His mind wandered over the immense darkness of the eternal damnation that would now befall Banaker's boy; he wished death on no vampire. He pressed to send his message when just outside he heard the disturbance. Stroud was spotted.

Briggs half rolled, half jumped from his mangled car to get a fleeting glimpse of Stroud as the attendants pointed and shouted.

“There!”

“There he goes!”

“Where?”

“Service bay, see the door?”

Briggs did indeed see the top of the door as it closed slowly behind someone of Stroud's general build. Briggs froze for a moment, terrified of Stroud, a man capable of killing one of them. Despite all the bullshit Briggs'd heard about some legendary ones who opted to lie down and die out of a desire to quit living--so I long had they lived--Briggs couldn't imagine anything so asinine as that: to lie down and wish oneself to death. He knew every vampire had it within him to do so, the death wish as it was known, but he could not imagine such despair.

Some ripples of rumor had it that Banaker was on the verge of the death wish decision, but he doubted this. Banaker? Never. Not him. He liked power too much. Cooper, now there was a pire that could maybe take his own life in this manner, but never a pire like Banaker.

Briggs raced behind the two attendants who were going up a flight of stairs. “Is Banaker here, on the premises?” he shouted.