Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (10 page)

Lew tossed me an astonished glance. “Vampire? You mean like Dracula?”

I nodded. “
In his mind
anyway
.”

Lew countered. “I thought vampires made two tiny puncture wounds in the neck, not slash the neck to the bone.”

“That’s
in
the
movies. In
some
legends
in other cultures
, vampires
rip
ped
open the neck or even the abdomen and drank blood with their tongue
s
.”

Lew rolled his eyes
in disgust
. “What the hell kind of books do you read?”

“Oh, I like to watch The Discovery Channel at three a.m. when I can’t sleep
,
”
I shot back.
In truth, I had been an avid reader
of horror and
all things
macabre
as a
teenager
. Poe, Lovecraft, Bierce
and Stoker were among my favorite authors. A
lot of that late night scary stuff stayed with me as an adult.

He changed the subject. “How’s the shoulder?”

I remember what the nurse had said
about the cause of the wound
. “Hurts like hell. By the way, the doctor said it wasn’t a knife wound.”

Lew raised an eyebrow.
“Oh?”

“Yeah, he said it was an animal wound, like claw marks.”

Without a word, Lew pulled
his SUV
into a parking lot
, killed the engine
and stared at me. “Claw marks?”

“Claw marks
,
”
I repeated.

“Jesus, Tack.
That’s what Munson said about the wounds to the girls’ necks.
” He clenched his fist and slammed the steering wheel so hard I thought he might break it. “
What the hell is going on?”

I wish I had an answer for him.
Instead,
I could only offer a guess. “I think we’re dealing with a real whacko who thinks he’s a vampire. Maybe he’s got a
n animal claw, like a
n
eagle’s talon or something that he uses as a weapon.”
A sudden sense of foreboding came over me. “You’re sure you saw a man and not some animal?”

Lew emitted an almost serpentine hiss.
“Damn it, Lew, I don’t know what I saw.
It moved on two legs, so it wasn’t an animal, but…” His voice trailed off
.
“What does he do with the blood and don’t tell me the bastard drinks it?”

I had not missed how deftly he had changed the subject, but t
hat
bit
concerned me too. I had heard of modern day vampires who
drank
blood, although they did
n’t
get it from their victim’s throat.
They used syringes to withdraw it
from willing partners
.
“We found
plenty of blood at the crime scene and at the church. Maybe that’s all of it.”

He looked unconvinced.
“So what do we do
now
?”

“We check on some of these vampire groups. You’re a wiz on the computer. See what you can dig up on-line.
Maybe there’s a Vampires R Us.com or something.
”

“And you?”

“
I ha
ve
a few unanswered questions. I need to talk to Munson about some fish scales.”

He looked at me
as if
I had
gone off the deep end, but
cranked the SUV,
threw
it
in gear and took off.

****

I found Dr. Munson in the autopsy room.
He looked up at me through his clear face shield
spotted with blood
and set down his
bloody
electric bone saw. Three of the four tables were occupied – my victims. The
girls
were naked save for strategically placed cloths over their private parts. Munson did not always do this.
He was being generous.
I was grateful for his show of courtesy to the girls.
They
deserved
dignity even in death.
The lights were low and except for the body on which he was working,
the room was
in
shadows. I was grateful for that too.

Patricia
Stewart
, the latest victim
,
still
looked beautifu
l
in spite of the ragged sutures
holding together the flaps of skin where he had removed her internal organs.
Munson had bathed
her
body, removing the blood
covering her face
. She was pale, far paler than most bodies I had seen
, but her freshly scrubbed face retained the beauty of
her
youth
.
She looked so innocent and childlike lying on that stainless steel table, so opposite of the
vibrant young girl in the
photo by her bedside.
The savage wound in her neck reminded me of the wound in my back.

“Notice anything?” Munson asked
, nodding at the table
.

I played his game, checking the body
carefully
with my unpracticed eye. Then I spotted it. “No lividity.”

He smiled. “Correct.” He rolled the body over slightly
to show me
. “No tell-tale purplish marks where the blood settled post mortem, and do you know why?”

I took another stab. “No blood.”

“Correct again.” I could tell Munson was fascinated. His eyes sparkled
with excitement
. “All three girls have been bled almost dry of blood.
The amount of blood discovered at the crime scenes and found at the church would not account for a third of it.
What happened to the rest?”

“If I knew that, I might know where to start looking for my killer.
” I paused. “
What do you know about vampires?”

He
lifted his visor and stared at me
.
“You mean Dracula?”

“No, I mean those Goth punks in black that file their teeth and drink
human
blood
.”

“Well, there are loose groups of them in town, but I think you’re reaching.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh? And why is that?”

“To them, blood drinking
has sexual connotations
. I can’t see any of them brutally attacking women in their homes and transporting their bodies to another location
, especially without leaving clues
.”

“Maybe I’ve got a psycho vampire on my hands,” I countered.

“
A psycho, certainly. See this wound.
” He pulled back a flap of skin on the Stew
a
rt girl’s neck
with a gloved finger. “
A sharp object, applied with strong force did this but not a blade like a knife.
The tip was sharp
but
with a
slightly rounded body, almost like a meat hook, but not made of metal. Possibly a chitinous substance.
I found
bits of chitin
in the wounds.
And there was no hesitation
in the wound
. Our killer has had lots of practice.
”

My stomach fluttered. “You remember that gray fish scale stuff?”

His eyes went wide. “Oh, yes. I examined that.
In
teresting
.
It
’s composed of
skin cells,
a type of chitin
also
,
but from what creature I
can’t
begin to guess
. The cell structure is very odd and the DNA singularly complex. There were some nasty germs mixed with it
, some I can’t identify
.
I’ve sent the cultures to the CDC for analysis.
”

I shook my head. “Chitin?” I asked.
I knew I had heard the word but couldn’t place it.
I took a stab. “Like a cow horn or something?”

“
No, horns are composed of
the protein keratin, like
hair. Chitin is
a derivative of glucose. It’s t
he substance
comprising the shells of
arthropods, such as crustaceans and
insect
s
,
like the hard carapace
o
f a beetle
, or the beak of a squid
.
It serves the same function as keratin but is different
chemically
.
”

“
So w
e’re looking for a beetle now
, or a squid
?”
I snapped irritably.

“No, it did not come from an insect
or a cephalopod
.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know where it came from.”

I nodded.
If Munson was
stumped,
I
did
n’t
feel too bad in my ignorance.
“
Whatever it was
, the bastard got me in the shoulder and I had a fever
with
in minutes. The ER doc found some of th
at
same
chitinous
substance
in my wound
.”

He looked dumbfounded. “Minutes? That’s … I almost said impossible, but this case breeds impossibilities.” He glanced at my shoulder. “How is it?”

I moved
my arm
experimentally and grimaced
“Sore. I’m taking antibiotics.”

He
looked at me with sympathy
. “You should be in bed, but I understand your enthusiasm.” He looked down at the dead girl
and sighed
. “Catch this bast
ard
Detective
.”

“That’s my job, Doc.” I turned to leave. “Gotta go.”

“By the way.”

I turned back.

“That ammonia – turns out it’s a form of urine.”

“Urine?” I repeated in disbelief.
“
I
’ve
smelled urine of every type in my job from fresh
to several
months old. It stank but not like this
.”

“Animal urine, more specifically it’s very similar to that excreted by vampire bats of South America. Their diet consists mainly of animal blood.”

I stared at him a moment
as his words sank in
. “
Are you
saying
that
this guy has vampire bats
for pets
?”

He said nothing.

I slowly realized what he was suggesting. I shook my head vehemently. “No way, Doc. No way
will I
believe this guy is drinking blood and pissing ammonia. That’s
…that’s
not even human.”

“Someone who savages women like this is not human
,
”
he reminded me pointedly.

While we faced off, him suggesting the impossible and me denying the
im
probable, the
tele
phone rang. He picked it up and spoke
briefly
into the receiver
. When he looked at me and nodded, I knew it was bad news.
He
replaced the receiver
slowly.

“
You’ve got another missing girl
.
It appears
your
man
was busy
again
last night.”

4

As Lew drove,
I hung my head, feeling the weight of the last twenty-four hours pulling me inexorably
like gravity
to the ground.
We had f
our victims and
the only
clue
s
as to the murderer
made little or no sense
.
Nothing about the case made sense to me.
A rookie could have made as much progress
as I had
.
Bodies were piling up and all I could do was keep count.