Blood Red (27 page)

Deanna had been alone, all alone, while Bobby had battled with Leticia, while pure madness had broken out….

Where had Jonas been?

“He's been with me, hasn't he?” Deanna asked softly.

“Yes, honey, he hung around,” Heidi assured her, smoothing back her hair.

Deanna stared at Lauren. “Jonas is
good
,” she said firmly.

Then why the hell had he disappeared right when Deanna needed him most? Lauren wondered.

Bernie Gibbs was on night duty at the morgue. His job was to sit at the desk and deal with whatever the doctors might need help with, and sign the paperwork for whatever dear souls might depart this world in the darkness. Since the doctors never needed help at night, mainly he read books and signed for bodies when they were brought in.

He was often on night duty. Actually, he liked it, liked the silence. He'd gotten through three years at Tulane by working here. He heard about some weird stuff now and then, but it didn't bother him any. He'd always been the kind of kid who could sit through the most gruesome horror movie. Now that he was premed, he'd already seen a hell of a lot worse anything Hollyweird could come up with.

Tonight he was in pretty good shape. He had borrowed a popular new spy thriller from the library, and it was just as engrossing as the reviews had promised. He was actually glad to be at work, where the stiffs never interrupted him just when he was at the best part of a book.

He gotten one call from Lieutenant Canady, who'd said he would be coming by. He hadn't explained why, just told Bernie to keep an eye out for him. But that was cool. Canady was a good guy. He was hell on wheels if you were a crook, but if you were just an average Joe, schlepping along, he didn't mind what you did with your free time. But Canady hadn't shown yet.

There was a sudden noise—right when his spy was meeting up with his Asian nemesis. It startled him from his concentration on the book, and he cocked his head to listen.

Nothing.

He wondered what the hell the noise had been. Something must have fallen in back. He turned his attention back to his book, but he couldn't help wondering what could have fallen?

He set his book down, swearing softly. Had a door been left open? Or did they have rats or something?

Shit.

He decided he'd better check it out.

He stood, and looked around. He didn't have a weapon. Attendants at the morgue didn't usually have problems with their…charges. But what if some jerk had broken in? He looked around and saw his book. “Great,” he muttered aloud. He could just see the headline.
Courageous Night Attendant at Morgue Foils Thief with Spy Novel

No, the book wasn't good enough.

There were all kinds of scalpels and saws in the autopsy rooms, but he didn't want to take a chance of coming across an intruder before he could get to a weapon. He opened the drawer to his desk. Aha! A letter opener.

Clutching it in his hand, he stood. He looked toward the door to the street and noted that it was securely locked. He started down the hallway.

A glance into the first room showed him that everything was sterile and pristine.

And smelling…sanitized.

Like a morgue.

A place of death.

Hardly a surprise, he thought with a shrug, and he moved on.

He found nothing. At last he came to the large insulated stainless steel doors that led to the morgue's current occupants.

He opened the door to what was essentially a giant refrigerator and looked around. Nothing. No, wait.

Something.

Shit!

There was movement on one of the gurneys. Damn it, they did have rats! Big rats, if the movement he was seeing gave any clue.

Rats—or a frat brother, trying to freak him out, he thought. He shook his head and walked to the gurney.

“Asshole,” he said, pulling back the sheet.

But no frat brother was waiting to leap up and yell “Boo!”

He'd seen the corpse earlier. It was the one that had been discovered by a woman chasing after her kid, and it was months dead and decaying. The eyes were…gone. Eaten by insects or who knew what. Most of the flesh had been rotted away, and what was left clinging to the bones looked as if it had been burned. In fact, the smell of burning flesh had hovered around the body. She—because it was a she—had scarcely been recognizable as a human being.

But now…

A sound like…like insects gnawing on flesh and bone was coming from the corpse, but that wasn't the cause

It
was
flesh and bone, all right. Flesh and bone that appeared to be repairing themselves. As he stared, watching blood vessels appear, muscles take form….

Her eyes—eyes that hadn't been there at all earlier—suddenly opened, and she stared at him.

Stared at him.

And then she smiled.

Smiled, only it wasn't a smile, it was like a snarl, and she was baring her teeth, but they weren't teeth at all, they were fangs. She looked like a huge asp, her horrid maw of a mouth opening, and he knew that she meant to sink those fangs into his jugular.

He screamed.

And he struck, batting at her face with his hand and trying to stab her with the letter opener. But those teeth were still coming….

Then, suddenly, he felt something heavy smash down on his head. Stars burst before his eyes, and he crashed to the floor.

He thought vaguely that he heard someone groan “Son of a bitch,” but he wasn't sure. And then the world went quiet, as if a black curtain had fallen from the sky, and all seemed to be eternal darkness.

M
ark was certain the morgue was empty when he arrived, but as he stood at the door of the seemingly deserted facility, it opened, and Sean Canady was standing there in the dark.

“Took you long enough,” he said, then turned and walked away, calling over his shoulder, “Come in. Quickly.”

Mark followed, his eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. There were security lights, but they offered dim illumination at best.

“No night attendant?” Mark asked.

“He's…here.”

“Oh?”

“I knocked him out,” Sean said impatiently. “I had to.”

“Really?”

“Come see.”

“I thought you wanted me down here because of that body the cops brought in today?” Mark asked with a frown.

“Yes.”

“I destroyed her today.”

“She
should
have been destroyed,” Sean said.

“What? If she's coming back, we need to talk to her. We need to know where she's been sleeping, who—”

”I'm sorry, but it's too late now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Come on back. You'll see.”

He did see. The morgue attendant was out cold on the floor, and the corpse…

She was half-covered in flesh again, looking like a Hollywood movie prop. Her eyes were open but unseeing. Her mouth was distorted in a snarl.

Her fangs were glistening.

And she had a literal death grip on a stake that was protruding from her chest.

“You certainly did take care of her,” Mark said, looking at Canady.

“I had to. I know you were hoping she could be brought back to help us, but it's not going to happen. And after what I saw here tonight, we've got to be very careful.” He indicated the morgue attendant on the floor. “She nearly had him. There seem to be some fairly new recruits in Stephan's flock. We can't count on dust to dust to get rid of them. If you make a kill, be damn sure you cut the head off. I'll take care of any explanations.”

“Like Stephan, when he throws his refuse into the Mississippi,” Mark said bitterly.

“You've got to make sure they're down for good,” Sean said firmly. “I have a community of the living to protect. I know you need information, but you can't get it at any risk to others.”

Mark looked down at the fallen morgue attendant. Poor guy looked well and truly out. “How hard did you hit him?” he asked Canady.

“He'll come to soon enough.”

“How much did he see?”

Canady shrugged. “Too much. But with the bump on his head, he won't say anything. Who the hell would believe him?”

“She should begin to rot again quickly,” Mark said.

“I want her more than rotted,” Canady said curtly.

“If she
were
to come back…”

”Mark, we can't take chances like that. She almost put paid to Bernie. I barely got to her in time.”

Mark winced. “All right. What next?” he asked Canady.

Sean handed him a bone saw. Mark nodded and got to work. Decapitation was not an easy process, he thought halfway through.

When they were done, he asked Canady, “How the hell are you going to explain this?”

“I'm not. I'm going to pray she rots again by morning.”

“What about the morgue attendant?”

“I'm going to prop him back at his desk. With any luck, he's going to think he's worked a few hours too many alone with the dead at night.”

“I guess you know what you're doing.”

Canady shrugged. “It's the best I can think of, anyway. When I leave here, I'm heading back to the hospital to check on things there. Where will you be? Back at Montresse House?”

Mark shook his head. “No. I can't just sit around and wait. I have to find Stephan's lair. He's using guerilla tactics, going after different people, trying to keep us so busy and scattered that he'll eventually succeed in getting to Lauren. I have to find him first.”

“What do you think he'll do next?” Canady asked.

“I don't know, but I hope to God I can find him before he does it,” Mark replied.

Deanna remained very weak, and she was also fretful, worried about Jonas.

Lauren was worried about him, too, though not, she suspected, for quite the same reason.

Stacey managed to cook up a delicious soup that Deanna was able to keep down, so at least her strength was improving, even if the danger was still out there.

But that night, with Stacey, Bobby and Big Jim around, it seemed to Lauren that the siutuation was on the upswing, at the very least.

Deanna actually made it to the shower by herself, with one of them waiting, ready to hand her a towel and support her back to the bed.

Big Jim suggested they gather in Deanna's room for a game of Trivial Pursuit, and though she felt listless about the idea at first, Lauren was pleased to see how eagerly her friends agreed. Still, though she tried, she couldn't get into the game herself; she felt strangely restless and unnerved. Finally she excused herself and went downstairs to brew a pot of tea.

As the tea steeped, she suddenly remembered the paper Susan had given her, which she'd forgotten in the welter of events. She raced upstairs to her own room and found it in the pocket of the jeans she had worn the day before. Eagerly, she sat down on the bed to read.

It was a newspaper article, written ten years earlier about strange events in Louisiana history.

Lauren was perplexed. The event in question dated back to 1870. A plantation owner who had survived the ravages of the “War of Northern Aggression” had been returned to his home for burial after traveling abroad to attend the wedding of his son in Kiev, where he had apparently gone berserk and used a bow and arrow to kill the bride and several of the guests.

On the day of his funeral, the house—a beautiful, graceful home on the river—had gone up in flames. The shell had remained for years. As of the article date, the ruins were still abandoned, and the property had reverted to the state.

Lauren read the article over and over again, unable to puzzle out why Susan had given it to her.

Perplexed, she refolded the sheet of paper and tossed it on the nightstand.

Mark spent over two hours just driving around.

He had been certain at first that Stephan would have chosen a place along Plantation Row for his refuge, but he had apparently been wrong, because he didn't see anything suspicious the entire time

He headed back to the hospital, anxious to see how Leticia was doing. All seemed quiet when he reached her room.

For whatever good it might do, Sean had stationed an officer on duty outside the door. And Judith Lockwood was right where he had left her, the knitting project in her hands beginning to look more like a sweater.

He noticed there were more crosses in the room. Several of them—all wooden—lined the window frame.

“Hello, Ms. Lockwood,” he said quietly.

She looked up calmly and nodded at him. “He's been here already, been here and gone.”

“He?” he murmured.

She returned her gaze to her knitting. “Folks can poke fun at some of the old beliefs, but you know, way back in the old days, in the jungles and deserts, folks knew. They knew about good, and they knew about evil. My girl here, she just happened into the way of evil. But she's a good girl. And I don't intend to lose her to any spawn of Satan. I was ready.” She smiled. “Well, I have to admit, I'm a little bit afraid to be leaving this place myself now, but I was ready. He showed up at that window. And I gave it to him good. You see that silver cross there? I blazed my light on it just as soon as I saw the golden orbs of his eyes at the glass.” She chuckled softly. “He was gone, lickety split. Yessir, I think we're going to be fine.”

Mark walked over to Judy and took her hands. “Good for you. You're saving her life, you know. But you're right; you mustn't leave here. Not at all. Not until it's…safe.”

“Not until you've killed the bastard, huh?” she asked.

He nodded. “He needed Leticia because she's a nurse, but she's also a very beautiful young woman. You've kept her from him. She's not the one he's after, but he'll hurt you, hurt you badly, if he can, because he doesn't like people denying him anything. You understand, don't you?”

She stared at him. “Oh, yes, young man. I understand. I understand much more than you imagine I do. And I won't be leaving. Do you see stupid in this old body? I think not!”

Mark had to smile. “I do not see stupid,” he agreed.

“Get out there, then. Get out there and stop the monster that did this to my girl.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he told her, and left.

Outside, he swore. If only he knew where the hell the bastard was going to strike next.

Deanna still didn't have much strength, though she was doing much better than Lauren would have expected. By midnight, however, she was sleeping again, apparently peacefully.

In her chair, Heidi yawned.

“You all go on to bed now,” Big Jim said, looking around the room. “I'll take first watch. Bobby can spell me in a few hours. And Stacey is always up by six.”

“I can watch Deanna,” Lauren said. “You're already doing enough, giving up your job to stay here with us.”

“You listen to me, Lauren. I know what I'm up against You go get some sleep. You won't be any good if you're overtired..”

Heidi stood. “I'm sorry, but I really am exhausted.” She grinned. “It's very tiring, convincing your fiancé that you don't want to sleep with the entire roster of the L. A. Rams. Big Jim, bless you. I'm going to bed.”

“Okay,. I guess I'll get some sleep, too,” Lauren said.

“We'll do it as Big Jim calls it,” Bobby said, rising as well, and holding out a hand to Stacey. “Come on, kid.”

They all filed out of Deanna's room.

“Maybe I should bunk in with you,” Lauren told Heidi.

“No, thank you.”

“But—”

“Lauren, the room is protected. And I have a feeling someone will come home to you eventually. And though I think it's great you're getting some at last, I don't want to be around for it,” she said, laughing.

“All right,” Lauren agreed. “I'm right next door. If you get nervous, if anything so much as goes bump in the night…”

“I'll scream my head off so you can come save me,” Heidi swore, then gave Lauren a warm and reassuring hug. “I swear, I almost lost Barry, and there's no way I'll let that happen, especially now that I know what I'm up against. I'll be ready for anything that comes my way, I promise.”

Lauren watched Heidi disappear into her room, then headed for her own.

She took a long shower, with plenty of hot water, before dressing in a soft knit nightgown and curling up in bed.

The silence of the house seemed to weigh on her, and she realized that she was listening. Waiting.

Listening for the sound of wings, fluttering in the night. Waiting in fear.

It was exactly what he wanted, she thought. He had been at the hospital. He had wanted to prove that he could go anywhere, that he could injure them when they didn't even know they were vulnerable. And that he did want her.

Why?

Because she looked like Katie?

It was all so ridiculous.

She got up and decided to read the article Susan had given her one more time. But she still didn't understand what the seer had been trying to tell her. It was a sad story, and it had all happened in 1870, shortly after the Civil War had torn the nation apart.

She noticed that several sources were cited at the bottom of the article. She wondered if she could find any of them on the computer, or if she would have to go to the library. It was almost two AM, and though she couldn't sleep, she was exhausted. She decided to see what she could find in the morning.

She lay down again to try to get some sleep.

Although it seemed futile, Mark decided to try barhopping again.

Big Jim wasn't playing, he quickly discovered. But he stayed for a beer, and listened to the remainder of the group.

He was still bothered by everything that had happened with “Nefertiti.” She had wanted him to destroy her. He was certain she hadn't seized the child because she really intended to take his life; rather, she had wanted death and had forced his hand. But he was still frustrated, thinking that she might have known something that could have helped him.

He straightened suddenly and looked around. Nothing in the bar looked different, but something had changed.

He sipped his beer and carefully observed those around him. Three college boys were sitting at one of the high tables near the bar. There were eight people on the dance floor. They weren't dancing as couples, just moving to the music.