Authors: Jean Lorrah
“So you can drink my blood."
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“And turn me into a vampire, too."
“No."
“No?"
“Vampires are born, not made."
“I thought anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one."
“Add it up, Brandy,” said Dan. “If that were true, with every vampire creating twelve or thirteen vampires every year, eventually everybody would be a vampire!"
“You have thought this all out, haven't you?"
“I'm not making it up,” he said gently.
“More coffee?” Brandy asked, unnerved by his calm certainty.
“Not for me,” Dan said. “To keep from influencing you, I prevent you from influencing me. I won't be able to ingest anything more until—"
At the idea of his sinking his teeth into her throat, Brandy rose, tucking her gun into her belt. She put the mugs in the sink and started to clean the coffee pot. But she couldn't turn her back on Dan. He took over, threw out the old filter full of coffee grounds, installed a new one.
Brandy couldn't look at Dan Martin and see a madman.
But if he wasn't insane, then he was a vampire, and that meant she was crazy! She'd better take him down to the station, let what happened at sunset happen—
“The sun is setting,” said Dan.
Too late. She would have to play it out here. Determinedly, she did not hesitate to touch his hand—with her left hand, her right on her gun. The familiarity of walking beside him, his smell, his size, his shape and movement, contrasted with the apprehension in her gut as they went to the living room. Brandy sat on the couch she had moved from her apartment. Dan seated himself carefully on the edge of the coffee table, facing her.
What did he expect to happen now? Did he think his eyes would glow, that his features would become monstrous? That he would grow fangs?
Outside, light snow fell. There was no red or golden sunset, nor could they see the moon rising behind the clouds. Daylight simply grayed toward black.
The furnace gave a click, and warm air stirred the drapes. Moving slowly, unthreateningly, Dan leaned toward Brandy.
She drew her gun, but kept it pointed at the floor.
She let him kiss her, felt him lick her lips in his strange sensuous way, and by habit opened her mouth to him as she had a hundred times before. That was safe enough—but what if he proceeded to lick her neck? Now that she knew his unique caress was part of a vampire fantasy, could she remain calm?
His mouth stayed on hers, tongue caressing, then moving to stroke the roof of her mouth, on either side where the valleys led back toward the soft palate. Brandy let her own tongue follow his, repeating the motions—
His taste was familiar, but the contours of his mouth seemed strange—crowded? What was this? Instead of the normal valleys on either side of his hard palate, she felt ridges. Strangely not put off, she explored curiously—
Something moved!
The hard but yielding texture of palate parted to release smooth, unyielding bone or—
As Brandy's tongue withdrew, it was followed by—
“Oh, my God!” Brandy gasped, withdrawing only far enough for her eyes to focus on his mouth.
Teeth.
No, fangs.
Unfolding from the roof of his mouth like a viper's fangs, there emerged long, needle-sharp teeth.
Chapter Ten—Proposal
Dan opened his mouth wide to allow the fangs to clear his lower lip. When they were fully extended, reaching a good inch past his incisors, he could not hide them. They curved slightly, just like—
Just like the tines of that fork that had so precisely fit the wounds in Carrie Wyman's neck.
But Brandy couldn't think about that now. Something had happened to Dan's eyes, too: they were red, more reflection than glow. The part of Brandy's mind divorced from her immediate feelings diagnosed dilation, allowing light to reflect off the retina, the look of an animal caught in a car's headlights. Together with the fangs, it gave the man before her a surreal look.
If she had not felt the fangs emerge, Brandy might have thought them a theatrical appliance. But they were unquestionably real—and that meant—
Helplessly overcome with relief, Brandy giggled.
“That was not among the reactions I was prepared for,” Dan said. The fangs caused him to lisp slightly.
“I'm sorry.” Brandy fought incipient hysteria. “This is a bit of a reversal on Beauty and the Beast!"
She heard relief in his familiar deep chuckle. Then he said, “I didn't know how else to prove it isn't a trick.” He looked into her eyes, the eerie glow focused on her. “You're not frightened.” It was a statement of fact.
“No,” she realized. The hard knot of fear in her belly had melted in the face of irrefutable evidence. “You're not crazy,” she said. “As long as you're not some psycho killer, whatever else you are we can work through."
“Oh, God, I love you,” he growled, started to reach for her, then paused to retract his fangs. They folded back up behind his upper teeth, into either side of his palate. At the same time, his eyes resumed their usual appearance.
When he kissed her, Brandy probed curiously with her tongue. The fangs lay covered but palpable on either side of his palate. Dan broke the kiss in exasperation. “Could we have a little more romance and a little less investigation?"
But she had to ask, “Why didn't I ever notice that swelling before?"
“Once I've—fed, they don't come down into striking position until the next full moon. Bran-dee,” he protested as she tilted her head, trying to see into his mouth.
“Let me look,” she insisted until he gave in. Everything appeared amazingly normal. He had all his teeth, but three lower molars and one upper one were crowned, and she saw a number of fillings. From any angle she tried, there was nothing visibly abnormal. “Doesn't your dentist notice? What about x-rays?"
“Dental x-rays are taken from the sides. If the fangs show at all, it's just a shadow. Are you about finished?"
For answer she tried to give him a proper kiss, but had to interrupt her embrace to put her gun on the coffee table. Her fear was gone, their rapport returned. It wasn't what he called influence—he wasn't experiencing anything except relief at her acceptance. She could read his feelings easily, and something of his knowledge, too—one of the things she read, without question, was that Dan had not killed Carrie, nor anyone else.
Brandy pulled Dan onto the couch, then settled beside him. “I'm sorry. I've never known a vampire before. Are you all right now?"
“Much better than all right,” he said, giving her a gentle squeeze.
“You haven't, uh—"
“Not until you're ready."
The reminder of what he expected was unsettling. Those fangs penetrating her throat—she supposed she could accept it as she did a flu shot if it was what Dan needed to live. Perhaps his hypnotic powers kept the pain away. “Will you answer some more questions?"
His deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. “I fell in love with a detective. I'll live with it."
“Did you—drink my blood the night you put me to sleep in my apartment?"
She sensed his confusion for a moment as he tried to remember. “No. It wasn't near the full moon. The Craving starts two or three nights before, but it's only relentless that one night. But yes, I put you to sleep, and yes, it was the same thing I did to Jeff. There were witnesses that time, so I called it the Vulcan nerve pinch to make you think it was just the power of suggestion."
“But you're planning to drink my blood tonight."
“Only if you want me to,” Dan replied.
“You could make me want it."
“I don't think so,” he said. “I don't think I can make you do anything against your will, Brandy. In any case, I won't. Any more questions?"
“Hundreds! Let me just get the big ones out of the way."
“All right."
“Health,” she said. “You drink a different person's blood every month. Ever been tested for hepatitis? AIDS?"
“Yes, but not because I thought I had either,” he told her. “I don't even catch cold. But I had a blood test last year, when they were looking for a marrow donor for that student with cancer."
“You—would have donated?"
“Of course! I obviously have a superior immune system. If my blood type had matched hers I've have gladly donated, but it didn't.” He paused, and added, “I was both relieved and disappointed. Certain things about my nature, such as rapid healing, would have been revealed—but I might have learned something about vampire physiology. Anyway, they did a full-spectrum test on everyone who gave samples, and I got back a clean bill of health. If you want me to, I'll be tested again."
“Blood tests don't show that you're a vampire?"
“They weren't screening for vampires,” he explained. “I have no idea whether some sub-factor would indicate it."
“This superior immune system—that's how your saliva heals other people?"
“It heals wounds,” he said. “It won't cure colds—or cancer. But yes, when I licked the gash in your finger, that stopped the bleeding and made it begin to heal."
“It was gone the next day,” she acknowledged. But her line of questioning had obviously set Dan to thinking.
“Did you see the autopsy report on Everett Land?” he asked. “Was there anything to indicate that he wasn't an ordinary human being?"
“Oh, God,” Brandy remembered. “Land didn't develop rigor mortis. Neither did Chase or Jenny Anderson, but Officers Rand and Paschall did. And the bullet wound to Chase Anderson's hand was healed as much as if days instead of hours had passed!"
Dan stared at her. “Two more vampires? I had no idea. How many of us are there around here?"
“You'd know better than I would. But—wait a minute. The Andersons had fingerprints."
Again Brandy felt Dan's bewilderment. “I thought not leaving fingerprints was a sign of vampirism."
“The only thing I know it's a sign of is old age,” said Brandy.
“It is? I didn't know that."
“I guess the police don't broadcast it to avoid tempting geriatric criminals. Have you never had fingerprints?"
“I did as a child. I only encountered the idea of vampires not having fingerprints in some Victorian text a couple of years ago, and checked it out on myself. Before that, I tried to avoid getting fingerprinted because I didn't want prints on record when I changed identities. Rett didn't leave fingerprints."
“But he was over 65, and so are you,” Brandy pointed out. “The Andersons might have been the age they appeared, mid-thirties.” She thought a moment. “You didn't frame Rory Sanford, then."
“How do you come to that conclusion?"
“The drawer in which the evidence was concealed was wiped clean of prints. Someone without fingerprints would have left it with Rory's own prints on it."
“Well, it's nice to know there's one crime you don't suspect me of. But still—all these vampires. I thought we were extremely rare. Of course we all cover our tracks. I've only discovered one other vampire before—two, if you count Rett, although I hadn't gotten up the nerve to confront him. His death provided confirmation that vampires suddenly age and die when their time is up. I'd like to know how old Rett really was."
“We can try to trace back beyond the two identities we know,” said Brandy, “but it gets harder before the 1950's. Dan, could the Andersons have escaped from jail?"
“I'd expect too many safeguards and too many other prisoners for them to influence a jailer to let them go. It wasn't terribly smart, calling attention to themselves with a bank-robbing spree. If they were put in prison—imagine a surveillance camera catching a vampire feeding!"
Brandy added, “The next time Chase Anderson's bandage was changed, the doctor would have found his hand completely healed."
Dan nodded. “I think—their recklessness made them dangerous, so another vampire killed them."
“Well, I know that wasn't you, either. You were with me when the Car 108 murders occurred."
He gently squeezed her shoulders, as if to reassure her—or himself. Brandy continued thinking out loud. “Dan, whoever made certain the evidence of a vampire's bite remained on Carrie's body might not have had you, specifically, in mind."
“Only another vampire could influence Carrie,” said Dan. “That's four besides me. Brandy, this is crazy."
“No—one of the vampires may be, though. The one who murdered the Car 108 victims—and Carrie."
“The same person?” Dan asked.
“You said Carrie's death was a warning. To you, or to any vampire in the vicinity? Dan, I need more information. You don't live on blood. You have a healthy appetite."
“I need only a few ounces of blood, once a month. It seems to be a vital supplement, not food. I have no idea if I'm lacking some hormone or enzyme that I get from human blood, or if it's something else entirely. All I know is that without blood I would die. Maybe in my next identity I'll study biochemistry, try to find out how it works."
“This is—your second identity? Or were there others?"
“This is my second. I was an engineer before, helped to build dams and other projects after World War II."
“You have hypnotic powers. You can see in the dark. You're immune to diseases. What else?"
“During the hours of darkness I have greater strength than other people."
“How great?"
“I'm not Superman. I can lift more than the strongest Olympic weightlifter—although the one time I pushed it to the limit I put my back out. My muscles can't support such effort. But by the next day my back healed. In an emergency I wouldn't hesitate to try again."
“This rapid healing—"
“A blessing and a curse,” he explained. “I'm not a biologist, but I think what makes me different from you is not so much the content of my cells, as that it duplicates rapidly and perfectly. Current theory says human cells slowly lose that ability. It would explain vampire longevity—as well as the fact that we don't scar or callous. My body automatically maintains itself in a healthy state, but I can't ‘buff up.’ My light sensitivity—the reason for sunglasses even in the winter—lets me see in the dark. There's nothing supernatural about it."
“And you don't really have a sun allergy,” said Brandy. “You just can't tan, so you burn."