Bloodsucking fiends (29 page)

"Look, I'm going to shoot some guys in a minute. You want to help, or what?"

"It's registered to a Dutch shipping company. Ben Sapir Limited."

"Have you seen anyone coming to or from that boat? Crew? Visitors?"

There was a pause while the guard checked his records. "No, nothing since it came into harbor. Except that it fueled up last night. Paid cash. No signature. Man, that baby's got some fuel capacity."

"How long has it been here?"

Another pause. "A little over three months. Came in on September fifteenth."

Cavuto checked his notebook. The first body was found on the seventeenth of September. "Thanks," he said to the guard.

"Those guys you had me let in are causing trouble. They took a boat."

"They're coming back through the gate. Let them do what they want. I'll take responsibility."

Cavuto disconnected and dialed the number of Rivera's cell phone.

Rivera answered on the first ring. "Yeah."

"Where are you?" Cavuto could hear Rivera lighting a cigarette.

"Watching the kid's apartment. I got a car. You?"

"The kid and the night crew are on a big motor yacht at the Saint Francis yacht club-hundred-footer. Boat's called the
Sanguine Two;
registered to a Dutch shipping company. They've been out there a couple of hours. Two of them just left."

"He didn't seem like the yachting type."

"No shit. But I'm staying with the kid. The
Sanguine Two
pulled into port two days before the first murder. Maybe we should get a warrant."

"Probable cause?"

"I don't know – suspicion of piracy."

"You want to call in some other units?"

"Not unless something happens. I don't want the attention. Any movement from your girl?"

"No. But it's getting dark. I'll let you know."

"Just go knock on the damn door and find out what's going on."

"Can't. I'm not ready to interview a murder victim. I haven't had any experience in it."

"I hate it when you talk like that. Call me." Cavuto rung off and began rubbing a headache out of his temples.

Jeff and Troy Lee were running through the Safeway aisles, Troy shouting out items off Drew's list while Jeff pushed the cart.

"A case of Vaseline," Troy said. "I'll get it out of the stockroom. You grab the sugar, and the Wonder Grow."

"Got it," Jeff said.

They rendezvoused at the express lane. The cashier, a middle-aged woman with bottle-blond hair, glared at them over her rose-tinted glasses.

"C'mon, Kathleen," Troy said. "That eight-items-or-less bullshit doesn't apply to employees."

Like everyone who worked days at the Safeway, Kathleen was a little afraid of the Animals. She sighed and began running the items over the scanner while Troy Lee shoved them into bags: ten five-pound bags of sugar, ten boxes of Wonder Grow fertilizer, five quarts of Wild Turkey bourbon, a case of charcoal lighter, a giant box of laundry detergent, a box of utility candles, a bag of charcoal, ten boxes of mothballs…

When she got to the case of Vaseline, Kathleen paused and looked up at Jeff. He gave her his best all-American-boy smile. "We're having a little party," he said.

She huffed and totaled the order. Jeff threw a handful of bills on the counter and followed Troy out of the store, pushing the cart at a dead run.

Twenty minutes later the Animals were scrambling through the
Sanguine II
with the bags of supplies for Drew, who was crouched in the opening with the stainless-steel vault. Tommy handed down the boxes of fertilizer.

"Potassium nitrate," Drew said. "No recreational value, but the nitrates make a nice bang." He tore the lid off a box and dumped the powder into a growing pile. "Give me some of that Wild Turkey."

Tommy handed down some bottles. Drew twisted the cap off one and took a drink. He shivered, blinked back a tear, and emptied the rest of the bottle into the dry ingredients. "Hand me that broken sword. I need something to stir with."

Tommy reached for the sword and looked up at Lash. "How we doing?"

Lash didn't even look at his watch. "It's officially dark," he said.

Chapter 34 – Hell Breaks Loose

A wave of anxiety washed over Jody as she woke up. "Tommy," she called. She leaped out of bed and went into the living area, not stopping to turn on the light.

"Tommy?"

The loft was quiet. She checked the answering machine: no messages.

I'm not going to do this again, she thought. I can't handle another night of worrying.

She'd cleaned up the mess from the police search the night before, put lemon oil on the wood, scrubbed out the sinks and the tubs, and watched cable TV until dawn. All the time she thought about what Tommy had said about sharing, about being with someone who could understand what you saw and how you felt. She wanted that.

She wanted someone who could run the night with her, someone who could hear the buildings breathe and watch the sidewalks glow with heat just after sundown. But she wanted Tommy. She wanted love. She wanted the blood-high and she wanted sex that touched her heart. She wanted excitement and she wanted security.

She wanted to be part of the crowd, but she wanted to be an individual. She wanted to be human, but she wanted the strength, the senses, and the mental acuity of the vampire. She wanted it all.

What if I had a choice, she thought, if that medical student could cure me, would I go back to being human? It would mean that Tommy and I could stay together, but he would never know the feeling of being a god, and neither would I. Never again.

So I leave; what then? I'm alone. More alone than I've ever been. I hate being alone.

She stopped pacing and went to the window. The cop from the night before was out there, sitting in a brown Dodge, watching. The other cop had followed Tommy.

"Tommy, you jerk. Call me."

The cop would know where Tommy was. But how to get him to tell? Seduce him? Use the Vulcan nerve pinch? Sleeper hold?

Maybe I should just go up there and knock on the door, Rivera thought. "Inspector Alphonse Rivera, San Francisco PD. If you have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you about being dead. How was it? Who did it? Did it piss you off?"

He adjusted himself in the car seat and took a sip from his coffee. He was trying to pace his smoking. No more than four cigarettes an hour. He was in his forties now and he couldn't handle the four-pack-a-night stakeouts – going home with his throat raw, his lungs seared, and a vicious ache in his sinuses. He checked his watch to see if enough time had passed since he'd last lit up. Almost. He rolled down the car window and something caught him by the throat, cutting off his breath. He dropped his coffee, feeling the scald in his lap as he reached in his jacket for his gun. Something caught his hand and held it like a bear trap.

The hand on his throat relaxed a bit and he sucked in a short breath. He tried to turn his head and the clamp on his throat cut off his breath again. A pretty face came through the window.

"Hi," Jody said. She loosened her grip on his throat a degree.

"Hi," Rivera croaked.

"Feel the grip on your wrist?"

Rivera felt the bear trap on his wrist tighten, his hand went numb, and his whole arm lit up with pain.

"Yes!"

"Okay," Jody said. "I'm pretty sure I can crush your windpipe before you could move, but I wanted you to be sure too. You sure?"

Rivera tried to nod.

"Good. Your partner followed Tommy last night. Do you know where they are now?"

Again Rivera attempted to nod. On the seat next to him, the cell phone chirped.

She released his arm, snatched the gun out of his shoulder holster, flipped off the safety, and pointed it at his head, all before he could draw a single breath. "Take me there," she said.

Elijah Ben Sapir watched the red dots moving around on the video screen above his face. He had awakened feeling gleeful about killing the fledgling's toy boy, then he saw that his home had been invaded. He was hit with an emotion so rare it took him a while to recognize it. Fear. It had been a long time since he'd been afraid. It felt good.

The dots on the screen were moving around on the stern of the boat, scrambling in and out of the main cabin above. Every few seconds a dot would disappear off the screen, then reappear. They were getting in and out of a raft at the stern.

The vampire reached up and flipped a series of toggle switches. The big diesels on either side of his vault roared to life. Another toggle and an electric winch began grinding in the anchor.

"Move, move, move!" Tommy shouted into the cabin. "The engines started."

Barry came through the hatch carrying a bronze statue of a ballerina. Tommy waited at the stern of the yacht with Drew. Troy Lee, Lash, Jeff, Glint, and the Emperor and his troops were already in the raft, trying to find room to move around the paintings and statues.

"Over," Tommy said, taking the statue from Barry as the squat diver went over the side into the arms of the waiting Animals, almost capsizing the raft. Tommy threw the statue down to the Emperor, who caught it and went to the floor of the raft with its weight.

Tommy threw a leg over the railing, and looked back. "Light it, Drew. Now!"

Drew bent and held his lighter to the end of a wax-coated strip of cloth that ran across the stern deck and through the hatch to the main cabin. He watched the flame follow the trail for a few feet, then stood and joined Tommy at the rail. "It's going."

They went over the rail backward and the Animals obliged them by stepping aside and letting them both hit the floor of the raft unimpeded. The raft lurched and righted itself. Tommy fought for breath to give a command.

"Paddle, men!" the Emperor shouted.

The Animals began to beat the water with their paddles. There was a loud clunking noise from the yacht as the transmission engaged and the raft was rocked as the twin screws engaged and began pushing the yacht away from them.

"Rivera," Rivera said into the cell phone.

"The yacht is moving," Cavuto said. "I think I just aided these guys in looting it." He unzipped a leather case on the car seat, revealing a huge chrome-plated automatic pistol, a Desert Eagle.50-caliber. It fired bullets roughly the weight of a small dog and kicked like a jackhammer. One shot could reduce a cinder block to gravel.

"I'm on my way," Rivera said.

"What about the girl?" Cavuto slammed a clip into the Desert Eagle, dropped another one into his jacket pocket.

"She's – she'll be fine. I'm at Van Ness and Lombard. I'll be there in about three minutes. Don't call in backup."

"I'm not – oh Jesus Christ!"

"What?"

"The fucking thing just blew up."

A fountain of flame shot from the stern of the
Sanguine II
, a second passed, and the rest of the yacht disappeared in a cloud of flame that rose into the sky above her. She had cleared the breakwater and was perhaps three hundred yards out into the bay when the fuse reached Drew's incendiary cocktail.

The raft had just made the dock when the explosion went off. Tommy leaped onto the dock and watched the mushroom cloud dissipate. The shock wave rolled in and Tommy reached back to the raft and caught the Emperor before he went into the water.

Debris rained down around them. A pool of fire and unexploded diesel fuel spread out across the water, illuminating the whole area with a dancing bright orange.

"Is this a party boat, or what?" Drew shouted.

The Animals scrambled out of the raft onto the dock and began handing up the objets d'art. Tommy stood aside and watched the burn. Bummer cowered in the Emperor's arms.

"Do you think we got him?"

Jeff handed the Degas ballerina to Troy and looked over his shoulder. "Fucking A, we got him. Nice mix, Drew."

Drew took a bow and almost went over the edge of the dock.

The Emperor said. "I can't help but think that the explosion may have attracted the attention of the authorities, gentlemen. I would recommend a speedy retreat."

Drew looked at the burning slick. "I wish I had some acid. This would be great on acid."

Jeff jumped down into the raft and handed up the last painting, the Miro. He looked past Troy Lee, who was wrestling up the heavy frame, and said, "Whoops."

"What?" Troy said.

Jeff nodded past him and the Animals turned around. Cavuto had a very large, very shiny pistol pointed at them.

"No one move!"

They didn't. The spearguns were stacked on the dock. Glint held the shotgun loosely at his side as he prayed. He dropped it.

"Drop it," Cavuto said.

"I did," said Clint.

"That's true, he did," Tommy said. "And before you asked. He should get extra credit for that."

Cavuto motioned with the pistol. "Everybody down. On your faces. Now!" The Animals dropped. Lazarus barked.

The Emperor stepped forward. "Officer, these young men have -"

"Now!" Cavuto screamed. The Emperor dropped to the dock with the Animals.

The screens went dark an instant before he was slammed against the side of the vault. He tumbled inside, feeling his flesh burn on the steel with every turn. The vault glowed red with the heat and had filled with smoke from the seared wires and the vampire's clothing.

After a few seconds the tumbling stopped. The vampire was jammed into one end of the vault, his face against his knees. His skin was stinging and he tried to will it to heal, but it had been days since he had fed, so the healing came slowly.

He located the lid by finding the smashed CRT and radar screens. Salt water sprayed in a fine mist from behind the screens. He pushed on the lid but it didn't move. He felt for the latches and released them, then heaved against the lid with force that would have crumpled a car fender, yet the lid stayed fast. The heat of the explosion had welded it shut.

I should have killed him last week, the vampire thought. This is what I get for indulging my pleasures.

He reached into the broken CRT, looking for the source of the spraying water, then concentrated his will and went to mist. The transition was slow, weak as he was, but when he had finally lost his solid form he followed the path of the water and wormed his way through the pinhole to the open ocean.

The vault lay on the bottom in a hundred and twenty feet of water and as soon as the vampire escaped, the pressure of four atmospheres condensed him to his solid shape. He tried to force himself to mist, failed, then swam toward the orange glow at the surface, thinking, The boy dies first, then a new suit.

He broke the surface in the midst of the flame slick, then scissor-kicked hard enough to bring himself completely out of the water and tried to go to mist. His limbs dissolved in the air, their vapor whipped by the flame and standing out white in the rolling black diesel smoke, but he could not hold. He fell back into the water, followed by a vortex of vapor that condensed back to solid form under water. Frustrated and angry, he began the swim around the breakwater toward the yacht club.

Cavuto panned the Desert Eagle back and forth across the heads of the prostrated Animals as he moved forward to get their weapons. Lazarus growled and backed away as the big cop approached. Sirens sounded in the distance. Crew members and yacht owners were popping out of the hatches of nearby yachts like curious prairie dogs.

"Inside!" Cavuto shouted, and the yachters ducked for cover.

Cavuto heard footsteps on the dock behind him and swung quickly around. The gate guard, looking down the cavelike barrel of the Eagle, stopped as if he'd hit a force field. Cavuto swung back to cover the Animals.

Over his shoulder Cavuto said, "Go back to the gate and call nine-one-one. Tell them to send me some backup."

"Right," the guard said.

"All right, scumbags, you're under arrest. And if any of you even twitches, I'll turn you into a red stain. You have the right…"

The vampire came out of the water like a wet comet and landed on the dock behind the Animals. He was burned black and his clothes hung in sooty shreds. Cavuto fired without thinking and missed. The vampire looked up long enough to grin at him, then reached down and snatched Tommy by the back of his shirt and yanked him up like a rag doll.