Blood Crimes: Book One (13 page)

      “Any idea what this is for?”
M
etcalf asked.

      
Jim
couldn’t keep himself from nodding.

      “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

      
Jim
started to answer him, closed his mouth.

      “Superstitious, huh?”
M
etcalf asked. “You’re afraid to say it? Okay, I’ll say it for you. This spot’s reserved for the next resident here who pisses me off.”

      “It looked to me like Serena was doing a good job of that.”

      A glaze fell over
M
etcalf’s eyes. “She has her privileges, but you sure as fuck don’t. If I were you I’d watch my mouth. Understand?”

      Something about the way
M
etcalf was staring at him told
Jim
he was seconds away from being made one of his experiments. As shaky as he was feeling he knew he’d have no chance against this vampire.
M
aybe if he was feeling stronger and had a knife, he’d have a shot, but not now.

      “Yeah,”
Jim
said, his eyes shifting downwards and away from
M
etcalf.

      “So what did you learn here?”

      “Don’t piss you off.”

      
M
etcalf nodded. “Congratulations. You pass your indoctrination and get to walk out of this room. Not all of our new recruits can say that. Now get the fuck out so I can get to work.” He sniffed and glanced sideways at
Jim
as he was leaving. “I’m sure Serena will fill you in on the rest of our rules, but before that don’t try to do something stupid like leave this building. You do, we’ll hunt you down and I’ll make you one of my very special projects.”

      During the next five months
Jim
played along. At first he refused the blood being offered him, and to the amusement of the other vampires accepted
M
etcalf’s offer for other food—first trying fresh fruit and vegetables, then fish, and finally cow’s blood, and each time paying a heavy price, the reaction being the same as when he had tried licking up drops of Serena’s blood. After several days of this he was left near crazed with hunger and drank what Serena brought to him. He tried hard not to think about where it came from. Instead he did what he had to during those five months to survive, including putting on an act of complete submissiveness. The reality was his survival instincts had kicked into full drive. It was like he was back in Iraq, moving silently among the enemy and gathering whatever intelligence he could. During that time he avoided
M
etcalf as much as possible—not that it was that difficult given how that psycho son of a bitch spent most of his waking hours playing in his lab.

      He had been right about the building being a converted hotel, and also about it’s location—it turned out to be in the heart of Union Square. After a month of being cooped up inside of this glorified tomb, Serena took him clubbing with her and her posse. By this point he had become more than just her sex toy. While she was still engaging in orgies with her posse, she was spending her nights alone with
Jim
, confiding secrets, and at times even appearing vulnerable. He knew this special treatment didn’t play well with the other members of her inner circle, especially Zach, and he was careful when he was alone with them. When they went out clubbing, Serena spent less time eyeing other men, and mostly focused on
Jim
, whispering in his ear and rubbing her body against his. His own feelings towards her were a mix of hate and lust. As much as he was disgusted by her, she could make him hard simply by looking at him. Sex with her was always a thrill ride, and he kept his true feelings about her hidden.

      After five months he was satisfied with the intelligence he collected, and when he had his next opportunity to escape, he took it. Like every night when they went out clubbing, Serena and her posse doped themselves up first with heroin, and that night they snorted extra lines and were more lethargic than usual. At the club, Zach was brooding over some imagined slight, which attracted Serena’s attention enough for
Jim
to slip away. He left through a back door and kept running until he was out of
M
anhattan and crossing over the Queensboro bridge into Long Island City. The first night he spent in a condemned tenement building. He could hear the rats squealing as they fled. After that night he found a studio apartment off of Queens Boulevard to rent. The place was a dump, but it didn’t matter. The cockroaches and other pests emptied out of it within seconds of him showing up. Besides, he didn’t expect to be there long.

      During his time in the vampire hotel, or tomb, as he had come to think of the place, he had worked out some initial plans of how he was going to free the “cattle” being held in the basement, and destroy Serena,
M
etcalf, and the other vampires living there. He knew that while it was difficult to kill an infected person, it was possible. With enough explosive force he would be able to blow off their limbs, and then cut off their heads as they lay helpless. The plan he worked out was basically a suicide mission, which was okay with him as long as it left the other vampires dead. Hell, he always thought he left Iraq with one last mission left in him. The only piece of intel that he was missing that bothered him was the source of the infection. He never was able to identify whether the virus started with Serena,
M
etcalf, or a third party, and he would’ve liked to have known that when he was done the virus had been fully eradicated. But he was going to have to leave this one loose end.

      He had taken twenty grand from Serena the night he went on the run. As far as Serena was concerned money was of no object and that twenty grand was nothing but loose change to her. One of the residents of the tomb was a billionaire founder of a dot-com company whom she had infected so she could make him transfer all of his assets to her. Now that he was in Queens,
Jim
was using most of the twenty grand to purchase explosives, but it didn’t go nearly as far as he had hoped. He needed more money to carry out his plan, and he started searching out drug dealers to rob. They were easy. He didn’t kill them, but he roughed them up and took their money.

      He had blueprints for the hotel, and was close to having what he needed when one night while wiring up bombs, the door to his studio apartment was kicked in and standing outside were two vampires. They were thicker and darker than the other vampires he had seen, but he knew from the shape of their heads that they were infected. He didn’t recognize them, but he didn’t know all of the residents of the tomb. It was also possible Serena infected them to send after him—she had no qualms about infecting people to get what she needed.
Jim
would later learn from the newspapers that that was what happened—that these two were
M
afia hit men who were missing for ten days before showing up at his studio apartment. They were both carrying big-ass pistols that
Jim
would later learn from the papers were
M
agnum .357s. Without a word they lifted their guns and started firing at him, hitting him pointblank in the chest with bullets that he’d also later learn from the papers were armor piercing. The force of the bullets blew him out of his seat and against the wall. One of the bullets must have ricocheted off his chest and hit a stick of dynamite. The room exploded into flames and he was blown through the wall and sent into the street.
M
ore explosions followed. A searing heat rolled over him. As he lay on his back he saw the building collapse onto itself.

      His whole body ached, but he was still in one piece. People started to pour out of the buildings nearby.
Jim
used the ensuing panic to search through the rubble. He found one of hit men with his legs blown off at the knees. The vampire had been blinded by the smoke and dust, and was trying to stagger away on his stumps.
Jim
used a piece of metal as a makeshift sword. The first swing went a few inches into the vampire’s neck. It took a half dozen more swings before he had the head mostly cut off. Before he could pull his makeshift sword loose, he was tackled from behind and found himself rolling among the rubble with the other hit man.

      “I got nothin’ against you, buddy,” the vampire grunted as it struggled to point the barrel of gun at
Jim
’s mouth. “I’m just doing a job, so do me a favor and fucking die already.”

      He had pressed the barrel against
Jim
’s neck, but either he was out of bullets or the gun had jammed because nothing happened when he pulled the trigger. He started to give the gun a pissed off look, but before he could do much else,
Jim
had flipped him over. While they had been rolling around
Jim
found one of his hand grenades. He pinched the hit man’s nostrils shut. When the vampire opened his mouth to breath,
Jim
shoved the grenade in, pulled the pin, counted, then rolled off.

      The blast knocked him over. It also took off enough of the vampire’s head to kill it. Sirens were approaching.
Jim
got up and ran before anyone could stop him. Hours later he was in Newark, and a few days later he found Carol. After that his plans changed.

* * * * *

      Carol had the TV set on. The motor lodge offered fourteen cable channels, along with pay per view porn. She couldn’t find
M
TV, and after flipping through the channels several times and finding nothing of interest, she left it on a religious program. It didn’t matter what was on, she just wanted the background noise, anything to block out the squealing of bedsprings from the neighboring room.

      After her first few weeks together with
Jim
, he bought her a lady’s handgun, a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver. It was funny that it was considered a lady’s handgun since it still had enough firepower to stop a two hundred and fifty pound NFL linebacker in his tracks. It wasn’t pink, and it didn’t have little hearts decorating it, but Carol figured it was because the gun could fit in her purse and only weighed twenty ounces. Whenever she helped
Jim
lure a predator to feed on, he always insisted that she bring her gun along in case he lost track of her. She now had the gun laying on the bed and stared transfixed at it for what seemed like an eternity, all the while an evangelical preacher from the TV rambled on about how Jesus suffered each day for their sins and if the good people listening could only dig deep into their hearts, and even deeper into their wallets, the lord’s pain could be eased. A hardness froze Carol’s face. Earlier she had cracked open the cylinder and dumped the bullets onto the bed sheet.

      Almost from the beginning she’d been wanting
Jim
to infect her so they could go through this together. Wasn’t that what true love was all about—to share everything each other went through, the good and the bad? He refused to, though, saying that their life together always on the move was difficult enough; that at least if Carol were uninfected she’d be able to drive during the day and run the other errands they needed. She didn’t buy his explanation. They could move from city to city just as easily at night. She knew he was trying to protect her from what he was going through, but as far she was concerned, that wasn’t good enough. She wanted him to share his pain with her. If they were really each other’s soul mates, there shouldn’t be anything between them.

      She picked up the revolver. For something that only weighed twenty ounces, it felt heavy in her hand. She slid a bullet into one of the chambers, then spun the cylinder.

      If
Jim
came back and found her dying, he would have to infect her to save her life. No matter all the things that he’d said to the contrary, he would have to save her. 

      
Carol, he’d tell her in that tired voice of his he’d fall into whenever they had this argument, you don’t know what you’re asking me. This is not something I could ever let you go through. Fuck, I can’t think of a worse curse to wish on anyone, let alone something that I would ever inflict on someone I loved with all my heart. Please, let it drop, it’s never going to happen.
 

      Bullshit. If he really loved her as much as he claimed he did, how could he ever let her leave him?

      She pushed the muzzle of the gun against her belly, felt the coldness of the steel. There were five chambers. Four empty, one with a .38 caliber bullet. A twenty percent chance. Her muscles tensed as she squeezed the trigger. An empty click, nothing else.

      Oh, fuck.

      She almost vomited the shots of tequila and greasy burger and fries from before. Somehow she kept it all down.

      If he really loved her he would save her. No matter what else, he would have to save her. If the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t think twice. She spun the cylinder again, hearing the metallic clicks. Again, she pushed the muzzle hard against her bare belly. The preacher was rambling on about how Christ loved all of them. She started laughing. It sounded like something that could’ve been coming out of a wounded animal.