Blood Red

“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.