Blood Hunt

bell, the woman answering startled him. Anna Bieber!

No, he realized a moment later. This woman’s hair had been shorn boy short and she used a walker. But the face and clear eyes were Anna’s, and they searched his face intently. “You’re Garreth? I’m Mary Catherine. Please come in.”

She led him to a livingroom furnished with the same kind of deep-cushioned chairs and couch Anna’s house had.

“Thank you for coming,” she said as they sat down. “Violet will have told you I’m Sharon’s grandmother, so first I have to thank you for her life. The Lord is mysterious and wonderful, bringing her cousin here from so far away in time to save her.”

Garreth started. “Excuse me? Cousin?”

“Yes. You see, I’m also Anna Bieber’s twin sister…”

That explained the likeness!

“…and I really asked to see you because I think my niece Mada is the grandmother you’ve been looking for.”

That caught him by surprise, too. “You do? Why?”

She sighed. “History repeating itself. Although we were more practical when Anna got pregnant. We got her a shotgun wedding to Ben Bieber. Even at fifteen and eager to drop our drawers for our Irish stallion every chance we got — Danny Shannon, a hired hand at our farm…” She smiled at the memory. “…we knew he wasn’t husband material.”

Garreth jacked his jaw back in place. His mind boggled at these two sweet elderly ladies as hormonal teenagers humping the hired hand then scheming to arrange marriage. “You made Ben think the baby was his?”

She shook her head. “He knew what he was getting. He and Anna had been wanting to marry, so she told Ben that Danny caught her in the barn one night, thinking she was me, and it being dark, she gave herself thinking, until too late, he was Ben, come for more than cuddling that time, and now she was in the family way. She knew Ben would insist on making an honest woman of her and he agreed with her suggestion they sleep together at least once so they could truthfully confess to fornication.” She smiled again. “Anna told me Ben marked his territory good and proper by rising to the occasion three or four times before morning.”

More information than Garreth needed. “So you think Mada got pregnant, too.”

She nodded. “In California, not Europe, and since the professor couldn’t marry her, she ended up at your grandmother’s boarding house using that false name.”

“What about the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber?”

“I wasn’t here — my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Leavenworth for the early thirties — but I’m thinking ‘Maggie’ was Ben’s sister Adele. She always accused Anna of tricking Ben into marriage, and was outraged at Ben scraping together that tuition money in such hard times for another man’s bastard. Danny was long gone when Mada was born — we made sure he skedaddled before Anna went to Ben, for fear Ben would kill him — but everyone remembered him and that red hair marked her as his. Ben sent Mada to college to let her get away where no one knew or cared about her paternity. He hoped college worked better than sending her into town for high school did.”

With that family history and what the librarian said about Lane’s behavior and treatment in high school, no wonder she embraced being a vampire. It gave her the power to take revenge on the world.

He pulled his attention back to Mary Catherine. “How would Adele have known where Mada was?”

“She’d been widowed and was living with Ben. Except for several years after running away with the professor, Mada always keeps in touch with Anna…letters, phone calls. I think she did write in that time…from your grandmother’s about her situation…but Anna never got the letter because Adele intercepted it and got so mad she decided to go tell Mada just what she thought of her. Giving her name as Maggie Bieber let Mada know someone knew who she really was.”

The plausibility of the story and its smooth dove-tailing with his cover story left Garreth suddenly feeling as if he were wading and lost contact with the bottom…that reality was blurring, and with it his ability to distinguish between the true Mikaelian and role he played here.

Mary Catherine gave an emphatic nod. “I believe when Mada abandoned your father, she went on to Europe like she and the professor originally planned, and that’s why Anna believes she was there the whole time. Even though I’m sure Adele spitefully tried to convince Anna otherwise. Ask Mada about it if you’re here at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don’t see how it would embarrass her now. Nothing does as far as I can tell. She tells the most scandalous stories about herself.”

No…the least scandalous stories, nothing touching the truth about her…Lane the vampire, the killer.

He gave Mary Catherine sincere thanks as he left. “You’ve answered important questions for me. I will stick around and see Mada.”

But he needed to arrange a logical way to do so.

Taking a back way to the hotel, he considered the most obvious option. Signing on to the local PD fit the I Ching advice Lien gave him when he left San Francisco, that acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. His conscience stung at trying for a job that deserved a commitment he knew impossible to honor, but if Grandma Doyle were right about his continued existence being only to bring Lane to justice, they would never learn he joined knowing it would be temporary. Not that Nat’s desire to recruit him made acceptance a slam dunk. He doubted Nat had hiring authority and who knew how whoever did might feel about it.

7

Whatever the attitude of those doing the hiring might be when the subject came up, Nat had clearly created some interest here in the PD office. When Garreth walked up to the glass of the front desk a bit before eight, a plump young woman swivelled from a long communications desk that divided the receiving area from one with desks and file cabinets and gave him a bright smile.

“You must be Garreth Mikaelian.” She hurried over to eye him with interest through the glass, from head to the sport coat he put on for the evening, to jeans and boots, then opened a door at the end of the desk to let him in. “I’m Sue Ann Pfeifer, the evening dispatcher.”

A real Pfeifer. Who smelled of blood and…chocolate?

“Would you like a chocolate chip cookie? I brought a fresh batch this evening.” She pointed to a plate of cookies sitting between the radio and teletype on the communications desk.

The smell brought a vivid memory of his mother baking. He remembered the taste…so sweet then, nauseating to think of now. “No thank you. I’m not a cookie eater.”

She sighed and patted a generous hip. “I shouldn’t be either. Tomorrow — ”

“…You’re going to go on a diet.” Nat appeared out of a hallway at the back of the room, buckling on his gear belt. “I’m glad you decided to come. Maggie Lebekov here is just getting ready to go off duty, so come and meet her.”

He stopped beside a desk where an attractive, trim brunette in her twenties sat typing a report.

“Maggie is our Afternoon officer, our expert with juveniles and domestic disputes. Maggie, this is Garreth Mikelian.”

Garreth came around the communications desk, holding out his hand. “Glad to meet you.”

She glanced up no farther than his hand, and returned to typing. “Nat, I forgot to mention Scott Dreiling has the keys to his Trans Am again. I guess Mama couldn’t stand her baby not being able to drive himself to school and football practice.”

Garreth examined his fingers for frostbite. Terrific. They had Up-Against-the-Car Duncan and Ice Queen Lebekov. So much for being a friendly department. Did he really want to work here?

Nat’s ears reddened. “Let me show you the rest of the station.”

That consisted, downstairs here, of the complaint, communication, and officer desk areas, a locker room for