Blood Hunt

“There was a set of golf clubs at an estate auction I wanted to bid on. One was supposedly signed by Jackie Gleason. They were scheduled to sell about two o’clock…only Jacobs talked the auctioneer into putting them up an hour earlier, before I got there, and bought them himself. And bragged about it at the Cowboy Palace.”

It sounded like their beef went back farther than the golf clubs. Whatever the origin, it needed to stop before escalating any farther. “I’ll talk to Mr. Jacobs and see if he will admit to painting your driveway. If so, I could arrest you both for vandalism but do you really want the embarrassment of going to court? I think you should offer to pay for repairing his paint job, and I will have him come tomorrow and clean your driveway. Then I want this…feud done with. I don’t want to see either of your names on this type of complaint again, understood, or I won’t hesitate to haul you downtown…in handcuffs…in full view of your neighbors.”

Haffener winced.

So did Jacobs when Garreth obtained an admission of guilt there, too, and presented him with the same threat of public humiliation.

“I see you employ our very useful hypnotic ability,” Lane said after Garreth returned to the car and sat writing up his preliminary report…the final one to be typed at the office.

He wrote on without replying.

“How about sex?” she said. “Ah, I see you have discovered the joy of vampire sex. Isn’t it interesting we still blush. We’re honey for flies, and what sex as humans ever compared to what it’s like when we’re hungry?”

The purr in her voice rasped at him. He laid down his clipboard and slapped the car in gear, pulling away from the curb with a jerk. “Your point?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Look at all we are…our superiority, our abilities. Why would anyone want to be a mere human when they can be…us.”

“Because family and friends are worth more.” He made no attempt to hide his bitterness. “Now I’ve lost them. Every moment with them is a lie. Which isn’t a problem for you, is it, since you never cared about anyone except your mother.”

“None of them except her ever cared about me,” she said coldly.

“So you probably asked to come across.”

She snapped, “Yes!”

“How did you find a vampire?”

Lane smiled. “Irina found me…Vienna, July, 1934. It really wasn’t the place to be that month with Hitler’s putsch and Dollfuss’s killing, but Matthew said as long as the cafes and museums stayed open what were politics to us. This exquisite woman sat down sat at a table next to us that evening and started flirting with Matthew. Naturally I went over to tear her face off.”

That sounded familiar. “Like you attacked Claudia Darling?”

In his peripheral vision she blinked. “Who?”

“Your 1942 assault victim.”

Lane sniffed. “Oh, that slut. I should have killed her. You know what she did after getting me arrested?”

“Got you fired and then blackballed around North Beach. She told me.”

“You’ve seen her? Well…how is the little bitch these days?”

“Matronly and rich.”

Lane laughed. “Whereas I am anything but matronly and am very rich.”

His skepticism must have shown on his face.

Her forehead twitched. “Oh, yes, I am. You can learn a lot during pillow talk about making your money grow, especially with a little vampire encouragement. Which brings me back to Irina. Garreth, park somewhere so we can talk face to face.”

“Eye to eye?”

She sighed. “You are paranoid. We’ll sit back to back if that makes you feel — no, not here! Turn right.”

Into the cemetery, not St. Thomas More’s parking lot. So she disliked being even in the vicinity of a church?

“Let’s go to the War Memorial,” she said.

A tall granite obelisk in the middle of the cemetery with cannons on its left and right pointed at the obelisk. Erected in 1920 to commemorate the Great War, which everyone optimistically assumed would be the Last War.

He steered into the cemetery, radioing Doris his location, and parked at the Memorial’s island. Swinging out of the car, Lane strolled through the mist toward the obelisk. He climbed out, too, but remained beside the car.

Her voice came back to him. “Irina looked up at me with big violet eyes and said don’t be angry, join her for tea. Suddenly I wasn’t angry. Matthew and I did join her. Later she came back to our hotel with us and suggested we have a threesome…which Matthew accepted eagerly, of course. I don’t have to tell you how fantastic it was. But the most amazing part came after she told me to go to sleep and she and Matthew went at it again by themselves. I didn’t sleep — maybe she was in too much hurry to be sure of me — so I watched them…and I saw what she did. She doesn’t bite the neck, where the marks show. She prefers — let’s just say she gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘cocksucker.’”

Garreth cringed.

As though seeing him, Lane laughed. “I’m joking. That would be like drinking from a sponge with a soda straw. She goes for the femoral artery. The moment those fangs came out, I knew what I’d been born for! She tried sneaking away, thinking we were both asleep, but I ran after her and asked her to bring me across. She refused, then said she could help me be a happier human if I would agree to be her companion and run her daylight errands. I accepted though I didn’t believe I could be happy as a human. She said don’t regret you’re not cuddly; think of yourself as an Amazon queen. She taught me how to move, how to dress, bought singing lessons. I appreciated it all, but it wasn’t enough and I kept begging to be brought across. Finally I wore her down. Then, suddenly…” Lane’s tone went acid. “…she turned into this old lady, acting every bit her four hundred plus years. Nagging me just to drink, not kill, because that attracts attention.”

“It does.”

“Not if you make the kills look the work of a psycho or wild animal or cult, which I did. But she got so angry she threatened me, and might have tried destroying me if we hadn’t gotten separated in Warsaw when Hitler invaded.” She paused. “Blitzkrieg isn’t just a word when you’ve lived through it.”

“I can imagine it was terrible.”

“Not really.” She ran her hand down the engraved names on the obelisk. “You know what this represents?”

“Bravery. Grief. Lives cut short. Wives widowed. Children orphaned.”

She snorted. “No…it represents a feast! Think of all the blood. I took my time leaving Europe. With so much death, no one noticed a few more bodies.”

Bile rose in Garreth’s throat. “All you see in humans is prey?”

“Of course. That’s all they are to us; that’s all they can ever be.”

“Not to me! I’ve never drunk a drop of their blood!”

“You drink only animal blood?” She came back to stand on the far side of the car, staring mockingly across it at him. “That’s bad nutrition.” She ticked her tongue. “If you’re injured, it affects your recuperative powers.”

He carefully focused beyond, not meeting her eyes. “I refuse to prey on people!”

“How righteous!” Her lip curled. “I notice you have no scruples, however, about cozying up to my mother to get to me.”

That stung. Heat crawled up his neck and face.

“My mother!” Her voice flattened to a hiss. “It almost makes me sorry I didn’t break your neck in that alley.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You bit me.”

He blinked. She sounded as though that explained everything. Then he remembered his thoughts while reading Dracula, noting the difference between Dracula and Miss Lucy and how Dracula gave Mina his blood in return, but not Miss Lucy. “You mean receiving vampire blood does make a different kind of