In the Blood Read online

  Greg swore and Caroline felt her eyebrows shoot toward her hair all on their own. It was not easy to kill a vampire on purpose. Even other non-human paranormals had a difficult time against a vampire in a fight.

  “How? When? Do we need to go hunt down some wannabe vampire hunters or something?” Caroline asked, her own voice grim and a little angry. Darien shook his head again.

  “Maybe? I don’t know. It’s actually worse than you’re thinking. Point’s going to have an all hands in a bit, but he wanted me to know about it first because of Hannah, and because I should probably be careful myself.” He dropped his gaze down to where her hand covered his. “It would be handled by our office anyway, even without my connection. Hannah was going to school here at Stonehaven University. Ready to graduate this spring. She was going to go on to med school.” He shook his head. “She chose to go here because I’m here. She thought it’d be safer, you know? If she needed help I’d be nearby, and… And I…”. Darien swallowed and his voice grew thick. “There was no way I could have helped her. I know that, but I still feel like I should have been able to do something.”

  “Darien.” Caroline didn’t like the guilt and the anger she heard threading through his voice. “What. Happened?”

  “She was poisoned.” He looked back up at her. “The hospital said the whole thing looked odd to them from the start, but nothing they did seemed to help. They called us just before she died, but our medics didn’t get there in time. Hannah was young. Healthy, you know? She ran marathons for fun. She was actually training for that cancer research fundraiser thing this fall. Raising money for it. She was so excited to study medicine so she could help people. There was no reason for anyone to…” Caroline squeezed his hand, and Greg grimaced and laid a studying hand on Darien’s shoulder.

  “Anyway. Point called me into his office just before I headed out last night and told me. Ollie came in this morning and said that Hannah most likely ingested tainted blood but he couldn’t be sure until he got the samples into the lab,” he was whispering by the time he finished speaking, like saying it any louder would make it more real.

  Caroline felt the air leave her lungs. She blinked at Darien as the implications hit her. Darien and his cousin were vampires. The vampire community largely met their ‘special dietary needs’ by buying containers of packaged blood. While they were physically capable of playing Dracula like in the movies, they generally avoided it for a number of reasons ranging from considering it uncivilized at best and criminal at worst.

  Nobody wanted investigations into ‘vampire attacks’ so they were very much discouraged. There were also magic-based implications involved with feeding directly from a living being, so by and large the small vampire community went, er, grocery shopping at very specialized retailers who ran private blood donation centers.

  All of which meant that if Hannah had ingested tainted blood, then it was very deliberate.

  “Does Ollie know what the toxin was?” Caroline asked. “Wait, what about that guy the other day? The one who bit his neighbor?”

  “He died, too. Honestly, that case is what led to Ollie looking into it in the first place. He still wasn’t sure what they ate when he sat with me last night. I had to spend the night on the phone with my aunt and my mom and Hannah’s friends, and calling around to the couple of shops in town where she might have eaten. Then I called the places she’d have bought her blood, too. There aren’t a lot of places to go around here, after all. Only a couple places sell blood for us like that. It’s not just the handful of vampires that use it, you know. There’s some spells that require blood for whatever reason. Those are usually pretty heavily regulated, but they’re not unheard of. Not surprisingly, many of those shops are open all night. Not a lot of people want to be seen going into a blood bank and coming back out with shopping bags.” Darien tried to smirk at the small joke, but his grief wouldn’t allow that much of a shift in his expression.

  “Did you get any sleep at all?” Caroline frowned at the dark circles that seemed to be growing bigger while she watched him. Darien shook his head.

  “Point made me lie down on the couch in his office for a few hours, but I don’t think I actually slept. Mostly I just stared at that dumb painting he hung up last week.”

  “Well, I’m going to go talk to Ollie. Then after that, I’m taking you home to get some rest, and I don’t want to hear any arguments. You just stay here and sit for a while.” She squeezed his hand again and exchanged a glance with Greg who looked just as determined as she felt. “We’ll get this figured out, Darien.”

  3

  Caroline shivered when she stepped into the laboratory where Ollie worked. He had a number of assistants, but it was clear to anyone who ever walked into the room that Ollie was in charge, no question. The first time she ever saw Ollie, he had been in full tactical gear and definitely pissed off. She and Darien had been captured by a small splinter of a terrorist group that occasionally rose up to plague the department, and once the team breached the magical barrier wall surrounding the house they’d been held in, Ollie had come barreling in like a living tank. The size of her dad’s Chevy Suburban if it was flipped up on its back end, the ogre had made it perfectly clear to every one of the elves— including their old Chief, the traitorous jerk— that he took it personally, having a teammate set up, attacked and held hostage. Ollie made Andre the Giant look like a gangly teenager.

  Now, the ogre wore slacks and a lab coat, and hunched over a microscope that looked like a child’s toy between his hands.

  “Hey Caroline, how’s my favorite human today?” Ollie asked without even looking up. An elf in another lab coat put her hand on Caroline’s shoulder and gave her a sympathetic smile before turning to Ollie.

  “Here’s the breakdown you wanted, boss. We’re still working on the rest.” She handed Ollie a folder and hurried off again, back to her station. Ollie sighed and glanced through the pages.

  “Ollie, what’s…” He sighed again and motioned for her to follow him to what served as his desk.

  “I knew you’d show up this morning.” He waved the folder as if that explained everything. “I’m glad you’re here. Darien’s going to need all his friends to hold him up on this one.”

  “What’s going on, Ollie? Darien’s cousin was murdered in a way that it landed in our laps and there’s another vampire dead after attacking his neighbor, but that’s all I know.” She climbed into the visitor’s chair across from his desk. Ollie’s office furniture was suited to his form, not anyone else’s, even though he was the only ogre in the building. Her feet swung free of the floor once she settled. Even Greg looked small in his chair, which was impressive.

  “It’s bad,” Ollie said. She’d never seen him look quite this worried. He usually got oddly excited when presented with a challenge, but right now he looked actually nervous. Greg slipped in behind her and closed the door, taking up a position leaning against the wall.

  “How bad?” she asked. “Darien’s a mess. What are you not telling us?” She looked up at Ollie’s face— like a lumpy apple, his nose slightly crooked where it had been broken and his head so bald it gleamed in the flat office lights. He rubbed his hand over his head, shining it just a bit more.

  “Well, you’ve heard of some of the bigger paranormal extinction attempts, I’m sure. Salem Witch Trials, and the Spanish Inquisition are the two most American humans know off the top of their heads, but there have been plenty over the centuries.” Ollie frowned. “Back during the Second World War, there were a lot of us signing up to serve, though the Nazis didn’t like to admit they were accepting non-human help for fairly obvious reasons. That’s a whole separate subject, but there were a lot of elves and brownies and mages and the like on both sides of the battlefield.”

  A soft growl rumbled through the room and Ollie glanced over at Greg and grimaced.

  “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. And while the governments knew of the special squads they put together, the general population did no
t. Well, at some point early on, the Germans discovered a vampire in their midst. Nobody is really sure how or where, or if that first one was a Nazi soldier caught feeding or if they were an enemy soldier that was captured and sent to one of the concentration camps, or something else completely. It’s still a mystery, but what happened next is disturbingly well documented. The vampire— we only know them as Subject One, which is horrifying enough— was kept alive and experimented on in pretty much all the ways you can think of for Nazi scientists in a secret lab. I won’t go into it. People can think of some absolutely nightmarish things.” Ollie slumped over his desk, his head resting on his hand, and sighed heavily.

  “I…” Caroline shivered and felt sick. Ollie smiled sadly at her and nodded. Greg growled quietly again.

  “I don’t just mean humans, either. Any sentient being with any sort of imagination is capable of it. It’s an unfortunate fact.”

  “What happened to Subject One? And how do we know any of this?” Caroline wasn’t sure she really wanted to know, but she had to ask. The poor vampire deserved to have their name returned to them, at the very least. Not that she had any idea how to do that, she was no historian.

  “Subject One eventually died, unsurprisingly. The scientists had discovered a toxin that acted on a vampire’s ability to digest blood. I’ve never seen it in action, but I’ve read about it, back when I was still studying. The long and the short of it is that a vampire still needs the blood to live, but their ability to process it is destroyed. After a few days, their body starts to starve. They start craving blood and some of the victims went insane.” Ollie sighed and shook his head. “This toxin got used as a weapon, of course. Some of the bloodiest, most horrible battles were caused back then by an affected vampire in the last stage of poisoning before they died. And they do die, in great pain.”

  “Oh my god.” Caroline whispered.

  “It’s not automatically fatal, thankfully. A lot depends on the size of the dose taken and a bunch of other factors that we don’t really know about. What we do know for certain is that it gets dicey, very fast.” Ollie pressed his fingers into his eyes. “The worst of it is, it has to be taken internally. The last time anyone saw this poison used, it was laced into relief supplies sent from Britain to the front lines. This was pretty early on in the history of blood transfusions, you understand. The Nazis somehow got one or two people at crucial points in the supply chain to doctor the blood. Most of the packaged blood was used for medical purposes— this toxin doesn’t seem to affect humans at all— but there were a few vampires serving their countries and some of the blood supply was diverted for their needs. Nobody knew what happened until well after the war ended and someone who knew about paranormals found the lab notes in the abandoned Nazi lab. All the known samples were destroyed and thankfully the formula was never found.”

  “Wow. That’s… Wow.” They sat there in silence for a few minutes to collect their thoughts. Caroline let everything sink in. It was horrifying to think about, that this stuff was out there.

  “So, I assume you’re telling us all this because it was this Nazi poison that is what killed Darien’s cousin?” Greg asked. Caroline heard the fury in his voice, but she wondered if anyone else could.

  Ollie nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s what I think. The state of her body and the tests I’ve run seem to be consistent with the reports from the Allied Inhuman Medical Squad reports. The AIMS took very detailed notes since it was the first time we had large numbers of documented paranormals being exposed to modern warfare. Before that we have to go back to the Mad Mages to see similar numbers of paranormals fighting in the same battles, and that was early medieval Europe.”

  “Well, that means that at least we know how to treat this poison, right?” she said hopefully, looking up at Ollie’s face. “I mean it’s awful that Hannah died before she could be treated, but—“

  “We don’t, though. Not really. If we knew how the stuff was made, what it was maybe. As it is, we only figured out what happened to Hannah because of the extremely detailed records we have from during the war, and even then we were only looking into vampire-specific poisons because of the other two victims. The formula itself was never found, just the notes on the observations, and one memo about the plan to infiltrate the British blood banks. We know what signs to look for,” Ollie said. “Once Mitch mentioned the similarities between Hannah and the other known victims, it was pretty easy to track down some of the Allied doctors reports as well.” Ollie scrubbed his hand over his face again and sounded exhausted.

  “Wait, other victims?” Greg finally broke his silence.

  Ollie nodded. “One man who became aggressive in the last stage before his organs began shutting down and bit his neighbor. He went into a coma soon after being taken into custody and died early this morning. Another was found at a campsite out by Sugar Grove. He was already dead when another camper found him. It was apparently a pretty grim find, the guy was surrounded by empty cans of blood and a few animal corpses. The woman who found him was a mage and called us directly, but we didn’t have any reason to connect the dots until Hannah.”

  “Jesus,” Caroline whispered.

  “We found a fairly simple test in the Allied notes that will indicate the presence of the toxin, and they installed a process for testing the food supplies before shipping them to soldiers, and again before the soldiers consumed them. Hannah’s stomach contents tested at significant levels. The really scary part, though, is that Hannah had no reason whatsoever to have been exposed to this poison, let alone have taken a big enough dose of it to be fatal. What we don’t know is what’s safe for vampires to consume and what isn’t. There’s not a lot of overlap between the three victims. Hannah and Rigles— the man who assaulted his neighbor— they were local, but the man who was camping was from out of state. He drove up from North Carolina.”

  “Wait, so…” Greg growled and Caroline felt her eyes go wide. “You’re telling me that someone has discovered the secret Nazi formula for vampire poison and is starting up their blood tainting program all over again?”

  “That is essentially exactly what I’m saying, yes.” Ollie said. “And now you know why I’m so worried about Darien. The man’s grieving and in shock, and has been warned to be careful. But he’s still got to eat.”

  4

  Caroline sat heavily in her desk chair. Darien was staring blankly at the email open on his monitor, but she could tell that he hadn’t actually absorbed a single word of it.

  “Ollie told me the history of this stuff we’re dealing with. That’s nightmarish.” Caroline said. Darien nodded.

  “Point is putting Greg and Mack on the case, but it’s a priority for everyone.” Darien said, still staring blankly at his screen.

  “Greg and Mack? Good. They’re good. But…” She struggled to figure out how to put words around her question.

  “Why not us?” Darien shifted his attention and as his eyes refocused he flickered a tiny smile at her. “Partly because I’m still in shock and would be more of a hindrance than a help. Hannah was such a sweetheart. I wanted you to meet her, actually. It thought she could help show you around campus— all the actually useful parts that they don’t show you at orientation. And it’s always nice to go into a new place when you know someone already. And she was excited to meet you. You’d have been great friends I think. She would have been such an amazing doctor.”

  “I bet.” Caroline heard the heartbreak in his voice, and her own eyes started to tear up.

  “The other reason is that I’m too close to the case. Hannah was my cousin, which gives me a bias. And if this is what we think it is, what Ollie and Mitch and Point think it is…” He blinked at her and now she heard his fear as well.

  “And Ollie is usually right about these things.” Caroline nodded. “You’re a target, too.”

  Darien nodded. “I have an appointment with the med team in an hour. Just to make sure I haven’t been exposed already. And Mack wants to raid my fridge
to screen everything, just to be safe.” Darien swallowed.

  “Oh man.” Caroline sat back. This was awful. “That’s where Greg went tearing off to?”

  “Yeah. They’re heading out in a minute. Once Point’s done with them.” Darien sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I called my family and told Mom to keep Aunt Lucy away for the time being. I’ll make arrangements for Hannah, get her home for the funeral and everything once her body is released and safe to handle. I don’t want anyone else near a possibly contaminated blood supply, not that anyone drinks from corpses, but I don’t want to risk this stuff getting on someone’s hands and then...”

  “Good thinking. And…” Caroline hesitated before reaching out to grip his arm where it lay on his desk again. “Listen. If your stored food is contaminated…” She met his eyes to make sure he understood.

  “Caroline you don’t have to—“

  “You’re my friend and I am not going to let you starve to death. So, it’s an offer, that’s all. It’s an option if you need it, okay? We’ll hope you don’t need it, but I want you to know,” she said.

  “Thanks. That means a lot to me.” Darien smiled, somewhat bigger this time.

  “Besides, what girl wouldn’t want a dedicated vampire bodyguard these days? Heck, last time you couldn’t lie to me for two weeks! I could grill you about embarrassing stories from your childhood or crazy ex-girlfriends or something!” She got the reaction she wanted when Darien groaned and flopped back into his chair with his hands over his face. The tips of his ears were turning pink.

  “You’re adorable when you start blushing.” Caroline grinned, satisfied that she’d shaken him slightly out of his stupor.

  “Hey, D! You’re not answering your phone. Meds called and want to know if you can head down early. And can I get your house keys?” Greg called over. He was tossing a pink sparkly ball of yarn from hand to hand, and barely paused when he caught the keys Darien tossed to him, instead starting to juggle them.