Crimson Death
Page 168

   “Hospital,” she said in a voice that sounded raw from screaming.
   “That’s good, Edna,” Damian said. “Do you remember why you’re in the hospital?”
   She seemed to think really seriously and finally said, “My granddaughter disappeared. . . . She came home. She wasn’t dead.”
   I let the whole definition of life and death go for now. “Something like that, yes.”
   “Voices, shining eyes, they promised me something. They promised me . . . I looked in the mirror and I looked the same. I thought I’d be young again, but I looked just the same. It didn’t work the way they said it would.”
   “What was supposed to happen, Edna?” Damian asked.
   “Vampires are young and beautiful. I thought I would be twenty again, or thirty, but there was a mirror in my room, and I looked as old as ever. I hadn’t changed, and then a doctor came in happy that I was awake, and . . .” Horror filled her eyes up one memory at a time. “Oh, my God, I tore open her arm. I drank her blood!” She started to retch as if she was going to throw up.
   “It’s okay, Edna. It’s okay,” I said, though that was a lie, such a lie.
   “Is the doctor all right?”
   “She’s in surgery,” I said.
   “Did I tear her arm almost off? I wouldn’t do that. I would never hurt someone like that, but I remember the blood and . . . and voices promising me . . . I’d be young again.”
   “I’m sorry, Edna,” Damian said.
   She stared at him. “You’re young and beautiful. You both are. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s why you give up everything, to be young forever.”
   I started to explain to her that vampires are the age they die at forever. That they don’t grow older, but they don’t become younger either. But Damian stopped me from explaining it to her. He whispered, “Later. Give her some time.”
   “Where’s Frankie?”
   “Your son?”
   “My husband. Where’s Frankie?”
   I looked at Damian, because Frankie hadn’t made it. He’d had a bad heart for years, and the doctors theorized that the shock of being drained of blood, or maybe seeing his granddaughter as a vampire, had been too much for him. Who the hell knew? If you had a bad ticker, how the hell would you ever survive the horrorfest that had befallen this family?
   The youngest daughter hadn’t made it either. Her throat had been so small that the fangs had pierced too much and collapsed her windpipe. She’d suffocated before she could bleed out, so no vampirism for her.
   “Who did this to you, Edna?” I asked, and my voice was gentler than it had been. It was all just so awful.
   “Who did the voices belong to,” Damian asked, “the ones that promised you eternal youth? Who told you that?”
   “He did.”
   “Who is he?” I asked.
   “He came with Katie. She brought him home. He found her when she was lost and he brought her back to us.”
   “What was his name, this Good Samaritan?” I asked.
   She smiled at me. “Yes, he was a Good Samaritan. He found Katie and brought her back to us. He told us that we could all be together forever and never grow old, never die. I remember his eyes . . .” She frowned. “Or I don’t remember his eyes. I don’t know if I remember what color his eyes were, but they were like stars.”
   We questioned her for a while longer, but all we learned was that the man had short, dark hair, maybe black, maybe brown. He was Caucasian. He was young, but since she was in her early seventies, that could have meant anything from teens to fifties. His eyes had glowed like stars, which could have meant they were paler colored, gray, or pale blue, or it could just have meant that she remembered them glowing, but not the color.
   Edna’s son, Katie’s father, remembered even less. His memory seemed to stop with Katie at the door. She’d come home. She wasn’t dead. That’s where he stopped. It was more merciful than what Edna remembered.
   In the hallway Nolan asked, “Will they remember more as time passes?”
   “Yes,” Damian said.
   “Yes,” Echo said.
   “Why do neither of you sound happy about that?” I asked.
   “Would you want to remember any of this?” Echo asked.
   I looked into her lovely blue eyes, and said, “Hell, no.”
   “Some people don’t ever remember their first night,” Fortune said. “Maybe they won’t either.”
   “Edna Brady already remembers most of it.”
   “The man doesn’t.”
   “The best chance we have of finding the vampire that is doing this is to start with the teenage girls. One of them was the first victim. She’ll remember the most about the one that created her,” Echo said.
   “They found Sinead Royce’s family,” Superintendent Pearson said. He’d come in late and mostly just monitored us. He didn’t want to see either of the victims in person. He was having a lot of trouble coping with them as vampires when he’d seen them alive and looking for their daughter just days ago.
   “Your face says it’s not good news,” I said.
   He shook his head. “The whole family was so brutally attacked that none of them rose as vampires.”
   “How can you be sure?” Echo asked.
   “They’re starting to rot.”
   “Sinead had two younger brothers, as well as the parents,” Pearson said.
   “Where were the bodies found?” Edward asked.
   “In a shed three houses over. The smell alerted the neighbors.”
   “Where were the owners of the house?” I asked.
   “In the shed,” he said.
   “I take it that they won’t be rising as vamps either.”
   “No.”
   “Is this the most victims that were torn up too badly to rise as the undead?” Echo asked.
   “That we’ve found, yes.”
   “Maybe it’s a clue,” I said.
   “A clue to what?” Edward asked.
   “I have no fucking idea, but it’s something different in the pattern and different is something.”
   “Do you want to go look at the shed?” he asked.
   “No.”
   He smiled. “Want to go look for clues in a shed that was full of decomposing bodies?”