Spirit Sanguine (22 page)

“Of course not. Dan’s resting his eyes in the break room. I was gonna give him another half an hour, since it’s been quiet. What on earth brings you here in the middle of the night?”

“I missed you, Nina,” Harvey said with that doe-eyed look, the one Gabe had seen him use on Gustav.

It didn’t work on Nina. “Riiight. Out with it.”

Chastised, Harvey dropped the act and turned serious. “All right. Have you noticed any of the patients getting strange bruises in the last couple of days?”

“Honey, they’re all old or very sick—they bruise easily.”

“I’m talking about fresh bruises, probably on the wrist or neck, that have no business being there.”

Nina opened her mouth, closed it, then wrinkled her forehead for several seconds. “Come to think of it, Mr. Carter got what looks like a big hickey. I thought it was odd. Why do you ask?”

Harvey stepped behind Nina to a rack of folders. After a brief search, he picked one up and opened it. Gabe guessed it was Mr. Carter’s chart.

“Harvey, what’s all this about?” Nina snapped. “You know you can’t look at those—you don’t work here anymore.”

Harvey put the files back. “Which room is he in?”

“Two-oh-five, but—”

“We’ll be just a minute,” Harvey said, heading for the stairs, pulling Gabe with him.

A single bedside lamp and streetlights filtering through half-closed plastic blinds illuminated Room 205. Silhouettes of sparse furnishing loomed in the shadows. A thin body lay in the bed, his right arm hooked up to an IV. His cheeks were hollow and his breathing shallow. A sour smell of medicine and death permeated the air. Gabe leaned closer and inspected the large bruise on the man’s neck.

“It looks like a bite or two,” he commented.

Harvey stood at the foot of the bed. “He’s in the last stages of stomach cancer, like Mrs. Simpson was.”

“Who?”

“The patient those assholes were feeding on before they attacked me.”

They went back downstairs to find Nina in front of the nurses’ station, arms crossed and glaring at them with murder in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Nina, we’ll be out of your hair now.”

She wasn’t having it. “Now just hold on for a mighty second. Does this have anything to do with that time you disappeared in the middle of your shift? That lazy-ass Dan was sleeping then too, wasn’t he?”

“He’s not lazy; he has two jobs,” Harvey said in a conciliatory tone.

“Or he sleeps on two jobs,” Nina muttered.

“Does he still smoke?”

“Of course he does, and he should know better. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Look, Nina, it’s nothing you need to worry about, okay?”

A ripple ran through Gabe’s special senses, as if a foul breeze blew on them. He grabbed Harvey’s elbow. “He’s close.”

Harvey tensed and grabbed Nina by the shoulders. “Nina, go to the break room and lock the door. Don’t come out till either Gabe or I say so.”

She hesitated, visibly on the verge of arguing, but the graveness of Harvey’s expression seemed to have made up her mind. “All right, but after this, I want answers,” she said.

“I will tell you everything, I promise.”

They waited till she disappeared behind a door down the hall.

Harvey turned to Gabe. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“He feels nasty, like the one who kidnapped Dill.”

“I know how he gets in. Dan, the other nurse, goes out to the back to smoke, through the same door we came in. Our vamp simply waits for the door to open. When it does, he charms Dan and then Nina. He’s in and out before they snap out of it.”

“That’ll make it easier to catch him. I’ll open the door, and while he’s focused on me, you grab him from behind. Between the two of us, we should be able to overpower him easy enough. Let him step inside first, so there’s less of a chance of him escaping. Here, you’ll need this.” Gabe reached into one of his cargo pockets and handed Harvey a length of his special rope.

Harvey took it. “Sounds like a plan. Wait! Take your jacket off.”

Harvey went into the room behind the nurse’s station and came back with a scrub top. “Put this on.”

They took their places by the door. When Gabe felt the vamp right outside, he gave Harvey a sign before pushing the door open. The vamp was immediately in his face. Gabe took a step back as if startled, making the vamp follow him. It was a nasty-looking thing, sallow-skinned and gaunt. The moment the door clicked closed, Harvey grabbed the vamp from behind while Gabe tackled it from the front. The two of them wrestled it onto the ground with surprising ease. It fought back, but its fear and panic wasn’t backed by much physical strength. Hissing and baring its fangs, the vamp tried to snap at Gabe, till Gabe pulled his scrubs off and shoved the fabric into the vamp’s mouth. To be on the safe side, they trussed the vamp up nice and tight.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Gabe said and darted away.

When he got back, Harvey waited for him in the open door, talking to the tied-up vamp. Gabe backed the SUV up to them. He and Harvey threw the vamp into the back and got in themselves—Gabe behind the wheel, Harvey in the backseat to keep an eye on their captive.

“Did you have a good chat?” Gabe asked, starting up the engine.

“Yes, I asked him if he remembered me.”

Seeing Harvey so in control of himself pleased Gabe, who’d been worried about how Harvey would handle facing one of his attackers. But Harvey neither crumbled nor flew into a rage.

“What did you tell Nina?” Gabe asked.

“Nothing. I charmed her,” Harvey said, sounding guilty. “I didn’t like it, but it’s best for her and everyone else involved. I’ll have to do something nice for her.”

A loud growl came from way back.

“Oh, shut up, or I’ll shove a stake where the sun doesn’t shine. See how funny that is,” Harvey barked at the vamp.

Handing the vamp over to Augustine’s men in one piece—as he’d promised—filled Gabe with what he reluctantly recognized as professional pride. He wished he could’ve been there for the debriefing, but he couldn’t have everything.

While the days passed without word from Augustine, the date to meet Harvey’s friend arrived.

“Her full name is Sylvaine Caron, but I call her Syl. She’s a more than three-hundred-years-old Gypsy—born in France but traveled a lot.” Harvey filled Gabe in about Syl while they were driving to meet her.

“The proper term is Roma,” Gabe corrected him.

“What?”

“It’s not polite to call someone a Gypsy.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was lectured on the subject.” Gabe recalled a
pálinka
-fueled night in a Hungarian tavern with a dark-haired and dark-skinned young man. “There are Roma tribes living all over Europe, and they’re looked down on everywhere. The local word for Gypsy is always a derogative.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“When you go around the countryside looking for hidden places, it pays to get along with the Roma. So, how did you meet Syl?”

“Stan went to her for advice after they found me. She was the one who suggested giving me cow’s blood. I looked her up to thank her once I was better, and we became friends. We have a lot in common. She practices naturopathic medicine—with regular people, not vamps. She’s been the only vampire who encouraged me to work on my tonic.”

“She sounds very Earth Mother.”

Harvey chuckled. “Just wait till you meet her.”

Syl seemed young, dressed in a chic pale green short dress and skinny jeans. However, she carried herself with the confidence of centuries. Gabe had learned to recognize these subtle clues while making deliveries for Augustine. Older vampires felt a shade different to him. After greetings and introductions, Syl instructed them to take their shoes off and make themselves at home while she left them alone for a moment.

Gabe followed Harvey into the living room and found a cornucopia of color there. The sofa and chairs surrounding the coffee table were upholstered in different fabrics, some plain, some patterned. The walls were pale green, except one, which glowed warm yellow. The ceiling flaunted lilac. Pillows of all sizes and colors littered the furniture and the floor.

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” Harvey asked, grinning.

“It’s as if a rainbow exploded here,” Gabe agreed.

“Syl says colors make up for losing her regular sense of taste, but I think she just has a fondness for the lurid.”

Harvey dislodged half a dozen pillows from the sofa to make room to sit. Syl joined them shortly after, handing Gabe a steaming mug.

“Herbal tea,” she explained.

Not wanting to be rude, Gabe accepted.

Syl threw herself on the love seat across from them, tucking her bare feet under her. She was rather pretty with her oval face, curly, black hair and dark eyes that appraised Gabe with at least as much interest as he assessed her.

Gabe took a sip of his tea. He tasted chamomile and mint. “Special blend?” he asked.

“The herbs came from my garden, but there’s no secret ingredient, don’t worry. I thought you could use something warm in this cold weather.”

“Thank you.”

Syl graciously bowed her head. “I’m glad Harvey finally brought you by. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.

“Good or bad?”

Syl pursed her lips. “You’re quite a conundrum. I hear you can sense us. What’s it like?”

Gabe thought about it. “It’s hard to describe, sort of a tingling, prickling sensation, but not entirely physical. The closer the vampire, the stronger I feel it. Age makes a difference too. And sometimes emotions.”

“Well, I’ll be! You’re for real. I haven’t met a Dhampir in at least a hundred and fifty years, and only briefly then.”

“A what?”

Syl leaned back in her chair. “My people believe a Dhampir is the son of a vampire and a regular woman, or any male descendants of that bloodline. He’s destined to be a hunter of vampires. He can sense them and possesses unique skills to kill them. Those skills can be inherited but not learned.”

“But vampires can’t reproduce,” Harvey commented.

“Oh, child, there’s more than one kind of vampire.”

Gabe had had some suspicion in this area and wanted to know more. “There is? What makes them different?”

“The way they come about. Harvey and I were made—the most common sort. But there are myths and tales about others.”

“Roma tales?”

She gave him a smile. “Yes. The Roma have stories about mortal and immortal vampires, like the Mullo. According to fable, if a man dies an untimely death, he may come back to suck the blood of those who wronged him.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

She lifted and dropped one shoulder. “There are a lot of myths and folktales in the old world. The truth hides among them, but it’s hard to tease it out. I traveled to many places in Europe before the Second World War, to collect stories and try to separate the fiction from reality. You need a hobby if you expect to live for centuries.”

“Not forever?”

“Nobody lives forever, not even the gods, certainly not us. Not even without slayers after us. What made you quit?” Her voice was light and conversational, but her gaze penetrating.

“I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Gabe offered the simplest answer he had. Deep down, he believed meeting Harvey, despite the way their first two encounters transpired, was part of fate steering him, but that kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo was not something he’d openly admit to.

“Gabe didn’t know till about five or six years ago he was a hunter,” Harvey added.

“How’s that possible?” she asked.

“My parents fled from Hungary when they were young. I was born here, and they’d never told me a word about this business. I only learned about vampires after my parents died, and I went to Hungary to meet my uncle.” Gabe had a hard time keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

The way Syl cocked her head indicated she caught it, but she didn’t comment on it. “But you must have sensed the presence of vampires before?”

“I think I did, but without knowing what it was, I filed it under emotional weirdness and forgot about it.”

From under one of the cushions, Syl pulled out a notebook, bound in battered brown leather. Gabe drank his tea while she scribbled down her notes. Harvey fidgeted around till he arranged himself to lean against Gabe, who moved his arm behind Harvey to make both of them more comfortable.

When Syl looked up, Gabe put his empty mug aside. “We’re really here because of Harvey,” he said.

Her keen gaze brushed over them. “Of course. Harvey, why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

She listened to Harvey’s account, jotting down more notes.

“So what do you think it is?” Harvey asked in closing.

She chewed the end of her pencil. “It’s out of the ordinary for sure.” Flipping the pages of the notebook, she checked several passages. “Over time I recorded a few accounts of vampires feeding on defeated Dhampirs, but not one had mentioned any unusual effects. Yet what you’re experiencing is clearly the result of your drinking Gabe’s blood. It makes me assume you react to it differently than anyone else would, although it should be tested.”

“No! I’m not having anyone else bite him!” Harvey protested, sitting up ramrod straight.

Gabe kept a calming hand on the small of Harvey’s back. Secretly, this display of possessiveness tickled him.

The look Syl gave Harvey reminded Gabe of his kindergarten teacher explaining why he shouldn’t eat the crayons. “It doesn’t have to be a bite. It would be very useful to know whether Gabe’s blood affects other vampires too.”

Gabe had a question. “Why would Harvey be different from others? Does it have to do with the way he was turned?” He knew it was a sensitive subject, but he had to ask.

“What do you know about it?” she countered.

“That it was done by force, and the vampires who did it fed on sick people just before. I killed one of them, and we captured another last night. Let me tell you, something was seriously fucked up about both of them.”

She looked at him with surprise. “You captured him. Where is he?”

“We turned him over to Victor Augustine.”

“Oh. Well that’s good, I guess.” Her brows dipped, creating a frown line between them.