Crimson Night Part 3

"Why?" Lee asked, fascinated. "What happens when you digest blood?"

"It works much the same way absorption of B12 works in humans. We drink blood, and it travels through our stomach to our small intestines. Now, you know that in humans the B12 vitamin travels to the small intestine where it's absorbed by the ileum and transformed into proteins that are stored in the liver and kidneys before being transformed into enzymes that the human body needs to remain healthy. In vampires, after we transform, our ileum develops specialized tissues that transform antigens in the blood into an enzyme that doesn't exist in mortals.

We discovered it about seventy years ago. That enzyme is responsible for our powers."

"What are your powers?" Lee asked. "Do you really live forever?"

"I'd have to answer yes in that I've only known vampires to die from unnatural causes like decapitation and exposure to sunlight. No vampire, until Meghann, that is, has been struck down by illness. We are immune to all mortal diseases, we heal from blows like gunshot wounds in a matter of seconds "

"How do you get this power?" Lee asked. "How do you become vampires?"

"You must be bled by a vampire to the point of death. Then, the vampire allows you to drink its blood. If you haven't been sufficiently drained of human blood, the vampire's blood poisons your system and you die quickly. But if you are drained, transformation begins. Your entire body, your whole genetic code, undergoes a radical change. a.s.suming you survive the process, you develop superhuman strength and the aging process stops. But if you don't have a steady diet of human blood to keep an acceptable level of the enzyme in your bloodstream, you die."

"So vampirism is purely biological," Lee mused. "After you transform, you drink blood to create this enzyme "

"Not quite," Meghann interrupted. "We know the enzyme gives us our power, but we don't know why. We also don't know why an enzyme should make us cast partial reflections "

"You really can't be seen in mirrors?"

"We present hazy outlines," Meghann said and gave him a slight smile. "Now, why would an enzyme do that? The answer is that it doesn't. There's more than pure science to us there's the mystical side to vampirism and we have no way of explaining our mirror images or our ability to summon the dead, control and read mortal thoughts, our telekinetic power "

"Meghann," Charles said at Lee's bemused, saucer-wide eyes, "we can go into all of this another time. Lee doesn't have to absorb it all tonight."

"No," Lee agreed, feeling much like Alice fallen down the rabbit hole summon the dead? He shook off his horror and returned to the situation at hand. "Putting mysticism to the side, though, it sounds like Meghann has a simple vitamin deficiency. When uh, humans become B12 deficient it leads to symptoms like hers fatigue, weakness, weight loss. The pernicious anemia that occurs due to B12 deficiency isn't that uncommon in pregnancy."

"So if she expels the fetus, she should be able to digest blood again," Charles said. Lee nodded. "But if I have any problems with the D and C tomorrow if her blood pressure drops or she hemorrhages and I have to stop, we have to consider ways to help Meghann without terminating the pregnancy. In humans, we'd simply inject the patient with B12 since they aren't capable of extracting it from food. Is there any way to synthesize the enzyme you need since Meghann can't extract it from blood?"

"Lee," Meghann said, "we've been trying for almost a century to synthesize that enzyme with no success. If we could make the enzyme, we wouldn't have to drink blood anymore. Right now, the only way to manufacture the enzyme is by drinking blood and I'm not able to do that anymore."

"So you see why abortion is the only option," Charles said but he was looking at Meghann instead of Lee.

Meghann nodded, but her eyes glistened. "You know how much I wanted to be a mother it didn't even matter that it was Simon's baby."

"I know, honey," Charles replied, kissing her cheek. "It was hard for me too knowing transformation meant I'd lost all hope of becoming a parent. But you know what would happen if you did give birth. You heard the accounts of those poor, malformed babies. It's settled. Tomorrow, Lee will give you the D and C."

"Wait," Meghann said, seeming to struggle to stay awake. "Lee, I'm very grateful for your help. But you must understand Simon Baldevar wanted to get me pregnant. The last time we saw each other, he left me a letter saying he'd leave me alone until I came to him of my own free will but I don't believe that for a second. I think he believed that once I found out I was pregnant, I'd seek him out because I wouldn't know what to do." Meghann laughed bitterly. "Even if I could carry this baby to term, he'd be the last person I'd want around. But when he doesn't hear from me, he'll seek me out he'll want to know if he succeeded in making me pregnant. If he finds out I had an abortion " Meghann paled, breaking out in tremors that Lee thought had nothing to do with her illness.

"He'll kill her and anyone who helped her do it," Charles finished.

Lee swallowed nervously. He might not be able to remember the evil thing that tried to kill him when he was a child, but the terror in both Meghann's and Charles's eyes was enough to make his mouth dry and his hands turn clammy.

"I don't care," Lee said and took Meghann's hands. "You saved my life and now I'll do my best to save yours." He helped her off the examining table, and directed Charles to carry her to one of the guest bedrooms a large, cheerful room painted white with plenty of plants and wicker furniture.

"Try and get some rest," Lee said when Meghann was settled under the flowered quilt. "Hopefully, when you wake up tomorrow night, this will all be behind you."

CHAPTER TWO

July 1, 1998

New York City

Lord Baldevar selected a lightweight navy blazer from his walk -in closet, thinking wryly that even a vampire was not immune to a New York City heat wave.

The oppressive July humidity and mugginess made his usual suit and tie impossible, he thought as he plucked a pair of gold and onyx cufflinks off his dresser.

He was fastening the cufflinks to his cream silk s.h.i.+rt when a brutal pain ripped through his side, making him gasp and clutch the dresser for support.

It hurts! It hurts! Make it stop Abruptly, the high-pitched, whimpering voice left his mind and the pain vanished as Simon said aloud, "Meghann?"

There was no reply not that he'd expected one. The brief visitation was far too quick and unexpected for him to hold the presence long enough to identify it.

Still, it had to be Meghann. He'd transformed many vampires over the centuries, but his link to them had diminished over time. Meghann (not counting the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt) was the only one young enough for him to still feel her pain and distress.

For a moment, Simon was tempted to abandon his plans for the evening and concentrate on his missing consort's whereabouts but it was not the right time.

For one thing, it was only twilight the sun had not yet completely set.

Although he was old enough to be awake and functioning during dusk, there was no way to employ his occult powers without a serious drain on his energy. Too, he hadn't fed last night. Better to go outside and feed, get his strength up before he attempted to find Meghann.

Leaving the protection of his shuttered town house, Lord Baldevar slipped a pair of Ray Ban sungla.s.ses over eyes that needed protection even from the weak light of the slowly setting sun. It was a quarter to eight now had he attempted to leave his home even fifteen minutes earlier, the wretched sun might have blinded him.

But why complain? Perhaps in a few years he'd be able to go outdoors at noon if he desired. That pain-wracked distress call if it indeed belonged to Meghann was a very good sign that his Beltane experiment had been successful.

Simon smiled, startling two young female tourists who gawked at him as they pa.s.sed each other on Fifth Avenue. Briefly, he considered offering the young women a drink and making them his evening meal but he decided to get a bit more air before settling on a victim. After all, his company was not due until ten he had plenty of time.

He kept smiling, finally admitting to himself how uneasy he'd been at Meghann's silence. He'd fully expected her to (willingly or unwillingly like the scream that had invaded his mind) contact him long before tonight. Beltane was two months ago he'd started wondering if her silence meant he'd failed to impregnate her.

But he should have remembered how obstinate the girl could be, Simon thought, stopping to admire a stunning cabochon bracelet in the Cartier display window. Should he buy the hopefully expectant mother this pretty bauble studded with emeralds that matched her eyes?

No, no he had a far better gift for her. As soon as he found out where she was hiding, Simon planned to present her with Jimmy Delacroix. Surely her lover's demise would teach Meghann a badly needed lesson in obeying her master.

Simon's mood darkened as he reflected on his last meeting with Meghann and he walked rapidly, the sights and sounds of the bustling city around him no longer registering on his senses.

That she'd been frightened and defensive when she first found out he was still alive, Simon fully understood. After leaving her master to die, she most certainly should have feared for her life. But after he'd told the girl he was willing to forgive her and make her his consort again, what did she do? Weep and whine because he'd slaughtered Alcuin, flaunt her mortal in front of him, and plot with her sodomite friend to kill him.

Ah, well, what was the point in brooding over Meghann's loathsome behavior like a jilted lover? He'd punished her severely for her transgressions. Good mood restored by the thought of how devastated Meghann would be when she saw what her defiance cost her no longer mortal lover, Lord Baldevar turned his attention to feeding.

He was glad to be in Manhattan; the city had always provided remarkable sustenance. Perhaps it was because the people who lived here inevitably took on the characteristics of the city they inhabited brash, occasionally crude, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with an energy and intensity that people who occupied older, more sedate cities lacked. It had been years since he'd had time to fully savor the attractions of Manhattan. Over the past decade, he'd merely come for a few nights at a time to apprise himself of Meghann's activities. It did not surprise Simon at all that after her apprentices.h.i.+p with Alcuin she would choose to return to the city where she'd grown up, where they had met and fallen in love.

Feeling a bit sentimental, Simon decided to head downtown, toward the Time Square area. That was where he'd taken Meghann for her first hunt. He laughed aloud as he remembered Meghann, freshly transformed and indignant when he told her to dress like a streetwalker. It was only after he'd explained that being perceived as a hooker was the easiest ruse a female vampire could employ to lure prey that Meghann acquiesced, her eyes wide with apprehension and glee at all her new powers.

She'd learned so quickly, Simon mused. The girl had taken to vampirism with a speed that delighted him. Every new lesson she absorbed rapidly, showing her grat.i.tude toward her teacher in lovemaking so pa.s.sionate it nearly took his breath away.

What happened, Meghann? Simon asked his absent lover. You had more promise and natural ability than any other fledgling. What happened to make you hate yourself and me for transforming you?

Simon shrugged and waved his hand, making a cab swerve abruptly when it came a bit too close to him. Meghann was young, and making mistakes was a privilege of youth. No doubt her Catholic upbringing made her vulnerable to Alcuin's mealymouthed view of immortality, and caused the guilt that made her reject her master. At any rate, that was all in the past. It was the present that mattered and Meghann was no longer in a position to reject him.

When Simon finally approached Broadway, the area turned out to be a disappointment, so changed he barely recognized it. When he'd first come to New York, in the forties, the Great White Way had offered stunning productions written by geniuses like Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Now he saw there was such a dearth of mortal imagination that many of those same shows had been revived but he doubted they could match the vigor and style of the originals. The few new plays offered did not interest him either they seemed gaudy and dull.

Even worse than the tepid entertainment promised by glittering marquees, Simon missed the air of danger that used to pervade these streets. Decades, even a few years before, patrons of the theater district made sure to stay in well-lit areas for fear some derelict might rob their valuables or a.s.sault their person. Now Times Square was so sanitized and antiseptic he actually saw a Disney store doing a thriving business, and tourists walked the streets with impunity. What had happened to the s.h.i.+fty-eyed hustlers that lurked in dark alleys? Where were the dope fiends, the streetwalkers, the pickpockets? Where did a vampire go if he wanted a bit of depravity with his evening meal? It seemed the cops patrolling these streets had chased those unfortunates to darker corners of the city, and Simon did not have time to seek them out. What did that leave him with? Perhaps he could surprise some wholesome tourist or theater patron show them there were still things to fear on the New York City streets after dark.

A booming, shrill voice interrupted his thoughts. "Repent!" a woman yelled at the pa.s.sersby who ignored her existence. "Repent or be roasted over the fires of h.e.l.l for eternity! You must repent now to be saved!"

Lord Baldevar smiled so all the crazy characters had not been driven away after all. He walked toward the screeching howl, planning the charade he'd played out many times before with fanatics the sober, earnest look he'd put on his face as he listened to the woman's spiel and allowed her to hand him some poorly spelled, cheaply made pamphlet that told him salvation hinged on turning over a considerable portion of his wealth to whatever organization she was affiliated with.

Then, when he convinced his victim of his sincere desire to be saved, it would be a simple matter to lure her home with him to pray for his soul.

Unfortunately, Simon found his target was a fiftyish crone with permed gray hair, granny gla.s.ses, widely s.p.a.ced teeth, and soft, wattled flesh. He'd sink his teeth into the garbage pail next to her before drinking from that age-diluted stream.

Resigning himself to a walk to the notorious meatpacking district and the debauched mortals that could be found there, Lord Baldevar found his spirits raised when a teenage couple approached the zealot and began haranguing her. He a.s.sumed the couple was a boy and girl, though it was difficult to tell at first since the deep-voiced one had long, greasy blond locks that trickled over a cheap black T-s.h.i.+rt. No, Simon decided, this was definitely a boy no girl would appear in public with her hair in such unwashed disarray. Not that the girl with him was any prize. Unlike her skinny, small companion, the girl was tall but her obesity made her appear shorter than she was. She had frizzy, badly combed brown hair and a slight overbite. These two weren't beauties, but they would serve his purpose. Besides, it was growing late. He wanted to feed and wash before his company arrived. It would be the height of rudeness to appear before guests in bloodstained, soiled clothing.

From the loud argument that drew amused stares from pa.s.sersby and cheap silver-plated inverted pentagrams around their necks, Simon gathered that the youngsters were neo-pagans, which gave him the perfect opening gambit to win their trust. Interrupting the raving old fanatic with a slight clearing of his throat, Simon turned to his intended meal and said, "Why bother this lunatic? Let her wors.h.i.+p as she pleases. After all, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

Of course, the zealot turned her abuse on him but Simon barely heard her he was too busy clamping his lips together to refrain from laughing at the eager, s.h.i.+ning expressions on the faces of his prey.

"You know of the Great Beast?" the boy questioned.

"I knew him," Simon answered gravely, refraining from rolling his eyes at the alias for Aleister Crowley a drug addict and charlatan who'd tried to pa.s.s himself off as an esteemed practioner of practical magick.

Simon had encountered the fake in Egypt around the turn of the century, having gone there to supervise Howard Carter's excavation of the Egyptian tombs, a project he'd funded very generously in the hopes he might discover a clue to the origins of vampirism. Contrary to popular fiction, he'd learned nothing of vampire history from the pyramids but he had been able to amuse himself with Aleister Crowley.

He'd learned the pompous junkie used to belong to the Order of the Golden Dawn, a mortal organization that the d.a.m.ned prelate Alcuin had chosen to reveal the secrets of the cabala to.

Annoyed by Alcuin's attempt to spread his theology to mortals and hand them divine knowledge they should never have been privy to, Lord Baldevar had attached himself to Aleister Crowley expelled from the order for his sadism and debauchery. For an amus.e.m.e.nt, he'd appeared to Crowley and told him he was Aiwa.s.s, an ancient Egyptian deity. The gullible magician wrote down everything he told him, and Lord Baldevar's words became the mainstay of Ordo Templis Orelius, the religious order the egotistical Crowley proclaimed himself head of.

Now Simon felt a malicious pleasure, seeing that the nonsensical rituals he'd set down over seventy years ago were still being slavishly adhered to by foolish mortals.

"You couldn't have known Mr. Crowley," the girl said doubtfully, taking in Lord Baldevar's deceitfully young appearance. Then her face cleared and she smiled at him. "Of course! You mean you knew him in a past life."

"It was a different time," Simon agreed. "But why bother with this old hag?

You don't think you're going to convert her? Surely you have better things to do with your time? As you may have guessed, I'm foreign to this city and a bit lonely for the company of adepts (he mentally recoiled from calling these simpletons adepts) like yourselves. Perhaps you could accompany me home and tell me how to set up a coven here?"

The couple agreed instantly, sparing Simon from having to use any form of persuasion on them.

"Don't follow the devil!" the fanatic he'd forgotten about screamed at the young couple after he'd flagged down a cab to take them back to the town house.

"He's an abomination! Let G.o.d into your hearts and He shall save you from this unholy "

The young couple simply got into the cab, although the girl did make a rude gesture with her middle finger at the woman.

Before getting into the cab, Simon placed his arm around the missionary's shoulder and whispered so only she could hear, "Madam, I shall leave you to a far worse fate than me a long, long existence in your virginal twin bed and a painful death from the cancer that has once again lodged in your breast." He watched the woman's face cave in and gave her a mocking bow. "Good night."

Once home, Simon directed the young couple to what used to be his study when he lived in the town house with Meghann but nowadays had to be pressed into service as a magick temple.

The couple was, of course, enthralled with the room and the elaborate wooden and steel sigils that decorated the walls, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases teeming with ancient, well-preserved grimoires, and various magickal implements he'd collected over the centuries.

"Wow," the boy (who'd introduced himself as Osiris in the cab) breathed reverently, picking up a Spanish steel sword Lord Baldevar had owned since the seventeenth century. "Is this your athame?"

Simon refrained from wincing at Osiris's hideous p.r.o.nunciation and merely said, "I use it to open the circle."

He felt another flush of irritation at Meghann when he thought of the past forty years and all the trials he'd been through trafficking with daemons and currying their favor so he could gain the power he'd need to wrest Meghann away from that smarmy cleric, Alcuin. If the little witch had stayed by her master's side as she promised to, he wouldn't have to devote so much time to sorcery it was as bad as when he'd been a novice vampire and had to build his defenses to guard against Alcuin's constant attacks.

But as long as he was practicing, he'd have some fun. Simon grabbed a rowan wand he'd had since he was a mortal and pointed it at Osiris. "Demonstrate your powers."

"Huh?" The boy blinked.

"I've given you a room filled with objects imbued with power it took centuries to develop. Show me what you can do."

The girl, who'd given Simon the rather pretentious name of Lady Cerridwen when she introduced herself, told Lord Baldevar haughtily, "We can summon demons at will to do our bidding."

Since there was no way they could escape his house now, Simon threw his head back and howled, laughing harder at the identical angry flushes on the young couple's faces. "Dear child, you have no power but the capacity to delude yourselves. You've never summoned anything nor will you. But, if you are fortunate, perhaps I will treat you to a display of real power and raise a daemon or two."

He was talking like a madman and it should have occurred to his young guests to leave his house but the couple stood their ground. Osiris raised his chin and said, "You're full of s.h.i.+t. Why should we believe you can do anything? Just because you've got a room filled with some old books?"

"They are called grimoires," Simon said calmly. "And you are quite right. I've given you no reason to believe my boasts are any more grounded in truth than yours. What say you to a wager?"

"Okay," Lady Cerridwen agreed before her boyfriend could speak. "What's the bet?"

Simon reached over her head, removing a wooden sigil to reveal a wall safe.

Rapidly, he undid the combination (the date of his transformation) and removed several thick stacks of money.

He laid them on the black-clothed altar and turned to his gaping guests. "That is twelve thousand dollars. Raise a daemon and the money is yours. Fail and you walk out of here with nothing. However, if I summon, you will pay me with your souls."

Simon liked these modern times. In his day, someone would have protested mightily at the thought of handing over his immortal soul, but in this century mortals seemed to have little regard for it. No doubt because so few of them (no matter what they pretended) actually believed in an afterlife.

"You'll give us the money if we win?" Osiris asked, and Simon did not even need to read the boy's thoughts all he had to do was look at the greedy eagerness in his eyes to see the boy thought him a rich lunatic. Simon noticed Osiris eyeing him, seeming to a.s.sess what kind of struggle he'd put up when Osiris and Lady Cerridwen tried to separate him from the money neither of the mortals could stop staring at.

"Of course I'll give you the money if you win," Simon responded truthfully. If these mortal nothings could raise the rug from the floor, let alone a monster, he'd go greet the sunrise. "And if I am successful, you agree to give the forfeit I demand?"

The couple looked at each other and then Osiris said, "Okay."

"Begin," Simon said, and leaned against the paneled wall of his study.

Lady Cerridwen grasped his sword, and spun around counterclockwise to form the magick circle that would protect her and her boyfriend from attack by any monster they summoned.