Blood Work (11 page)

Vampires
reacted to blood group incompatibility in the same way humans did.
When you introduce red blood cells of a different type into a body,
the native antibodies in the recipient’s plasma react hostilely to
the new cells. In short, it’s one hell of a gang war, and ends with
massive causalities. In a human, that’s a major bummer. It can
kill. In a vampire, same mechanism, different outcome. I mean, it
wouldn’t make sense if it did, would it? Unless a vampire and their
victim have compared blood groups, the chances of a vampire sucking
down litres of compatible blood is pretty slim. If miss-matched
blood groups affected vampires the way it does humans, I’d be out
of a job. All it does is take the strength from them, puts them in
a coma like state. Ever wonder why, when a vampire drains a victim,
they’re out the next night guzzling more? A symptom of today’s
binge-drinking society? No. It’s because the stolen blood keeps
getting smashed to smithereens by the vampire’s natural antibodies.
Mix in several doses of all types of blood groups and it’s no
wonder they’re a cranky, depressive mob.

What I’d done
with Mercy, ensuring she got plenty of her own blood group, had a
made difference. She could spaz out, no joke, but she wasn’t
constantly bug-eyed crazy like your average vampire. It was a
series of trained tricks, sure, but she could act human. That she
could remember those tricks, could intuit when to use them and
which ones, was a fairly good testimony to my theory. Of course,
I’m working with a test group of one. That’s never going to pass
muster with the scientific community, but I’m betting it could in
the supernatural crowd.

And maybe that
was part of why Aurum came to have his chat. I plucked the card
he’d left me from a pocket and stared at it. A mobile, probably one
he’d picked up in-country, to be abandoned when he went home.

And maybe that
wasn’t the whole reason.

I didn’t want
to admit it. I mean, what did it mean if it were true? I had some
measure of control over Mercy because of the blood I fed her.
Because of the choker chain I kept around her neck. Not because I
was her version of the ultimate vampire.

Which brought
me crashing head long into Aurum’s parting question.

What flavour
was Mercy?

Whenever you
get in the way of a psychic compulsion from a vampire, if you’re
sensitive to such things, you get to touch their… well, I guess it
would be their aura. Now, I’m getting way clued into to this
psychic deal, but I don’t go around seeing auras and whatnot. I’m
not about to do a laying-on of hands and heal the whole
congregation. But aura is the word that best suits the whole
shebang. So, you touch the aura and I don’t know how it is with
other folks, but my brain relays the sensation to me as a
flavour.

Some are a
hot, spicy cabernet sauvignon. Some are the smooth, rich earthiness
of honey. Some are tangy enough to make me pull a face. Some are
like saltwater. But in all fairness to my dignity, I’m not about to
go around referring to vampires as a bunch of condiments. So you
call them the reds, the yellows, the oranges and the blues. Kudos
to me for picking names the rest of the world uses as well.

Mercy’s
flavour? Well, she didn’t have one. Not that I could detect,
anyway. She was just… Mercy. Maybe I was too close to her.

The flavour
doesn’t develop as soon as a person is turned. It takes a while.
Same with the psychic skills. I guess it’s like the probationary
period or something. Got to learn the ropes, be shown where the
coffee machine is and swear to uphold the clan honour on a stack of
Devil’s Dictionaries or something.

At least, that
was my take on it. Aurum’s revelations added a different view.

I suppose it
made sense that all members of a clan are linked together
psychically. Links between parent and child, all the way back to
the top of the pecking order. A demonic pyramid selling scheme.

I gathered up
my stuff, made sure nothing remained that would give away my
midnight presence, and left.

I couldn’t get
the image out of my head. A great, sweeping pyramid of vampires,
and perched at the very peak, a shadowy shape growing bigger and
bigger with each poor soul added to the ever widening base. And
there beside it, was me ridding piggy back on Mercy, waving a tiny
flag and tinier sword. Multiply the big pyramid by six—Reds, Blues,
Greens, Yellows, Oranges and let’s not forget the late comers, the
Violets—and that’s just not fair to the poor guy in the middle.

Subterfuge was
pretty far from my mind as I left the hospital. Everything was
pretty much far from my mind except a gut numbing, scared
shitlessness. It was okay when it was just me and Mercy going up
against a couple of vampires. Hell, we’d redecorated Surf Wars with
a dozen of them. As they say, ignorance is bliss. They also say
ignorance is evil, but I was going to ignore that in a stunning
contortion of logic.

Jogging back
to my car I decided the next time I tried to be inconspicuous I
would beat myself about the head and just damn well park under a
spotlight. What sort of maniac goes around asking for trouble like
this?

Cab sav
flooded my mouth.

“The sort we
like.”

I staggered to
a stop. Again, pretty dumb thing to do, but it’s hard to think of
alternatives when the night around you suddenly comes alive with
vampires.

They emerged
from dark shadows and dropped from trees with nary a noise from any
of them. Well, no. They were Reds and in order to be a good little
Red, you had to think that long black coats were a mandatory
fashion requirement. And the bastards knew how to make it work
too.

I have a black
Drizabone, one that reaches my ankles. Looks way swish, especially
when you stride about all important like and it flares out behind
you like some over produced Western scene. But the blasted thing is
too hot. And I never did work out how to fight in it. Hence the
camouflage jacket. Oh, and the cargo pants. Loads of nifty pockets
to put things in, like weapons.

So, fashion
versus combat lesson aside, the Reds arrived in a susurrus of
flaring coats. They didn’t crunch on the leaf and twig covered
ground, like I did, and their big army surplus boots didn’t thump
noticeably, like mine did. Very quiet indeed.

They formed up
around me in a loose circle, silver eyes sparkling prettily in the
faint light from the hospital windows. There were half a dozen of
them.

“Night Call,”
the one directly in front of me whispered.

That was
pretty special. It’s not often… okay, never, that a vampire
initiates a fight with idle chit chat. Don’t get me wrong. When we
fight, there’s heaps of yodelling and screaming, and the vampires
make some noise as well. It’s just that your average vampire isn’t
a big talker. Seemed this guy was. Add that thought up with the
fact he had also read my mind and it equals ‘nasty’.

He was a big
bastard, too. André the Giant big. All right, no one’s that big,
except André, of course. But if this guy ate his Vegemite he might
get there.

I’d just had
the metaphorical teeth knocked out of my head by Aurum, and here I
was confronting a mob of vampires without Mercy. I could either
roll up in a ball and hope they’d left their dancing shoes at home,
or I could do my best.

I straightened
my shoulders, dropped the esky and looked him in the eye. Heck, I
was still gonna hope they kept the fangs holstered, but that was
more a backup plan.

“A man is more
than his job,” I snarled back. “I have a name. Learn it.”

“Your name
means nothing to us. What you do does. You are the Night Caller,
the death of us.”

I got a little
less scared for a moment. It was pushed aside by a touch of pride.
They had a pretty cool name for me. Neat. Then I went back to being
scared.

“Then let’s
not beat about the philosophical bush. How about we see the Night
Caller in action?”

“We did not
come to fight.”

“Heh.” I
tensed anyway. “That’s a new one. Then why are you here? Is it the
laid back lifestyle? Live in the ’burbs, work in the big
smoke?”

The guy doing
all the talking rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “We are
here to negotiate a deal.”

I stared at
him. I stared at the other vampires standing around me. Their eyes
had dulled from combat-ready to normal. When I faced the main guy
again, his eyes had also lost the predator sheen.

“You’re
serious.” I swallowed. “Well, fuck me.”

What are the odds? My back up plan
worked. And I didn’t even have to fail at Plan A first. It’s nights
like this when I should go buy a lotto ticket. I just had to get
through the negotiation first.

“A deal?” I
spent a moment pretending to mull it over, but really cataloguing
the weapons I carried. I wasn’t Kofi Annan, after all. “Why?”

Big Red took a
step toward me. By golly, he was good enough to get a sweeping
flare from his coat with that simple a movement.

“You have
something we desire.”

I patted
myself down. “Nope, no bags of spare blood tonight.” And all my
weapons just where I remembered putting them.

“You need not
fear. We have all fed sufficiently.”

“Phew, that’s
a relief. Now you can just beat me up for sport.”

Aurum would
have smiled tolerantly. Big Red just growled. A deep, throaty sound
that should only ever be heard on the plains of the Serengeti while
you’re safely tucked away in a big old photo safari bus. Every
nerve in my body screamed ‘Fight or flight, preferably flight!’ If
that wasn’t bad enough, it brought with it the sensation of cold
electricity generated by the presence of huge supernatural badness.
It crawled across my skin, prickled my hair and crept in through
every—and I mean
every
—orifice to sink into my guts and
veins and muscles, steeling strength. There was such a rush of cab
sav flavour through my head I could have got drunk off it. Big
Red’s eyes flashed silver.

“I have
already stated we came to talk.”

I was immune
to Mercy’s psychic compulsion and sort of immune to that of other
vampires. This, however, was not a compulsion. It was a real,
physical effect and no psychic ability could stop it. Even the dumb
‘animals’ of the supernatural world could produce this. It became a
mind over matter issue.

I could lick
this.

Pulling in a
deep breath, I said, “Then stop the games and talk. You may have
eaten tonight, but I’ve only had some Cheetos. Hardly nutritional
enough to constitute a decent meal. If I hit a sugar low, I get
cranky.”

Big Red
hissed, but pulled back on the special effects. “You have something
we want. If you give it to us, we will not kill you.”

The snort was
out before I could think even once. “Dude, that’s hardly an
incentive. I’m not exactly defenceless here. Remember what you just
called me? The Night Caller? The death of your kind? Hmm?”

“You do not
have the crippled one with you. You are vulnerable.”

Mercy?
Crippled? Oookay.

“I’ve taken
down your kind without her help before.”

“Young ones,
yes.”

He had a
point. Bastard. Once a vampire gets its maturity on, they get a lot
tougher, more ammo in the psychic locker. Until they attack, you
can’t really tell how strong they are. Though right about now, I
was thinking this ability to string together coherent sentences was
another yardstick I could use. When she wasn’t sulking, Mercy could
be quite eloquent, but I’d already established she was far from
normal.

Wigged out or
not by Big Red’s mad word skills, I wasn’t about to let him know
that. I lifted one eyebrow and regarded him blandly. “Still, not a
very enticing offer. What else you got?”

“I have been
instructed to offer you protection from the other castes as well as
your life. We will ensure that no other vampire kills you.”

“Let me guess.
I won’t be able to continue being the Night Caller, though.”

“You may. Your
targets would be the other castes, and you would fight alongside
us.”

“Alongside
you. Brothers in arms. Right.” The laugh came out with as much
pre-thought as the snort had. “So, let me get this right. I give
you this thing you want, and I can either retire from the field in
all good faith and no one will come assassinate me. Or, I give you
this thing and join the ranks of the fashion victim vampires.”

“Or you don’t
give us what we desire, you die, and we take it anyway.”

“Crap, man.
This is so clichéd. You’re bargaining with me even while boasting
that you don’t have to. You know, a fella could get to thinking
that you don’t really want to kill him at all.”

Big Red opened
his mouth to respond. I held up a hand to stop him.

“Not yet,
Watson. Holmes is still deducing. And the answer is… There’s two
things I have that you want. One you can’t get if I’m dead.” I
tapped my head. “Which means it’s in here. Which means it’s
probably got something to do with the other thing you want.”

Slowly,
deliberately, I reached into the big pocket on my left hip and
withdrew the Eagle.

“And you ain’t
getting either of those things.”

I shot Big Red
before any of us could think. He screamed as his face started to
smoke. I spun and laid down a ring of paintballs, keeping the
others back. It wouldn’t last long, but long enough for me to get
another weapon.

There’s this
little church tucked away between a couple of big high rises in the
middle of the city. In that church, is a little Father who doesn’t
ask too many questions. He ladles out the Holy water for me, and he
blessed my nightstick.

Three vampires
closed on me.

I shot one and
whacked the nightstick across another’s face. Neither was enough to
take them out of the fight, but it gave me room to get a clumsy
hold on the third coming up from behind, toss him over my shoulder
and land kneeling on his chest. I unloaded three paintballs into
his mouth and rolled off him in time to miss a clawed hand slashed
at neck height.