— 17 —

October 12, 6:55 p.m.

Bellevue Hospital

Zero Days until the V-Event

“This had better not be a prank,” said the fierce little woman behind the desk.

Luther Swann stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Detective Schmidt in the spacious office of Alice Feldman, Bellevue’s chief of psychiatric medicine. Feldman had a wall full of certificates and a shelf lined with awards. Her books were required reading in the very best medical schools, and she was a frequent talking head on the Discovery Channel and MDTV.

“This is no joke,” said Schmidt in a flat voice that left no doubt.

Feldman studied him. She had eyes that were almost a perfect teal green and a mouth so tight with disapproval that Swann wanted to check his fingernails to make sure they were clean.

She studied the men for another few seconds, then gave a single curt nod.

“Sit.”

Like obedient schoolboys, they sat, perching straight and stiff on the edges of the two guest chairs in her office. She continued to study them from across an acre of polished desktop. Between them were the statements, photographs, X-rays, charts and lab reports that comprised Michael Fayne’s file. Swann knew that one of those papers was a copy of his résumé. Dr. Feldman picked it up, studied it for a moment and dropped it on the desk without comment. As they waited, she went through each piece of evidence with an expression that rarely changed except for an occasional lift of one eyebrow and a mild grunt. When she was finished she sat back and sipped the last of a cup of coffee that had gone cold.

“DNA?” she asked.

“We’re waiting on that,” said Schmidt. “Might have it tomorrow. I put a rush on it.”

Another grunt.

“I’ll want my own people to redo all of these tests.”

“Yes,” said Swann, “that’s pretty much what we want.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why? Don’t you trust your own results? No … of course you don’t. Who would?”

They waited.

“What injuries did he sustain when he broke the glass? I don’t see that report here.”

Schmidt cleared his throat. “The suspect sustained no enduring injuries.”

Feldman frowned. “That’s interesting phrasing, detective. What is it supposed to mean?”

“It means that although the suspect appeared to receive several lacerations from the glass, there was no evidence of recent wounds when he was examined by an emergency room doctor.”

“Then the doctor missed it.”

“No, ma’am,” said Schmidt. He bent and retrieved his briefcase, opened it, and produced a file folder. He cut a quick look at Swann, took a breath and handed it to Dr. Feldman. “The wounds were noted and photographed before the suspect was transported to the hospital.”

Dr. Feldman looked at the photographs. She pushed her glasses down to the end of her nose and peered at the prints as she slowly fanned through them. She paused at the last photo, which Swann knew was a high-res shot of Fayne’s palms taken just prior to transporting him to this facility. The photo showed several thread-thin white lines crisscrossed over the heels of his palms.

Swann tensed, expected the harsh and certain denial that such evidence should evoke.

Instead, Dr. Feldman closed the file and placed it neatly in the center of her desk.

“I’ll want affidavits from everyone. Every officer who entered the interrogation room, the ambulance staff, the E.R. staff. Everyone. And we may even need to do polygraphs on some of them.”

Swann and Schmidt nodded.

“And …,” she said, pausing for a moment before completing her next comment, “we may want to attempt to reproduce those results under clinical conditions. Multiple video cameras, witnesses, the works.”

They nodded again.

In the ensuing silence, she once more picked up Swann’s résumé.

“Professor Swann,” she said softly, “a cynical person might think that this was all somehow staged in order for you to get on the bestseller list.”

“I —” he began, but she cut him off.

“You look too scared to be playing a game.”

“Scared doesn’t begin to touch it.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “If I’m wrong about this, then I’m going to forget it ever happened. I’d be an idiot to put it in my books. I’d be an idiot to even talk about it. My career would be in serious trouble.”

“And if you’re right?”

“Then the whole world might be in serious trouble.”

"LOVE LESS" PT.2

John Everson

— 23 —

Sometimes the hours felt like days. The need burned in him stronger than anything he’d ever known. And he’d needed a fix of something or other for half his life. But this latest drug … he craved it more than any snort of cocaine or rock of crack that he’d ever had.

Pete was a junkie, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. That’s why he’d agreed to go on that talk show a few weeks ago. He had known then that his addictions would kill him. This latest jones was different in some ways, but not in that. But if he had to die, there was no better way to go than this. His latest addiction kept him safe and warm, put a roof over his head and fed him. After a day or so without, the need became so powerful that he could feel it inside his veins. His jones was like a thousand tiny roaches running up and down his arms and legs. He itched himself until he bled, but it never touched the need. Sometimes watching TV with the others helped; sometimes he could get his mind off the need. They understood; a couple of the others had also been junkies before they’d come here. Sometimes he played video games with the little Spanish girl Chelsea. That chick had it really bad … she’d been on meth before she came here … and now whenever the waiting for her next fix grew too intense, her wrists and elbows and eyelids began to twitch. So bad she couldn’t walk. Sometimes Pete held her on the couch, trying to hold back the shaking.

“It will be nighttime soon,” he’d promise, as he struggled himself to keep from tearing new trails in his flesh with his fingernails. “You know they’ll be here soon,” he whispered, stroking the limp hair away from her eyes.

Tonight though, Pete lay waiting in his own bed. He didn’t have the energy to console Chelsea. His own need was too great. He could taste it. Funny how the symptoms of the old addiction had transferred so easily to this one.

The lock on his door clicked.

Pete’s eyes snapped open in the dark, and he stared at the faint silhouette of his cell door. The light blinded him as the door opened. But it closed again quickly, and he heard the faint sounds of clothing falling. Then the heat of her body was next to him in the bed, the silk of her thigh slipping easily over his.

“Did you miss me?” Danika whispered.

Pete slipped his arms around her, enjoying the soft curves of her body.

“Yes,” he gasped, as her fingers slipped between his legs, measuring.

“Hurry,” he said.

Danika opened her mouth and kissed him on the lips …He could feel the points of her teeth as she broke the kiss and trailed them across his cheek to his neck.

And that was it for the foreplay.

Danika bit, sliding her fangs inside him slowly, easily.

Pete moaned as the warmth of her venom began to flow from her teeth into his flesh. She pumped her fangs in and out, releasing precious drops of poison inside him. A neck fuck. This was the best drug ever. The waves of heat shot down his back and up his cock like an electric jolt. His world turned from a grey thirst to kaleidoscope of orgasmic color. He barely even noticed when Danika shifted and straddled him in the bed, guiding him inside her. She used him for more than just blood.

All he cared about was the hit to his head, an amazing tunnel of color and light and sound. He was lost in the drug of her.

Danika’s hips slowly moved as she moaned … and drank.

— 24 —

Mila Dubov turned away from the TV in disgust. She could see the change in her sister. She could almost feel the blood lust inside her pulsing. How could Danika go on pretending? She was a vampire. Feeding on the very people she sought to entertain.

They were both damned.

Mila looked at her boyfriend, who lolled without cognizance on the couch. Part of her laughed at her self-righteous indignation aimed at her sister. Who was Mila to talk? She had maimed Adrian, and still, without any real conscious thought, he served her. But she knew it wouldn’t last long.

She had stopped short of killing him the first time she’d drank, and she’d continued to feed on him in smaller bits ever since. So far, he seemed to still be human, though he walked about in a daze much of the time. But she’d done her best to avoid killing or turning him. She did not want to make Adrian like her.

But Mila was constantly hungry. How long she could hold off from taking too much … she didn’t know. All she knew was that she could not suffer to eat grandma’s chicken soup anymore. And that was a penance as frustrating as the need to hurt in order to eat. She had always loved that soup.

Mila turned away from Adrian’s still body in disgust with herself, and her sister alike. Frowning, she picked up the phone and dialed her sister’s cellphone. She hadn’t talked to Danika since the day she had cooked her chicken soup to cure Danika’s “cold.” She hadn’t asked her sister’s help when she confronted the change. She wasn’t going to ask for it now.

But there were some things she needed to know. She looked at the man on her couch, and shook her head in bitter sadness. “I have a responsibility,” she whispered.

— 25 —

“It’s about time you turned up,” Danika said.

“That’s about what I said to you the last time I saw you,” Mila retorted. They sat at a streetside café, two unsipped iced teas on the table before them. Mila would try to drink some of hers, because blood or not, she believed the body needed to be hydrated.