Double Dead: Bad Blood Read online

  “You ready?” Gil asked.

  “Sure,” Coburn said.

  But he was pretty sure it was a lie.

  He had no idea how unready he really was.

  PART THREE

  DEVILS

  The Conversation: #3

  Can you still hear me?

  A little.

  But I’m fading, aren’t I?

  I don’t want to talk about that.

  You don’t want to talk about a lot of things.

  Ain’t I a bitch?

  But these could be our last moments together. Tell me, John Wesley. Tell me about what you regret. Tell me about what you love.

  I regret nothing. And I love only myself.

  Now you’re just being stupid.

  It’s how I roll.

  Won’t you miss me?

  I’ll miss you. But it won’t matter because I’ll be dead. Dead for good. Dead and done and fucked four ways from Friday.

  I’ll miss you, too.

  Yeah.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Devil’s Island

  THE DINGHY BOBBED in the bay. The thunder was distant, now. The bulk of the storm had moved out to sea again, leaving behind only a grimy mist of rain falling oily against their skin.

  The vampire had Gil row for a minute.

  He set the dog in his lap. The animal no longer looked up at him. His breathing was fast, shallow—like watching a rabbit die from fright. The holes in his side were pretty bad. Went deep.

  The dog was dying.

  Coburn said as much.

  Gil looked back. Mouth in a sad, straight line.

  “Not that I’m a doctor or anything,” Coburn said.

  “Be nice to have Leelee here,” Gil said.

  “Yeah. Yeah it would.”

  The dinghy continued. Alcatraz in the distance, a shadowy rock growing larger and larger as they approached.

  The dog’s breath came in hitches now—inconsistent, unsteady, uneven. Gil spoke up again: “Remember. Leelee got bit. Kayla saved her. Right then and there.”

  “That she did.”

  Gil turned around. Set the oars down. “No, you’re not listening. Her blood. Kayla’s blood. It’s your blood now. Give the damn dog some of your stuff.” Gil looked down at the dog. “But you better hurry.”

  Coburn sank his teeth into the tip of his thump, ripping the flesh of the thumb-pad clean off. Then he thrust it into the dog’s mouth and used his free hand to massage the hand, way you’d urge milk from a cow’s udder.

  The dog’s tongue lapped at the wound. Weakly, but there it was.

  Then the dog stopped breathing.

  Coburn shook the dog. “No, no, get up. Wait. Shit. Fuck!” He shot a hate-fueled gaze at Gil. “You did this. You told me it would work. You said—”

  The dog shuddered suddenly, took in a great gasp of air.

  The tail started going. Just a light thwip thwip thwip against the inside of Coburn’s arm. The eyes focused again. The breathing returned. Still shallow. Still weak as wind blowing around a piece of tissue paper.

  But it was there.

  Then Creampuff pissed on Coburn’s lap. Probably not an act of spite.

  Probably.

  “Dog pissed on me,” Coburn said.

  “Maybe you deserved it,” Gil said. “Maybe he’s trying to make you smell better. Because let me tell you, you smell like shit. Literally. Like shit.”

  “You don’t smell so good yourself.” Coburn held the dog close. “You planning on telling me you got bit?” The infection had a smell. Cheesy. Curdled. Parfum de rotter.

  Inside Coburn’s mind, Kayla woke up at that—he heard her shout for her father as if the old man could actually hear her psychic projection.

  Then he heard her crying.

  “I got bit,” Gil said. “So what.”

  “Here.” Coburn thrust out his still-bleeding thumb. “Drink up. Worked on the dog. I guess. Go on. Drinky, drinky. Suck my thumb, little baby.”

  “Better than ‘old man,’ I guess.” But Gil didn’t move. Instead he stared ahead, still rowing, and said: “Something you need to know about Kayla. Something Kayla needs to know, too.”

  Daddy?

  “She’s listening. But first—” Coburn gestured with the bloody thumb.

  Still Gil didn’t move.

  “It’s about when she was born. She wasn’t born right. When she came out, she was—”

  A gunshot split the air in the distance, echoed over the bay, and the bullet punched the water about three feet off the right side of the boat. Coburn said, “Jesus Christ. Fuckin’ assholes think we’re an invading army or some shit.” He stood up in the boat. Waved his arms. “Hey! Fuckos! We’re here to help! We’ve got something—”

  “Coburn, don’t stand up in the—”

  Another gunshot.

  The bullet clipped Coburn’s hip—shattering bone and coming out through his buttock. His leg gave out and his body pivoted, and he tumbled over into the water with a heaving splash.

  More bullets followed him into the water. Watery lines as the slugs punched the space above his head—lead minnows leaving little bubbles. The underside of the boat drifted away, churned by the oars. Gil was leaving him—not a shock, and not unwarranted since he was being shot at, too.

  The vampire could take care of himself. The old man knew that.

  Probably.

  Coburn, feeling mighty pissed off, swam.

  KAYLA’S VOICE: AN endless chatter of crows inside his mind. Daddy! Please let him be all right. What was he going to tell you? What’s wrong with me?

  Coburn couldn’t help but answer: You’re dead. That’s what’s wrong with you.

  In return he once more heard her weeping.

  Damnit.

  He swam through the dark water, losing track of the boat and eventually pulling himself up on the rocky shore of Alcatraz Island. All around him—trees, rocks, the remnant of an old brick wall here and, further up, a warped chain-link fence. Beyond all that, the silhouette of the prison itself, all hard angles and severe lines. Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island.

  The wind kicked up over the water, buffeting him, and as he shook himself dry like a common cur, someone called to him from further up.

  Standing on a cement platform about fifty yards away:

  Lydia, oh, Lydia, oh, have you met Lydia.

  Gil knelt next to her. She held a rifle to his head. Remington 700 by the look of it. Bolt-action. High-caliber.

  Double damnit.

  “Up here,” she called. “Unless you want your friend’s brains to paint the concrete.” She pushed the gun forward, the barrel jabbing Gil hard in the temple.

  Please, save my Daddy. Don’t you fail me, JW. Don’t you dare.

  Coburn knew he could get away from her. Be like a cockroach slipping away under a fridge. All these trees. Under the cover of night. Could sneak up on Lydia from behind, kick her heart straight out of her damn chest. But then Gil would be dead and Kayla would be inconsolable and—

  “I’m coming,” he called. “Just settle the fuck down up there.”

  Grudgingly—and grumpily—Coburn found the walkway and plodded up the steps, boots squishing as he did. When he got closer, he could see Creampuff laying next to Gil. Still with the shallow breathing. But the bleeding had stopped.

  Lydia stood tall. But she was only feigning triumph. All about her, the miasma of fear hung like a cloud of gnats.

  “You’re afraid of me,” he said, grinning.

  “You’re not the one I’m afraid of.”

  “Well. Let’s get this over with. My friend and I hear that this is your lab. That why you wanted my blood? Synthesize a cure? Should’ve just said something. That’s what I want, too. Instead you have your Jonestown drug cult fuckos nail me to a table until you show up? Not cool, lady. Not cool.”

  Lydia laughed. Not a happy sound. A high-pitched trill, anxious and angry and simulating delight. “Lab. Well. Guess you caught me, then.”

&nb
sp; “So drop the gun.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Coburn tried a little voodoo. Tried to stare deep, past the darks of her eyes and into her brain where he could pluck those strings and make her a puppet for his monster theater. “I said drop the gun, honey.”

  She tsk-tsk-tsked him. “You really think that works on me?”

  “Boy’s gotta try.”

  She kneed Gil in the back. Told him to stand, then march. “You too.” Coburn reached for the dog, but she pressed the gun against the back of Gil’s head. “Leave the mongrel behind.”

  “Fine. But you’re not making me feel real friendly.”

  Another laugh.

  THE LIGHTS COME on: fluorescents overhead snapping to life with a pop and a hum. The prison awakens out of the dark, but to Coburn it looks less like a prison and more like a cathedral of rust-colored bones. The femur of corroded railings, the radius and ulna and jail bars, the fingerbones meshed together caging the lights above their heads.

  Inside each cell: beds, IV poles, metal and wooden carts with all manner of medical equipment both modern and antiquated. Toward the back, Coburn saw equipment like he saw in the Los Angeles lab: centrifuges and cabinets of beakers and a big metal box with a window in the side and a place to stick your hands into some rubber gloves—a place where you could manipulate dangerous chemicals or, who knows, a pissed off wolverine, without getting your hands destroyed.

  But nobody was here.

  And the smell...

  The odor of corpses. The perfume of spattered blood. Hidden beneath an invisible façade of harsh nose-burning antiseptics.

  This lab was dead. Dead like Lydia. Dead like that Ellie girl who bit her and turned into a monster. Dead like the rest of the world.

  Kayla wasn’t sobbing in his head. She was whimpering. Receding to the furthest-flung corners of his mind.

  “Coburn...” Gil said.

  “I know, Gil.”

  “This is a dead place.”

  “I said I know, Gil.”

  Lydia pushed them forward with the barrel of the gun. “Did you really think that I was operating some lab? Saving the world? Please. Those days are done.”

  Coburn’s blood felt hot. Set to a low simmer, galloping on toward a boil.

  “I thought,” he began, “that you were like me. Doing what you had to do to survive. Saving the human race is, for us, like the humans making sure their cow-herd doesn’t have mad cow disease. Not sure if you noticed, but the blood supply out there’s gone a little sour, Doc. Figured you wanted to save people to save yourself.”

  “That what you’re doing, John Wesley? I know different.”

  Those words. Sounded like Kayla’s words coming from Lydia’s mouth. Didn’t make sense. The mercury in Coburn’s thermometer cracked the glass, shot a hot arc of angry blood straight to his brain.

  Lydia didn’t know what hit her.

  Coburn grabbed the barrel of the gun. Anchored his boots to the hard prison floor, put everything he had into it and swung her skinny ass into the metal bars with a clang. Her hand let go of the gun, and he spun it like a cheerleader flipping a baton and turned the barrel on her. Bead between her eyes.

  She slid to the floor and sat there. Long dark hair framing her face.

  Framing that smile.

  “How’d you know my name?” he asked.

  But she didn’t have to answer.

  Footsteps echoed down between the cells.

  A voice, so familiar and so uncomfortable—like a tongue pushing through flesh and bone and slithering into the white of one’s marrow.

  “Hi, John.”

  Coburn wheeled with the rifle and started firing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Heart of Glass

  PULL TRIGGER. JACK bolt. Eject shell. New shell. Pull trigger.

  Four times.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Ears ringing. Air stinking with the acrid smoke of a discharged weapon.

  Blondie kept coming. Arms out in faux-beneficence. Cleft lip like an axe wound pulling his lips into a twisted sneer beneath his smashed nose. Above that, a pair of blue, blue eyes glittering like sapphires.

  In his chest: four holes. A little blood dribbling out of each.

  Coburn jacked the bolt again. Fired dry. Click.

  “Would it be in poor taste to clap?” the vampire asked. “I’m going to do it anyway because, wow, look at that grouping.” He brought his hands together in a slow-motion applause. The clap echoed.

  It’s him, Kayla said. Waves of fear radiated from her, like ripples of pondwater after a stone interrupted the surface.

  Coburn’s fear matched her own.

  “You can’t kill me,” Blondie said. “Besides the fact I’m already dead, that is. You put an end to me, well. You know how that story goes.”

  (“It’s one of those old immutable laws,” Blondie said, making a face that might’ve been a grin, might’ve been a sneer. “Kill the maker and you kill the monsters he made.”)

  Lydia stood. Worked her way behind them, pacing like a starving puma. Gil threw a sideways glance at Coburn: “You mind telling me what’s happening?”

  But Blondie was the one who answered, as he approached: “Good question, Gil. It is Gil, isn’t it?”

  “How the hell you know my name?”

  “I know all. My blood is his blood. I gave unto him so that he may live. But he’s got another guest in there, now. Another ghost in the red.” Blondie showed his curved fangs. Ran a too-pale tongue along one. “I’ve been waiting for you, John. Been sitting there in the back of your dreams. Silent and stoic. A gargoyle looking down from above and watching the movement of the tiny people below.”

  Coburn felt his hands tighten around the stock of the rifle. The wood split with a bony snap. “You fuck. What happened here? Where’s the lab?”

  Blondie stopped about ten feet away. Whistled. “I had to kill all those people, John. All that hope-for-the-future nonsense? Curdles the blood. Optimism has no place in this world, not any more. The lights are out. The playground is for us monsters, now. Too bad you can’t have the fun I have.”

  “I figured you for smart,” Coburn said, seething. “But you’re dumb as a bucket of guts. As I was telling your mistake here—” He tossed a thumb at Lydia, behind him.

  “Your sister, if you will—”

  “Fuck you. Like I was telling her, we need people. Food supply. Blood. In case you missed that part?”

  “See, that’s the thing. You were always a fine predator, John. Don’t think I haven’t been watching you these many decades. You hunted. Killed. Fed. Good for you. But me, I don’t hunt because I need to. I hunt because I want to. You kill and ditch the bodies. I keep them alive long as I can. I hurt them. I roll around in their misery like a dog in mud, covering myself in their glorious scent. You’re a predator, okay, fine. But I’m a monster. I’m the Devil, John. And this is my world, now.”

  Coburn tilted his head left, then right, let the neck-joints crackle and pop. He said, “I’m tired of you talking.”

  Then he moved.

  Put everything he had behind the thrown fist—enough blood and gusto to turn his arm into a piston that would punch a hole clean through the smug motherfucker’s chest, driving splinters of breastbone through the monster’s heart as Coburn shoved the organ right out through the space between the bastard’s shoulder blades.

  That didn’t happen.

  Blondie caught the fist with both hands like he was fielding a football. Then gave a hard twist. Coburn’s arm shattered like a corkscrewed twig.

  He fell to the ground, and for good measure Blondie completed the football visual and gave Coburn’s head a hard punt.

  Coburn’s jaw broke in a half-dozen places. Unmoored and loose in his skin. Tried to speak. Came out as anguished babble.

  Gil did not sit idly by.

  Or, at least, he tried not to. He moved forward, an ungainly and foolish assault, and found himself lifted off his feet b
y the vampire Lydia. Who held Gil’s neck in the crook of her arm ’til the man’s legs went slack.

  JW, they’re hurting my Daddy.

  He told her that he knew, and had other things to worry about right now.

  You fix this.

  Right now he couldn’t fix shit. He urged the blood to repair his cracked jaw and splintered arm. Blondie knelt down by his side. Patted him on the head, way he’d patted Creampuff so many times.

  “I’ll say this, John. You do have a point about the food supply. I’ll give you that. It’s hard out there. I’m torn. On the one hand, watching the world die and come back to life—the weak herd of humanity replaced with my children, children made from your blood which is my blood—it thrills me. One of the few things that can thrill me. So much so I’m not ready to give up my front row seat. But that means I need to eat, and fresh blood isn’t so readily available. I have Lydia bring me children sometimes—and as you know, I am nothing if not a fan of the misery of youth—but it’s not enough. My hunger is long. My patience? Short. And lo and behold, what happens is—”

  Blondie, it seemed, liked to hear himself talk. Lost in the sound of his own voice like a—what was it? Dog rolling around in mud.

  Coburn saw the opportunity.

  Seized it by the balls.

  His jaw was still fucked, but his arm was better. He surged up, snapping an elbow into Blondie’s jaw—

  Or, that’s what should have happened. But it didn’t. Blondie caught it. Twisted the arm again so that it snapped. Then slammed Coburn’s face hard into the concrete. Once. Twice. Blush of bright blood behind Coburn’s eyes as his own teeth and fangs jettisoned down the back of his throat.

  “Feisty,” Blondie said. “I’m very proud. But that matters little. As I was saying, little rabbit, what happens is you end up gulping down the blood of some miracle baby, some little twit with the healing power of the heavens, and next thing I know, you’re changed. Weaker of spirit, maybe, but stronger of blood. You don’t need to feed as much. The hunger doesn’t cloud your vision. And you can move around during the day. You know the last time I saw the sun? I don’t. I literally don’t. That memory is lost to me. But now that I know I can have it again, I want it. I really, really want it.”