Ancient Blood 00 The Taste Of Death Read online

  The Taste of Death

  by

  Kate Hill

  Note: The following account has been permanently filed in the Network Archives. For security purposes, the names of certain people/locations have been changed or omitted.

  The Official journal of Agent Marjorie A. Colson

  June 20, 2002

  At first his case disgusted me. It made me smirk. It made me want to kick the shit out of him.

  What a waste. What a danger to all of us. He was nothing but some bleeding-heart disgrace of immortality, and it was my job to bring him in.

  I know it seems like I have a problem with humanitarians, or whatever his type of freak is called. The slaves to mortal love.

  Gag me.

  Anastasius Kacey was the name in the file I found downloaded into my computer on April 10, 2002, along with a brief message from my boss at the Network. I've been an agent for a couple of years. A damn good one, too. No, I don't mind if I sound egotistical. Too many of my kind are concerned with coming across as superior to humans. We are, so why not just admit it and move on? But that's another story.

  I was talking about Anastasius. Other than repulsion, the second thing that struck me about the information in his file was that he'd never changed his name. He'd gone by Anastasius since the beginning, at least his beginning.

  His early years were spent in Greece where he trained with healers and philosophers. That didn’t surprised me. He must have always been soft and weak. I figured once I tracked him down, I wouldn't even need the cuffs to bring him in.

  There were a couple of records of him trying to Change his Greek teachers, but he'd botched the job every time and they'd died mortal deaths.

  As I clicked through his file, I realized he had centuries of such failures. Year after year of trying unsuccessfully to Change friends, mentors, and lovers.

  After Greece he'd moved to Rome then traveled around Europe. He was living in a small English village when the Plague struck. Again his attempts to rescue those closest to him failed, but that was the turning point for him. He willingly admitted before others of our kind that he had killed dozens of infected mortals.

  Just the thought of biting those scarred, oozing, vermin-infested, feverish mortals made my stomach turn. The man was deranged.

  I'd run my tongue over my fangs as if to cleanse away the foul taste that I couldn't help imagining.

  His life became a tour of violence and revulsion. Leper colonies, battlefields, monasteries and villages filled with the sick and dying. He drained their foul blood. Anastasius willingly killed creatures so rancid, so disease-ridden, that even a vampire in the last stages of starvation would have thought twice about putting his teeth to such flesh.

  The more I read, the more I wanted this madman locked away. I understood why the Network had put out a warrant for his arrest. By killing so many mortals and doing little to nothing to disguise what he was from those around him, Anastasius Kacey was a danger to us all.

  I'd leapt into the case with enthusiasm. Though Anastasius did nothing to hide himself or avoid the law, he was difficult to track. He moved often and could show his sharp-toothed, hazy-eyed face at a third world mission as easily as he could an exclusive hospital catering to the rich and dying. Wherever his nasty calling beckoned was where he flew.

  After tracing his most recent kills, I found a common thread. He'd been spending more time than usual in hospitals in the northeastern United States. Hospitals with a common link in the form of Dr. Matthew Winter, a vampire physician know for his scientific breakthroughs regarding our kind – a man steeped in controversy and someone I always believed should be imprisoned himself. Being the brother of the Network leader was probably the only reason he walked freely among us. I will probably get cited for writing this, but dishonesty is cheap.

  I took great pleasure in arresting him right in his office in one of the only vampire research centers in the world. I cuffed him in front of patients and staff. He didn't even appear ruffled. I guessed having relatives in lofty places would give a person confidence.

  "You know Anastasius Kacey?" I demanded, my eyes fixed on the doctor's steady blue ones. A vampire so young shouldn't possess a gaze as penetrating Winter’s. "This is a Network investigation. You have to answer or risk the consequences."

  "I don't have to do anything."

  My hand shot out and grasped him by the pretty silk tie he wore. I showed my fangs and hissed, "You're going to tell me what I want to know!"

  Suddenly I felt as if a colossus had kicked me in the gut. My head slammed against the interrogation room wall.

  "Son-of-a-bitch!" I snarled through clenched teeth, glaring into the doctor's amused face. I'd been warned about his command of magic but hadn't believed a kid who hadn't yet seen his first century could truly wield the power of a seasoned warlock. Just another sign that life was unfair.

  "What I’m about to tell you is by the request of a friend," stated Dr. Winter. "Anastasius knows you've been trailing him. He realizes the Network wants to place him on trial, and he's willing to cooperate."

  "Oh, I'm sure."

  "It's the truth. Do you want to know where you can find him or not?"

  "And I'm to believe a man of your convictions would tell me so easily and a man of his madness wants to be arrested?"

  "I don't care what you believe. I promised to bring you to his next mercy killing."

  "Mercy killing?" I laughed. "Is that what you fanatics are calling murder combined with risk to our kind now?"

  Dr. Winter held my eyes. After a moment, I unfastened his cuffs, muttering, "I must be nuts."

  The good doctor told me to meet him at his office – not the one at the vampire center, but at the city hospital - at six o'clock that evening. It was then I got my first look at him.

  Anastasius' appearance surprised me. He was a tall man, lean and well-muscled beneath jeans and a blue sweater that picked up the color of his eyes. Five o'clock shadow dusted a face that appeared both masculine but boyish with its wide-eyed charm. Not the feminine creature or the dark, brooding ancient I'd expected, he appeared fresh and young. He was all the things I'd left behind yet wanted back more than I was willing to admit.

  "The family will be here soon," Anastasius said after our initial introduction. "I was told you would wait until I'd completed this one last task?"

  I shrugged. "What's one more kill when you've already had so many?"

  "It's the kill that bothers you?" His eyes held mine in a way that made my stomach twist. It is said the only way to truly tell a vampire's age is by looking in his eyes. Anastasius' centuries seemed to grab me and drag me backwards into corners of his mind draped in shadows of pain and happiness. I shuddered. They reminded me too much of my own memories.

  "It's not the kill," I said, my voice far more steady than I felt. "It's the exposure. You have no regard for the rest of us."

  "I've yet to have a mortal give me away."

  "You've been lucky."

  "Lucky?" he murmured.

  Winter's secretary phoned and the good doctor, who had been watching us from his seat behind his desk, picked up. Moments later, he informed us the family was on its way and I would have to give them privacy.

  I waited in an adjoining room, my sensitive ears straining to hear the conversation.

  "You're sure there's no hope?" asked a woman, her voice trembling. I heard the humans' hearts beating. There were two. The wife and brother of a dying man—a man they'd asked Anastasius to kill.

  "His chances of recovery are less than one percent," stated Dr. Winter.

  "His pain is much worse," said the brother.

  "We are finding it harder to manage," the
doctor told her.

  I heard the humans’ heartbeats quicken. Dr. Winter and Anastasius' pulses were incredibly slow and even – vampires in their most relaxed state. Like so many of our kind and of their profession, they were at ease dealing in death.

  Unable to control myself any longer, I slowly opened the door a crack. The mortals sat facing the desk, their backs to me. Dr. Winter sat behind the desk, leaning forward a bit. I credited him with actually looking interested in the humans. Anastasius faced me. If he noticed me watching, he made no sign, as his attention remained fixed on the mortals.

  The wife hunched forward, trembling. I heard her crying. "It won't hurt him?"

  Anastasius stooped in front of her and placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders. With eyes so wide and trustworthy I found myself almost believing in him, the killer said, "I promise you, he won't feel any pain."

  "Then do it." The woman’s voice wavered.

  "Tonight?" Anastasius asked.

  "As soon as possible," the brother whispered.

  Dr. Winter escorted the humans to the hospital. I drove Anastasius. It occurred to me that I might arrest him right then. I had him in the car. I could take him to the local Network headquarters where he would be held for trial. Then I hate to admit I thought of the wife, the brother, and the man awaiting death.

  "If they know what you are—what we are—why not ask you to Change him instead of hastening his death?"

  "Because it goes against their faith."

  I shook my head and stopped asking questions. Faith. I wasn't about to go there.

  When we arrived at the hospital, I followed Anastasius up to a third floor room. The husband and sister stood by the bed of a skeletal figure, paler than any movie vampire, attached to tubes and wires.

  I looked away.

  "What's the matter?" Anastasius asked. "Does mortality offend you?"

  "This entire situation offends me. You offend me."

  "Why?"

  "Because your cravings are sick. Your disregard for both human and vampire life is criminal."

  "Criminal?" His eyes narrowed and the tips of his fangs glistened against his full lips. He shook his head. "We'll talk after. I have to concentrate on what lies ahead."

  "On your mercy killing?" I scoffed.

  He placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face the room. His chest felt warm against my back as he whispered close to my ear, "Look at him. Sometimes isn't death more merciful than life?"

  If I listened closely, I could hear the wife and brother's whispered words to a man who was probably too drugged to hear them.

  "Do what you promised," I snarled. "Just know I'm waiting for you right after."

  Moments later, Dr. Winter led the family out of the room while Anastasius waited for the opportunity to slip in, unnoticed. At the last second, he grasped my arm and dragged me with him.

  "No!" I hissed when he closed the door behind us. "I'm not staying for this!"

  "We'll leave through the window," he told me. "No mortal will trace us that way."

  I gritted my teeth. He was right. We were several floors up and with Dr. Winter handling the body, no one would suspect that the victim hadn't finally succumbed to whatever disease ravaged his body.

  "Just get it over with!" I told him.

  Though I intended to keep my back turned, I was unable to refrain from watching. Anastasius knelt at the bedside. His eyes slipped shut as he leaned closer to the withered neck. I caught the scent of blood as his teeth slipped in. Sick blood. I could only imagine how it tasted. How could he stand it?

  Right before I heard his last heartbeat, the man's lips curved upward in the slightest smile.

  Anastasius drew back, dragging a hand across his mouth. His breathing had increased, and his pale eyes glowed with a combination of bloodlust and tears. He wiped his eyes with his fingertips then stepped onto the window ledge.

  "This way, Marjorie," he said, without so much as glancing at me.

  The drop to the pavement below jarred my teeth, but I instantly turned to where he leaned against the building, gulping cold night air.

  "You all right?" I grunted.

  He looked at me. Again his age showed in his expression. Guiding him to the car, I tried to keep from remembering the dead man's smile.

  Though I'd intended to take him directly to the headquarters located in a nearby hotel, I stopped at a donut shop and ordered a couple of coffees. We parked under a bridge in a secluded section of town.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "I thought maybe you'd want to get yourself together before I take you in."

  "Uh huh." His tone was sarcastic as his eyes fixed on mine.

  "What?"

  "You're curious about me, about what I do."

  My first impulse was to protest, but I changed my mind. This might be the only chance for me to learn what would force the finest of earth's creatures into such a lowly vocation as he'd chosen. For a vampire to murder healthy people—that was almost understandable. There was a certain honor to vampires who terrorized, even though the Network tried to keep a tight reign on them as well. But for a vampire to suck the blood of those who were dying anyway…where was the pleasure in that? Where was the glory for our kind?

  "It began in Greece, you know," he said. "I'm sure you have records of my failure from the beginning."

  "You tried to Change a few and it didn't work." I shrugged. "So? You're not the first."

  "No, but I'm impotent."

  Impotent! My eyes widened. Probably the greatest curse a vampire could possess was the inability to create human hybrids. It was true that vampires and mortals had to be compatible before the Change could succeed, but generally even a vampire with the strangest blood could be paired with some mortal somewhere. To be at odds with all types of mortals, to be unable to Change even a single companion, was something all vampires feared. Fortunately impotence was rare in our kind.

  "You're sure?" My brow furrowed.

  "I've been tested. I only wish there had been a way for me to know before. It might have saved me centuries of grief."

  "Then why the killing? Are you so angry that you can't share your gift that you kill to vent frustration?"

  "No." His enormous blue eyes widened in shock at my conclusion. "That couldn't be further from the truth."

  "Then why?"

  "They called the plague the Black Death. It was long before you were born."

  "I know history!"

  "Of course. I'd been living in a small village on the English countryside. I had a woman friend there. Beautiful. A widow. How it ravaged her." Anastasius's expression darkened and appeared far away, as if he'd been dragged back to the dingy sewer the middle ages called a town. "The disease killed everything. Rotted her beautiful flesh, tossed her vibrant mind into delirium. I would have given anything—anything—to ease her pain and make her one of us. I couldn't."

  I resisted the urge to touch him in comfort. What the hell was wrong with me? I was a Network agent! I was an Immaculate, the most elite of my kind, a vampire conceived and born of two others. I hadn't been created by bite. I wasn’t tainted by a drop of pure human blood. I was powerful, a woman to be reckoned with. I was…so deeply affected by the story I was hearing.

  "I tried," he whispered. "At first I didn't think I could do it. The taste of her blood was so horrible. I can't describe the tang of the blood of the dying. Fill an old rubber tire with stagnant swamp water and let it fester in a damp cellar for a couple of days then take a drink. That's what it tastes like. Yet I would have drunk an ocean of such vile stuff to save her. She died anyway, but in those final moments, when our minds were one, she thanked me for releasing her. I knew then what I had been called to do. I cannot give life, Marjorie, but I can give peace."

  I stared into his eyes and allowed my mind to reach out for his. I wanted to sense deception. He was lying to save himself. He'd created this pathetic tale to coax me into turning him loose. I know what men are like, particularl
y desperate ones.

  Draining my paper cup of coffee, I shrugged. "Nice try, but I'm still taking you to the Network."

  "I expected you would, Marjorie. Your reputation precedes you. You're one of the Network's finest agents. Never missed an arrest. Your goal is to bring all criminals to justice."

  I pulled the car out of the lot and headed back to the city.

  "Don't worry," I told him. "The Network won't kill you for this. They'll probably just lock you away for observation for a few hundred years."

  "They may be surprised by what they learn."

  I turned to him. "You really are crazy, aren't you?"

  "The road, agent!"

  I swerved to avoid a head-on collision with a truck. Steadying the car, I cursed under my breath. That's what I get for thinking too deeply about a closed case.

  When we arrived at headquarters, two guards waited to take Anastasius into custody. Dr. Winter stood beside the lawyer he'd contacted for Anastasius. I gritted my teeth. The slender young blond was one of the finest attorneys our kind could hire.

  Great. After all my work Kacey would probably get off with a hundred years of community service.

  Is that really so disappointing? Anastasius' thoughts touched mine as he was led away and I slid into my car. You're not exempt from loving mortals, Marjorie. One day, one of yours may need me.

  If I loved one that much, I'd do the job myself, I fired my own thoughts back at him, though I wondered if I could. Could I endure the bitter taste of death and not pull away in disgust?

  I hope you never know, Marjorie Colson. I hope in the chilly dark, with death on your tongue and brittle bones in your arms, you never have to decide.

  The End

 

 

  Kate Hill, Ancient Blood 00 The Taste Of Death

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