Crimson Death

40

THE ROOM WAS done in bright colors. One half of the room was a circus theme complete with a cartoon-circus-parade wall mural and a clown lamp beside the twin bed. The other half of the room was covered in posters of boy bands I didn’t know, some actors that I did know, and a rugby poster that seemed to be mostly a shot of buff men in small shorts fighting in mud. I’d never really thought of rugby as the male equivalent of women wrestling in oil, but suddenly I could see the analogy, because I was trying to see anything but the bodies in the room.

Helena Brady lay on the twin bed underneath the rugby poster with her daughter curled beside her. She had a protective arm around the girl, and if they’d been breathing, it would have been a charming example of mother-daughter love. The only positive was that Katie Brady looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old. If we could keep Katie from killing anyone else and the Irish legal system didn’t want to execute her for anything she’d already done, then as the years passed and she grew older in her mind and emotions, she’d have a body that would be adult enough to have a grown-up life.

Sinead Royce lay on the other bed underneath the circus parade. She looked older than Katie and could have easily passed for eighteen. “How old is this one?” I asked.

“Sixteen. They’re both sixteen,” Pearson said.

“How old is the younger sister that’s at the hospital?”

“Eight.”

“That’s a big age gap to share a room,” I said.

“They moved Michael Brady’s mother in with them after his grandfather died, and then moved her mother in when she had a bad fall, so the girls had to share a room.”

“The dutiful son and daughter,” Edward said.

“They were, or are, good people,” Pearson said.

I stared down at the bodies on the bed and was angry. “This isn’t right.”

“No,” Edward said, “it’s not.”

I shook my head. “One of the few taboos that all vampires have is you don’t bring over children. The two teenagers you could make a case for, because if the vampire is old enough they may think of sixteen as an adult, because for centuries it was, but whoever made Katie Brady a vampire let her loose on her family. Whoever made her had an obligation to keep track of her until she was able to think for herself, because like Ted says, one of the first things vampires do is go home. The vampire creator is supposed to keep that from happening.”

“Why?” Pearson asked.

“One, it’s morally questionable, but two, it’s bad for business. One of the ways that vampires got discovered back in the old days was that one person would die from some unknown disease, a wasting disease they used to call it, and then one by one the rest of the family would die, so someone would get the bright idea to dig up the first family member that died, and voilà, there’s the vampire. Most of the old vamps liked to stay in their coffins during the day, because it was the most sunlightproof place they knew, and some believed that they needed to sleep in their original coffin at night or they’d die at dawn and not rise again.”

“Are you saying that vampires are superstitious?” Sheridan asked.

“People are superstitious. Why not vampires?”

“Katie didn’t have a funeral. She went missing,” Pearson said.

“Modern burial techniques like embalming, or organ donation, will kill a vampire before it can rise the first time. If creator vampires want their offspring to rise from the dead, they’ll take the body with them and hide it.”

“You said if. Some vampires do not care if their—what did you call it—offspring rise?” Sheridan asked.

“You know how some people are crazy, or mean, or just careless?”

“Yes.”

“Vampires can be all those things, too.”

“What can we do for them?” Pearson asked.

“They’re all new enough that once darkness falls they will have to feed. If this is Mrs. Brady’s first night as a vampire, she will be uncontrollable, or at least not controllable by a baby vampire like Katie, or Sinead. I don’t mean baby vampire because they’re teenagers. I mean they’re less than a month dead. Whoever made Katie should still have her with them at night and be controlling how she feeds. There were rules against shit like this before vampires were legal.”

“In America, would you execute Katie?” Pearson asked.

“It depends on whether she’s outright killed someone that we can prove; for all we know some of the bodies with their throats torn out are hers.”

“I hope not,” he said.

“Me, too, but she had to be getting her blood somewhere besides her family.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she needs to feed every night, and she hasn’t been feeding on her family long enough to have them be her only food source.”

“How do you know that?”

“The parents wouldn’t have come to you two weeks ago demanding more action on her disappearance if she’d already started feeding on them.”

“She fed on Sinead.”

“Is her family still alive and well?”

“To our knowledge.”

“Do they live close to here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You might want to check on Sinead’s family, then.”

Pearson cursed as he walked out of the room, already on his phone. He was sending officers to the other home. I hoped the other family was okay. I didn’t really want this kind of moral dilemma twice in one day.