Crimson Death

Nolan looked at me. “Well, Blake?”

I appreciated that he asked my opinion and not Edward’s. I think he was trying to make up for the yelling match. “Not as fast, and the newly dead won’t know how to harness all that superstrength yet. Magda has had years of training and practice. She’s not only stronger and faster than human-normal, but she knows how to use all of it. You’ve got a suburban mom and two teenage girls. Just being vampires won’t make them instant martial arts experts or give them washboard abs; that takes work whether you’re dead or alive.”

“So will the other cell hold the new vampires?” he asked.

I looked at Magda. “Will it?”

She nodded. “For a few nights, yes, but they will learn how strong they are, and they will begin to use that strength. They will also learn how to use the other things they have gained from becoming vampire.”

“You mean mind tricks,” Nolan said.

“Their gaze can trap you and make you into their slave. It can turn a man against his friends and family.”

“It doesn’t work over cameras. As long as we don’t open the door and look them in the eye, we’ll be fine.”

“You’ll have to feed them,” I said.

“We’ll shove in some bags of plasma,” he said.

I shook my head. “They can’t feed on old blood, only fresh.”

“We can get rats to put in the cell.”

“First, the vampires are still at some level going to be who they were in life, so I don’t think that shoving live rats in a room with a mother and two kids is the best idea.”

“You mean they’ll be afraid of the rats?” Donnie asked.

I nodded.

“I know where we can buy rabbits,” Flannery said.

“They would drink the blood of animals, but it won’t sustain them.”

“What does that mean, it won’t sustain them?”

“It means that animal blood fills their stomachs, but it’s missing some ingredient that keeps the bodies from rotting. The brain stays intact and working, but the body starts to rot like a zombie’s does. They still have eternal life unless they’re killed, but the looking-just-like-they-did-at-death rots away.”

“How do you know that?” Donnie asked.

“I’ve seen a master vampire that tried to give up feeding on people. It was pretty horrible.”

“Is there any way to reverse the process?” Flannery asked.

“Yes, but not without literally sacrificing other people’s lives to replace the energy the vampire has lost through trying to go their version of vegetarian.”

“You mean they have to consume enough blood to kill people?”

“No, literally the ritual that might fix the damage requires human sacrifice. I’ve never heard of it being done successfully, but I was approached by someone who wanted me to help them do it.”

“They wanted you to perform the ritual?” Flannery asked.

“No, they wanted me to be one of the human sacrifices.”

His eyes went wide. “Cheeky buggers.”

“I thought so.”

“What did you do to stop them?” Nolan asked.

“I’ve already told you what stop means to me, Nolan.”

We looked at each other for a long minute, and then he nodded. “Yes, you have.”

I felt Magda move beside me, and something about it made me turn and look. She was watching Brennan walk up the hallway toward us. We were also standing in the way of the only exit from the cell block, so he had to come this way to leave, but it had still put Magda on alert. I didn’t blame her.

Mort stepped a little in front of her, so that Brennan would have to pass in front of him and not Magda. I had a moment to see how much smaller Mort was than the werelion. He wasn’t just shorter; he also was one of those men who muscled but didn’t bulk up much, so that he looked almost delicate standing in front of her. Since Mort was three inches taller than me, it let me understand just how tiny I must appear to everyone else.

Brennan stopped his six feet of tall, dark, and brooding handsome in front of Mort. “Would you actually protect her against me?”

“Magda did what we asked her to do: point out the flaws in our system.”

“Would you stand with her against me?”

“She didn’t point a gun at me, Brennan. You did.”

“I wasn’t aiming at you. I was aiming at her.” And he pointed a finger at Magda as he said it.

“Do you really think that you could have hit her without hitting me?”

“Yes,” he replied, but he was a little too defensive about it. He’d gotten spooked by Magda and he’d let his fear make him foolish.

Magda took a step forward and Brennan took one back; even with Mort between them he didn’t want to be closer to the werelion. Crap, we might have broken him for this duty; if he couldn’t get over being this afraid of wereanimals, not only couldn’t he work with us but he’d be a deficit working with any of the preternaturals.

“Donnie, escort Brennan to medical. I want him checked out.”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion, Brennan. I gave Donnie an order,” Nolan said.

“Do you actually believe that I would do anything to endanger a member of my own team?”

“I’ll review the recording and then we’ll revisit this topic. For now, I want you to go with Donahue to medical.”