Dr. Feldman gave a tiny jerk of her head and the orderlies stepped back. The four of them stood like the pillars of Stonehenge around the bed. Swann and Schmidt lingered by the rear wall. Only Dr. Feldman approached the bed on which Fayne lay, his face turned away toward a blank wall. There were no windows in this dreary, cheerless little room. The walls were not padded; instead they were a featureless off-white that Swann thought was the least tranquil and comforting color choice he could imagine.
“Mr. Fayne?” said Dr. Feldman. “Can you hear me?”
Fayne said nothing and continued looking at the blank wall.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Fayne?”
Fayne snorted.
“Do you understand why you’re here?” asked Feldman.
Fayne turned his head very slowly to face her. Swann saw Alice Feldman start ever so slightly and a deep frown etched its way onto her face. She shot a quick look at her orderlies and then over at Swann.
Swann and Schmidt took a half step forward and then stopped. Even from that distance they could see that there was something different about Michael Fayne. Schmidt stiffened, and Swann could feel his blood turn to ice water.
Fayne knew that everyone could see the change. He wore a strange expression. Almost a smile, but not quite. His lips were curled upward but he looked like he was in pain.
“I know why I’m here,” he said.
And his voice was different, too. Deeper. Thicker.
Feldman quietly cleared her throat. “And why are you here, Mr. Fayne?”
The prisoner closed his eyes for a moment but his half-smile lingered. “It’s not because they think I killed those girls.”
“No? Then why?”
He tried to raise one hand but there wasn’t much slack on the restraint. The action made the whole bed tremble. The sound was unusually loud, as if there was a lot more power in the motion than there appeared to be. Than there could have been.
“I’m here because you got beds like this and a goon squad and lots of drugs,” said Fayne. “That’s why they brought me here.”
He opened his eyes and Swann shifted again to get a better look, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. The irises had somehow changed their color from a medium brown to a dark red, as dark as smoke-stained bricks. Almost black. The sclera had also changed, darkening from blue-white to a bloody red.
“Jesus,” gasped Max. “Doc — ?”
“He’s hemorrhaging,” Swann snapped. The orderlies surged forward.
“No!” growled Feldman. “Don’t touch him.”
Everyone froze, staring at the young man on the bed.
Schmidt gripped Swann’s arm, maybe to stop him from moving, maybe because he was reaching for an anchor in a moment that was drifting into strange waters.
Michael Fayne looked at the doctor and the detective and the orderly and the man who studied monsters.
And laughed.
It was one of the strangest sounds Luther Swann had ever heard. It was a deep, rumbling laugh that was all bass. So low it seemed to ripple along the floor and vibrate in Swann’s chest. Everyone in the room froze.
That laugh held so many emotions.
Insanity.
An unhinged mirth.
Absolute terror.
And a dark and endless promise.
“This is all a joke,” said Fayne, and now his whole voice was filled with the weird bass rumble. “You already know I killed them.”
Schmidt’s hand tightened on Swann’s arm.
“That I tore them apart. That I drank them.” There was laughter in Fayne’s voice but tears burned silver lines down his cheeks.
Three of the orderlies took small steps backward from the bed; only Max held his ground, but his look of calm control had slipped several notches. He kept flicking uncertain glances between Fayne and Dr. Feldman.
“That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?” demanded Fayne, his voice low but filled with strange passions. “You want me to say it, don’t you?”
“No,” someone said, and Swann realized that it was own voice. In very real point of fact, he did not want this young man to say anything more. Not a word.
Dr. Feldman held her composure. “We want to know the truth, Mr. Fayne. We want to know what happened.”
“Don’t lie to me,” snarled Fayne, and his voice was huge, like a physical blow made of sound and rage. Everyone staggered back, two of the orderlies clapped hands to their ears. Dr. Feldman cried out and turned sharply, digging for a tissue with one hand and pressing the trembling fingers of her other hand to her nose. Blood bubbled from both nostrils and flowed in red lines over her lips and chin. Bright scarlet drops splattered on the spotless white of her coat.
Fayne’s eyes snapped in that direction and Swann heard him make a low, desperate sound. A moan. Of pain?
Or hunger?
“God … oh, God …,” said Feldman in a small voice as she struggled to stem the flow of blood. “Mr. Fayne …”
Fayne’s eyes burned as he stared at the blood. He struggled to sit up, to lean closer to the blood. “I —I …”
Max stepped close to the bed and placed a huge hand on Fayne’s chest, pressing him flat down on the bed. The way Max moved, it was clear that he expected to slam the smaller man down, but there was a moment’s delay between his push and any reaction. Muscles stood out in sharp definition on Max’s arm and his face tightened with effort and anger. Swann saw surprise register on the giant’s face.
“You settle your ass down, right now,” growled Max.
Fayne reluctantly shifted his eyes away from Feldman’s bloody nose; he looked up into Max’s eyes, and in a voice that was once more totally human and totally vulnerable.
“Kill me,” he whispered.
The moment froze.
Max said, “What?”
“Kill me,” begged Fayne. “Do it now. Please, for the love of God.”
Max looked momentarily confused. “Look … sir … I need you to settle down. I need you stop … whatever you’re doing and act right, okay? No one wants to hurt you, so —”
“God, you’re all so fucking stupid,” whispered Fayne. He turned to Swann. “You! You understand what’s going on. Tell them. For God’s sake, tell them to kill me.”
The orderlies glanced at Swann. So did Alice Feldman, who was finally slowing the flow of blood.
“Tell them what I am!” screamed Fayne. “Tell them that I’m a goddamned vampire!”
— 20 —
October 12, 8:24 p.m.
Bellevue Hospital
Zero Days until the V-Event
Yuki Nitobe cried out and nearly dropped her cell.
The digital image fed to her iPhone from the hidden camera carried a crystal clear picture and great sound quality.
She saw and heard everything.
Everything.
“Oh my … GOD!”
Part of her wanted to laugh. This was insane. It was bad comedy. It was some kind of trick the cops were playing on a mentally disturbed patient.
Part of her wanted to run. Those bottomless dark eyes. That voice.
Part of her need to stay right there. Watching. Recording.
Getting ready to become the most famous reporter in the history of journalism.
That part of her forced her to sit there in the empty office and keep watching. But a bead of cold sweat crept crookedly down from her throat to between her breasts, right over her wildly beating heart.
— 21 —
October 12, 8:28 p.m.
Zero Days until the V-Event
“Vampire?” one of the orderlies, a big redhead, barked out the word and then laughed. “What the hairy fuck are you — ?”
“Shut up,” snapped Swann, Schmidt and Feldman all at the same time.
The room crashed into a hard silence.
“Tell them,” said Fayne, but his voice was weaker now, paler. Broken.
Max fished some clean tissues out of his pocket and handed them to Feldman. “Doc, you need to get out of here. We need to get that looked at.”
Alice Feldman shook her head in irritation.
“Professor Swann?” she said.
Swann wanted so badly to just bolt out of the door and get the hell away from here. Far away from here.
“Luther,” murmured Schmidt, and it was the first time the detective had used his first name.
Swann took a deep breath and tried to clear the terror off his face.
“Mr. Fayne … Michael … ,” he began, “do you know what’s happening? Do you really understand it?”
Fayne’s dark eyes were inhuman, but his tears were not. He slowly shook his head.
“We can’t rush to slap a label on this, Michael,” continued Swann. “You understand that, right?”
Fayne nodded. A sob broke in his chest.
Swann took a step forward, paused for another steadying breath, and then went all the way around to the side of the bed. He gently pushed past Max and stood close to the restrained man.
“I know how all this looks,” Swann said, “but you need to understand that we’re not looking to simply solve some crimes and —”
“Murders,” interrupted Fayne bitterly. “Don’t pussy around with it. Call it what it is. You got to have the balls to at least do that much.”
Swann glanced at Schmidt, who gave a tight little nod.
“Murders,” said Swann reluctantly; and yet saying it seemed to steady him. Murders were still part of this world. “We’re not just trying to solve murders. You understand that, right? If it were just about that, they would never have brought me in and they would never have brought you here.”
Fayne considered that, and nodded.
“This is bigger than that,” continued Swann. “This goes deeper than that. We need to know what caused this.”
“ ‘Caused it’?”
Swann nodded. “When we were speaking earlier, you told me that this happens during blackouts, and that the blackouts — this kind of blackout — something that only recently started happening to you. Do you remember telling me that?”