Bloodbank (Monterey Shorts) Read online

  Bloodbank by Mark C. Angel

  P.O. Box 22594, Carmel, CA 93922

  markcangel.com

  All righs reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any way or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information sorage and retrival system, without written permission from the author, except for the incusion of brief quotations in a review. For information regarding permissions write to the publisher ANAMedia International, P.O. Box 221594, Carmel, CA 93922

  Copyrite 2005 by Mark C. Angel

  First published in Monterey Shorts 2 (2005) ISBN 0976009609

  Library of Congres Catologing in Publications

  Monterey Shorts 2/FWOMP 1st edition

  Books by Mark C. Angel

  Novel

  Rexrider: First World's End (Book 1)

  Short Stories:

  Bloodbank**

  Mortuary Beach*

  Snake Skin Jacket**

  Books published by ANAMedia International

  Short Stories (as ebooks):

  A Break in the Trail by Byron Merritt**

  A Place to Heal by Shaheen Schmidt*

  Donya's Spices by Shaheen Schmidt**

  Gods and ghosts by Chris Kemp**

  Finding Anna by Byron Merritt

  Love Potion by Shaheen Schmidt**

  Monte-Ray Gunn by Byron Merritt*

  Night Wounds Time by Chris Kemp**

  Resurrected by Chris Kemp*

  *First published by Thunderbird Publishing in the anthology Monterey Shorts (2003 ISBN 0967684846) and reproduced by permission of the authors.

  **First published by FWOMP Publishing in the anthology Monterey Shorts 2 (2005 ISBN 0976009609) and reproduced by permission of the authors.

  Bloodbank

  by

  Mark C. Angel

  Kamil climbed out from under heavy covers. He ran his fingers through his kinky hair and stepped over to the picture window in his room at the Bernardus Lodge, Carmel Valley, where he flung open the blackout curtains to gaze out.

  Beneath the moonless night, the soft light of outdoor lamps revealed a manicured courtyard filled with colorful native flora, elegant wood furnishings, and modern California ranch-style architecture. But those trappings didn’t interest Kamil much; he was more taken by the vista above. January stars filled the sky, an outstanding view courtesy of the coastal fog’s inclination to hang west of the Laureles Grade. “I love winter north of the tropics,” Kamil said to himself. “Nice long nights with plenty of time to hunt.”

  The sky seemed to darken as his preternatural vision adjusted and countless points of light blazed more brightly than any mortal would ever know. A few more moments passed, and Kamil saw what he thought might be a satellite passing across the inky blackness of the azimuth. If it were a satellite, however, it was unlike any he could remember: its light faded in and out at regular intervals.

  Kamil contemplated that it might be an asteroid tumbling through space, destined perhaps to miss the blue planet by the narrowest of margins, or . . .

  “Wouldn’t it be ironic if it hit us?” he mused. “Maybe then the Thirst would set us free.”

  The Thirst. It drove him to drink human blood again and again, and as such it was the core cause of his powers—heightened senses, enhanced strength, perfected memory, and a psychic link to each victim which permitted perception of the Flash.

  But all of these came with a price and his willingness to pay that price had faded. So his thoughts came to rest upon the one for whom he had come.

  Where might Lilac be?

  ***

  Kamil’s first and only interaction with Lilac had been in the summer of 1859, a profound exchange he still recalled vividly.

  He had been following the Italian wars of independence fought against Austria, visiting battlefields after skirmishes to hunt and collect the treasures of the nearly dead, while stealing personal histories from both sides of the trench via the Flash. It was while he grazed on injured combatants after the Battle of Solferino, Italy, that he met the ancient lamia.

  Smoke from cannon and musket tainted the warm night air and a downpour at dusk had transformed the earth into a bloody quagmire. Bullet- and bayonet-damaged bodies writhed in the throes of death in the midst of human remains sprinkled about impact craters. The sounds of misery were everywhere. So were putrid smells.

  Kamil felt right in his element.

  Lilac was squatting near a man with precious little time left. She wore clothing more befitting of an Austrian boy than of an experienced nighttime predator, her amber hair tucked beneath a black fisherman’s cap so the back of her neck glowed pale in the moonlight. Her thin build—90 pounds or so had she been flesh-and-blood—was misleading; a vampire’s skin and bones were much denser than that of a mortal’s, with blood that thickened over time into something akin to liquefied iron.

  Lifting the soldier’s head slightly, she held a canteen to his lips. “You will be with your god soon, do not fear,” she told him. Only after he had gasped his last breath did she help herself to his remains.

  Kamil recalled his revulsion at the sight of a fellow vampire feeding on the already dead, sucking at lifeless wounds. He had gone up to her boldly, even though he couldn’t tell how strong she was without touching her to gauge the density of her flesh.

  Since bodily contact was a risk he hadn’t been ready to take, he instead cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he offered. “Don’t you find that a bit repulsive?”

  “Not as repulsive,” she replied without looking up, “as countless sets of memories crammed into my mind. I value my sanity, thank you.”

  Kamil chuckled at her glib dismissal of the Flash. “Suit yourself,” he replied, dabbing a drop of blood off his chin with a handkerchief and flicking the mud off his shoe with a short kick that cracked like a whip. He continued to watch her feed with a grim fascination, until she began to exsanguinate a spleen.

  “That truly is disgusting!” he cringed.

  Lilac looked up. “And who asked for your opinion?”

  Kamil shrugged. A bad taste carpeted his tongue.

  She resumed sucking the soldier’s stagnant blood into her mouth.

  “What’s the point?” Kamil straightened his topcoat. “Let their hearts do the work, pumping the blood as the gods intended. You are certainly giving meaning to that distasteful slander, ‘blood sucker’.”

  He slid over to another “moaner”. “It is alright, friend,” he said in a soothing voice, “you will be just fine soon enough.” Then he ripped the man’s neck open, enjoyed the natural flow of nectar, and reveled in his final moment, as the victim’s life flashed through Kamil’s mind.

  “I see you have yet to lose your enthusiasm for the Flash,” Lilac said, as she moved on to another soldier.

  Kamil licked his lips with the faux innocent look of a boy who had pulled the wings off a butterfly. “I see it as preserving their memories for posterity; my duty as a historian, you see.” He spoke as if he believed it.

  His conviction failed to move Lilac. “I was making that same argument to myself when Alexander took Persepolis,” she replied. “But I have grown tired of reliving human suffering over and over again.”

  Kamil gave her a patronizing smile. “You ought to meet the Swiss businessman I heard talking this evening at a nearby inn. He was completely beside himself with horror at what he sa
w here. Dunant was his name...yes, Henri Dunant.” Kamil chuckled. “He had been seeking Napoleon III to discuss a deal of some sort, and passed by this very place: tens of thousands of men, each alone in the dirt, their lives leaking out from all sides. Lacked our innate appreciation for the spectacle, I guess.”

  Kamil bent down and gathered up another broken man. He drained the gasping soldier of his remaining blood and let the Flash pass into him—the ecstasy of knowing all the victim ever knew in a final frenzied flurry of right brain cell activity.

  Lilac continued ignoring him as she administered water to the fallen. Undeterred, he continued to talk to her. “This Dunant said something about following in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale and swore to anyone who would listen he was going to do something about the misery. He was looking for an appropriate symbol . . .”

  Lilac got up and brushed her hands against her front, before fixing him with a firm gaze.

  “You sneer at me.” Her statement was unencumbered by emotion. “Well, maybe your Henri Dunant is right.”

  Kamil found it difficult not to be unnerved by the grip of resolve in Lilac’s glance, and just barley managed to smile. “Please. I did not mean to offend your sensitivities. But it is not only a matter of blood. I just like knowing a little bit about these people. Have the gods not given us pristine recollection of all life memory details? Even languages? It is our nature.”

  “Who can say what our nature is—certainly not your victims!—not anymore!” Lilac stepped toward Kamil, regarding him closely. “And I, for one, am not presumptuous enough to assume I understand the motivations of the gods. Thousands of lives, all unique, all special to someone, if only to themselves. Then why, after centuries, have they come to seem all the same to me? Perhaps that is the path the gods are asking us to take, to come to a greater, a deeper understanding of the fates. Get past the pleasure of the Flash and discover what lies beyond. I am sorry if these concepts cause you discomfort and disdain.”

  She was back ministering to another dying man. Unshackled from her gaze, Kamil knelt to help himself to the next closest groaner. The hearts of these dying soldiers failed after only a few pumps, making it harder for him to satisfy his thirst. Fortunately, the Flash remained undiminished.

  “Maybe when you have been around as long as I have,” Lilac suddenly offered, “you will remember this night with a better understanding of my sentiments.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. I will say that it was good to have your company. I rarely run into a battleground companion. Most like us prefer healthy kills. But I do so like to vary my diet.”

  “Well, if you ever do tire of this mundane existence, consider looking me up in North America. I am headed there soon. It is a big country with big ideas, and the surroundings may help me find a more dignified way to satisfy the blood Thirst.”

  With those words she disappeared, too quickly for even Kamil’s keen eyes to follow.

  ***

  Lilac settled on the central coast of California. She gave last rites to Padre Serra before she sipped his serum near the Carmel Mission. Later, while John Steinbeck was writing about dustbowl immigration to the Central Valley, she enjoyed dead Muskogee Bloody Marys. When little Shirley Temple smiled on celluloid, soliciting membership for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief program, Lilac didn’t shed a rosy tear. But decades later, when she heard that the Red Cross’ Carmel chapter sought volunteers to staff their burgeoning blood program, she remembered the long-ago conversation about Dunant, and her interest peaked; evidently the man had founded his humanitarian organization and chosen a symbol like his native Swiss flag as its banner. She decided to investigate, hoping to find a way to renew her withered body, long deprived of fresh human blood. The advent of modern health care had been rough on her; fresh corpses were hard to come by, meaning far too often she had been forced to feed on road kill.

  But Dunant’s Red Cross program . . .

  The sun had just set when Lilac opened the doors to the detached garage of her modest Carmel Comstock cottage, nestled among twisting back roads in the southeast corner of the city. The heavy hinges protested loudly, stale from age and inactivity. Inside the musty garage, she pulled the cover off her black 1909 Silver Ghost, and slid behind the wheel.

  She backed the almost 60-year-old automobile out, wheels crunching on gravel, just as two neighborhood squirrels began to chew out a cat that watched them from its perch on a rickety redwood fence—as exciting an event as took place in this neck of the woods. The rodents launched a chewed pine cone at the feline, but their aim was wanting. The woody missile bounced off the hood of the classic Rolls-Royce.

  Angered, Lilac leapt up into the air from the convertible, shooting past the tree’s lower branches and, in a single motion, grabbed the furry perpetrators. By the time she dropped back to the earth, more gracefully than any feline could, the gray critters were drained of their blood, their scattered little memories dancing like dragonflies in her mind. She instantly regretted her action, and shook her head in a vain attempt to rid herself of their thoughts. She dropped the twin carcasses on the ground for the benefit of the fat cat that was now caressing her legs. The lazy hunter sauntered off with first one, then the other, and disappeared behind a hedge.

  Lilac regarded the small dent on the roadster’s hood, and considered how the vehicle—which she had bought new to celebrate her 50th anniversary of swearing off the Flash—was the only thing in her life she preserved with any particular care. In truth, she felt an affinity to her cherished Ghost, as she shared many characteristics with it. Her skin was nearly as hard as metal, her eyes shined like silver trimmed carbide head-lamps, and her temperament could run as cold as its midnight steel.

  Lilac slid behind the wheel gingerly and backed out—protected from the last rays of the setting sun by the dripping summer fog—and in no time found herself cruising down Ocean Avenue looking at the pedestrians mindlessly enjoying their evening walks. She found a parking space on Eighth Avenue near Dolores Street and got out into the brisk offshore breeze. She turned the corner and walked up to the front door of the Carmel Chapter House, passing the cockling American flag and Red Cross colors. Even though it was after closing time, she saw one person through the brightly-lit windows—a middle-aged woman who sat talking on the phone.

  Lilac hid her gaunt face and pallid complexion behind a loosely-tied head scarf, and knocked firmly. The woman hung up, straightened her red blazer and came to greet Lilac, smiling through the glass with plump, rosy lips that were almost too much to resist.

  “Hi,” the woman called out cheerfully through the panel-glazed split French door. “We’re closed now. Is this an emergency?”

  Lilac cleared her parched throat. She hadn’t spoken in a while and her larynx had become stiff. “I, hchm . . . would like to volunteer.”

  “Um . . . well . . . ah, yes,” the Red Crosser said skeptically as she scrutinized this creature who appeared to be on the very threshold of death. “We are always looking for volunteers.”

  She cracked the door open and reached through it to take her visitor’s hand. “I’m Dee, the chapter manager.”

  Lilac kept her hands huddled inside her cloak.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude,” Dee began, retracting her hand awkwardly, “but do you think you could come back another time? I was just getting ready to go home.”

  The gaunt woman stared with a purposefully unreadable look, before she replied, with a well-calculated pinch of desperation. “I . . . ah . . . only have evenings available, and I really feel the, ah . . . craving to volunteer.”

  “Well, we do need volunteers, but the work is sometimes physically demanding.” Lilac knew this last was meant to discourage her, but she also knew that if she persisted, this woman would not be able to turn her away. The neediness flowed off of her; not to mention that Lilac had read it in the newspapers: the chapter was having a hard time filling its volunteer ranks. Lilac focused her concentration on the visage before her.r />
  It didn’t take long. “Well, maybe I can stay a little longer,” Dee said. “Why don’t you come in for a moment and have some coffee and cookies?”

  The chapter manager opened the front door fully and stepped aside to let Lilac enter. She led her visitor in and gestured toward a table with a plate of sugar cookies on it, helping her guest take a seat next to it before disappearing into the kitchen. “Cream or sugar?” she called to Lilac.

  “Black, thank you.”

  Dee brought two steaming mugs to the table.

  “Now, let’s see,” Dee sipped her coffee. “What kind of volunteering did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking . . . hchm . . . blood.”

  “Blood?” Dee repeated meekly. Lilac watched her hostess’ stomach muscles twitch and the hairs on her neck stir—a visceral reaction to Lilac’s force of will. The vampire took care to ease up. The woman was obviously somewhat agreeable by nature. No need to overdo it.

  Dee brightened almost immediately. “Oh . . . right, right. Since we announced our new partnership with the Red Cross Blood Center in San Jose, we have been seeking volunteers to help us collect blood.”

  The look of skepticism crossed Dee’s face again.

  Lilac snickered quietly enough not to be heard. “I-I don’t look so good right now,” the vampire stammered, while slightly increasing her command. “But I’ll get better. I haven’t taken my . . . medication for some time.”

  Dee looked as if she were deep in thought, then snapped out of it. “I think I have an idea!” she said.

  ***

  In a month Dee’s brainstorm had come to fruition. The Carmel Pine Cone ran a hand-painted portrait of Lilac—she had refused a photo shoot, citing religious reasons—along with a full page plea for donors to collect blood for the brave soldiers fighting the good fight in Vietnam.