After Jay left, Kristi spent over an hour instant messaging different screen names and joining chats online, some of which were disturbing, others which were silly and just plain inane. She figured those were probably filled with kids just messing around on their computers when they were supposed to be sleeping. However one room, dedicated to blood in literature, as opposed to shape-shifters, werewolves, or vampires in the campiest and most twenty-first century of meanings, intrigued her. For the most part she lurked, watching the conversation between several of the partic.i.p.ants. Whereas some of the chat rooms talked up the Buffy Buffy television series to death and another focused on the television series to death and another focused on the Blade Blade movies, this one dealt with vampires in literature, and for a minute Kristi thought Dr. Dominic Grotto himself might be leading the discussion. There was a little talk about Count Dracula, the work of Bram Stoker, questions about Elizabeth of Bathory, the countess who bathed in the blood of her subjects, and even Vlad III, the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, whom the discussion suggested was the inspiration for Bram Stoker in creating the character of Count Dracula. Some talk centered around Transylvania and Romania and fact versus fiction, and questions abounded about the drinking of blood. movies, this one dealt with vampires in literature, and for a minute Kristi thought Dr. Dominic Grotto himself might be leading the discussion. There was a little talk about Count Dracula, the work of Bram Stoker, questions about Elizabeth of Bathory, the countess who bathed in the blood of her subjects, and even Vlad III, the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, whom the discussion suggested was the inspiration for Bram Stoker in creating the character of Count Dracula. Some talk centered around Transylvania and Romania and fact versus fiction, and questions abounded about the drinking of blood.
But all in all, in this particular chat room, the partic.i.p.ants seemed interested in more than trying to score some shock value; they seemed sincere in their quests, whatever they were.
Kristi poured herself a gla.s.s of Diet c.o.ke, then made notes on everyone who partook of the chat and what their particular bend was. Or at least she kept track of the screen names they used, all of which, it seemed, included some reference to the subject. Since she wanted to blend into the group, she had signed in with the screen name of ABneg1984, though her own blood type was O positive and she wasn"t born in 1984. She used a couple of blind aliases to hide her true ident.i.ty and asked a question or two every five minutes, just to keep the other users from thinking she was spying on them.
Which, of course, was the whole point of her being online at this unG.o.dly hour.
It was a bit of a juggling act as she kept several screens open at the same time. They each were dedicated to a different live chat room, and, at first, she had a little trouble keeping up with all the conversations. Soon, however, she was getting the hang of it and clicked out of a few that seemed off topic. What she needed were other people online from Baton Rouge or at least Louisiana. There was just no way to tell by the screen names and as far as she could tell the chatters could be from anywhere in the known universe.
It was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, even though she tried to narrow down the rooms by mentioning Louisiana.
Finally, in the intellectual-sounding room, there was mention of All Saints Campus and vampirism.
"Bingo," Kristi whispered as if she were afraid the other chatters could actually hear her. Fortunately, her laptop mic and camera were disabled. She couldn"t believe her good luck. Someone by the name of Dracoola lived nearby. Or at least had connections to the school.
She lurked. Waiting. Tried to read between the lines, even going so far as visualizing the different characters, many of whom supplied their own icons. Blood drops, snarling fangs, and flying bats seemed to be the favorites. People came and went, but some of the chatters seemed in for the night. One was JustO, who eventually mentioned Dr. Grotto"s cla.s.s.
Kristi felt a tingle of antic.i.p.ation. Things were coming closer to home. "Now you"re talkin"."
Several people responded, all agreeing. Kristi quickly scribbled down the screen names for Dracoola, JustO, Carnivore18, Sxyvmp21, Deathmaster7, and Dmin8trx.x.x. "Sheesh," Kristi said to the cat, who stopped short, skittery, halfway to his bowl. "Who are are these people?" Houdini pressed himself to the wall, all muscles tense. these people?" Houdini pressed himself to the wall, all muscles tense.
Kristi tried to think of a way to bring up the missing girls, but the conversation wasn"t segueing in that direction and she wanted to buddy up to the weirdos who spent their nights virtually talking to strangers about blood and vampires and otherworldly beings. She let the others guide the conversation, all the while trying to find out something, some little hint about vampire cults on campus, or some connection to the women who had gone missing. One of the latecomers to the conversation had a screen name of DrDoNoGood and there was something about his questions, something a little bit familiar, that disturbed her.
Did she know this guy?
Or was it a woman?
A medical doctor? Wannabe? PhD? A James Bond/ Ian Fleming fanatic as his name might be a play on words for Dr. No Dr. No?
He asked another question and she froze. She"d seen that very question before in her study notes for her cla.s.s with Dr. Grotto.
Could DrDoNoGood be a cybernet alias for Dr. Dominic Grotto?
Her mind raced. What was the meaning of his name? Or was she just jumping to conclusions in the dead of night? Or...
Her pulse jumped as she read only the capital letters in the screen name. DDNG or DrDNG.
Didn"t Grotto"s middle name begin with N? Or, again, was she forcing a connection? Making something out of nothing? Hadn"t she seen Grotto"s name somewhere? From something she"d gotten from the school?
With her attention split between the computer screen and the bookshelves over her desk, she located the course handbook for the college. It was beat-up and dog-eared, but she flipped it open to the section on the staff of All Saints College. "Come on, come on," she murmured, barely managing to stay on top of the conversation discussing the ritual of drinking blood and the s.e.xuality inherent in the act.
"Yuck." She shuddered. "No thanks." Flipping the pages, she finally saw Dr. Grotto"s picture. d.a.m.n, he was good-looking. Piercing eyes, strong chin, high forehead, and dark hair. Underneath his photo she read: Dominic Nicolai Grotto, PhD.
Could it be?
DrDoNoGood and Dr. Dominic Nicolai, one and the same?
She couldn"t prove it, but she felt a rush, the same gut instinct her father experienced when he would figure out a clue in some homicidal maniac"s twisted game.
"Like father, like daughter," she told herself as she asked a simple question about the cla.s.s.
She wondered if there was a way to uncover his ident.i.ty, some way to flush him out. Maybe she could pander to his vanity, complain about him as a teacher and see what happened.
Still reading the conversation, now about cultural mores and human blood, she pulled out her cla.s.s notes. Maybe if she quoted him, she"d get a response...and if she said something about him being more an actor than an intellectual, more into theatrics than literature, she was certain he"d be unable to pa.s.s that up. She pulled up another screen in the program on which she kept her notes, but before she could come up with a significant question, he logged off.
"What! No!" she cried, and quickly reopened the other chat room screens, hoping he"d show up somewhere else. But he wasn"t anywhere she could find. If he"d entered another cyber chat, it was one she hadn"t located. "Of all the bad luck!" She tossed the school catalogue aside and was about to close out the windows for the chat rooms when she saw a strange question in the room so recently vacated by DrDoNoGood.
Deathmaster7 asked: Do you wear a vial?
Kristi froze.
Three people responded with a yes while one, Carnivore18, answered with a question mark. Obviously Carnie didn"t get it either. One person didn"t respond and two typed in no. no. Kristi decided to go with the flow and responded Kristi decided to go with the flow and responded yes. yes.
Carnivore18 created a line of question marks. He clearly felt out of it.
"Join the club," Kristi said, and wondered how she should prod the conversation along. But she remembered something-hadn"t Lucretia mentioned that some of the girls in the "cult" and Dr. Grotto"s cla.s.s wore vials of their own blood?
Deathmaster7 asked: Whose?
Kristi stared at the screen, her pulse leaping at the thought that she might have just stumbled onto the connection she needed to find out more about the vampire cult that was supposedly on campus. But she had to be careful, not answer too quickly. What if she were wrong? What if Lucretia had given her bad information? Fingers poised over the keyboard, she waited.
The only one who responded was JustO: Mine. Who else"s?
Kristi grinned. "How about that."
None of the other chatters was responding but Kristi wanted to keep this alive. Following JustO"s lead she typed: My own.
The other vial wearers were strangely silent until they, too, answered along the lines of JustO. Were they reticent to tell the truth, or like Kristi, liars with their own agendas?
For the first time since logging on, she sensed she was getting somewhere and could barely contain herself. She bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood as she thought. Kristi was certain JustO was cyber-texting about blood. So who was she or he? How, if at all, was he or she connected to the cult? Kristi tried to imagine who JustO was. Someone in Dr. Grotto"s cla.s.s? Someone she saw every time she stepped into the cla.s.sroom? Was his or her name, like Kristi"s, for the purpose of this chat room all about blood? Was JustO"s blood type O?
Kristi felt a rush of adrenaline and could barely sit still. She felt certain this person was female, though she couldn"t quite put her finger on why. She just had some sense of it. Almost like a memory.
Could it be that JustO really did wear a vial of her own...Oh, G.o.d! It hit Kristi then. She did know who this person was! She was sure of it. Hadn"t she heard of a student at All Saints who went by one initial. Just "O"?
Kristi"s own father had mentioned the girl. He"d interviewed "O" while investigating a homicide a couple of years earlier. It had been one of the cases that had been linked to Our Lady of Virtues, the abandoned mental hospital located a few miles outside of New Orleans. One of the victims of that particular nutcase had been a student here, at All Saints.
Detectives Bentz and Montoya had driven to Baton Rouge, where they"d interviewed students, family, and staff. One of them had been a girl who had worn a vial of her own blood around her neck.
Feeling almost dizzy with the connection, Kristi stretched her arms over her head, hearing her spine pop, but still she kept her gaze fastened to the conversation on her monitor. Her mind spun backward as she remembered the conversation that had taken place in her father"s living room. She hadn"t been living with him then, but she"d been visiting. Olivia hadn"t been home, but Bentz and Montoya had been discussing the case and Montoya mentioned something about the "weird Goth girl" wearing her own blood. She hadn"t wanted to be called Ophelia, her given name. She"d told the detectives to call her "O" or "Just O".
There was was a girl named Ophelia in Grotto"s cla.s.s, a sullen, quiet girl who always sat at the back of the room. Kristi hadn"t actually met her face to face, hadn"t been close enough to notice if she wore a chain around her neck and a tiny vial of her own blood. a girl named Ophelia in Grotto"s cla.s.s, a sullen, quiet girl who always sat at the back of the room. Kristi hadn"t actually met her face to face, hadn"t been close enough to notice if she wore a chain around her neck and a tiny vial of her own blood.
But that was about to change.
Even though the idea of anyone taking the time to draw blood, seal it in a tiny bottle, then wear it...Jesus, that was really out of the boundaries of normal.
The screen flickered and JustO logged out of the chat room.
Kristi felt a sense of disappointment. She knew she was on the verge of something important, though she wasn"t certain what. She glanced at the clock on the computer screen and groaned. It was nearly two and she had an early morning cla.s.s. Besides, she really needed to think about what she"d learned online. Process it. It was probably just as well that JustO had left the conversation, which seemed to be rapidly going downhill. Even Carnivore18 gave up the ghost and logged off.
Her eyes burning from lack of sleep and staring at the monitor, Kristi closed out all of the open screens and thought about how she would approach O, the quiet girl, how she would get her to admit that she was JustO. If the vial were visible, that might start the conversation, but Kristi would have to pretend to be someone else because ABneg1984 had bragged about wearing her own blood and Kristi couldn"t fake it. If the people wearing the vials were part of a cult, there was probably a certain vial they used, maybe a certain necklace on which it hung, some sort of conformity that would make it immediately evident if she came up with a fake. Maybe the vials were a certain shape, or etched, or dark gla.s.s or...Oh, she couldn"t think about it now.
Yawning, she stretched again and envied the cat, who was already back in his hideaway.
She wasn"t certain of the significance of what she"d just discovered, but it sure looked like it had a lot to do with Dr. Grotto"s vampyrism cla.s.s. Maybe the cult Lucretia had mentioned was a subject of the cla.s.s.
"I don"t know what the h.e.l.l is going on, but I"m definitely getting closer to something...something that"s going to make one h.e.l.luva book," she said aloud as she switched off the computer and watched the screen turn black.
Why in the world would anyone wear a vial of their own blood? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the girls who had vanished?
She walked to the window overlooking the campus.
Somewhere out there, was a predator, someone preying on students who took a particular combination of courses. "So who are you, you sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" she whispered. "Just who the h.e.l.l are you?"
It was hours after midnight and Vlad felt an insatiable hunger, a craving he could no longer fight. The need to kill thundered through his brain as he drove ever closer to New Orleans, the tires of his van singing along the pavement, the traffic at this late hour thin and spotty.
All the better.
It was wrong to hunt tonight.
Dangerous.
He could easily make a mistake.
And then who could he blame?
Only himself.
This he knew. Yet Vlad could wait no longer. He knew there was a protocol, a reason to wait for the killing.
And yet, he found it impossible to tamp down his urge, and for that, he had the "lessers," the women who would suffice physically if not intellectually.
And there were issues to deal with. A naysayer who had to be quieted, a guilty conscience that had to be silenced or all would be lost, and he couldn"t allow that.
His head began to throb.
He was empty. Hungry. Yearned for the thrill of the kill.
Could no longer hold back.
And he rationalized that this, tonight"s kill, would be a sacrifice to her, the one to whom he was forever linked, the one to whom he was fated.
And perhaps this unplanned killing of another lesser would throw the police off, send those who suspected on a wrong path in a different city.
Don"t do this. If you succ.u.mb to temptation, if you kill, you could be exposed, your mask stripped from your face.
His hand began to tremble as he considered turning around, resisting the urge that was a living breathing thing within him, a need so fierce he was its slave.
A willing slave.
He swallowed hard and felt the emptiness within. His hand steadied on the steering wheel as he saw the bright lights of New Orleans washing up against the night sky in the distance.
There was no turning back.
He knew the one he wanted...the perfect woman. Her skin was near translucent, her neck a long, welcoming arch, her body firm and ripe. His skin flushed, his own flesh heating at the thought of taking her.
Alive...oh, she needed to be alive, to know that theirs would be a hard, night-long union of pa.s.sion and l.u.s.t where she could satisfy his every need. And then she would give him the ultimate gift of her lifeblood.
Oh, how he would take her tonight.
He felt a throb of antic.i.p.ation heat his veins at the thought and savored what he would do to her. Before. And after.
From deep in his throat came a soft growl of antic.i.p.ation. Of need. He heard his own blood pumping through his veins, felt his pulse jump in expectation of the night ahead.
He closed his eyes for the barest of seconds, felt his erection hard and strong and straining. Which was good. Necessary. He needed the edge, the relentless resolution, the sheer testosterone-driven will that kept him sharp, cunning, and ruthless.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror and smiled at his transformation. His disguise was complete. No one would recognize him. Eagerly, he took the off-ramp he wanted, then wound through the city, driving carefully, under the speed limit on the empty streets. He knew where to park, where to wait.
He"d planned this one for a long time, knowing that at some point he would give in to his needs and search for a lesser one who would satisfy him for the next few days. Until the next.
The street on which he parked was nearly deserted, in a section of the city where the hurricane"s wrath had been mighty. There were a few parked cars, some abandoned and tagged, a few others occupying stretches of the battered street. He rolled down the driver"s window and breathed deep of the cool winter air. Even here, in a desolate section of the city, the Louisiana night felt alive. He heard the sound of insects buzzing, the whirr of bat wings in flight, and he smelled them all, a rat scurrying into a sewer hole, a racc.o.o.n searching the street for garbage, a snake slithering up the side of a tree.
Far off was the m.u.f.fled sound of traffic on the freeway. Every so often headlights cut through the night and a car rolled past.
His nostrils flared and he drank it all in, his eyes easily adjusting to the dark. l.u.s.t was his constant companion. It had been since he"d been eleven or twelve, maybe younger....
He leaned back against the cushions of the driver"s seat, his hands tapping on the steering wheel. There were several lessers he wanted, those whose lives would be given without the elaborate rituals of the ent.i.tled, ones he"d earmarked for just the purpose of the letting of their blood. This one, the woman he would sacrifice tonight, would not be missed for several days. In that she was perfect.
He knew she would come. He"d watched her before, had met her several times, here in New Orleans. She was beautiful, her body toned, but she had no interest in improving her mind. And that was her mistake. Her soul could not be elevated. She was not royal, only a servant.
As are you, that nagging voice in his head chided. that nagging voice in his head chided. Are you the master? Of course not! You gave your free will over long ago and here you are, adhering to rules that you find restraining. Whether you admit it or not, there is a chain around your neck, one that is always kept taut. Are you the master? Of course not! You gave your free will over long ago and here you are, adhering to rules that you find restraining. Whether you admit it or not, there is a chain around your neck, one that is always kept taut.
He closed his mind to such arguments, knew they were blasphemy. He saw her then, walking alone, the friend who was sometimes with her missing. Good. She strode briskly in her high heels, her footsteps sharp and hard. Determined. Trademarks of a strong woman.
A dancer.
Who called herself Bodiluscious, but whose real name was Karen Lee Williams.
Wearing a short miniskirt, crop top, and jean jacket, she walked alone on this desolate street, heels clicking on the pavement. She probably knew better than to walk this way, but it was the quickest, straightest shot to her small house.
And a perfect place to become lost.
He waited until she was nearly a block away and then he slipped noiselessly from his vehicle. There were no lights, no alarms, just a soft little click of the door.