Free Blood Crimes: Book One by Dave Zeltserman

exhalation, then shook his head smiling grimly to himself. He wished he had some idea where
Jim
and his girlfriend had gone off to next.
M
ore than ever he wanted to find the sonofabitch and be done with the case. He checked his watch and sighed heavily. It was nine-ten. Almost four hours before that waitress would be off duty. He got back in his car and drove the two miles to the murder site. Before leaving his car he took the safety off his 9 mm and slipped the sap under his belt so he’d have easy access to it. He walked back into the alley hoping to come across someone who might’ve seen something the night Devon Wilkerson was killed. He waited patiently without any luck until quarter to one, then headed off to his date. 
 
    Chapter 4  
          
M
etcalf’s private lab was reminiscent of some nightmarish scene from the Island of Dr.
M
oreau , and like
M
oreau’s laboratory, was a place of pain and abomination. For
M
etcalf, the lab served dual purposes; it helped him gain insights into the effects of the virus, and it acted as a deterrent to the other vampires in the compound from thinking about challenging his authority. The test subjects were all infected with the vampire virus. Some were originally brought in as “cattle” and had the misfortune of being chosen for this capacity—which was a fate far worse than being milked until illness or anemia set in; others were members of the compound who needed to be made examples of. All of the test subjects had their arms and lower halves removed; which made them appear like grotesque doll-like creatures. Some were pinned to their tables by spikes through their shoulders, others were chained along the walls. All of them were in the midst of experiments that would’ve made even the infamous Joseph
M
engelev cringe in horror.
          
M
etcalf strolled casually around his lab examining his experiments. Those that were capable of screaming out fought hard to hold their tongues; they knew their situations, however horrific, could be made worse.
M
oans escaped from a few of them, whimpers from a few others, but most kept quiet.
M
etcalf stopped at a table where a test subject had reached six months without being fed. The subject had shriveled to the point of looking more like a prune than anything that could’ve ever been human. Its eyes appeared dead, its mouth gaping open.
M
etcalf pulled the spikes out from its shoulders and carried it to a scale. Only thirty-four pounds. Before the experiment was started, the subject had weighed more than double that.
M
etcalf brought it back to its table and pounded the spikes back where they’d been. Not even a whimper.
M
etcalf had doubts whether it was still alive. If it were dead it would be the first time that he witnessed a vampire dying due to starvation. Using an eyedropper,
M
etcalf squeezed a drop of human blood into the thing’s gaping mouth. A sucking sound came from it.
          “Still alive, huh?”
M
etcalf noted.
          He squeezed the remaining blood from the eyedropper into the gaping hole. The glaze over the vampire’s eyes faded and a flicker of life shone in them.
M
etcalf slowly fed it an ounce of blood, and as he did so, the vampire plumped out like a raisin that had been dropped in water. It stirred slightly, its tongue pushing out, then choking noises rattled from its throat as it pleaded for more blood.
M
etcalf continued to feed it blood until it was restored to its former condition. Four ounces of blood had brought the vampire fully back. The vampire lay with its chest heaving sucking in oxygen.
M
etcalf scribbled notes on a clipboard that hung on the edge of the table.
          “Please, no more…I’m begging…end it…please…end it…” the vampire forced out, its voice not much more than a hoarse whisper.
          
M
etcalf looked up and made a shushing noise to the vampire before moving on to check on other experiments. Although some of the vampires were made