Free Manitou Blood by Graham Masterton Page B

which lead the sufferer to believe that they need to.”
    â€œSo Ms. Fireman is a nut job?”
    â€œ ‘Nut job’ isn’t a term we generally use here at the Sisters of Jerusalem, Lieutenant. For one thing, it’s not clinically specific. There are scores of different types of nut jobs, from bipolar depressives to full-blown sociopaths. And as I say, we haven’t yet completed all of our tests.”
    â€œDid she tell you
why
she drank the blood?”
    â€œShe said that the sunlight in her apartment made her feel as if she was burning, and she had to drink her friends’ blood to save herself from being cremated alive. It’s possible that the burning sensation was a genuine physical symptom, but her response to it was psychotic. It happens.I once had a patient with stomach cancer who seriously believed that he was being eaten from the inside out by alien insects, and tried to swallow Raid to kill them. When people suffer unbearable pain . . . well, it can seriously distort their perception of reality.”
    â€œOkay, accepted,” said Lieutenant Roberts. “But what I’m trying to ask you is, do you consider that she’s mentally competent? Do you think she can tell the difference between right and wrong?”
    The phone buzzed. Frank said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and picked up the receiver. He listened, and nodded, and then he slowly put the receiver down again, and kept his hand pressed on top of it, as if he were trying to make sure that it didn’t ring again.
    â€œWe have a problem, Lieutenant.”
    â€œA new problem, or the same problem got worse?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe both. About an hour ago, a young man was brought into the emergency room, vomiting blood like Ms. Fireman. He showed some signs of being sensitive to light, too—his skin was all covered in sun block. We analyzed the contents of his stomach and I’ve just been given the preliminary results.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œOver three liters of blood, none of it his.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œThat’s not all. Dr. Garrett has just had another one brought in. A middle-aged male, also vomiting blood, his face and his hands covered in thick foundation cream.”
    â€œAnother one? Maybe it’s some kind of blood-drinking cult.”
    â€œThere’s no way of telling
what
it is, not yet. It could be a virus, incubated by the heat and the high humidity. Or maybe it’s not a physical sickness at all. Maybe it’s some kind of mass hysteria.”
    â€œYou think it could be catching?”
    â€œThere’s no way of telling, not yet. We’re carrying out all the regulation disease-control protocols, in case it is.”
    Detective Mancini shouted, “
Okay, Ryker, for sure! I’ll talk to you later!
” He pushed his way back in through the door, catching his foot on the wastepaper basket.
    â€œWell?” asked Lieutenant Roberts.
    â€œRight on the button, Lieutenant. They found them in the kitchen. Two dead, a man and a woman, both in their twenties, both with their throats cut, both bled out.” He checked his notebook and sniffed. “Mr. Michael Harris and . . . Ms. Priscilla Trueman.”
    â€œOh, God,” said Frank. In spite of her confession, in spite of all the medical evidence, it still came as a shock to him that Susan Fireman’s story was true. He felt as if the lights had suddenly gone up in the middle of a horror movie, and he had found himself spattered in real, warm blood.
    â€œWell,” said Lieutenant Roberts, “it looks like we have ourselves a double homicide, and that’s just for starters.” He checked his large Rotary watch. “Since Ms. Fireman isn’t in a fit state to be interviewed, I think we’ll go take a look at her handiwork for ourselves, and come back later, if that’s convenient with you. I’ll also need to interview those other two patients