Chapter 2:

The Bloodhound

BLOODBORNE

The second injection lasted seventeen hours.

By then Lucy had led us out of Chachapoyas in two black utility vehicles that looked absurd beside fruit trucks and motorbikes.

Ward rode with Lucy and me. Rivas and Bell followed with the heavier gear.

By then the camera had been around long enough that nobody performed for it anymore. Ward checked Lucy's pulse. Lucy complained. Rivas swore over comms. Bell asked me to stop filming while he urinated behind a wall.

The documentary had disappeared into the work.

Lucy slept under Ward's coat with wraparound glasses over her eyes.

"You always check her that often?" I asked.

"Yes."

"She's asleep."

"She's changing."

Lucy spoke without opening her eyes.

"Still here."

Ward did not apologize.

He explained the progression because I asked and because Lucy was listening anyway.

Metabolism. Temperature regulation. Sensory processing. Appetite. Light tolerance. Cardiovascular function. Behavior.

"Behavior," Lucy repeated.

"Your brain is part of your body."

"You make everything sound fun."

"I am not paid for fun."

"You should talk to Francesco. He'd fix that."

At Francesco's name, Lucy opened her eyes.

Ward noticed.

"Do you want to see him?" I asked.

Lucy looked out the tinted window.

"I want to know why he left me."

Ward said, "We find him first."

"Then you kill him."

Lucy was quiet.

"That's the plan," she said.

We had no tracker on Francesco. His phone number died the morning Lucy became sick. He used cash, borrowed vehicles, and apparently regarded official records as a personal insult.

Ward's people could reconstruct where he had been.

Lucy knew where he was going.

At first it was direction.

"East."

Then roads.

"Not this turn. The next one."

Then proximity.

"He was here."

We stopped at an abandoned petrol station before dawn. Rivas found nothing useful. Bell found old footprints layered over older footprints. Ward found a paper cup with no prints.

Lucy stood beside the road and pointed north.

Ward checked the map.

"Nothing north for forty kilometers."

"He's north."

Thirty-seven kilometers later we found Francesco's black sedan beneath a collapsed agricultural shed.

Nobody made fun of Lucy's directions again.

The third injection bought fifteen hours.

The fourth bought twelve.

Normal food stopped staying down.

Her hearing changed first. She told Rivas his watch was making a clicking sound from across a motel room.

"Digital," he said.

"I know."

He held it to his ear.

Nothing.

Lucy looked miserable.

"There's something inside it."

Rivas took the watch off.

Ward wrote the observation down.

I asked him what the sire bond actually was.

"A name," he said.

"For what?"

"The fixation between a turning victim and the Blood-borne who made them."

"Vampires understand it?"

Ward laughed once.

"Vampires barely understand vampires."

That got my attention.

"Meaning?"

"Ask ten old ones where they came from and you'll get twelve religions. Curse. First murderer. Dead gods. Diseased saints. Blood punishment. Some say they existed before humans, which creates obvious menu problems."

"And hunters?"

"We know what they do. We know what kills them. Origin theories get people killed."

"You don't know why sunlight works?"

"We know that it works."

"Why blood?"

"We know they need it."

"Why the sire bond?"

Ward looked at me.

"Elias."

"What?"

"If vampires understood their biology, they would stop writing scripture about it."

That night I found Lucy in the bathroom with one hand closed around something.