Solomon Seal #2: I Knew I Was Gonna Miss Her

I stood in the doorway of the lab, both horrified and crestfallen at what I was seeing. Doctor Madsen was splayed across a table with no heed of the test tubes, beakers or other equipment that were standing on it before she was tossed there. There was no blood. Just a bruised wound at her neck, and a pained look locked on her face. Behind that table, Doctor Vozot had Doctor Williams bent backwards over a counter, pulling his head to one side with one hand, wrenching his arm behind him with the other. Williams flailed less and less as Vozot drained the blood from his neck.

Clearly, Jeanine had been here. "Damn," I said quietly. I had managed to hide them for six months since she found out I had doctors trying to crack the problem of vampirism. How the hell had she found this place?

I about jumped out of my hat and trenchcoat when I heard, "I bet you're wondering how I found this place."

Holy hell! Jeanine!

"Relax, Seal, I've eaten already," she smirked. "I've known where they were for six months."

I couldn't keep my thoughts off of my face. Surprise that she had kept that fact from me. Upset that I hadn't been as good at hiding them as I had thought. Surprise that she hadn't killed them six months ago. Confused about why she had waited until now to do so. I just looked at her, with all of this playing out on my face.

"Hellooo?" she said, pointing both hands at her face. "Ancient, powerful vampire here? Can turn to mist and follow you anywhere, sneakier than the sneakiest ninja? Can track one smell in a million? Especially blood?"

My face was now clearly showing that I knew how much of a fool I had been to think that I could fool her. I have these same abilities. I really should have known.

"By the way," Jeanine added. "Don't think I don't know it was Hudson that shot me. I know his smell too. Him, you, Tito." She smirked again at his nickname. "Relatives have scent markers just as telling as DNA. I knew he was the shooter as soon as I went out the window."

I knew how to track through smell, but I didn't know that about the scent markers. I had never paid it much atten...

"You're lucky I didn't kill him," Jeanine said, interrupting my thoughts. She fixed me with a dangerous look.

I looked at her for a long couple of seconds before drawing in a breath and nodding in acknowledgment. "Why didn't you?"

Jeanine shoved me against the doorframe, the noise of which drew the vampire doctor's attention. He looked our way hungrily, but Jeanine held up an index finger in a halting motion and told him, "Stay." The doctor obeyed. Turning back to me, she said, "The same reason I only turned you instead of killing you, you dope! I like you!"

Tilting a thumb in the doctor's direction, I said, "That why you turned him too?"

Jeanine grabbed my face in one hand and squeezed it into a fish-faced look to quiet me. "I like you, Solomon, but don't test my patience when I'm angry."

Still fish-faced, I twitched my eyebrows and managed, "O-hay." She let me go, and I flexed my newly freed jaw, rubbing it slightly on one side.

Her own jaw jutted from side to side as she glowered at me. She looked at Doctor Vozot, and the anger turned to a smile. She said, "He is quite..." she looked him up and down, then back at me to waggle her eyebrows and say, "...vigorous." I just looked at her. When she got no more reaction than that, she said, "You were right though. He is highly motivated to study vampirism and figure it out." The mischievous twinkling returning to her eye, she said, "Science is a real turn on for him." Her shoulders swayed like a satisfied puppy wagging its tail, as she looked off towards the ceiling, unconsciously tonguing the tip of her canines while she savored a memory.

"Is that always how you do it?" I asked, recalling how she'd turned me. I may have sounded a tiny bit jealous.

"Why, Solomon," she purred. "You sound a tiny bit jealous." She smiled. "There's no reason I can't scratch two itches at once. I mean, be honest...it's quite a way to go, isn't it?"

Hell yes it was.

"That's not what happened here though," she said. I tilted my head in surprise. "I very rarely turn someone, Sol'. That can get messy. I prefer to eat and move on."

I glanced at the doctor, "Then...how?"

"Well, if I didn't do it, and you didn't do it," she said, waiting for me to find the answer.

"Another vampire?" I asked, looking at her with confusion.

"I did it," said Vozot.

I looked at the doctor, dumbfounded and still a little confused as I grasped to reconcile this new information. I looked at Jeanine, who just crossed her arms and looked at me, waiting. I looked back at the doctor, and simply asked, "How?"

"The blood samples you gave us," he said, and what color my face held drained away. "They could only get us so far on the microscope slides. The best way to study it was in a live host. So I injected myself. I honestly didn't expect it to make me so hungry though. You seemed to have it under control."

"I have a food source!" I said as if talking to an idiot.

He chuckled as he looked at the discarded body of Doctor Madsen thrown over the table. "Well, so did I. I just couldn't control that constant craving," he said with a shrug. "How do you do that? How do you not jump every normal person you run across? They smell...so...good," he said, clearly a little overcome with the thought.

I looked at him numbly, disgusted at what I had inadvertently created; horrified that this could have easily been me when I turned, if not for Jeanine. I looked at her as if looking to a life preserver. Arms still crossed, she just raised her eyebrows at me, her look expectant.

I threw my hands up in front of me and answered her, "Yeah, okay Jeanine. I get it. You were right."

She smiled.

I pulled my gun from its holster, released the clip, dropped it in one pocket, and pulled a special clip from another.

Jeanine's neck recoiled backwards in reflex. "Ew! Those smell disgusting! What are you doing with those?"

"It's my mess, Jeanine. I'll clean it up," I said flatly.

Now it was her turn to look confused.

I just looked at her with resignation, then turned to Doctor Vozot and fired. The white phosphorous bullet ignited on impact, destroying him with immolation. His screams were brief, his destruction total, leaving behind only a little pile of ash. I looked back at Jeanine after a few moments. "Satisfied?"

"Interesting that you have those," she said. We looked at each other for a long few seconds without saying anything else. "Take care of the others too. Zombies are a pain in the rear." She turned to mist and as she drifted away, her disembodied voice added, "I'll see you at the office in the morning."

I watched her mist drift away. I couldn't decide if I was becoming more horrified by Jeanine Fairchild, or more attracted to her. Either option gave me a dread feeling of panic deep in what was left of my soul.

I fired a bullet into Williams' body, and he burst into flames with an audible wuff. He sizzled and popped in the crackling flames, and it took less than a minute for his body to be reduced to ash.

I paused when I turned to Doctor Madsen's body. She was a truly compassionate woman, and that's what motivated her desire to help find a cure for vampirism. If I weren't undead, I might have...well. It would almost be worth letting her come back as a zombie just to tell her that. Or to apologize. Jeanine just wanted me to dispose of her and show up at the office tomorrow to go back to business as normal. As if anything about us is normal.

Still, she's not wrong. Creepy business decisions like this are part of what we do; part of the cost of being vampires. I stood there quietly, looking at Madsen's face. What a damned waste. I pulled the trigger anyway, and she ignited as easily as Williams. I watched her burn, and just shook my head. I knew I was gonna miss her. This was purely a business decision. If I told myself that enough, maybe I'd believe it. God help me if I did.

Story and characters owned by Chris Bishop, copyright 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.

Thanks for stopping in! :^D

The Origins Behind the Origins (or how some of these characters got their names):

Thanks for reading. :^D

Did this get posted as a contest piece in the end? Looks familiar

Yep- CCC 36. I always post at the bottom of the OP if it was in a CCC or Writers Guild first.

I post 'em as their own threads because I always plan to continue them. :}

@cbishop: I thought so, was just scrounging through blog pages and found it

@impurestcheese: It's actually funny you bumped this one- I just reread it last night or the night before. :)

@cbishop: Great Minds...Now gimme your ideas

To paraphrase Planet of the Apes: Get your hands off my ideas, you danged dirty Imp'! ;)

@cbishop: Jeez just because a girl spends her time outside she's dirty, well excuse me Mr. C(lean)bishop

@impurestcheese: Just riffin' off of this:

;)

title change check bump