***
Shanna followed Rachel and Hunter into the coroner’s office, where a man with a rust-colored mustache was finishing off a tuna sandwich. When he saw them, he quickly plopped the rest of the food into his mouth and licked his fingers, before wiping them off on a white lab coat that was marked up with several greasy stains. She tried to swallow her disgust and was grateful that he at least hadn’t held his hands out to shake theirs.
“Ya’ll must be the…uh,” the coroner frowned as he took them in. “Kinda young for feds, ain’tcha?”
A few hours earlier, after Krystal, Natalia and Quinn had left for their classes, Shanna had gotten dressed and had been antsy for something to do. When Rachel announced that she was going to check out some leads on the vampire that was stalking the streets of New Orleans, Shanna had jumped at the chance to help. Anything to not feel like a total waste of space. And if she couldn’t help with a vampire problem, what good was she to anyone?
Hunter smiled politely and held up an official-looking badge that indeed identified him as FBI. A total fabrication, but he did work for the government, so Shanna figured that it only counted as an embellishment. If he were reported, he would probably be cleared for the abuse of power, given that they were part of an organization that probably didn’t even officially exist.
“Well, I’ll be…” the man shrugged. “I’m Hopper. Fred Hopper, but everyone just calls me Hopper.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Hopper,” Hunter said, before introducing the party. “We’re here to take a look at a body that was recovered two nights ago. A John Doe found with his blood drained, no visible blood near the scene, his jugular severed.”
“I know why you’re here,” Hopper sniffed, and led them to a door at the back of the room. “I had warning. And this ain’t the first one like it. We got ourselves a serial killer on the loose, you ask me.”
Shanna exchanged a look with Rachel as they followed the man down a short hallway illuminated by fluorescent lights. At the end of the hall, they took a door to the right and Shanna suddenly found herself in a room that sent goosebumps down her arms. There were large stainless steel sinks against the walls to her left, and a wall of square metal doors to her right. She knew from the many episodes of The X-Files that she’d seen that behind each of those doors, two high and five across, was a cooler, and in at least a few of those coolers would be dead bodies.
In the center of the room were two steel tables, drains in the floor nearby. It was all very clean and sanitary at the moment, but Shanna could only imagine the sorts of horrors this room had seen on those tables.
Hopper looked over the doors for a moment, then grabbed the handle of one that was chest-high. He looked back at Shanna before he opened the door, letting out a cloud of cold air that spilled halfway to the floor before dispersing. “This ain’t for the squeamish, now,” he said, pulling a slab out of the wall. A black body-sized bag lay atop the slab and as Shanna drew closer to it, she could feel the cold wafting from it.
Hopper reached for the zipper, but Hunter stopped him.
“If you don’t mind,” Hunter said, with a warm smile. “We would like some time alone with the body. Official government business and all.”
“Fine with me,” the coroner said, scratching his head. “Haven’t done the autopsy yet. Were you planning on doing that yourselves?”
“Not likely.”
“Well, ya’ll are welcome to stay and observe. I’ll be back in the office. Just zip up the bag and make sure the door’s closed nice and tight before ya leave.”
“Will do,” Hunter agreed, waiting until the man had left the room before he turned back to the body. “Now, let’s see what we have, shall we?”
Rachel nodded and watched with interest as he unzipped the bag and pulled the cloth back to reveal the torso.
Shanna wasn’t as keen to see what he’d revealed, opting to look away until the man was fully exposed. She expected a strong rotting smell, but the refrigeration had reduced it to a minimum, and so Shanna felt braver as she turned to regard the body of a young man, perhaps twenty, with blonde hair. His skin was milky white, his lips tinged blue, but there was no disguising the fact that he had been a very handsome guy when he’d been alive. He was completely naked on the slab, but Hunter had only revealed the top half of his body, and as the others drew closer to get a better look at the wound on his neck, Shanna couldn’t help but do the same, curiosity getting the best of her.
She had been expecting two puncture wounds on his neck, as she’d seen on several vampire victims in the past. She subconsciously brought her hand up to her own neck before she knew what she was doing and blinked. Her fingers could barely detect the scars left behind where Damien had drunk from her neck, when she had willingly given her blood to him. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks as she recalled the feeling of Damien’s lips brushing up against her neck before he’d entered her and had greedily begun to lap up her lifeblood. It sounded terrible, but the memory brought a shiver of pleasure with it that she couldn’t suppress. Allowing her eyes to find the wound on the dead boy in front of her, she concluded that his brush with the undead hadn’t been so pleasant.
The right side of his neck had been ripped open, as if claws had sunk into his flesh, grabbed hold of the jugular and had ripped it out. His skin was torn like hamburger meat, allowing them an intimate look at a horrible gaping wound.
Shanna turned away for a moment, before bracing herself for the sight once more.
“Not what I was expecting,” Hunter admitted. He pulled a tongue dispenser out of his coat pocket and prodded the edge of the wound. “His blood has definitely been drained, but I hardly expected this from a vampire.”
“Not used to messy eaters?” Rachel asked him, amusement curling her lips.
Hunter frowned. “You’ve seen a wound like this before?”
“Of course,” Rachel crossed her arms. “When vampires aren’t concerned for the lives of their victims, they rip open whatever flesh they can get ahold of to get to their blood, especially if they’ve been abstaining.”
“And new vampires,” Hunter nodded. “They probably have little self-control or skill.”
“Exactly,” Rachel confirmed with a smile. “There’s no reason for neat little bite marks unless they plan on letting their victim walk away. They could hypnotize them, or just let their victims loose, letting them dream up their own explanations. That’s what most vampires do. But why bother if they’re just going to drain their victim dry, right?”
Shanna suddenly recalled the night of La Faer Noir’s gala. It seemed like ages ago, but it had only been months since that night, the conclusion of their first mission as a team of hunters. It had been an eye-opening night, meeting many monsters that were part of the monster organization’s ranks. Including vampires, like the villainous Scarlet Fever, whom she’d killed herself as the building had gone up in flames around them. But there had been a creature in the crowd that night. A demon. Lolth, the demon queen of spiders. Shanna distinctly recalled Scarlet pointing her out, a beautiful alien-looking creature, albino white with eight arms. And spiders…drank blood.
“Was it even a vampire?” Shanna asked aloud, earning looks from her companions. “There are other creatures that feast on blood that wouldn’t leave a clean point of entry. Like a spider.”
Hunter considered with a frown. “True, there are other creatures that feast on blood. Spiders, however, don’t actually drink the blood of their victims. They cover them in their digestive acids until their entire bodies, skin and all, liquefy. Then they drink the entire thing, barring the solid things, such as bones, that they filter out.”
“Mmm. Fascinating,” Rachel rolled her eyes. “But despite the creative thinking, this is a vampire attack.” She sighed. “To a human, a police officer, a coroner, it would appear that something else had attacked this man. But I’ve seen people’s throats ripped open like this in fron
t of me. A vampire did this.
“It could have been a vampire afraid of being discovered, panicking and covering his tracks,” Hunter suggested.
Rachel shrugged. “There are any number of scenarios to explain the wound, but the fact remains that the vampire had no regard for the life of this person, and wasn’t attempting to take just a little. That means that there’s a dangerous vampire stalking the streets of New Orleans, and it could easily be behind the missing students.”
Hunter nodded. “Agreed. Is there anything else you need to see here?”
Rachel looked at the body dismissively for a moment, before pausing and drawing closer. She hesitated as she glanced over at Hunter and gestured to the tongue dispenser still in his hand. “May I?”
“Oh, yes,” he handed it to her and she began to poke at the wound with it.
Shanna looked away in disgust. “What are you looking for if a vampire slit his throat?”
“Something seems….off here,” Rachel murmured.
“What is it?” Hunter asked, stepping closer, and Shanna couldn’t help but return her eyes to the wound as well.
Rachel looked back at him. “There’s hardly any blood pooled around the wound. Probably because the blood had already been drained low.”
Shanna frowned. “Wait. What? Are you saying that his throat was ripped open after he was drained?”
Rachel nodded. “See here?”
Leaning forward and looking over Hunter’s shoulder, Shanna could clearly make out a pair of holes deep in the mangled flesh.
“A less trained eye wouldn’t have noticed the signs,” Rachel said with a frown. “Even another vampire hunter could have easily missed this.”
“Why would someone rip his throat out after the fact?” Shanna asked, confused.
“It could still be a vampire afraid of being discovered, panicking and covering his tracks,” Hunter offered.
Shanna nodded. “That makes sense. Like a new vampire, still thinking about the laws of the human world.”
“Like a scared teenager.”
They all looked at each other for a moment.
“Is that what we think happened here?” Shanna asked. “That one of those students was turned into a vampire and is stalking his classmates now?”
“It seems possible, given the facts,” Hunter confirmed.
Rachel tapped her lower lip as she regarded the body. “Something still doesn’t seem right here. It’s like it’s at the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t…” She groaned in frustration.
“We have something to go on, at least,” Hunter said. “A possible direction to take this investigation. It’s an important step.” He clapped Rachel on the shoulder. “You did well here, reading the signs.”
She nodded, but Shanna saw in her face that she didn’t quite believe the signs herself.