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  HIGH PRAISE FOR GRAHAM MASTERTON!

  “One of the most consistently entertaining writers in the field.”

  —Gauntlet

  “Graham Masterton is the living inheritor to the realm of Edgar Allan Poe.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Graham Masterton is always a lot of fun and he rarely lets the reader down. . . . Horror’s most consistent provider of chills.”

  —Masters of Terror

  “Masterton is a crowd-pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral grue.”

  —Time Out (UK)

  “Masterton is one of those writers who can truly unnerve the reader with everyday events.”

  —Steve Gerlach, author of Rage

  “Masterton has always been in the premier league of horror scribes.”

  —Publishing News

  STRANGE COMPULSION

  “Did she tell you why she drank the blood?”

  “She 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.”

  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.

  “We have a problem, lieutenant. 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.”

  “And?”

  “Over three liters of blood. None of it his.”

  Other books by Graham Masterton:

  THE DEVIL IN GRAY

  THE DOORKEEPERS SPIRIT

  THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT PREY

  MANITOU

  BLOOD

  GRAHAM MASTERTON

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2005 by Graham Masterton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1774-5

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0319-9

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: September 2005

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  Contents

  1 Bloodwork

  2 Blood Thirst

  3 Blood Root

  4 Blood on Seventeenth Street

  5 City of Blood

  6 Blood Lust

  7 Blood Line

  8 Blood Bath

  9 Blood and Thunder

  10 Bloodshot

  11 Blood Fever

  12 Blood Relatives

  13 Blood Hunt

  14 Blood of Draculea

  15 Cold Blood

  16 Blood Heat

  17 Blood-Red Moon

  18 Blood Brother

  19 Blood Pact

  20 Blood Stream

  21 Bloodstream

  22 Blood Group

  23 Manitou Blood

  MANITOU

  BLOOD

  1

  BLOODWORK

  It was only a few minutes after eleven in the morning, but already the sun was beating on the sidewalks as hard as a blacksmith’s hammer.

  As he crossed Herald Square, in his flappy brown linen suit and his green Matrix-style sunglasses, Dr. Winter saw a small crowd gathered outside Macy’s. At first he thought they must be looking at a new window display, but then he realized that a mime artist was performing in front of the store.

  Frank Winter had an irrational aversion to mimes, or jugglers, or clowns, or any other kind of street performers. Behind their painted-on grins, he had always suspected that they were sly, and spiteful, and out to cause mischief. But this mime caught his attention. She was a girl, to begin with—a very thin, small-boned girl, in a one-piece suit made of tight silver fabric. Her short-cropped hair was stiff with silver paint, and her face was painted silver, too.

  Frank stopped for a moment, and watched her. Her suit was so tight that she could almost have been naked. She was small-breasted, with very prominent nipples, and her buttocks were as tight as a boy’s. Underneath her Tin Man makeup she had a thin, sculptured face that was almost beautiful, in a starved, waiflike way, and pale, blue staring eyes.

  But it wasn’t only her appearance that held him there: It was her extraordinary performance. She swayed from side to side, giving the impression that she was defying gravity. Then she began to mime that she was climbing, and somehow she made it appear as if she was actually making her way up a ladder. At the top of the ladder she teetered, and nearly lost her balance. Two small children who were watching her stepped instinctively back, as if she was really going to fall on them from twenty feet up.

  Frank pressed his hand to the back of his head, because the sun was beating on his neck. It was well over 93 degrees, with 85 percent humidity. Nobody could walk around the city without gum sticking to the soles of his shoes, and the crowd around him was mostly dressed in T-shirts and shorts and sandals, and were furiously fanning themselves with newspapers and tour guides. It had been sweltering like this for over a week now, since the second day of August, and the weathermen were predicting the longest heat wave in New York City since the summer of 1926.

  Up on top of her imaginary ladder, however, the girl began to clutch herself, and shiver, as if she were freezing. She stood on the sidewalk quaking and even though the sun was beating on the back of his neck, Frank could almost feel a chill, too, as if somebody had opened up a refrigerator door, right behind him. He turned to the man standing next to him and said, “She’s something, isn’t she?”

  The man looked Italian, or maybe Greek. He was bearded, with a flattened nose like an osprey’s beak, and bulging brown eyes, and he was wearing a strange dangling earring, like a miniature dreamcatcher, all feathers and beads and fishhooks. He raised his eyebrows and smiled but didn’t reply.

  Frank wasn’t sure if the man had understood him. “I mean the way she’s shivering like that . . . she’s actually making me feel cold.”

  “Well,” said the man, still smiling. “She is one of the pale ones, that’s why.”

  “The pale ones?” said Frank. He shook his head to show that he didn’t understand.

  “I would gladly explain it to you, sir, but you would probably not believe me.”

  “You could try me. I’m a doctor and you know us doctors. We’re ready to believe anything.”

  The girl began to climb down her imaginary ladder, until she reached the ground. Then she sat on her red-and-yellow rug on t
he sidewalk and twisted her arms and legs together so that she tied herself into human knot. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, Frank would have said that it was anatomically impossible. Her face was looking at him from between her legs, emotionless, remote, but strangely threatening, as if she were warning him to keep his distance.

  She rolled around the sidewalk in a ball, and then, in one fluid movement, she disentangled her arms and legs and stood up, her arms spread wide. The small crowd applauded, and two ConEd workers gave her a piercing whistle.

  Gradually, dropping nickels and dimes into her silverpainted basket, the crowd dispersed, but the girl stayed where she was, leaning against Macy’s window with both hands, breathing deeply, staring at herself. The Greek-looking man stayed, too.

  Frank took off his sunglasses. He could see himself reflected in the store window behind her—a tall, broad-shouldered man with brushed-back hedgehog hair that was graying at the sides. “That was quite some performance,” he told her. “I’m a doctor, and believe me—I’ve never seen anybody who can tie themselves up like quite like that.”

  The girl lifted herself away from the window and turned around. She looked Frank up and down as if she already knew who he was, but she didn’t speak. Frank wondered if she might be such a good mime because she was genuinely mute. He glanced again at the Greek-looking man, but the Greek-looking man didn’t seem to be interested in contributing anything to the conversation, either.

  “Well, great show,” Frank told her, uncomfortably. “I have to be getting on.”

  He took out a dollar bill and he was leaning forward to drop it in her basket when the girl suddenly raised her hand to her throat and made a gagging noise. She took a stiff-legged step toward him, and then another. At first he assumed that she was acting, but her eyes were wide and she kept opening and closing her mouth, as if she couldn’t breathe.

  Without warning, she vomited blood. A bright-red clattering cascade that splattered the sidewalk in front of her and splashed all over Frank’s shoes. She tilted back, and then sank to her knees. Frank knelt down beside her and put his arm around her.

  “What’s wrong? Are you sick with something? Have you been to see your doctor?”

  The girl shook her head. She looked terrified.

  Frank shouted, “Call 911!” but there was no reply. “I said, call—!” he began, but when he turned around the Greek-looking man was hurrying away, like the White Rabbit. “Listen,” he told the girl, reaching into his shirt pocket for his cellphone. “I’m going to call for an ambulance, get you into the emergency room right now.”

  The girl nodded. She started to say something but then she vomited even more blood, so that Frank’s sleeve was soaked. A few passers-by had stopped to watch them, but most people were staying well away—even crossing over the street. Frank didn’t entirely blame them. He and the girl were plastered in so much blood that it looked as if they had been fighting each other with box cutters.

  All he could do was kneel down beside her and hold her close against his chest while she sicked up more and more blood. She was shaking wildly, and now she felt genuinely cold.

  It seemed to take an hour for the ambulance to arrive, although it was probably less than ten minutes. The sun beat down on the blood that was spattered on the sidewalk, so that it steamed. Frank heard sirens, and banging doors, and the rattle of a gurney, and then he was being helped up onto his feet.

  A woman paramedic was staring very closely into his face. “Where are you injured, sir? You want to show me where you’re injured?”

  Dr. Gathering said, “The good news, Frank, is that she’s HIV-negative.”

  Frank was standing by the window of his twenty-seventh-floor office at the Sisters of Jerusalem, looking down at West Thirty-sixth Street below. The traffic was sparkling in the sunshine, and the crowds far below him were dressed in bright reds and yellows and greens, like a scattered assortment of jelly beans.

  “What’s the bad news?”

  George Gathering opened the plastic folder that he was carrying and took out three sheets of test results. “I’d call it bewildering, rather than bad. She must have vomited more than two liters of blood, not counting the blood she brought up before we got into her emergency. By rights, she should be dead.”

  “I thought it might have been a perforated ulcer.”

  “Well, that was my first guess, too. But we haven’t found any serious erosion of the stomach lining, although I think it’s worth doing another X-ray. We haven’t found any varices in the esophagus, either. Her liver’s healthy, and she has no portal hypertension.

  “So where was all that blood coming from?”

  “We’re not sure yet. But you know how ulcers can hide themselves out of plain sight.”

  “Still—this is very unusual, wouldn’t you say? Usually, if a patient’s bringing up that much blood—well, it’s almost impossible to stop it.”

  “Like I say, I want to try another X-ray. But she has some other unusual symptoms, too.”

  “Oh, yes? Like what?”

  “Her digestive chemistry is seriously out of whack for a young woman of her age. Her stomach lining is secreting less intrinsic factor than an eighty-year-old’s. Which means of course that she isn’t absorbing vitamin B12.”

  “So she’s anemic?”

  “Yes, she is. Not only that—or maybe because of that—she’s hypersensitive to sunlight. We cleaned all that silver paint off her, but when we tried to put her in a bed by the window she literally screamed. We had to move her into a room of her own with all the blinds pulled down.”

  “What’s her history?”

  “She says that her name is Susan Fireman. She’s twenty-three years old and she’s a third-year fashion student at The Beekman College of Art and Design. She shares a loft on East Twenty-sixth Street with two other girls and one of their boyfriends. The mime thing is just a hobby, apparently.

  “Her medical records are still held by her family doctor in New Rochelle . . . that’s where her parents live. We’re trying to contact him now. Apart from the usual childhood diseases, though, she says that the only problems she’s ever had are painful periods and an allergy to steamers.”

  “Have you contacted her parents?”

  “Not yet. She specifically requested us not to. She says that her dad has a serious heart condition and she doesn’t want to worry them.”

  “I see. Has she been out of the country lately?”

  George sorted through his notes. “The last vacation she took was to Mexico, last October, eleven days in Cancun.”

  “Have any of her friends or acquaintances shown any signs of sickness?”

  “Not so far as she’s aware. But there’s one other symptom. She’s been having a persistent nightmare.”

  “A nightmare? Nightmares don’t make you vomit blood.”

  “Of course not. But for some reason she seemed to think it was important. She’s been having it night after night, for more than a month. Always the same one.”

  “Go on.”

  “She thinks that she’s deep inside a ship, somewhere in the middle of the ocean. But she’s shut up inside a box, and it’s totally dark, and she can’t get out.”

  “That’s it?”

  George closed his folder. “That’s it. But she says that it’s so realistic that she doesn’t like to go to sleep any more.”

  “Yes,” said Frank. He thought about the time that his father had taken him to the circus, when he was five, and a clown had come right up to him and screamed in his face. “I used to have a nightmare like that.”

  Frank had given his assistant Marjorie the day off today, so that she could visit her elderly mother in Paramus. He put on his Armani half-glasses to check his e-mail, most of which was spam from pharmaceutical companies. Then he sorted quickly through his letters, tossing aside the circulars and tearing open the envelopes that looked as if they might contain checks. He called Pediatrics to check when he was due for his afternoon clinic (3:45, on th
e sixteenth floor.) Then he bought himself a large double-strength espresso from the vending machine and went down to the eleventh floor to visit Susan Fireman.

  “I’ve been praying on my knees for this heat to let up,” said Sister Dominica, in the elevator. “I had to use the subway this morning, and I do believe that the Lord was giving me a preview of the Other Place, in case I was ever tempted to misbehave.”

  Sister Dominica must have weighed over 225 pounds and her face was pale and knobbly like an Idaho potato. She might have been tempted to misbehave, thought Frank, as the elevator doors opened yet again, and more people crowded in, but where was she going to find somebody to misbehave with?

  He walked along the shiny corridor to Room 1566. The door was ajar, but it looked as if Susan Fireman were sleeping, so he stepped quietly inside without knocking. The blinds were all drawn down over the windows, but a faint, moth-shaped twist of sunlight quivered on the wall, illuminating a picture of Jesus, standing by the sea of Galilee. The air-conditioning had been turned to Nome, Alaska, and Frank couldn’t stop himself from shivering, just like Susan Fireman had shivered at the top of her imaginary ladder.

  Frank went up to her bedside and looked down at her. She was breathing steadily, with an oxygen tube in her nostrils. Her face was so white that her skin was almost translucent, like a death mask molded out of candle wax, but she seemed to be peaceful. The nurses had combed most of the silver paint out of her short dark-brown hair, but it was still dry and tangled and out of condition.

  He balanced his cup of coffee on the bright red crash cart next to her bed and checked her monitor. Her blood pressure was low and her pulse was a little too quick, but there was no arrhythmia. He was tapping the touch-sensitive screen to check on her CO2 and her FiO2 when he became aware that her eyes were open, and that she was watching him.

  “Oh . . . you’re awake,” he smiled. “How are you feeling?”

  “Sick,” she whispered.