Deader Still

“Jesus,” I said.

Co

I crossed to the one thing left standing along the edge of the dance floor, the spot where a DJ had set up his sound system. A young man in a skewed trucker’s cap, most likely the DJ himself, was slumped over the console, as lifeless as everything else on the ship. I positioned my hands to examine him and then looked to Davidson.

“May I?” I asked.

He nodded. “None of those cops out there could make heads or tails of it. Be my guest.”

Co

“You know,” Co

I checked the floor for blood. Co

“Vampires?” Co

Even though the Department had government tedium written all over it, at its heart we were all closet cryptozoological nerds eager to spot any number of oddities. While the motto of the NYPD was “To Serve and Protect,” I had always thought our motto should be “To Gawk and Appreciate.”

“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions,” Co

I nodded and thought of the dry-erase board mounted high over the bull pen in our office. It read: “It has been 736 days since our last vampire incursion.”

“I don’t want to go all Code Bela over all this,” I said, “but it’s a possibility.” I turned to David Davidson. “Are there any witnesses?”

He shook his head. “Not anyone who survived,” Davidson said. “They even fished a few people out of the water who looked like they had jumped to escape whatever did this. They weren’t bitten, though. They simply drowned.”

“I doubt there’s anything simple about drowning,” Co

Co

“What the hell is he doing?” Davidson asked, covering his nose. “Trying to attract hippies?”

“Quiet,” I whispered. “He’s attempting to bait any lingering spirits.”

I waited as long as I could before speaking again.

“You getting anything?”

He shook his head, sca

Davidson stood there watching the two of us, making me self-conscious on top of already being creeped out.

Finally, Co

“Not really,” I said. I pulled out a roll of Life Savers, unwrapped it, and crunched the whole thing down in three bites. “But we owe it to these people to get to the bottom of it, so . . . let’s find out why this whole mess has landed in the hands of Other Division, shall we?”

With my gloves on, I gently lifted the DJ off his array of turntables and lowered him to the floor with care. There were a lot of things that Co

I willed my power into action without a problem. The turntable was ripe with fresh information. I could feel it arcing into me as the electric hum of co

I was the DJ in this scenario, feeling whatever he felt last night. At the moment, he was charged with the energy of the deep bass he was pumping out and I found myself caught up in his sensations, his heart rushing in time with the music.

I looked down and caught his reflection off one of the CD cases lying on the edge of his equipment tower. I wore headphones, each the size of a ci

Although I was a passive passenger in the DJ’s body, I was able to look around the rest of the room even though his focus was on the turntable. Faster than I could follow, the dance floor was turning into a sea of panic, people screaming and ru

He spun around in time to catch a flash of glowing red eyes as a humanoid shape lunged at his neck, the sharp tear of fangs puncturing his jugular. Trapped in his body as I was, I could feel him dying as his blood was being drained. His chest tightened, a scream of horror catching in his throat as his heart started to slow. Caught up in the DJ’s fear, I felt helpless to pull myself out of the vision. I’d never been trapped inside someone in the throes of death before, and I wondered if there was any chance that I would die myself if I stayed in that moment long enough. It seemed I was about to find out—I couldn’t pull myself out of it and my world went dark.

I snapped out of the vision only to hear the tail end of my own scream echoing in the now-still room. I was laid out on the floor with Co

“You okay, kid?” Co

I stood up on shaking legs, leaning against a nearby column for support.

“I . . . I . . .” I started, but couldn’t finish. My face hurt, and my blood sugar felt abnormally low. How long had I been in the vision and how much energy had it sapped from me? My body shook with the dizziness of hypoglycemia. The faint smell of blood mixed with the overpowering fruitiness of the Life Savers I had eaten minutes ago. I felt my stomach clench. I was going to be sick.

I fought back the urge as I staggered for the doors at the far end of the room. My feet slammed into several of the bodies as I went, repulsing me even further, but by the time I ran out onto the back deck of the ship my only concern was not throwing up all over them. I jumped over the railing and onto the pier, fell to my knees, and emptied the contents of my stomach into the Hudson River.

I felt better the moment I was done, except for the shaking. I collapsed on my side. Although the idea of eating anything right now seemed impossible, I fished out another roll of Life Savers.

“You okay, honey?” a voice said from behind me. I rolled over. A woman in her fifties stood there in a white, button-down shirt and blue sailor pants that rose a good two inches above her navel. A tiny gold badge from the cruise line proclaimed that I should “Come Sail Away with . . . Maggie!” Her blond hair was done up in a fifties beehive, making her look like an ancient version of the cruise director from The Love Boat.