Under a Blood Red Moon
By: Lady DeathAngel
Disclaimer: don't own them, don't sue me
Warnings: slight language and they talk about the bodies of the victims (not too graphic, but not for kiddies either)
A/N: All right, here's the next chapter! Hope you like it! Please write to tell me what you think!
"How the hell did this get out? I specifically told you and your staff not to breathe a word about this!"
Sally Po rubbed at tired eyes and stared at her speaker phone. How dare he come at her like this was her fault? And not even in person either. Apparently he'd been too busy to come and see his own daughter in the hospital and had, instead, opted to drive the hospital crazy by calling every five minutes to make sure his little girl was okay. Now that he knew for a fact that she wasn't going to die, he had decided to let loose the cannons and start asking questions to which Sally had no answers.
"I assure you Mayor Darlian, no one working at my hospital said a word. If I was you I'd ask Lucrezia Noin who she told and who they might have told."
"I have already spoken with Lieutenant Noin, Dr. Po and she told me that she didn't utter a word of it to anyone. That being the case, the only other people who had spoken with Meiran would have been you or one of your doctors. Now I'm asking you nicely how the hell this got out."
"This is nice?" Sally asked, glaring at the phone.
She couldn't believe this man. She had always known that people didn't hold her in high esteem. Word had gotten out about things that had happened in her past and men and women alike in this town just couldn't stand her. She'd worked hard to earn respect as a doctor and she had. But only among some people. Others still didn't like her and, she knew, never would. Mayor Darlian was one of those men.
"If you demean my authority one more time," he said in a low voice. "You'll be getting a call from my lawyers next."
"What more can you take from me Mayor? Huh? You've threatened to take everything from my small hospital to the clothes off my back more than once in the past two years. You ruined my life years ago and frankly, I don't think you can top that anytime soon. Not even if you take every single penny in my bank account. Now stop harassing me and stop phoning my hospital. I don't want to see you around here again. You can send one of your pretty limos to pick up your daughter in two days, until then leave us all the hell alone."
And then Sally disconnected the call and was about to sigh in relief when there was a knock on her door.
"Damn." She breathed.
Why couldn't she get a break? All she wanted was a chance to get used to the idea of monsters in her backyard. All she really wanted to do was have time to mourn the loss of life properly, not have to face down angry politicians and irate parents who wanted to know just who had killed their children. She needn't have worried though. The young man who entered when she called for him to come in wasn't an angry politician or an irate parent.
It was Duo Maxwell.
"Duo! Hi!" She said happily, standing up and moving to hug him.
"Hey Sal." He said, embracing her back. "Long time no see."
She stepped back and smiled.
"Yes. A very long time. So, what brings you here?"
He grinned.
"Same thing that's brought everyone else here. Just wondered if I could get a little inside info on our resident vamps from an old friend."
Sally rolled her eyes but didn't argue. Instead she just moved to the seat behind her desk and waved to the chair in front of it.
"What do you want to know?" She asked.
He leaned back and crossed his arms.
"Well, I was wondering if you've got any DNA results or anything like that."
She sighed and shook her head.
"No. Lieutenant Noin thought she'd found something but it was just a strand of hair with no matching results anywhere within a fifty mile radius. We have no clues, nothing to go off of and our one eye witness didn't have any solid information."
"What about the autopsy reports?" Duo said.
"I'd rather not go into those." Sally murmured. "But since you asked . . . whoever is murdering these girls is doing a good job of it. No prints, no blood splatters, no anything. And they've killed so thoroughly . . ." She rubbed her temples and shuddered. "It's really horrible."
Duo sighed. "And you don't have any suspects?"
"No. None at all. No one has even seen anyone strange in town. That's why people are so quick to buy into this vampire nonsense."
Duo opened his mouth to reply when a nurse walked into the room.
"Dr. Po, there's a Mr. Heero Yuy here to see you. He said that he's been assigned to be Relena Darlian's bodyguard."
Sally glanced at Duo with raised eyebrows but he just shrugged. She smiled and stood up, moving to leave.
"We really need to catch up." She said as she passed him.
~*~
Quatre spent most of his day trying to ward off young men and women who had written stories for his paper about vampires. They'd written everything from long, extensive histories on vampires and their origins to personal encounters. By the time he got a call from Duo saying he had some important information, he was about ready to kill himself.
"Hey babe, you ready to leave?"
Quatre looked up and rolled his eyes.
"What took you so long?" He asked.
Catherine shrugged and leaned against the doorway.
"Dorothy wouldn't stop bitching about how Trowa and I need to clean up our act for the summer carnival or else we'll be the laughingstock of the town. Besides," she said with a grin. "She wasn't all that eager to let us go, especially since it's for a meeting with the bane of her life."
Quatre sighed. "You know, if she'd just let it go she'd be much better off."
"Maybe. Then again, if she lets it go, she could become even less human than she already is."
"None of us are all that human anymore." He said with a lopsided smirk.
"Yeah well, at least we aren't all out to rule the world."
Quatre laughed. "That's true."
He stood up and moved around his desk.
"Well, we'd better get going. Duo did say to meet him at the hospital right?"
Catherine nodded and looped her arm around his waist when he got to the doorway.
"You think the news will be good?" She asked as they left the building.
Quatre shrugged. "I doubt it'll be good for anyone but the towns people are probably going to be worse off."
She sighed softly and rested her head on his shoulder.
"We'll protect them won't we? No matter what?"
Quatre smiled. "Of course. No matter what."
~*~
Heero didn't leave Relena's side until Duo called for him mentally to let him know that the meeting was going to start. Even then he was hesitant to do it. She wasn't resting peacefully at all and he couldn't really blame her. She'd been through a lot. He did want to know what Duo had found out though, so he made his way to the sublevels of the building the second he heard Duo's voice.
He arrived just as Wufei did. Trowa and Midii were already there and Quatre and Catherine arrived just a few minutes after him. They all picked out seats in the room. Trowa and Midii opting for one of the plush sofas, Wufei seating himself on the floor beside the couch, and Heero, Catherine, and Quatre sitting on a long couch. Duo himself was pacing around the room.
Only two mortal people knew about this room. Sally and Ben. They hadn't needed explanations as to why this room was needed, although they had gone so far as to tell them that it would be a safehouse for them in case anything bad happened. Other than that, no questions were asked.
Truth was, they needed this room to conduct private meetings and the entire sublevel of the hospital was a hideout. They needed it for occasions just like this as well. Until they could be sure that they were safe, they had to have a place to hide.
Once they were all present, accounted for, and comfortable, they looked up at Duo. He paced for another two minutes before he finally spoke.
"I don't get it." He said. "I mean, I'm just saying that right here, right now so that you guys don't start asking me questions because I *don't* know the answers. But I'll tell you what Ben told me he'd found after examining the bodies."
He took a deep breath. "They're missing their livers. They were drained bloodless. And the holes in their necks from the bites were made by fangs much larger than ours. In fact, whoever did it probably drained half their blood through the fangs before he or she got tired of it and just ripped out their throats."
Heero felt Catherine shudder and glanced over at her. Quatre put his arm around her and she leaned into him while her hand reached out and grabbed Heero's. He looked around to gauge everyone else's reactions while he unconsciously rubbed his thumb across Catherine's knuckles.
Midii was clutching Trowa like a drowning man in a sea would clutch a buoy and Trowa looked sick. Wufei's eyes glittered with what Heero knew to be anger. Wufei, for all that he was an irate chauvinist pig, really did have a keen sense of justice, and killing anyone in cold blood compromised that sense of justice.
It took a few minutes before anyone spoke again.
"Doppleganger." Quatre breathed.
Everyone turned to him with wide eyes.
"Not quite Quat." Duo said.
Everyone turned to *him* with wide eyes.
"Dopplegangers would never leave evidence at the scene of a crime and the cops found evidence. Thing is, there were no matches for what they found, and they found something different at each one."
"Different?" Trowa asked.
"Yeah. Well, not really. They found a few strands of hair at each one but they were all different colors. There was nothing else."
They all sat in silence trying to digest it all but it didn't really filter in for a few minutes. When it finally did they didn't know what to make of it.
"Look, let's just all go home." Duo said finally. "We'll think about it, try to figure it out, and hopefully on of you will come up with something because I sure as hell haven't."
And with that the meeting was over, although they all knew this situation was far from it.
~*~
A/N: Sorry that this chapter was kinda on the short side. But hey, it's Christmas. And besides, I'll be getting the next one up in a few days. Anyway, hope you liked it. Please R&R. Thanks! And Merry Christmas!!!
