Disclaimer: I do not own anything from either Blade 2 or Shivers/They Came From Within.

Summary: Things go badly for Cromwell, while Carolyn realizes the scope of the problem. Reinhardt tries to stay alive.

Parasitic

Chapter 3–Experiment

Carolyn screamed and aimed a swift back kick at his groin. The only thought she had was to escape and call the police. His hands loosened on her arms with the impact of her kick as she wrenched herself free. As she turned toward him she launched a roundhouse kick at knee level, which took his feet out from under him. He hit the floor hard and sprawled across the hallway, blocking her retreat. Now, as she assessed the level of threat Dr. Corby represented, she decided to find our exactly what was going on.

He was bare-chested, wearing gray sweat pants with no shoes, a huge departure from his normal business-suited look. No blood marred his skin or hair, but then he had showered before going out. No need to panic the other tenants while he went trolling for victims. Carolyn shuddered with the memory of what he'd left of the blonde girl, then controlled herself. "I saw what you did, Dr. Corby."

"I thought as much, seeing as you were leaving the room when I came in." Corby moved to sit up, but Carolyn stopped him

"You can scoot backward and sit against the wall if you want. You try to attack me, or even stand up, and I'll knock you flat on your ass. Again. Is that clear?"

"Crystal." His contempt dripped from the word. "It isn't what you think."

"I think I've been the graduate assistant to Jack the Ripper for the last year." She cast a look toward his living room, wondering how she could restrain him so she could make the call to the police and this whole thing would be out of her hands.

"That's why you'll never be a great scientist, Carolyn. You see only the obvious and don't bother looking below the surface for answers. You have no vision, no imagination." Corby pulled his knees up and rested his arms on them. "That girl in there was my first step to a new evolution for the human race, the first person to attain a truly pure state."

"If that's what you call death." How had she not seen he was insane instead of just a womanizing jerk? Or had he just been good at wearing a mask?

Corby gestured, impatient. "Killing her wasn't the experiment. I wanted to see whether the creatures could be surgically removed without injuring the test subject."

Her mind reeled. "Creatures? What kind of creatures?" The sensible side of her told her that they were a figment of his diseased mind, but the curious part of her, the part that had compelled her to become a scientist, let him continue.

"Symbiotic organisms that can raise us from the morass we're trapped in. They remove our compulsive need to worry, to overthink, to analyze." His eyes glowed with a zealot's passion. "How much unhappiness have these traits caused the human race? When these creatures live inside us, we can regain the pure state we once enjoyed as babies–the burden of excessive thought removed, replaced by the free flow of emotion, unafraid and unashamed. Adam and Eve before the Fall."

Carolyn once again had that feeling, as if she'd slipped through a dimensional crack into some alternate reality. "Where did you get the idea to start implanting these things in people?" At least that poor girl had been the only person he killed in his madness, the first of his new breed of humans. Who would have thought a scientist could dislike and distrust thought so much? And why was she even still talking to him?

"An old professor of mine in Montreal performed the same experiment under similar conditions back in 1975. A residential island with traffic limited for the night–Peachbloom was the only place I could find that replicated the conditions closely enough for duplication of the experiment. I had to gather reliable data, of course."

"Of course." What else could she say?

"He died during the experiment, so I imagine that when the scientific community opens its eyes to the brilliance of his ideas, the creatures will be named after him. After all, he has revolutionized the field of biology."

She refrained from pointing out that, if his brave new world came about, no more scientific community would exist. Corby had lost any contact with reality he'd ever had, and she was tired of listening to him. "Please come into the bedroom, Dr. Corby."

He lifted his head, surprise and a flicker of hope in his eyes. "So you had closer contact with the body than I thought, Carolyn. You held out longer than I thought you would, but you always were a stubborn little bitch. See how much better it is this way? Just let the feeling flow."

"Cut the shit about these imaginary parasites. You know I believe in them like I believe in the Easter bunny, and your blood's going to flow if you don't do what I say. I need to restrain you until the police get here, and your little playroom seems to be just the place. On your feet, doctor."

A smile slashed across his face as he rose to his feet and began the walk into the bedroom. "I can't wait until they take you, Carolyn. You'll be begging me to fuck you any way I can think of, but I won't. At least not for a while. You need to be punished a little."

She waited until he stepped past her, then used her arm to pinch both his carotid arteries simultaneously. Corby lost consciousness in less than five seconds. Maybe it was premature, but she couldn't stand listening to him talk anymore. At least now he was quiet. She kicked her stiletto heels off to drag him over to the bed and fasten the leather restraints around his wrists and ankles. If she was right about him, he wouldn't have any way of getting free once he came to. Carolyn thought he savored total control and so wouldn't give a partner the chance to get free if she changed her mind. By this time color had started returning to his face and he made a moaning sound, so she hurried out to the living room to make the call.

Corby's phone emitted nothing at all–no static, no dial tone, no nothing. Just a piece of molded plastic that sat on his end table. "Shit," she muttered. Phone service on any island was problematic, but with all the rich folk living here, she thought it would be better. No storms to knock out the lines–could Dr. Corby have had anything to do with this? He'd left his apartment for some reason. Maybe it was to disable communication with the mainland so he could go on a real killing spree with multiple victims. "Out of luck there, doctor." The sound of her own voice unsettled her a little in the silence. Only one thing to do now, and that was go downstairs and notify the management of Peachbloom Towers that they had a maniac to deal with. They must have a shortwave radio on the island somewhere for just such an occasion, and more than one if they were smart. Corby had recovered enough to shout obscenities at her by the time she left the apartment.

OOOOOOO

Cromwell kept the blonde girl's hands trapped in one of his as he dragged her across the bedroom and tossed her onto the bed, falling on top of her to pin her down and stop her struggling. Since he'd been turned twenty-five years ago by Golden's former right-hand man, he'd forced more than his fair share of women, so this one was nothing special to him. Not the first, wouldn't be the last. But this one wasn't fighting him at all. What he'd taken for struggling was really her squirming against him in encouragement. For a heartbeat he wondered why she was behaving this way with the man who'd ordered her jeweler boyfriend killed by that Neanderthal Reinhardt, who'd only put her death on hold until after he raped her. For that matter, why had she and Lutz put on that show in the living room? The human part of him, the part that still feared death, tried to warn him of danger, but then she lurched against him, her pink mouth opening and her tongue lapping at her blunt white teeth, and the vampire bloodlust took him. He reached down, unzipped his pants, and drove himself into her. Damn, but it was good, hot and tight and wet. The blonde girl began thrusting her hips up to meet his, making animal squeals of delight, and he lost himself in the sex, pumping into her like a machine. Maybe he would turn her, because damned if a performance like this didn't deserve some kind of reward. It had been a long time since he'd had a regular woman instead of the familiars Golden passed around like party favors.

Cromwell tried to turn her head to the side, to bare her neck so he could feed, but she kept trying to kiss him. Affection was nothing he encouraged during sex, so he put one hand on the side of her face and shoved hard until the vein and artery were exposed to him. The pulse pounded like a trapped animal, making the lust and hunger blend into one unstoppable drive. With one powerful strike he pierced the skin and began drinking of her. Odd, her blood tasted odd. Some kind of bizarre flavor to it he had never encountered. Only then did he bother to reach out with his senses and detect the alien scent Reinhardt had noticed earlier. Of course he was a vampire and no human disease could infect him, since he had passed that level of physical weakness when he turned, but a sense of caution prompted him to lift his mouth from her and turn her face back toward him.

Feral was the only word he knew to describe her eyes, with a knowing, gleeful edge that at long last awakened fear in him. A laugh bubbled from her lips as he tried to pull himself free of her body. Her interior muscles gripped him like a vise. How was that possible? He was a vampire, stronger than she was, but she held him prisoner. The taste of her blood burned his mouth and throat, painful, but not as much as the sensation of being imprisoned within her body. And something was happening there, to him. His cock throbbed and he had the distinct, very uncomfortable feeling of being opened, something flowing into him from her, some unknown thing entering, moving inside his cock. As he drew breath to scream for help, before the burning penetrated his brain and stole his fear, his language, everything other than the need to fuck, to come, to spread this gift to others, he heard her say, "Free, now."

The scream died in his throat.

OOOOOOO

Reinhardt walked back toward Lutz's apartment, buttoning his shirt. He'd had to work quickly to dig out the bullet before his skin grew over it. Feeding on the guard had accelerated his healing process, and the wound had been nearly closed when he found the utility closet and removed the .38 slug with the Bowie knife he carried. It went into a pocket of his jacket as a souvenir. Once again he noticed the worrisome emptiness of Peachbloom Towers. He hoped Cromwell had finished with that weird blonde girl so they could haul ass back to New York before anything else happened. His mind went back to their behavior, that scent he detected from them. Some illness, maybe? It would serve Cromwell right if he got some new strain of gonorrhea from that chick. Let him explain that to Golden. The thought put a smile on his face that stayed there until he reached the door.

It had locked automatically behind him, so he exerted just a little of his strength and broke the lock. When he stepped into the apartment, the first thing he registered was the briefcase full of diamonds that Cromwell had found in the bedroom. It sat where he had dropped it when he'd gotten a load of Lutz and the blond chick fucking. Now that seemed out of character for him. Once he got the bloodlust out of his system, he'd insist on keeping them in his possession until he handed them over to Golden. Reinhardt picked up the briefcase and stepped over to the door, ready to knock and ask Cromwell if he was done, but something else caught his eye then. Lutz's mouth gaped open, which he noticed because the jeweler's mouth had been closed when he died, and a shiny, beige-tinted trail of slime led over his face and across the carpet to the wall, where it moved into one of the heating vents in the floor. He knelt beside the jeweler and probed at the dead man's mouth with the barrel of the .38 Special. Blood in there, and slime, lots of it, but nothing else. Not now, anyway. He stood there, trying to come up with a logical explanation for this and not finding one. How he hated problems he couldn't solve with a bullet. "Cromwell!" he yelled. "Get finished with that slut and let's go! Something bad's going on here."

He heard his partner laugh from behind the closed bedroom door. The sound raised the hairs on his arms. It was the same sort of laughter he'd heard from the jeweler. Female giggles joined Cromwell's, then the door opened. The blonde preceded his partner out the door, still naked but with blood trailing from her neck to flow across her upper chest and drip off her nipple. How was she still standing after Cromwell had fed on her? Had he turned her? Cromwell was equally naked behind her and had a look on his face that Reinhardt recognized and didn't like. Lutz had had that same look on his face. Before he died, of course. The two of them started toward him, and instinctively he grabbed for the briefcase and leveled his gun. "Get your clothes on, man. We've got to get out of here. There's some kind of trouble."

The other vampire laughed, exposing those elongated canines. He put a hand behind the blonde's neck and lapped at her blood, not taking his eyes off Reinhardt. She drew her breath in with a sensual hiss, also keeping her gaze on him. "Free," she murmured.

"Golden wants those diamonds off the island tonight. You want me to explain to him that you fucked up because you were thinking with your dick? Wouldn't look good for his right hand to get that kind of a rep, would it?"

Cromwell's fingers wandered down to the juncture of the woman's thighs and began moving. She moaned with pleasure, her eyelids dropping shut. "Need," he said. "A gift. You."

Reinhardt didn't have a clue what he was talking about. "Have you lost your mind? Kill her and let's get out of here."

"No," the blonde told him. "We want you." Then she lunged at him, moving quicker than her speech and behavior had led him to think she could. But it didn't matter much, because he was quicker. The bullet took her in the forehead and knocked her back, but didn't exit the skull. Cromwell made no move to catch her, watching Reinhardt with hungry eyes as the vampire leaned down to press his fingertips against the artery in her throat. He felt no beat.

"Did you turn her?" he asked. He received no answer but a whisper of movement. As he'd spoken, Cromwell made his own lunge. He knocked the bigger vampire off his feet and tried to pin him to the floor with his body. Waves of lust rolled off him as he rubbed himself against Reinhardt, moaning at the feeling of the linen slacks against his stiffness, trying to bare the other man's neck for a bite.

This made the scene with the girl and Lutz look wholesome as Mom's homemade apple pie. He knew for sure that Cromwell was straight, so what had happened in the past fifteen minutes to change that? Besides, gay guys didn't usually go for him. He wasn't pretty enough. He used his heightened senses and–yeah, there it was. The alien scent Lutz and the nameless blonde had exuded now came from his former partner. Some kind of infection, contagious disease? Well, whatever it was, vampires weren't immune. He wasn't sure if it could spread with a bite, but he wasn't going to take the chance. Swinging the briefcase, he nailed Cromwell in the side of the head, knocking him onto the floor. Reinhardt scrambled to his feet, wishing his fingers on the gun didn't have that tiny tremble of nerves. But, hey, this was enough to unsettle anyone.

Cromwell rushed at him and he fired, remembering too late that he held the guard's .38, not his knife-gun with the silver bullets. The two shots hit him dead center in the chest, and the vampire changed course, passing Reinhardt and running out the door. Cursing, he dropped the .38 and drew his own gun from the shoulder holster. By the time he entered the corridor, the other man was nowhere in sight. "The perfect conclusion to a perfect job," he said bitterly to the empty hallway as he closed the apartment door behind him and made for the stairs. He had to stop Cromwell before the other man took the boat and left him stranded on the island. The odds of killing Golden's right-hand man without dying himself now seemed a whole lot better.

OOOOOOO

The lobby of Peachbloom Towers was completely deserted when Carolyn stepped out of the elevator. She was too rattled by what she'd seen and heard in Corby's penthouse to wonder why. Nicole still remained behind the information desk, but now she sat in a chair, only the top of her red head visible. Relief swept through her. She hurried toward the information desk, her bare feet soundless on the marble floor. How was she going to say this without sounding crazy? She hoped the woman wouldn't just dismiss her as a loon and refuse to call her boss. "Nicole, you have to help me. There's a serious situation with Dr. Corby in the penthouse, and you have to call the police right now. The phone's out in his apartment. Do you know if all the phones on the island are out?"

Nicole's fingers idly caressed the strand of pearls around her neck, and her thighs rasped in their nylon casings as she uncrossed her legs to stand up. "Take it easy. What are you talking about?"

"Look, something bad's happened with Dr. Corby and a woman is dead. He murdered her. I managed to restrain him afterward. The body's up in his penthouse and we have to call the police now. Is your phone working?"

She raised the phone to her ear and shook her head. "Nothing."

"Is there a shortwave radio on the island that we can use to call the Coast Guard? They can notify the cops and have a launch here in an hour or so."

"Yes, we keep a shortwave nearby in case of emergency. The phone service here isn't too reliable, as I'm sure you've noticed. Come with me, please." Nicole tried to take Carolyn's hand, but she pulled away.

"Why are the phones out? There hasn't been any storm." The redhead's behavior was way off. Way too calm. She should be freaking out, but she was tranquil as the ocean on a still day. And why hadn't she tried to notify her bosses of this potential scandal? Carolyn knew they'd want to do damage control as soon as possible, spin this to make Peachbloom Island look good despite the dead body and the crazy doctor. But Nicole was ignoring this, instead taking her arm and urging her toward a door at the end of the corridor. "Where are we going?"

"You said you wanted the shortwave radio to call the Coast Guard. It's in this room." The woman's voice began to sound urgent, and her grip tightened on Carolyn's arm. "We can help you. Everything will be all right." Drool appeared in one corner of her mouth, then began to form a trail through her perfect makeup as she led Carolyn toward the closed door.