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A Chill in the Blood by P.N. Elrod
Chapter One
Chicago, February 1937
Tired to the bone, I slumped in the front seat of Shoe Coldfield's big Nash, wedged between him and
my partner, Charles Escott. The car's heater was going full blast, but I still shivered like a malaria victim.
I'd never been this cold before in my whole life, but that's what happens when you take a dive off a boat
into Lake Michigan in early February.
Coldfield, a large, grim-looking black man in his middle thirties, glared down at me with a combination of
relief and exasperation, then shifted the glare in Escort's direction. "Charles, he's half-dead. I'm taking him
to a hospital."
Escott bent forward so his pale, sharp-featured face was more or less in my field of view. The effort
made him grunt. One of his eyes had a bad shiner, the other was swollen shut, and he held his left arm
protectively close to his lean frame. He'd been through the wars tonight himself, I dimly recalled. "My
dear fellow," he said, addressing Coldfield, not me, "that really wouldn't be a good idea for any of us, and
you're well aware of it."
In response, Coldfield snarled a ripe curse as he hauled at the steering wheel. He made a smart U-turn
along the beach road and got us pointed back toward Chicago.
"Jack's a little shell-shocked, but he only needs a warm place to thaw out and rest." Escott went on,
peering at my no-doubt-glazed eyes.
"No shit. Then what? We wait for pneumonia to set in?"
I got annoyed at their talking over me. " 'M a'right," I managed to puff out through chattering teeth. Bad
idea. It made me cough. Escott thoughtfully shoved a handkerchief in my face before I dribbled more
lake water onto the overcoat he'd loaned me.
"Like hell you are," said Coldfield. He glared briefly at me again, like all this was my fault—and he was
right—then focused on the road and the rearview mirror. I was glad I was low enough in the seat so he
wouldn't notice anything odd about the reflection.
"Anyone following?" asked Escott.
"Not yet."
"Let's keep it that way. No hospitals, Shoe, as a favor to all of us. We must assume that Kyler's gang or
Miss Paco could have informants anywhere in the city and—"
"Yeah, yeah, well, they won't have any in my neck of the woods. I'm bringing in Doc Clarson to look at
you both."
"I can manage without."
"Oh sure, I've seen how well you've managed with those busted ribs."
 "They're only just cracked a little."
"Charles…" Rising impatience in Coldfield's tone. Couldn't blame him.
But Escott's attention was centered on me. "Jack? Are you up to seeing Dr. Clarson?"
I shook my head. A doctor meant an examination, which meant that the first time he tried to take my
pulse he'd find out I was a bit more than just half-dead. In fact, I'm Undead, which was why I'd had such
a tough time with the free-flowing water of the lake. Right now I didn't want to bother dealing with
anything beyond getting out of my freezing wet clothes and maybe crawling into a nice hot oven for a few
hours.
"What are you asking him for?" Coldfield demanded.
"I thought I'd give him a choice in the matter."
"Huh. Shape he's in he couldn't think straight if you gave him a ruler. Same for you."
"I'm also trying to keep the number of people involved in this mess to a minimum."
"Clarson's family, he won't talk."
"I know, but I'd rather not put him to any unnecessary risk."
"It's in
my
territory, I'll be the judge of what's a risk for my people."
"But—"
"Charles, just shut the hell up and let me drive."
Escott subsided. As far as I could tell through my fog of nausea and disorientation, he seemed perfectly
unoffended by Coldfield's manner. They were old friends from back in the twenties when they'd both
been actors in some touring company in Canada. A decade and then some goes by and now Escott's
calling himself a private agent—I suppose it's got more class than "keyhole peeper"—and Coldfield's
heading one of the larger criminal gangs in Chicago's Bronze Belt. How they ended up in two such
opposite fields and remained friends I was still trying to figure out.
Coldfield drove fast and the car got pretty warm—for them. I was only just starting to feel a little less
like an iceberg, but my bouts of shivering gradually shortened, and the teeth-chattering business finally
ceased. I could still taste the sour metallic flavor of the lake in the back of my throat, but that would go
away if I could make a quick visit to the Stockyards to feed before dawn. Not much chance of doing that
with Shoe Coldfield along; he didn't know about me being a vampire.
I'm not like what you saw a few years back in the Lugosi movie. There're some similarities between me
and old Count Dracula, but I don't turn into animals or quake at crosses or silver bullets, flop in a coffin
or stuff like that. I do drink blood to keep body and soul together—still have one of those as far as I
know—and it's usually animal blood, but
that
little detail can still hit people the wrong way. Because of it
I hadn't made up my mind whether to let Coldfield in on the news yet.
Escott knew all about it, of course, and could more easily break it to his friend, but once told me it was
 really my decision and my job. It would save a lot of trouble right now, but dammit, I was just too tired
to open that can of worms tonight. You can't just tell people that you're a vampire and have them accept
it, you have to prove it to them and then give out the whole history of how you got to be that way. In my
case, I fell in love with a beautiful, but unusual woman, and we exchanged blood. Last summer I was
killed by a mobster, but much to his surprise I didn't stay dead. How I got back at him for my murder is
another story.
Half an hour or more passed with no one saying a thing. I liked their silent company. It was nice, so
very, very nice to be with people who didn't want to kill me. That and the warm air helped me relax until
I was as near as I could get to dozing. I don't sleep, not like I used to when I still breathed regularly; at
night I'm always solidly awake for the duration. When dawn comes, I'm so close to being dead it ain't
even remotely funny. I've no control over it, and lately it's been damned inconvenient, if not downright
dangerous. I miss a lot.
I opened my eyes when the car came to a halt, but it was only for a street signal. Coldfield was in the
thick of the city now and began driving sedately, easing into the start and stop of the wee hours' traffic,
signals with care. Maybe he didn't want to jar us more than necessary, but you could also figure that he
didn't want to attract cops. Too many of them were still on the take despite attempts to clean things up
since the Feds whisked Capone away on that tax rap, and as Escott said, people like Miss Angela Paco
could have eyes and ears anywhere in the town. It was because of her I ended up in the lake tonight,
another casualty in her gang war.
"Where we going?" I asked, blinking against a barrage of neon from an all night drugstore's sign.
Coldfield seemed surprised I'd spoken. "Someplace safe and warm."
" 'M all for it. Where's Isham?" He was one of Coldfield's men and had been with them earlier. He'd
tried his best to pull me to safety when all hell broke loose at Angela's place earlier this evening.
Escott—bad ribs, shiner, and all—had been her unwilling guest, and I'd snuck into her house to try
getting him away, but we tripped a burglar alarm on the way out. Her thugs started shooting at us; Isham
started shooting at them, and there was a lot of yelling and noise as Coldfield tore across the grounds in
his armored Nash trying to get to us. Isham and "Escott managed to reach the car, and I'd almost gotten
aboard, but little Angela started throwing hand grenades, which screwed everything up. They'd quite
sensibly hightailed it out of there with me weakly waving them on. Coldfield's Nash was tough, but not
that tough.
"I told him to get scarce after Charles made his call to arrange to get you back from Angela Paco," said
Coldfield.
"She was going to do a double-cross. Try to kill him."
"I'd figured that much by now. You wanta tell us what happened?"
I shrugged, staring straight ahead at the dashboard. "Tried to walk home from a boat ride. It didn't work
so good."
"The hell you say."
"Would you care to expand a bit on the subject?" Escott asked. "We rather lost track of you when Miss
Paco lobbed that last grenade."
 And what a sight she had been with her throwing the thing as far as her tiny form could manage, then
running flat out in the other direction to hit the dirt a half second before the whole night went up. She'd
been laughing the whole time.
"Yeah, Fleming," said Coldfield. "We wanted to come back for you. Sorry."
"I'm not. None of you needed to be there. Angela's her father's daughter and then some when it comes
to being crazy."
"So what happened? How'd you get away?"
It would be much easier if I could give him the truth of it, of how I'd nearly checked out four times over
this night. First by getting shot up by a wiseguy named Chaven, which weakened me; I can survive
bullets, but can't tolerate blood loss too damn well. Then later, while trying to get away from Angela
Paco, I caught a load of grenade shrapnel. The stuff had gone right through me, of course, but it hurt like
blazes and weakened me more. The third time, while I was locked up and alone, one of Angela's mugs
came to work off a grudge by trying to beat my brains out. I was only just able to stop him, and in the
aftermath, I'd fed from him to stay alive. It saved me, until the morphine in his blood kicked in and laid
me out flat. That's when Angela, figuring me to be dead, decided to drop my body into Lake Michigan.
The only reason I was moving at all was that with my condition I'm a lot tougher than I used to
be—though at the moment I was feeling pretty damned fragile.
A real hell night for yours truly, Jack Fleming, and there was still more of it left.
"Kyler had Frank Paco prisoner," I said, trying to sort what to say and what to leave out. "Was going to
use him to get full control of the old Paco gang away from Angela. When Kyler pegged out, that
lieutenant of his, Chaven, cozied up with her to get her to trade me for her father." And one other
hostage, a walking adding machine named Opal who knew how to work the gang's books.
"The hell you say. Why did Chaven want you?"
"He needed a patsy to blame for Kyler's death. Probably pretty embarrassed, what with aiming at me
and getting his boss instead when I ducked too fast. After he gave back Paco, he hauled me, Kyler's
body, and what was left of a guy called Vic who was playing both sides, aboard the
Elvira
and was
going to dump us all in the lake for fish food. I waited until I had a chance, then jumped Chaven. He's
dead now. Charles, it was with your gun."
Escott offered me a thin, glacial smile, his face alight for a second. "I'm delighted to hear it was put to
such good use, though there might be trouble should the police trace it to me. I suppose I'd best report
the gun has been stolen."
"They won't trace anything even if they do find the body. The bullet went right through him."
"How fortunate."
He might not have thought so had he been the one pulling the trigger.
"What's become of it? My Webley?"
"Still aboard the yacht, I think."
 He merely nodded. "Who knows, perhaps I can recover it some day."
Escort's got a dark streak in him and it's icy like the lake. Once in a while I run into it. The encounters
don't always leave me in a cheerful mood, and I was feeling rotten enough already.
"Are you really all right?" he asked, looking at me as closely as his good eye allowed.
What was making me sick was remembering the
feel
of Chaven's death, not the sound, though that must
have been loud enough when the Webley I'd turned on him went off and shot out the artery in his throat. I
remembered his hot blood bursting forth, striking me, coating me, the weightless, screaming instant as we
both fell into the water and the sudden hellish silence that followed when freezing death closed over my
head.
"Jack?"
I huffed out something that was meant to be a laugh but failed. "I guess so," I said, lying. I looked down
at my clothes, but the lake must have washed them clean. Too bad it couldn't have done as much with my
memory. Turning someone alive into someone dead, even scum like Chaven, made for a black ache
inside that no doctor could ever fix. This nightmare would be living with me for a while yet.
"Then what?' asked Coldfield, wanting me back on the subject.
"Then I jumped ship and swam for my life."
"You outta your mind, kid."
"I didn't have a lot of choice. There was another guy there, Deiter, he was all ready to ace me. Between
him and the lake I figured I had a better chance in the water." That was total falsehood. Deiter had been
too shit scared to even think of shooting, and my ending up in the drink had been a mix of accident and
bad luck. Never mind the cold, that's the least of it; because of my supernatural condition free-flowing
water and I just don't mix. It's bigger than me and infinitely stronger. If I'd not been able to vanish and
float up over the surface soon after going under, it would have been fatal. And that's vanish, not turn into
a mist. Another handy talent of mine, but exhausting.
"Deiter, you said?"
"That's what they called him. One of Kyler's boys. His job was to bump off Gordy so Kyler could take
over his part of the town, then cut a deal with the New York bosses. With Gordy's rackets in hand he
could up their take by five percent and keep the rest. Of course, that was before he got dead. Chaven's
not here to pick up the reins, and now I don't know what they're going to do."
"Holy shit." He glanced at Escott, who was shaking his head. "This town's gonna blow wide open once
word gets out. Without Kyler to take over Paco's territory—"
"Hey, don't forget Angela," I added.
"What can she do? There ain't a wiseguy in the town who'd let himself be bossed by a woman."
"She's more of a girl, but don't underestimate her. She's using her father as a front man, that's why she
wanted him back so bad." Well, to be fair to Angela, she wanted Frank Paco back because he was her
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