Bloodthirst Read Free Page B

obvious discomfort.
    McCoy gave a small, involuntary shudder at the sight of the man’s face. Maybe it was an illusion created by the shadows, but the man’s skin was gray, the expression pinched—like a corpse, McCoy thought, like a med school cadaver that’d been taken out of stasis and left lying around the classroom too long.
    â€œAdams. Jeff Adams.” He did not move closer. The light at his feet kept him pinned in the doorway, unable to come any nearer, but drawn to Stanger and McCoy by some need. “I’m not used to the light anymore—it’s been shut off for days.”
    â€œMr. Adams” McCoy began.
    â€œDr. Adams.”
    Good Lord, did titles matter at a time like this? “Dr. Adams, then, can you tell us what’s going on here? We intercepted an emergency signal”
    â€œI broadcasted that signal, yes. Thank God you’re here.” Although Adams’ face was shadowed, it looked like the man was making an effort to smile.
    â€œHow many of you are there?”
    â€œThree. Three of us.”
    Stanger aimed the beam on the faces of the dead. “Then would you mind explaining
this?”
    Neither of them made it to Adams in time before he fell.
    Jim Kirk felt a headache coming on. At first he attributed it to the cumulative effect of several days’ unrelenting boredom on a stellar mapping assignment. Such tasks invariably left the captain with nothing to do but fidget, so Kirk had jumped at the chance to respond to a distress signal. But the more he listened to what McCoy had to say, the less thrilled he was that the
Enterprise
had answered the call, and the more his head throbbed. He took a generous mouthful of chicken salad on rye, in the hopes that it would somehow help.
    â€œHere’s the thing that bothers me.” McCoy leaned forward over an untouched plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Normally, such a meeting would have taken place in sickbay or the captain’s quarters, until McCoy put up a fuss about missing lunch and it already being past dinnertime. Which was no problem, except that McCoy had simply stared at his plate for the first five minutes.
    Kirk finished swallowing. “You mean only
one
thing about this bothers you?”
    â€œAll right, then, the thing that bothers me the
most
about all this is—what happened to all the blood?”
    â€œPlease elaborate, Doctor.” Spock sat opposite McCoy and next to the captain with his fingers steepled, having already silently and efficiently disposed of an unconscionably large salad.
    â€œThere just simply wasn’t enough blood left in the corpses”
    Kirk had just taken another huge bite of his sandwich; he stopped chewing. He wasn’t particularly squeamish by nature, but with the headache
    â€œForgive me, but I believe you mentioned that the throats of both victims had been slit,” Spock said calmly. “Isn’t it logical for significant blood loss to occur?”
    â€œYes, but Stanger and I examined the area around the bodies—with a flashlight, mind you; kind of spooky down there, in the dark—before we moved them, and there wasn’t as much blood as there should have been. Yoshi—that’s the man, Adams says—was face down with his carotid slit. Do you have any idea how fast blood would drain from a body under those circumstances?”
    â€œApproximately” Spock began. Kirk looked up from his cup of coffee in dismay, but McCoy came to the rescue.
    â€œChrissake, man, when are you going to learn to recognize a rhetorical question? Suffice it to say that there would have been enough blood to swim in.”
    â€œDoctor.” Kirk set down his mug.
    â€œAt least to go wading,” McCoy persisted.
    â€œDo you
mind?”
    McCoy caught the look on the captain’s face and a sheepish grin slowly crossed his face. “Sorry about that, Jim.” His expression grew more serious. “But there