A Taste of Blood

All the words worthy of being used have been written. They languish on the pages of dusty books in amber lit rooms, unread and weeping from the loneliness of their plight. How can I save the words and utilize their brilliance, without treading on the fingers of their creators?
Sammy Shu '09


Below is a scene from “Bloodthirsty” my newest release, it may seem as if I am giving somthing away by choosing such a scene but trust me all is not as it seems.
 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=samantha++shu++bollodthirsty&x=15&y=16



A soft ecited murmur came from the members of the students still in attendance.

Leo shook his head, “of course, I cannot discuss my findings with our group until I have updated the task force, I’m calling the lead Detective as soon as I leave here and will be cleared to share by the time our group meets.”

Katie spoke up "How can that be? Don’t you have to wait to share theory and information until the case is closed.”

“That is correct” Leo smiled confidently “With what I have that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Another student spoke up and Leo waived his question away.” Nothing else today, save your inquiries until our meeting. Have a good night.” He began packing up his brief case. The students filed out, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

Katie remained seated until all of the other students had left and the door swung shut behind them. She stood, placing her hands on her desk for support.

“Leo, I’ve been working on a paper for my psychology class on this serial murder and I was wondering if you could give me an opinion on my theories.”

He was clearly irritated. “Katie, I told you, I can’t discuss this now.”

‘I know that, but you can talk about my paper.” She quipped, her heart still lodged in her throat.

“Isn’t your paper on the case?” he asked, a sharp point to his tone.

“Yes” she needed him to be a little irritated. She wanted answers. She needed to take him by surprise, if the answers didn’t calm her.

“Well then, I can’t discuss it,” He stated flatly.

“Oh… well, I was just gonna tell you, I think it’s a CJ student.” She watched his reaction to her statement.

“What?” Stricken

Shit, she thought, this is bad. She pressed, testing her theory further “And I think the differences in the crimes aren’t because they’re confused or trying to find their grove. I think it’s intentional to throw off the cops” she rushed on, watching his expression “And they know how to do it, because they study criminals” She chanted inside her head, tell me I’m crazy! Tell me I’m crazy! She liked Leo. Really liked him, sadness moved in her somewhere as she considered the inevitability of this moment.

He didn’t tell her she was crazy, as she knew he wouldn’t. His eyes were slits now and Katie knew, she wasn’t wrong. He was too close. Her heart regained is normal pace as calmness washed over her. Her gaze was sharp and the air inside the room became thick. She could feel the atmosphere thicken, as it always did in these moments. She heard Leo ask, “How did you come to these conclusions?” He demanded to know

“Why? Are they the same as yours?” She tilted her head demurely and winked at him

“Close, very close.” He replied slowly. She could see his brain, tick, tick, ticking away, trying to find a solution to this bizarre situation. Somehow a student had come to the same conclusions that he had labored over, paced the floor and lost hours of steep over. She could see it all on his face, etched into the lines around his eyes. She squinted at him, looking deeper seeing what only she could see.

“But you have something else, something that will blow the case open?” with his next action Katie knew she was correct. Knew with a certainty that if she didn’t act quickly this man, this lousy retired profiler, would be her undoing.

Leo opened his briefcase and began searching inside

While his attention was diverted, She slipped her hand into the backpack and slid out the long pearl handled knife. This had been a present from her grandmother ten years ago; a gift meant to hang on the wall in celebration of another mans victories. She griped it tight and wondered how many men’s blood had slipped down its long blade only to end in the palm of their killer.

She saw his deep exhalation as he located his paperwork on the case. She giggled. The sound was close to hysterical, harsh and shrill.

His head came up at the sound ” I didn’t steel your papers.” she said, and took a few quick steps in his direction. “I would never do that” he hadn’t noticed the knife. She could see him trying to evaluate the situation, to gage its magnitude.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what you have but I can’t risk it leading to me.”

He moved his head as if to shake it, then stopped and looked directly into her eyes. “Why would…” he stopped and his eyes grew wide as he obviously realized the full brevity of the situation.

Katie lunged forward plunging the pearl handled blade deep into his mid section.

Eye widening, teeth gritting, Leo grabbed her shoulders and pushed, as he did this, he stomped down hard on her left foot. She felt and heard the bones fracture in several quick snaps, like twigs from a brittle tree. She bit back a startled scream, held tight to the handle and fell back, landing firmly on her ass. Katie watched as Leo fell back against the wall and opened his mouth to yell out. She jumped from the floor and shrieked as pain; fire and ice, tore into her injured foot.

Immediately she dropped back to the floor, a moment before his boot landed under her chin. Her teeth slammed together and copper filled her mouth. Still conscious, she wondered how she had mad such a terrible, obvious mistake.

Leo may be a professor, a profiler, but he had also been, Detective Marks, a decorated, police officer. He wasn’t one of the ashen, soft, useless men she’d dealt with in the past. This one was trained and accustomed to pain. He’d taken a thick heavy blade to the stomach and still, he moved toward her. As blood pooled and streamed, still he stood, no, not stood, walked. Fear and pain, a universal motivator, stirred in her. she rolled onto her stomach. As the tip of the leather boot came into view, Katie reared up and plunged the blade into the top of his boot, through the skin and bone, slamming it into the floor beneath. A guttural scream filled the room, like a siren waking Katie to the danger she was in, which had nothing to do with the battle she was currently waging.

She moved across the floor on her stomach, rolled over and pulled herself onto her shaking knees. The sight she saw shocked her enough to make her choke on the blood in her mouth. Head bent forward; balancing on her knees, she spat a mouthful of crimson onto the tile. As her eyes came up she looked into the gaze of a madman. Blood dripping from her blade he now held. His teeth were showing, in a wide snarl. As he moved, blood trailed under his injured foot. He was dragging his foot a little and as he spoke, she realized they were the first words he’d spoken since she’d stabbed him an hour ago. Wait… it wasn’t an hour, it was seconds, only seconds, and now she was about to loose it all. A stupid mistake.

The dripping bleeding madman said, “You’re the one. Why?” as the last word still echoed in the small classroom, streams of slick, dark, blood, fell from his open mouth.

His eyes widened and as she watched, it seemed as if the bones had been extracted from his muscle tissue in one fluid movement. He fell only a few feet from her, the blade clattering onto the ceramic tile and spinning away. She watched in shocked fascination as it came to a stop an inch from her fingertips. Streaks of the professor’s life force accompanied its journey.

Katie turned her head left and then right, trying to establish where the loud keening noise was coming from. Had the fan in the central ac unit collapsed? Her nerves were raw and the sound was excruciating. Her jaw hurt where he had slammed his oversized boot into her face. She could feel the swelling already beginning.

She pushed off of the floor and leaned her back against the wall. What was that noise? When the noise changed to a whimper then a gasp, Katie realized that it was coming from her. Blood spattered the walls and covered her clothing. She knew her DNA was everywhere. She remembered spitting blood on the floor. The keening began again. Think think!

She crawled toward Leo and began searching his pockets. He had fallen into a contorted bloody mass on the floor. She had a hard time getting her fingers into his pockets. Front jeans nothing she turned him and was started when his head fell to the side and smacked against the floor. His red-rimmed eyes stared at her. Stopping she leaned in and looked at him his glasses had fallen off during the fight. Funny, she hadn’t noticed. His eyes were brown, like honey. Some people would call them amber but Katie liked honey. Whenever she heard the word amber she thought of misscitos trapped in that hardened stone waiting for the collection of dinosaur DNA.

So stupid, how a crazy movie could change someone’s view of something so easily. She reached out and pressed her index finger against the soft skin beneath his left eye. So soft. She marveled at how she had never noticed his lovely honey colored eyes. The left one had a tiny fleck in it and she leaned in closer. Rings of gold and almost brown but not quite, captivated her. She could see he was no longer there. No life waited to re-ignite within the honey whirls. The same finger that rested on his face reached up slowly and rested against the surface of his open beautiful eye. As her skin met the surface she was surprised at how dry it felt. She expected it to be slick and moist with tears. It was also harder than she had imagined. The surface firm and not spongy as she had somehow been led to believe. She pressed against the eye and was surprised again by how it moved as a whole and didn’t indent under her finger. She wondered if more pressure would do the trick. Would the eye pop? What did the inside of an eye look like?

The last time shed dealt with this she had just scooped the eyes out she hadn’t touched them. But this was different. She knew him she liked him. Yes this was different. She grabbed his eye lid pulled and watched as it popped down over the violated eye. She fell back so that she was sitting on her heels and looked at him. Leo marks was winking at her. She laughed. He had been a funny guy she liked it. Plus she knew it made a sort of sense he dies with a secret. Wink. Wink. Now she just had to find the secret.

What had she been doing when his eyes distracted her? She grasped for it in her mind what, what, what! Keys! Ok she began the search again. After checking the body several times she decided to look in the brief case and there they were two sets of keys. Katie knew he looked up for the faculty some nights. Sometimes he even let class out early so he could take care of the chore.

Ok first cultivate a plan. She turned off the light and locked the inside door just in case. Pulling off her jacket she used it to mop the blood from her mouth and hands the best she could. Her hair was long so that should obscure any security guards from taking a closed look at her swollen face.

She grabbed her book bag off the desk, emptied all of the professor’s paperwork and laptop into it. Removing the small penlight and jump drive from around his neck and  draped them around hers. Back pack in place she peeked out the door. The hallway was empty, she slipped through, locking the door behind her.

As Katie drove she contemplated how she would move forward. There were ten hour before the campus opened and the room that had become a slaughterhouse was found. The body would have to be moved. But how? And even if she moved the body they would know where he was killed the minute they saw the room. Everyone in his last class would become a suspect.

Ok there’s nothing to be done about the mess, she thought, but I can at least get rid of all of the evidence. She dropped her car off in the parking lot of a gas station. Went to the restroom and looked at her reflection. Surprisingly she didn’t look frightened. She looked exhilarated. Washing her hands and face she giggled as an idea struck her.


Until tomorrow. Fortune favors the brave! Samantha Shu