Blood Tribe (The Blood Tribe Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Blood Tribe

  Also by Iris Kain

  Shadow Hunter

  Eternal Spring

  Sour

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 Iris Kain Books

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Acknowledgements for Blood Tribe:

  Romeo and Juliette, (1.1. 138-141) Univ. of Chicago Press 1906.

  The Art of War, Sun Tsu. Translated from Chinese by Lionel Giles, M. A.. Original publication 1910.

  Essays: First Series (1841). Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  ISBN 978-1-957244-05-1

  For Jamie.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  Epilogue

  I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

  - Mahatma Gandhi

  CHAPTER 1

  OCTOBER 1943

  Vivian’s only clue that her mother was home when she got back from the American Legion hall was the presence of their run-down Ford sedan in the driveway. She strode through the door, hung her jacket on the coat rack, and went straight into the roomy living room to her favorite item in the house—the radio. It stood as high as Vivian’s waist, and even though on cloudy days the reception was at best so-so, it was her and her mother’s pride and joy. She turned the power knob. Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” poured from the speaker.

  She headed to the oak rolltop desk and sat down in the high-backed chair. She tried to dispel the unforgettable sensation of Jude’s touch, but the more she tried to distract herself, the more pressing the memory became.

  Duke Ellington ended, and Tommy Dorsey picked up with “Marie” on his famous trombone.

  Maybe if I try to write Phillip a letter, she decided. She rolled back the desk’s cover and reached into the right-hand drawer where her mother kept the stationery. She grabbed a fountain pen, dipped the nib into the ink, and determined she would put down whatever came to mind.

  “My Dearest Phillip,” she wrote, and was stumped. Before tonight, the thought of Phillip hunkered down in a foxhole reading one of her perfume-scented letters always made her smile. Tonight, as she sat back and tried to think through the past few days to find a topic to write about, all that came to mind was Jude’s silk voice, his touch, the graceful way he danced, and the way the soulful voice of the crooning singer mirrored her heart’s mood.

  Her hand started for the page two or three times as she considered telling him about going to the dance with Ruth, but she stopped herself. And what would you write? “The American Legion Hall held a dance, but I only stayed for a few minutes. Ruth dragged me out after a handsome stranger started flirting with me.” Don’t be stupid.

  The phone rang. Vivian leaped from her chair and nearly spilled black ink all over her skirt. It was late; her mother would most likely be asleep. She reached for the phone before it had a chance to ring again.

  “Hello?”

  “Vivian?” Wesley’s voice barely carried over the background noise. He had called from the hall. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Wesley,” she responded. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Wesley said. “I just got back, and I can’t find Ruth. Did she say anything to you about when she was planning to go home?”

  “Um, no,” Vivian tried to recall any part of her conversation with Ruth she might have forgotten. Anything might have been said. But nothing came to mind. She was so flustered when Ruth practically pushed her into Wesley’s car and made her go home.

  “I don’t see her,” he said. “I was wondering if she’d said anything to you.”

  “Sorry, Wes, but I don’t know anything that you don’t.”

  “Well, if she calls you, let me know. I’m going to go see if maybe I missed her,” Wesley said. His voice didn’t sound hopeful.

  “Keep me posted, all right?” Vivian asked.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I find her,” Wesley said. They hung up.

  Her concern rose. It wasn’t like Ruth to wander off by herself. Overprotective parents, loving friends, and a doting boyfriend—now fiancé—had made it uncommon for Ruth to be alone, and her friend seemed to like it that way. That Wesley had to look for her was puzzling and a little disturbing.

  Well, it was a busy night, she reasoned and tried to put it out of her head.

  She sat down with pen and paper again and forced herself to pen a page full of nonsense and small talk for Phillip as she waited for Wesley’s call. It never came. Agitated, she put up her writing utensils, closed the desk, and went to bed.

  That night, she tried to steer her dreams toward rational thoughts of Phillip, marriage, and their future together, but it didn’t work. She was haunted by nightmares of a beautiful, dark man who seduced her, no matter how hard she tried to ward him off.

  HER MOTHER’S VOICE woke her in the morning.

  “Vivian, honey, you have a phone call.”

  She sat up sluggishly and peered through half-open eyes at her bedside clock. It was only a few minutes after six in the morning. Anyone who knew her well enough to call her should know that she would not be crawling out of bed for another hour. It had to be Wesley, calling about Ruth. She hurriedly slouched into her robe, felt around for her slippers with blurry eyes, and stumbled to the living room.

  Her mother waited in the doorway to ensure Vivian was awake. As usual, Rose Black had pulled herself together early, a store-bought cotton dress pulled snugly over her trim figure, a cup of coffee in her hand, lipstick blotted on the bone rose cup. When Vivian managed to make it to the living room, Rose smiled and handed her the telephone.

  “Hello?” She fought to keep the grogginess from her voice but failed.

  “Vivian? It’s Wesley,” he stuttered. He sounded as though he were trying to talk around a bone stuck in his throat. “Listen, I need to talk to you as soon as possible. It’s urgent. I’d have come over to tell you, but they n
eeded me here....”

  “Wesley, you’re not making sense,” she interjected. “We’re talking now. Why come over? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to tell you over the phone—”

  “Wesley, what happened? Is this about Ruth? Don’t make me worry. Tell me what happened.”

  There was a sigh and a choked sob. Wesley was crying!

  Oh, God. How bad is it?

  Vivian waited with a furrowed brow for Wesley to find his voice. All thoughts of sleep vanished. She tapped a nervous foot on the floor. Her mother brought her a steaming cup of coffee in a china cup, and Vivian nodded a thank you rather than speak. She did not want to interrupt Wesley. Rose disappeared, probably to the kitchen, to finish reading the morning paper.

  “It’s about Ruth, Vivian. Remember how I couldn’t find her at the dance?”

  “Yes, of course I remember.”

  “Well, I never did find her. I asked some people if they’d seen her, but they hadn’t.” He drew in a shuddering breath and continued. “A bunch of us started looking for her, calling around, that sort of thing. I knew something was wrong....” He broke off and sobbed hysterically.

  Vivian was desperate to hear what had happened, but part of her knew. Somehow, she knew.

  “Wesley, what happened?” she barked. There was another pause, and Vivian tapped her foot harder. The wait was torture.

  “I’m going to come over,” he sniffled. “I don’t want to say this over—”

  “Wesley William Scott, you tell me right this second! Where the hell is Ruth? What happened?”

  He still didn’t want to say. This time, Vivian swore she could have reached through the phone, grabbed him by his shirtfront, and shook him until he spoke. She endured another static-filled, shaky breath.

  “I took the woods behind the hall,” he said. “I don’t know why I looked there, but I did. She shouldn’t have been there. Now I wish... Why couldn’t someone else have...?”

  “Have what, Wesley?”

  His voice struggled, delivering the news in fits and starts. “I found her, Viv. I found her. Dead. I. Found. Her. Dead. Dead. She’s gone, Viv.”

  “No,” Vivian murmured. “How?”

  “How?” Wesley sounded angry. “I don’t know. All they tell me is that she lost her blood somehow.”

  “Lost it? How does a person lose their blood?”

  “From the looks of it, she lost a lot on the ground.”

  “Wesley!” Vivian cried.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m so... so.... Listen, is it all right if I come over? I’d like to talk to you. I need to talk to someone.”

  “Of course,” she said. She could use someone to talk to as well. She wasn’t sobbing yet, but her throat felt blocked, and tears poured down her cheeks.

  “I’ll be there soon,” he said

  “All right.”

  She hung up the phone in a stupor and felt for the chair next to the telephone table. She shuffled over and sat heavily.

  Ruth... gone? How? How does someone lose their blood and die? She had never heard of such a thing. It sounded like some crazy jungle disease or something out of a novel, not something that happened in New Bridgeport, Michigan. She sat several minutes until her shaky legs worked again and walked to her bedroom, her coffee forgotten.

  Hot tears poured down her cheeks as she laid curled into a ball on her bed. Ruth, her closest friend, was gone. While her mind grasped the concept, her heart refused to budge. She remembered Ruth’s flustered face as she forced her to leave the hall the night before. She saw her rosy cheeks, her dark, curly hair, the determined set of her mouth. What had possessed her to go into the woods at that hour? Ruth wasn’t a nature-lover, no matter what time of day it was. The thought of Ruth strolling through the woods crawling with heaven knew what kinds of bugs and four-legged creatures... No. Not Ruth.

  Poor Wesley. What is he going to do? Ruth was his whole life. How will he go on without her?

  As she sobbed into her pillow, she wondered how she would get along as well.

  BY THE TIME WESLEY arrived, Vivian had showered and put on a fresh pot of coffee. She nearly forgot to comb her hair, and when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, her eyes were red-ringed and swollen, as if she hadn’t had any sleep at all. Her mother asked what was wrong, and after finding out a few details, graciously stepped back to let her daughter deal with the situation the way she usually did—on her own.

  Wesley looked even worse than she did. His button-down shirt and slacks were as wrinkled as if he had slept in them. Then she recognized the shirt and slacks as the same ones he had been wearing when he dropped her off last night. His eyes had circles so dark it looked as if someone had slugged him. His sandy hair was uncharacteristically unkempt, and his face was a sickening gray-white under his tan.

  She let him into the house and showed him the way to the large, white kitchen, where she handed him a cup of black coffee. Wesley looked at the fabric-covered white chairs nervously, afraid to sit down.

  “It’s all right,” Vivian assured him, sitting across from the chair she directed him to take. “They’re washable.”

  He sat down and sipped his coffee, his face distracted. His eyes steered clear of hers as if he feared she blamed him for Ruth’s death. She sat, her arms on the table, her eyes unblinking and dry, and listened.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” he murmured. “When I couldn’t find her. I asked around, tried to find folks who might’ve known where she was. No one knew anything. So, I called you, then I checked again, but that was no good. She just wasn’t there. That’s when I started to panic.

  “I got the guys together, and we started to call people, friends she might have left with for one reason or another. Nobody knew anything, and by now, it was getting late—around midnight or so, I figure. The guys and I all wandered everywhere we could think of around looking for her. Thought maybe she’d walked home, and we just missed her. But I drove the route to her house and didn’t see her, and her folks said she wasn’t there. And then they’re worried. That’s when someone called the police—her father, I imagine.

  “The guys suggested we start to search the whole area near the hall for her, on foot, you know? I thought it was a great idea. I knew that Ruth wouldn’t.... Well, you know Ruth. She never does the unpredictable.

  “The other fellas, they took different roads. Thought maybe she just took a long way home or something. I took the woods behind the hall with Artie and Frank and one or two others.”

  He paused to sip coffee, and Vivian followed suit. Her mouth had grown dry as she listened. He put the chintz cup back in its saucer, and it struck Vivian how strong and capable his hands looked holding the tiny piece of china. He did not look as though he felt capable at that moment, though. He looked beaten down.

  “I don’t know why I took the woods,” he continued. “It was the last place I suspected she’d be. I think maybe somehow, I knew... It only took a couple of minutes for me to find her. Even in the pitch-dark part of the woods, she was so pale....”

  Vivian didn’t press for details. She didn’t want them. He had already hinted at how gruesome the scene was, and she didn’t want to picture it; it would make it too easy to imagine how her friend may have suffered. Yet, he looked so burdened by pain and confusion that Vivian did not ask him to stop. He needed to unburden himself by sharing the details. He hadn’t stopped staring at the tile floor since he took his first sip of coffee, and his voice was level and detached.

  “The coroner explained that her body was drained of nearly all its blood. Imagine that. Like a Goddamn vampire got a hold of it. Oh, sorry. You know I don’t like to swear in front of a lady, but jeez. It looked to me like there was plenty of blood there. It was all over the place.”

  He broke off to regain his composure, his eyes brimming with tears. Vivian waited for him to go on.

  “I’m really sorry to be the one who has to tell you this. I didn’t know where else to go
. You were Ruth’s best friend. I suppose a part of me thought you’d want to know.”

  “I did, in a way,” she admitted. However, I could have done without all the details. “I don’t understand it any better than you do, but it helps to know I can be here for you.”

  “You don’t know why Ruth was in the woods, do you?”

  Vivian shook her head and agreed it was both puzzling and maddening.

  They finished their coffee in silence. Vivian struggled for something to say. They were both lost in thoughts of Ruth. Wesley patted her hand several times in reassurance, and she did the same, as if by strengthening each other, they could help themselves.

  The phone rang. Vivian crossed the kitchen, entered the living room, and answered it. She guessed it would be another grieving friend—possibly Daisy Milner from English class. She had been a close friend to Vivian and Ruth. But no one was there.

  She hung up.

  She returned to the kitchen, where she found Wesley on his feet. The two of them made plans to visit Ruth’s family in an hour or two after Vivian had freshened up. The phone rang again.

  Vivian held up a finger, and Wesley nodded. She entered the living room again and answered the phone.

  Once more, no one was there.

  “That’s odd,” she commented. She looked up, and Wesley was watching her. She flushed, embarrassed that he caught her talking to herself, but he didn’t mind.

  “I’ll be around in a little while to drive you to the family’s house if you’d like,” he offered.

  “Thank you. That’d be nice,” she said, and the phone rang a third time. An annoyed expression crossed her face, but she lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Vivian?” It was the voice of her neighbor, Frances Drake, New Bridgeport’s leading rumormonger. Vivian had a vague memory of seeing Frances at the dance the night before, on the arm of her very long-standing, very henpecked boyfriend, Paul. Frances had waved briefly before catching Rita Schmidt by the shoulder, giving her an intense conspiratorial look and running her mouth at what appeared to be faster than the speed of thought. Which, knowing Frances, might not be far from the truth.