Blood World Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY CHRIS MOONEY

  DARBY MCCORMICK SERIES

  The Missing

  The Secret Friend

  The Dead Room

  The Soul Collectors

  Fear the Dark

  Every Three Hours

  Every Pretty Thing

  The Snow Girls

  The Killing House

  Deviant Ways

  World Without End

  Remembering Sarah

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Mooney, Chris, author.

  Title: Blood world / Chris Mooney.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019057674 (print) | LCCN 2019057675 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593197639 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593197653 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3563.O565 B56 2020 (print) | LCC PS3563.O565 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057674

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057675

  Jacket image by Aleks Ivic Visuals / Getty Images

  Jacket design by Tierney and Wood LLC

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Titles by Chris Mooney

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1 – Thy Kingdom Come

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part 2 – Thy Will Be Done

  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

  Part 3 – In Heaven as It Is on Earth

  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

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part 4 – Give Us This Day

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Jackson,

  the greatest gift

  Thy Kingdom Come

  CHAPTER 1

  WHEN ELLIE BATISTA turned the patrol car onto Montclair, a quiet street in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood, she spotted a big Secret Service–looking dude in slick mirrored sunglasses and a black suit ushering a boy dressed up in prep school clothing to a Chevy Suburban with tinted windows parked at the top of the driveway of a spacious, contemporary ranch house. The guy holding open the SUV’s back door was bigger and taller than his partner, but the thing Ellie noticed right away was how both men were looking around like a sniper was lurking somewhere nearby, in this neighborhood where the greatest danger was living next to someone who hadn’t paid their parking tickets.

  Ellie was close enough now to see the anxiety on the kid’s face. She hit the lights but not the siren. Her partner looked up from his smartphone, saw her shooting up the driveway, and rolled his eyes.

  “No,” Danny said. “No, we are not doing this again.”

  “Relax, Pops. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Ellie parked at an angle so the SUV couldn’t escape—at least down the driveway. She couldn’t see the driver—the SUV’s windows were tinted, almost black—but if there was someone behind the wheel, he might decide to make a break for it, tear across the lawn.

  Danny sighed as he unsnapped the holster of his sidearm. “You’re doing all the paperwork—and you’re picking up lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “Jimmy J’s taco truck.”

  “The place where you got food poisoning?”

  “I think it was a stomach bug.”

  “Still,” she said.

  “That’s the deal. What’s it going to be?”

  “Your funeral,” she said, opening the door.

  At five feet eight, Ellie was tall for a woman. The guy holding open the SUV’s back door stood six feet six and weighed probably close to three bills. He looked, Ellie thought, like vanilla pudding poured into a cheap suit. He had a tiny pug nose and small hands for a man so large, but there was no doubt in her mind that he could swat her away like a fly.

  The driver had rolled down the windows. He knew the drill, and he rested his hands on top of the steering wheel.

  “IDs and permits,” Ellie said.

  Vanilla Pudding sighed. “We’ve been stopped three times by you people just this past week alone. You’re seriously screwing with our, you know, productivity.”

  Ellie looked to the driver. “Sir, please cut the engine and step outside.” Then, to the group: “Put your hands on top of the car roof so I can see ’em.”

  As Danny frisked them, taking their licenses, gun permits, and handguns, Ellie studied the boy from behind her sunglasses. He looked to be eleven, maybe even as old as thirteen, and had a sweaty pie-shaped face and stringy blond hair, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He kept swallowing nervously and his eyes skittered across the ground in front of him as if it contained hidden land mines.

  Carrier, Ellie thought. Had to be, given all the security. If this kid had the gene, he was worth big money. The rule of thumb in the blood world was the younger the carrier, the more potent their blood, the more he or she was worth. Blood didn’t discriminate. Boy or girl, black or white, mentally challenged or potential Mensa candidate, a single child co
uld be worth several million dollars over the course of his or her life—unless the kid was drained and dumped, the blood sold for quick cash. That seemed to be the norm these days, at least here in California, with everyone looking to make a quick buck.

  “What’s your name?” Ellie asked the boy.

  “Christopher.”

  “Christopher what?”

  “Christopher Palmer.”

  “Nice to meet you. Do you know these men?”

  The boy nodded. He wore dark gray pants with loafers and a navy blue suit jacket with a school crest on the lapel, over a white shirt with a red tie. Prep school kid, lots of money.

  “I need to hear you say it,” she said.

  “I know them.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “From what?”

  “From anything. Are you a carrier?”

  Vanilla Pudding, standing with his hands splayed on top of the SUV’s roof, turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Don’t answer that, Christopher.” Then, to Ellie: “Look, kid’s already late for school, and we’ve got to get him there before noon. He’s got a big test today he can’t miss.”

  “I’m not through with my questions.”

  “All due respect, Officer, what you’re doing, LAPD—it’s harassment.”

  “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, sir, you don’t want to cooperate.”

  “How about you take our licenses and gun permits, our weapons, do the background checks, whatever, while you follow us to his school? We drop him off, and then we can play question and answer for as long as you want. I’ll give you the numbers for his parents, too. You can call them along the way, make sure everything’s copacetic.”

  “Give me the numbers.”

  The parents’ names were Cynthia and Francis Palmer. After she wrote down the numbers, she showed them to the boy. “Are these your parents’ phone numbers?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Can I sit in the car, please? It’s really hot out.”

  Ellie opened the back door for him. Then she looked at Vanilla Pudding and said, “Lead the way.”

  Danny took over driving duty so she could work the laptop installed in the car. As she checked the licenses and permits, she thought about the steroid-laced goons playing rent-a-cop and wondered if someone, maybe even a group of people, was watching the boy right now, shadowing his movements and working on a plan to abduct him. She doubted anything would happen on the way to school, but something might go down at the school. Last month, a group of masked men armed with assault rifles stormed their way into a fancy private high school in Van Nuys to abduct a pair of teenagers who carried the blood gene. The gunmen were killed, along with two students and six school employees. There was a lot of talk in the state about teachers arming themselves.

  The bodyguards checked out. Their gun permits all checked out. Ellie called the numbers Vanilla Pudding, whose name was Trevor Daley, had given her. She got the boy’s mother on the phone, but the woman refused to answer any questions until Ellie gave her own personal information.

  Ellie didn’t blame her. Families of carriers had to worry about people posing as police and federal agents. You couldn’t trust anyone these days. Anyone.

  When the boy’s mother called back fifteen minutes later, she seemed more relaxed. Ellie asked the woman a series of personal questions, comparing her answers with the information listed on the computer screen. Everything seemed to be in order.

  St. Devon’s Academy looked more like a maximum-security prison facility than a private school. Its sleek modern buildings sat behind tall concrete walls that had barbed wire installed along the tops. Almost all schools these days had fences or walls, but this was the first one she’d seen that had its own guard tower. Seeing a guy armed with a high-powered rifle and a scope looming above a bunch of little kids kicking around a soccer ball or just hanging out, acting like this was all normal, made her heart sink.

  When it came to carriers, the police were subject to the same checks as ordinary citizens. Ellie and Danny had to wait several minutes while two men armed with assault rifles checked and rechecked their IDs. Forms were signed, fingerprints scanned, and after the gate was unlocked, Danny pulled up against the curb of what appeared to be the main building. Another pair of armed men guarded the door. Others were stationed at various checkpoints and roamed the perimeter and parking lot.

  Vanilla Pudding pulled up behind them. Ellie got out and again asked the boy if he felt safe. He assured her that he did, and off he went to the front door to submit his hand to the portable fingerprint scanner one of the guards was holding.

  “You happy with your job?” Vanilla Pudding asked.

  “Is anyone?”

  Vanilla Pudding smiled. He had tiny, baby teeth. “Reason I’m asking is, my company has a lot of clients who are young girls. They’d feel more comfortable in the presence of a woman.” He reached into his coat and came back with a business card. “If you want to make some real money, with real health benefits, call me.”

  Ellie thanked him, handed him back his documentation and weapons, and headed back to the patrol car.

  “Your stop-and-frisk routine back at the house,” Danny said as they drove away. “You mind telling me what that was about?”

  Ellie shrugged. “We saw something, so we stopped.”

  “We?”

  “The kid looked scared shitless, so I decided to check it out.”

  Danny’s gaze cut to her; he wanted, she knew, to call bullshit. And he’d have been right, of course.

  Ellie had been a patrolwoman for a little over a year, but her real goal—her future—lay in the LAPD’s newly formed Blood Crimes Unit. Admittance was extremely competitive—only the best and brightest. She considered herself reasonably intelligent, knew she was a hard worker, and, for the most part, had good people skills. What she had going against her was lack of investigative experience—and BCU looked for two years minimum, even for lowly data analyst positions.

  The way she figured it, the more information she could collect on the blood world during her stop-and-frisk routines, as Danny called them, the more knowledge she would accumulate, and the more attractive she’d look when she reapplied to the BCU.

  There was another, more personal reason she didn’t want to get into it with Danny—with anyone.

  Ellie was about to change the subject when Danny, thankfully, did it for her. “You ever wonder what it’s like?” he asked.

  “Being a carrier?”

  “Getting an infusion.”

  Ellie shrugged. “Don’t really see the point.”

  “You can say that ’cause you’re young and good-looking. How old are you, again? Twenty-four?”

  “Twenty-six, which is a whole two decades younger than you, Gramps.”

  “Yeah, wait until you hit middle age. Your body starts changing without your permission. Everything begins to wrinkle and sag, and everything hurts. It’s depressing as hell.” Danny sighed. “You do know this is one massive government conspiracy, right?”

  Ellie drew a slow, deep breath through her nose as she shifted in her seat.

  “No,” he said. “No, don’t give me that look. I’m not some conspiracy nut. Carrier blood is a real thing. It’s a fact. It’s got that circulating protein there, that enzyme called eNAMPT that makes cells produce these unbelievable amounts of energy, which is why carriers look like they don’t age, why they seem to be able to fight off disease. I mean, that’s a legitimate medical thing, right?”

  Ellie sighed. “Yes.”

  “Okay, and we also know a full-body transfusion of carrier blood alone doesn’t erase wrinkles and burn belly fat and increase muscle tone and all that other wonderful stuff—which is why, back in the day, scientists and biohackers started experimenting with carrier blood mixed with other medications. They found one that worked, that chemo pill th
at’s now off the market because it’s supposedly carcinogenic, Vira-something.”

  “Viramab.”

  Danny snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. So, all these megawealthy one-percenter types start flocking to these holistic centers that are springing up like warts all over the East and West coasts, and they’re paying mucho dinero to get these carrier transfusions mixed with Viramab, and, voilà, the shit actually works.”

  Everything Danny had said so far was 100 percent true. Now here comes the crazy curveball.

  “This goes on for about a year,” Danny said, “and then suddenly the government shuts everything down because people getting these transfusions allegedly die from them.”

  “Allegedly?” Ellie chuckled, saw that he was dead serious. “Danny, people actually died. They were on the front pages of major news sites. Their immune systems eventually broke down—”

  “That’s what the government wants you to believe.”

  “You’re saying that all those well-known actors and actresses and titans of industry and rich folks from all over the world who died from these blood transfusions were targeted by the CIA or some such bullshit? Please don’t tell me you believe that.”

  “I’m talking about the Illuminati.”

  “Okay, we’re done here.”

  “You read that article last week in the Times, the one about Senator Baker from Ohio? Guy was showing early signs of dementia, right? People were urging him to retire. Now the dementia’s gone—”

  “According to an anonymous source,” Ellie said. “There’s no direct proof—”

  “Oh, please. Pull up the side-by-side pictures. There’s no doubt he’s using carrier blood. And that’s my point. Wealthy people, people in power—you know they’re getting carrier blood from someone who has perfected the recipe. Could be an underground supplier, could be big pharma. Who knows? Point I’m trying to make here is that the law and rules of society only apply to common folk like you and me. The wealthy and the elite—these are the people who can get their hands on this stuff. These are the people who will continue to live and reproduce, and in time they’ll create a new world order.”