Bitten

by K. L. Nappier

  She finally shut up and took a pretty good swig of her own, her stare never leaving his. They faced off until both bottles were drained. Then Max dropped his gaze and picked at the neck's label with his thumbnail.

  He said, "I'm done with it."

  Doris's face tensed; a look somewhere between fear of knowing and needing to know. She said, "Okay, you want another?"

  He looked up. "That's not what I'm talking about."

  Her expression softened. "Yeah ... I know. What happened, Max?"

  "Does anything have to have 'happened'? Except for another hunter, you're the only one who understands how crappy this life is. Not even Mina gets it like you do. Hell, I'm almost fifty. It's a hard life for a man half my age."

  "But something did happen. Am I right? Something out of the ordinary ...?"

  He could see his eyes reflected in the reading glasses she was still wearing. He saw his own expression, a mix of pleading and refusal.

  "I'm serious. I don't want to talk about it."

  "If you want me to understand, Max--"

  "Who said I do? I came here to get away from it, not to lug it along with me."

  Damn it, he was through . Bad enough to have Luperón endlessly spooling through his head, waking or sleeping, without having to indulge Doris's stunted mothering instinct. But she didn't nag or sit in pissed off silence. Instead she looked at him as if she could see inside his head, see the carnage at the church, see him cradling Sister Veronica as she took her last breath, see him gently reassembling Mezz like some giant, torn rag doll.

  Finally she asked, "So ... what's next?"

  "I was thinking, maybe, some coffee. You've got a point about the beers."

  "You're a real wit when you want to avoid something." But she rose to grab the percolator off the stove and filled it at the tap, letting the subject drop.

  Max watched her, wondering if Ventura would be a nice place to settle.

  Chapter Twenty

  David Alma Curar's Compound

  South of Tohatchi, New Mexico

  Spring, 1950

  Dusk. New Moon.

  David pushed back from the journal and rubbed his eyes, the must of yellowed pages clinging to his fingers. The Ham whistled briefly and he looked up in spite of himself. He knew Max wouldn't be hailing him. Couldn't hail him. Doris didn't have a radio. She had refused years ago, in spite of David's offer to pay. It would have been agony, she had told him. She would not have been able to stay off it. Listening, wondering, worrying, every time they were on a hunt. Better to not know. Better to wait for a phone call from Mina one awful day, telling her that he or Max -or both- had finally lost to the Beast.

  He rested his hands on his thighs, leaned the chair on two legs and let his gaze return to the volume opened on the table. Its pages were brown around the edges, its leather cover worn, grainy and cracked. There were six thick journals in all, dating from 1894 to 1932, all written in the sparse, crabbed handwriting of Joseph Stanislov.

  Stanislov had already been an old man when he had taken David back from the Beast. By the time his hunts led him to David, he depended on cunning more than physical force. Drugs. Kidnappings. Those had become his main weapons long before the two of them had even met.

  Not that it would have been very hard to subdue David in any case. By the time Stanislov came along, David was spending the better part of his time drunk. Most of the elders on the reservation had figured out he was behind the killings long before he knew it himself. But, of course, the police -neither Navajo nor white- believed in werewolves. And the elders relied on the old ways when it came to damaged souls.

  David endured every sweating, sing, unction and powder, anything to keep the community peace. Anything to heal the pain of his widowhood. But he always denied he was at the center of it all. And the kills continued. David got drunker. His cursing about old men and their stupidity and superstition got louder. He was branded a witch, a shape-shifter, a man who refused to walk in the Navajo way of Beauty.

  The elders pronounced him shunned. He moved like a ghost inside the reservation. The only recognition of his existence was people crossing the street to avoid him. Or their flinching when he yelled at their backs, turned against him when he couldn't be avoided.

  He'd been living not far outside the reservation's borders a few months before Stanislov tracked down the lineage that David hosted. By then he was well on his way to being the stereotypical Indian, passed out against the facade of some white man's liquor store.

  Then came Fate. A chance encounter. David walks out of the store. A bump, a busted Mogen-David bottle bleeding through its paper bag on the wooden walkway. An elaborate apology from an old hawk-nosed man with an accent that made David think of the "Dracula" movie. An offer to replace the bottle. With his hangover and his shakes, in his eagerness for the first gulp of that dark, sweet, grimace-inducing wine, David hadn't even noticed the screw top's seal had been broken.

  It was that easy.

  David woke from a stupor the wine had never given him before. Deeper even than the fifth of whiskey that he could, from time to time, get his hands on. He had fantasized about such a deep, cottony daze, but now he realized he didn't want to sink into those depths again. Something waited for him there. Faces waited for him there.

  "Those are the memories you share with the Beast," Stanislov said.

  David didn't realize he had company until that moment. He pulled himself up from his side, rubbed his face, and looked toward the voice. He wanted to ask, "What did you say?" But all he could manage was a questioning groan.

  "In your stupor, you were talking. Trying to find a way to turn from them. Those faces you see. Those are the faces of its victims. It revels in the memories, feeds off them while it lies dormant. They are very like the moving pictures of this new generation, aren't they? They are what sustain the Beast until emergence, these memories of its kills. Their screams. Their pleading. Their eyes. You were not meant to see them just yet, Mr. Begay. But, lucky for us the Beast has, at least, a few limits and weaknesses."

  Something else David hadn't noticed before was that he wasn't home in his hogan. This place looked like some dingy jail. Another milestone on my downhill road. My first time in lockup .

  At last he found enough voice to ask, "Where am I," before he thought to add, "Who are you?"

  "Forgive me. I have you at a disadvantage. My name is Joseph Stanislov."

  It must have been night. The only light was from a couple of oil lamps, one sitting on a small table near Stanislov's elbow; the other, coming from behind David's left. He turned, still in a daze, looking for the source. This was a strange setup for a town jail, even in the wastelands around Indian territory. He was sitting on a canvas cot in the middle of a cage. The cage, in turn, sat in the middle of some place large and hidden behind the lamp glow. He reached out to touch the bars, expecting them to dissolve like a booze-induced hallucination. His fingers came back gritty with rust.

  Finally, a dose of fear. Adrenaline cleared some of the stupor. He swiveled about, trying to get his bearings, in spite of the ache and vertigo.

  "Are you thirsty?" Closer now, Stanislov's voice made David startle. "I'm sure I will have to say this often before you finally believe. But you have nothing to fear from me."

  David never did come to believe that. He just learned to believe that Stanislov was his only hope.

  His captor bent down about an arm's length from the cage and set a canning jar of water on the floor. He kept a steady gaze on David all the while, then -with the stiffness of age- rose and returned to the stool he had been sitting on.

  "Can you reach that?"

  David didn't try. He began to sweat, his heart pounding in his ears. Stanislov shrugged, suit yourself on his face. Ever courteous, but aloof.

  "Regrettably, this inconvenience is necessary. You and I will remain here until the first night of the full moon. There is still some life left in you, and the Beast isn't ready to move to another host. Like a pa
tient suffering through an attack of malaria, yours will be a difficult time. A poor analogy, but it's the best I can do with my simple English. Your experience will be worse.

  "The Beast, you see, is more conscious of us than you of it. The Beast knows what I intend to do, so naturally, it will fight back as best it can. Soon it will share with you more of those memories. What you did in the orphanage, What you did to your wife ..."

  That brought David to the bars, his arms stretched, his hands clawing. Stanislov's stony expression never wavered. The pain in David's head surged. Something between a roar and a scream felt as though it would burst his skull. He sank to the cage's floor, clutching his ears. When the noise and the pain ebbed, Stanislov's voice came through.

  "Neither of you are quite ready for that, I see."

  "Animal attack," David managed to slur out.

  "Please?"

  "It was an animal attack!" David shouted through the pounding in his head.

  "But what you must come to understand, Mr. Begay, is that the animal is in you."

  David pulled himself off the floor. "You crazy old bilaga'ana! What am I doing here?! What do you want?!"

  "Only to stop it."

  "Stop what ?"

  "The Beast, Mr. Begay. The werewolf."

  David made it to the cot, his limbs heavy as sacks of wet sand. None of this makes sense . He must've gotten a tainted bottle of wine, or a bad can of beans, and this grotesquely real dream was the effect. Maybe he was in a clinic somewhere, comatose, on his last legs, dying from botulism. Could he be that lucky?

  Or maybe a skin walker -a real one- had poisoned him and was waiting for him to die so his bones could be ground into corpse powder. Strong magic in corpse powder, they say. Probably all the more so if made from the bones of a witch.

  But just in case this wasn't a deathbed fever dream, he stole a glance at the cage door, wrapped tightly at the unhinged seam with a heavy chain and padlock.

  Stanislov said, "It is an old but solid circus cage, Mr. Begay, without its wheels and axle. Built for a lion. There is not even a key to the lock any more. I destroyed it after I pulled you onto the cot. So, you see, you are quite confined. Upon First Night, if I do not act quickly, the Beast will come through those bars. But you never will ..."

  ***

  The Ham crackled again. David heard a voice beneath the static, but no one he knew. He brought the chair back to all fours, folded his arms on the table and pulled his gaze from the journals. In the quiet, he could hear Mina at the other side of house, readying for bed.

  He pressed his palm against the denim of his trousers until he felt the ridge of scar tissue on his abdomen. I'm getting tired, Stanislov. I'm getting old. He tried to picture how Yazhi might have looked in her 50's. Wondered if they might have had grandchildren by now. How many sons, how many daughters? The fantasy made him smile a moment, and then it tightened his throat and stung his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Doris Tebbe's House on Mission Avenue

  San Buenaventura, California

  Spring, 1950

  Evening. New Moon.

  "It's going to be a hard habit to break, I guess."

  Max hadn't realized what he'd been doing until Doris spoke. He had leaned forward, peering at a patch of sky between the neighborhood rooftops and the front porch eaves. Looking for the moon. Searching for its faint silhouette during the dark phase. In the New Mexico desert, away from city lights, he would've spotted it easily.

  Max leaned back on the three-seated glider. Doris sat with him, her hand resting on the empty cushion between them. Together, they pushed the glider into motion and Max asked, "You don't look for it anymore?"

  She gazed toward the street. "I try not to, but ... there's a section in the morning paper that displays the phases."

  "Cheater."

  Doris laughed, short and soft, and reached for her highball on the side table. She took a drink and said, "So. How're David and Mina taking this decision of yours?"

  David's pouting like a four-year-old, sulking in his sweat lodge, burying his nose in those goddamn journals, pretending he's accepted it, but I could see it in his eyes. The bastard'll never give up on me.

  Max reached for his own drink. "David rolls with the punches, you know that."

  "Hmm. And Mina?"

  "Mina's got plenty to worry about besides me. She manages those shops better than David ever did. With her in charge, all he really needs to do is work on his own silver craft and decide what other Native jewelers to display." He looked at Doris and lifted his index finger, pointing at her from around the glass. "That's what he should do. Quit hunting altogether and put his energy in his art again."

  "I don't think the two of you could've gotten along without Mina."

  "We thank our lucky stars we didn't have to for long. Although, at the time our paths crossed, we sure didn't think of those stars as lucky. Funny how things go, isn't it? If I hadn't almost died of pneumonia when we were fleeing the state, David and I might not have Mina with us today."

  "Did she ever ... was she ever able to go back to her family, after following you and David?"

  Max shrugged. Between sips he said, "She came and went for a little while. But she hasn't done that for years now. She's never talked about it, at least not to me. Maybe with David. I used to catch them sometimes, talking low in Navajo, but they'd clam up as soon as they noticed me. Like I'd ever understand a word."

  "And how are the others? Paul and Amy? Samuel?"

  "Paul and Amy are good. Still freezing their asses off in the Canadian northwest, who the hell knows why. Couple of calls ago, Amy said the sea foam was freezing in midair. Samuel ... I dunno. When I left Tohatchi, we still hadn't heard from him. If David doesn't hear from him soon he'll need to do something. We're getting worried. You've never met any of them, have you?"

  Max finished his highball, waiting for her reply. But Doris had gone stiff and quiet. He was trying to decide if he had the nerve to ask if he'd said something wrong, when she said, "How 'bout it? Is that enough small talk for now?"

  Max set his glass down. "Doris ..."

  "Because it's been small talk since you got here. Beer and small talk. Town tour and small talk. Dinner and small talk. Now porch sitting and small talk." She braked the glider's motion with her foot and turned to him. "You know I've never been good at this chatty crap. So now, after all these years, you expect me to turn into a Good Housekeeping model?"

  "Doris ..."

  "Come on, Max, screw all this."

  Max clenched his jaw so hard, his back teeth ached. It was a stupid idea, coming to see Doris. What the hell had he been thinking? He was angrier with himself than with her, because she was right. He hadn't really thought about it that way but, yeah, that's what he'd wanted. And with Doris, he should've known better. What the hell had he been thinking?

  His voice was still tight when he said, "You're right. It's not fair. This was a bad idea." He stood. "I better turn in. The long flight, the booze .. what I need most is a good night's sleep."

  He started toward the door, but Doris's voice was plaintive when she said, "Max," and grabbed his shirt sleeve. She stood. Her hand moved up to rest near his shoulder.

  His eyes burned and got watery. Embarrassed, he looked away, his jaw tensing again. But he didn't move away. Neither did she. Her fingers pressed his arm more firmly and she said again, "Max .."

  He brought his arm up to her back. He meant it to be a reconciling gesture, between friends: it's okay ... I'll be okay. But his fingers curled over her shoulder and he pulled her against him and pressed his face against her neck. One gut-deep sob spilled out before he could do anything about it.

  She let him hold her. She let him pull his other arm up and lock her against him. When he kissed her neck, she let that happen, too. Her gasp, so close to his ear, hardened him instantly. Her palms came up, fingers clutching wads of shirt, and he pulled his lips up her neck to her jaw line, to her mouth.

  The
n suddenly she wasn't there. She was backing off, toward the front door, glaring at him with a mix of anger and heartache.

  "Damn it, Max!" She turned and charged through the door.

  Max followed. "I'm sorry ... Doris ... I'm sorry ..."

  She turned toward him again. "Are you? For what?"

  "I just ... I'm tired, boozed up, I lost control. I'm sorry, Doris, it won't happen again."

  She looked like she was going to slug him. "You ... asshole ! Who the hell do you think you're talking to? You're going to look me in the eye and pretend all you did just now was make a pass at me?"

  "I did just make a pass ..."

  She jabbed her finger at him, firing words like bullets. "Bullshit! You didn't want me so much as you just wanted to change the subject . That was low. " Her eyes narrowed and her voice got brittle. "Well, congrats. It worked."

  By now Max was past sorry and well into pissed. But Doris stormed off to her room and slammed the door before he could get satisfaction. He marched down the hall and gave her door a kick.

  "Good!" he shouted through the wood. Then stood there for a minute. When nothing happened, he stomped off to his own room and matched her, slam for slam.

  * * *

  He wasn't sure how long he'd lain in his skivvies on top of the covers, his clothes crumpled in a corner where he'd flung them. Long enough to be sorry about their fight. Long enough to admit to himself that Doris was partly right.

  She was wrong about him not wanting her, though.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side. It took him a moment to swallow his pride and screw up his nerve, but he finally got off the bed, uncrumpled his trousers and pulled them on.

  Outside her door, he rapped a knuckle against the wood. When he didn't get an answer, he tried again and called low, "Doris?" Still nothing. He took a chance and tried the knob. She wasn't in bed. She had been, from the looks of it, but not long enough to mess it up much. Max closed the door, feeling even worse about his behavior. He went looking around the house, but she wasn't anywhere.

  He checked the porch, wound up in the living room, plopped on the couch, leaned back and rubbed his face. She hadn't gone far because her Rambler convertible was still parked out front. Max thought about going to look for her, but decided against it. This was s.o.p. for her. When she was upset she'd walk it off, no matter how long it took.