Bitten

by K. L. Nappier

"That means they'll let Andrew out, too."

  "It's either that or give the Beast a prison full of caged prey instead of making it hunt down a single victim. Doris, don't leave! We were en route when my truck broke down, but we're getting there as fast as we can. There's nothing else we can do for this First Night. We'll just have to find him before the next one ..."

  "Max is with you?"

  "Yes ... he's very weak, but, yes, he's coming, too. He's going to turn himself in. He's going to take the Takei boy's place."

  "Weak? Why is he still weak?"

  "Not from the save. From pneumonia. Doris ... we almost lost him. It hit him before he recovered from the save and by the time he was conscious enough to remember Andrew, the moon was in its third quarter. I've been trying to track you down ever since. Doris, you know you can't stop the Beast, even if you go. But your phone call might save lives."

  Doris didn't reply. She was too busy thinking, How much gas is in the car? I've still got a few ration coupons, is there a station on the way? How can I get the night guards to evacuate the center? Can I get to Andrew when I get there?

  "Doris, are you still there?"

  Then what? If I can get to Andrew before the Beast emerges, then what? I need a silver weapon ... damn it! All her archery equipment, her bow, her arrows -still tipped with the same silver that had slain the Beast while Max was its host- was in storage, thirty minutes away in the wrong direction.

  A wave of vertigo pressed her against the phone table. Her gaze fell to the silver-plated letter opener. She dropped the receiver into the cradle and grabbed her address book, whipping through the pages until she found the number for the juvenile center. The phone rang again and she knew who it was even as she picked it back up.

  "Doris!" David shouted.

  She pressed the disconnect with her thumb, hardly able to bear the time it would take to wait for David to hang up again in an attempt to re-dial her. When the hum came to her ears, she started dialing.

  The juvenile center's phone rang. And rang and rang. She cursed the receiver as she slammed it down. All she had for the prison was the day number; the public one, the one used by attorneys and parents and delivery men. There had to be another number for after-hour emergencies and contacting the night shift. But it was bound to be restricted.

  Her phone was ringing again. She grabbed the letter opener, snatched up her car keys and ran out the door.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Butte County Juvenile Detention Center

  North Central California

  1942

  First Night. Full Moon.

  A halo domed the bell tower as the moon rose behind it. Doris punched the gas all the way to the front entrance. She threw the car door open, stumbling as she ran, but skidded to a halt when she reached the entry. The right door was flung wide, a ring of keys sprawled on the floor tiles just below the lock. Spatters of blood led off to the north detention wing and a continuous smear went south. The sight rooted her where she stood. That, and the dead silence.

  Oh, God.

  Terror bled her mind of all thought, except one: Tonight I die . Then another burst through: Run! It's too late, run! But if she did that, the killing wouldn't stop. She slid one sweaty palm into the pocket of her jacket. Her fingers closed around the silver letter opener and she stepped over the blood.

  The need to live just long enough to kill reined in her terror. Every sense sharpened. The lobby lights stung her eyes like sunlight. The grit between tile and shoe felt like gravel. To her right, the door to the north wing -where all the other juveniles were housed- was wide open. She could see the cell doors flung back, but the only sign of violence within was the pattern of blood drops that had separated from the larger, longer smear leading to the south wing. The drops were scuffed and smudged inside the north wing, as if trampled across, and they doubled back to where the keys lay at the detention center's entry. But there were no bodies. A spark of hope flashed through Doris's mind: someone had gotten the kids out.

  She looked left, toward the south wing, where the large blood smear led. The door was closed, but the smear continued on beneath it. There still wasn't a sound except her own ragged breathing, the rapid thrum of her pulse and the high, electric buzz of the ceiling lights.

  Then a scream came through the door.

  Doris didn't give herself time to think. She rushed over and gripped the door handle.

  A man burst through. It was Cutler, bed-sheet white, dripping sweat and blood. He grabbed Doris's arm and was pushing her toward the exit when he went down, pulling her with him. He shrieked, clawed for purchase, kicking at the head of the Beast as it dragged him back through the door, taking Doris with them.

  Cutler's agony rang off the walls. The Beast worked its way up his leg, ripping and flinging, its eyes full of fever, fixed on Cutler's contorted face. Then suddenly the Beast howled as if in pain, lunging backward, and it was a moment before Doris realized she had struck out, slashing the Beast across its muzzle with the silver opener. She scrambled to her feet, flailing the blade outward as her back collided with the door jamb.

  Silvery red blood oozed from the Beast's muzzle. It stood panting, growling, watching her as Cutler lay between them gasping, calling out a woman's name, and then calling on God until what was left of his life spilled from the gap where his hip and leg had once been.

  Down the entire length of hallway there was nothing but shattered cell doors, smear, stench and splatter. The only sounds, Doris's rapid panting and the Beast's low growling: as if it was thinking aloud, considering the wisest move, how to get past the silver blade that blocked it from her throat. It curled its long red tongue across its muzzle and lapped at the luminous blood, staring at her through Andrew Takei's eyes.

  And suddenly Doris remembered another time, another host. David shouting over his gunfire, hoping to awaken Max trapped deep within the Beast: Maxwell! Maxwell! Over here!

  She shouted, "Andrew!"

  Not a flinch. Not a flicker of recognition. The Beast stopped its growling mutter. Its shoulders squared and its hind quarters dipped as it readied to spring forward.

  Oh, God, please let Andrew hear me, please, like Max heard David, please, God.

  "Andrew!!"

  The Beast opened its great jaws and roared. Doris screamed and sobbed and nearly dropped the blade as the Beast bent more deeply into its crouch. Then suddenly rage trumped terror, and Doris thought, " All right then, damn it, God, help me plunge this right down the son-of-a-bitch's throat!"

  But instead of bolting forward the Beast jerked to the right. Doris jumped away and knocked against the wall. That was a feint, she thought, it's trying to get me to drop the blade.

  The Beast flapped its great head. It took a step forward, and then back again, flapping some more, growling, looking at her, and then flapping again like some gigantic hound trying to clear its ears.

  She shouted, "Andrew! Can you hear me, Andrew?"

  Again the Beast roared, again it flapped its head, swiveling from side to side. Then, as if being pulled from behind, it backed away and Doris didn't realize what it was doing until it had turned and went full gallop toward the grated window at the hallway's end.

  She screamed, "No!" No , to her failure. No , she was letting it escape! She ran after it, slipping on the blood, falling, skidding across the gore as the Beast's silvery bulk ripped through the metal grating, and the window's glass burst, as gossamer to its mass as spider web.

  Doris struggled upward, blood-soaked from her fall, still clutching the flimsy silver letter opener. She stumbled to each shattered cell door, hoping to find one of the boys, any of the boys alive ... but, no. She found the remains of Cutler's partner flung against the far wall in one of the cells across from Andrew's, along with the boy he must have been trying to save.

  In the vacuum of silence came the beginning of a high-pitched whine. A siren, still far off. Then Doris made out a second behind the first. Wait for them. Just make it to the lobby, and w
ait for them.

  That's what she wanted to do, more than anything. Let them find her there, waiting with the carnage. Let them ask her question after question, listen to her answers corrupted by trauma and hysteria -because that's what they would be certain to think- then tuck her into a nice, safe, padded cell. Maybe they'd even try to pin all this on her. She looked down at her mighty, silver letter opener and the thought struck her as so sickly funny that one short burst of laughter popped out before ending in a sob.

  The lure of an asylum was strong, but Max and David would need all the help they could get. Andrew Takei would need all the help he could get. She left behind the south wing and its dead, taking off her bloodied shoes and crossing the lobby in her stocking feet, sidestepping the blood trails that streaked the floor.

  She tossed the soiled shoes onto the car's floorboard as she fled and, from the cover of a rutted path, densely treed, she watched the ambulances and police cars speed on toward the juvenile center.

  * * *

  Doris bolted upright, startled awake by something shrill. It was only the telephone. Once she realized that she was lying on her bed with the spread pulled cattycorner over her, she caught her breath and made her way into the living room. Her bathrobe had twisted during her restless sleep, and she tugged it back into place as she reached for the receiver.

  It was A. Frederick Gershom, delivering as gently as he could the news about what had happened at Butte County. At least eight of the nine Inu Hunters were dead. Both guards, too; a man named Jacobs and the other, Cutler. Did Doris remember him? He had been pulling two shifts.

  They had all been killed like the Tulenar victims. The prevailing thought was that the mysterious man -or men- believed to have controlled the boys while they were in the internment camp, must have gotten to them at the juvenile center. They were killed to keep them silent. They were killed horribly to make a point.

  There was a possibility that one of the boys, Andrew Takei, might still be alive and was an accomplice rather than a victim. But that was uncertain. His state-issued jumpsuit was found in tatters in his cell and there were signs of a struggle in the aftermath: a long drag mark through the blood pool that headed toward the shattered hall window. Perhaps Andrew had been the last to be attacked and was pulled through the window. There was a lot of speculation why, if that's what had happened.

  There was also a blood trail that began in the south wing and ended at the detention center's entrance, and a series of blood spatters that continued from the lobby into the north wing.

  Authorities had managed to round up most of the north wing kids, who said that they had heard horrific screams before Cutler came through the door and started opening their cells, yelling for them to get out. He appeared to be badly wounded, but managed to lead them to the entrance, unlock it and get them through the door. None of them saw who pulled him back. They just knew he wasn't following, and they kept running. A couple of the boys made it to a nearby farmhouse and called the sheriff.

  Don't ask questions , Doris told herself while Gershom talked on, don't ask him a single thing . Don't risk giving yourself away, trying to find answers he won't have. Just answer yes when he asks, "Are you still there?" and "Are you all right?" Let him assume your silence is the result of grief and shock. That's not so very far from the truth.

  He couldn't answer the only question that mattered, anyway.

  Where was Andrew Takei now?

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Doris's Apartment, Roseville, California

  Seventy-Five Miles Southeast of Butte County Juvenile Center

  1942

  Midnight. New Moon.

  In her dream the moon is blood red, though the light it gives is as white and blinding as a searchlight. Doris is at the gates of Tulenar, flung wide open. Cutler is in the guard tower with the soldiers, all aiming their rifles outward in the wrong direction. Doris is shouting at Max and David to hurry, hurry! They're a good mile away and yet she can see them, pushing a broken wagon -like something out of a western movie- really putting their shoulders into it. Every once in a while David stops to look ahead, as if gauging how much farther they have to go.

  "Hurry!" she shouts again, hearing the Beast feeding behind her, hearing its chesty rumbles of ecstasy and the bones of Arthur Satsugai grinding in its jaws ...

  Doris pulled out of the nightmare gasping. The sound of grinding bones became a rapid scratching against her bedroom's window screen. It stopped suddenly, then began again.

  Her heart, already hammering from the nightmare, kicked even harder. Adrenaline jangled her nerves as she tried to slide quietly from bed, intent on finding something as a weapon, but she wasn't quiet enough. A harsh whisper came from behind the shade:

  "Mrs. Tebbe! C'mon, please ...? Let me in, okay?"

  "Andrew?"

  "Please? Please, let me in?"

  She hurried to the window and pulled up the shade. Andrew was hunched below, hardly more than a dim-faced shadow in the moonless night, fingers pressed to the sill. Doris gave the screen a couple of sharp, fisted blows at the bottom corners, Andrew yanked it away and she helped him climb through.

  He was filthy and gaunt, wearing an ill-fitting shirt and trousers. Doris closed the window, pulled the shade again, got her robe on, and led Andrew to the little apartment's living room. She sat him on the couch and, with her hands still clutching his arms, asked, "Are you all right?"

  He looked at her miserably, his chin trembling. "I'm really thirsty."

  She got him a glass of water and watched as he gulped it down, clutching the glass with both hands.

  "How'd you find me?"

  Between swallows he said, "We followed you."

  "What? When? Who's 'we,' one of the Butte County inmates?"

  Andrew shook his head. "No ... you know ... us. We followed you. That night."

  Doris knelt in front of him. "Andrew, I don't understand."

  He looked away, fidgeting. " That night."

  Doris began trembling again. She reached over, pulled the little chair away from the telephone desk and sat. "You mean ... you mean the night of the killings?"

  He nodded. Doris swallowed hard.

  "Who's 'we,' Andrew?"

  Still looking away, he became agitated. " Us ," he said again, as if it was the only word he knew and expected Doris to know, too.

  "By 'us,' do you ... Andrew, do you mean the Beast?"

  He began rubbing vigorously at an ear, but replied, "I dunno ... I guess so ... if that's what you call us."

  "No," Doris said slowly, carefully. "That's not what I call you . It's what I call the thing that ... came out of you at Butte County."

  Andrew stood quickly and Doris leapt from her chair, frantic to remember where she had put the silver letter opener. But Andrew didn't attack her. He stepped to one side or another, rubbing at both ears now.

  "Andrew, what's wrong?"

  "It hurts. It hurts when we think about it. Or talk about it ..."

  We, again. "It hurts you and the Beast both?"

  "No ... just ... me ..." Sweat began to ripple over Andrew's face and he sat back down, clutching his ears.

  Doris remembered the Beast in the midst of all that death, the slice across its muzzle still oozing, the monster shaking its head violently ... flapping its ears.

  "But you hurt the Beast that night, didn't you? The same way it's hurting you now?"

  He lunged away, groaning and pacing around the small living room.

  She asked again, "Did you?"

  Between gasps, he said, "I guess. I just ... I just wanted it to stop , but I kinda, I kinda liked it, too, but not really, all at the same time ... mostly I wanted it to stop, but it wouldn't stop and it didn't care what I wanted it was so ... strong until you hurt it and then I sort of ... I sort of woke up better ..."

  Andrew gritted his teeth and went to his knees. His rubbing and clutching became clawing. Doris dropped down, grabbed his wrists and wrenched his hands away.

 
; "You kept it from killing me," she said as he struggled against her. " You did that, Andrew. You saved me."

  He started to scream and she locked him against her, pushing his face into her shoulder to both muffle the noise and hold him like his own mother might. His mother. Oh, God, all this and he still was going to have to learn about his mother. He screamed into her shoulder again, and then went limp.

  At first she thought he might have passed out, but he shuddered, stirred and pulled his face away to rest better against her.His voice was heavy with fatigue and, just before exhaustion sank him, he said:

  "It'd had plenty, was all. It'd had all my friends and those ... stupid guards ... it stopped starving enough so that when you hurt it, I woke up better. I could ... push at it ... so it left you alone ... and 'cause it remembers you ..."

  'Cause it remembers you. Doris remembered, too. She remembered sitting in a shack with Max and David, David saying to her, You better understand who you are to the Beast . She remembered Max looking at his own palm, looking at the pentagram there taking shape, watching it take on a silver sheen that was usually lacking, but not this time. This time it shone, because she was nearby. When Max had taken her hand and opened it palm up, there lay its twin.

  It was a meeting of the Beast's Chosen.

  David had said, "If this were the prey's mark, it would simply mean you're the next feeding. But the prey's mark doesn't take on a sheen as the moon increases. That only happens to the Chosen. Like me. Like Max."

  They had stopped that from happening to Doris. She had become one of the Beast's slayers instead of one of its hosts. All that, only a few short weeks ago; the three of them finding some measure of peace, thinking they had put a stop to one of the Beast's countless incarnations.

  But now they knew they had stopped nothing. Here it was, in this sixteen-year-old boy sleeping in her arms. The boy who had taken her place.

  * * *

  She couldn't keep the words out of her mind as she watched Andrew eat: wolfing it down . She looked at the wounds on his arm, turning from pink to white and healing abnormally quickly. Medical thread lodged in the skin where the stitches' tied ends must have burst during the Beast's emergence. A few of the threads were completely trapped beneath.