Bitten

by K. L. Nappier

  He rose from his breakfast plate to help himself to more milk from the fridge, and she saw the silver hair at the nape of his neck. It was beginning to show, now that his hair was growing back after the Butte County shaving. If she reached across the little kitchen table when he sat down again, if she took his hand and laid it palm up in the early morning beams, she wondered if her presence -as a former Chosen- would tease out the faintest tracks of a pentagram, waiting to darken as soon as the moon renewed its phasing.

  She said, trying to sound as normal as possible, "We should get as many of those stitches out as we can before the skin grows too well around them."

  His mouth stuffed with omelette, Andrew angled his elbow to look, and then nodded. Doris went into the bathroom and got a pair of tweezers. When he had finished, she told him to put his dishes in the sink, then pulled her chair around and had him rest his arm on the table. She leaned in and gave the first of the broken stitches a firm tug. He winced.

  "Hurt?"

  "S'okay, just do it."

  She went back to work. "Andrew. Where did you go after Butte County?"

  "Like I said. We followed you, first."

  "But I was in a car."

  "So? We ... I ... it can smell stuff really good. You were easy to track."

  Doris's hands went clammy and she had to stop for a minute. "I should've washed my hands first," she said, then went to the sink and scrubbed them to have an excuse to dry them. She sat back down and began tweezing again. "Then why didn't it come for me? Did you stop it again?"

  Another stitch popped out, Andrew sucked in his breath and jerked his arm away to rub it. "I don't know ... kinda, but kinda not ... it's hard to explain."

  "Do you talk to it?" She motioned for him to lay his arm back down. He did.

  "No, it's not like talking, we ... it's like if you want to do something and you just decide to do it? You wanna go for ice cream, you don't think, 'geez, I want ice cream.' You just get up and go. It's like that. When I woke up inside the Beast that night ... it was like that. Only I had to really, really want it really bad."

  "Sometimes when you talk about it, you say 'we' and sometimes you say 'I'."

  He watched her tug out another stitch, then said, "It's just ... it's tough to feel apart sometimes. I gotta think about it hard."

  Doris stopped and looked into his eyes. "Do you remember much about that night, Andrew?"

  He looked down at what was left of the reachable stitches and massaged the scars. "I remember I got real sweaty and sick feeling. Then I don't remember much for a while. Then parts of it, like feeling heavy and watery kinda and knowing ... knowing what was happening, what the Beast was doing, but like it's way far away, then hearing you and seeing you there, like I was maybe closer up ... I don't know. I don't know if I so much knew it when it was going on or if I'm just sort of remembering it now ... like remembering chunks of a dream."

  Was his story the same as Max's? They had never talked details, about what happened to him during emergence, where his consciousness went, how it altered. But Doris had gotten the impression from both him and David that their experiences were more like a total black out, as though the Beast kept them smothered to the point of near death. Their sense of a shared consciousness only came toward the end, when the Beast needed to move on to the next host, abandoning the old one to their common memory bank. As if even that part of the host's humanity is usurped, is never the Beast's own and is left behind with the rest of its ruin.

  Andrew, though, was speaking of only a partial black out. She watched him sitting there, looking so much like the kid he really was. Eyes down, brows knitted, trying to explain the unexplainable. Just a boy. A motherless boy, now, and without a single friend except Doris.

  She reached out and lowered his arm again, plucked out the last pluckable stitch, then pressed her palm against his wrist as she looked into his face.

  "Andrew, I know someone who can help you."

  He glanced up, both wariness and hope in his eyes. "You mean like a doctor or something?"

  Doris shook her head. "This isn't something a doctor can help with. But I know who can. Two people. They've gone through what you're going through."

  His face scrunched up. He reached up to rub an ear. "Two? You know two other people like me?"

  Doris reached up with her free hand and pulled Andrew's away from his ear. "You're going to have to listen to me very carefully, Andrew, because the Beast isn't going to like what I'm telling you. Yes, I know two people. Men who were just like you."

  She felt him tense in her grip, wanting badly to rub at what must be a fast growing discomfort. But he asked, "Who are they?"

  "They're friends of mine. And they'll be your friends, too. They can ..." Doris struggled to find the right word, the one that wouldn't frighten him "... separate you from the Beast. They can make it leave."

  Something shifted in Andrew's tension, she felt it beneath her hands. It happened in his eyes, too. Something of the boy faded. Something else leaked through.

  "I know 'em, don't I? At least one of 'em."

  Her first impulse was to lie. But she sensed he would know if she did. That thing leaking through ... unlike its host, it remembered everything. It remembered everyone. Doris started talking fast now, hoping against hope.

  "Maxwell Pierce."

  He jerked free, standing, looking at her as if she had lost her mind.

  "You kidding me?"

  "Andrew --"

  "The guy who grilled me so bad back in Tulenar? The guy who wants to get me executed?"

  "He doesn't want any such thing --"

  "Why should I trust him? Why would he want to help me?"

  "Because he is you, Andrew. He just didn't know it then, he didn't recognize what was in him the way you do. But someone was able to help him do that and get free. He's with that man now and together they can help you. And I'll stay with you all the way, I promise. I won't leave you alone. The three of us will do everything we can to help you."

  "What a load! What a crock!" Andrew was pacing now, becoming angrier, more frightened. He rubbed his ears vigorously.

  Doris stood. "Andrew, do you know what's happening right now? It's the Beast that doesn't like what I'm saying, not you. Andrew, you know me from our Tulenar days together. You know how hard I fought to keep you and your friends from being taken from your families. And you know me from these past weeks at the detention center, before the Beast emerged in you. I promise. I won't let anyone hurt you. I will never leave your side."

  Andrew stopped pacing and drew his hands from his ears. He looked at Doris, his expression, his whole body, pleading. "But it wants to come back so bad. What if it comes back?"

  "It can only emerge during the first night of the full moon. You and I have all that time to plan. I'll teach you everything you need to know. But we need help, sweetheart. We need Max and his friend David."

  She saw how badly he wanted to believe. She reached her arms out to him.

  "I wanna see my ma," he said.

  "Andrew --"

  He nodded, as if nodding to himself, and began pacing again. "I gotta see my ma. She's gotta be worried sick."

  "Honey, you can't go back to Tulenar. You can't go anywhere. Every lawman in the state is looking for you, trying to find out if you were abducted from Butte County or an accomplice to the killings."

  He looked at Doris. "She needs to know I'm okay. We gotta get her out of there and take her with us to your friends. You help me get her out of there, Mrs. Tebbe, and I'll do like you say."

  "Andrew." Doris went to him, held him by his shoulders. Her voice tightened. "Honey ... she's not there anymore .."

  "What do you mean? Where'd they take her?"

  Doris shook her head. "They didn't take her anywhere. Andrew ... sweetheart ... she became very ill after you went to Butte County. But she didn't want you know until your trial was over. She was sure she'd be better as soon as you were released. But ... a couple of days ago .. word got
to her ... she couldn't hold on anymore ..."

  In the time it took Doris to draw her breath, to draw up the words, she saw the horror of understanding in his eyes.

  He bellowed. He pushed her away. Then he came at her. He slammed her against the kitchen cabinet, his hands on her throat, bending her backward over the sink. Yellow and black burst across her vision and she jammed her thumbs into his eyes.

  Breath returned, vision returned. Andrew was wailing and stumbling back, his hands to his face, and then he bolted out of the kitchen. Doris's knees buckled as she pressed a hand to her throat and heard the apartment door slam back against the living room wall.

  Chapter Thirty

  Andrew's House on Mission Avenue, Three Blocks East of Doris's

  San Buenaventura, California

  Spring/Early Summer 1950

  Second Night. Full Moon.

  Max went to the bedroom window. "The moon's set. The worst of it's over." He looked at Andrew, head lolled to one side, and remembered his eyes open, lucid and staring. "Will he sleep through the night?"

  Doris nodded. "He should."

  "Let's get out of this room for a while."

  Max took Doris's empty coffee cup from her and led the way to the kitchen. As he refilled their cups at the stove, he said, "When we made it to your place in Roseville, you told us you didn't know where he went after he ran off."

  "I didn't."

  Max resisted calling her a liar. But when he joined her at the table, his thoughts must have been writ large on his face.

  "I didn't ," Doris repeated, and then the heat went out of her voice. "I didn't hear from him for several months. By then you and David had given up looking for him. His trail was stone cold."

  "Or just well covered."

  "Damn it, Max, quit accusing me."

  He leaned over the table. " Eight years , Doris."

  "I know! I know it's been eight years, I'm the one who's been living this with him!"

  " Why , Doris?"

  She rubbed her face with both hands, then dropped them to the table. "The first time he came back, I was afraid if I talked about you, he'd run again. Max ... you've got to understand. He didn't come back because he liked or trusted me. He just didn't have anywhere else to go. He was a Nisei boy, no family left to him, running loose in California in 1942. It's a miracle he didn't wind up back in jail or in another internment camp during the months he'd disappeared. I needed time to earn his trust."

  "How long did that take?"

  "Well, let me check my calendar, Max. I know I have 'Anniversary of the Day Andrew Finally Trusted Me' marked somewhere."

  "Okay ... All right, just ... tell me what happened."

  Doris looked at her coffee. "When he showed up again, he was in even worse shape than before. Thin, filthy. Miserable. He wouldn't talk about where he'd been or what he'd done at first. It wasn't until he began staying with me for longer periods that he told me he had spent those months trying to hide among the Chinese population. It didn't work very well or for very long. He kept on the move until he managed to become a hanger-on with a group of stray kids in San Francisco's Chinatown. They treated him like crap, but they liked having someone around they could use as a go-for and to kick around. So they let him sleep on the floor of an abandoned house they'd taken over. Not long after Andrew joined them, their leader disappeared and the rest of them scattered."

  "Let me guess. Their leader disappeared on a First Night."

  Doris nodded. "He was found later, the police just didn't know it. Too mutilated for a solid I.D. Andrew said that he and the boy were about the same age. Even the same build. The state quit looking for Andrew after that."

  The back of Max's mouth tasted sour. "Clever boy."

  It was Doris's turn to lean over the table. "It wasn't him , Max, any more than it was you at Tulenar. It was the Beast making sure it got as much out of its host as it could."

  "And it's gotten eight years out of this one! "

  Eight years. Unheard of. Impossible! Hosts didn't last that long, could not last that long. The Beast was lucky to get several months out of one before having to move on. How could this be?

  Max felt weak and dizzy, still reeling from the discovery. Still reeling from Doris's betrayal. Doris , of all people! He wanted to upend the table. He wanted to grab her and slap her to the floor. He wanted to grab her and clutch her against him, so they could sob into each other's shoulders. He wanted to wail and grieve for what they'd both done to make all this happen.

  He stayed rooted in his chair and waited for Doris to continue.

  Her hand shook as she brought her cup to her lips. She took a long drink, then said, "He came back, on and off, for several more months. Showing up after Third Night. Sometimes right after, sometimes much later. It depended on where he'd wandered and how long it took him to make his way back. Gradually, he stayed with me for longer periods of time, but always disappearing again before First Night. He would never tell me where he'd been or where he was going. But he did say that, since he couldn't stop the Beast, he was influencing its choice of victims."

  "That's impossible, Doris."

  "Maybe it was impossible for you. Maybe it was impossible for David or for your network of hunters. But it's not for him."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because, I ... because sometimes ... I helped him find them."

  Max swallowed hard. He wanted to cry out don't tell me this , but instead heard himself saying, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus, Doris."

  She looked at him, her eyes wide, pleading and desperate. "I was trying to get him to stay here, stay in one spot long enough to listen to me, to give me time to get a message to you and David, get you here or get us to you ..."

  Max pushed away from the table, his stomach twisting. He strode to the kitchen's back door, opened it and leaned on the jamb, gulping large doses of cool air and staring into the back yard as Doris continued:

  "I'd ... take Andrew to study the wanted posters at different counties' post offices. Pick out killers, rapists, let the Beast track them down. We'd wander different cities, find where the street walkers and drug fiends were. We'd turn the Beast toward the pimps or the pushers. We did a lot of traveling to avoid a pattern, but ... mostly the victims weren't people that were noticed when they vanished."

  She took a deep, shaky breath. "And ... that went on for about a year, I guess. By then you and David were getting organized. You had some failures, then your first success with Samuel. I finally got up the nerve to talk to Andrew about you, again, telling him about how you were learning to do what you were doing."

  Weariness spread through Max, a soul-deep exhaustion. He walked back over and sat across from Doris. She looked up. Fresh tears brimmed her eyes.

  "I remember ... I was reading one of your letters when he came through the door one day and I thought, 'now or never.' I told him about your methods and how things were developing. He went stone quiet. I was sure he was going to leave. I thought about ... about waiting for him to turn his back ... wondered what was close at hand, heavy enough to hit him with. But, instead, he reached for your letter and read it for himself. I could hardly believe it when he asked if I thought you and David could do that for him ... save him . And he asked if I thought he could be a hunter, too. I said, 'yes, of course,' to both questions. But then he looked at me and said ... 'Or I might die. There's a good chance they won't be able to save me.' And ... I had to say 'yes' to that, too. He was gone the next morning, and I didn't see him again for months."

  Doris's gaze drifted from Max and settled where the kitchen met the hall. The doorway to the room that held the radio could just be seen: the radio, and all those bones. "When he came back, he brought the first of those with him. A jawbone, to prove to me that he had tracked down a lineage and killed it. He'd never looked so ... fulfilled. Everything about him was different. He'd taken the Beast and turned it against itself. No one had to die anymore, not even the most wretched of the wretched."

  "
Except the hosts, Doris. They never get a chance. Not even the slimmest."

  Doris closed her eyes and insisted, " It wasn't supposed to go on for so long. He talked about going to Tohatchi some day and joining you. But ... there was always one more lineage to track ... he kept putting it off ... always on the move ... always hunting ... keeping tabs on you and the other hunters ..."

  Max leaned toward her. "What about you , Doris. What was stopping you ? You know we would have come to you!"

  "What good would that have done, when he was away? If he had come back and you and David tried and failed with him, he would have disappeared forever."

  "And when he wasn't away?"

  "Then ... I was afraid that I'd fail. Max, he's my son . The first time he called me 'Moms' ... He's my son , Max, as surely as if I'd given birth. You don't know what it's like to love like that ... and know that you're the reason he is like he is." She pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment, swallowing hard. Then she said, "Sometimes I'd stand over him at night while he slept .. I'd have something ... heavy ... in my hands. Nothing silver, nothing that could kill him, only something to knock him unconscious so I could bind him, but .. God, Max ... I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I kept thinking, what if I fail? There would be no hope of saving him then." She looked at Max, her eyes pleading again. "He always had a reason for hunting one more lineage before coming to you and David. Always."

  Max reached over and took Doris's hand. He was squeezing too hard, but he couldn't help himself. " And why do you think that was, Doris? Think about it. What was his real reason for putting it off?"

  A metallic snick, a soft exhale from the hallway, and a plume of smoke ghosted past their faces. They looked up. Andrew Takei stood there, barefoot and shirtless, one hand pushing a Zippo and a pack of Luckys into his trousers pocket.

  "Because I'm better at it than you," he said.

  * * *

  Max had never seen a host like him. If he could get to them early enough, the hosts looked as ordinary as any pedestrian on a street corner, wholly witless to what they carried inside. If he got to them late, almost used up, the hosts were gaunt, at the brink of insanity, their bodies withering with their minds.