Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

  “You’ve been talking to Sandy.”

  Covey blinked innocently. “Who?”

  “Sandy Dodd. Cute blonde. Nice legs. Uses a lot of critical pedagogy, cognitive rhetoric and conceptual blending when she talks.”

  “Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Where’d you send her?”

  “I told you, man,” Covey said. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “I know she was in here yesterday and talked to you. She told me so herself. And there’s no way a guy like you would know trivial population statistics on your own. You’re probably routinely outsmarted by Cheez Whiz.”

  Covey chuckled. “You’re funny,” he said, shaking his head. “Wish I could help you, but hey.” He feigned a shrug.

  “Yeah.” John growled, lugging his lifeless arm off the top of the bar. He recognized an exercise in futility when he saw it.

  “Be seeing you,” Covey called as he limped away.

  “Where are you?” John murmured. Wilma had stopped at a gas station to buy a street map of Miami, and he stood beneath the heavy shade of a stand of palm trees, unfolding it across the hood of the Sentra.

  “You’re blistering,” Wilma fretted.

  He glanced at his arms. The network of black mottling, the shadow-like threads radiating out from his bite wounds had reached his right arm now, snaking down past the cuff of his shirt sleeve, which had been turned back to his elbow. The alabaster skin of his forearm was indeed blistering, small white bubbles raising against backdrop patches of bright, angry red where the sunlight had burned him.

  “Yeah, Mom.” Vampires burn up in the sun, he thought. A couple more hours, and I’ll probably burst into flames. Isn’t that what Gough said happens? Spontaneous sanguinarian combustion.

  “I have some sunblock in my glove compartment.” She was already ducking back into the car, rifling around for it.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help, Mom,” he said.

  “It’s SPF 50,” she said, smearing a thick, greasy layer of Banana Boat on his nose.

  He shrugged her away and leaned down, following the line of Biscayne Boulevard on the map until he found the approximate area where the Show Me! bar in Miami was located. We could take the sunset ferry to Big Coppitt Key, then take the Intercoastal to the mainland, over to Miami. It’d take awhile, at least three hours, closer to four with the way Mom drives.

  He sighed heavily, frustrated. Sandy now had a good two-hours’ lead on them. She’d arrive in Miami first and have plenty of time to get into trouble before he could catch up to her. And that was if he could catch up to her.

  She could be anywhere, he thought. I’d have to be psychic to figure out…

  The thought trailed off in his mind. At first, it occurred to him that he might not be psychic, but he knew someone who was, or at least, someone Sandy had claimed to be “sensitive” in that way.

  Not sensitive. Intuitive. Mother’s intuition, she’d called it.

  And because he was thinking of Gracie, he in turn thought of her painting in the Pink Palace, of her vodka-laced lemonade and how he’d left there only a little while earlier to go to Little Pink.

  Little Pink. In the dining room, Sandy had left behind a spread of photocopied articles, pictures and maps. Several of these latter had been nautical charts and topographical illustrations. All of the islands, he thought.

  He was a guest of William Pardon Wilder, Duvall’s son, at the family mansion on Duvall Island in 1892, Sandy had told him of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, which she’d also said had been loosely based on a weird series of events and legends involving the Sister Islands.

  And in her notes he’d seen at Little Pink earlier that day, Sandy had written, June, 1820 – Twenty-eight people missing. Bodies of only four recovered. Decomposed but drained of blood. “Perro del Diablo” – the devil’s hound blamed. Also reports of gigantic bat that attacks by moonlight, carries naughty children away to what was then known as Cayo Norteño (Northern Island, today it’s Duvall Island).

  “I’ll be damned,” he whispered because all at once, he realized he didn’t need a psychic at all. “She didn’t go to Miami.” He glanced over at Wilma. “I’ve got to get out to Duvall Island.”

  She slapped another hearty dollop of coconut-scented lotion onto his nose. “Not without sunscreen, you don’t.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I need your help,” he told Michael Gough. He hadn’t bothered with salutations or small talk, and for a moment, there was nothing but a prolonged and puzzled silence from the other end of the line.

  Then, “Mr. Harker?”

  “Call me John.” He’d sent Wilma back into the gas station convenience store under the pretense of grabbing some soft drinks and snacks, using the momentary privacy to dig his cell phone out of his pocket. “Listen, I think Sandy is in trouble and I need your help.”

  “Sandy?”

  “Yeah. My assistant. Cute blonde. Uses a lot of catachresis and hyperbole for paraprosdokian effect.”

  “Oh,” Gough said, a sort of a-ha! sound. “What’s happened? Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. If she’s not, if Wilder’s done something to her, I’m going to cut off his head and plant a tomato stake through his balls.

  He explained to Gough what he knew of Sandy’s destination and intentions. At which point, Gough uttered something like a groan.

  “Oh, this is bad,” he said. “This is very, very bad. She’s gone to their nest. That’s got to be what Duvall Island is. A safe place for Wilder and the other vampires he’s changed.”

  “How many?” John asked, thinking of all of the dancers he’d seen lounging in Wilder’s South Shore office.

  “There’s no way to tell. Maybe a handful. Maybe a hundred. I don’t think there could be that many, though, surely not more than a dozen. The Sister Islands are small, the population pretty contained. Too many vampires feeding off the residents couldn’t escape public notice for long. And that’s the last thing they want—humans finding out about them.

  “He’ll have some of those working for him, too. Humans, I mean. Vampires need them for protection during daylight hours, to help keep their nests hidden and safe. Usually that comes with the promise that they’ll make them a vampire when it’s all said and done, give them eternal youth and beauty, money, power, that kind of thing.”

  John thought of Jame Covey. What happened? Covey had asked him in a taunting, sly way. That barracuda bite you’d told me about turn bad?

  “Taking care of the humans shouldn’t be a problem,” Gough said. “But the vampires will be stronger than you, stronger than two or three good-sized men put together, even the female ones.”

  “Yeah,” John said, because when Lucy had attacked him inside her apartment, she’d seemed impossibly strong—inhumanly so.

  “You have to act fast, take them by surprise, in the daylight while they’re vulnerable,” Gough said. “You’re best bet is to try and get to the head vampire first and foremost. If you kill the him, all of the others will either revert back to human if they’re like you and haven’t turned all the way, or if they have, they’ll die. That’s what the legends say anyway.”

  “Tell me what to do.” John opened Wilma’s glove compartment and dug through it until he found a small spiral-bound notepad and a ballpoint pen. “Exactly what to do. Tell me again.”

  As Gough spoke, he scrawled in hurried shorthand, transcribing the doctor’s instructions.

  “And remember, don’t try to drive the stake through the sternum,” Gough said. “You try to go through the breastplate, all you’re going to hit is bone. You want to aim for the third, fourth or fifth intercostals space, between the ribs. You only get one shot at the heart. One strike. It has to count.”

  “I have to do all of that?” John asked “Stake through the heart and cut off the head and put silver nails through the skull, neck and belly? I thought in the movies, they always just stake through the heart
.”

  “I’m not sure about any of this, Mr. Harker. That’s what I keep trying to tell you. There have never been any vampires documented or studied by scientists. I’m going by folklore here.”

  “Then it’ll have to do,” John murmured, hanging up on Gough.

  ***

  The only large-scale grocery store on the entire trio of Sister Islands, Publix was a sprawling complex of fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, plus fare more suitable to New England than the near-Caribbean to appease the large, seasonal influx of Yankee snow birds.

  “Do you have any garlic?” John asked a guy working in the produce section.

  The man, who had been unloading clear plastic containers of grapes from a large box, glanced at him, then paused, looking longer and harder.

  John could empathize. He’d caught a glimpse of himself in the side-view mirror as he’d climbed out of Wilma’s car, if only to convince himself that he could still see his reflection in the glass. The entire left side of his face had slackened, as if he’d suffered a stroke, and the corner of his mouth hung askew and somewhat ajar. His eyelid drooped and he needed to shave, plus his hair was a mess because he couldn’t maneuver a brush in his numb hand to smooth it down good. His clothes were rumpled and he walked with a discernable, if not somewhat drunken limp, because now his leg was numb from about mid-thigh south, too, and when he moved, he dragged it along, shuffling like Frankenstein’s monster.

  He might have been able to see himself in the mirror, but these other signs sure didn’t bode well. I’m running out of time.

  “Excuse me?” the grocer said, understandable since John was now also lisping around the immobilized half of his mouth.

  “Garlic,” he said again, more loudly, trying to annunciate. “I said, do you have any garlic?”

  The man seemed to take a prolonged, thoughtful moment to decipher this, then shook his head. “Sorry. A lady came in earlier, cleaned me all out on bulbs.” He swept one beefy hand to indicate a section of countertop left barren now, the green plastic display grass conspicuously visible.

  I think she’s planting a garden, Gracie had told him of Sandy. She spent half the morning out at the hardware store, came back with a couple of these great big packs of wooden tomato stakes, a bunch of flower bulbs, too.

  Not flower bulbs, John realized, adding with a mental groan, Damn it, Sandy, did you have to buy all of it?

  “Where can I get some, then?” John asked.

  Again, the man looked pensive. “The store out on Big Coppitts Key,” he replied at length and John bit back another frustrated groan.

  “That’s too far,” he complained and the big guy shrugged.

  “Can’t help you, Mr.,” he said. “When we’re out, we’re out.”

  John frowned, shambling about in a tortoise-like semi-circle to make his way out of the store.

  “Of course, that’s just the fresh garlic,” the man said, bringing him to a stop. “You can use the powdered sort for recipes, substitute it in.”

  John pivoted. He’d have raised his brow except that side of his face had gone dead. “You’ve got garlic powder?”

  “Oh, sure.” The guy nodded, then flapped his hand. “Over there, aisle three. I’ll show you.” Pausing for a moment, he swept his gaze warily down John’s paralyzed left side. “You want me to get you a motorized cart, Mr.?”

  “No, I’m alright.” John shook the right side of his head. “Just don’t go all Speedy Gonzales on me and we’ll be fine.”

  The man led John down an aisle lined with cans of coffee, different tea varieties, sugar, flour, salt and assorted spices. They stopped in front of the garlic powder selections.

  “I’ll take them.” John handed off the little plastic shopping hand-basket he’d been carrying.

  “Which one?” the guy asked.

  “All of them,” John replied.

  The man studied him a moment. “It don’t take much, you know. Something like half a teaspoon, maybe less, equals one clove of the fresh kind. These little ones hold around nine ounces. The big bulk canisters hold about a pound.”

  John, in turn, studied the shelf. There were at least seven of the one-pound containers in a row, flanked by a good dozen of each of the two smaller brands. Seven pounds, he thought. And how many ounces in a pound, sixteen? Nine into sixteen doesn’t quite go twice, so two of the little cans is slightly more than a pound, times twenty-four cans…

  He started to count on his fingers, then remembered he couldn’t move his left hand. “You carry them, then,” he told the grocer, annoyed. “All of them. Every single one.”

  The man shook his head as he began piling the cans into the basket. “You’re going to need some Tic-Tacs, too, Mr.,” he muttered.

  In the checkout lane, he spied a display rack promoting an upcoming Hole-in-One Breast Cancer Awareness golf scramble. In conjunction with the fundraiser, the store was selling little packs of pink golf tees, plastic pouches of fifty apiece. 100 Percent Maple, the package proclaimed. 2-3/4" wooden peg shaft, flair top ball holder.

  According to most folklore, you have to pierce them through the heart with a wooden stake, Gough had told him during their initial phone conversation, which to John now felt like a lifetime ago. Not just any wood will do. It has to be ash, maple, hawthorne, blackthorn, buckhorn or aspen.

  “Maple,” John murmured, reaching for one of the pouches of pale pink tees. Then another. And another and another, stuffing them into his already overflowing hand basket until he’d cleaned out the cardboard standing display. Spying a second such display at the neighboring station, he nodded to redirect the cashier’s gaze. “I’ll take all of those, too.”

  ***

  Next stop, Ace Hardware.

  “You got a nail gun that can handle two and three-quarter inch projectiles?” John asked the guy behind the customer service counter in the power tools section, his palsy-stricken appearance eliciting the same strange looks he’d received at Publix.

  “Uh,” said the guy, blinking for a moment. “Sure. Right over here.”

  He accommodated John’s shuffling snail’s pace as he led him to a display of hand tools. Hefting a bright orange nail gun in hand, he said, “This right here ought to do just about anything you need, the Paslode IMCT Impulse cordless framing nailer. She’s got a sure-grip handle, no hoses or compressors, weighs only about seven-and-a-half pounds. She’ll fire in upwards of four thousand nails on one battery charge.”

  John took it from him. Even though the word gun was in the name, it looked more like a power drill with its bit removed, enough so that his reflexive anxiety wasn’t triggered by the proximity. “How many nails at a time?”

  The guy shrugged. “You can load it up to forty-eight per strip. It’ll fire around two or three per second.”

  “How about golf tees?”

  The man blinked. “Beg your pardon?”

  “Golf tees,” John said, spitting all over himself as he tried to wrap his uncooperative mouth around the plosive sounds. “Can this thing fire off golf tees?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” The guy looked thoughtful, scratched his head. “Never heard of anyone trying before.”

  John handed him the nail gun. “I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, then,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

  ***

  “This doesn’t look like any kind of medicinal therapy I’ve ever heard of,” Wilma said with a frown, twisting in the driver’s seat to study the growing pile of parcels and plastic bags in the back of her car. “You sure that friend you called knows what he’s talking about?”

  “Yes, Mom,” John said. “I told you, his name is Michael Gough and he’s a doctor.”

  Wilma shook her head, then took a sip from her Big Gulp diet cola. “And he doesn’t think you need to go to the hospital in Miami?”

  “No, Mom. I told you. Bed rest and antibiotics.” With a glance back at the grocery bags, he added, “And lots and lots of garlic.”

  “Well.” Unconvinced and anxio
us, she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “I guess he is a doctor.”

  “That’s right,” John said.

  She glanced at him expectantly. “Where are we going, then?”

  “To hell if we don’t change our ways.” He dropped her a wink. And when he did, he found he had to manually peel back his left eyelid to reopen it.

  “Ha, ha, ha.” Wilma frowned, starting the car, sending air-conditioning blasting out of the vents in a sudden, frigid burst.

  “Back to your house, Mom,” he told her, leaning back against the headrest, closing his eyes. “I need to grab something out of your gardening shed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I don’t like this.” Wilma stood on the dock, one hand on her hip, the other clapped against the top of her head to keep her hat from blowing away.

  “Just help me untie the lines, Mom,” John said, lowering himself clumsily against the cockpit bench within reach of the tiller. He’d fired up the Quagmire’s engine, churning up a gurgling froth in the water behind it.

  She looked down at the cleat in front of her, the line of white rope twined around it. “I’m not any good at these things,” she complained.

  “It’s a standard round turn and two half hitches,” he said, exasperated. “Just untie the knotted part and unloop it from there. I’d do it myself but…” In illustration, he lifted his paralyzed hand with his good one, then let it fall with a heavy thud! back against the fiberglass bench.

  Wilma squatted and began tugging on the rope. “I don’t think you should go out there by yourself. For one thing, it’s trespassing.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” John muttered, shoving himself clumsily to his feet and rocking the boat on its keel as he crossed the cabin, reaching out to help her unfetter the line.

  “Don’t you take that tone of voice with me,” Wilma said. “It is. Duvall Island is private property. They can have you arrested.”