Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

  “No, thanks,” he said, and it was only the fact that his left side was pretty much paralyzed that kept him from scrambling backwards in bright, sudden panic.

  “It’s a Kel-Tec PF-9 nine-millimeter automatic,” she began, stepping forward, still offering it to him.

  “I said no, thanks. I don’t do guns.”

  For the first time in the three years that he’d known her, Sandy fell silent and simply looked at him, surprised and puzzled.

  “What?” he asked, then when she didn’t immediately answer, he frowned. “It’s not like I just told you I had a third nipple or something.”

  He expected this to divert her, that she’d respond with something like “You know, I used to date a guy with a third nipple,” or something, but instead, she stayed right on course.

  “You don’t ‘do’ guns?”

  “No,” he grumbled, sorry he’d said it now because he’d never talked to her about his past, not that part of it anyway, and he sure didn’t want to at that particular moment.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like them, that’s all.”

  “But you’re a policeman,” Sandy said with such a look of ingenuous disbelief on her face, he nearly laughed out loud. She looked like a kid who’d just found out it had been her mom all along putting quarters beneath her pillow in exchange for baby teeth.

  “No, I was a policeman. I’m not one anymore.” He could hear his heart pounding, could feel it, the panic-stricken rush of blood and adrenaline coursing through his veins. His mouth had grown tacky and dry and breathing had become difficult and strained. His chest felt tight, nearly painful, and his head swam murkily.

  “Can you put that away now?” he asked in a small voice, little more than a croak. “Please?”

  “Okay.” She looked uncertain and worried, but did as he’d asked, reaching behind her to shove the pistol out of sight. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Technically, I’m not,” he replied.

  “No, really. You look terrible, John.” She slipped an arm around his waist, then with a frown, looked beyond his shoulder toward the sea and surveyed the horizon. “And it’s almost sunset.”

  He followed her gaze. “Gough said we shouldn’t go after Wilder at night.”

  She nodded. “He’ll be too strong then.”

  “So let’s climb aboard the Quagmire and I’ll take you back to your boat. We head for home, regroup, try again tomorrow when we have more time.”

  His voice faded. She hadn’t said anything to interrupt or argue, but there was something in her face, the way she cut her eyes away from him and back toward the trees as if seeking an avenue of exit, that spoke volumes.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We can’t come back tomorrow,” she said. “Dr. Gough said after sunset on the sixth day, he lost contact with Lucy Weston. He thinks that’s how long it takes, the transformation. And Lucy bit you…”

  “…six days ago,” he finished for her, realizing with a sinking, knotting, gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, the base of his balls, where she was going with this. He blinked at her, all too aware of it as the blood drained from his face, leaving him cold and ashen.

  When she looked at him, her eyes were round and frightened. “There is no more time, John.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Come on, Sandy.

  John thought this as he sat beside the tiller aboard the Quagmire, less than a quarter mile off-shore from Duvall Island. The little yawl bobbed and rocked as undulating waves drawn inland with the tide swelled beneath it.

  All around him, the surface of the water was alight, reflecting a back splash of vibrant color as the sun sank, swollen and amber. In its wake, the sky had grown dusky, shades of lavender and rose deepening to plum and Bordeaux.

  He’d motored out close to where Sandy had anchored His Girl Friday, then killed the trolling engine. He hadn’t dropped anchor, primarily because he was no longer in any sort of physical condition to try and wrestle with it. Barely able to curl his fingers around the shaft of the tiller to guide the Quagmire through the choppy surf, he now had to conscientiously struggle to hold his head aloft, to keep his chin from drooping heavily toward his sternum.

  With a grunt, he shrugged his shoulder, trying to flip his unwieldy left arm up high enough to award him a glance at his watch. It took him two or three tries, but at last, he caught a long enough hint of fading sunlight against the twin hands to make out the time.

  Thirty minutes, she said, he thought. If she couldn’t do find Wilder by then, she’d get the hell out, she said, get back in her dinghy and meet me here.

  But according to his watch, it had been forty minutes at least.

  And the sun’s almost set. We’re running out of time.

  She’d sent him off with a wink and a smile, the nonchalant, everything’s-okay sort that really meant everything was not okay and she was just putting on a really good show for his benefit. “Don’t worry about me,” she’d told him as he’d backed the Quagmire away from the dock. Because he’d been unable to manage himself, she’d unfettered his mooring lines and tossed them down to him. “Worry about whoever has to clean up what’s left of Wilder when I’m through with him.”

  He kept trying to find even a scrap of security in her patently false bravado but then, as now, couldn’t. Because underneath it all, that scrappy, confident façade, Sandy had been scared shitless. And so was he.

  I can’t believe I let her go all by herself, he thought for at least the thousandth time. When left all alone with nothing but the sound of foam-capped water lapping at the fiberglass hull of his boat, a man’s thoughts were his own best company. And when said man could do little more with said thoughts than ream himself a new ass for his own incompetent cowardice, it made for piss-poor company at that, he’d come to realize.

  What the hell was I thinking? Sandy’s not Rambo. She’s a secretary, for God’s sake. As an after thought, he added, Okay, an administrative assistant. And a massage therapist. And a medical transcriptionist. And a certified computer programmer. With a Master’s degree in integrated marketing communications. And training in speed reading.

  At any rate, Sandy was hardly qualified to be breaking and entering a private residence that, werewolves notwithstanding, was undoubtedly locked up tight and boasting a state-of-the-art security system, with the intention of tracking down and murdering said private residence’s primary resident.

  I should have gone with her, he thought. Not that he’d have been able to help. Hell, he’d barely been able to stand upright on his own before she’d deposited him back at the helm of the Quagmire. Even without his physical debilitations, there remained the matter of the paralyzing panic attacks he’d have undoubtedly suffered when she next pulled out Harry the pistol.

  Some back up I’d make, he thought. He would have frowned to coincide with this had he been able to move more than just the right side of his face.

  Again, he swept the now darkened silhouette of the island rising out of the crimson-stained water, straining to see any hint of her dinghy as she approached. Come on, Sandy, he thought, because there was nothing else he could do but this—sit there like a bump on a log, worrying and waiting. Goddamn it, come on.

  When the sun was no longer even a crescent-shaped sliver on the horizon, and he couldn’t fool himself into believing that the little pinpoints of light dotting the outermost edge of the sky were passing airplanes, not stars, he fired the Quagmire’s engine back up.

  Something’s wrong. Something’s happened to her. She’d have been back by now if she could.

  He gritted his teeth and wrapped his fingers around the tiller handle, steering the boat toward the island. The pier lay outlined in solar-sensitive lights that had turned on in his absence. He could see them as he drew near, like a strand of twinkling pearls guiding him.

  The pier and outlying forest were quiet. If nothing else, the thick foliage should have resonated with the din of overlapping tree frog an
d cricket chirrups. Instead the silence was heavy, nearly suffocating, as tangible as the humidity, which had grown thick with the evening.

  Getting out of the boat and up onto the dock was a challenge unto itself. John wound up shrugging loose of his backpack and gear, and after several unsuccessful attempts, managed to heave them all up onto the pier. Next, he dragged himself, all but dead-weight, up the height of the ladder that had been built beside one of the pilings. Instead of tossing his mooring line up to secure his boat, he looped the rope clumsily over his shoulder and hauled it aloft with him. Once he’d made it to the top of the ladder, he’d fumbled with the line, twining it around the nearest cleat as best he could. The loose knot was a far cry from pretty or technically formed, but he figured it would do in a pinch.

  Leaning heavily against a piling, John crawled to his feet. Then, hooking his immobile arm around the column to support himself, he leaned over again, flapping his outstretched right hand until hooking the straps to his backpack. He shrugged it into place, adjusted and rearranged all of the supplies that had shifted inside his tool belt compartments in transit, then took out his pepper spray again. The dock remained empty, the surrounding woods shadow-draped and quiet, but that didn’t mean the werewolves weren’t still somewhere close at hand.

  Dragging his left leg behind him, his left arm dangling heavily, useless at his side, John shambled down the gangplank. Out of the corner of his gaze, he caught sight of Britney Wilson, still sprawled in the grass, her pale skin starkly aglow in the dim light from the pier lamps. Her oversized breasts protruded prominently above the high grass, a pair of alabaster geodesic domes, as perky in death as they had been in life.

  As he shuffled into the woods, John fumbled with his belt for his flashlight. Because he couldn’t carry both the pepper spray and the Maglite, thanks to his impotent left hand, he propped the base of the flashlight between his teeth, keeping the broad yellow beam trained directly ahead of him, as long as his head didn’t loll to and fro. It fell a time or two because the left side of his mouth felt shot through with Novocaine, and each time, he’d stop, grimace, bend over, groan, grab the flashlight and grumble as he straightened once more.

  The Wilder family mansion was original to the estate, built in 1855 by Duvall Wilder himself when he’d relocated his family from their former residence on Little Sister Island. A sprawling three-story Queen Anne-style Victorian home, it boasted a sweeping wrap-around porch, copper trim, turrets, Palladian windows, dentil moldings and white-washed gables, crowned by the prominent balustrade of a rooftop widow’s walk. Hurricane shutters were propped open at slight angles, but lowered enough to obscure any views through the windows, whether inside or out.

  Guided by the soft glow of amber lights on the porch, John staggered out of the dense underbrush onto a thick, well-tended lawn of plush grass, ornamental landscaping and bright, tropical flowers. When an automatic lawn sprinkler system engaged with a sudden hiss, sending a fine mist of moisture spraying in wide circumferences from dozens of in-ground nozzles, John stumbled back and nearly fell on his ass, crying out in startled surprise.

  By the time he’d limped his way through this irrigation gauntlet, his shoes, socks and pant legs clear to his knees were soaked. The shoulders and sleeves of his shirt were sopping, and thin rivulets of water had replaced the sweat rolling down his head and neck from his drenched hair.

  “Terrific,” he muttered, tromping up the steps to the porch, leaving puddles in his wake. He saw no sign of Sandy. No sign of anyone, in fact, which puzzled and worried him. Night had fallen. According to Gough, Wilder and his gang should have been up and at ’em. He’d expected to find the mansion if not buzzing with activity, then at least showing some remote signs of occupancy. He could glimpse a faint glow of light from somewhere inside through the windows, but otherwise nothing.

  It’s too quiet, he thought with a frown. It’s like I’m walking into a trap.

  That feeling only intensified when he realized the front door had not only been left unlocked, but conspicuously ajar.

  “Terrific,” he mumbled again, willing to bet Sandy wouldn’t have been that careless. He traded the pepper spray for the Paslode Impulse cordless nail gun. Because it looks like I’ve been expected.

  The front door opened onto a spacious foyer with honey-colored wood floors accented by carpet runners in an intricate maroon and gold Oriental pattern that complemented the pin-striped wallpaper and upholstered furniture. The light fixtures were polished brass, the table tops made of marble. Everything looked posh, antique and very expensive, even to John’s untrained gaze. A vase filled with fresh calla lilies adorned a table to his immediate left. Propped upright against it was a large, cream-colored envelope.

  Mr. Jonathan Harker had been written on the front in a careful, calligraphy script.

  So much for the element of surprise. John limped to the table, catching sight of himself in the large mirror hanging above it in a gilded brass frame. He froze, eyes wide, although he couldn’t see his eyes reflected in the glass to know this with certainty. He could see his shirt well enough in the mirror, but nothing else. His head and neck, face and hair, everything that should have been above the damp band of his collar wasn’t there in his reflection, and in a moment of reflexive panic, he drew his good hand up to his face, promptly clunking himself with the nail gun.

  He remembered one of the papers he’d seen at Little Pink, spread out on Sandy’s dining room table. She’d printed it from a website about vampire folklore, and now one of the lines she’d highlighted from the text echoed ominously in his mind.

  Because mirrors are said to show the reflections of a person’s soul, which vampires lack, some legends also state that they cast no reflection in mirrored surfaces.

  The same thing had happened to him on the night he and Sandy had gone to meet Wilder at the Show Me! bar, only then, it had only lasted a second or two. This time, however, nothing changed, no matter how many times he blinked or rubbed his eyes or tried to convince himself otherwise.

  There is no more time, Sandy had told him. Six days had passed since Lucy had bitten him. His transformation was almost complete. There was the proof right in front of him in the glass.

  He put the nail gun down and opened the envelope. Someone had thoughtfully not sealed it, so he didn’t have to fight with his uncooperative, clumsy fingers. Inside, he found a thick piece of stationary to match the ivory envelope. On it, in that same meticulous hand, was written:

  The honor of your presence is requested at The Wilder Family Home, Duvall Island, Florida on Saturday, August 11 for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at eight-thirty in the evening in the upstairs parlor. Dinner immediately following. Regrets only.

  The invitation was signed Mr. Boyd Duvall Wilder.

  The staircase was to John’s left, less than five steps. He’d passed it to reach the table with the envelope and flowers. The same Oriental-patterned carpet blazed a trail up the risers, twisting and twining toward a second story.

  “I don’t suppose you have an elevator,” he called up the stairwell.

  No reply.

  “Didn’t think so,” he muttered, slapping his inert left hand against the banister and lugging himself up toward the landing.

  It took him a good fifteen minutes to reach the second floor, and only then because he’d abandoned the idea of actually climbing the stairs on foot, and settled for scrabbling and clawing his way up them on his belly, pushing with his good foot and groping for purchase with his able hand. As he lay on the landing, panting, he raised his head and looked around. It didn’t take a mental heavyweight to figure out which was the parlor. Every door on the floor was closed with the exception of one, which, like the front door downstairs, had been left open just enough to be inviting, sending a diagonal slash of lamplight from beyond its threshold spilling into the hall.

  He could hear music, too, the tinny, tinkling sort they’d play on the public radio stations Sandy would sometimes stream from her desktop
computer. Ordinarily, John hated that shit, finding it pretentious and cartoonish, but all at once, he found himself longing for Sandy to interject brightly that it was Beethoven or Schubert or maybe something from Puccini or Gluck. As annoying as that otherwise might have been, in that moment it would have cut the tension in the air like a dipstick through Crisco, would have given him at least a moment or two of reprieve from the nagging, gnawing fear that had gripped him.

  Adjusting his grip on the Paslode nailer after stumbling to his feet, John limped down the hall. The music grew louder the closer he drew to the parlor door, and with it, another sound, one he’d heard before in the stairwell leading up to Wilder’s office at the Show Me! A soft whispering, like numerous voices overlapping in hushed conversation, hissing and mumbling, inarticulate but discernable. Now, as then, it seemed to John that he could hear the voices not with his ears, but inside his head somehow, a sensation creepy and peculiar enough to set the fine hairs along the nape of his neck on end.

  Using the side of the nail gun, he poked experimentally at the door, pushing it in a creeping, creaking arc. Although far from crowded, at least a dozen women framed the wide circumference of the room. He recognized the curvaceous red-head he’d seen at Wilder’s office, Phoebe, among them, reclining against a chaise lounge.

  The walls were alternately painted a deep shade of eggshell and papered with a rose-themed print. The oak floor was all but hidden beneath an expansive Persian rug, while the furniture, like that in the downstairs foyer, looked elegant and antique. A marble-faced fireplace dominated the far wall. Framed by plush upholstered Queen Anne chairs, it was crowned by an enormous painting in a gold-toned frame; a stern-faced man in Victorian garb, his white hair drawn back primly from his haughty, austere features, his pallor a sickly but familiar shade of alabaster.

  John had seen that very same portrait once before, at least a photocopied version of it on a sheet of paper on Sandy’s dining room table.

  Duvall Wilder.

  “John, hey!” he heard Boyd Wilder call out in a cheerful voice, even before the door had come to a stop. He glanced to his left and found Wilder in the far corner of the room, standing with his shoulder propped casually, comfortably against the wall. He held an opened bottle of Horse Piss beer in one hand, while he had placed the other in possessive fashion against the shoulder of a woman seated in front of him in one of the antique chairs. Her mouth had been muffled with a thick stripe of duct tape. Her hands had likewise been bound to the chair arms.