Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

  “You can’t stand it that Lucy Weston made another man for a vampire,” John shouted, then turned to look back at Covey. “Come on, Covey. You’re a stupid fuck but you’re not that stupid. You see any other male vampires here? Why do you think Wilder keeps only women around like him?”

  “I said get him out of here, Jame.” Wilder’s voice had sharpened now, the cleft between his brows furrowing more deeply.

  “Because he’s chickenshit, that’s why,” John said. “Another man around here would be competition for him. Maybe then, all of his girlfriends would find out what a tool he really is, how pathetic and weak. Hell, he’s not any better than a woman himself.”

  “Stop,” Wilder said, his voice thick with barely contained fury, drawing Covey to a halt just as they’d started across the parlor threshold.

  John strained to look over his shoulder and saw Wilder had turned Sandy loose. His hands knotted into fists at his sides, the tendons bridging his shoulders and neck standing out in taut, furious lines.

  “Bring that son of a bitch back here,” Wilder said. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to deal with him myself.”

  As Covey obediently turned and shoved him back toward the center of the room, John looked at Sandy and saw the exact same question mirrored in her eyes that he was asking himself at that moment: Are you crazy?

  “You think I’m scared of you, Harker?” Wilder asked, striding forward, his footsteps heavy and shuddering.

  “I think you’re a pussy, Wilder,” John said, then his voice cut short in a strangled whoof! as Wilder’s knuckles plowed into his midsection, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over, breathless and in pain, but Covey jerked him upright again, just in time for Wilder to send a nasty little right hook around, smashing into the side of John’s face.

  Sandy cried his name from around her gag. Her hands flapped against the chair arms and she kicked her feet frantically.

  “Nice,” John remarked, glancing up at Wilder. He tasted blood in his mouth, bitter and prominent, and spat. “I haven’t been hit like that since my ex-wife.”

  “You fuck,” Wilder seethed, punching him in the face again. Over and over, he drove his fist into John’s head, pummeling him, while Sandy wailed, her voice muffled and anguished.

  “You think you can take me on, Harker?” Wilder asked in between blows, his voice ragged, his breathing exerted and harsh. “You think you can beat me, you stupid, arrogant fuck? Let him go, Covey.”

  Covey obeyed, stepping back as he did, and John crashed in a breathless, shuddering heap to the floor.

  “Take your best shot,” Wilder told him. When John looked up, he squinted against the sting of blood. One of Wilder’s punches had sheared open a shallow laceration above his brow, spilling blood down the side of his face.

  “No, John, really,” Wilder said, reaching behind him, beneath his shirt. As he hands moved forward again, John caught the wink of light against metal, then Wilder let something he’d pulled from the waistband of his slacks fall with a sudden clatter to the floor between them.

  Harry Shearer.

  Not the actor, but the gun, Sandy’s chrome-plated Kel-Tec PF-9 nine-millimeter automatic pistol, the clip fully loaded with the silver plated bullets that had been her mother’s side-show trademark.

  “Take your best shot,” Wilder said.

  John couldn’t move. He stared at the gun, his throat constricting, his entire body going rigid. Had his impending vampirism not already all but paralyzed him, he would have been immobilized by sudden, overwhelming panic.

  Oh, Jesus.

  In his mind, he heard Adelaida López Famosa scream as he’d burst into her brother’s bedroom five years ago.

  “Teo,” she’d cried, scrambling up from a white rocking chair, holding something wrapped in the heavy folds of a blue blanket to her chest. It was a baby, of course, and of course, now he knew it was a baby, but at the time—pumped on adrenaline, his primal fight-or-flight engaged in all of their heightened glory—he hadn’t realized. Not right away. Not at first.

  Gun, he’d thought. Gun, gun, she has a gun underneath those blankets!

  “No se mueva,” he’d shouted at her. “¡Policía!” Don’t move. Police!

  “¡Teo, despierte! ¡Ayúdeme!” Adelaida had cried. Teo, wake up! Help me!

  “What are you waiting for?” Wilder asked, snapping John from his dazed reverie. He stared down at John, hands outstretched in mocking invitation.

  He knows, John realized. Wilder had called him out by name upon their introduction at the Show Me! but now John understood that more than just the facts behind John’s shooting, his resignation from the police force, Wilder knew a whole lot more.

  “Pick it up,” Wilder said to him, nodding to indicate the gun. “Come on. Shoot me. You’ve got me dead to rights. I won’t even try to run.”

  John cut his eyes past Wilder toward Sandy, who was staring at him in desperate implore. What are you waiting for? she seemed to be screeching through her gaze. Get the gun, for God’s sake! Shoot him!

  I can’t, he thought, feeling idiotically on the verge of sudden tears. Oh, God, Sandy, you don’t understand.

  Wilder chuckled. “You can’t do it, can you?” he asked. “Not even to save yourself. And, I’m willing to bet, not even to save your girlfriend.”

  With this, he turned and walked back to Sandy. This time, when he grabbed her by the hair, she cried out beneath the duct tape covering her mouth. Wilder leaned over, making a show of dragging the tip of his nose along the slope of her neck, following closely with the blade of his tongue.

  “I’m going to bleed her right here in front of you,” he told John. “I’m going to take my time and drink my fill of this stupid bitch’s blood. And there’s not a thing you can do to stop me. Because you’re the chickenshit, Harker, not me.”

  Pressing his lips nearly flush to Sandy’s ear now, he said, “Did you know that, Miss Dodd? Harker here can’t take the shot. He can’t even look at a gun without freezing up. Speechless terror, that’s what the shrinks call it. An unfortunate side effect of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s why he’s not a cop anymore. Because he can’t take the heat.”

  He looked across the room at John. “You’ve never told her, have you? The truth, I mean. About how you’re the pussy. You killed someone, an unarmed kid three years ago. Seventeen years old, still in the prime of his youth, and you gunned him down like a damn dirty dog.”

  “¡Teo, despierte! ¡Ayúdeme!” Again in his mind, John heard Adelaida screaming. Teo, wake up! Help me!

  He could see it now, too, clearly in his mind; a blur of movement, a loud rush of wind from his immediate left, snapping his attention away from the girl. Mateo López Famosa had been coming at him, springing catlike from a mattress on the floor where he’d apparently been sleeping.

  “¡Pégale!” Adelaida had cried. “¡Teo, agárrale la pistola! ¡Órale!”

  Hit him! Teo, grab his gun! Do it now!

  “How you feeling there, Harker?” Wilder called out, grinning broadly. “You’re looking a little green again, my friend.”

  Sandy strained to look at him, terrified and shaking. John, please! he could see in her tear-filled eyes. Help me!

  I can’t, he wanted to scream at her. You don’t understand. I can’t!

  “Go on, Harker,” Wilder said, opening his mouth wide now in between his words, pressing the tips of those horrible fangs against the smooth flesh of Sandy’s throat. “Pick up the gun.”

  Shut up, John thought. His eyes were pinned to the gun, his own aghast expression reflected in the smooth chrome of the barrel, but in his mind, all he could hear was Adelaida.

  “¡Pégale!” she screamed. “¡Teo, agárrale la pistola! ¡Órale!”

  Hit him! Teo, grab his gun! Do it now!

  “Save her life,” Wilder sneered. “Stop me.”

  John closed his eyes, teeth gritted, brows furrowed. Shut up!

  Adelaida’s voice in his mind drowned out even his
own. “¡Teo, despierte! ¡Ayúdeme!”

  He opened his eyes. Found himself blinking at the barrel of the gun. “I said shut up,” he hissed.

  And then he reached for it, forcing his hand to move, seizing the cool grip of the pistol against his palm. The ghosts of his past were abruptly gone, and his finger folded inward against the trigger. The Kel-Tec PF-9 nine-millimeter bucked against his palm. Across the parlor, Wilder flew back from Sandy’s chair, spinning in a swift, sudden pirouette. He smashed headlong into the wall. He turned, his ordinarily perfect coif now messily askew, the pasty alabaster of his complexion broken now by a thin, crooked seam of blood sliding down from a nickel-sized hole almost dead-center in his forehead.

  “You shot me.” Wilder seemed stunned, his lucent blue eyes wide and round as his fingertips fluttered up to the wound, drawing back again smeared with scarlet. “You shot me in the face.” His brows furrowed deeply and the thin line of his mouth hooked down in a menacing sneer. Again, his fists balled and he reclaimed his footing, stepping forward, tromping toward John. “You son of a bitch, you messed up my face.”

  Then he drew to a halt in mid-stride, the furious expression on his face shifting to something more surprised. A delicate tendril of smoke seemed to be wafting out of the bullet hole now, along with blood, and it might have been John’s imagination, but he could have sworn the edges of the wound were blackening. The way his own bite wounds had seemed to sprout vines of shadow and darkness in an irregular circumference, so, too, did the place where the nine-millimeter slug had entered Wilder’s flesh.

  “You…” Wilder began, staring at John, stricken this time. He said only one other word—“silver”—before his voice dissolved abruptly into screams. The smoke, to that point only a lazy wisp curling up from his head, became a sudden, thickening column, and the blackness began seeping out, swallowing his face, dissolving skin, underlying tissue and bone into what appeared to be charcoal or ash. The burning intensified, emitting an audible hiss as it rushed in a scorching wave over the contours of Wilder’s cheek and chin, enveloping his nose and mouth, sweeping down his throat, fanning out to engulf his shoulders and chest.

  The smoke became a choking, heavy cloud that filled the room. In the middle of it all, Wilder careened wildly about, arms and legs flailing. He plowed into Sandy’s chair, toppling it sideways. All around him, the women shrieked in panicked, birdlike unison and began to scatter, a murder of crows frightened by a gunshot. The smoke surrounded them, and they floundered blindly, stumbling and tripping over Covey and John, over Sandy and her chair, into each other as they stampeded for the door.

  “Sandy,” John wheezed, his eyes smarting from the acrid cloud. He caught a glimpse of Wilder crashing to the floor, little more than a carbonized husk, like one of the victims left behind in the ruins of Pompeii, or perhaps more accurately, like one of the old-fashioned snake firecrackers John had loved as a kid, the kind that would spew out a long, cylindrical dog turd of ash when lit.

  As Wilder fell, the black veil of smoke swept down with him, leaving John in virtual darkness, gagging for breath. His eyes watered freely now, and he gulped like a goldfish tossed onto a tabletop as he forced himself to move, to crawl through the smoke toward where he’d last seen Sandy. He kept his good arm outstretched before him, and when his groping fingertips pawed against the chair, he called out to her again.

  “Sandy!”

  “Mmmfflgrr!” he heard her answer.

  “Hang on,” John gasped, pawing blindly, tugging against the duct tape binding her wrist. He managed to pull it loose enough for her to wriggle her arm out, then she freed her opposite hand.

  He couldn’t see as she pulled the duct tape away from her mouth but he knew it just the same. “Speechless terror,” Sandy said, coming into view as she leaned toward him. “Post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course. I should have known. Traumatic memories are somatic and emotionally triggered…”

  “Sandy.” John clapped his hand over her mouth. “Shut up.”

  Leaning against one another, they stumbled out of the parlor. Smoke billowed out through the wide doorway into the second-floor landing, and Sandy led the way toward the stairs. All the while, she continued babbling. “…neurophysiological and disassociative affectations that can affect hippocampal volume and impair psychoimmunologic function.”

  “You sound like a shrink,” he muttered, wondering if he could slap the duct tape back over her mouth using only one working hand.

  “Well, I did pass the NEPPP,” Sandy said, adding helpfully. “The National Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology. I earned a Master’s in social work right after my MBA. I’m licensed as a psychotherapy counselor in the state of Florida.” After a moment in which he said nothing, too caught by surprise, she added, “It was on my resume.”

  When they reached the first floor, Sandy helped John lean against the nearest wall and they both rested a moment, coughing and sputtering for breath. “I didn’t kill that boy,” he croaked at length. When she looked at him, puzzled, he nodded once up the stairwell. “What Wilder said up there about me…how I gunned down that kid in Miami.” He paused, hanging his head, struggling to both catch his breath and find the words.

  “John,” she began, reaching for him. “You don’t…”

  “Yes, I do. I want you to know.” Looking into her eyes, he nodded again, steeling himself. “I want you to know the truth. I killed someone.” The words fell out of his mouth without him even thinking about it, never mind trying to prevent them. “He was a small time hood, a gang-banger drug dealer and I was part of a team sent to raid his house, arrest him. I burst in on him while he was sleeping. His sister was in the room and she started screaming. He came at me and I thought he had a gun in his hand, a knife, something. I shot him.”

  “John.” Sandy reached for him again.

  “He didn’t,” John said. “Have anything in his hand, I mean. He was completely unarmed. He was just a kid, seventeen years old. I was charged with second degree murder but a grand jury ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to bring it to trial.” Stricken, he closed his eyes. “It ruined my life,” he whispered. “I resigned from the force because of it.”

  “Mateo López Famosa,” Sandy said, drawing his surprised gaze. She smiled gently, pressing her hand to his face, brushing the pad of her thumb against his cheek. “I know, John.”

  “What?” He blinked at her. “But I…I didn’t…how did you…?”

  “Boyd Wilder’s not the only one who can do a Google search you know.” She brought her free hand to his face, cradling his cheeks against her palms. “What happened to Mateo López Famosa wasn’t your fault. You were doing your job. You were a good police officer.” She leaned toward him and he felt her breath brush his mouth as she whispered, “And you’re a good man.”

  He watched as she closed her eyes, as the soft seam of her lips parted. “Sandy,” he breathed, leaning forward to meet her. Then a sharp, unexpected pain lanced through his chest. In an instant, he doubled over, eyes flown wide, crying out hoarsely.

  “John!” Sandy caught him as he fell, deadweight, into her embrace, taking her down with him as he crashed to the floor. He convulsed, his voice escaping in another strangled cry as again, it felt like an invisible butcher knife twisted between his ribs.

  “Sandy, I…I can’t…” he gasped, pawing at the front of his shirt. He couldn’t catch his breath and panted heavily, on the verge of hyperventilating. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re having a heart attack,” Sandy said, her hands darting frantically from his face to his chest, then back to his face. “Oh, God, John, Dr. Gough said it would happen like this…this or a brain aneurysm, some kind of massive stroke. You’re dying.” Her eyes flooded, her tears spilling down her cheeks. “But you can’t be. You killed him. Wilder’s dead, the master vampire. I don’t understand, John. Dr. Gough said that would stop things, keep you human.”

  The smoke had found them, rolling in thick billows d
own the stairs. When Sandy saw it, she shoved an arm beneath him. “Come on,” she said, grunting as she tried to get him on his feet.

  “Leave me here,” he groaned. They hadn’t seen any signs of Covey and the werewolves, or the vampire dancers from the club, either, but that didn’t mean they were gone, or that they were any less of a threat to Sandy. “Go on, get out of here, back to the boat.” His voice cut short in an agonized mewl and he twisted sharply against her.

  “Like hell,” Sandy said. She gritted her teeth, her face glossed with sweat as she hauled him upright, his arm slung across her shoulders, her free arm clamped around his waist. Because he couldn’t walk, she hauled him toward the front door.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she grunted in his ear. “Wilder has to be dead. I saw him go down. There was nothing left of him, just some ashes, maybe some bones. That should have fixed things, changed you back.”

  Unless Boyd Wilder wasn’t the master vampire, John thought in sudden, startled realization, lifting his head, tearing his bleary gaze from the floor. “Sandy,” he croaked as she reached for the handle to the front door, flinging it open wide. “Sandy, wait…it’s not…”

  A man stood in the doorway, tall and pale, and startled, Sandy shrank back with a soft cry. “Oh!”

  He could have been Boyd Wilder’s twin, boasting the same lucent blue eyes, the same ashen pallor, the same corn silk-pale hair.

  Not his twin, John thought, because he’d seen this man’s portrait upstairs only moments earlier, hanging above the fireplace in the parlor. His grandfather.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, as Duvall Wilder’s hand shot out, catching Sandy beneath the shelf of her chin. She uttered a breathless, frightened cry, then John crashed to the floor as Wilder wrenched her away from him.

  He held her aloft for a moment, her feet kicking madly in the open air as she pawed helplessly at his hand, gagging around his chokehold. Then his brows furrowed, his mouth turned down in a murderous frown and he threw her like he might have a rag doll.