Once Bitten - Clare Willis

by Unknown

  Eric’s house was an anomaly in this old-fashioned neighborhood, a stunningly modern building of cement and glass. It looked like two shoeboxes, one standing on its edge and the other emerging from the side of the first, cantilevered over a hill and resting on pilings. Barry opened the door and pushed me to the sidewalk, not noticing that the rope was loose around my wrists. Now would be the moment to run away, as Barry was hefting his linebacker frame out of the back seat, but I didn’t consider it. Eric might be asleep inside the house, helpless against Nicolai’s ancient knife. I couldn’t let Barry reach him.

  Instead of turning toward the house, Barry prodded me to walk up the street. He kept the gun against my ribs, hidden under the trench coat that he had placed over his arm. Under his other arm was the ornate box containing Nicolai’s knife. Barry peered in the window of each car we passed.

  When we came upon a huge blue SUV Barry said, “This one will do.”

  With the butt of the gun he hit the glass in the passenger window. As the alarm wailed, ear-splittingly loud, Barry rushed me back to Eric’s house. He pulled out the gun and shot the door lock, the sound drowned out by the alarm.

  “People have no idea that car alarms are a criminal’s best friend.”

  We walked into an expansive living room. Floor to ceiling windows framed a three-sided view of the bay. The two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge peeked out of the fog. Because of the way the house was cantilevered over the hillside I felt like we were on the deck of a ship. The room was bright with sunlight, even on this foggy day, and there were no curtains.

  “Guess he doesn’t sleep in here,” Barry said, echoing my thoughts. He took hold of my arm again and led me into the hallway.

  “I figure he doesn’t walk around during the day, right?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Yes, he does. And the gun won’t do anything to him, and neither will the knife. I know, I tried it already.”

  Barry just laughed. “Never cheat a cheater, or lie to a liar,” he quipped. “Besides, I got a plan for all eventualities. Want to hear it?”

  Of course I did, so I nodded.

  “Well, Angie,” he said. “If he’s a normal human freak, I’m going to shoot him. If we find him sleeping in some coffin like a supernatural freak I’m going to stab him, and then shoot him. What do you think?”

  I turned to look at his broad, handsome, cartoon-character face, and saw that he was smiling at me like I was his co-conspirator.

  “Good idea,” I replied.

  In front of us was a circular iron staircase spiraling both up and down from the main floor. Barry guided me down the stairs into a long hallway. Recessed lighting highlighted a collection of old photographs of different cities. I recognized Paris and Venice before Barry opened a door and pushed me into a room. The interior was dark but Barry patted the wall until he found a light switch.

  It looked like the bedroom of any well-to-do San Francisco bachelor, not that I had been in many for comparison. Tasteful abstract oil paintings decorated the walls. An ancient-looking Oriental rug covered the oak floor. The bedroom set was black and modern, with a tweedy gray coverlet that matched the tweedy gray drapes. A small, oval portrait hanging near the bed caught my attention. It was framed in gilt and dark with age. Fascinated, I moved closer. It was an oil painting of an ethereally lovely woman. With her copper-colored hair and light blue eyes, it had to be Eric’s mother. The picture confirmed that it wasn’t just his vampire powers that made him attractive: it was in the genes as well. No wonder a vampire had chosen him as a permanent companion.

  “This must be his bedroom, but dang, where he is he, Angie?”

  “How should I know?” I shrieked. I was trying to stay calm but the tension of walking through this silent house, trying to be ready for whatever battle was around the corner, was almost unbearable. If something was going to happen I needed it to hurry up, because I couldn’t hold myself together for much longer.

  Barry threw open the two closets and even banged on the walls and felt the floor. I watched him, my mouth dry with fear. I could only hope that if Eric really was asleep in the house that he had hidden himself really well. I had been using all my senses to locate him, not just looking but sniffing the air and sending out mental feelers to sense his presence around a corner or behind a wall. The bedroom held a slight vestige of Eric’s scent, enough to tell me that he had been there recently. But even as I searched for him I hoped he was nowhere nearby.

  We returned to the hallway. The next room had a reinforced door with a lock on it, but the key was in the lock. Barry pocketed the key and we went inside. This room was much larger than Eric’s bedroom and looked like it was just used for storage. I say just, but it was filled with things that would have amazed me had I not been in such dire circumstances. It was like visiting the basement of the Metropolitan Museum. Standing on a stone column was a marble statue at least eight feet high, of a young naked man with chiseled abs and a tiny penis. Two holes gaped where his jeweled eyes should have been. There was a gleaming black and red vase, its circumference decorated with pictures of men in togas hunting various animals. A richly engraved warrior’s shield that looked like it was made of pure gold sat in an open wooden crate filled with Styrofoam peanuts. A stack of oil paintings leaned haphazardly against one wall. The one in front was of ballet dancers in gauzy white tutus pirouetting in a high-ceilinged studio. My sister had a very similar print in her half of our room while we were growing up. It was either a Degas or a mighty good knock-off, and why would Eric own a fake when he could have bought this painting in Paris when it first went on sale?

  “Hell’s bells, Angie, look at this stash,” said Barry, running his hand over a marble bust of some long dead conqueror wearing a wreath of pressed gold leaves. He picked up the wreath and placed it on his own head. “I’m no expert, but this looks like some valuable stuff. And just think, it’ll all be mine when you’re both dead. What an unexpected bonus.”

  He wandered through the room, picking things up and putting them down with no reverence whatsoever. Ancient vases and delicate statuary wobbled and teetered under his ham fists.

  “Do you know what any of this stuff is?” he asked.

  “No, but I know Eric’s going to kill you when he finds you here,” I replied, with more bravado than I felt.

  “Not if I find him first,” Barry said.

  We finished searching the first storeroom and then crossed the hallway into a second room with a reinforced door. It also had a key that Barry took with him. We moved much more swiftly through this room, as my captor had ceased to be impressed by the treasure trove around him. We were near the back of the room when Barry stopped abruptly.

  “Hey, that looks promising.”

  A massive stone sarcophagus with an ornately carved top and sides stood against the far wall, surrounded by packing crates, Chinese porcelain vases, and a giant wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. My heart sank.

  “What do you think, Angie?”

  “It’s Egyptian, or maybe Roman.”

  He laughed. “No, I mean, do you think Count Chocula might be sleeping it off in there? It looks pretty sturdy.”

  To my great dismay, I thought that he might be. The sweet fragrance of vampire was much stronger in this room. I wondered if Barry had noticed it.

  “I told you, Barry, he doesn’t sleep during the day. That’s a myth.”

  Barry made the tut-tutting sound of disapproval again. “I went to college too, missy. After five years at Ole Miss you think I don’t understand reverse psychology?” He pushed at the lid of the sarcophagus. “Jesus, that’s heavy. Could you help me?” He looked up. “No, of course you can’t, your hands are tied, aren’t they?”

  He stuck the gun in the waistband of his pants and placed the knife box on a nearby table, and then he crouched so that he could apply all of his considerable strength to the task at hand. Now was my chance. Slipping my hands out of the rope, I grabbed the nearest thing, a large porcelain vase, and raise
d it over his head. But Barry’s football instincts were still intact. He swung around and rushed me with his shoulder, sending me flying into the statue of the Virgin. Mary and I hit the ground amid shards of the probably priceless vase. My head bounced like a tennis ball on the concrete floor. I tried desperately to stay conscious, but a galaxy of stars whirled in front of my eyes and an inky blackness crept in on both sides until it finally engulfed me.

  Chapter 26

  When I woke up I was propped against the wall with the Virgin Mary in my lap. My hands were tied again, in front this time, and much more tightly. My head throbbed and my eyes didn’t seem to be working. Everything I looked at had a shadowy doppelgänger attached to it, wavering in and out of focus.

  “Hey, are you awake? I want you to see this.”

  The statue was lifted and Barry’s smirking face appeared, a double image attached to the side of his head like some monstrous conjoined twin. He grabbed my arm and pulled me upright. Jolts of pain like electric shocks ran through my trussed wrists. He was holding the wavy knife, and it was stained red.

  “I found him, look!”

  Barry had managed to shift the heavy cover, and it lay tilted against the bottom half of the sarcophagus. The coffin was deep, at least four feet, and I couldn’t see inside until I walked right up to it. I approached on tottering feet. The heavenly fragrance grew more and more powerful in my nostrils, but it was mixed with another smell, bitter and awful. When I looked inside bile rose in my throat and I almost threw up.

  Eric lay naked in his marble bed, with no blanket or mattress as protection from the cold. This pained me, although I knew he couldn’t feel anything. His expression was calm and his arms lay at his sides, his long fingers curled slightly inward. My eyes flicked over the angry, puckered burn scar that lay over his left nipple, and rested on the fresh knife wound, a diagonal slash from collarbone to the bottom of his rib cage. It was this wound that had made me gag. The two edges of his pale skin curled like black, waxy parchment away from the wet, red muscles in the center. Acrid smoke was rising from the wound, as if his flesh had been dipped in acid and was still actively burning.

  “What did you do?” I cried out.

  The wound was horrible, deep and vicious, but it wasn’t bleeding. Understanding neither vampire anatomy nor the effects of magic swords on the undead, I had no idea whether such an injury was life-threatening. For all I knew Eric could already be dead. I put my fingers under his nose and was relieved beyond words to feel his cool, dry breath. I moved my hands lower and felt his heart beating, the rhythm slow but steady. Clenching his cold, hard shoulder between my bound hands, I shook him, all the while knowing that if the pain of his injury hadn’t roused him I wouldn’t be able to. I still had double vision, and a shadowy second Eric moved under my hands as well, and failed to wake up.

  I heard Barry’s insane titter behind me. “I tested the knife on him, and look what happened! His skin flared up like a tiki torch, and it’s still burning. If that ain’t magic I don’t know what is!”

  A tear dripped from my eye onto Eric’s cheek. “Why didn’t you just kill him?”

  “Because I wanted you to watch, of course!” Another hysterical laugh.

  Of course he wanted me to watch. Barry was a sadist of the most macabre kind, as evidenced by the trail of misery he’d left behind in Asia. He’d make me watch him kill Eric, and then he’d do the same to me afterward. And more.

  I pressed against the coffin, staring at the only man I’d ever truly loved. He was helpless as a pupa, his limbs frozen, awaiting the metamorphosis of night. I had to do something, and do it now. A parade of images marched through my mind of Barry’s previous crimes, and those grotesque pictures gave me an idea. It was the only glimmer of hope I’d had since I regained consciousness. I blinked furiously to amass more tears, and manufactured a few sobs as I gazed at Eric. Then I turned around to face Barry. It was a terrible risk I was taking, and I hated to think of the consequences if I failed, but it was my only option.

  “Please just kill me now,” I begged, as the tears poured down my face. “Just don’t hurt me, like you hurt those other girls.”

  Barry approached me, the wavy silver blade in his right hand, his left hand empty. The gun was in his waistband. I cried and whimpered, backing away from him with my bound hands held up in supplication. His smiling countenance slowly changed, as he turned from a crazy man into a rabid wolf. His eyes narrowed. His lips drew back and exposed his giant white teeth. It was working. Barry had forgotten about Eric for the moment and turned his attention to his favorite prey, a helpless woman.

  His eyes moved up and down my body, resting for a long moment on my breasts. Then he made a guttural sound, low in his throat, and launched himself at me. We both fell onto the hard concrete floor. Any semblance of humanity he had maintained dropped away as he tore blindly at my clothes. His teeth raked my cheek. The knife clattered to the floor but he made no attempt to retrieve it. His entire weight pressed down on me, on my bound hands, and I almost passed out from the pain and lack of oxygen. He lifted himself to fumble with his zipper, giving me a tiny bit of space to maneuver. I could feel the hard contours of the gun pressing into my hip, only inches from my hands. I clasped the crosshatched metal of the handle and worked my finger into the trigger.

  “I have your gun, Barry,” I yelled. “Get off me.”

  Barry stopped moving. “It’s got the safety on. Bet you don’t know how to switch it off.”

  “Bet you the safety’s not on, and all I have to do is twitch my finger and your guts are going to be all over the ceiling.”

  A shudder passed through his body.

  “Now get off me.”

  He moved his weight onto his elbows and then rolled to one side, holding his hands up next to his head. I pointed the gun at his stunned, terrified face and awkwardly hoisted myself to a standing position. I still had double vision and it took all of my effort to aim the gun at the more substantial of the two Barrys and not get confused by the ghost that hovered next to him.

  “Pick up the knife,” I ordered. “Don’t try anything sneaky.”

  I could see Barry wrestling to control his emotions. His face turned into a smiling mask.

  “Let’s not play games, sweetheart. You’re not going to shoot me and you certainly…”

  The blast almost knocked me into the wall. I barely managed to keep hold of the gun. When I looked at Barry he was curled like a pill bug, grabbing his lower left leg. Blood seeped under his hands, staining his khaki pants.

  “Ahh, you fucking shot me!”

  “That’s right. Now do what I say or the next one’s going to be aimed higher. Stand up.”

  “I can’t fucking stand up! You shot me in my fucking leg!”

  “Okay, then. Crawl into the next room.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me! Crawl.” I kicked him just above his broken leg.

  “Argh! Stop! All right, I’ll do it.” He pulled himself to his hands and knees, holding the injured leg up as best he could, and slowly slid, crawled, and dragged himself through the hall to the adjacent storage room.

  “You’re going to be so fucking sorry, Angie.”

  When he was over the threshold I shoved him the last few feet with my foot in the seat of his pants.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “Sorry I’m letting you live.”

  He rolled onto his back and clutched his injured leg. Tears rolled down his sweaty red face.

  “I almost forgot,” I added. “Give me the keys.”

  He didn’t argue this time, just reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys, then slid them along the floor. I kicked them into the hallway and walked out, closing the door with difficulty while still clutching the gun between my trussed hands. I had to put the gun down to lock the door, and I accomplished that as quickly as I could, while listening to Barry groan and cry inside the room.

  I returned to the room where Eric was and hurried over to the sarcophagus. H
e was lying as before, silent and still as the coffin itself, but his heart was still beating, so I knew he was alive. The wound on his chest had stopped smoking. It wasn’t bleeding, as a human’s would, but it was also not spontaneously healing. There was nothing to do but wait for Eric to wake up when night fell. Hopefully he’d be strong enough to deal with Barry. But now I needed to get my hands free. I found the knife on the floor and sat down, then picked it up and positioned it between my feet.

  “Just don’t slit your wrists, hotshot,” I muttered.

  I slid the razor sharp blade between my palms. The cold metal didn’t burn me, I was happy to note. I sawed my hands up and down two or three times and the ropes were off.

  I searched through the mind-boggling contents of the storage room and found a gorgeous silk tapestry, at least ten feet long, stitched with a design of a medieval maiden in a pointed hat lying with a lion in a field of green grass. The colors were still brilliant. Trying not to think about how old and certainly valuable the tapestry was, I wrapped it around myself like a shawl and settled down at the foot of the sarcophagus. I kept the gun in my hand just in case Barry managed to break out of the room where he was trapped.

  It was difficult to stay awake, but I knew I had to try. The double vision was probably caused by a concussion, and I’d read somewhere that if you fell asleep with a concussion you might never wake up. So whenever I felt myself nodding off I stood up and walked around the room, admiring the objets d’art and checking on Eric. I had no means of telling time, but every minute seemed like an hour. Occasionally I heard thumps from the other room and I rushed over to point the gun at the door, but then it would grow quiet again.

  Finally I heard a rustling sound from inside the sarcophagus. Before I could stand there was a rush of movement. Something flew through the air. But it wasn’t Eric, it was a wild creature with flaming eyes and glittering fangs. He leaped on me, and his hands were like metal vises, crushing my arms. He had awakened, threatened and in pain, and he was going to eliminate the source of the threat. His head arched, preparing to sink his teeth into my neck.