Diary of an Alligator Queen

by Winter Reid

  So, what I was doing was a safe kind of bravado. A kind of exposure therapy.

  I put my weapons back in my pockets and started out. My sneakers made scant noise on the pavement, with only the occasional pull and scrape of a loose pebble announcing my presence. Curious eyes watched from the trees around me, wild birds and squirrels hiding under new leaves. As I closed in on the swamp, the deciduous trees gave way to cypresses, their naked trunks shaved clean and dyed black by the water.

  The trail made a sharp turn, and a low, dark mass lay across it not more than ten feet away from me. I stopped short, breathing hard, and pulled the knife from my pocket, tracing the monogram with my thumb.

  It was one of the alligators that migrated to the park earlier that year. A hint of shiny wetness reflected off his iris in the faint light, his pupil a thin slit. I took a quick step back. He didn’t like my jerky movement, his tail swinging wide behind him, deadly as a mace. I froze, watching the thick spikes he wore on his back like armor, the curve of his mouth like a smile. He hissed his alligator’s warning, and I felt the sound move through my spine, the low, breathy gargle a rattle of bones.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered soothingly, quiet as a mouse. “I’m leaving.”

  I took slow, cautious steps back, keeping on my toes, one foot and then the other. The alligator shifted forward, following me on squat, bowed legs. I turned to run and slammed nose-first into a second body. A much taller one.

  I looked up beyond the naked chest to his bearded face, hidden in shadows except for the gleam on his teeth. I screamed, he roared, and the alligator lumbered to the water’s edge and threw himself in, splashing like a fat rock.

  It was my vampire—my bulldog with thumbs—and he was blocking the path back to my bicycle. I spun around again, ready to run back toward the alligator, deeper into the swamp, but he caught me easily, his hands rough and muddy on my arms. He pulled me tight against him and my body remembered the pose, what had come of it last time. I shook so hard I thought my teeth might shatter.

  He used his nose to nudge my jaw to the side, putting his face against the pink scar at my neck and breathing in. In almost any other context, being held in a vice grip and sniffed by a guy with abs like rumble strips would have made my knees weak and my eyes roll back. Instead, I held my breath, keeping as still as I could. In my mind, I replayed videos of nature shows, watching the hunted rodents and deer who try to make themselves invisible to predators by holding still, their lives already over.

  Warm, his mouth moved gradually down to the notch at the base of my throat and up again to the other side of my neck, under my ear. His hands were hard where they held me, palms cool and firm. Cool as the blade of my knife, the flat edge of it pressed against my bare leg.

  In my terror, I’d forgotten it.

  I squirmed a little, and he tightened his grip, making a slow, threatening noise deep in his throat that vibrated against my ear. My range of motion was limited, but I could stab him decently in the thigh, easier since he was still running around naked.

  A breeze broke the night, and I realized that the air hadn’t moved since I’d left Jackson at the garden party. It brought traces of wisteria and the thick, rancid smell of fresh cooked fat from the rendering plant.

  The man’s teeth tapped my skin and tore it, making a gash, not the small, clean punctures in movies. I cried out, and my body went stiff. He didn’t drink my blood, but rubbed his face in it, painting his cheeks and resting his head in the warm, wet curve of my neck. Moving the hand on my back, he stroked me, fingers circling, rising again to hold the back of my head still. He ran his tongue over the wound and locked his mouth on top of it, sucking hard.

  Angling the knife, I drove it down into his leg as hard and deep as I could. Deep enough I felt an echo when it hit bone, like the reverberation of a tuning fork. He roared and pushed me away. A trickle of blood seeped out around the metal, rolling down his leg like sweat. Occultist addict or vampire, I expected something to happen; for him to run screaming or for the wound to fester, dissolving him into a puddle of silver-induced gore.

  It felt as though we both held our breath for a minute. Then he looked at me.

  My chest went tight, blood rushing so hard in my ears I could barely hear my own voice. “Oh, shit,” I said.

  He snarled.

  I turned to run. He caught my camera strap, choking me, pulling me back until he could put his arm around my neck. I sank my teeth into the hard muscle, tasting a combination of his saltiness and the woods, biting down until I felt his skin give. Until I tasted his blood, crying out in surprise when I recognized the flavor.

  In an instant, I switched from fighting to get away from him to struggling to get closer, to shift around in his grip so I could see his face again. I needed the visual to reach a memory of our time together, my recollection of its existence sparked by his blood. There was something I wanted to remember, but whatever it was danced just beyond my consciousness.

  He helped. Wrapping his free arm around my waist, fingers digging in at my hip, he twisted me around to face him. I fisted his long hair in my fingers, yanking it, trying to angle his face into the light so I could see the planes of his cheeks, the straight line of his nose. I needed them to help me remember.

  All I did was lighten the shadows enough to catch the shine on his eyes, the full curve of his lower lip. The rest of him stayed locked in darkness so close to the edge of the pond, the skirt of cypress trees slashing the moonlight, fracturing it.

  My neck still bled, blackness staining the front of my shirt in a wet wash. Sighing, he looked at it, exhaling a whisper of August against my mouth. I cried, and he watched, holding still while I searched what I could see of his face, hoping the memory would come. It didn’t, nothing left of it but the residual taste of him on my tongue.

  I went limp, heartbroken, and moved my hands from his hair down to the sides of his cheeks, his beard oddly soft against my palms.

  “What have you done to me?” I whispered.

  He licked his bottom lip, looking back at the open wound on my neck, bending toward it like he’d bite me again. My response was visceral. Uncontrollable. I shrieked and fought, kicking at his legs and scratching him with my fingernails. My hand brushed the knife, still lodged solidly in his leg, and I grabbed it, wrenching it, trying to cause more damage. He shoved me back roughly, and I stumbled, slipping down the side of the trail and falling backward into the water.

  Darkness covered my eyes, warm and wet, thick with duckweed and bits of rotted trees and leaves. Beneath the surface, the water was cleaner, except for me and the blood that still seeped out of my neck.

  The water by my head moved, pushed aside by a heavy body, bigger than the man and graceful in its element. I struggled to the surface, gulping air and trying to get my feet beneath me. The alligator’s back slid through the pond in an arc, coming around to make another pass.

  I glanced at the bank, but my attacker was gone. In that moment, I almost missed him. Better to meet my end with him sucking reverently at my neck than drowned and rotted, eaten in pieces on the bottom of a swamp. The alligator locked its teeth around my left leg and pulled me back down into the water. I kicked hard with my right foot and caught it in the snout. It let go long enough for me to surface and breathe before it caught me again, higher up by my hip, and dragged me down to roll. I reached out for anything to use as a weapon, burying my hand in soft silt and coming up with a rock. The alligator ratcheted its tail to start a spin, and I ground the rock deep into its eye until I felt it give and gush, a short flood of liquid meeting my hand like a cross stream.

  Its tail churned the water, whipping back and forth in agony, but it didn’t release me. Another loud splash came from near the bank, but I was too busy to worry about what made it. My hand was back in the silt, digging for another rock when the alligator’s teeth went slack, its body tearing free from mine and disappearing in the night. I didn’t stick around to see if it was coming back but flopped arou
nd to my stomach and fought through the murk, crawling up the bank to the path, where it was all I could do not to stop, not to collapse and let it catch me again if it could. There was pond water in my nose and mouth. I tasted it, earthy and fishy, and realized then that if the blood loss didn’t kill me, the myriad of protozoa and parasites I swallowed in the water probably would.

  My left leg looked like Swiss cheese, and I was fairly certain my ankle, if not my thigh, was shattered. Walking was impossible, but I dragged myself almost all the way to the fork; to the relative safety of the oak trees, far enough away from the swamp that it became an echo. Something faint and distant. A whisper of scent and sound. I rolled onto my back, looking up into the leaf canopy above. If I could get to my bike, I could use my cell to call for help. I craned my neck to see beyond the fork. My safety reflectors winked at me, white beacons on my tires, just beyond my reach.

  Chapter Six

  My eyelids were glued shut.

  I wasn’t sure why I’d want to open them anyway. Until Jackson called to me in a voice that said it wasn’t the first time.

  “Nadine.”

  I blinked awake and his face was there, worried lines on his forehead. A beeping noise sounded to my right, and a band tightened on my upper arm until it hurt. Then it stopped, pausing for a heartbeat before it released, bit by bit at first, and then all the way with a sigh. Blood pressure cuff.

  I closed my eyes again and listened to the quiet, busy hum of the hospital: the nurses’ sensible shoes in the hall, their hushed voices at the station. A cart. A cough.

  “Hi, honey,” I said, and the air hurt my throat, making the words cracked and wounded.

  Jackson jumped to his feet, raking his hand through the short, spiky hair he still wore the same as he had in med school. The frat boy special. He still looked the same as he did then in general, his face handsome and angular. Not all men are attractive in scrubs and a lab coat, and there was a reason the younger nurses got tongue-tied when he spoke to them.

  He paced back and forth at the end of the bed. “Damn it, Nadine. What the hell has gotten into you?”

  “Bike ride,” I croaked.

  “Bullshit!” He came close, towering over me. “A bike ride? Alone in the middle of the night!” he shouted. “You and I both know damn well what you were doing there.”

  “Doctor,” a voice came from the doorway.

  Jackson ignored it and stared at me, wearing that pained expression men save for when they can’t understand why we do what we do, but know we’ll kill ourselves at it.

  “You found a monster. Are you happy now?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Nadine!” he yelled.

  “Doctor,” the other voice came again, sharper and louder this time. Authoritative.

  Jackson pushed away from the bed, making it tremble. He didn’t speak again, charging out of the room. The man in the door turned sideways to let him pass.

  “Good morning, young lady,” he said, once Jackson was gone. He logged into the computer beside my bed, typed a few strokes, and then sat down beside me.

  I assumed, given his behavior, that this man was also my physician. I’d have put him somewhere in his early fifties, with wayward white hair that matched his coat, and a soft, indulgent smile. Christopher Lloyd came to mind.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired.”

  “You will have some explaining to do,” he said, taking my hand in his.

  “Oh?” I managed.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  I nodded.

  He unwrapped a cup on the table by my bed and filled it with water from a pitcher. Ice bumped against the plastic glass. He passed it to me, helping me sit up straighter to drink it.

  “A game warden came by to check on you yesterday. Gator hunting on a protected reserve is frowned upon in this state. T’aint Louisiana.” He added the bit last with a chuckle.

  The water burned going down. I tried to clear my throat.

  “You think I was hunting an alligator with a rock?” I asked. My voice was still raspy, but better than it had been.

  Tapping his fingers on his knee, he said nothing for a minute. Then he smiled at me again. “Jackson tells me you’re a curator at the Old Assembly House.”

  “Assistant curator,” I said, nodding.

  “And that you take photographs in your spare time.”

  I nodded again.

  “Maybe you were out there taking pictures of wildlife for National Geographic. The police found your camera on the trail.”

  I looked at him. “That’s what I was doing,” I whispered. “Freelance.”

  “Good.” He stood and patted my head. “I’m glad we got that settled. You’re going home in the morning.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you need to observe me?”

  “I’ve been observing you for three days, sweetheart. I don’t think much is going to change now. You’re a fast healer.”

  I leaned back into the pillows. “So I’ll make it then?”

  “Sure you will.” He winked at me. “Just stay out of the woods.”

  “One more thing,” he said, stopping short on his way out the door and snapping on a pair of exam gloves as he came back to me. He pulled the privacy curtain around the bed and untied the top of my hospital gown, pulling it down to bare my neck.

  “I’m curious about this,” he said, peeling the gauze dressing off the new wound the vampire had made. “This didn’t come from an alligator.”

  I swallowed. “I think I got scraped by a branch, but I can’t really… can’t really remember.”

  “That’s a puncture and a tear, darlin’. And it’s unbelievably close to your carotid artery.” He moved his fingers across my neck to my other scar. “This was from a dog?” he asked. “That’s what it says in your record.”

  “I don’t remember much of that either,” I said, which was not entirely untrue.

  “It also says you claimed a man attacked you.”

  I shrugged and winced. “They didn’t believe me.”

  He gave a disgusted grunt. “Not everyone is as open-minded as I am.”

  There was a hand mirror beside the sink and he brought it back to me, angling it so I could see the new bite, pink at the edges and scabbed over.

  “Do you see those marks there?” He pointed at some pinpoint bruising around the outside where the skin was still sound.

  I nodded and wiped at the tears rolling down my cheeks with my fingers.

  “It’s ecchymosis.”

  “Ecchymosis?” I echoed.

  “Blood that’s pooling subcutaneously from broken capillaries. You see it with a lot of different injuries, but I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like a hickey.”

  I pushed the mirror away.

  He sat down in the chair and took my hand once again.

  “Sweetheart, either you have a fetish for wrestling pit bulls or someone has hurt you. Now if there were bruises on your face and you told me you fell down the stairs I’d have a long talk with Jackson, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. What I can tell you is that whatever you are doing is going to kill you. Sooner than you imagine.”

  I pulled my hand out of his and tried to recover the wound. He brushed my fingers aside, laying the gauze carefully back over it and pressing gently on the tape. He gathered the straps of my hospital gown, tying them under my chin.

  “Thanks for your help,” I murmured when he was done.

  “Mm-hmm,” he said.

  An orderly wheeled me down to the main entrance late the next morning and Jackson loaded me into the backseat of his car. My left leg was in a cast that pretty much ran from my toes to my hoo-hah, and I had to sit against the back door with my leg propped up on the passenger armrest in the front seat.

  Since he was technically still at work, Jackson only had time to get me settled in my apartment, which was just as well since he still wouldn’t speak to me in full sentences. It took us a goo
d twenty minutes just to get up the stairs to my hallway. He keyed open the door and stood aside while I maneuvered in on my crutches. I made it as far as the sofa and stopped.

  “That where you want to be?” he asked, terse.

  I nodded and he stalked off into the bedroom. I lowered myself onto the cushions.

  “Where’s Olive?” I asked.

  He came back into the living room with every pillow I owned.

  “She’s at Lacey’s. I called her the morning they…” His voice caught and he had to stop and swallow. “The morning they brought you in.”

  He stacked a couple pillows under my leg and shoved one down behind my back.

  “You were there?” I asked.

  Refusing to look at me, he nodded, stalking off to the kitchen. I listened to him bang around in the cupboards, open the fridge and slam it shut again. His mouth was a hard line when he came back, whatever he wanted to say locked behind his lips. He dropped my cordless phone, cell, a bag of chips, two apples, and a sack of ginger snaps on the coffee table, and then plunked down a pitcher of iced tea and a cup.

  “Call your mother,” he ordered, turning away.

  “Hey,” I said gently, reaching for his hand. He pulled it away, grabbed the TV remote, and shoved it at me.

  “I’m off at six. I’ll see you then.”

  “Jackson,” I said.

  He finally looked at me.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said and left.

  Chapter Seven

  Getting out of the shower with the damned cast on was tricky enough without the added pressure of someone pounding on my front door like the building was on fire. I overstepped the bathmat and my good foot slipped out from under me. Grabbing the towel rack to catch myself was a mistake, I learned, when it snapped away from the wall, clattering to the floor. The knocking paused a beat and then got louder.