Diary of an Alligator Queen

by Winter Reid

  He took out his phone and opened it to a picture, laying it on the table in front of me.

  “Oh no,” I whispered, chest aching as my vision blurred and tears spilled over. I looked up at Bell, the lines that drew his face grew fuzzy at the edges. “No, no, no. I just saw her. I talked to her last night.”

  Sinking down into the sofa cushion, he sat beside me. “Tell me.”

  “I had library books that were months overdue. I brought them in and she helped me with some computer research.”

  I picked up his phone, the image there a gruesome portrait. Ginger’s skin was already gray when they’d taken it, her auburn hair in limp, wet waves around her face. “I walked her out when she closed at eight-thirty. We said goodbye at the gate.”

  “You were friends?”

  “We were working on it,” I said, an ocean of regret opening up in my chest. I wiped at my eyes with my fingertips.

  He made a noise and reached into his pocket, pulling out a cloth handkerchief. I blew my nose, trying to get control over my emotions.

  “Your turn,” I whispered.

  He grunted and swiped the screen, bringing up a full picture. Ginger lay among the cypress roots just as the other girl had. The same gaping wound at her neck. She was still in her work clothes. Her hazel eyes were open, staring, unseeing, at the camera. I choked on a sob and started gagging. Bell reached for the small garbage can under the coffee table and shoved it into my hands. My last candy cane wrapper was still there at the bottom. I vomited bile with Bell rubbing between my shoulders. When I was done I sat back, wiping my mouth rudely with his handkerchief.

  “Goddamn it, Levitt. This has to stop.”

  I nodded.

  “I need your help,” he said. “I came here from her mother’s house, Nadine. Her mother’s house.”

  “It’ll stop. I promise.”

  Raising an eyebrow, his questioning gaze landed on my face, studying it until he reached my eyes. “What are you telling me? You know who’s doing this?”

  I nodded.

  “You want to explain that?” he asked after a minute.

  I shook my head.

  “You know I pulled your medical records from Regional.”

  I gaped at him. “Those are private.”

  “Active investigation.”

  I looked down at my hands and he pulled them into his, forcing my gaze to his weary eyes.

  “Originally, you said there was a man. A man who attacked you.”

  “They didn’t listen.”

  “I’m listening. Whatever this is… a serial killer, some kind of deranged club… it starts with you. You were the first victim. Whoever hurt you… whoever it was, I can protect you from him.”

  I laughed. “You can’t. And even if you could, it’s not him.”

  “Tell me.”

  I blew out a breath. “You’d never believe me if I did.”

  “You don’t know that unless you try.”

  I looked at him. “Why are you being nice to me?”

  “You’re my only lead and we’re about a heartbeat away from having an alphabet soup of federal agencies come in on this.”

  “I’ve always been your only lead.”

  “Fine. Lacey told me I had to behave.”

  “Lacey?”

  One corner of his mouth flicked up and he shrugged.

  I chewed at my lip. “Let me talk to someone and call you later.”

  “Promise me you won’t skip town.”

  “I promise.”

  “I mean it, Levitt. I’ll haul your ass in on federal trespass charges.”

  “I’ll kick your ass if you hurt her.”

  His mouth twitched again. “Deal.” He stood up, walking toward the door. I followed.

  “By the way,” he stopped, pulling a silver bracelet from his pocket. Made of coins, it had little turquoise beads between each round. “I found this in front of your door.”

  I knew the piece. It had been on Ginger’s wrist the night before. I searched his face for the knowledge. He was either a consummate actor or he didn’t know.

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out for it. “My mother would have killed me for losing that one.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Nadine.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Meidias sat on my sofa cleaning guns, spreading puzzle pieces of metal all over the coffee table. After Bell’s visit, I’d run to the pawn shop down the street and bought him one of his own. I watched him from my chair. Guns and vampires. Ten years ago, I’d never have expected either to play a significant role in my life. Now they were painfully normal, and at least in Meidias’s case, welcome.

  Ginger’s bracelet still sat on the coffee table. I ran my finger over it and my cell buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?” I answered, watching Meidias slide the clip back into my weapon.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” a voice answered, familiar and pissy.

  “Dr. Renfield?”

  “The very same. Dr. Bowman has no record of you as a patient.”

  I flinched. “Which Dr. Bowman did you call?”

  “The only one within a two-hour radius that has D.D.S. after his name.”

  “I might have lied a little,” I confessed.

  “I guess so. Care to tell me why?”

  For a second, I considered it. “Do I have to?” I asked.

  “It’d be polite.”

  Meidias finished assembling his gun and laid it out carefully next to mine.

  “It’s not something I can really discuss over the phone,” I explained.

  “Well that’s handy because I’m outside.”

  I jumped off the couch and went to the window. Oh boy, was he ever outside; standing next to a high-end street bicycle and wearing a mix of red and yellow spandex, crazy hair escaping his helmet in a wild halo of white fluff. He waved.

  I turned around and looked at Meidias, still sitting on the couch. He raised an eyebrow.

  “I know this bar,” I said into the receiver.

  Meidias was scowling; had been scowling since we left the apartment.

  “C’mon,” Renfield pressed. “Let me see ‘em.”

  Meidias’s growl was so low I felt it as much as heard it, and so soft it was completely covered by the barroom din around us. I put my hand on his leg, pressed tight against mine, and leaned across the table toward Renfield, curling my upper lip away from my teeth.

  He clasped his hands together and guffawed. “Hot damn!”

  I relaxed my lip, sitting back against the high-backed leather booth.

  He leaned in toward me. “Can I feel ‘em?”

  Meidias’ growl came back online. I moved my hand from his thigh to his hand where it rested on the table, wrapping my fingers around his.

  “No,” I answered.

  Renfield’s disappointment lasted all of two seconds. He kicked back the remains of his scotch and shook his head, still smiling. “This is remarkable.”

  “It’s something,” I said.

  “You know… I pulled your medical records.”

  “You too?”

  “It makes sense.” He waved his hands at us in a circle. “All of this. We try so hard to fit everything into our little boxes. The most possible and the most probable. Totally unwilling to entertain anything outside of those parameters in spite of the evidence.”

  “Evidence?” I asked.

  “A young woman arrives at the ER. She’s severely dehydrated and hypovolemic, but without any tachycardia or increased blood pressure. She heals exponentially faster than normal people, but her white blood cell count is sky high. She claims she was attacked by a naked man who drank her blood, and yet, in spite of the fact that she has no prior history of mental illness, we decide she was bitten by a dog and the lab results were faulty. Ridiculous!”

  Holding his glass up high, he shook it at the waitress.

  “And now to see the two of you together,” he continued, gesturing at our linked
fingers. “After what was so clearly a traumatic and devastating experience, Nadine. That the same man responsible for your situation is the person who will guide you into this… becoming for lack of a better word. That you have managed to not only overcome the circumstances of your meeting but develop any kind of relationship. I mean, look at how you communicate with each other! You’re having an entire conversation without speaking. One can only imagine the sex.”

  Meidias’s growl changed into a snarl.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Renfield,” I said as my phone went off. I answered, putting my hand up against my other ear to block the noise.

  “Levitt, where are you?” Bell’s tone wasn’t angry; it was scared.

  “The Hanged Mackenzie on Catherine and 18th.”

  “Is Lacey with you?”

  A band of nerves tightened around my stomach. “No, why do you ask?”

  “Damn it. She left a note at our apartment saying she was going to your place after work. Kevin said she left an hour and half ago. I’m at your door. She’s not here, and she’s not picking up her cell.”

  “Wait… our apartment?”

  “Focus, Levitt,” he snapped.

  I took a ragged breath. “Stay there. I’m coming.”

  “She’s got Lacey,” I said to Meidias, slipping my phone back into my pocket.

  He moved his hand to my face, stroking my cheek with the back of his fingers. “Then let’s get her back.”

  I met Bell at my apartment, popping inside to get the guns. He eyed me tucking them into my jacket but didn’t speak against me bringing them. Three minutes later we were in his SUV. I didn’t need to tell him where to go.

  He parked in the back lot to the west of the swamp. The plan was for Bell and I to sweep the back half of the park. Meidias would get the front, and we’d meet in the middle. It wasn’t much, but it was all we had. Unbuckling my seatbelt, I reached for the door handle. Bell stopped me, his arm a bar across my torso.

  “Tell me what I’m walking into here, Levitt,” he said.

  Moonlit tangles of vines and trees drew a night landscape just beyond his windshield. I sighed. “Don’t make me say it out loud.”

  He swallowed and shook his head. “She told me to go fuck myself.”

  “Huh?”

  “On our first date. Fifteen minutes into it, Lacey told me to go fuck myself.”

  I smiled. “You must have done something really awful.”

  He grinned before he swallowed hard and I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. It took him a minute to speak again. “I can’t lose her, Nadine.”

  “You run, Bell?” I asked.

  The vampire’s scent hit me square in the face about half a mile into the park. It was strong, almost unrepentantly present. Like she wanted to be found. Bell kept a good pace by human standards. Nine months ago, he could have kicked my ass, even in his trooper boots, but we had a couple miles left to the swamp and I was no longer exclusively human. He was a drag.

  I had no way of knowing where Meidias was or if he’d even made it to the park yet, but I wanted to think I felt him with me. The idea of him being there made me feel stronger. Ready.

  My legs ached to go faster and I hit the gas, turning onto the swamp trail about a half mile in front of Bell. Meidias came out of nowhere, falling in beside me. Roughly a hundred feet ahead of us two darkened figures made an abstract shape low on the pathway. I thought of my alligator.

  The vampire’s head snapped up at the sound of our shoes on the walkway, blood all over her mouth and chin. She made a low noise, and again I thought of the alligator from months ago, the warning rattle he had given me when I got too close.

  She had Lacey sprawled out under her, lying limp across the pathway, one arm stretched into the grass. Lacey’s fingers twitched and she whimpered. The sound hit me like a starting gun. I sprinted forward but there was too much space between us. The vampire was on her feet and running deeper into the swamp long before we got to Lacey.

  I slipped Meidias’s gun from my pocket and tossed it toward him, dropping to my knees by Lacey’s shoulders. He didn’t break stride when he caught it, just glanced at me and nodded, racing off into the darkness.

  There was blood everywhere. In Lacey’s hair, on her neck, soaking her shirt. I put my hands over the wound on her neck, pressing down tight. The smell of all that red hit me hard in the back of the throat and I felt saliva surge into my mouth.

  The soft, rubbery sound of bicycle brakes on tires broke the night behind me and then Renfield was there, crouching down on the other side of her.

  “Move your hands, Nadine,” he ordered.

  I wanted to but they wouldn’t budge. They were busy keeping her blood inside her body.

  “Nadine,” he said again. “Look at me.”

  I did.

  “Move your hands so I can see.”

  A breathless Bell appeared and dropped to his knees beside me. He cursed, pulling off his uniform shirt.

  I let go and stood up, letting Bell and Renfield take over. Bell tore a strip off the shirt, handing it to Renfield. Then he looked up me.

  “You’ve got a job to do, Levitt,” he said.

  I nodded and backed away from them, turning to jog into the woods, slowing when I hit the darker part of the swamp where the trees grew tall in tight clusters. The night forest had become familiar to me. The sounds of birds and insects that would have terrified me the year before had become a comfort. Creeping forward, I listened to them sing in the dark. Occasional leaves fell from the branches around me, spiraling to the ground; nature’s midnight confetti. Funny how the same shadows that used to scare me had become the safe havens I hid inside.

  The vampire’s scent was still fresh around me. Meidias’s too. I followed them to the sharp s-curve just before the caves began. Another dark lump lay in the path about twenty-five feet ahead; a smaller one. I picked up my pace, easing into a gentle jog as I got closer.

  It was a man’s shirt, a plaid flannel. I crouched down, reaching out to touch it, smearing it with Lacey’s blood. The fabric was warm and dry. Bringing it to my nose, I smelled him instantly… the vampire we’d killed in the swamp. Her scent lingered in it too, and I inhaled both of them—the vampire from the photograph and the vampire who’d made an altar of it.

  She’d worn his shirt like armor. Carrying it. Carrying him with her while she took her vengeance. It was true there was incredible rage in what she was doing, but there was sadness, too. Sadness and bone-crushing loneliness. My breath caught on a sob and I hugged the material tight against my body.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  As far as distractions go, she’d chosen a good one. And apparently she knew me better than I knew myself because she took me completely unaware when she dropped out of the tree above me, screeching like a banshee. Her weight on my back sent me sprawling forward. I scrambled to get away but she caught the back of my jacket, yanking me back down to the ground. Kicking, I twisted around onto my back. She launched herself at me again, crawling up my body and straddling my waist. She grabbed my head, lifting it up. Her face was a mask in the moonlight—pale and oval with a long, straight nose and full lips, twisted in pain. Hot, angry tears rolled down her cheeks and off her chin, landing on my face and in my mouth. I felt the incredible strength in her hands and in her fingers where she held my face. She shoved my head back down, cracking it against the pavement.

  My world went white at the edges, teeth ringing with the impact. She lifted my head again. The gun in my pocket pressed into my side. I reached down and grabbed it, flipping off the safety as I pulled it out, shoving it into her side and pulling the trigger. She screamed, grabbing her waist with one hand and slapping me across the face with the other. I scurried out from under her and she rose, kicking my gun away with her boot. It skittered up the path and she leapt for it while I clambered after her. She scooped it up and spun around, pointing it squarely at my head.

  “Get up,” she growled.

&nb
sp; I struggled to my feet, unsteady and swaying. I still had the shirt in my left hand. She looked at it and her eyes went wide.

  “Stop touching it,” she screamed, pressing her free hand into the wound at her side, curling her body over the pain a little like she could hold it in one spot.

  Jesus, she was crying. I was crying. It felt like the whole goddamn universe was crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, holding the shirt out to her, trying to make my voice as soothing as I could. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She aimed the gun at me again, inching forward, stretching out to catch a sleeve and tear the flannel from my fingers. Holding it tight to her chest, she calmed and took a step toward me, the gun barrel cold and unyielding when she pressed it against my forehead in a metallic kiss.

  “Let her go,” Meidias said quietly. He came into view behind her, materializing bit by bit from blackness.

  She shook her head.

  “Let. Her. Go,” he said again.

  Her face was so wounded, so raw.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, and I was.

  A deep, unsteady breath moved her shoulders and she closed her eyes, shaking her head. Dark waves of her hair shifted over each other like currents of water in the river Styx. When her lashes fluttered open, her gaze was a steady weight on my own, searching my face for something. Finally, she sighed.

  “Once,” she said, “I was you.”

  In a flurry of movement too fast to track, she turned the gun on herself, pressing it into her temple, and pulled the trigger.

  I screamed as she collapsed onto the ground.

  Meidias’s hands shook when he stepped over her body to pull me in against him. He kissed my cheeks and eyelids, pressing my head against his chest, where his heart raced faster than I’d ever heard it. He ran his fingers over my face and under my chin, lifting it up to kiss my mouth.

  “No more,” he said, and I knew he was referring to our vampire hunting. “Never. Again.”

  Fine with me.

  “Lacey,” I whispered after a few minutes.

  He frowned and nodded.

  We saw to the dead vampire. In spite of how fast he worked, Meidias took her fangs with more care than he’d taken the others. When he touched her, it was with a kind of quiet reverence. With regret. He walked her body into the water, gently setting her adrift, the Ophelia of her own story. If she had been me once, she was Meidias at the end of her life. And that was the part of her I loved.