Once Bitten

by Willis, Clare

  “A man, a woman, and a young girl were sleeping in a bed in the one-room cottage. I faltered, and Vincent pushed me forward. His voice in my head said, ‘We’ll take the girl, she will be sweetest.’ Vincent swept up to the bed, making no noise, and lifted the covers off the girl. Her chest rose and fell with the rhythm of her breath. She wore a muslin shift that had lifted up over her legs and hips. I looked at her beautiful skin and felt nothing but the desire for her blood. Vincent leaned over her, lifted her up, looking for all the world like a young lover. He placed his face to her neck and the smell of the blood flowing into his mouth was so strong I stepped back.

  “He lifted his head and beckoned me over. I looked at Vincent and saw his face, white and dripping with blood, fangs bared, eyes wild. ‘No!’ I screamed out loud. ‘You are the devil!’

  “The parents heard me and woke up. They struggled out of bed, calling for help. I escaped, leaving Vincent in the house. I ran to the edge of town where I knew there was a cliff, a precipitous drop down to a river. I ran toward it and found that I could very nearly fly, my strength and speed were so great. I arrived at the cliff and before I had a chance to stop myself I ran right over the edge.”

  Chapter 15

  Eric was holding my hand so tightly I thought my bones would break. I put my other hand on his and said gently, “Eric, you’re hurting me.” When he didn’t respond I shouted the same words. He looked at me like he couldn’t figure out who I was, but then he smiled distractedly and let go of my hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  I waited for him to continue and when he didn’t I asked, “So what happened then? Obviously you didn’t die.”

  Eric shook his head. “Obviously. I found out quickly that it’s not as easy as it looks. I never tried it again, by the way. I’ve thought of it, many times, especially now that I know how to do it correctly, but I found I never again had the stomach for it. I suppose I’m a coward at heart.”

  “What happened to Vincent?”

  “I went back to him. I had to. I had so much to learn. I never loved him again, though. In fact I despised him, and he knew it. We parted soon after. I left the monastery and entered the world. I changed my name. I change it quite often, as the styles change.”

  “So, what have you been doing all these years?” I was pleased when he laughed. The trance seemed to be broken.

  “I move around the world, never staying in one place too long. I have studied in some of the best universities. I’ve been an art dealer in Brussels, a diamond merchant in South Africa, a stock trader in New York City. I’ve even been here in San Francisco, once before, as I told you. I came for the gold rush.”

  “You were a gold miner?” It was hard to imagine Eric swinging a pick.

  “No, no. A financier. I sold people equipment in exchange for a piece of their claim. One thing I’ve learned about business in the last four hundred years: never be the miner, be the guy who sells him the pick.”

  I imagined Eric over all those years, changing costumes, changing his name, haunting the periphery of human society, profiting from human commerce, living off human blood. All those years. All those people.

  The questions I had wanted to ask Eric retreated from my lips. The image of Lucy and Eric in her house flashed in my mind, but I didn’t ask the question. Suddenly I understood why I had shied away from asking questions every time the opportunity arose. I realized what Eric meant by the protective factor of ignorance. Had Eric killed Lucy? Had he killed Lilith? And if he hadn’t killed them, what about the countless others over the years? The truth, if there was such a thing, was incompatible with my feelings for Eric.

  The horizon past the Golden Gate Bridge was beginning to take on the unmistakable pinkish tinge of impending dawn. Eric stood and helped me up.

  “As you can imagine, Angela, it is about time for me to leave.”

  “Just stay for another few minutes?”

  Eric smiled and put his arm around me. I leaned into his shoulder and we listened to the yelp of seal lions as they arrived to begin their shifts as tourist attractions at Pier 39. For a moment it felt almost normal, two lovers sitting together, enjoying a tranquil moment. Eric planted a soft kiss on my cheek that caused my heart to lurch, it was so tender.

  When the sun burst from the shelter of the East Bay hills and shone a laser beam into Eric’s translucent eyes, I felt his whole body cringe. He threw up a hand to block the light. I cursed myself for asking him to stay with me.

  “Do you have any sunglasses?” he asked.

  I dug in my purse and handed him the only pair I had, oversize Jackie O glasses with pearls in the hinges. I thought they would look silly, but the glasses only emphasized his masculinity, like a kilt on a Scotsman or diamond earrings on a muscle-bound rapper.

  “What’s going to happen to you now?” I asked, as he pulled his collar closed and buttoned his shirt.

  “I’ll develop wrinkles that a gallon of Botox couldn’t cure,” he answered, and I was reassured by his joking. But still, he pulled me to my feet without wasting another second.

  “Should we call a taxi?”

  He shook his head. “Just close your eyes,” he said.

  I felt him scoop me up in his arms. Then I sensed that he was running, but only because the air was pressing into my face like I was riding in a convertible at seventy miles an hour. There was no feeling of feet pounding the pavement, no strain whatsoever in his body. It had taken us twenty minutes to walk down the pier and we were back at my door in less than sixty seconds. He put me on the ground and I almost toppled over.

  “Careful there,” he said, holding my arm.

  “I guess traveling at the speed of light can make a person dizzy.” I looked up and saw Eric crouched in the shadow of the awning.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  “No. I must go home.”

  I wanted to ask him when I would see him again, but by the time I had cleared my throat he was gone, taking my sunglasses with him.

  I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, eyeing the bananas in the fruit basket and the box of water crackers Kimberley had left on the counter. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? I counted on my fingers. Wednesday night was my last meal. I’d had part of a pretzel on Saturday morning and two glasses of champagne last night. The longest I’d ever gone without eating before was twenty-four hours, when my sister and I tried a grapefruit juice diet we’d read about in Seventeen. Thea and I had both woken up in the middle of the night feeling dizzy and sick. We sneaked downstairs and ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and an ice cream bar each. So much for the grapefruit diet.

  It was now going on four days and I wasn’t feeling the slightest desire for food. Sure, I felt nauseated, but it was a different kind of nausea, and it only bothered me during the day.

  “What is happening to me?” I asked out loud.

  The story Eric had told me last night proved what? That he believed he was a vampire. Or was he just trying to make me believe it? I thought of the old movie Gaslight, which I’d watched six times in a row at college because Ingrid Berg-man was so good in it. In the film Charles Boyer, who plays her husband, plots to convince Ingrid that she is going insane. Was Eric trying to gas-light me?

  I tried to examine the case rationally. First there were my “symptoms”: nausea, lack of appetite, and intolerance of light. Then there were Eric’s manifestations: incalculable speed and strength, clairvoyance, remarkable healing ability, intolerance of light, and, how to describe his power over me? Inhuman sexiness?

  Yet none of these things were facts. They were impressions, feelings, sensations, chimera of the body and mind. Eric could be inducing my experiences with drugs, perhaps hypnosis, creating an illusory world in which I could believe the impossible. But whether Eric himself was delusional, or was trying to create delusions in me, my reaction should have been the same—to get the hell away from him. And yet that simple response seemed completely inconceiva
ble.

  Kimberley, unlike me, went with her parents to church every Sunday morning. She had left the newspaper on the table and I flipped through it automatically. There was an election coming up and the front-page article was about how each candidate was going to solve the homeless problem. The current mayor’s solution was to confiscate their shopping carts. Normally this would have gotten me angry enough to forget my own troubles. I tried to muster up some indignation, but it wasn’t working; I was still far more concerned about myself. I flipped to the next section, the Bay Area news, and read the first headline.

  SF WOMAN IS POSSIBLE ‘VAMPIRE’ VICTIM

  A woman found dead in her Richmond District home is the possible victim of a ‘vampire’ attacker, sources close to the investigation say. Lucy Weston, age 30, an ad agency executive, was found in her home by friends on Thursday evening. Although autopsy results were not yet available, sources said that the cause of death was most likely massive blood loss. The victim had been wounded in the neck.

  “We may be looking for a delusional person,” one source said, “someone who believes they are a vampire.”

  The rest of the words swam as tears pooled in my eyes. This was no chimera, no illusion. Lucy’s death, and the way it happened, was a fact. But who did it was still up for speculation. The phone rang. Automatically I checked the wall clock above the table. It was one of those plastic cats with bubble eyes that turn back and forth. I’d put it up and Kimberley had left it there, a fact that surprised me. Mr. Cat said it was ten o’clock. It had to be my mother. Nobody else would call me so early on a Sunday.

  “Hello, may I speak to Angie McCaffrey?” It was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize.

  “This is she.”

  “Ms. McCaffrey, this is Chris Neeley from the Examiner. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your colleague, Lucy Weston—”

  “I have no comment!” I shouted.

  “Please, Ms. McCaffrey, I know this must be a difficult—”

  I hung up the phone and it immediately rang again. I let it ring six times, hoping the machine would answer, but it was turned off.

  I picked up the phone and yelled, “I have no comment, now don’t call me again!”

  “Angie? This is your mother.”

  “Oh God, hi Mom, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Well, that hardly matters. I don’t think anyone deserves to be spoken to that harshly, do you?”

  “No,” I muttered.

  “Who was it, anyway?”

  “Oh, just a reporter, wanting some information about a client. Can you imagine, calling on a Sunday morning?”

  “Yes, but I would think you could be a little more polite, Angie. I didn’t raise you to yell like that. By the way, speaking of polite, I called you last Thursday and invited you over for tonight. May we look forward to the pleasure of your company at dinner?”

  The thought of eating made me queasy, but I told my mother I’d be over that afternoon.

  I left the apartment to go to my parents at three. I had taken the phone off the hook and spent the day napping and reading the newspaper, trying to keep from worrying—about Eric, Les, Kimberley, and even Barry Warner. It didn’t work, of course. Even as I slept my dreams worried.

  My Mini was parked in front of a fire hydrant, the only place I could find when I returned from the Hall of Justice the day before. A police car drove by, so I rushed to the car and jumped in, breathing a sigh of relief when the cruiser turned the corner. Blocking a fire hydrant cost two hundred and fifty bucks, a fact I knew from experience.

  Ever since I left my house I had been squinting. I rifled through my purse for my sunglasses, only to remember that I’d given them to Eric. I reached into the back seat to see if I’d left a baseball cap that I wear on the rare occasions when I go running. Instead of the cap, my hand touched human flesh. I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  Chapter 16

  It was Les. He hadn’t shaved in days and was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day we went to Lucy’s house. His short hair was matted on one side.

  “Oh my God, Les, I almost peed in my pants! What are you doing in my car?”

  Les rubbed his eyes. “I needed a place to sleep, and also I wanted to talk to you. Where are you headed, by the way?”

  “My parents’ house in Noe Valley.”

  “Okay. Drop me off at the BART station at Sixteenth and Mission.”

  “How did you get in the car?”

  Les reached around and produced a short, flat piece of metal. “Slim Jim.”

  “Slim Jim,” I repeated, imitating his matter-of-fact voice. “Have you overdosed on Cops? You can’t just go breaking into people’s cars!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “You knew I wouldn’t mind? This car is six months old. If you broke the lock I’d have to kill you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” He grinned and a semblance of his old cockiness returned. He was still cute, even in dire straits.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t.” I faced forward and turned on the engine. “How are you, anyway? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fucking great, Angie, just great. The police are watching my apartment, I’m sleeping in cars, they’re questioning all my friends, what could be better?”

  “I’m sorry, Les, but I told you not to run away,” I said, thinking I was sounding a lot like my mother.

  “Did you make the videotape like I told you? Did you get anything?”

  “I’m not sure. But I took the video to the police, like you wanted.”

  Les lurched toward me, banging the back of my seat. “What did they say, are they going to arrest anyone?”

  “The inspector wasn’t convinced. He said they’ve been watching these people for a while and they don’t do anything illegal. He took a copy of the video, but I think he was doing it just to humor me.”

  I glanced in the mirror and saw Les rubbing his stubbly chin.

  “You’ve got to go deeper, Angie. There must be another place, or get them to take you to their home, something…”

  “I am deeper, Les. Deeper than you think.”

  We reached the corner of Sixteenth Street and Mission. The street was busy with loiterers, Sunday shoppers, and people moving in and out of the BART station, San Francisco’s subway. I pulled into the bus lane.

  “Look at me, Angie,” Les said. When I did he stared intently into my face.

  “You met the guy too, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t answer, but he didn’t wait for a response. “Angie, he could be your way in. Get him to talk to you, get him to tell you what happened with Lucy. I’m sure he’s the one…” Les was trembling with excitement, leaning over me.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “You don’t know him. How do I know it’s not you, Les, and I’m helping you cover your ass by finding a fall guy?”

  Les exhaled slowly through pursed lips. “He’s got to you, Angie, hasn’t he? You sound just like Lucy. You look like her too, come to think of it. Pale and kind of sick. Wild in the eyes.” He looked at me sadly. Then he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Angie, there’s a guy, his name is Nicolai Blaloc, he studies vampires. He might be able to help you break the spell. I found him when I was looking for someone to help me get Lucy away from the coven.”

  “And did he help you?” And do I want to get away from Eric?

  “No. Lucy wouldn’t talk to him.”

  “Where is this Nicolai?”

  “I don’t know, I only talked to him on the phone. He’s got a website called vampirehunter.com.” He reached for the door handle.

  “Les, how can I find you?”

  “You can’t. I’ll get in touch when I can. Be careful, Angie. Sounds like maybe you need more help than me.”

  In a moment he disappeared into the crowd around the train station.

  To get to my parents’ house I took Dolores Street, a broad boulevard with green center islands plant
ed with palm trees. I passed Mission Dolores, the street’s namesake, and for reasons unknown I found myself parking. The old Mission Dolores, a whitewashed adobe building with broad squat columns and a red tile roof, was built in 1790, making it the oldest building in the city. I’d seen pictures of it taken in the 1800s, looking almost as it did now, but surrounded by nothing but mud and farm animals. The grand cathedral that was built next to it overshadowed the small adobe, but when tourists came for a tour it was the old mission they went to first.

  The neighborhood I grew up in was only a few blocks away over the next hill, and we used to go to services fairly regularly at St. Philip’s Church. On very special occasions like Christmas Eve or Easter we would come to Mission Dolores Cathedral to hear Mass.

  I climbed the wide concrete stairway into the church. It was empty, but the smell of incense from morning services still hung in the air. The statue of Jesus on the cross glowed as if it had just been painted. The blood from his hands, feet, chest and forehead was clearly visible from the back of the room. His heavy-lidded eyes gazed up to the sky, presumably waiting for deliverance from his earthly trials. I sat on the farthest pew and stared at the statue. Images from the story Eric had told me flooded my mind. Eric had been religious at one time, so much so that he was ready to dedicate his life to God. I wondered what he thought of Him now. I was suddenly reminded of something my father used to say, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Since I was there, I decided to pray.

  “Dear God,” I said silently, “Please watch over me. I feel I’m in over my head here and I don’t know who else to ask for help. You know a thing or two about evil, and protecting people from it, so maybe you’ll send me a sign.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say about Eric, but then I realized that if there really was a God He knew all about Eric and my feelings for him. “Guide me in the right direction with Eric. And please watch over Lucy, and I hope she’s up there with you now.” I crossed myself for good measure.