Bite Me (Woodland Creek)

by Mandy Rosko

  Jake hoped Alice was running.

  *****

  Alice ran for maybe fifty feet down the road before the police cruiser rounded a corner and made a slow, leisurely drive toward her. She was so fucking pissed off at the man that her hot anger boiled over everything, even the possibility that the cop behind the wheel might try to run her over as she ran toward him.

  All she could think about was digging her fingernails into the eyes of the officer when he pulled up and got out of his car as she turned into her human form.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she shrieked, and her hands did make a go for his eyes, as if her limbs had a mind of their own.

  The only thing that saved the officer from certain blindness was the fact that he’d grabbed onto her wrists. And of course, Alice only came back to herself and realized she was probably still in trouble when the cop looked over her shoulder at the fight Jake was having with Bobby.

  Alice looked, even though she didn’t want to. There was blood. It was so bright and thick that she could see it even from the distance she stood. The snarling and barking as the animal above Jake went wild, followed by the grimace and shouts of pain from Jake as he fought to keep the Rottweiler from coming at Alice and protect his face at the same time, was almost too much.

  She looked at the cop. “Do something!”

  His face was pale. His lips were paler as they trembled. He shook his head. “I…I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “He knows where I live. My family…”

  “For fuck’s sake!” Alice reached for the man’s gun, which was still in its holster at his side. Maybe it was some sort of cop instinct to not let anyone else touch his weapon, but the officer finally seemed to wake up out of his stupor when Alice yanked on the gun. His hands were tight on her as he struggled to keep her away from his weapon.

  “Stop that!” he yelled.

  “Then do something!” Alice yelled back.

  Fuck! He was going for his handcuffs.

  Wait. Why was she worried about that?

  Alice shifted. She did it probably faster than she’d ever done it in her entire life, becoming small, furry, and hard to get ahold of.

  The cop yelled in shock, his hands flying away from her as he jumped back.

  If he was being threatened by Bobby, then there was no way he couldn’t know about shifters, but having someone transform while he’d been holding onto them had clearly been a surprise.

  Good. Alice was on the ground, looking up at him. People always looked so much taller and bigger than they actually were when she was in this form, but she had to act before he could stomp on her in a panic.

  She leapt at him.

  The cop shouted and fell back on his ass. Alice used his shock to her advantage as she shifted back into her human shape, landing on the panting cop with the dead look in his eyes.

  He wasn’t just pale now. He was kind of green around his cheeks and jaw. He looked like he’d just got off the worst roller coaster ride of his life.

  Alice grinned. That was exactly how she liked the look of her men. At least, whenever she was forced to surprise them like this.

  “Thank you,” she said, helping herself to his gun. “I promise not to give you too much paperwork if I have to use it.”

  Which was a total lie. If this guy managed to keep his job after this, he’d be forced to sit at a desk for probably the rest of his career. But he deserved it.

  That was what Alice said to herself as she spun around to go back to Bobby and Jake.

  She stopped dead on her feet.

  Bobby was…just standing there. Ten feet away from her. He wiped some blood away from his lip on a black handkerchief, the angles of his square face and head looking so much sharper than she was used to as he spat a red gob of phlegm on the side of the road.

  And Jake…Jake was lying in a crumpled heap behind him, back where the fighting had first started, face down.

  His hair and the angle of his head covered most of his face, but she could still make out some of the blood that was on his cheeks and nose. His hand was pressed into a loose fist on the black road, and there was even more blood on his knuckles. There was also the great big possibility that the shiny black pool he appeared to be lying in was blood. Or maybe it was just an actual puddle and she was only making herself nervous by thinking it could be blood. It was just the angle she was looking at him from. That was all. Nothing to be worried and totally mental over…

  Nothing at all…

  Bobby’s chest rose and fell, panting. He actually laughed a little. “Damn. Little snake had more fight in him than I remembered he did. Not enough, though.”

  He wiped some more blood off his forehead, but a red line quickly reappeared and started filling with blood again. Jake had at least made him bleed.

  Alice pointed her new weapon at him.

  Bobby tilted his head to the side, heavy brows coming down in a bored expression. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

  “Point and shoot, right?”

  “Sure. In a movie.” Bobby stepped forward. “Note how I am unafraid.”

  She couldn’t find the safety. She was a cat burglar, so there had never really been a need for her to learn much about guns. Not until she had to live with Bobby and his gang. Unbeknownst to Bobby, Jake had taken her to the range several times, insisting she needed to learn how to use a gun.

  She’d kept up with those lessons after thinking Jake had died, when she’d been on the run from Bobby.

  It took her a second to remember these sorts of guns didn’t have the traditional safeties on them that other guns could have. The safety was internal, and the gun would only fire if she pulled the trigger in just the right way.

  He was getting closer, and her heart beat even faster. She couldn’t let him near her. Not one step closer!

  She fired the gun. Bobby fell back several steps, as though he’d been punched hard in the shoulder.

  He stood straight, his mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened as he looked at Alice. Then he looked down at his shoulder. His long jacket was black in color, so it wasn’t easy to see right off that there was a hole in the material.

  But Alice could see it, and Bobby could clearly see it and feel it as he looked at it. He poked his finger into the material, as if he still couldn’t believe Alice had shot him.

  Alice couldn’t believe she missed. She’d been aiming for his head, but she knew about the statistics of actually hitting a person when trying to shoot one, especially when she was as highly strung as this.

  But now that she’d fired the gun once, a lot of her adrenaline left her in favor of something else that made her heart jump around in her chest and beat like crazy. Namely a great deal of terror and blood-pumping anxiety. She’d never killed a man before.

  She had to glance down at Jake to remind herself of just what, and who, she would be killing Bobby for.

  Bobby growled, and he looked behind her. “Are you gonna do something about this, bitch?”

  Alice made the mistake of turning her head and looking back. The cop was still there. When she realized what she’d done and looked back at Bobby, it looked like he’d rushed forward another five feet.

  Her heart thumped louder, harder. She was going to have her very first heart attack if she couldn’t slow it down, and she wasn’t even thirty yet!

  Wouldn’t that just make things a thousand times easier for Bobby? If she died and he didn’t have to raise another finger to make it happen? Could he go back to prison for causing someone’s death just by scaring them too badly? How did the law work whenever something like that happened?

  “Well?” Bobby asked.

  “She’s the one with the gun,” said the cop, his voice resigned, like he was giving up.

  But Alice didn’t lower her guard. She was still surrounded, and her new mission was to walk sideways several steps, until she was off the road and onto the well maintained grass, with both the cop and Bobby well in her si
ghts. At least now, if she were to shoot again, there was no chance of accidentally hitting Jake. That was the last thing she wanted.

  The cop wasn’t looking at her. His head was down, his fists clenched, and with the way his shoulders shook, it looked a whole lot like he might be fighting off tears, if he wasn’t crying already.

  She couldn’t feel sorry for him, or even think about putting herself in his shoes. His shame was something she couldn’t care about right now, not when she could still see Jake just lying over there.

  Bobby spread his hands, and he took another step closer to her, and another, and another, until he was on the grass, backing her up now. “Come on, sweetheart. You can’t shoot me like that. I’m not attacking you.”

  “You attacked Jake,” Alice said.

  “But I’m not doing anything now. Kill me in front of a cop, and your life is over.”

  Alice gasped. He was right, and Bobby smiled.

  The manipulative bastard was right, and he knew it. Even if he’d threatened or cajoled or paid off that guy, he was still able to use having a cop around to his advantage. If Alice shot him and killed him, she would go away for the rest of her life.

  “It looked like you attacked her to me,” said the cop.

  Alice sputtered. “What?”

  Bobby frowned, as though annoyed. “What was that?”

  The officer glared at Bobby, and the red in his face was visible. “You attacked her boyfriend after you threatened my family. I let them walk ahead of me like you told me to, and when I came back, she was running for her life and you were chasing after her. She took my gun in a panic and killed you just before you could wrap your fingers around her neck. That’s what I saw.”

  “Hey, shut the fuck up. No one asked for your opinion on anything, you traitor pig.”

  But then the cop was looking at her, and Alice felt suddenly bad for not knowing his name. “I swear on my life that’s what I saw,” he said.

  Bobby pulled back the side of his long, black coat. “I said shut the fuck up,” he said, yanking a gun out of a holster that he’d hidden there. He pointed it at the cop, and Alice pulled back on the trigger of the Glock without thinking about anything else, not even where she was aiming.

  She didn’t get him in the head. That would’ve been too perfect, but Bobby was punched back again by the force of her bullet hitting him. His gun went off. He probably squeezed the trigger as a reflex from the pain of being shot. He didn’t hit the cop, but there was suddenly a hole in the passenger side of his cruiser.

  Bobby’s eyes were wide, shocked, and it took Alice a couple of seconds before she realized where she’d gotten him.

  Left side of the chest. If she didn’t hit his heart, then it was a damned close one. Either way, he dropped his gun, his hand coming up to touch the spot where she’d shot him. He looked down, then at her, and then he fell over.

  Whether he was passed out or dead, Alice decided right then and there that it didn’t matter and she didn’t care. Well, she did care. She hoped he was dead, but she couldn’t bring herself to check when she ran over and grabbed his gun off the ground and then made a run for where Jake was lying.

  She’d seen too many movies where the hero dropped their only weapon, or left the killer with a weapon of their own when they thought he was down and out of commission. She wasn’t about to leave a gun near his body in case he was alive and happened to wake up, and she wasn’t about to leave it lying around for the cop to take either.

  He might’ve vouched for her, but she didn’t trust him, not after this.

  “Jake? Jake?”

  It was blood that he’d been lying in for sure. As she ran closer, the black, inky-looking stuff turned red as she stood over him. Dark red. There was so much of it. Bobby had been a little roughed up, and he spat out some blood, but there was no telling what was his and what was Jake’s. It all mostly seemed to belong to Jake. There was no way any of this could belong to Bobby, not even with that scratch he’d had on his forehead.

  And Alice had no idea if she was supposed to move him or not. What if his neck was hurt?

  There was a knife in the dark puddle. Alice almost didn’t see it. Had he been stabbed? Maybe that was it. Jake had clearly gotten Bobby with the knife at least once on the forehead, but what if Bobby had decided to hell with trying to kill him in his dog form, shifted, taken the knife, and stuck Jake with it?

  Oh, God. There was so much of it that she could smell it.

  Alice knelt down, touching his shoulder. “Jake?”

  His eyes fluttered, and Alice’s heart, stomach, and guts all lurched in her throat and mouth. “Oh, my God, Jake!” she said, and when he opened his eyes, it was the best thing she’d ever seen in her life.

  Until he lifted his head just enough for her to see the massive bite at his throat. Teeth marks, missing skin, gruesome stuff that made her happiness almost turn to sickness. He looked right up at her, not seeming to notice that his throat was half missing.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that extreme. She didn’t want to let her imagination completely get the better of her. He’d be dead if that was the case.

  But Alice was still horrified.

  “Don’t move,” she said, trying to be as gentle as she could when she touched him, as though just by touching him could take off bits of his skin, or maybe even a limb or two. “Don’t say anything. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Jake’s lips moved. He didn’t say much, but she could read Bobby’s name in them.

  Alice looked back at where Bobby was still lying on the ground. The dark, shiny black puddle surrounding him was bigger than the one that was around Jake.

  “I think he’s dead,” she said, and then noted how the lights on the cruiser were flashing, and their cop ally was on his radio. Hopefully calling for help. He’d better be calling for help, or the next person Alice shot would be him.

  “You did good,” Alice said, looking back down at Jake. She smoothed some of his hair out of his face. It spread some of the bright red around, but that couldn’t be helped. “I don’t think he’s going to be bothering us for a while.”

  Jake closed his eyes, giving her a weak nod in reply.

  “Hey, stay awake for me, okay?” she said. This was looking a little too much like the last time. The scary difference was that Jake was so much weaker now than he’d been then. At least then he could squeeze her hand, talk to her, and she could talk to him. It had been what kept her from going insane as she waited for the police and the ambulance to arrive.

  She heard the sirens coming in the next instant. It seemed that in such a small town things were able to move around a lot quicker. They wouldn’t have to wait so long before medical help got here.

  That was good. That might just save Jake’s life.

  “Hear that? They’re coming for you. They’re almost here.”

  Alice took Jake’s bloody hand, the one that wasn’t ruined from dog bites, and she rubbed it between her fingers, hoping that would at least keep him awake and aware of what was going on around him. “Stay with me. Okay? You can’t just kiss me like that and tell me all those things about yourself and then leave.”

  She was crying. Shit. Not a good thing. She was supposed to look strong for him so he’d pull through.

  But she couldn’t help herself. It was happening, and the tears were coming whether she wanted them to or not.

  “Don’t you dare die on me. I swear I won’t forgive you.” Ten years was too long to live without him, even when he’d been alive. At least if he were alive, she could be happy knowing that much. She could live in a world where Jake was alive, because he was proof that good things did live in this world, and not just bad things like Bobby.

  “Please don’t die,” she said, still crying. Sobbing now.

  The sirens from the cop cars and ambulances were getting closer. Jake remained pale on the concrete.

  *****

  He couldn’t be dead, because if he were dead, he was pretty sure he woul
dn’t be in this much pain. Death was supposed to be nicer. Also, Jake didn’t really believe in the afterlife. Not the traditional one of Heaven or Hell or anything like that. When he died, he figured it would feel the same as it had before he was born. Meaning, he shouldn’t be feeling jack shit.

  But no, the fact that everything was dark didn’t mean death, or the fact that he couldn’t move didn’t mean death. The fact that everything had a dull ache had to mean life. There was no way it couldn’t mean anything but that, not with the pain that throbbed through him like a motherfucker.

  When that happened, he thought of the bites on his arms, his legs, his stomach, and then his throat. The bite that put him down for good. The bite that should have killed him, but for some reason hadn’t.

  He was still in that fight, still struggling to get the dog off him. To throw Bobby off and give Alice the time she needed to get away, but his limbs were sluggish and slow. Always too slow. Then he’d remember that the fight was over. Who won? Probably not him.

  He slept sometimes. At least, he was pretty sure he was sleeping. He didn’t know for how long, but there wasn’t much else he could be doing. Then there were the times when the pain felt almost manageable. That was probably the drugs kicking in.

  He wasn’t aware of much happening around him, other than footsteps and the puttering of the people who had to be staff. This had to be a hospital. The air felt stale and clean, so something was up his nose helping him to breathe, at least.

  Then there were times when he felt warmth on his hand, or when it wasn’t touching him directly, he felt it sitting beside him, or across the room. He was especially aware of when that warm feeling would vanish, when it wasn’t in the room.

  He didn’t like it when that feeling came upon him. In fact, he hated not knowing where it was.

  Alice. It had to be Alice. She was alive, and she was coming to see him.

  Who else could make him feel like that?

  He focused on opening his eyes whenever he was sure she was there, but it felt like something was pressing down on his eyelids, preventing him from seeing her, and then he’d sleep again for what felt like the longest time, whether he wanted to or not.