Publish and Perish

by Phillipa Bornikova

  “Good point,” I muttered, and shoved the phone in my pocket.

  We headed out the door and up the stairs out of the cellar.

  21

  “Wonder what time of day it is,” I panted as I ran up the stairs after David.

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “I hope it’s night.”

  “Not as much as I do.”

  The top of the stairs dumped us out in a hallway. The lights were on, which I at first thought was encouraging, then realized there were no windows so of course the lights were on. As we ran down the hall David growled, “I want some clothes.”

  “Not our number-one priority,” I shot back as we entered a large country-style kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances. A huge SubZero refrigerator dominated one wall, a massive Wolf cooktop and double ovens were against another. There were windows and it was dark outside. “We need to find Ken—”

  “Also not a top priority.”

  “Yes, he is. We have to take him with us. He seems to understand what happened to me. Maybe he can fix it.”

  “You want to drag along a reluctant prisoner? Slow us down? Risk getting caught again?”

  “But—” I began feebly.

  “We’re in way over our heads. We’ve got to get out of the deep water first. We’ll find him, Linnet, I promise, but not right now.”

  I saw the logic in what he was saying and gave a reluctant nod.

  David grabbed up a big butcher knife off the center island, then laid it back down and snapped, “Give me one of those guns.” I handed over the one with only five rounds. Based on the way he’d handled that sawed-off BAR back a million years ago, I had a feeling he knew how to make each bullet count.

  I checked the windows, wondering if we could just leave this party, but they were mullioned and rather small. There was no way we were going to fit through them. If I were still myself I might have made it, but—I broke off that train of thought. If I went down that rabbit hole I would plop down on the floor and noisily give way to hysterics. There had to be some way to fix this. Ken seemed to understand this horror.

  I grabbed David before he could leave the kitchen. “One last thing. Whatever you do, don’t kill Ken.”

  “I’ll try, but if someone is trying to kill me I’m going to kill them first.”

  “I don’t think Ken is the killing type.” David looked at me and I realized how stupid that sounded because of course if David had been infected the predator was going to kill him. “Okay, point. Let’s just say I don’t think he’s the hands-on kind of killer.”

  We left the kitchen and found ourselves in a large formal dining room. An elaborate crystal chandelier hung over a polished mahogany table complete with a two-foot-high silver centerpiece. Whoever owned this house was rich. Really rich. We moved on and found the living room. There were shouts from behind a closed door to our left.

  “We can’t call the police.” I recognized the voice of the master.

  “Damn it, we’ve got bodies. What are we going to do with those?” My father’s voice.

  Another person spoke up. “Greg needs a doctor. He’s bleeding bad. That bitch kid of yours—”

  My father. “Don’t even—”

  “Enough!” The master again. “Any gunshot wound that comes into a hospital has to be reported to the police.”

  “But he needs a doctor!”

  “We’ll try to find someone to come here. Someone discreet.”

  “Come here? Are you out of your fucking mind?” my dad yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here! That vampire’s going to be here any minute.”

  “And here he is,” David muttered and began to stride toward the door. I grabbed him around the waist and got dragged along. The parasite was quivering in my chest.

  “Are you nucking futs?” I whispered, my tone stretched and urgent. “We have to get out of here!” He plowed on, with me an anchor weight. “That’s my father, please stop.”

  “Don’t you want me to kill him for you?”

  “No.” The voices beyond the door fell silent. “Oh shit, they heard us. Let’s go!”

  He gave the door one last regretful look and then he turned away. I released him because his eyes were getting that weird glow again. A vestibule beckoned. We ran toward it and I heard the door behind us open. I ran harder, heart thundering a heavy rhythm in my chest, breaths loud in my ears.

  “Lynnie, stop!” my father called. I ran harder.

  David and I hit the entryway. David’s bare feet slapping on the marble, and my stocking feet slipping on the polished black and white parquet floor. Carved wood double doors rose up before us with delicate stained-glass windows in each panel. David threw the bolt and yanked open the door. We raced outside, down a set of flagstone steps, and found ourselves on a curving driveway. A man was walking sentry duty in the grass on the other side of the drive. His left arm was in a cast and I recognized him from the hospital. He was the man whose arm had been broken by John.

  “Damn it, stop her!” the master yelled from the top of the steps. The sentry stared at us and looked puzzled. “Him! Him! The little one!”

  But the man’s confusion had given us a precious few seconds. David leaped the intervening distance and punched the guard in the face. I heard bone crunch. We ran across the grass, heading for a tall stone wall. I leaned against the wall and wheezed, clamping an elbow against the stitch in my side. My feet were going numb, the toes burning from the cold. Same with my fingers.

  “Can you climb?” David asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, I’m going to toss you up. Don’t mess it up.”

  “Don’t throw too hard,” I countered.

  I tossed the kukri over the wall. David cupped his hands and I gave him my knee. My little friend gave that shiver of delight when David touched me. I growled at it mentally, and the sensation subsided. Just like getting a leg up onto a horse, I thought, if the horse was twelve feet tall, and then I was airborne. I saw the top of the wall passing beneath me. Shards of glass sparkled in the moonlight. I decided not to grab for the wall. It was only twelve feet. How bad could it be? I tucked and pulled my head down, trying to orient myself so I would hit on my left shoulder and be able to roll. There was a bush to help cushion my landing, but I heard and felt the crack as my collarbone broke. The breath got knocked out of me, which was the only reason I didn’t scream. My broken ribs were screaming. Apparently when it changed me into a male the predator hadn’t bothered to fix my broken bones.

  Bare, white feet flashed past my eyes, and David landed next to me, taking the shock on bent knees. He didn’t even lose his balance, the bastard. “I can see why you avoided the top of the wall,” he said as he dragged me to my feet. Thank God, he grabbed my right arm, but once again the damn parasite got happy. I pulled away from him. “You okay?” I just nodded because I still didn’t have any breath for words. Tears of pain and shock and probably grief spattered as I moved my head, but I didn’t have time to process their cause. “Still got that phone?” I nodded and fished it out. “Hope you haven’t broken it,” he complained.

  I glared at him, but the question had made me nervous, so I checked. “It’s okay.”

  “Then let’s go.” He started off down the street. I paused to recover the kukri.

  We started limping down the street. Well, I was limping. The damn vampire was fine even if he was naked and barefooted. There were house numbers in wrought iron and tile set in impressive walls next to equally impressive gates, and it was a long way between gates. Wherever we were, it was a ritzy neighborhood. But numbers did us little good without a street name, and a street name was useless without some idea what town we were in. We reached a corner and were at the intersection of Oak and Maple. Street names that could be found in almost any northeastern city.

  “We’ve got to find somebody, find out where we are,” David said, looking indecisively in both directions. “Maybe it’s time to ring a bell.”

  “
We’ll terrify them,” I said. “And they’ll call the cops.”

  “Cops are what we need now.”

  “Then let’s get one that’s on our side,” I said through chattering teeth. I pulled out the cell phone and dialed Lucius’s number.

  David gave me a look of admiration. “You actually learn phone numbers? That’s impressive. I thought all you kids just relied on pictures.”

  “Oh, shut up, and they’re called icons, not pictures,” I said through gritted teeth while the phone rang.

  Lucius answered, “Washington.”

  “Lucius, it’s me, Linnet, I need help.” I was now shuddering rather than just shivering from the cold. The false spring was gone and winter had returned.

  “What the hell? Is this some kind of sick joke?” His tone was hard and suspicious. “Who is this?”

  I started to cry. “It’s me. Really. I just … Things…”

  “Give me that.” David snatched away the phone. “Detective, this is David Sullivan, I’m an attorney at IMG—”

  “Yes, I remember, I met you—”

  “No time for pleasantries, Detective. That really was Linnet—”

  “How?”

  “Focus, Detective, we’re in trouble and we need help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Well that’s the problem—”

  I grabbed back the phone. “We’re on a stolen cell. If I give you the number and the carrier can you trace it?”

  “Yeah, I can.” He sounded weird. I didn’t blame him. I went to the settings page and read off the number and the carrier. “Hang tight. Once I’ve got you located I’ll send the authorities. Then I’ll grab Hettie and head there.”

  “How did you…?”

  “She contacted me the minute you disappeared. Even though it was out of my jurisdiction I was able to get assigned to the investigation since I had relevant information on both you and John. Okay, I’ve got to hang up and contact Verizon. Help is coming.”

  I wrapped my arms across my chest, trying to hold in any trace of warmth. A cold wind blew through the tears in my sweater. David moved toward me, arms open to hug and hold me. I backed hurriedly away. “No, don’t come too close.”

  “You’re cold,” he objected.

  “And you touching me won’t help! You vampires are freakin’ cold. And you just want to get close because you want to bite me, and the damn thing wants you to,” I snapped. He had the grace to look ashamed. “You stay over there.” I gestured across the street with my kukri.

  “Across the street?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  Headlights came around a bend in the road and washed us in their glare. It was a small white Ford with a fat-faced young man behind the wheel, and the first car we’d seen, suggesting it was very late at night. I squinted through the glare and was able to make out the driver’s gawking expression. The car screeched to a stop, the door was flung open, and the man got out and hunched down behind the open door, a gun in his wavering hand. I could see a sort of faux uniform with patches on the sleeve and breast of his coat.

  “Oh, great,” David said. “A rent-a-cop. Just what we need.”

  “Put your hands up,” the young man quavered. The gun was shifting between me and David in a most alarming way.

  “It’s okay,” I said in my most soothing voice. “We’re so relieved to see you. We really need your help.” My soothing had the opposite effect. He looked even more alarmed and the gun was waving dangerously.

  “You … You back off, you perv!”

  And that’s when I realized that the sugary, helpless, breathless tone I had taken worked great when it came out of a five-foot-tall female, but coming from me in my present form was just creepy.

  “I’m calling the police!” the rent-a-cop shrilled.

  Approaching sirens cut the night. “You’re a little late,” David said in his best snotty vampire tone.

  Two squad cars and an unmarked car pulled up. Uniformed cops and a pair of detectives, one white male and one African-American female, boiled out of the various vehicles. “David Sullivan?” the male plainclothes cop asked as he eyed us warily. I could see why. David was buck naked and holding a pistol. My clothing was torn, the sweater now too short and revealing my midriff, and I was holding a mucking big knife, had a cell phone clutched in my other hand, and a pistol struck in the waistband of my slacks. I noticed every cop’s hand drifting toward their holstered weapon.

  David didn’t miss it, and he threw down the gun and raised his hands. “I’m David Sullivan,” he said with the air of a prince acknowledging his subjects. His nakedness was clearly no embarrassment to him. “We were kidnapped and have been held in that house for a number of days.” He indicated the shadowy bulk of the roof of the big house visible over the high stone wall.

  “Check it,” the male detective ordered one of the uniforms, who moved back to his patrol car.

  “And who’s that?” the other detective asked as she hooked a thumb at me. I opened and closed my mouth several times and really wished that David and I had worked out our story before the police arrived.

  “My … assistant,” David said and dropped an arm over my shoulders. Once again, a wash of expectation ran through my body.

  The remaining uniform looked from David in his magnificent nakedness to me, shoeless, dressed in my now too-short sweater that exposed my midriff, with the tears at the shoulders, and my ripped pants. “Yeah, and how exactly does he assist you?” he snorted.

  I shrugged off David’s grasp and stepped away from him.

  “Shut up, Stevens. These are the people that detective down in Manhattan called about,” the woman detective snapped.

  “Okay, but how come he’s buck na—”

  “Perhaps we could continue these discussions at your station house. My associate is freezing.” David was once again stepping closer to me. I edged away from him.

  The uniform returned from the car. “House belongs to Reginald Halcomb the Fourth. Ran a quick Google search. He’s some kind of big hedge-fund guy.”

  The male detective’s stance changed and he almost sneered. “And that’s who kidnapped you? Really?”

  David drew himself up and looked down his nose at the man. “Yes.” Typical vampire. No explanation, no effort to get the guy on our side. Just a single snotty word. I did a face palm.

  The two detectives exchanged glances. “Okay,” the woman said. “We’ll send Boggs up to the house—”

  “Please, get us away from here!” I begged.

  “Yeah, we will absolutely do that,” said the male detective and gestured toward their car.

  “Uh, could we ride in separate cars?” I asked.

  David’s jaw and hands clenched. The uniformed cop, Stevens, gave the woman detective a triumphant told you so look. I hunched my shoulders against David’s stare and moved quickly to one of the black-and-whites. The detectives escorted David to their car. I settled into the backseat. I was not familiar with the back of cop cars. The grate between me and the two policemen in the front seat, the lack of door handles on the back doors, and the smell of old vomit and body odor that seemed to have seeped into the seats left me nervous and jumpy even though I was guilty of no crime. Apart from murder, a nasty little voice whispered. I had a sudden flash of the guard collapsing after I shot him. It was more than cold that had me shivering now. I hugged myself and ventured a question.

  “Excuse me,” I said hesitantly.

  “Yeah?” the cop in the passenger seat said.

  “Where am I?”

  “In a cop car.” Yeah, he was quite the wag. I clung to my rapidly fraying patience.

  “I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant, I mean, what city? What state?”

  “Fairfield, Connecticut,” said the driver.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  I leaned back and considered my situation. I had no ID. It was in my purse, which was sitting in a locker at the hospital. And even if I had it, what the hell good would it be? My license
said Linnet Ellery, female, and showed my height at five feet with black hair and gray eyes. Well, I guessed I still had the hair and eyes, but everything else … not so much. Now I wished I had stuck with David. We needed to come up with a story, be on the same page. He had said I was his assistant. Who was I? What name would he give? I thought about having hysterics so no one could question me, but I was afraid if I opened that door even a crack, full-blown real hysterics would come rampaging through. As it was, I was only hanging on by a thread.

  22

  David ended up in an orange jumpsuit, which brought on a vampire temper tantrum of epic proportions. The cops got a little testy too, pointing out that no one wanted to give up their civvies to this guy. “Vampirism doesn’t rub off!” David said in his most condescending manner. I dropped my face into my hands again and muttered,

  “Oh, shut up.”

  I realized my skin felt rough against my palms. I frantically explored my cheeks and chin with my fingers. It wasn’t skin. It was stubble. That’s when I started to cry, scratch that, I started to wail. Everyone in the precinct looked awkwardly at each other. Finally the woman detective grabbed my arm and pulled me to the bathrooms. I started through the door into the women’s room only to get yanked back. I gave a yell of pain.

  “What?” the woman asked.

  “I think I broke my collarbone,” I whimpered.

  “Oh, sorry, but you want that door,” she said and pointed across the hall.

  Maybe she’ll just think I was blinded by tears and pain and not weird, I thought.

  It was a white-tiled room with a line of urinals against one wall. (I avoided looking at them because of all that they implied.) Four stalls, a line of sinks with mirrors above them. I wanted to wash my face, but then I would see my face. What had been done to me. I continued to stand with my back against the bathroom door, reluctant to advance even one step.

  “You die in there?” the detective waiting impatiently outside called.

  Of course she was staying close. They didn’t trust us. I wouldn’t trust us; we were a riddle that made no sense and we had accused a rich white guy of kidnapping. I forced my unwilling legs to move and walked to the sink. I looked down at the porcelain basin, turned on the water, and while I waited for it to get hot I pumped a bunch of bright pink industrial soap into my palm. I then scrubbed and scrubbed my face. I was aware of the smell of sweat. The exertions of the past couple of days, and no shower or bath for days before that, had left their mark. I wanted to strip off the ill-fitting sweater and wash my underarms. I decided to wait for the cavalry to arrive. Get taken someplace safe and actually take a bath. Further delay was pointless and cowardly. Water dripping off my chin, I slowly raised my eyes and looked in the mirror.