Once Bitten - Clare Willis

by Unknown

  “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.

  When I left the church the weather was glorious, or what I would have called glorious before I began detesting the sun. It was a perfect October day, bright and clear and about seventy-five degrees, with a salty breeze blowing in off the bay. I enjoyed the warmth, but the light was oppressive. I found the baseball cap in the back seat and pulled it low over my eyes before I pointed the car up the hill toward my parents’ house. Hopefully I could get in, have dinner, and get out without revealing too much about what had been happening. It would be difficult. Normally my parents pumped me like an oil derrick for information about my life.

  My parents live on a quiet street in Noe Valley, in the house my grandparents bought in 1955. My grandfather was a firefighter, like my own father. Grandpa died in a warehouse fire when I was a baby, and from then on we all lived together, my parents, my grandmother, my brother and sister and me, all sharing one bathroom. I’d always been able to shower faster than anyone I knew.

  My father was trimming a hedge in the postage stamp-sized front yard. Lean and wiry, Frank McCaffrey looked more like my brother than my father, which was understandable, since he’d had me when he was only eighteen. The only indications that he was middle-aged were the wrinkles around his eyes when he laughed, which was often.

  Dad put down the shears when I pulled into the driveway. “Ma’am, you can’t park here, this is private property.” He scowled menacingly.

  I held up both hands in surrender. “Get your licks in now,” I said.

  Dad came over and enveloped me in a bear hug. He smelled of fresh cut grass and sweat. “Glad you came, honey. We read about Lucy Weston in the newspaper this morning.”

  I squeezed my dad back, knowing that this was all he would say on the subject. He’d experienced deaths a few times as a firefighter, and it seemed he handled it with beer and silence.

  “Go in and see your mom, she’s been worried about you.”

  I opened the door and stepped into our front hall. The house I grew up in was what the real estate agents call a “storybook cottage,” meaning it was really small. The living room was on the left, with stairs on the right leading to three tiny bedrooms and the bath. Down the hall were a dining room and a recently remodeled kitchen with a deck overlooking the back yard. Everything but the kitchen and bathroom was circa 1895.

  The sounds of a gamelan orchestra filled the house, sounding to me like a hundred pots being banged rhythmically. My mother’s taste in music was eclectic.

  Mom was right in the middle of making spanakopita when I walked in, spreading cheese and spinach onto thin sheets of filo dough, surrounded by an explosion of dishes and pans. She refused to wash a pot or even put anything away while she was cooking for fear of interrupting the creative process. I had learned a lot about cooking from my mother, but I feared the knowledge was getting rusty from disuse.

  “Hi Mom, I thought we were having meatloaf…”

  My mother held up a hand, requesting silence. She lifted a delicate package of filo dough and spinach and deftly folded the rectangle into a triangle, over and over, like two soldiers folding the flag. When she was done she did one more while I watched in silence. She added the last two to a baking pan already holding a dozen others and popped it into the oven. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and only then did she come over and give me a hug.

  Her ample bosom pressed into my chest. That was one thing I hadn’t inherited from my mom. Nor the silky blond hair she wore clipped back from her face with two barrettes.

  “If you want meatloaf, you have to make your reservations early.” She held me at arm’s length. “So, how are you doing, sweetie?”

  I just couldn’t say “fine,” like I had with everyone else. Tears started in the corners of my eyes and I pulled away so she wouldn’t see them. “Are Frankie and Thea coming?” I asked.

  “Frankie will be home anytime now. He’s at the library studying. Thea’s doing a cocktail party tonight so she won’t be coming.”

  Thea was twenty-five and, having inherited my mother’s culinary talents, she had opened her own catering business. Frankie was nineteen, going to San Francisco State University, majoring in creative writing and living at home to save money. Creative writing was a waste of time, according to my father. He had said the same thing about my degree in theater, but still he came to my graduation from Cal Arts and cried. Neither he nor my mother attended college, since they were married and changing my diapers when they should have been rushing frats and sororities.

  I sat on a stool at the kitchen bar and watched my mother chop vegetables at the speed of light. There was an open bag of Fig Newtons on the counter and I absentmindedly took one. When I bit into it I almost spit it out, so cloyingly sweet and gritty it was, but I kept chewing, since my mother would surely notice me upchucking one of my formerly favorite comestibles.

  “You met a man, didn’t you?” Mom asked, without looking up from her flying knife.

  “Why do you ask that?” I choked out.

  “I remember you sitting there eating Fig Newtons with the same spacey look on your face the summer you met Joey Malone.”

  Ah, Joey Malone. Too young to drive, we had necked for hours behind a bush at Dolores Park, until my lips were so bruised I couldn’t drink from a straw for a week. Strange she should mention that. Of all the experiences I’d had in life, this one felt most like that—dangerous, exciting, tempting beyond any ability to refuse.

  “Don’t bother denying it. Just tell me whether I get to hear about it or not,” she said.

  I crushed the rest of the cookie into a crumbly ball. “It’s probably not worth talking about, Mom. He may not be around for much longer.”

  “Why, is he a criminal? Is he on the lam?”

  “On the lam, Mom? No, he’s not a criminal. He’s just, um, a lot older than me.”

  That’s an understatement.

  “Well, older men can be good. They have more wisdom. And more money, usually.” Mom wiped her forehead with a dishtowel. “It’s hot today. I should have ordered Chinese.”

  She came to sit next to me and brushed against me with her bare arm. When her flesh touched mine a light flared in my vision, so bright that I closed my eyes against it. Suddenly I saw a vision of my mother and father in a doctor’s office. My father pacing the floor nervously. My mother sitting like a stone. With her right hand, she was holding her left breast like a sick infant. I opened my eyes and the vision, and the flare, were gone.

  “Mom, are you ill?”

  She twisted on her stool and slapped one hand into the other. “I told your father I didn’t want to tell you children yet, not until I had something definitive to say! Damn the Irish, they can’t keep their mouths shut!”

  “It wasn’t Dad. I just had a feeling.” I pressed my head into my hands, overwhelmed by a welter of emotions—fear about my mother’s illness mixed with shock that I’d just looked into her mind as clearly as looking through a window.

  “No, no, it can’t be,” I muttered.

  Mom took my hands off my face and held them. Her skin felt dry and paper-thin. “It’s nothing to freak about, honey. I found a lump in my breast a couple of weeks ago and I had it biopsied. We’re still waiting for the results. The doctor says it’s probably benign, we don’t have any history of breast cancer in our family, but he wants to be sure. I wasn’t going to worry you if the tests turned up negative.”

  I searched her face. “You shouldn’t keep things like that to yourself. I always want to know, yo
u know that.”

  “Well, you’ve been so preoccupied and busy at work the last few weeks.”

  She patted my hand almost absentmindedly. I had never been in a position to comfort my mother rather than vice versa, and I knew now should be the time. I was searching for the proper words when we were interrupted by a huge backpack slamming into the chair next to me.

  Since he was fourteen my brother Frankie had reminded me of a big, loud horse, with his braying voice and galumphing feet. And usually a strong smell of sweat, since he played on more sports teams than I could count. Whenever he came into the house he headed right for the refrigerator, usually to grab the half-gallon of milk and drain it out of the carton. I could see Frankie had matured because today he took out a glass and filled it with milk before sitting down with us.

  “Hey Frankie, take off your hat at the table.” I flicked his baseball cap’s brim with my thumb and middle finger. So much for Angie the adult.

  Frankie turned the cap around so the bill was at the back. “Is that better, Miss Manners?”

  “All right. I probably don’t want to see your hair, anyway.” Frankie had the same wiry red hair as I, while my lucky sister Thea had inherited my mom’s blond waves. “How’s school going, bro?”

  “Good, once I finally managed to get some classes. There were twenty people on the waiting list for ‘The Victorian Novel.’ It’s going to take me five years to graduate just because I can’t sign up for any of the classes I need.”

  “I can’t see you taking a class called ‘The Victorian Novel,’ anyway, Frankie. You seem more the Jack Kerouac type to me. Henry Miller, maybe.”

  “Don’t stereotype me with your bourgeois mentality, man. Henry James wrote some sick shit.”

  My mom shot him a disapproving look.

  “Sorry, Ma. I mean he wrote some sick literature.” He threw the backpack over his shoulder. “I gotta study. When’s dinner?”

  “The usual time, Frank Junior. Although if you wanted to come down early to help set the table I wouldn’t say no.”

  Frankie grunted an unintelligible answer as he stomped up to his room.

  “Did you tell him?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing to tell yet. And I want you to forget about it too, Angie. That’s an order. Now help me get this dinner on the table.”

  My knife chopped celery and jicama on autopilot as I thought about the visions I’d had when Eric and I were touching each other. They had seemed so vivid, as if they were my memories replaying in my head, but I had dismissed them as fevered imaginings. Now I had a different thought about them. Had I tapped into Eric’s mind when I touched him? Had he tapped into mine? Did he know how I felt about him?

  After I left my parents’ house that night I found myself driving around aimlessly, worries circling in my head like goldfish in a bowl. Finally I pulled out my cell phone and dialed directory assistance. They gave me the number for Nicolai Blaloc. It was as simple as that.

  “Hello?” The soft, cultured voice was wary, as if he was expecting a telemarketer.

  “Is this Mr. Blaloc?”

  “Who is this?”

  If I had to make a guess as to the origin of his accent I would have said Eastern European, maybe Russian, but I was no expert.

  “My name is Angie McCaffrey. I was given your name by Les Banks. He said that you were an expert in, uh, people living the vampire lifestyle.”

  “What do you want?” This guy was not exactly making things easy for me. If he didn’t want people calling him why have a website called vampirehunter.com?

  “I need help, Mr. Blaloc. Certain things have happened to me over the past week. I believe I might have met a vampire.”

  “Ha ha, very funny. Go and tell your sorority sisters you called the vampire hunter. I’m sure they’ll be very impressed.” Then he hung up.

  I cast around in my mind for something that would make Nicolai believe that what I had to tell him was the farthest thing from a joke. I redialed his number.

  “Listen, this person, he has a strange smell,” I blurted out.

  “Please, call me Nicolai.” Suddenly the voice was polite. With his accent, the first syllable of his name was pronounced knee.

  “I am intrigued, Ms. McCaffrey. When can you come and see me? I live in the Mission District.”

  “Actually, that’s where I am right now.”

  Chapter 17

  Nicolai’s apartment was only four blocks away from where I’d left Les earlier that day. This part of the Mission had been recently identified by the Chronicle as the “hippest” neighborhood in the city, but it seemed like only a small portion of the residents could afford to partake of the hipness. Tapas bars and book-lined coffee houses sat cheek by jowl with pool halls, Mexican grocery stores, and tiny travel agencies advertising cheap flights to every city in South America.

  The address Nicolai had given me was a large apartment building on the corner of Sixteenth and Guerrero, a gray three-story citadel with security gates on all the entryways and first-floor windows. I rang the bell on the middle door and while the buzzer sounded I pushed open the metal gate. There were three flights of creaky wooden stairs before I reached number twelve.

  A tall thin man, whose most distinguishing characteristic was the high contrast of black and white in his appearance, answered my knock. A snarl of shoulder-length black hair framed a white face marked by black eyebrows and a black goatee. He wore black leather pants, black boots, and a frilly white pirate shirt. He looked to be in his mid-forties.

  He shook my hand with a cold, moist palm. “I am Nicolai Blaloc, you must be Angela.” He squinted at me as if his eyesight was bad. “Please come into the parlor.”

  I couldn’t suppress a gasp when I entered his “parlor.” Normally Victorian apartments bear only the most vague resemblance to what they looked like when Queen V was alive, but Nicolai’s made me feel like I’d walked into a time machine. Every inch of wall and ceiling was draped or painted or covered in ornate floral patterns, one laid upon the other in dizzying profusion. A mansion’s worth of silk and gilt furniture packed the little room. He even had a baby grand piano with a piece of silky fabric tossed over it. Every table held a collection—crystal figurines, snuffboxes, and tiny pictures in silver frames. He also had an assortment of stuffed birds, some of them under glass bell jars, others mounted on the wall, a few in bamboo cages. The birds gave me the creeps; they all seemed to be staring at me with their glassy eyes. To complete the effect the room was lit with flickering gas lamps. After giving me a few moments to take in the scenery, Nicolai directed me to sit in one of the high-backed chairs.

  “Angela, you look somewhat ill at ease. May I offer you a drink? A glass of wine, perhaps?”

  His calling me Angela made me uncomfortable, because it reminded me of Eric. “I’ll have a glass of wine, sure.”

  He passed through a curtain-draped archway and returned a few minutes later with two glasses of red wine in tulip-shaped glasses. Nicolai arranged himself on the couch opposite from me and took a sip of wine. Somewhere in the apartment several grandfather clocks chimed.

  Nicolai leaned back and stroked his goatee, as candlelight flickered on his face. He looked like Sigmund Freud in hell. “Tell me what you have been experiencing.”

  Where to begin, how much to tell, how much to trust? I had to tell him some of the truth if he was going to be any help to me. “My boss, Lucy Weston, is dead. It looks like she was killed by a vampire, or someone who wanted to make it look like a vampire’s work. The police are after Les Banks, her boyfriend. He’s the one who gave me your name. Les says he didn’t do it, that Lucy was killed by a ‘real vampire.’ The man he was referring to is someone I’ve been, uh, seeing.”

  I rubbed my eyes. This explanation was bringing on a headache. “This man I’ve met, he has told me some things that are hard to believe.”

  “But things have been happening to you that you cannot explain by natural causes.”

  Startled, I pi
tched forward to get a better look at Nicolai. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You are experiencing unusual symptoms. Nausea, headaches, a desire for darkness. Loss of appetite. You hear voices.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” My voice was a whisper.

  Nicolai continued to stroke his beard. He spoke in a soothing monotone, as if he were hypnotizing me. “This man, he visits you at night. You have, shall we say, encounters, with him that are both frightening and…”

  He paused. I gulped loudly.

  “…exciting.” He put out one finger and stroked the tail of a stuffed black bird perched on a branch-shaped pedestal. “Yet I’ll warrant you could not describe the exact nature of these encounters, am I correct?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice to work properly.

  “You are powerfully attracted to him, yes, Angela?”

  “Who are you?” I was gripping my wineglass so hard I thought I might crack it.

  He leaned back, smoothing the ruffles on the collar of his shirt. “I am nobody, simply an observer. I am a scholar, a historian, a researcher. I follow groups such as the one that convenes at the House of Usher because that is where you usually find them.”

  My mouth felt dry. “Find who?”

  Nicolai went to a bookshelf in a corner of the room and took down a large book bound in flaky brown leather with gold embossed text. He put it on the table in front of me and opened it to the front page, which had the spiky and not quite even type of a very old book. The title read: The Vampire in Legend, Fact and Art, by Mme. de Laszowska, with a publication date of May 1785. There was a bookmark in the first third of the book so I opened to that page.

  It was a print of what had originally been a woodcut, of a man’s profile, with a sharp nose, small eyes, and a pointed beard. He wore a simple crown on his head and a fur collar. His eyes glared at some distant enemy. The caption read: “Fourteenth century Transylvanian count Vlad Tepisch, believed by many to be the first vampire.”

  Nicolai’s words floated over the picture, the soothing, cultured voice of a professor giving a lecture. “The history of the vampire begins in fact, but the fabric of truth is frayed with time, interwoven with myth and make-believe to produce a patchwork quilt of legend.”