Bite Me

by Bella Street

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “That was something else, and nothing to do with this new development.”

  She sighed, knowing verbal sparring with Fenn solved nothing.

  She looked at her husband...at the shiny, horrid exam table, at the awful lighting and grim, white institutional walls. “I want Trent in a hospital bed, with a mattress, and pillows and blankets. And I want to be with him around the clock.”

  Olga and Fenn exchanged glances, and after a moment, he nodded. “He'll still be restrained. And I would advise you to keep your distance. If there are any...changes, he'll be more violent than you can imagine.” He took a breath. “It's feasible he'll kill you if he gets the chance.”

  Seffy returned his look. “Well, it's my throat for the slashing, eh?”

  “Seffy,” Olga scolded.

  Fenn exhaled and left the room. Seffy turned her attention to her husband, then released a sigh of her own when Fenn was finally gone.

  She looked at the nurse, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “So what's the grand plan if Trent turns into a wolf?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Where have you been?” Fiona groused.

  Fenn turned and saw his significant other approaching him from a different hallway as he neared his residence. He wished she were his wife. He'd lost count of how many times he'd begged her to marry him. “I was dealing with...a compound problem.”

  “You were with that little tramp again, weren't you?”

  “Fiona, Seffy is not a tramp. Besides, we've already had this discussion.”

  Fiona's dark eyes narrowed. “Maybe if you stop sniffing at her skirts, I'd be a little more understanding.”

  He nodded at the two guards flanking his door and entered his residence. Once he got to the living room, he collapsed onto the couch, still winded from Seffy's barely-there shove.

  “Well?” Fiona marched into the room and dropped onto the couch opposite him.

  “Well what?”

  “What's Seffy to you?”

  He looked away. “She's just a scared girl.”

  “And what, you want to 'protect' her?”

  Fiona's acid tone stung. “You know she might be dangerous to the other residents. I'm just trying to keep her and her friends feeling like they have some control here.”

  Fiona folded her arms across her chest and slumped against the cushions. “Why are you keeping things from me? Don't you trust me?”

  Fenn regarded her wide brown eyes and piquant face. “I used to.”

  Her expression crumpled slightly, but she lifted her sharp little chin. “So what changed?”

  He sighed. “I know you used to shoot me up to keep me under control.”

  Fiona's jaw came unhinged as the blood drained from her face. “Fenn, I was just trying to help. Seeing you go through withdrawals tore me up.”

  “You sent me back to square one over and over, keeping me weak.”

  She chewed her lip, then slapped her hands on her knees. “This place was wearing you out! All you did was worry. You were sick and in pain.”

  “Heroin was hardly the answer.”

  “You got the rest you needed, you weren't in pain.”

  “Fiona, I already have one disease. I don't need something else rotting me from the inside out.”

  She clasped her hands together, beseeching him with her gaze. “I did what I thought was best.”

  He watched her for a moment, then patted the couch cushion next to him. “Come here.”

  Her dark eyes flashed as she got up and crossed the distance between them.

  When she sat down, Fenn put his arm around her and pulled her close. “You want me to trust you, right?” When she nodded against his shoulder, he continued. “Then you're going to have to trust me, too.”

  ***

  “Sef!” Lani hissed. “What's going on?”

  Seffy looked down the hall and saw her friend advancing. She pulled her door closed behind her with a click, already chafing at the delay.

  She'd only come back to her room to get some personal items for her stay down at the end of the hall. Olga had sworn Trent would be fine for ten minutes without her.

  “I came to your room earlier. The door was open but no one was here.”

  Seffy tried to form a coherent response. “It turns out that Trent is sick, so they have him...quarantined for a while. But I'll be staying with him.”

  “What's wrong with him?” Lani asked, her blue eyes popping.

  She shrugged. “He's still acting weird, and a blood test came back wonky. They think he picked up a...virus or something.”

  “Oh, how crummy.” Her smile wobbled. “But he's back. You must be so relieved.”

  Seffy ran her hand through her tousled hair. “Beyond belief.”

  “God, Sef, your arm. That's a new bruise!”

  She glanced down and saw the handprint on her forearm. “Would you believe this one is from Olga? She grabbed me because I was upset about Trent.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, what are the others saying about all this?”

  “Mostly just mumbling dark things in dark corners. Gareth is no fun to be around and Addison's either waspish or having another crying jag.”

  “So we're all pretty much going to pieces.”

  Lani grinned. “Except me.”

  “I'm glad one of us has it together.”

  “Of course Cynthia and Eva aren't speaking to us—they haven't since the...episode at that house. Jared has been real interested in what's going on with Trent, but we're just ignoring him.”

  “Good.”

  “Well, I can tell you're anxious to get back to your sweetie. Say hi for me.”

  “I will. Thanks, Lani.” As soon as Lani turned, Seffy headed in the opposite direction, hurrying without looking obvious—she hoped.

  When she made it to the exam room, two burly guards were exiting. She went in and saw Trent was now ensconced in a hospital bed. The blanket had slipped, revealing the restraints around his wrists. Well, it was the best that could be done...for two days. Somehow they'd make it through. They had to.

  “Nothing's changed,” Olga reported from one of two easy chairs that had been brought in. Two guards stood just outside the door, watching with impassive expressions.

  “Except the comfort level,” Seffy admitted. “Fenn works fast.”

  “He's not your enemy, you know.”

  “Then who is?” Seffy asked, settling into the padded chair next to Trent's bed. She wrapped her fingers around his hand, comforted by his warmth, and lowered her cheek to his knuckles. “I feel like I've been fighting ghosts the entire time I've been here. All the terror with none of the substance.”

  “We are often our own worst enemies.”

  Seffy laughed humorlessly. “Olga, no one seems to remember what my friends and I have gone through. We don't belong here. We've been mistreated to the nth degree...I mean, come on.”

  The nurse pursed her lips. “I wish you'd look on the bright side once in a while.”

  She frowned. “My only bright side is Trent.” Reveling in the feel of Trent's hand in hers, she cleared her throat. “What are you really expecting to happen?”

  Olga's attention shot to the guards before returning to her. She lowered her voice. “Tests are still being done, but for the sake of argument, use your imagination.”

  “They'll kill him?”

  “What choice do they have?”

  Seffy's eyes widened as she fought a sensation of dizziness. “So we're just sitting ducks? Are you serious?”

  Olga leaned forward, her eyes suddenly avid. “I have an idea,” she whispered.

  “Oh, God, why do I feel like a goose just walked over my grave?”

  The nurse narrowed her eyes. “Hear me out. I've been doing a little experimentation of my own.”

  “I'm going to hate this idea, right?”

  “Probably.” She lowered her voice to a whisper “Now, I want you to think back to when you w
ere exposed to the zombie virus.”

  “There's a golden memory.”

  “Your body was able to fight it.”

  Seffy narrowed her eyes. “Do you think Trent will be able to fight this whatever it is? I mean how can he get better if you don't even know what it is or how to treat it?”

  “I was thinking—” The nurse looked up at the guards. “If you'll excuse us for a few minutes, please.” After they left, she resumed. “What if your blood could kill what ails him?”

  Seffy's heart pounded unnaturally loud. “My blood is poison, remember?”

  “If it's poisonous to the virus, then it could cure Trent.”

  “And after that it kills him.”

  Olga folded her hands, looking somehow demure and cunning at the same time. “When I was studying Trent's blood, I combined some of yours with his, and components of yours killed off what's making him sick.”

  “What is making him sick?”

  Her eyes held a strange light. “I've been able to figure out that his blood is full of powerful hormones, anabolic steroids, and cocaine, which accounts for his aggression among other things.”

  “Huh?” He was being drugged? But how? By whom?

  “But there also seems to be some kind of viral component at work.”

  “Like the flu or something?”

  Her face became grave. “Like what they used for the zombies. Popov got a hold of a mixture that included a hemorrhagic virus similar to the pneumatic plague.”

  “Hemorrhagic? Like bloody? Like THE Plague?” Seffy began to feel faint. Hell, forget faint. Why wasn't she dead?

  “My guess is that a similar idea is at work here. Steroids and hormones to change the behavior, then a viral component to spread to others.”

  “How?” Had she really asked the question? Because she honestly didn't want to know.

  “Like the zombies. Through bites.”

  God. But not through kissing? Or sex? “And how is it then that I haven't been infected?”

  Another stupid question. She was just full of them. But she was apparently full of the friggin' Plague. Maybe there wasn't room for a new virus.

  “I'm assuming Trent hasn't bitten you.”

  “No,” she snapped, “we haven't yet entered the 'biting' phase of our relationship.”

  “As you can see the similarities between this and the Popov virus—”

  “Uh, actually no.”

  “I combined components of your blood with his and in the same way your blood conquered the Popov virus, it also neutralized the virus in Trent's blood.”

  Seffy wondered how a nurse knew how to do all these blood tests. Was she the real Lady Macbeth here? The person behind the curtain pulling all the strings while making everyone believe in phlebotomical insanity? “What's the part you're not telling me?”

  The nurse bit her lip. “Well, it also destroyed all the red blood cells but—”

  “Sorry, Olga, I'm not going to experiment on my husband.”

  “Even if it means saving lives?”

  “Whose? Yours? The compound residents?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “No,” Seffy said through gritted teeth. “The Fugere thugs can shoot us both for all I care.”

  “With some fine-tuning, I think I can come up with a ratio that will destroy the virus without destroying the rest.”

  “I thought you were a nurse, not a Frankenstein wannabe.”

  She bristled. “I've studied hematology for several years as a hobby and have an understanding of blood chemistry.”

  “I thought knitting was your hobby!”

  “This is serious.”

  Ya think? Seffy gripped Trent's hand, blocking out the impossible conclusions from her mind. “None of it will matter anyway.”

  Olga got to her feet. “I'm going to start working on my theory. The guards will stay and will shoot if you try anything. I wish it wasn't this way, but we have no choice.”

  Seffy stared at the dingy floor tiles. “So you're siding with the compound?”

  “This place is my life. But I will do everything in my power to help you.”

  She turned to Trent, wondering when he'd wake up. Or what he'd wake up as.

  ***

  “I found out what's going on.”

  Gareth looked up to see Fiona striding through his door. He stifled a sharp retort at her lack of knocking skills. “With Seffy and Trent?”

  Fiona shut the door and leaned on it, her dark eyes avid. “Fenn harps on trust and yet I had to skulk around corners to figure out what he had going. You friend's little husband is more than 'sick.'”

  “What's wrong with him?”

  She straightened and pushed away from the door. “Well, it's not easy to explain. There's a bit of paranormal mixed in.”

  Gareth sighed. “What, like time travel?”

  Fiona wrinkled her brow. “I can't figure out if time travel is sci-fi or paranormal. What do you think?”

  “Are we talking about genre or reality?”

  Her face hardened. “I've heard talk that Trent has been infected by the thing that was responsible for the shredded bodies in the next town.”

  “I thought that was from a wolf, which the compound caught and killed.”

  Fiona arched a brow. “Assuming Trent was bitten by this wolf...”

  Gareth leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. After all he'd been through, he managed to keep a lid on his emotions. Fiona probably wouldn't appreciate him laughing out loud. “Um, that was unexpected.”

  She walked over and flopped onto the couch. “I'm just repeating what I heard.”

  He stared at her, trying to get a bead on her angle. Her sudden 'friendship' had an attached agenda, he was sure. Why was she using him as an in to the group? Except the group technically no longer existed. Seffy had defected with a loser, unraveling their tightly-knit circle. “So, how is such a thing confirmed?”

  “There's a full moon the day after tomorrow. I guess if he starts howling, we'll know.”

  “What then?”

  “Oh, well, he'll or it will be destroyed.”

  A qualm of unease rippled through him. “Where did they come up with this theory?”

  “The bodies in the towns, a fresh kill—human—closer by, and tracks near the compound.”

  “What kind of tracks?”

  “Wolf, then closer to the compound, human.”

  “That's not possible.”

  Fiona shrugged as if the idea of werewolves bored her. “I'm just repeating what I heard.”

  “Does Seffy know all this?”

  “I guess, but I couldn't care less.”

  “Does she know the part that it might mean the death of her husband?”

  “Who knows what goes through that squirrelly brain of hers. She's a basket case.”

  “Helped along by you and your compound comrades, no doubt.”

  Fiona jumped up, her tiny fists clenched. “I'm getting tired of being blamed around here. We've gone out of our way to help out, and yes, maybe some of our efforts have been harsh, but look what we're dealing with!”

  Gareth regarded her with a steady look. Her large eyes and small stature made an appealing picture and he felt himself wanting to take her side. “You'd have our undying gratitude if you sent us back.”

  “I know you think that equipment is like the silver bullet or something. But there was more than science at work getting you here.”

  “Getting us here? Since you're responsible, you can use your science and hocus pocus to get us back.”

  She firmed her mouth, obviously regretting her choice of words. “Well, Einstein, why don't you get your ass down to the computer lab and help out once in a while?”

  He raised his brow. Last time he'd been shown the door. Maybe Fiona had finally had her fill of time travelers. He thought of all her stratagems of the past.

  Nah. There must've been a shift of power and he now knew who was no longer on top.

  *
**

  Seffy moved in the chair and tried to stretch a kink in her back, which only annoyed a different muscle. The room was dim and hushed. She figured it must be the middle of the night.

  Olga was gone but two guards remained. One was asleep, crumpled uncomfortably in a hard chair, the other, leaned against the door jamb, sending her a steely look.

  She got up and went to the adjoining bathroom and stared at her dismal reflection. Pale as pasteurized milk was not a good look for a California girl. Seffy washed her face and finger-combed her hair, her mind clinging to the here and now, and not the might be and well, crap.

  She hurried back to Trent's side, not trusting the guards for more than a few minutes. Apparently they hadn't moved. She glanced at the monitors and all seemed to be well.

  Seffy looked down at the chair and decided she couldn't bear the thought of contorting herself in it a moment longer. Ignoring the watchful eye of the guard, she folded Trent's arm onto his chest and climbed up onto the bed next to him.

  “What are you doing?” came a deep voice behind her.

  She didn't bother looking back at the guard. “Sleeping with my husband.” Wedging herself between his body and the rails of the hospital bed, she angled his arm so she could lay her head on his shoulder. The moment she relaxed at his side, a portion of her worries eased.

  Gradually, the warmth from Trent's body lulled her into a half-sleep. When she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine they were cuddling together in the Light Room, away from the nightmarish schemes of the compound. Only the beeping of the monitor anchored her to the exam room and the uncertainty of her circumstances.

  ***

  The full moon made the night turn into day—in a gloomy, silvery kind of way. Seffy looked up, trying to remember when she'd seen the moon so large or so low to the ground. It looked like a cheesy stage set in a low budget film—yet somehow menacing. All around were evergreen trees that appeared black against the white powdery snow dusting the ground.

  She knew she was lost. And while the moon should've guided her to the right path, it disoriented her, making confusion roil in her brain. She searched in vain for the trail, then became aware of a graceful doe walking alongside her. Suddenly the doe stopped and lifted her elegant neck.