made love to and some of them died, but two men with punctures in their bruises did not mean punctures in every bruise.
On the TV, Dracula’s bite turned Miss Lucy to a vampire driven by mindless bloodlust.
Thirst started to burn in Garreth’s throat and he reached involuntarily for the bandage around his neck.
No! He jerked his hands away. That really was impossible! If every vampire bite made a vampire, the world would be hip-deep in the creatures. Look at all the men Lane had bitten.
He turned off the TV with a decisive stab of his finger. The blood loss must be affecting his mind. Vampires did not exist. He had no insatiable urge to bite the nurses, did he, despite his thirst and their attractive blood scent? He had not developed a desire to don a black opera cape and take the form of a bat. He just happened to feel better at night.
But cold continued to run up and down his spine, and knots worked uneasily along his gut.
Anger flared in him. This was nonsense! He would end it once and for all.
Easing out of bed, he groped his way to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. To his relief, he saw the same face he did every morning while he shaved.
So that settled that! Everyone knew vampires did not reflect. His teeth, though sore and loose from his fall this afternoon, looked no longer than usual.
Then he realized he had not turned on the light.
He quickly flipped up the switch…and wished he had not. The eyes in the mirror, perceived before as normal gray, now reflected the light as Lane’s had, flaring red. Fire red, hell red…blood red.
Garreth slammed down the switch in a spasm of panic and clutched the edge of the washbowl for support, trembling. No! This was insane. Impossible!
And yet…
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet. Yet, how was it that he, who always woke with the sun, now felt better at night? Why could he see in the dark? Why did he smell the blood in people and throw up solid food? On the other hand, if he had become -
The thought stumbled and died before a new flood of panic. Run! a voice screamed inside him.
How to get out, though? While they could not keep him against his will, demanding to be released in the middle of the night might make them consider him irrational. He could hardly walk out in a hospital gown, either.
But he had to get away somehow!
Shaking, he made his way back to the bed and pushed the call button.
“May I help you?” a female voice asked from the speaker above the bed.
“I need to go to the bathroom. Will you send an orderly to help me, please?”
A female aide appeared a few minutes later, not an orderly. She opened the cabinet beside his bed.
“Please, not the urinal,” Garreth said. “I feel much better. Can’t you let me use the bathroom if someone takes me there?”
“I’ll see,” she said.
While Garreth waited, crossing mental fingers, he ripped the draw sheet on his bed into several long strips and wrapped them around his waist under his hospital gown. When the door opened again, he smiled in relief at the brawny orderly.
“You’re sure you want to try this?” the orderly asked.
Garreth nodded. He had no trouble making the gesture sincere.
“Okay.” Putting an arm around Garreth, the orderly helped him out of bed and supported him across the room into the bathroom.
The orderly’s cheerfulness stabbed Garreth with guilt. He consoled himself with the thought that if all went right, no one would be hurt.
The orderly left him in the bathroom. Garreth waited a few minutes, running the water, then sat down on the floor and called for help.
The orderly hurried in. “Did you fall? Are you hurt?”
“Help me up, please.”
As the orderly leaned over to do so, Garreth threw an arm around the muscular neck and tightened down.
The orderly collapsed flat on the floor in Garreth’s neck lock.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Garreth said, “but if you don’t shuck your shirt and pants in one minute, you’re going to have the biggest pain of your life in your neck.”
“Mr. Mikaelian, you — ” the orderly began in protest.
“Strip.”
It was hard with both of them lying on the floor, but the orderly managed. Garreth tied his hands with the strips from the draw sheet, gagged him with another strip and a washcloth, and tied him to the pipes of the washbowl, out of reach of the call button beside the toilet. Then Garreth changed into the orderly’s clothes, rolling up a cuff to shorten the trousers to his length. He helped himself to the orderly’s shoes as well, though large for him.
“I’m sorry about this, but I want a quicker discharge than I think the doctor is willing to give me. At least I’m leaving you your skivvies. I’ll see the other clothes are sent back.”
The orderly sighed in combined disgust, anger, and bewilderment.
Garreth walked out, shutting off the light and closing the bathroom door.
No one looked twice at him in the corridor. He took the elevator down and walked out of the building without being challenged. On the street he hailed a cab. The resolution that let him walk without staggering ran out. He slumped back in the seat.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?” the cabbie asked.
Oh, God. The cabbie smelled of blood, too, though with the reek of sweat and cigar nearly overwhelming it. The combination sent waves of nausea through him. “I’m fine.”
The ride home seemed interminable. Keeping the cab waiting, he unlocked the door with his hidden spare key and changed clothes. A sweater with a turtleneck reaching almost to his ears hid the bandage on his throat.
He went to the gun safe for the Charter Undercover revolver he liked carrying off-duty and strapped the.38 to his ankle, then dropped the extra set of car keys, his ATM card, and cash from his desk drawer into the pocket of a sport jacket. He had to endure another ride in the cab to an ATM, then to the lot where he parked the ZX.
It was with relief that he paid off the cabbie, adding a twenty for him and tucking a couple of twenties into the orderly’s clothes. “See that these reach an orderly named Pechanec at General will you?”
Then he was free, on his own. He started the car. But he hesitated before backing out of the parking slot. Where did he go now? “On his own” it occurred to him, this time meant alone…very, very alone.
3
Garreth drove blindly, not caring where he went. Some place would feel right, and there he would stop, and think. Rational answers he had overlooked before would become apparent. Then perhaps he could make the terrified child within him realize there was nothing to run from, nothing to be frightened of.
Eventually he found himself in a deserted parking lot, but it was with shock that he looked up and recognized Mount Davidson. The white cross atop the hill loomed above him, his strange new night vision seeing it luminous with icy fire against the night sky. Relief and triumph followed surprise. This proved his imaginings false. How could he possibly have come to a place like this if he had…changed.
Climbing out of the car, he made his way up to the cross. No lightning struck him. No terrible agony engulfed him. If anything, each step made him feel better. Sitting on the ground at the base brought sheer relief, all the
