Once Bitten, No Longer Shy by Julie Steimle (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

Chapter One

Troy Meecham lived by a few essential rules. Number One: Never be alone at night except when you are inside your own home with locked windows and doors. Number Two: Eat garlic with every meal. Number Three: Don’t stay out late, especially with a date. Number Four: Avoid nightclubs at all costs. Number Five: Keep spare bandages on hand. And Number Six: Never forget your cell phone. He rarely ever told anyone this list of rules. Most people would not understand, and those that did really did not need an explanation.

As he was in the middle of his doctorate research, Troy enjoyed the quiet of the library on most days. He officially was studying Pathology and Pharmacology, but those who knew him well knew he was actually researching Medicine within Occult folklore. He wasn’t an occultist or anything, but he did know a thing or two about the supernatural world as an alumnus of Gulinger Private Academy. So he should have known better than to stay alone in the dark recesses of the university library late that night.

But he was on to something—finally. He had been researching natural blood clotting agents and cures for vampire bite, and up until recently, he had no solid leads.

But within the past few weeks he had found an old manuscript within the archived records of medicine. Those in charge of the archives would not let him handle the brittle paper, but they gave him photocopies, which, to be frank, did not do the job. So he had borrowed a spell from his best friend’s new wife (who happened to be a skilled so-called ‘retired’ witch) which allowed him to open doors and break into the archives himself. What those people who maintained the archives did not understand was that touching the manuscript the writing was on itself was vital to the comprehension of the contents. While they were handling it with nitrile gloves, he needed physical contact with fingers to activate writing sealed away through magic.

Of course, those who generally used nitrile gloves did not believe in magic. They were adherents to the philosophy that the material world was all there was and they did not understand that the universe was much vaster than what our five senses could detect.

As Troy poured over the papers, he felt a tickle on the back of his neck. He quickly checked his watch.

A shiver ran down his back. It was late. Extremely late. He should have been home by now. He had just broken rule number one.

“Well, well, well…” said a voice that prickled the back of Troy’s scalp, feeling centuries old while the old bite wounds on his neck and shoulder opened, dripping blood down his neck. “The little child, in his desperation, is not as careful as they thought.”

Troy grabbed up the manuscript, shoving it under the heavy book he was using as a desk top to prop them, dropping both on the near shelf. His collar was now damp with fresh blood from the wound that would never heal. Up above, he heard a rustle. There was more than one of them in there. He pulled out his cell phone and drew up his texts, pressing SEND for one he had always set to alert his best friend, Randon Spade, for emergencies. Ahead of it, he noticed a text recently sent by Randon.

*Tom says there’s news about the Order of Blood gathering in New York. Where R U?* 

“You can’t run,” the voice above drawled out as Troy ducked through the tall library shelves, pressing the alert key fob Rick Deacon had handed him which was built to notify some more powerful friends to his aid. He just had to get out of the library before those vampires reached him. His bag had garlic, but he had left it near the door. He had not expected to need it indoors.

More rustling above, followed by a few books which toppled down on him as if kicked followed him. He just had to get to the garlic. 

“Come on son,” said another voice. “It is time you joined the family.”

“Damn you!” Troy shouted ceiling-ward. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” He dashed into a break between the rows, zigging toward the library stairs. He had to get out of the basement and to the upper floor.

“Is that the proper way for a son to speak to his father?” that second voice called down.

Troy cursed under his breath. His damn father was a lousy, no-good philanderer; a scum of the earth, selfish man, who cheated on his mother… and had the audacity to manipulate her into vampirism after he had embraced that bloody lifestyle himself. Before his father cheated, they had had a normal life. Before his scumbag father cheated, they were a happy New York working-class family for pity’s sake. And his father ruined it all.

“You bit me, you bloody monster!” Troy snapped skyward. “Parents are supposed to protect their children!”

He then dashed for the stairs, grabbing two heavy books on the way. He was halfway up the steps when those two vampires rushed after him, faster than on wings. Luckily for Troy, he knew how to dodge and had long been experienced in dealing with speedy supernatural beings. One of his Gulinger friends was a half-imp for pity’s sake. Nothing was faster than a half-imp except for an imp, not even a vampire. He clocked one vampire with one book, knocking him back. He kicked his father in the groin, slamming the other book in his face.

He got up to the main floor, hurdling over the stair railing. Troy rushed toward the main doors. But three other vampires came down on him, seizing him to tear him apart.

Their sharp fingernails dug in. It was over.

From the basement, that one vampire and his father joined them. But for some crazy reason none of them bit in for blood. Then again, Troy had eaten a calzone for dinner and his blood had to be reeking with garlic, the aversion to which was perhaps one of the only true things about vampires which the movies got right. They were still going to kill him, though.

His father, whom he had not seen since he was twelve, looked so changed from the former night guard he had once been. He had same physique, strong but lean, yet his dark hair seemed darker, his cheeks more gaunt and angular. His blue eyes had long taken on a hungry intensity. And he was pale from lack of sunlight. Troy at one point before this transformation would have been described as a chip off the old block, but now? His father looked like death and he, Troy, was the live version. Troy had expected his father to advance on him with a gloating look, but his father’s reddening irises tracked to the other vampires checking his actions as if he were the one under condemnation and not his son. “Troy, you have been a bad boy.”

Troy strained against the grips of those who were admittedly much stronger than he was. But vampirism did that to a person. It was a condition of their lifestyle and curse. He was the weak mortal who could walk in daylight. They were powerful immortals who could not abide natural light at all.

“Now, you are going to be a good boy from now on,” his father said, his voice rippling with seductive magic—a skill Troy had discovered from all his research was actually learned from among vampires and not naturally connected to being a blood-sucking demon itself. Apparently his father had delved deeper into the vampire society to get that ability. It was like vampiric flight and animal transformation—vampire magic of the most dangerous kind. Getting closer to him, his father said, “You will come with us. And if you fail to prove worthy, the Order of Blood will tear both you and me apart.”

Blinking at him, Troy stared. “You are just doing this to save your own butt? Aren’t you?”

Snorting erupted from three of the vampires.

“He nailed you,” one said as they dragged Troy to the outer doors.

There was no way to escape. But since they did not tear him apart yet, that meant there was possibility for it in the future. The question was, why hadn’t they?

“Where are you taking me?” Troy demanded, as they hauled him out. The sky was clear and the stars were visible. The little hamlet’s light pollution had not blocked them all out. Troy half expected them to take him to the roof where vampires could congregate in mass, but they just dragged him across the campus lawn toward the curb where another vampire stood next to a van.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Troy murmured. “I thought vampires flew places.”

“Not all vampires can fly, kid,” one said with a snort, glancing to Troy’s father. Apparently he hadn’t gotten that deep into the magic after all.

Two went ahead and opened the van’s doors while the other heaved Troy in, shoving him into a seat.

“Driving is faster,” his father retorted.

“Especially while carrying dead weight,” his more ancient partner said with a derisive nod at Troy. The vampire looked like he had not changed clothes since the seventeenth century. He smelled old—like dusty cloth. The others had varying peculiar and repugnant odors about them which assaulted Troy’s nose when they were in closer quarters without flowing air.

The moment the doors shut, their driver started off into the road.

“Where are you taking me?” Troy asked. He was pressed on one side by a stinky perfumed guy dressed in black leather with a look of someone trying to mix the style of Legolas and Fabio who was shirtless under his leather jacket. On his other side was this chunkier man with a comb-over who reminded him a lot of that short weaselly guy on that old TV show Seinfeld. He smelled of boiled cabbage for some reason.

“You gave us quite a hunt,” his father said, not exactly answering. “I thought you were now living in New York City. All evidence pointed to an apartment there. You had properties in your name there. It had been assumed that you had graduated college.”

Troy smothered a smirk, enjoying this news as it proved that Silvia—his best friend’s newlywed wife—was genuine when she had offered to help him create a decoy. It had certainly worked.

“You have made deals with witches,” his father ground out. “Which is unacceptable.”

The other vampires grumbled in agreement.

“But your association with a werewolf is your gravest offense,” his father said.

‘Oh,’ thought Troy. ‘Rick.’ Of course he had associated with a werewolf. That werewolf had saved his life on a number of occasions. He kind of owed him, something he resented at times when he thought about it, but that was life.

“You are under condemnation by the high Order of Blood,” his father said. “You—”

“I am not a bloody vampire!” Troy shouted out, straining in his seat. “And I don’t want to be a vampire! I am not part of this Order of Blood and I don’t want to be!”

“Silence!” his father shouted, slapping Troy across the head. “You are my child! My responsibility! And you have brought us to the attention of the Holy Seven through that werewolf!”

Troy doubted that, clutching where he had been struck. He had heard other stories through Randon, Rick, and Tom Brown that the Holy Seven knew about the Order of Blood through some west coast demon who was aiding them. Troy had not even met members of the Seven, unlike his other friends.

As they left the New York hamlet where Troy had been studying medicine, he noticed the key fob light continue to flash in his pocket. The light, for some reason, did not catch the attention of the vampires. He was not sure why. But