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

said as she visibly pulled further from him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not that kind of guy.”

Her eyes wider, she stared. A whisper came out of her. “You’re for real. But it’s day time.”

Troy looked to the window. He angled his head and nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t… you know, imbibe.”

She stared more, maintaining her distance. She clearly was not bite victim, as he could not smell any wound opening up or blood oozing. But she definitely knew vampires were real.

“Look,” he said, digging into his bag to pull out one of the fliers which Art had imposed on him ‘just in case’. He held it out. “I am actually with a guy trying to start a support group for bite victims.”

She drew in another tremulous breath.

“I was one myself,” he explained, trying to put her at ease. “…up until a week ago or so when they caught up with me and forced me to be like this.”

“No way,” she breathed.

The woman with quilting fat quarters gathered up her filled bags and made room for Miss Puppeteer. Seeing the cashier waiting for her, the gal placed her basket on the counter and hastily unload it. Both of them took a step forward in line. Someone stepped behind Troy—a man in flamboyant colors carrying a couple bolts of fabric, probably a fashion design student, though you never knew. The conversation took a pause as the puppeteer did business with the cashier.

Troy slipped the flier into her bag with a whisper. “If you know anyone who was bitten who needs support, you can refer them to us.” He then took out the freshly made business cards for both the police and for Dr. McAllister, holding them up. “These are law enforcement and medical services that can also help.”

She had been halfway between removing the flier from her bag to chuck it when he said this. Halting, she stared at the cards. She let go of the flier and took one, peering at the name. “McAllister?”

Troy nodded, relaxing.

The cashier announced her total but she shot Troy an extremely dirty look.

“You know Doctor McAllister?” the puppeteer said with surprising suspicion.

“I recently met him,” Troy said. He pointed to the card. “He’s going to be our supervising physician for medical reference. Him and his wife. We also have three NYPD cops working with us.”

She eyed him sideways. “How did you manage that?”

Shrugging, Troy replied, “I have a couple friends on the police force. One in homicide. The other is a detective.”

The cashier’s eyes widened on him.

The gal paid up and pulled her bags together, watching Troy speechlessly as he set out his things to ring them up. The cashier did it with haste. She too was now staring at Troy’s goth-impressive physique. The thing was, Miss Puppeteer lingered instead of escaping to the parking lot when she had the chance. Once Troy had paid up and the next person put his things on the counter, she said to him, “If you really were a victim, show me the bite.”

Shrugging, Troy pulled down his shirt collar, which no longer had to be tall since the bite no longer bled. But the pair of vampire bites along his neck and shoulders, barely missing his jugular, were clear enough.

She stared at them. Her eyes then flickered to his face again. “How is it you are in daylight?”

Sighing, Troy led her out of the path of the checkout lines toward the front of the store. “Well, I didn’t burn up when the sun rose, for starters. I expected to die. I was ready to embrace death. But my friends claim I survive the sun because I’ve never yet drunk any human blood—and I was forced to become a vampire against my will.”

“And how does that happen?” she asked.

“Are you asking for yourself or for a friend?” Troy started to wonder at her motives now.

Laughing nervously, she shook her head. “A friend. She was bit, and she is afraid two more bites will make her into a vampire. The bite won’t stop bleeding.”

Troy nodded. This was a real victim. He said, “A bite won’t make you a vampire—just a perpetual victim. To become a vampire, you have to drink vampire blood, which I would not recommend because it is like drinking acid.”

Wide-eyed, she nodded slowly.

“I have been working to find a cure for vampire bite for a long time. I am really close to a breakthrough,” Troy said. “Have your friend join the group. You can come too as her bodyguard. Contact Dr. McAllister if you don’t believe me. He’ll confirm it.”

She nodded. “We’ll do that.”

Waving, he then stepped away, tugging up his hoodie and going outside to brave the sun.

 

Troy, Art and Hanz returned to their apartment the following Wednesday. They had not been allowed back into the apartment until after Matthew had come by to inspect the place himself while the workers were cleaning up. And he was there now to give the rest of them a tour.

“Why the escort?” Troy asked him while Matthew unlocked the door with a new set of keys. Troy noticed the entire front door locks had been replaced. A new peephole had been put in also.

Handing him the set of keys, Matthew said, “Because Rick is rightfully paranoid when it comes to specialists connected to government entering places that he owns and altering them.”

“You changed the locks,” Hanz said. “Or did they change the locks?”

Art peered into the open space, stepping in. Most of the paint smell had been vented out. There were charcoal odor absorbers set around the room and the once wide open living space was now a more modestly shaped living room. No one would have known it had been so large before. It looked perfectly uniform and ordinary.

“We changed them,” Matthew said, handing Hanz one key. “We didn’t trust them not to make copies of the keys for here. Semour also came by and put in the security lock.”

Hanz nodded.

“He helped me set up all the security actually.” Matthew then led them in further. He pointed to the far door in the new wall. “It looks like a closet, but it functions like an entrance door at Gulinger.”

“Oh.” Troy nodded, walking into the room to examine it. The new wall looked so blank—like it needed a poster or something to shake up the monotony.

“I had a decent chat with the workers then made sure all bugs and surveillance equipment they had installed are now removed.” Matthew watched him as Art pulled in his bags from their weeklong stay in the Deacon penthouse.

“Were there a lot of them?” Troy asked knowing that when Matthew chatted with the workers he must have overheard their true thoughts and intentions.

Matthew nodded. “Yes. They suspected something was up with this request for a lab, and so they wanted their peek into it. After we cleared all the bugs all out, Semour himself returned them to the company with a warning.”

Hanz snorted, nodding.

Art looked confused. He said, feeling rather annoyed, “And who is this Seymour?”

“He’s one of the Holy Seven,” Hanz said. “He’s an intimidating guy, actually. He gives the impression of a man as brilliant as Steve Jobs but as dangerous as Conan the Barbarian—only with a crossbow and sword.”

“He scares the willies out of Rick,” Matthew confessed, nodding to Hanz appreciatively.

Troy lifted his eyes in surprise.

“Yeah, but, that’s because he wears silver armor,” Hanz retorted.

The fact that Hanz knew this surprised Troy and Matthew both.

They went about unpacking, then exploring the lab. Matthew showed Troy how to enter the lab—which he called the Lazlo Holiefield entrance. Only Hanz caught the movie reference, chuckling to himself with a deep head shake as he stepped into the closet and closed the door behind all of them in a tight squeeze inside. 

“Real Genius,” Hanz whispered to Art who shook his head in the dark.

Matthew pulled a light switch cord, illuminating the space. He then pressed his hand to a panel that opened up, then indicated for Troy to put his hand to it next so it could scan his handprint.

“Man! That movie did not deserve just a PG rating,” Art snapped back, inching into get his hand scanned next.  

Hanz shrugged. “Guilty pleasure. I saw it on TV before getting it on Netflix, so I had seen an edited version first. The ice scene still cracks me up, though.”

“Whatever. You also watch Monty Python.”

Matthew beckoned Art forward. Troy shifted out of the way now.

“Monty Python is really funny.” Hanz moved to get out of Troy’s way, leaning against the door and the door knob.

“You just say that about the Holy Grail one. Even you didn’t watch The Life of Brian.” Art pressed his hand against the pad, waiting as it got inputted.

“The Life of Brian was purposely sacrilegious.” Hanz stared up at the closet ceiling, which was less than a foot from his face.

“Would you two stop it,” Troy finally snapped. He looked to Hanz. “I thought you guys didn’t watch movies at all.”

Matthew quickly inputted the code to accept the scanned hands.

Art rolled his eyes at Troy. “We’re not Amish. It’s not like we swore off technology.”

“But isn’t acting considered a sin for you people?” Troy said before following Matthew into the lab. The door had finally popped open. He stepped into the cool, climate-controlled room, floor lights immediately illuminating the space. Everything was either white or off-white with a bluish speckled tint. There were counters all along the walls with a few sinks and several electrical outlets. It had clean, shiny gas spigots. In the center of the room stood an island counter with a sink. It also had a gas spigot and a near electrical outlet. On the far wall were two industrial type refrigerators and a typical cooking range atop one basic oven.

Matthew went to the wall and turned on the ceiling light switch.

“Ooh.” Hanz walked in, his eyes admiring the clean space while walking away from Troy. “This is perfect.”

Matthew then beckoned them to a black wall screen, which turned out to be an inset TV. He turned it on. “This is connected to house security. You can see into the living room and also outside on the roof, at the door and down at the bottom of the building. All entrances. That way you will have a heads up if anyone is coming while you are busy in the lab.”

Troy nodded. This really was better than just renting a lab somewhere.

“Amazing,” Art murmured. “Did Rick think this up, or you?”

Matthew shook his head. “Neither of us. When Rick brought Semour on board, Semour arranged all this. Apparently this is Semour’s dream child. He jokingly calls it, ‘better-than-Eddie’s-treehouse’… but I have no clue what that means.”

“Eddie is another one of the Seven,” Hanz said, admiring the tech.

“Yeah,” Matthew nodded, chuckling as he punched off the video screen button. “But I have no clue about the so-called treehouse. Some kind of secret lair for the Seven?”

Hanz laughed more, shaking his head. “They don’t have a secret lair—unless you don’t count Rick’s Middleton Village mansion. That’s where Eve tells me they hang out together.”

Troy felt like sighing. Rick, Rick, Rick…. That werewolf really was buying his influence everywhere. Rick got him this lab—and it was superb. He would be a total ungrateful louse if he did not use it now.

“Ok…” Troy nodded to himself. “Let’s get the equipment in.”

“Most is already in,” Matthew said, opening a lower cupboard cabinet to reveal their collection of beakers and pipettes. “You just need to set it up to how you like.”

Hanz nodded, and went to the refrigerators to inspect them. Art, however, moved to go out. Apparently he had seen enough for the day and wanted to unpack his belongings.

“By the way,” Art said to Troy when he walked past. “Acting isn’t a sin. Being fake or insincere is.”

Troy stared after him. What did that mean?

 

That evening, Hanz and Art put on a movie from Netflix—one of those superhero