Once Bitten Read Free

smeared across her right cheek as if she'd wiped it roughly with the back of her hand. Her body I'd have put at eighteen, maybe nineteen. They'd obviously taken her underwear because when she shook her head I could see the ripple of her breasts under the tunic. She caught me looking at her chest and smiled. “How old do I look?” she asked again.
    I felt my face redden and before I could answer there was a bang on the door and the guard opened it to let in De'Ath carrying two cups of coffee, one in each hand, with a file under one arm.
    His teeth were clenched and he grunted as he put both cups down on the table so hard that liquid spilled and pooled around them. “Yah! They're hot,” he cursed. He waved his hands in the air and swore. He pointed at one of the cups. “That's yours, white and sweet, just like your good self,” he said to me.
    “Whereas your's is black and cool, I bet,” I replied, and he laughed.
    “Man, you are one slick Englishman,” he said. “Almost makes me wish we never got our independence.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “Can we get on with this, please?”
    “Sure,” said De'Ath. He looked over the girl. “Professor Van Helsing introduced himself?” he asked her. “He's the man who's gonna tell us if you're sane or not, so be straight with him, d'yer here?”
    She nodded, wide-eyed.
    “Has she been charged yet?” I asked him.
    “It's coming,” he said. “Paperwork's taking time. They're out in force tonight. When you've finished with her there's a guy in room B who reckons that Satan told him to go and stick up a liquor store and shoot the owner's wife in the face.” He leant against the wall and sips his coffee.
    “OK, I'll be along when I've finished here.” I pressed the 'pause' button on the tape recorder and sat and looked at him because there's no way I was going to start questioning the girl while he was there. He finally got the message and left us alone. Alone with the woman guard that is.
    “He called you Van Helsing?” Terry said.
    “A joke.”
    Her brow furrowed.
    “Professor Van Helsing. The vampire hunter. The one that went after Dracula. In the book.”
    “Oh, right, sure, yeah,” she said, and her manacled hands went up to her mouth and touched the smear of lipstick. Except that I realised that it wasn't lipstick, it was dried blood. I pressed the 'pause' button again to start the tape running.
    “Terry, I'm going to ask you some questions, OK? Just relax, they're not tricks, I'm not trying to catch you out or anything. Trust me, OK?”
    “Sure. Fire away. Hit me with your best shot.”
    “What day is it, Terry?”
    “Friday.”
    “What month?”
    “August.”
    “What year?”
    “Nineteen ninety two.”
    “What year were you born?”
    She smiled. “What is this, Wheel of Fortune?” she asked.
    “Just help me out, Terry. Answer the questions and then I can go home to my bed. When were you born?”
    “Twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Or thereabouts.” She was a lot older than she looked.
    “Who is the president of the United States?”
    “George Bush.” She giggled and put her hands up to her mouth again. There was dried blood on her hands, too.
    “What's the capital of the United States?”
    She grinned. “Los Angeles,” she said. She watched me scribble her answer in my notebook and held up her hand, waving it to stop me. “I was joking, Jamie. OK? I was joking. Washington is the real capital.”
    I sat back in the chair and gave her a stern look. Or tried to anyway. She wasn't supposed to be using my first name. It didn't show the proper respect, you know? “This is serious, Terry,” I said.
    “Oh, for sure,” she sighed. “For sure it is.” She leant forward and looked at me intensely with her jet black eyes. “The black guy, now he's serious, Jamie. He's trying to bring me real grief, but you? You, Jamie, you're a pussycat.“ She smiled and winked. ”Fire away.”
    “Can you name three cities beginning with the