Blood sprayed the floor, littering it with chunks of brain tissue and shattered skull bone. Gloria sagged down and crumpled by my feet.
Well, that had gone great. Gloria and her secrets were dead, and I’d gotten myself bitten and was about to join her. How in the world had this gone wrong?
My arm burned. I ripped my sleeve off carefully, keeping my right arm still. A single puncture marked my arm near the elbow—she had only gotten one fang in, but one was enough. The tissue around the bite had turned bright red. The beginning of a swelling stretched the skin to hot hardness.
If Raphael’s people were any indication, I had minutes before the venom killed me.
The best method to prevent the spread of snake venom came from Australia and involved applying a broad tight bandage, complete with a sling and a splint to my arm. The venom had to move through the body through the lymphatic system before entering the bloodstream. The idea was to compress the tissue, preventing the lymph from moving to and from an injured limb.
I couldn’t bandage myself without moving my affected arm, and even then I couldn’t do it right and tight enough. All I could do was apply a tourniquet and hope my arm and I survived.
I pulled gauze from my pocket and bound my arm above the bite site, cutting off the flow of blood and lymph to my arm. It would have to do.
Gloria was still very dead on the floor. The rational, collected part of me took over. One, Gloria had giant fangs. Two, she was venomous. Three, she was connected to a reclamation company that bid on Raphael’s building. If she wasn’t part of the posse that had killed Raphael’s people, she’d definitely met them for brunch. I finally had my lead, except I was dying. If the venom finished me off, the cops would never release the crime scene to the Pack. I wasn’t an official member, and I wasn’t registered as a shapeshifter with the city, which made this crime scene fall into the jurisdiction of PAD. The Pack, and whoever would take over the investigation after me, would not get a crack at any evidence Gloria’s body offered. I had to preserve whatever evidence I could.
I took out the Polaroid camera from the pocket on my belt, pulled the woman’s lip back, and took a shot. The camera printed the photograph. I flipped it over, wrote “Property of Jim Shrapshire” on it, stuck it inside my shirt, and slid the camera back. If I died, the cops would find it and ask Jim about it, which would mean he would see it and make his own conclusions. Here’s hoping I hadn’t just killed myself.
I walked across the floor toward the phone. A couple of snakes struck at my combat boots as I walked past, but none of them connected. I reached over and pressed the lever on the wall, raising the metal grate over the door, climbed up on the counter to get out of their range, picked up the phone, and dialed the office.
“Cutting Edge!” Julie chirped into the phone.
“Give that to me,” Ascanio growled.
“This is Andrea. Put me on speaker.”
“Done,” Julie said.
“Listen to me very carefully. I’m at Gloria’s Antiques on White Street. I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake, probably a viper, the same kind that killed Raphael’s people. I’m dying. Call the paramedics, give them Gloria’s address, tell them to bring antivenom. Next, call Doolittle and repeat what I just told you. Then call Jim and tell him the same thing. Tell him the paramedics have been called. Do not open the door of the office to anyone except Kate. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Julie said, her voice flat.
“Good.” I hung up.
My metabolism was probably twice as fast as that of a normal human. The faster the metabolism, the faster the spread of venom through the body. I had to keep calm. The more I worried, the more I moved and the faster I would die.
I lay flat. Below me snakes slid around on the floor, their scales making the faintest of whispers against the floorboards. My arm burned. My forehead felt clammy. Sweat broke out along my hairline. Nausea came, squirming from my stomach into my throat.
I concentrated on breathing. In and out. Calm.
In.
Out.
I would survive this. No final thoughts, no regrets, no worrying about things I should’ve said and done. I would survive this.
In.
Out.
I wanted to run outside, to jump into my car, and drive myself to the emergency room. I would be riding to my death.
In.
Out.
I tasted metal in my mouth.
In.
Out.
A fever started, burning slowly just under my skin.
In.
Out.
I can do this. I will survive this. I will get justice for the four families. I will resolve things with Raphael. I have too much to live for.
I just had to not move.
My breath was coming in short gasps. So much for my calm breathing. I didn’t want to die.
The pain pierced my chest. My heart fluttered. I was hot, so very hot…
A man in firefighter yellow busted through the door and swore. “Snakes! There are f**king snakes in here!”
I closed my eyes.
“Run that by me again?” Detective Collins, a tall, fit, Caucasian man in his early forties, leaned toward me. “She jumped at you and you shot her four times in half a second?”
“Yes.” I shifted inside the blanket the paramedics had wrapped me in. I was sitting in the chair, by the counter from which Gloria had leaped at me. The first responders sank fifteen vials of antivenom into my body and when that didn’t quite do the trick gave me five more. My head swam and I felt cold and clammy. Any other time I’d be miserable, but now being sick and woozy just confirmed that I was alive.
“What happened next?”
“She grew fangs and bit me.”
“With her fangs?”
“Yes.”
Detective Tsoi, a dark-haired Asian female in her late thirties, arched her pretty eyebrows at me. “So would you say she was like a snake?”
I looked at her. Behind Tsoi, Animal Control packed the last of the snakes into bins.
“I just want to be sure that we’re on the same page,” Tsoi said. “Are we talking about snake people?”
“Yes.”
Tsoi and Collins looked at each other.
“Everybody knows there is no such thing as reptilian shapeshifters,” Collins said.
“I didn’t say she was a shapeshifter.” And that wasn’t strictly true either. There were reptilian shapeshifters; they just weren’t the product of Lyc-V.
Tsoi pondered me. “Your file says you were discharged from the Order due to post-traumatic stress. You failed your psych eval?”