Dark Moonlighting (27 page)

“What a prick,” I said to myself. “I should
turn him into a vampire.”

Two days later, after I had managed to track
him down, I did just that.

Chapter Fifteen: Old Klingon Proverb

“That’s it?” Christina asked in bewilderment.
“That was the horrible thing you did to this guy?”

“Yeah,” I answered sheepishly. “I guess it
was sort of anticlimactic.”

“No, I mean that doesn’t make any sense,”
Christina argued. Lance still had her by the throat, and she was
struggling to make eye contact with me since her head was tilted
towards the ceiling. “I thought you liked being a vampire?” she
asked her captor.

“Very much so,” Lance agreed.

“Hey, yeah,” I chimed in, accepting
Christina’s logic. “Then what’s with the whole revenge trip?”

Lance sighed and shook his head. “It’s a
little thing called manners, Nick. You didn’t
ask
if I
wanted to be a super awesome killing machine.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically.

“No, moron,” Lance snickered. “It’s because I
want to be the
best
vampire. I want the movies and the books
to be all about me. I want all the other vampires in the world to
look to me as an example of the quintessential creature of the
night. But I know I’ll never become a legend while the old vampires
are still alive. You’re old ass, Dracula—”

“Dracula? Please,” I scoffed. “I met Vlad
once back in the day. He was a hack. And talk about a
showboat.”

“I know, right?” my nemesis agreed as if we
were having a pleasant chat. “I tracked him down and killed him
about ten years ago. You know where he was living? In a Chateau in
the south of France. He said he gave up on the whole “gothic” thing
centuries ago. What a sellout. As you can tell though, he did give
me some ideas,” he said as he gestured towards the female vampires
who were holding me. “Life’s much better when you’ve got a trio of
sexy young ladies following you around. Although now I suppose it’s
just a duo.”

“About that,” I started sincerely. “I am
sorry about the whole killing Kourtney thing. It was my honest
intention to at least try to take you four in alive.”

Lance waved his free hand dismissively. “This
country has no shortage of hot, crazy blond girls. I should have no
trouble turning another one. I think the girls are pretty pissed
off at you though. Kim in particular was not happy when she
returned from kidnapping your love to find her sister had been
murdered.”

Kim took the opportunity to emphasize his
point. Her grip on my arm tightened as she pressed her face towards
mine. Her fangs were extended as she hissed at me. A string of
spittle landed in my eye, but I did not have any way to wipe it off
since both my arms were pinned. With great effort, I leaned my head
down and rubbed my face against my shoulder.

“I’ll give you some advice since you’ve only
been a vampire for a few years,” I said to her. “The virus repairs
just about anything that happens to your body, but you still have
to worry about halitosis.”

Kim cocked her arm back and sent her elbow
smashing into my nose. A stream of blood sprayed out of my nostrils
as my head jerked to the right. Khloe, who had also leaned close to
hiss at me, caught a few drops of my blood in her mouth. She turned
to the side and furiously spat the foul tasting liquid onto the
floor.

“Master, let’s end this!” Kim shouted.

Lance scolded the slut. “Not just yet. I want
him to understand everything first.”

Kim hissed again, muttered something about
James Bond villains and then fell silent.

“Why do you make them call you master?”
Christina asked. The constriction of her throat had started to take
its toll, causing her voice to sound like a gurgle.

“I’m egomaniacal,” Lance explained in
exasperation. “How do you not understand that about me yet? I act
the way a vampire
should
act. Not like Guilty McSadsack over
here,” he said, again motioning towards me.

“What?” I said, taking offense. “I don’t feel
guilty about what I am… who I am.”

“Bullshit,” Lance declared. “You work three
of the most difficult and important jobs in society. You could be
anywhere in the world that you want, doing anything that you want,
but instead you go around trying to help people. You fall in love
with a human woman,” he said, nodding down at Christina. “Hell,
you’re even working to cure the virus that makes you such a badass.
Looks to me like someone is trying to be a productive member of
human society. Trying to atone for all your evil deeds,” he
finished, making air quotes with his free hand for his last two
words.

“You’re wrong,” I countered. “I don’t feel
guilt because I only eat people who deserve to die.”

“The evidence suggests otherwise. Although
I’m sure that little distinction that you like to make has saved
your life up until now. You know how many legendary vampires there
are?” Lance asked Christina rhetorically. “Your boy Nick here is
the last one. I’ve been researching our culture since he turned me,
and as far as I can tell the vast majority of vampires don’t make
it to their fiftieth birthday. Most of them get overwhelmed by the
guilt of killing the poor, helpless humans. I was a diagnosed
sociopath before I was turned, so I don’t have any problem taking
human life. Nick, on the other hand, has the very rare ability to
completely rationalize his crimes. He’s so warped and twisted that
he actually thinks he’s helping society when he murders
people.”

“That’s a lie!” I argued.

“Do you know how many people you’ve killed?”
Lance asked.

“I have no idea. I don’t relish the murders
like you do,” I said.

“I did some simple math and got a rough
estimate. You’ve been a vampire for 651 years… figure fifty-two
murders each year. That means you have the blood of 33,852 people
on your hands… and in your stomach,” he laughed. “You run around,
terrified that the cops are going to realize you’re the Urinator?
That number goes way beyond serial killing. You’re up there in the
genocide range.”

It was obvious that I was not going to argue
my way out of the situation. “We’ll have to agree to disagree I
guess,” I mocked. “However, I will say that you’re a better vampire
than I ever was. You ruined my life, wrecked my careers, destroyed
my research and now that you’ve proven you’re the best you’re going
to kill me so you can become the big cheese. I’d applaud if your
sluts weren’t holding me.”

“Well, I’m glad you appreciate the work I put
in,” Lance started triumphantly. “You see I… wait, destroyed your
research?”

“My research towards the cure for vampirism?”
I clarified as if talking to a child. “You sent the team of human
mercenaries dressed as terrorists? They blew up my lab, destroyed
all my computers and notes? Ringing any bells?”

“No, actually,” Lance responded suspiciously.
“Someone really blew up your laboratory?”

“Oh please,” I scoffed. “Like you weren’t
responsible.”

“Right,” Lance mocked me as he motioned
around the room. “I’m squatting in a warehouse, but I can afford to
hire a bunch of commandos to assault a hospital? I wouldn’t lower
myself to working with humans anyway. No, I wasn’t the one who
ruined your research. I assumed your work towards a cure was just a
fool’s errand anyway. Apparently someone else thought you were
making progress… and they didn’t care for it.”

“Interesting,” I said. My mind raced to find
answers but came up empty. “I don’t suppose you want to let me live
a few more weeks so I can investigate that?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Lance said. “I’m
looking for notoriety from the vampire community, not the humans.
I’ll let you take the fall for all the bodies that have been piling
up in this town. It’s only fair; you’re responsible for a lot of
them after all. Me and my girls will get away scot free. With you
out of the picture, I’ll be able to begin my journey. The first
chapter of that magnificent story will be about how I framed you
for murdering the woman you loved.”

I snorted at his master plan. “Swing and a
miss, hot shot,” I said. I nodded towards Christina. “I’m not in
love with her.”

“You were sleeping with her,” Khloe
argued.

I nodded my head to the right as I said to
Lance, “She is young, isn’t she? And naïve.”

“It’s true,” Christina said. She was slurring
her speech now due to the greatly reduced amount of oxygen reaching
her brain. “It was just casual sex. He basically broke it off with
me this morning anyway.”

Lance examined our faces to try and determine
if we were lying. He closed his eyes for a second as he thought it
over. “Shit,” he yelled. The word echoed off the walls of the
nearly empty warehouse. “You know what? I don’t care. I’ve put a
whole lot of effort into this plan, so I’m going to go through with
it anyway. I’ll just lie about it to the other vampires I run
into.”

“Just do it already!” Kim yelled at her
master in frustration. “It seems like we’ve been doing nothing but
talking, with little or no action, since he got here.”

“Fine, whatever,” Lance agreed, angry that
everything had not gone according to his grand plan. “You have any
last words?” he asked Christina.

“It’s okay, Nick,” Christina gurgled at me.
“I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I still love
you.”

She had every reason to hate me. I had
treated her poorly since the first day I met her, and now she was
about to be killed because of me. Despite that, she still believed
that we were kindred spirits. At that moment, as I considered her
selflessness and loyalty, I realized that she was right. We were
both members of society who did not truly belong. Christina had an
inability to understand and interact with other people, and I had a
tendency to eat them. We had sought comfort in each other because
of our unusual failings. However, she had been smart enough to see
that our relationship could have been something greater.

“I love you too,” I shouted back.

It had been an impulsive response, but I had
meant what I said. After all, love can occur very quickly when a
vampire is involved. I locked eyes with her, or rather tried to
given the awkward angle of her head.

“Whatever,” Lance said, now thoroughly
confused about the status of my feelings towards Christina.

Fed up with the situation, he did not bother
to make a flashy show of it. Lance simply leaned down and sunk his
fangs into the neck of my lover, and my love. Christina’s eyes went
wide in pain as his teeth penetrated her flesh. I screamed in rage,
and the sluts instinctively tightened their grips on me. I turned
to the right and smashed my head into Khloe’s nose. I wrestled away
from her as she stumbled back, yelping in pain. I launched my newly
freed right hand into Kim’s face, catching her in the jaw. She
collapsed to the ground as I took off running towards Lance and
Christina. The former was too enthralled with the bloodlust to
react to the sudden development. I made it about halfway before
Khloe tackled me around the waist. I kicked at her futilely, but
soon felt Kim’s weight fall on top of me as well. As the two young
vampires violently pinned me to the ground, I watched as a frown
formed onto Christina’s face. It was the last conscious act she
made.

Having been deprived of oxygen during the
unusually long conversation, it did not take much blood loss before
she passed out. Tears swelled in my eyes as I watched Lance drain
Christina of her blood. I was sobbing like an infant when she
finally died fifteen minutes later. Lance pulled away from her neck
and looked down at me. He seemed like he had a quip planned, but he
abandoned it a few seconds later as he hastily opened the fly of
his pants. He groaned in pleasure as a puddle of urine formed on
the floor of the abandoned warehouse.

“Sucks to be you,” Kim whispered into my ear.
“That’s what he was going to say to you after he killed her, and he
was going to put emphasis on the word ‘sucks’. I thought it was
lame, but it was the best he could come up with. Sweet dreams.”

I felt a sharp pain in my backside and then
another and another after that. I started to count the pricks, and
the last thing I remembered was hitting the number twelve. I don’t
know what they shot me up with but, given how effective the vampire
virus is at filtering out foreign substances, they must have given
me a lot. When I woke up I was in handcuffs, but it quickly became
apparent that they had not been put on me by the vampire gang.

“Pete! Quick, he’s awake!” shouted a
middle-aged man wearing the uniform of the Starside Police
Department. He looked at my face briefly before crawling on the
ground next to me and throwing his arm around my shoulder. “Take my
picture with the Urinator!”

Chapter Sixteen: Trial of Eleven
Lifetimes

The next few weeks after I was captured were
a blur. My captors, quickly finding that traditional dosages had no
effect on me, pumped me full of so many tranquilizers that I was
barely conscious most of the time. I was poked, prodded and probed
by the best scientific minds that Starside had to offer. Better
scientists from better cities descended on the town to relieve the
first batch of researchers a few days later. I was a fascinating
specimen, and none of the eggheads thought it was necessary to be
gentle with me.

The capture of the Urinator was the biggest
news story in the country. When the rumors slowly leaked out that I
was a vampire, it became the greatest story in the world. The media
reported it as a joke at first and then declared that it was
probably a hoax. When the best minds in the country confirmed that
I was a vampire, the reporters sunk their own fangs into the story
and refused to let go. The population of Starside increased by
almost fifty percent in less than a week. Journalists, scientists,
tourists and hundreds of thousands of vampire enthusiasts poured
into the city.