 
### The Midnight Vampire Trap

by

L.S. Richards

Copyright 2014 L.S. Richards

Smashwords edition

License Notes

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For the best audience in the world.

Prologue

Desmond Sharpe was a vampire and Desmond Sharpe was an asshole. The very drive and indomitable will that had allowed him to survive the horrific transformation from human to vampire, and to survive the centuries that followed, had also made him an arrogant, egotistical, insufferable jerk. In short, thought Dr. Eleanor Warner, Desmond Sharpe was _perfect._

Because _wanting_ a vampire upon which to experiment, and _getting_ one, were two very different things. One was talking about a creature possessed of human intelligence, considerable monetary resources, and supra-human abilities such as the power to disappear in the blink of an eye, kill with impunity, yada yada yada. But then Desmond, dear, narcissistic Desmond, had gone and done what no other vampire before or after had ever done: he used his wealth to finance --and star in-- a motion picture based on his own life.

So Eleanor rejoiced. Elated, she opened her journal.

Why search the world in a fruitless and

_expensive quest for vampires,_ she wrote,

when you can make them come to you?

1

Demonstration

The tavern on the waterfront catered to an international clientele: men from Korean freighters carrying Chinese goods, men from Singapore, Vietnam, Hong King or Java. Men far from home and looking for a fast, cheap drunk. Men difficult to trace when they went missing.

The door opened, spilling noise and light onto the dark street. Two men, an Asian of perhaps forty, tough and ropey; and an Anglo who couldn't have been more than eighteen, underfed and slightly girlish, staggered out, reeling drunk. The Asian led the way to a nearby alley, then fumbled with the fly of his pants, swaying on his feet. At that, the younger man seemed suddenly sober, suddenly, not drunk at all. He'd been faking all night, plying his victim, and now, when he smiled, moonlight glinted off his fangs.

There was no struggle. The sailor was far too outmatched to resist.

Up the street, five people watched through the blacked-out windows of an unmarked van, a van with some kind of machinery attached to its roof. They were three middle-aged men in expensive suits, a younger, bearded man, and a sour-faced woman of perhaps thirty, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, an unflattering sweep of hair across her forehead.

As the vampire sank his fangs, one of the older men spoke.

"Is that...?" he said.

"Sh!" the woman hissed. _"He can hear you."_

In silence they watched the two men embrace, and they watched the victim slump. "He killed him," one of the older men breathed.

"He had to," the bearded man whispered back, and he opened a small computer, the screen of which displayed a single, glowing word: EXECUTE?

Finished, the vampire released his victim, who dropped, dead, to the ground. The vampire lifted his victim's wallet, then walked up the street toward his car, to get the chains and concrete blocks, pulling an electronic key from the pocket of his pants. He pointed the key at the car to pop the trunk, and as his finger hit the button, the man in the van hit ENTER.

There was no struggle. A light on top of the van blinked on, and the vampire was aware of a sudden sensation of heat, as though he'd walked into the kitchen exhaust fan of a restaurant, and then blisters ripped across the his skin, bubbling, searing, smoking. One gasp, and he exploded in a violent flash of light, flesh and bone disintegrating, stolen blood geysering into the air.

"My God!" gasped the eldest of the men, and in response the younger man removed from his briefcase a sheaf of papers marked CONTRACT.

With shaking hands, the three men in suits signed the contract, then exited the van, shooting disbelieving looks at the pool of steaming blood in the street. One by one they walked to their own cars parked further away, and drove off. The young man moved into the driver's seat of the van, began to start the ignition.

"Wait," said the woman.

Exiting the van, she walked to the vampire's car, stepping fastidiously across the blood. Withdrawing chalk from her pocket, she drew on the wall next to the car two interlocking rings, one red, the other green. Pocketing the chalk, she ran back to the van, and together she and the bearded man drove away.

2

The Galaxy Cinema

That his movie _, King of Vampires,_ was a success, was deeply gratifying to Desmond Sharpe. True, he'd poured millions of his own, and required the studio to pour millions more, into saturation marketing, and true, most mortals were sheep that would do whatever they were told to do, but the fact that it was a hit after all, that people genuinely seemed to enjoy it, was truly touching. And then _this_ happened, this most extraordinary thing: at an ornate old movie palace in Los Angeles, young mortals were gathering for midnight screenings, and they were dressing up as the characters in the movie, they were talking back to the screen, and they were dancing and singing in the aisles.

Oh, how Desmond had laughed when he'd first heard. How marvelous! How wonderful! It seemed the most perfect possible outcome for his little project, unexpected and delightful, a present from the cosmos to himself. Then a thought crossed his mind.

"Hey," he said, interrupting Max's tedious diatribe, "Wouldn't it be great for those kids if _I_ showed up?"

Across town, in a stark, white laboratory, the woman from the van turned to a panel of executives and said, "You've seen what can be accomplished. Unfortunately, we consumed the specimen. We're going to need another one."

Word had gotten out. Advertisements had been placed. Desmond Sharpe was coming to the midnight show at the Galaxy Cinema, live and in person. Tickets were sold out, and the crowd outside the theater, bathed in the colored lights of the Galaxy's blinking neon marquee, was in a state of near pandemonium. A news van parked up front, in the loading zone.

The limo arrived. The news crew switched on their massive lights and as a delirious scream swept the crowd there he was, chiseled features, waves of black hair, a _cape,_ even; the Byronic ideal personified. He smiled, flashing fangs newly polished, and waved. The crowd went berserk, straining against the interlocked arms of the renta-cops.

The news reporter, a cute Chicana in a short skirt, came up to him, camera in tow.

"Desmond! Desmond! Remy Ramirez, Wolf News! Wow, isn't this amazing!"

"Remy, enchanté!" Desmond replied, kissing her hand, ignoring the giant, fuzzy boom mike pointed at his crotch. "Yes, yes it is!"

"The world hasn't seen anything like this since _Rocky Horror,_ decades ago!" Remy enthused.

"I will take that as a compliment," Desmond replied, smiling and waving at the crowd, "though I think mine is the superior film."

"Desmond, you're famously difficult to interview," Remy persisted, "But you claim you actually _are_ a vampire?"

"And what is a vampire if not the fulfillment of one's darkest desires?" Desmond replied smoothly. "Excuse me." And he swept regally into the theater, his publicist, P.R. manager and agent trailing behind.

He climbed the stairs to the roped-off balcony, his heart beginning to beat in time to dark, pounding rock music that got louder with every step. Moving to the front railing, he looked down.

Astounding. The ornate theatre, built in the 1920s, renamed in the space-age '60s, was now a lair of decaying elegance: threadbare velvet curtains, peeling gold-gilt wallpaper, chandeliers with missing lamps and dangling crystals, the perfect setting for the decadent rites being enacted below.

Savage music. Barely-clad dancers on the stage spinning fire from their fingertips. Young mortals in ripped cerements running up and down the aisles, climbing over the seats, making out in the corners. Sex and death alike hovering in the air, teasing, ripe for the taking. A palpable, primordial energy, Dionysus loosed once more upon the world.

"Oh....my." Desmond breathed, at a loss for any other words.

His agent puffed up behind him. "Any other 'vampires', Desmond?" he asked.

"They are as mortal as you, my friend," Desmond replied, and then the house lights cut out and the music changed to _Black Sabbat_ off the _King of Vampires_ soundtrack, and as the scream from the audience shook the walls, the stage was engulfed in light.

In the movie, _Black Sabbat_ was sung by actors in sixteenth-century dress. Here, the song was lip-synced by a bevy of comely young women in ripped underwear ranging from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, upping the sex quotient, pleasing the audience who thronged the apron of the stage, and as the song moved into its driving, chanting chorus they all danced the _Black Sabbat_ dance. In the balcony, Desmond laughed like a delighted child.

_Black Sabbat_ moved into its closing chords, and as it did another sound emerged, a raw, buzzing, rising chord of that got louder and louder, onrushing, undeniable.

"What is this?" Desmond yelled to his publicist. "It's not from the soundtrack!"

"I don't know!" the publicist yelled back. "Apparently it's a thing they do here!"

And the chord crested and crashed over into the X cover of _Wild Thing,_ and then _she_ was there, a young woman with elfin features, impossibly sharp cheekbones and pointed chin, in a black corset, long black gloves and fishnet stockings, orange hair tumbling wild over her shoulders, and the sunniest, happiest grin on her face, as she and the frenzied audience lip-synced the words at each other.

She skipped along the edge of the stage, just out of reach of the audience's reaching hands. Working them, teasing them.

The song moved into its first repetition, and the long black gloves came off. The corset came off, revealing a skimpy, sparkly black bikini, as behind her, two of the _Black Sabbat_ dancers set up a metal stripper's pole. As the music spun into a descending, dive-bombing chord, she ran from stage right, leapt into the air, looped an elbow around the pole and reeled down, ending up on all fours, crawling toward the lip of the stage, her eyes now locked on Desmond's, singing directly to him. At the lip, she stood, ran a hand down her exposed throat, exhaling with Exene, openly inviting him, daring him, to ravish her.

The bridge kicked in and she spun away from the audience's reaching hands. As the music built, the dancers brought onto the stage a galvanized tub that they hooked to a rope descending from the ceiling, and they rolled out a small refrigerator, and they opened it, and it was full of blood packs that they tossed from hand to hand in time with the music, slashing them open and draining the blood into the tub as the girl beat time nearby. The music climbs, rising, and now the tub is rising, hauled aloft on a pulley, and she's taking her place below it and Desmond cannot believe what's about to happen but there is no stopping it and as the music goes into its pounding, strobing crescendo the tub tips and the blood comes down and she's bathed in it head to foot, and the grin splitting her face says she couldn't, couldn't be happier than she is at this exact moment.

She screams the chorus at the audience, and they screamed it back, and when it gets to the line about shaking it she _does,_ and blood flies everywhere, spattering the ecstatic crowd, and she is among them, their hands running through the stage blood running down her legs, and she is at once their avatar and their sacrifice.

The song goes into its final, unstoppable repetitions and then it's winding down and fading out and she bows low to the audience that feeds her and they applaud her and she applauds them and then someone somewhere starts it, a rhythmic clapping, a steady cadence, and then everyone is doing it, hundreds of hands and it's Desmond's intro song from _King of Vampires_ and the music pours in, all sinuous, suggestive sex, and in the balcony Desmond himself stands as if he has no choice at all and places his foot upon the balcony railing.

"Jesus, Desmond!" his agent cries.

And he drops, forty feet down into the aisle, landing lightly on his feet and the crowd goes absolutely insane as he sings along to his recorded voice, walking unimpeded to the stage because they love him here and they respect him, so no one rushes him because that would be unseemly, and so he reaches the apron of the stage and the girl holds out a blood-streaked arm and he takes her hand and hops nimbly onto the stage, and they sing it as a duet, she knows all the choreography, and the others fall into their places, acting it out just like in the movie.

The song ends on its playful button and a standing ovation isn't enough so it's a _bouncing_ ovation, five hundred people jumping up and down in mutual delirium. Desmond goes to embrace the girl but she backs off, crying "Sticky! Sticky!" and so instead he turns and addresses the audience, who quiet right down.

"Oh," he says, and is surprised to find himself on the verge of tears. "I didn't know what to expect when I came here tonight, except that... except that it was you know, soothing to my ego..."

That gets a huge laugh.

"But, oh...is this theatre for sale? I want to buy this theater. I'll get you new curtains, I'll get you new chandeliers. I've never known such a feeling, I've never known such..." he searched for the right word, _"Acceptance._ Long live the Galaxy Theatre," he cried, "Long live this audience, long live _King of Vampires!"_

With that the house lights dimmed and the movie itself started. Desmond moved up the aisle and now they came to him, wanting autographs, wanting photographs, wanting to touch and have their moment. Desmond, gratified and a little humbled by their love, graciously submits. He fed earlier, so he is not hungry, and he would not dream of harming any of these precious, precious people who adore him so.

Out front, across the street, an unmarked van with some kind of machinery on its roof pulls up. Behind the wheel, the bearded man opens his computer. The screen reads, CAPTURE SIGNAL? He hits a key, and a moment later the screen reads SIGNAL CAPTURED. UPLINK? Another key, and the screen changes to UPLINK COMPLETE. The man closes the computer, checks his watch, and settles back to wait.

3

Capture

Two hours later, the man in the van sat up. There was activity at the theater. People were coming out, and yes, there was Desmond, smiling, waving, throwing kisses. He and his entourage entered his limo, drove off. The van waited until the limo was out of sight, then followed.

Desmond's limo drove back to the studio, and the entourage got out, heading for their cars. The limo continued on, turning a corner and disappearing. A moment later, the van followed in its path.

The limo drove to a large, private, gated cemetery on the outskirts of L.A. Desmond exited the car, waved off the driver. Whistling a tune from _King of Vampires,_ he neatly jumped the solid ten-foot fence, and so did not see the van turning the corner.

He made his way to a large mausoleum, seemingly untouched for decades, seemingly sealed tight, unless you knew where to look. Still whistling, he pulled his key from his pocket, moved it toward the hidden lock.

There was a sudden, unexpected flash of green light, and Desmond reeled back, gasping, and then ripped open the sleeves of his shirt, exposed the skin of his arms, which was unbelievably, impossibly, but undeniably, burnt, blistered and smoking.

"What?" he manages to get out and then they are there, mortals, mortals running toward him, mortals with machines on their backs and something like rifles in their hands.

Desmond fled, a blur of movement. Anywhere, away from them. He didn't know what was going on but a horrible possibility was flooding his mind, a terrible inevitability...

More mortal voices, shouting, up ahead and on all sides. Shit! They'd ringed the cemetery! Well, he'd been the subject of ambushes in the past, and he was still here, so he'd be damned if he would be taken in this one. He still had a few tricks to use and now he was angry. Tonight had been so marvelous and how dare these puny mortals think they could ruin it!

Triangulating from the shouts he hid behind a large obelisk, and when the mortal ran past him he swept over him, ripping out the man's throat just for the sheer joy of it. In a blink he was gone, looking for the next victim. Behind him, two men ran to their fallen comrade, the bearded man from the van and a dark-haired man carrying a medic's kit.

"How bad is it?" the bearded man asked. The medic peeled the wounded man's bloody hands away from the wound and shone a flashlight upon it.

"Easy, easy, let me look...not that bad. He only cut an external jugular."

"But he can still bleed out!"

"In six minutes, yes, I know." The medic eased the man to the ground, one hand applying pressure to the wound, the other reaching for bandages. The bearded man pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. "He's getting nasty," he transmitted. "Take him."

In another part of the cemetery, Desmond lay in wait behind a tall headstone. He heard his victim approach, coiled, and struck....and recoiled as a wall of shimmering, wavy green light sprang up between himself and his victim, light coming from one of the rifle-like sticks the mortals held, light that he somehow knew, without a doubt, he could not cross. A soft click sounded behind him and another wall of light appeared behind him, and then another off to the side. He tensed, preparing to launch himself into the sky but the three walls of light converged, forming a pyramid closed at the top, pinning him to the earth.

"We'll burn you!" called a mortal voice from beyond the wavy lights. "We'll burn you like we burned that young one at the docks! Do you believe me?"

Furious, beyond words, Desmond could only glare, the phrase _Turn, hell hound_ whispering through his mind. He nodded.

"In that case," the voice continued, suddenly dropping back into a light, almost amused tone, "In that case, Cousin, I think this one belongs to you."

And the wall of wavy green light in front of him altered, a black shape appearing in it, a black shape that resolved itself into the completely unexpected form of a woman in a white lab coat, her hair pulled back in a bun, an unflattering swoop of hair across her temple. She had a machine on her back and a rifle-wand in her hands. She raised the wand.

"Hello, movie star," she said, and pulled the trigger.

4

Eleanor Explains the World

Desmond opened his eyes, blinking against the bright, white light. He was lying on his back on the floor of a large, sterile room, high ceilinged, white walls and white floor. Green light humming faintly between the double panes of reinforced windows. He was wearing the clothes he'd worn at the theater. His forearms still hurt, the burns smarting.

Rolling over, he saw the legs of a white plastic chair, the legs of a white plastic table, a cheap cloth bag such as the ones given away at grocery stores, and a woman's feet encased in ugly, practical shoes.

"Good morning," said Dr. Eleanor Warner. "Or rather, good evening. It is now 5:06 P.M. on November first, and you have been unconscious for fourteen hours and twenty-two minutes."

Desmond raised himself onto an elbow. "You shot at me," he said.

"I shot over your shoulder," Eleanor replied. "While you were distracted by me, one of the men shot you from behind with a tranquilizer dart loaded with," she consulted a paper on a clipboard, "24.82 cc's of pharmaceutical-grade heroin."

Desmond was silent, processing that, and almost instinctively began taking inventory of the woman before him. Late twenties, early thirties. Straight bones, clear skin, adequate body weight. None of the obesity that so incongruously marked the poor in affluent America. Teeth straight, possible orthodontia. No visible plastic surgery, but then, given her short, unmanicured nails, lack of cosmetics and hideous shoes, aesthetics were obviously not a priority to this one. Clunky eyeglasses. Mousy hair pulled back into a tight bun behind and looped in that unflattering swoop in front. Faint, unplaceable accent. Respiration accelerated, heartbeat ditto.

'She's excited,' Desmond thought to himself, 'But she's _not afraid...'_

"Oh," Eleanor continued, "Do you see the boxes on the walls?"

Looking up, Desmond did indeed see the boxes on the wall, looking much like audio speakers, bland and innocuous.

"Those boxes are capable of emitting the same radiation as that which burned you last night. If you make any move toward me or to escape, they will burn you where you stand. Any attempt to tamper with them or to hack their control codes will be taken by the system as an attack and they will fire automatically. Do you understand?"

Desmond said nothing, silently contemplating strangling her with the handles of her grocery bag, boxes or no boxes.

"Oh, and," she continued. "In case you were thinking of reading my mind..." she raised her hand to her forehead, lifting the flap of hair covering her temple and exposing the pink weal of a recently stitched wound, "It won't work. I have an implant in my brain preventing it."

Enough of this. Desmond rose to his feet, towering over her, angrily dusting himself off.

"Look," he barked. "I don't know who you are or what you _think_ you know, but I am a U.S. citizen, and I am _very_ well connected! I want a telephone, now. I want my lawyer. I want the police! I want--"

Sighing, Eleanor reached into the pocket of her lab coat, removed a small diabetes-testing lancet. Twisting off its plastic cap, she jabbed the exposed point into the pad of her left index finger, and held out the resulting drop of blood.

Desmond stopped mid-rant. Unfed for a day, the smell of the blood rocked him, hunger instantly rising.

"Well?" said Eleanor. "What is it?"

"It's...blood," Desmond replied, struggling to sound as if it made no difference to him.

"What color is it?"

Desmond stared at her. What? "It's red," he replied, as if speaking to a very slow child.

"Why?"

Why was blood red? He didn't know, he'd never thought about it. Blood was blood.

"Because of, because of, um, the hemoglobin." Who knows where he'd picked that up, but there it was.

"Yes, the hemoglobin." Eleanor smiled, as she bandaged her finger. "Which, as the compound word implies, is made up of two basic parts. Globular proteins, _globin_... and flat, circular arrangements of nitrogen, carbon and hydrocarbons called a _porphyrin ring."_

Pulling a remote control from her pocket, she touched a button and a slide appeared on a white wall, a diagram of letters in a circular shape, connected by single and double lines. In its center, a smaller circle, colored red, was labeled "Fe."

"This is a diagram of the porphyrin ring found in the hemoglobin of red-blooded animals," Eleanor said. "The central atom, in red there, is an atom of iron. It is these iron atoms that give blood its red color and, as you could no doubt tell us, its distinctive, metallic tang. And the interesting this about that," she said, "Is that you only find these porphyrin rings two places in nature. This is one of them, in hemoglobin. Here is the other one."

A touch of the remote, and an almost identical slide appeared, identical save that the central circle was now green, and labeled "Mg."

"This is the other porphyrin ring found in nature," Eleanor reiterated. "This...is chlorophyll. Mr. Sharpe, what is chlorophyll?"

"It's stuff in plants," Desmond answered, momentarily baffled.

"What does it do there?"

"I don't know," he replied, beginning to lose his patience, "it photosynthesizes!"

"Yes." Eleanor smiled again. "It photosynthesizes. Or, in other words, _it reacts to the light of the sun._ Tell me, Desmond: can you think of anything else that reacts to the light of the sun?"

Desmond fell silent, the horrible feeling of dread that had briefly visited him in the graveyard returning, bringing with it the feeling of terrible inevitability...

"The rings on the wall," he whispered, Max's cautionary droning coming back to him.

"Yes," Eleanor said. "The rings on the wall."

"You killed Tommy!" Desmond said.

"I had to," Eleanor replied.

She touched her remote again, and the wall was filled with images from _King of Vampires,_ images of actors dressed as vampires crawling out of graves, taking victims, burning in the sun.

"You made a movie," Eleanor said, "and you starred in it yourself, saying on the one hand that you really are a vampire but on the other carefully preserving the option of deniability, that no, you're just an actor playing a vampire. But it is all real, isn't it? Everything depicted in _King of Vampires_ actually happened, at one point or another in history, didn't it?"

Desmond remained silent, the voice of his lawyer, Cynthia, in his head, hissing "Zip it!"

Another touch of the remote and the image on the wall zooms in on a vampire burning in the sun, his body exploding in a brilliant flash of light.

"And out of all the images in your movie, the one that most interests me is this one. Not only do you burn, you burn with a flash."

She turned back to Desmond. 'The central atom in hemoglobin is iron," she said. "The central atom in chlorophyll is magnesium. Ever see magnesium burn?"

"Magnesium flash bulbs," Desmond breathed, memories from the 1930s to '60s rising.

"Yes," said Eleanor. "Very good. Magnesium burns, Desmond, and it burns with a bright, white flash."

She returns to her chair, and gestures for him to do the same. Twisting around, Desmond sees a plastic chair behind him. He sits.

"That," Eleanor says, "is enough for the formulation of a hypothesis, enough to desire a sample of vampiric blood to run though a mass spectrometer. But wanting a vampire's blood and getting it are two different things. Fortunately for us, there exists in the world a vampire who was egotistical enough to make a movie about his own life. Your film is playing at over twelve hundred cinemas even as we speak, but if you wanted the midnight show, you had to go to the Galaxy. We staked out regular screenings of your film here in L.A. and identified the people who were going to it over and over. The model of midnight audience-participation films already existed: we provided the venue and funding. Your vanity did the rest."

"It was a trap," Desmond said.

"Yes."

"Was it _all_ fake?" Desmond said, and at first Eleanor frowned, but then her brow cleared.

"Ah," she said. "I see your concern. We provided the venue and the funding, but the rest of the show was up to your fans. So yes, Mr. Sharpe, to the best of my knowledge, the _adoration_ was genuine."

For just a moment, Desmond closed his eyes, relief flooding through him, and in that moment a delighted smile flitted across Eleanor Warner's face.

"Well," she said, her severity returning, "There's no accounting for taste. Back to business. Tell me, Desmond, given what you've heard here today, given the similarity of the two porphyrin rings, given the flammability and brightness of magnesium, given the propensity of your kind to combust with a blinding flash, given all that, if I were to run a sample of your blood through a mass spectrometer looking for magnesium, do you think I might find it?"

Answering carefully, Desmond said, "If all that were true, then yes, perhaps."

"Okay then. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that I do exactly that, and do find magnesium in your blood, magnesium, furthermore, still bound in the porphyrin ring structure, reacting in you just the way it reacts in plants. Let's say I find that. The question then becomes, where did it come from?"

"What?"

"Where did it come from? At one point you were human, and human blood contains no magnesium. Then you underwent a vampiric transformation, and from that moment on have consumed nothing but human or animal blood...which contains no magnesium. I do a blood draw, and find enough magnesium to make you, under certain provocation, go up like a roman candle."

She touched the remote, and the _King of Vampires_ images are replaced by the porphyrin ring structures, side by side, iron and magnesium, red and green.

"In other words, if you start with these," indicating the red rings, "and end up with these," indicating the green, "then where did they come from?"

"My," Desmond began, then started again, "The vampire's body, must be making it."

There was a long moment while Eleanor waited to see if the shoe would drop, and when it did not she once more touched the remote. The rings were replaced with a periodic table, iron colored red, magnesium colored green.

"If that is true," she said. "Then the vampire's body is converting atoms with twenty-six protons into atoms with twelve protons. It is splitting atomic nuclei. Desmond? That's _nuclear fission."_

Reaching into the grocery bag, she withdrew a small black box equipped with a gauge and a metal stylus. Switching it on, she placed it on the floor and pushed it toward him with her shoe, and the Geiger Counter went berserk, clicking and clicking and clicking.

"You're radioactive, Sweetheart," Eleanor Warner says, "So no more pretending you're just an actor. It's how we tracked you from the theater to the cemetery; it's how we're tracking you right now. One of your traditional strengths has always been the ability to disappear? You no longer possess that. Once your radiation signature --a signature as unique to each vampire as a fingerprint, by the way-- was uploaded to the Global Positioning Satellites, which it was last night, there is no longer anywhere on Earth you can hide."

She touched the remote, the burning vampire returned. Rising, she stepped into the beam, the ghastly image projecting onto her face.

"All nuclear reactions occur at a given rate," she said. "In nuclear power plants, the rate is regulated by control rods which absorb excess energy. Remove the regulation, or apply extra energy, as we did, to you, last night, in the form of X-ray radiation..."

She glanced over her shoulder, shrugged.

"And just so you know, the radiation that burned you wasn't the green stuff. The green stuff is _visible_ light. X-rays are _invisible._ The green light was just there so you'd know where to stop. Oh, and all electro-magnetic radiation, regardless of frequency, travels at the same speed: one hundred, eighty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty-one miles per second. You're fast, vampire... are you faster than light?"

Desmond said nothing, because he did not have to. Because, really, hadn't he known for decades this was coming? As the sixteenth century had become the seventeenth, and the eighteenth, and the nineteenth, and, Jesus, the twentieth with its wars and its advances and its man on the freaking moon, for crying out loud, hadn't he always known this night was coming? How many times had he wondered, in passing, about whatever diabolical engine it was that drove his existence?

" _The Fire Inside,"_ he whispered, naming one of the songs in his movie.

"Yes," Eleanor smiled thinly. "That title was rather prophetic." She clicked off the slides and silenced the Geiger Counter. Resuming her seat, she smoothed her lab coat.

"Now," she said, "for the bad news."

"The _bad_ news?" Desmond gasped.

"Where do you think you are?"

"No." Desmond said, the horrid certainty finally crossing his mind. "Oh, no."

"You are in a high-security cell in a research and development facility owned by the Consolidated Gas and Power Corporation, the largest private-sector provider of nuclear energy in the world. And they, um, own you."

" _What?"_ Desmond yelled, all the shock and stress of the last hours colliding headfirst with the centuries of having his own way inside him. "They _what?!"_

Eleanor, suddenly shaken, rose from her chair, started backing towards the door.

"I understand the procedures aren't that painful..." she stammered.

" _You filthy little bitch!"_ Desmond cried, losing his temper and flowing toward her.

A split second later and he was crumpled on the floor in excruciating pain, his body burnt, his clothes smoking. Eleanor, meanwhile, released her held breath, her fingertips tingling, an involuntary acknowledgement of how close to death she'd just come. She took a moment, collected herself, then stepped over to Desmond.

"That was a warning, vampire," she said, her voice a little shaky, but then added the one thing she knew would most impact the vampire Desmond Sharpe:

"The next time, it will be your _face."_

Gathering her belongings, she exited the room, the heavy door booming shut behind her.

5

Introducing Brian

Dr. Eleanor Warner and her bearded cousin, Courtland Warner, attorney at law, sat across from Deke Hollingsworth, CEO of Consolidated Gas and Power, in an executive boardroom in CG&P's Los Angeles regional headquarters. Deke's best friend and COO, Charles (Chuck) Mahoney was also present, as were various CG&P suits, and a sandy-haired man, with the slightly seedy look of a graduate student, who sat at Eleanor's right. A television monitor was built into the wall at the top of the room.

"Right," said Chuck Mahoney. Let's get this briefing underway. Dr. Warner?"

"First," Eleanor said, "I'd like to introduce Dr. Brian Nicholls, my new assistant. He recently obtained his doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where his research focused on mitochondrial function. His dissertation was upon ATP formation. He also," she smiled, "once took an undergraduate course in crypto zoology."

"Hello," Brian waved, while a chuckle rolled through the room.

"Having overcome his initial skepticism regarding our control specimen," Eleanor continued, "Brian is now ready to join us in our queries. Speaking of which, our preliminary experiments have yielded very promising results. Mass spectroscopy of blood samples obtained from the specimen show a pronounced magnesium spike, and chemical analysis has shown that magnesium to indeed be bound in a porphyrin ring structure. Subsidiary experiments, into tissue regeneration and pain thresholds, continue."

Next to her, Brian looked at the floor, a faint flush suffusing his cheeks.

"Our work now focuses on understanding the mechanism by which his body processes energy and in harnessing that energy," Eleanor concluded. "Any questions?"

One of the suits spoke up. "I still can't get my mind around it. Cellular fission? How is it possible?"

Eleanor smiled. "Brian?"

"Well, it's a question of scale," Brian said. "Our own cells produce more energy than we can handle, did you know that? But we have a mechanism to deal with it, the electron transport system. Of course, we make energy by ripping the electrons off the outside of atoms, while he, apparently, makes it by ripping the atoms themselves apart... resulting in a much larger release of energy."

"Just how much energy are we talking about, Mr. Nicholls?" asked another suit.

"We don't yet have the final figures," Brian replied, graciously ignoring the slight to his doctorate. "But, given that the fission of a single hydrogen nucleus releases more than one million times the energy than the combustion of an entire molecule of octane, in gasoline, I'd say we don't have to worry."

There was a stirring in the room as all the energy-company executives shifted in their seats, as if their pants had suddenly become too tight.

"More than enough to keep a 'dead' body up and walking long past a normal lifetime," Eleanor enumerated. "To move with supra-human speed, to account for all the tricks his kind are famous for performing. And to accelerate healing, as our preliminary work has shown."

Rising, she inserted a file drive into the TV port and pushed PLAY... and Brian and the executives all flinched as Desmond's angry screams came from the TV monitor.

"Note that no matter what implement was used," Eleanor said, "Scalpel, bone saw, propane torch, the healing was almost instantaneous."

Ejecting and pocketing the file drive, she faced the men.

"Unfortunately, due to the invasive and, well, potentially destructive nature of these experiments," she said, "We have decided that possession of a second specimen is advisable. Therefore, another collection is scheduled for tonight. Are there any other questions? No? In that case, gentlemen, I suggest we get back to work. There is much to be done."

Eleanor picked up her bag and everyone rose, the executives returning to their offices, the scientists and Courtland heading back down to the labs.

"I'll ready the team," Courtland said, and turned down a side hall, leaving Eleanor alone with Brian. A few seconds passed. Brian coughed.

"You know, Eleanor," he began. "Are the pain experiments really necessary?"

"Why, of course they are, Brian," Eleanor replied. "We may learn something that will help humanity."

"It's just," Brian said, clearly reluctant, "It's just that you so seem to enjoy them..."

Eleanor stopped, appraised him.

"Are we not paying you enough, Brian?" she asked coolly.

"No, Eleanor," Brian replied, the flush back on his cheeks. "The money is more than adequate."

"Good," Eleanor said, continuing down the hall. "I wouldn't want you to be unhappy."

A few seconds later, Brian tried changing the subject. "You know," he said, "I can't help wondering, how did you get into this? How did you go from the porphyrin rings in a textbook, to--"

"Oh, that reminds me," Eleanor said. "I got you something." She pulled a book out of her bag and handed it to him. "It's a popular history of radiation," she said. "It's not a scientific text by any means, but I found it enjoyable. Did you know that as late as 1953 you could buy an over-the-counter contraceptive jelly laced with radium? Ah, here we are."

They had come to the door to Desmond's cell.

"Now I warn you, Brian." Eleanor said. "You've seen video of this individual and you've seen the lab reports, but they cannot prepare you to meet him in person. Always remember, he's a killer, and like most sociopaths he's charming, manipulative, and narcissistically self-confident. Were it not for the intimate nature of your work with him, I wouldn't allow you to have access to him at all. Understand?"

"Yes," Brian replied. "I see."

She unlocked the door and they entered a small anteroom on the other side of the lasered windows. The lights in the cell were on, but Desmond himself could not be seen. Eleanor punched the button on an intercom.

"Mr. Sharpe?" she asked.

Desmond's face lurched into view right in front of them, his expression ghastly, as if he were a walking corpse. Brian jumped, startled. Eleanor frowned.

"Stop that," she scolded, as if talking to a naughty puppy. "I've brought someone to meet you."

Desmond looked at Brian, and his eyes locked, boring into Brian's.

"This is Brian Nicholls," Eleanor began brightly, "My new assistant, he's--"

She noticed Desmond's raptness, and rapped sharply on the glass in front of his nose, making him blink. His eyes narrowed, staring at her with unmitigated hatred.

"You. Behave yourself!"

Desmond backed off, making an exaggerated 'moi?' gesture.

Brian shook himself, as if waking. "Hello," he said through the intercom.

"Hi there," Desmond replied. "So, what's your interest in all this?"

"Brian is a physiologist," Eleanor replied. "He's here to help us understand how your mitochondria make energy."

"How nice. You wouldn't happen to have a phone, would you, Brian?"

"Well, no, I..." Brian began, and then his eyes went blank and his mouth went slack as Desmond's gaze returned to him.

"Brian!" Eleanor yelled, and grabbing the lapels of Brian's one good jacket, she shook him as hard as she could. Behind her, Desmond smiled.

"Who?" Brian said, foggy. What...what happened?"

"It was a mistake to bring you in here!" Eleanor said. "You're not ready. Get out!"

"But, I..." Brian protested.

"Now, Brian!" And he left, still slightly dazed. Eleanor kept her face toward the closed outer door, frowning.

"That went rather well, I thought," said Desmond.

Eleanor's expression changed, the frown vanishing, replaced by a cheery grin. She pivoted.

"Nice try," she said to Desmond.

"Thanks," Desmond replied, eyeing her warily. "What's wrong with you?"

"Oh, nothing. Why do you want a phone?"

"So I can call my lawyer, why do you think? People will be looking for me, you know. You can't just keep me locked up forever, with nothing to do or to read, for you to experiment on whenever you want."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that's what we were doing. Your physiology is very interesting, you know."

"That's right, you want to know all about what makes me tick, don't you. Hence Brian, the cute physiologist." He stopped, considering her. "You know, Eleanor, I've been thinking about you. What would make a frigid woman like you choose vampires as her life's work? Disappointed in love, Eleanor? Taking all that rage and frustration and projecting them onto me... because I embody everything you don't have? Excitement... passion... consummation?" His voice dropped, becoming a seductive purr. "Don't you know there's another way? Wouldn't your work be easier if you and I worked together? And oh, I promise you, it would be so much more pleasurable--" and then he broke off, because Eleanor had burst out laughing.

"Sorry," Eleanor said, wiping away tears. "I was wondering when you'd get around to that. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it, you being all sexy and all. It was quite the performance. But sorry, Cupcake. There is nothing we want from you we cannot take by force. Besides," she continued, looking up at him, a head and a half taller than she, and said, with utter honesty, "You're not my type."

The stood a moment longer, Desmond glowering, Eleanor rocking on the balls of her feet.

"Well," Eleanor said finally. "That was fun. I have to go now."

Turning, she unlocked the outer door. Then she looked back, over her shoulder, and damned if she didn't actually _wink:_

"Let me know if you have any questions."

The door shut, leaving Desmond staring at blank steel.

6

Setback

The van and its crew had assembled in a downtown alley on the outskirts of skid row. Courtland Warner cast a disapproving eye on the alcoholics and drug addicts drifting past the alley's mouth.

"This is a freaking goose chase," he complained.

"The L.A. coroner's office reports two deaths due at least in part to exsanguination in these alleys in the past six months," Eleanor replied, settling her bag more comfortably on her shoulder. "That young one we destroyed favored the waterfront and this isn't exactly Desmond's cup of tea. I'd say these deaths were the work of a third."

"I hope you're right, Ella," her cousin shot back. "Because this is costing us twenty grand a night." Still grumbling, he turned away to set up the equipment.

Behind him, a sound at the bottom of the alley caught Eleanor's ear. A scuffle? On her own, she stepped toward the sound. One step. A dozen. The sound was coming from the far side of a trash-filled dumpster. She stepped closer.

A body exploded from the side of the dumpster, a skinny vagrant in filthy rags, with wild eyes and snarled black hair. He collided with Eleanor, knocking her down and grabbing her shoulder bag.

She fought to hang onto it, but couldn't. He ripped it away and was gone, down and out of the alley. Eleanor screamed.

Courtland and the men came running up. "He got my bag!" Eleanor cried, cradling her skinned knee. And to their blank looks she screamed _"It has the file drive in it!"_

"Shit!" Courtland said. He took off after the vagrant, followed by the others, who moved more slowly, encumbered by their half-donned equipment. He rounded the corner, and Eleanor limped after him, nursing her knee. At the corner, her cousin was nowhere in sight.

"Courtland?"

He emerged from the mouth of another alley, his fist wrapped around a bleeding wrist.

"Son of a bitch cut me!" he said.

"Did you get the file?"

"No."

"We have to find it!" Eleanor cried, panic rising.

"Okay, okay," Courtland replied, fishing a first aid kit out of the van. "Suits off, guys. Change of plans. Split up. We're looking for a tan leather shoulder bag. Check every dumpster, every doorway, under every car."

The men shed their backpacks and wands and moved off. "It's okay," Courtland said to Eleanor. "He's probably just after cash to buy drugs, and will dump the purse as soon as he can. The file drive will mean nothing to him. We'll get it back."

"Yes, but if we don't," Eleanor said, fear coming into her eyes, "What am I going to tell Deke Hollingsworth?"

Eleanor, her eyes red-rimmed and tired, stood before Deke Hollingsworth in the CG&P executive boardroom, Courtland slightly behind her. Deke was not happy.

"And CG&P personnel were depicted on this file," he said, tight-lipped.

"Yes," Eleanor replied.

"Wearing CG&P uniforms," Deke continued.

"Yes," Eleanor replied.

"The guy probably just wanted cash for drugs, and threw the purse into the nearest sewer," Courtland offered.

"Well by God he better have!" Deke exploded, all six feet two of his former college-football-star body trembling with rage. "Because if this gets out I swear to you, heads will roll!" With an effort, he got himself under control. "Now I have a meeting to attend and you've made me late. In future," he growled, "all CG&P property is to remain on CG&P grounds. Is that clear, Dr. Warner?"

"Yes, Mr. Hollingsworth," Eleanor replied, miserable.

"Good!" Deke left the boardroom, slamming the door behind him.

Meanwhile, across town, a pair of double-gloved hands placed the file drive from Eleanor's purse into a stolen Magna Pictures envelope, sealed it, and affixed a label addressing the delivery to Remy Ramierez, Wolf News.

7

Remy

Remy sighed, running the footage of the Clarke sisters across her screen again. Offspring of a successful restaurant-chain family, trust-fund kids with no need to ever really work, the teen-aged twins seemed to spend all their time getting kicked out of nightclubs and driving drunk. But they were young, thin and rich, so America couldn't get enough of them. 'Talentless train wrecks,' Remy thought, but no, that wasn't right. Being train wrecks _was_ their talent.

She sighed again. Graduate of Columbia School of Journalism. The first of her family to attend college, scrounging through on scholarships, part-time jobs, legal amphetamines and grit. And this was her job: reporting on the antics of spoiled brats.

The mail kid dropped her mail onto her desk and the Magna Pictures envelope caught her eye. _For your consideration,_ read the tag on the file drive, so she stuck it into her computer's port. Then she blinked, lunging for the volume control as Desmond Sharpe's screams filled the room.

"Jeez, Rem, what are you watching, _Writhe?"_ her colleague Jim asked, naming the latest torture-porn horror flick cleaning up at the box office. Intrigued, he rolled his chair over to Remy's cubicle. "Is that Desmond Sharpe?" he asked.

"Yeah," Remy replied, not taking her eyes from the screen.

"Is this from his movie?" Jim asked.

"No," Remy replied. "I just saw it on Saturday, and there's nothing like this in it."

"What's that on their uniforms?" Jim asked, squinting at the screen. "C...G...and P. The gas company? Why would the gas company be torturing Desmond Sharpe?"

Remy didn't answer. The back of her neck was tingling. Sweat had broken out in her armpits. All her reporter's instincts, long dulled by a steady diet of tabloid crap, suddenly revived. _Writhe_ was doing good business but _King of Vampires_ had been number one at the box office for the past three weeks straight, and that in the crowded autumn market. This might be a hoax, it might be a joke, but every fiber of her being was telling her it was a lead. A real story.

"Good question," she said, and reached for her phone.

Remy waited in a reception room at the CG&P headquarters, her computer on her lap, Guy Mitchell at her side. Remy was waiting quietly, but she couldn't help but notice Guy was nervous, fidgety. She considered asking him how Desmond was but decided against it, deciding instead to let it play out, see where it went.

A receptionist ushered them into an office, where a tall, middle-aged man in Friday-casual chinos and polo shirts held out his hand to Remy.

"Mr. Mahoney," Remy said. "Thank you for meeting us on such short notice. Allow me to introduce Guy Mitchell." She watched Mahoney's face carefully. "He's Desmond Sharpe's agent."

Remy felt a burst of joy as Chuck Mahoney blinked and blanched, obviously rocked. But he recovered quickly.

"The movie star?" he said, as if baffled. "I'm sorry... are you researching a movie? How can I help you?"

Remy spun her notebook around to face Mahoney. "Perhaps this will explain, Mr. Mahoney," she said, and pushed PLAY. Desmond's screams sounded forth. Mahoney swallowed hard.

"I... I'm sorry," he said, stalling for time. "I don't understand... is this from a movie? I don't think legal will allow our uniforms..."

"Mr. Mitchell here," Remy replied, "Is of the opinion that it's a hoax. Cornelius Ray, the director of _King of Vampire_ s, denies any knowledge of it."

"I never said that!" Guy said, startled.

"Of course not," Remy replied. "I called him after I called you."

"I'm very sorry," Chuck Mahoney said, "I don't know anything about this and I'm certain nothing like this was ever shot in any CG&P facility."

"Well then, I'm sure Mr. Mitchell is right, and it's a hoax," Remy said to Mahoney. "I'm sorry to have taken your time. Thank you again, Mr. Mahoney."

"Any time, Ms. Ramirez," Mahoney lied. "Anytime I can do anything for you..."

They left his office, and Chuck grabbed the phone.

"Get me Deke. Now. Tell him it's urgent!"

Out in the parking lot, Remy turned to Guy.

"So," she said.

"So," he replied.

"So you don't know anything about it, Cornelius Ray doesn't know anything about it, CG&P doesn't know anything about it, and according to you, Desmond Sharpe is shooting an independent film in Tierra del Fuego."

"Looks like," Guy replied, shrugging, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his $400 jeans.

"Well, I'm sure you're right," Remy said, edging toward her car. "It's just a hoax. But hey, when Desmond gets back from South America, remember, 'Wolf Number One!"

"Sure thing, Remy."

They both headed for their cars, each trying to move faster than the other but not look like it. As soon as she got in her car, Remy reached for her phone. In his car, Guy reached for his.

"Mike," Remy said to her producer.

"Cynthia," Guy said to Desmond's lawyer.

"Deke," Chuck Mahoney said to his boss.

"About that file drive, CG&P denies knowing anything about it." Remy said to Mike.

"About that file drive, have you been able to raise Desmond?" Guy said to Cynthia.

"About that file drive, Jesus, the fucking media has it!" Chuck said to Deke.

"So it probably is a hoax," Mike replied to Remy.

"No. I've tried the Tokyo house, the Sydney house, even the mausoleum, nothing," Cynthia said to Guy.

"What!?" Deke bellowed at Chuck.

"Yeah, except that _Guy Mitchell_ just drove over and spent two of his very important hours with me, on nothing more than that drive." Remy said to Mike.

"Jesus, Cyn, what if they really have him?" Guy said to Cynthia.

"Remy Ramierez, that _Movies Tonight_ bimbo, and Desmond Sharpe's agent were just here! They have the file!" Chuck said to Deke.

"Did he really." Mike said.

"We have to get him back. We have --Guy, are you on a cell?" Cynthia said.

"Jesus Christ. How'd they get it?" Deke said.

"Yeah! And he's as curious as we are, almost jumping out of his skin," Remy told Mike.

"Yeah," Guy told Cynthia.

"I have no idea," Chuck told Deke.

"Mike, you know this is hot. This isn't _Movies Tonight._ This is--"

"Then get here as fast as you can or call me on a land line! We have to get our story straight before they put it on--"

"Fucking hell. Call Legal. We have to get our asses covered before they put it on--"

"The six o'clock news!" Remy, Cynthia and Deke all said.

Eleanor and Courtland Warner stood before a livid Deke Hollingsworth and a grim-faced Chuck Mahoney in the CG&P executive board-room. On the wall, a Remy Ramierez's face filled a TV screen.

"What you are about to see is graphic," Remy was saying. "Viewer discretion is advised."

And Desmond's outraged screams once more sounded forth.

Across Los Angeles, others also watched their TV screens. In a Century City high-rise, Guy and Cynthia watched. In the Wolf News bullpen on Bundy, Remy and Mike watched. Out in Burbank, executives at Magna Pictures, which had released _King of Vampires,_ watched. Downtown, the L.A. District Attorney watched. And in their homes and in their bars and on their phones, Desmond's fans watched. Many, many people watched Desmond Sharpe be tortured on TV, but not Desmond, who was in his cell, being subjected to a TV he couldn't control perpetually tuned to _Jim Henson's Muppet Babies._

The screaming ceased. Remy's face came back.

"Is it real, or is it a hoax? Would a respected Fortune 500 company really kidnap and torture a movie star? Only Desmond Sharpe can say, and he cannot be found. The burning question tonight: where is Desmond Sharpe?"

Deke Hollingsworth went apoplectic on Eleanor. "I cannot believe your incompetence has so damaged this company!" he screamed. "How could you be so careless, so stupid?! If we suffer material damages I swear not only will I shitcan you but you will be held personally liable for our losses!"

"Perhaps it's not as bad as it seems," said Courtland.

"This company has just been exposed to charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault and God knows what else!" Deke yelled, "How is it not as bad as it seems?!"

Courtland answered quietly.

"CG&P cannot be accused of kidnapping, nor false imprisonment, nor assault," he said, "Because kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault only apply to _people."_

A long silence filled the boardroom.

"This is a publicly-traded company, is it not?" Courtland continued. "You were planning to someday go public with the provenance of these new technologies, weren't you? CG&P will not appear to be in the wrong because CG&P is not _in_ the wrong. Desmond Sharpe is not a human being. He is a vampire, a monster we have removed from the streets for the betterment of mankind. What's wrong about that?" He brought his hands up to his chin, tenting his fingers. "Society must be protected," he said.

"It'll mean court..." Hollingsworth said.

"It was going there anyway," Courtland replied. "Besides, Deke," he added gently, "What other choice do we have?"

Hollingsworth shook his head. "I hope to Christ you're right," he said.

"I'm a lawyer," Courtland replied. "I know the law. Call a press conference, tonight. The best defense is a good offense... we cannot appear hesitant or apologetic. We cannot appear _guilty._ And I'll talk to Legal."

Deeper in the building, telephones began to ring. Hollingsworth waited one beat, then nodded curtly, dismissing them. Eleanor and Courtland stepped out into the hall.

"Are you all right?" Courtland asked his cousin.

"Don't worry about me," she replied, opening her handbag and checking on her gun.

Desmond sat at the plastic table in his cell, staring at the two interlocking rings he'd drawn on the table-top in his own blood. Suddenly, the outer door open, and Eleanor Warner entered. Pointing to the deadly radiation-emitting boxes in the upper corners, she unlocked the inner door and stepped inside Desmond's cell, closing the door behind her.

"Now what?" Desmond asked, and in reply Eleanor pulled out a walkie-talkie.

"Okay," she said, and then a whole crowd of people poured into the antechamber: Remy and her camera crew, other reporters and their crews, CG&P lawyers, CG&P security officers, Chuck Mahoney and sweet Mary and Joseph, Guy Mitchell and Cynthia Carroll!

"Guy!" Desmond exclaimed. "Cynthia!"

He rushed to the reinforced window, but recoiled from the invisible radiation buzzing between the panes.

Cynthia pounced on Eleanor. "I demand you release him!" she ordered.

"I'm sorry," Eleanor replied. "I can't do that."

"What do you mean, you can't do that?" Guy demanded. "He's a movie star!"

"No, he's a trade secret," Eleanor replied.

"You release him right now!" said Cynthia.

"Get a court order," said Eleanor.

"He is my client!" said Cynthia.

"Be that as it may, he is also a vampire," said Eleanor.

"Are you _insane?"_ said Cynthia.

"If I were insane, could I do this?" said Eleanor, and whipping out her gun, she shot Desmond point-blank in the face. Blood, bone and pulverized tongue splashed against the window in front of the horrified onlookers. They gasped.

" _Oh, vu vucking bith!"_ said Desmond... and before the eyes of the onlookers and the rolling cameras, his face healed.

"Desmond...!" Cynthia breathed.

"Oh, like you didn't know," Eleanor said, and Cynthia clammed up, shutting her mouth with an audible _hup_.

"What are you doing?!" Desmond cried at Eleanor, his face completely restored.

"Finishing what you started," she replied calmly, replacing her gun in her handbag. "You wanted to be famous."

"Desmond! Desmond!" Remy yelled, "Do you have anything to say?" And that set them all off, the reporters baying for a quote and Cynthia yelling "Desmond, say nothing!" and the CG&P security guards bawling "All right folks, show's over. Let's all go back to the conference room. Nothing more to see here," and herding them all out until it was Eleanor and Desmond alone once more.

"What have you done?!" Desmond almost wailed.

"You started it," Eleanor replied. "Standing there, flapping your vampire arms around, going 'look at me, look at me!' Well, now they are. Happy?"

"When I get out of here," Desmond said, gritting his teeth, "I swear by all that is holy _I. Will. Kill. You!"_

Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Anyone can kill me," she said. "Let's see you make me come."

Once more indicating the radiation boxes, she marched out of the cell, locked it behind her and opened the anteroom door. "Oh, Ms. Carroll!" she cried. "Mr. Mitchell! Tell me: what color is blood?" The door shut behind her, and Desmond was once more alone.

Out in the CG&P parking lot, Cynthia and Guy sat slumped in the front seat of Cynthia's Mercedes, both of them almost numb from what they'd just heard from Eleanor Warner. Guy's cell phone rang, and wearily, he answered it.

Even across the aether, the New York accent of Bruno Schultz, President of Magna Pictures, was unmistakable.

"Guy?" he yelled. "What the hell is going on over there?"

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you, Bruno," Guy sighed.

"Well, is it true? Are they holding him? And they won't let him go?"

"Yeah," Guy said. 'It's true."

"Well, that's a problem, Guy, because we have a twenty-million-dollar contract with that bloodsucking putz, pay or play!"

"I know, Bruno," Guy said, rubbing his temples. "I made the deal."

"Then it's your job to fix it!" Bruno yelled. "You hear me? I don't care how, but you fix it!"

Bruno hung up, and Guy turned to Cynthia. "Bruno wants us to fix it," he said.

8

Judge Davis

Back in the CG&P lab, Eleanor slapped a temporary restraining order on the table in front of Brian. "Well, they got a restraining order," she complained. "As of eight a.m. this morning, we are legally enjoined from performing any more experiments upon Desmond Sharpe, esquire. Well. We can wait it out, of course, but now I have to go to court to fight her attempt to get an injunction forcing us to release him us: waste of time!"

"What shall I do in the meantime?" Brian asked.

"Oh, the last of those glucose tests," Eleanor replied, "Or the tidal volume readings."

"That won't take very long," Brian said. "I was hoping for new samples."

Gathering her things for court, Eleanor nodded toward the book on radiation she'd given him.

"I'm sure you'll think of something," she said, and left.

At the Los Angeles County Court, Judge Laverna Davis lowered Cynthia's Petition for Injunction and surveyed her courtroom. On one side sat Cynthia Carroll, Guy Mitchell and lawyers from Magna Pictures; on the other Courtland and Eleanor Warner, and lawyers representing Consolidated Gas and Power. Behind them in the observer's area sat the almost salivating press corps, including Remy and her crew.

"Is this true?" Judge Davis asked Courtland. "Are you holding him against his will?

Courtland stood. "Yes, your Honor," he said. "We are."

Judge Davis was astounded. "Why... why is this woman even standing in front of me?" she asked rhetorically. To Cynthia, she said, "Have you brought criminal charges?"

"We filed this morning, your Honor," Cynthia said, glaring at Courtland.

"Well, Mr. Warner?" Judge Davis said. "Would you care to explain your client's actions?"

"Certainly, your Honor," Courtland replied. "We are holding Desmond Sharpe against his will because his will is immaterial. Desmond Sharpe has no rights. Desmond Sharpe is not a human being." The press corps gasped, and Judge Davis barked "Quiet!"

Cynthia now stood. "Your Honor, this is absurd," she said. "Of course he's a human being. I have here his papers of U.S. citizenship, issued in 1984..."

"Using whose birth certificate, Ms. Carroll?" Courtland asked.

"Mr. Warner, you will address your remarks to me," Judge Davis said, an edge to her voice.

"I apologize, your Honor," Courtland said. "But we stand by our assertion: Desmond Sharpe is not a human being. He is a vampire."

"Your Honor, this is ridiculous!" Cynthia cried.

"I am inclined to agree with you, Ms. Carroll," Judge Davis said. "Mr. Warner, only my stubborn refusal to believe that the entire CG&P organization has lost its collective mind is keeping me from citing you for contempt of court."

"I understand, your Honor," Courtland said. "I was just as skeptical when I first learned the facts of the case. But with the court's permission, I'd like to call as witness Dr. Eleanor Warner."

At a nod from Judge Warner, Eleanor rose, and walked to the witness' chair.

Meanwhile, in the CG&P lab, Brian idly leafed through the book on radiation. A passage caught his eye, and he read with more interest... and then with intense interest. He skipped back a few pages, read avidly, then spun to face the large chart of the periodic table on the wall. "Oh, my," he said.

In the courtroom, Eleanor sat in the witness' chair. Courtland stood before her.

"Eleanor," he said. "You understand you are under oath, and any false statements expose you to the charge of perjury?"

"Of course," Eleanor replied.

"You are currently employed by Consolidated Gas and Power?"

"Yes."

"And you obtained your doctorate in biotechnology from Cal Tech, after which you did research on plant-derived ethanols at the H. West Institute for Alternative Fuel Development?"

"Yes."

"And you now lead the research into the physiology of the creature known as Desmond Sharpe?"

"Yes."

In the lab, Brian held his cell phone to his ear. Eleanor's voice played, saying, _You've reached Dr. Eleanor Warner, please leave a message..._ Exasperated, he hung up, and then, squaring his shoulders as if reaching a momentous decision, left the lab.

"In your expert opinion," Courtland said to Eleanor, "is CG&P justified in holding this creature against his will?"

"Definitely," Eleanor replied. "By his own admission, Desmond Sharpe is a bipedal, sanguinivorous humanoid, or, if you will, a vampire. He therefore, under the law, has no more rights than a lab rat."

"But, Doctor, what evidence do you have of this?"

"Mr. Sharpe was apprehended using technology that exploited his vampiric physiology," Eleanor said. "Were he not what he is, we could not have captured him. Experiments with various foodstuffs have shown that Mr. Sharpe is incapable of eating normally. And, of course, Mr. Sharpe heals inhumanly fast, as I believe the world recently saw."

"And you can back all this up with hard data?"

"Yes... although to do so in open court would endanger valuable trade secrets," Eleanor concluded.

Courtland thanked her, and retired. Cynthia, eyes glinting, came forward.

"Dr. Warner, tell me: have you ever personally witnessed Mr. Sharpe kill anyone?" she asked.

"No," Eleanor replied.

"Ever see him assault anyone?"

"No."

"Ever see him drink blood? Other than that you forced on him, that is."

"No."

"So you really have no evidence that he's a "vampire" at all, do you?" Cynthia asked. For all you know he's just a guy with unusual physiology, right?"

Courtland interrupted. "Your Honor, we will be more than happy to supply Ms. Carroll with all the evidence she requires," he said.

"And just when will that be, Counselor? When you feel like it? Your Honor, I demand that they release him at once!"

"Your Honor, we cannot proceed until you issue a gag order protecting CG&P trade secrets!" Courtland countered.

"A man is in immediate danger!" Cynthia cried.

"He's not a man!" Courtland cried back.

"Which you have not proved!" Cynthia snarled.

"Well, we will!" Courtland snarled back.

"May I say something?" Eleanor asked.

"Oh, Dr. Warner," said Judge Davis. "Yes, you may."

"Regardless of whatever else he may be," Eleanor said, "Desmond Sharpe is a killer. In order to live he must kill, and his favorite victim is human. He has not been fed in six days. If you free him, your Honor, I assure you, someone will die tonight."

At CG&P, Brian hesitated outside the door to the antechamber of Desmond's cell, then unlocked the door and stepped inside.

"Right," Judge Davis said. "I want to see this individual for myself."

Desmond looked up, surprised to see Brian alone.

"You're breathing!" Brian said.

In the courtroom, Eleanor and Courtland exchanged a glance, then raised their eyebrows at Judge Davis as if to say, "you asked for it."

Later, in the hallway outside Desmond's cell, Courtland handed Judge Davis a clipboard on which was fastened a CG&P waiver. "Please sign," he said, "Indicating you have been warned as to the true nature of the individual and the risks inherent in this visit and of your agreement to hold CG&P and all its affiliates harmless in the event you are injured, maimed or killed." Eyeballing him hard, Judge Davis signed the waiver.

Eleanor unlocked the door, stepped through...and stopped short, gasping. Brian and Desmond were face-to-face through the glass.

"Brian, what are you doing here?" Eleanor cried.

"Eleanor, I found something, in..."

"Are you all right?!"

"Yes, I'm fine. I--"

"Do you recall any lost time?"

"No, I'm fine, but I--"

"Dr. Warner?" Judge Davis asked from the hall.

"Later, Brian!" Eleanor snapped. "This way, your Honor," she said to Judge Davis. Unlocking the inner door, she allowed Judge Davis to step through.

"Oh, God," Desmond said.

"Mr. Sharpe?" Judge Davis said.

"You bitch!" Desmond spat at Eleanor.

"Are you all right?" Judge Davis said to Desmond, taking a step toward him.

"Stay away from me!" Desmond said desperately to Judge Davis... but she stepped even closer.

"I'm here to help you, Mr. Sharpe," she said.

"No!" Desmond said, almost strangling on it, and turned his back on the approaching woman. Meaning well, Judge Davis reached out and touched his shoulder.

"Mr. Sharpe?"

Desmond's hand clamped onto Judge Davis' wrist. He turned, his eyes suddenly strange, inhuman. Judge Davis gasped and tried to pull away, but he pulled her closer.

"Ah, Laverna," he said. "You've come to me at last." His blank eyes gazed into hers, and she stopped struggling, her brow smoothing out, her expression softening. Desmond twined his hands in her hair

"Morris hasn't ever really satisfied you, has he?" he murmured to her. "Oh, I know, you love him, you would never betray him, but he doesn't know, does he? Not like I do. He doesn't know how easy it is to give a woman pleasure when she wants it, when she's already half way there..."

He slipped his knee between her legs, and her head fell back. "When all it takes is a gentle nudge," he said, and as Judge Davis moaned, he sank his fangs into the veins of her neck. The room dissolved into a red haze, swarming with a woman's orgasmic moans.

Judge Davis hit the ground, hard. Shocked, her eyes popped open. She was on the floor, her skirt pushed up. People were pounding on the connecting glass, and Desmond was across the room, crumpled up, his garments smoking.

She rolled onto her hip, touched her hand to her smarting throat and gasped when it came away coated in blood.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" she said.

The inner door unlocked, and Eleanor rushed to her side.

"What is he?" Judge Davis shrieked. "What is he? My God, that thing belongs in quarantine!" She turned on Desmond, who still lay across the room. "How dare you! That was battery! I'm pressing charges!"

Eleanor took her by the shoulders. "Your Honor, I agree, he belongs in containment," she said. "But where is the facility as well-equipped as ours to hold him? Show it to me and I'll move him tonight. But for right now, isn't he better off where he is?"

"Yes... yes... let him stay." Judge Davis said, and humiliation flooded her as the memory of what she'd just felt, what she'd just _done_ before all these people hit her. She rounded on Cynthia.

"And you!" she spat.

Everyone else had left the antechamber outside Desmond's cell, and Cynthia stared dejectedly at the big, red DENIED scrawled in Sharpie across her Petition for Injunction, which Judge Davis had thrust at her before she stormed out of CG&P. Guy came up next to her, whispering hoarsely.

"Jesus, Cyn, don't you see? That's going to be their tactic with every judge up to the Supreme Court! We're screwed, Cynthia, because it's true. Desmond is a vampire! We're screwed!"

"No. There has to be a way."

"Well, I'm out of it, right now."

"What?"

"I'm out of it, and if anybody asks I never knew, not until just a minute ago, you hear me? I never really knew!"

"Of course you knew, and you were happy to profit from it! Desmond Sharpe made you rich!"

"And he's still going to," Guy said, pulling out his phone and escaping into the hall. Before the door closed Cynthia heard him saying, "Terry, baby! Do me a solid. Get on the horn and get me some CG&P stock..."

"You bastard! Guy!" she yelled, but it was no use. The door was closed and he was gone.

"Cynthia," said Desmond through the intercom. She turned, and there he was, his skin red and blistered.

"Desmond, I'm so sorry," she said. "What Guy says is true, they'll do that with every judge who stands in their way, all the way to the Supreme Court."

"I'm sorry too, Cynthia," Desmond replied. "I've always tried to shield my servants."

"I don't know what to do," Cynthia said, a very difficult admission for her.

"How long until we get to the Supreme Court?" Desmond asked.

"Oh, Desmond. That's the thing... with all the appeals, by the time we work our way through the courts, it could be years from now." Cynthia replied, fighting tears.

"Years!"

"Yes."

Desmond stalked away, making a circuit of his cell before coming back to the window between Cynthia and himself.

"Cynthia?" he said. "Do I have your attention?"

"Yes?"

"Good. You're fired, Cynthia."

"What?"

"Don't take it personally. You've done enough. We've had a good run but the rules have irrevocably changed, and I don't want you exposed to any liability you don't have to be. Understand?"

"But..."

"I mean it, Cynthia."

"Okay," Cynthia said, her heart breaking.

"Good. Thank you, Cynthia. Now go."

She turned and opened the door to the hallway. Halfway through, she turned back.

"Oh, I forgot. The kids at that theater are having a rally tonight in your honor. I thought that might cheer you up."

"Thanks, Cynthia," Desmond replied. "It does. Goodbye, Cynthia." And he watched the door close behind her.

In her car, Judge Davis searched her purse and pockets. "Where's my cell phone?" she asked no one.

In his cell, Desmond moved to the one corner he'd discovered was uncovered by the closed-circuit cameras and pulled Judge Davis's cellular telephone from the inside pocket of his rumpled tuxedo. Opened it. Dialed a long number. It rang once. Twice.

"Ja?" said a voice.

"Ingmar, ist Desmond," Desmond replied. "Jag behover din hjalp med en sak."

9

Cynthia

For years, Cynthia Carroll had worked as a prosecutor in the L.A. County D.A.'s office, and for years she'd watched criminals she knew to be guilty as sin walk free on technicalities. The final straw had been Wilberforce Clarence-Hughes IV, CFO of Hancock Investments, whom she knew had arranged the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl as punishment for her father's cooperation with an IRS investigation. As he exited the courtroom a free man, surrounded by his high-priced legal team, Clarence-Hughes, this elegant, dignified bastion of old Los Angeles in a four thousand dollar suit, had looked at Cynthia and fluttered his tongue in his mouth, miming cunnilingus.

Cynthia almost quit that night. Instead, she got a present. Flicking on the lights of her condo, she gasped at the sight of Clarence-Hughes's head sitting in a pool of blood inside a 13 x 9 glass baking pan on her kitchen table.

"Don't scream," Desmond had said, and he had talked to her. Told her that she'd never again have to watch scumbags like Clarence-Hughes walk free. That she'd never want for money. He'd told her what he was, and that she was free to say no, but the offer would never come again, and no one would ever believe her if she talked.

And she'd said yes. Maybe if was wrong, but Cynthia had lived long enough in the world to know that wrongs very frequently went unpunished, and that there were degrees of wrong. So she'd gone to work for Desmond Sharpe, helped him realize his dream of movie stardom, and never regretted her decision, until tonight.

She sat in her car across from the Galaxy Cinema. Rain was falling. November was L.A.'s rainiest month, and a steady drizzle showed signs of getting serious later. A line had formed down the block from the theater, the kids huddled against the cold and wet, and against the TV crews trying to get sound bites and the religious wackos trying to save their souls. Cynthia got out of her car, picked up the ticket left for her at the box office. Walking to the end of the line, she overheard snippets of talk:

"It's not fair!" a girl said. "He belongs to us now! They can't just take him away!"

"No way, Dude!" said a boy. "He'll get free. You can't keep Desmond in a cage, you'll see!"

"These children are mislead. God told me to come here tonight and lead them to the path of true righteousness..."

Cynthia took her place at the end of the line, behind two teen-aged boys who passed a doob back and forth between them.

"Did you hear?" one of the boys said. "They subpoenaed a copy of the movie. They're going to try to prove it isn't fiction."

"That's pretty cool, actually," the second boy replied. Then the line began to move, and she found herself walking up the faded staircase to the balcony, took a seat at the far right.

Below, the mood was subdued. There was no dancing, no rock music, no balloons bouncing back and forth. The stage was now blocked by black curtain, and there was a depressed, funereal feel in the house.

Without preamble, a young woman in a simple black dress, with red hair and elfin features, stepped through the curtains, and stood, waiting, until the house fell silent. Then, without accompaniment, she began to sing.

Her voice was thin, shaky, and heartbreaking in its naked exposure. Cynthia felt a stab of pity. Poor thing, she meant so well, but was clearly out of her depth.

She sang a stanza, then music did come in, strings, simple and warm, and it was as if the music itself were laying hands upon her, propping her up, supporting her. Her voice grew stronger, surer, even as the song dropped to a low note, her body bent as though beneath a terrible weight... and then shockingly, stunningly, she stepped that note up, octave after octave after octave after octave, her back straightening, her chin lifting, and Cynthia felt the hair on her neck stand on end as the girl's voice soared, Broadway strong, hitting the back wall. Behind her, the black curtains swept open, and she was suddenly backed by a full, robed _choir,_ and it was like getting punched in the heart. The song became an anthem, openly defiant, and it wasn't just about Desmond anymore, it was a song for anyone, anywhere, who had ever experienced defeat, scorn or injustice and was determined to survive, overcome and triumph. It was a song about _resurrection,_ and Cynthia, overcome, found herself choking back sobs.

It finished on a mighty, sustained chord, and the audience was on its feet, chanting _Desmond! Desmond! Desmond!_ shaking the very walls. The girl had spun around, acknowledging the choir, but then she turned and stalked to the front of the stage, where she spoke the words that started every midnight screening of _King of Vampires: "Start the fucking flick!"_

The audience took it up. " _Start the fucking flick! Start the fucking flick!"_ Only this time it was a cry of defiance, the defiance of the young toward every self-serving, compromised, cowardly decision ever made by the adult world. The movie began to a thunderous cheer, and below, Cynthia saw the red-headed girl moving toward the lobby with one of the camera crews, and was suddenly seized by the need to thank her for her song, to let her know how much it would have meant to Desmond. Skirting the side wall of the balcony, she took the stairs to the lobby.

The cameras were already rolling. The girl was speaking, her voice tight and squeaky with emotion.

"Desmond Sharpe is a vampire, so what?" she was saying. "Does that mean he has no rights? Is there no room in our world for him? If this movie really does show actual events, then look who he picks for his victims: murderers, rapists, tyrants... maybe Desmond Sharpe exists because he was meant to exist!"

"So you think he's just part of the natural order?" a reporter asked.

"It's like putting wolves back into Yellowstone," the girl replied.

"But what about due process?" asked another reporter. "Aren't those alleged murderers and rapists guaranteed a fair trial?"

"Perhaps nature has her own ideas about what's fair."

"But he kills people!"

"Yes, but it's not as if he has a choice, is it? Unlike a mortal killer, he has a--" and she just happened to turn her head in Cynthia's direction, just happen to make eye contact as she said it, _"biological imperative_ to do it."

Cynthia backed away. The reporters had closed around the girl, and now Cynthia's head was spinning. She left the theater, got in her car. Sat staring blankly at the rain.

_Could it work?_ she was thinking. _Is he part of the natural order? And are you prepared to argue that in Federal Court?_

She put her head down on the steering wheel. If he is part of the natural order, she thought, then what is the law to do with him? What place in society is he to fill? Is he to be exploited, like a piece of livestock? Or is he a human being, with all the rights and privileges inherent thereto? And if he is, then is he to be tried for his crimes and executed, if state laws apply? Jesus, how many states has he lived in? How many countries? What are the statutes of limitations in those states/countries?

"Can't someone else ask these questions?" she said out loud, knowing even as she did that no, there was no one else. It had to be her. She was Desmond's lawyer, and it was Desmond in that cage. If these questions were to be asked, in court, it was she who must ask them. That, or quit now. Cut and run like Guy. Run... or fight.

The anteroom door opened, and Cynthia, soaking wet, entered. A voice in the hall, high-pitched and anxious, was calling, "I'll have to notify Legal..."

"You do that," Cynthia called back. "Court order, Buddy!" and she slapped a wet document up against the window to Desmond's cell.

"Cynthia?" Desmond asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I have a court order allowing you access to counsel pending the determination of your legal status," Cynthia replied.

"I thought I fired you," Desmond said.

"You were obviously under duress and didn't know what you were doing." Despite himself, Desmond smiled.

"Desmond, I'm going to fight," Cynthia said. "I'm going to argue that you have rights in spite of what you are. I'm going to argue that you have a biological imperative to do what you do, and that the law must be amended to make room for you."

"But, Cynthia, by defending me you open yourself to prosecution."

"I know. I don't care."

Desmond brought his hand up to the glass, nodded for her to do the same. Across the glass they stood palm-to-palm, until Desmond could stand the searing no longer.

"That court order shuts off the recording devices in this room," Cynthia said. "And when we're sure they are off you must tell me everything, even the bad parts. I've arranged an expedited hearing in County Superior, and it's better if we bring up damaging evidence before they do."

Desmond thought. "How soon is expedited?" he asked.

"Two days," Cynthia replied.

"Two days... that works," said Desmond.

"Works for what?" Cynthia asked.

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud," he said. "Pull up a chair, Cynthia. It's a long story."

10

L.A. Superior

Six stories below the lighted window of the courtroom, a media circus had taken up residence in the street, their anchors competing for space to shoot without showing another anchor doing just that in the background. Remy Ramierez, off _Movies Tonight!_ forever, and possessed of the coveted spot just opposite the imposing doors, was saying into her camera, "In the Los Angeles Superior Court tonight, a battle that can only be described as bizarre. On one side a Hollywood megastar, famed for walking the tightrope between fantasy and fact, on the other industrial giant CG&P. At stake: a man's freedom, the future of nuclear energy, and just possibly, the definition of what it means to be human."

In the courtroom, Cynthia paced before the Superior Court judge. Behind her, on one side, sat Eleanor, Courtland and the CG&P lawyers; on the other, studio lawyers, and behind them all, local and national press.

"Your Honor," Cynthia said, "we are here tonight to determine the legal status of the individual known as Desmond Sharpe. You will hear my opponents claim that Mr. Sharpe has no rights under the law, because the law guarantees rights to humans only, and that Mr. Sharpe is not human. They will tell you that he is a vampire."

She looked up and met the judge's gaze.

"Well, Your Honor, they are correct in one thing: Desmond Sharpe _is_ a vampire."

The observers gasped, and the Judge waved them quiet.

"Are you really sure you want to continue with this, Ms. Carroll?" he asked.

"Quite sure, Your Honor," Cynthia replied. "May I?" The judge nodded.

"He has been so for over four hundred years." Cynthia said. "Nevertheless, we intend to prove that he was human before he became a vampire, and he is, therefore, human now, despite the physiological changes he has undergone. We intend also to prove that whatever acts he may have committed since that transformation --assault, robbery, even murder-- were committed against his free will, in response to the overwhelming biological imperative placed upon him by his own body. And now, Your Honor, I would like to call as my first witness Mr. Desmond Sharpe."

There was a jostling as the observers jockeyed for a view of the courtroom doors, and they gasped again as a shiny, silver coffin rolled in on a wheeled cart, escorted by wand-armed CG&P guards, some kind of running machine attached to its top.

"What the hell is that?" one reporter asked another.

"Uh," the second reporter replied, reading from a CG&P press release, "It's, uh, a 'vapor-diffusion vacuum pump.' It creates a vacuum inside the coffin, so that anything inside would be pushing not just on the lid but against atmospheric pressure if it tried to get out. And the coffin is made of titanium."

"Holy jeez," the first reporter whistled. "They're loaded for bear."

The guards pushed the coffin to the front of the courtroom. They threw a switch, and a great hissing was heard as air sucked into the coffin. They took up posts in the corners of the room as Desmond's shackled hands pushed up the lid. The observers gasped again as he sat up in the coffin.

"Cute, you assholes!" he snarled.

"There will be no swearing in my courtroom, Sir," the judge remarked.

Desmond kicked up the lower lid of the coffin and swung his legs over, hopped down.

"You have my deepest apology, I'm sure," he drawled.

He checked his wristwatch, and stepped aside as the coffin was wheeled away, sneering at the guards. Cynthia came forward and his expression changed to a smile.

"Will you take the stand, Mr. Sharpe?" she asked, and he did, lounging in the chair, ankles crossed in front of him as Cynthia began her questioning.

"First off, you're not really "Desmond Sharpe," are you?" she asked.

"No," Desmond replied. "No. I was born Johannes van der Hoeven in Antwerp, in the year 1621."

"Your Honor, I would like to submit the following exhibits: a photstat of Johannes van der Hoeven's baptismal entry in a 1621 parish register, and bank records dated 1644, 1792, 1838, uh, 1867, 1912, 1963, and 2014, all bearing the signature --under various aliases-- of the individual currently known as Desmond Sharpe."

She turns back to Desmond. "How did you become a vampire?" she asked.

"I was waylaid one night by a vampire, who drained my blood and then forced me to drink his," Desmond replied. He shrugged. "The usual."

"Why did he do it?" Cynthia asked.

"Ironically, I think he did it as an experiment," Desmond replied.

"Experiment?"

"To see if vampirism could survive the 'new religion,'" Desmond said, his tone implying the utter, utter pointlessness of such a transaction.

"So you never sought it out?" Cynthia asked.

"I never even knew it existed," Desmond replied.

"Did you fight it?" Cynthia asked.

"Yes. I preyed on dogs and cats for as long as I could... horses, sheep, cattle. But I knew from the first what it was my body really wanted."

"Human blood."

"Yes."

"So you took human victims."

"Yes. But I've always tried to take those I felt to be deserving of death: the thieves, the rapists, the killers worse than myself." He smiled, as if reliving a favored memory. "I rather enjoyed the Nazi occupation," he said.

"And you continue that pattern today?" Cynthia asked.

"Yes," Desmond replied. "There are so many creeps out there even I can't keep up with them. Internet pedophiles alone take up half my time... I'm only one vampire!"

A laugh rippled through the room, and the judge said again, "Quiet."

Cynthia smiled. Was the tide turning? "What happens if you refuse to drink human blood?" she asked.

"Overwhelming pain," Desmond responded. "Like being eaten alive from the inside out. Like starving with terminal cancer."

"Desmond, let me ask you something: if, in order to live in our society, you had to accept some sort of state regulation, would you do so?"

"If it meant not being locked up in a cage," Desmond said, his voice thickening, "not being subjected to excruciating and dehumanizing torture, then yes, I would." A tear rolled down his cheek, and at the prosecutor's table, Eleanor and Courtland exchanged a disbelieving glance.

"Thank you, Mr. Sharpe," Cynthia said. "I have nothing more at this time, Your Honor."

She walked away, and Courtland Warner stood up. He came up before Desmond, who was still blinking back his tears.

"Would you like a hanky?" he asked. Desmond stopped mid-sniffle and glared at him.

"So," Courtland said, "Let me get this right, Mr., ah, Van der Hoeven? You've been a vampire for almost four hundred years?"

"Roughly, yes," Desmond replied.

"And for most of that time you've been taking human victims?"

"Yes."

"How many per night?"

"Sometimes none. Sometimes I would fight it." Desmond narrowed his eyes at Courtland.

"And other times?" Courtland pressed.

"Sometimes one, sometimes more, depending upon what fate put in my path."

"So an average of one per night would be a fair assumption?"

"I suppose so."

Courtland pulled out a pocket calculator. "So four hundred times three hundred and sixty five... Wow, one hundred and forty six thousand! You've killed _one hundred and forty six thousand_ people?"

Desmond didn't answer.

"And we're just supposed to take your word that each and every one of them deserved it? Are you absolutely sure that one or two innocent people didn't slip in there? One night when you were feeling especially peckish?"

Again, Desmond did not answer, instead, he checked his watch.

"What's the matter, Mr. Sharpe? Cat got your tongue?" Courtland asked.

"No, I just don't think I'll answer that question," Desmond replied.

"Are you invoking the Fifth Amendment, Mr. Sharpe?" The judge asked.

"No, I mean I'm just not answering the question," Desmond said, looking again at his watch, looking at the second hand as it swept almost to ten P.M.

"Why not?" Courtland demanded, and in answer, Desmond held his watch out, making a praying gesture with his shackled hands.

"Because it's ten," he said, as every electronic device in the room gave out an ear-splitting shriek of feedback, as every news feed and connection went dead. Reporters yelled in pain, ripping their earbuds out and headsets off.

Outside, in the street, all the feeds to the news vans also went dead, and then they all looked up, all the mortals, at the bright flashes of light filling the sky.

"What the hell," more than one person in the courtroom said, and then they, too, saw the flashes of light, and they rushed to the windows to look.

"Is it a power outage?" someone asked.

"Is it a meteor?" someone else asked.

"Is it an asteroid?" a third person asked.

"Or is it," Desmond's melodious baritone rolled out over them, "The wreckage of an IT&T communications satellite that has dropped into a lower orbit, colliding with the Global Positioning satellite already there?"

Eleanor jumped to her feet. "You fool!" she yelled. "GPS satellites are owned by the American Air Force! _What have you done?!"_

"I remembered me I was Bagheera, the panther," Desmond said, quoting Kipling. "And I broke their silly lock with a blow of my paw, and came away." In a flash, he snapped the shackles binding his wrists. Another blink, and he was nose-to-nose with Eleanor.

"See ya round, Ellie," he said, and was across the room, smashing through the window and plummeting in a hail of shattered glass six stories to the ground, landing on the roof of a parked car in front of the news vans, exploding its windows in a sparkling blast before hopping down and bowing to the astonished media.

"Stars falling all over tonight," he remarked, and was gone.

In the courtroom, bedlam prevailed. Lawyers were yelling into their cell phones, reporters were yelling into their cell phones while simultaneously swarming Eleanor and Courtland, who were yelling into theirs, while the judge futilely banged his gavel, yelling "Order! Order!"

"We lost him! Without the satellite we have no way of tracking him!" Eleanor yelled into her phone.

"Well, he got a phone from somewhere, you find out how!" Courtland yelled into his phone.

"Exclusive, Los Angeles, vampire Desmond Sharpe claims responsibility for act of terrorism..." yelled a reporter into his phone.

"Vampire on rampage in City of Angels!" yelled another.

CG&P lawyers shoved their phones at Eleanor and Courtland.

"IT&T is suing us!" one said to Eleanor.

"The Director of Homeland Security just called Hollingsworth!" another said to Courtland.

"So did the President," said a third, turning a deathly white.

Amid the chaos, Cynthia's cell phone rang. She answered it, got a blast of exultant rock music in her ear. She laughed, and everyone else stopped dead and watched her.

"Yes," she said into her phone. "Yes. Yes, I understand." She hung up, noticed everyone looking at her. "Dogsitter," she said.

Eleanor advanced on her. "You give us your phone records!" she snapped.

"'Get a court order!'" Cynthia mimicked back.

"Where is he?" Eleanor snarled.

"I really have no idea," Cynthia demurred.

"You won't get away with this!" Eleanor swore.

"If anyone should be worried about "getting away," Cynthia said, "I should think it would be you, Dr. Warner." And felt a grim joy, as, for the first time, fear came into Eleanor Warner's eyes.

Perhaps the _King of Vampires_ sets should have been dismantled by now to make way for a new production, but Desmond was sentimental about his movie and his money had preserved them --perhaps fittingly-- beyond their natural life. Now it was to them that Desmond turned, unable to go to any of his homes, needing somewhere, something, to assuage his aching soul.

He entered the huge, cavernous soundstage, rolling back the great door with a push of his hand, and there they were, his sets, towering, creepy, gothic. He ripped off his soiled jacket and smacked his fist into a reel-to-reel tape deck marked PLAYBACK.

Music boomed forth, filling the vast space, insistent, powerful, menacing. It was a song from his movie, from the scene where he defeats the other vampires, a song about rage, vengeance and raging hunger, and he sang along with it, double-tracking his own voice, singing it, this time, to Eleanor. He danced through the sets, ripping it up and kicking it out until suddenly, the overhead work lights snapped on, completely spoiling the mood.

"Hey!" yelled an overweight security guard. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Just playing on my sets, hope you don't mind!" Desmond yelled back.

"Your sets? These belong to the studio, pal!" the guard challenged, puffing up to Desmond.

"Yeah, but it's my movie, and it just made them a couple hundred million dollars. Don't you recognize me?" Desmond said.

"Aw, I don't go to movies," the guard replied. "You're gonna have to leave, Buddy."

"But I'm Desmond Sharpe!" Desmond said.

"Yeah, well, you can't be here, 'Desmond Sharpe'!" the guard sneered, and he jabbed Desmond in the shoulder with his nightstick.

Desmond stared in disbelief at his shoulder, then looked up, his eyes changing, growing blank.

"Oh... thank you," he breathed. "Thank you so much...!"

On the playback, the music swelled, reaching a crescendo both beautiful and terrible, and Desmond pulled the guard close in a deadly embrace. He sank his fangs, and the blood hit his palate, flowed down his throat, washed through his gut or whatever was still down there, and suffused his entire being. His knees buckled, and they went to the floor together. He drained the guard dry, and finished with his head bowed low over the dead man's chest.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Oh, thank you."

The music picked up again, moving into its finale, and Desmond sang with it again, ending on a verse that seemed to promise great things in store for Eleanor Warner.

11

The Dial Painters

The radio in Deke Hollingsworth's massive SUV was tuned to the news channel.

"...Grows ever more bizarre," the announcer was saying, "in the two days since his disappearance, the U.S District Attorney has taken the unprecedented step of accusing movie star Desmond Sharpe in absentia of treason, stemming from the destruction of a Global Positioning Satellite owned by the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Eleanor Warner, the researcher most associated with the experiments on Sharpe, has gone into hiding at an undisclosed location. Industrial giant CG&P now faces criminal negligence charges leveled by the U.S. District Attorney and rival giant International Telecommunications and Technology. With a preliminary hearing this very night, CG&P CEO Deke Hollingsworth has refused any comment--"

Deke snapped off the radio, took a belt from the flask in his hand.

"Jeez, Deke, take it easy!" Chuck Mahoney said. "You have to testify in a few hours!"

"Shut up," Deke replied, drinking again.

Without warning, Desmond Sharpe dropped out of the sky onto the hood of the SUV. Deke and Chuck both screamed, Deke's flask cartwheeling out of his hand.

Desmond pulled back a fist as if to punch through the windshield, but then brought his hand forward, turned it, traced it gently over the glass, using his vampiric senses to find just the right spot... he tapped on the glass with one of his rings and it shattered, falling in a shower of harmless cubes.

"Hello, Deke," Desmond said.

"Jesus Christ!" Deke said.

"Not exactly, but thanks," Desmond replied. "So tell me, Deke: How much do you really know about Dr. Eleanor Warner?"

"What?"

"Well, it occurred to me," Desmond said, "As I was lying on my deck, enjoying the moonlight, that none of this would have happened if that file drive --you know, the one where I'm tortured?-- had not somehow got to the press. My lawyer's done some checking, interviewed the men who were on the team the night it was taken... turns out, the drive was in her possession, wasn't it?"

"Yeah...?" Deke said, eyes narrowing priggishly.

"So no one actually saw it stolen, except for her, right? Everyone else was slowed down by heavy equipment? And no one actually saw that cousin of hers get knifed, either, did they? Here's a question for you, Deke: have you looked closely at Courtland's Warner's wrist lately?"

Deke was silent. Desmond continued.

"Here's something else you might not know. I didn't, until my lawyer told me: Eleanor testified that she'd obtained her doctorate from Cal Tech, right? Here's the thing, Cal Tech is very picky. They accept only about two hundred students a year, and every one of those applicants is screened three times. In short, they know who's on campus and who's not. Now, if you call them up and get someone who just punches her name into a database, you get a file stating that Eleanor Warner went there, and graduated with honors. But if you actually go there, and talk to the professors whose classes she would have taken to obtain that degree, they've never heard of her."

"What?" Deke said.

"Don't take my word for it," Desmond replied. "Check it out for yourself. Look, Deke, I don't know who she is or what her game is, but I'd bet money that you've been played for a chump. I think you were so blinded by greed you gave her everything she wanted. She wanted that file to get out, and she used you to do it. Gee, I wonder what the stockholders are making of all this? Your résumé all updated, Deke?" Desmond smiled beatifically. "Well, that's about all, I guess," he said. "Nice talkin' to you," and he vanished.

"God damn it!" Deke said. He turned to Chuck. "That bitch lied to us, Chuck!" he yelled. "She never went to Cal Tech! She took that fucking file, she gave it to the goddamned media! She fucked us over! I'm gonna kill her!"

"Easy, Deke, you're drunk," Chuck tried to soothe.

"Maybe, but I'm gonna go confront the bitch right now," Deke said.

"But she's in hiding," Chuck said.

"Aw, hell, Chuck," Deke slurred, "they're at the Noche del Cicada, it's a crappy motel up off Sunset. Now switch seats with me: I can't drive."

They switched seats, and Chuck started the SUV, driving out of the CG&P parking lot and heading toward Hollywood. From the roof of the building, Desmond watched them go.

At the motel, a door opened, spilling the sound of a TV into the night and a splash of light across the pool. Eleanor stepped into the doorway, an ice bucket in her hand. She still wore her lab coat, her hair still up in its usual bun. A man's voice followed her outside.

"Be careful," it said.

"I will," Eleanor replied. She walked down to the corner ice machine, filled her bucket, turned back to the room.

"Hello, bitch," Deke Hollingsworth said, looming out of the shadows.

Startled, Eleanor dropped the ice bucket, the cubes clattering to the pool tarmac.

"Deke!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Someone could have followed you!"

"Who you working for, huh? Who'd you sell us out to?" Deke demanded.

"What are you talking about?" Eleanor said.

"You never went to Cal Tech, did you?"

"Who told you that?" Eleanor said, paling.

"Never you mind. You sold us out, didn't you? You took that file, you gave it to the media!"

"That's absurd! You're drunk!"

"Why?" Deke cried, "Why did you do it?"

He grabbed her wrist. She struggled to get away, but her foot hit one of the cubes of ice on the pavement. She spun, arms cantilevering out, and fell, her head striking one of the poles supporting the motel balcony. She dropped, unconscious, to the ground.

"Jesus, Deke!" Chuck gasped.

"Bitch!" Deke said, now actually crying, tears running down his face. "Fucking bitch! You ruined my life!" And in a paroxysm of rage, he kicked Eleanor's unconscious body into the pool.

"Deke! My God, Deke!" Chuck gasped.

"She took my life! She took my fucking life!" was all Deke could say.

Chuck moved toward the pool, but Deke grabbed him back. He pointed to the fallen cubes of ice.

"She slipped, Chuck," he said. "She stepped on the ice and she slipped up. And if you wanna keep your job you'll get us out of here right now."

He dragged Chuck away, into the night, and a few seconds later came the sound of the SUV starting up. Behind them, in the pool, Eleanor's body began to sink.

She floated downward, breathing water. Her hair came loose of its bun, floating free. Her body convulsed, vomited dark material into the blue water. Her eyes grew wide and blank.

Above, there was a muffled splash, and a man's hand reached down through the water, twining in her loosened hair. It yanked her up.

Backlit by a full, glaucous moon, Desmond Sharpe lowered Eleanor's body to the tarmac. He bent her head back, exposed her helpless throat... and placed his mouth over hers, breathing his air into her lungs. He watched as her chest rose and fell in time to his breaths, once, twice.

Eleanor coughed, spat water. Desmond backed off, pushing her disdainfully with his foot, rolling her onto her side.

Eleanor coughed and gagged, hacking water from her lungs. She looked up, dazed.

"Finished?" Desmond asked.

"How did I get in the pool?" she gasped.

"Deke Hollingsworth kicked you in," Desmond replied.

"And you... you saved me?" Eleanor said.

"Yes, well, as you so carefully pointed out to Brian," Desmond said, "I breathe."

To that, Eleanor had no answer.

"Yes," Desmond continued. "Brian and I had quite a charming téte a téte while you were off plotting my eternal incarceration. Seems someone gave him a book on radiation, and in that book was the story of the dial painters."

He continued, his voice weaving the tale, invoking images. "The dial painters were young women employed in factories in the early twentieth century," he said. "They painted glow-in-the-dark numbers on watch dials, using radium-laced paint. Indeed, the first inkling anyone had that radium was dangerous came when these young women began to fall ill, when their bones began to snap as they simply walked down the street, and, as Brian pointed out, they became anemic to the point of death."

Desmond crossed his arms over his chest. "They had almost no red blood cells. They had been exsanguinated, as surely as if they had been the victims of a vampire, and why? Because in order to paint the tiny numerals on the watch dials, they would draw the tips of their brushes through their lips, and every time they did so, they ingested minute amounts of pure radium. And radium, Brian tells me, has the same number and configuration of electrons as calcium. They appear in the same column of the periodic table."

He continued. "So when radium is put into a human body, it tends to go where the calcium goes: to the bones. Where it kills the tissue that makes blood cells, the marrow. The dial painters had no red blood cells because their irradiated bone marrow couldn't make them."

Desmond bore in on Eleanor. "And you know what I'm going to say next, don't you? That calcium appears above radium in the periodic table... and directly above it, is magnesium."

Eleanor was silent, picturing the oh-so-familiar table in her mind.

"And irradiated magnesium --the product of cellular fission--" Desmond said, "lodges in the bones just as does irradiated calcium, killing the blood cells, and red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. So if someone were to, say, have irradiated magnesium in his bones --but doesn't die, because the same process that makes it also produces enough energy to overcome it-- but still needs red blood cells because he still breathes, but can't make them because he's got irradiated magnesium in his bones, well, _he'd have to get them from someone else,_ wouldn't he? He'd have to take them from living creatures already using them, and being once human himself, human blood would be the closest match. He'd have to be cunning, and ruthless, and seductive, and pretty, to attract his victims, and oh, yes, pointy little eyeteeth would be a great help too, now wouldn't they? You _gave_ all that to Brian," he said, wonderment in his voice. "He's going to win a Nobel Prize for it, and you _gave it away."_

He shook his head, finally stripped down to honest bafflement. "Who are you?" he asked. "What prize are you playing for, if not for that? And what information could possibly be left in your head that you would go to the length of having an implant put in your brain to prevent me knowing it?"

Eleanor looked away.

"Still won't talk?" Desmond said. "Well, I'm sorry, Ella, I really am. Because I'm afraid I cannot leave here without learning what I came to know, and it doesn't matter that you won't tell me. It doesn't matter that you've got an implant in your brain. Blood never lies, Eleanor, blood never lies. Come here, Eleanor."

He dragged her over, and she struggled to get away.

"You have no idea how much that arouses me, Eleanor," Desmond said, and sank his fangs.

The world dissolved again into a red haze, the blood warm and pulsing as it flowed down his throat, and then came the images: blood, the bloody rings drawn on this tabletop, the periodic table, and then, finally, a locked door.

Desmond licked his lips. "What's behind the door, Eleanor?" he asked. "Hmm? Shall we find out?" and again, he bent his head and drank her blood.

More images. The door swinging open into a red haze that resolved itself into a laboratory, a laboratory in some kind of conservatory or greenhouse, in a house, on a hill.

"Hm. I know that house," Desmond said, surfacing. "It's up in the hills, you can see the greenhouse glowing at night. What will I find there, Eleanor?" A third time, he bent to drink.

"Let her go," said a man's voice.

"Now who are you, pretty one?" Desmond said to the slender, dark-haired man standing before him, armed with an X-ray wand. Behind him stood Courtland Warner, similarly armed.

"Ah," said Desmond. "You're the dark one took the file. And you were there, in the cemetery, the night they took me, weren't you? I remember you. And you care about this woman, you care deeply. So Ilsa the She-Wolf has a lover!" he said, grinning down at Eleanor, "Curiouser and curiouser!"

"Just let her go," the dark-haired man said.

"Or you'll burn me?" Desmond asked. "I daresay you will. Well, little one, you're in luck. I'm finished with her...for now." Standing, he dropped Eleanor roughly to the pavement.

"I have your blood now, Eleanor," he said. "So as you once said to me, there is now nowhere on Earth you can hide." And Eleanor, on the ground, beaten, half-drowned and bloody, Eleanor, damn her, just met his gaze and said levelly:

"I accept those odds."

As one, the men raised their weapons, and Desmond had no choice but to vanish. The men rushed to Eleanor.

"Recapture the signal?" she asked. "Oh, yes," Courtland replied. "Are you all right?"

"I will be," she replied, "But he got the greenhouse. He knows where it is."

"Endgame, then," Courtland said.

"Yes."

"So we go to the safe-house." Her lover said.

"Yes, it's time. Can you get our things, Courtesan?" she said, using her cousin's real name.

"Sure, Ella." he replied, and went back inside the motel room. Her lover took her hands and helped her up. Standing, they looked each other in the eyes.

"Let me look," he said, pulling a pen light from a pocket and shining it into her eyes, checking her pupils.

"I should have known he'd use Deke," she replied, as he clicked off the light, then laid her wet head on his shoulder, "Just one too many details..."

"I'm so sorry," her lover replied. "I didn't hear. I was in the bathroom melting the ice."

"What if he misses the mugs?" she said.

"We pin-spotted them," he replied, "He won't." He crooked a finger under her chin, lifting her face to drop a kiss on her lips. "You so owe me, Amborella," he sighed.

She held him close. "I know, Hemlock," she replied.

12

Eleanor's

Brian pulled up to the house in the Hollywood hills in his twelve-year-old sedan, the one with the dented quarter-panel and the duct-taped tail-light. His headlights swept the driveway, illuminating Desmond leaning against his Lamborghini in a tailored suit of pale linen.

Brian parked and got out. "Hi, Brian," Desmond said. "Thanks for coming."

"How could I refuse?" Brian said, that blush suffusing his cheeks. "So," he said, "what is this place?"

"It's your boss' house," Desmond replied. "Cynthia checked, it's in Eleanor's name. You've never been here?"

"No, never."

"Want to go in?"

"Isn't that illegal?" Brian asked. Desmond sighed.

"Brian... I'm facing treason charges, conspiracy charges, and oh, yes, one hundred and forty-six thousand counts of first-degree murder. Do you really think a little breaking and entering's going to stop me?" Desmond asked. He walked over to the front door and easily shouldered it open, pulling the dead-bolt right out of the frame.

They walked through the darkened, empty house, Desmond easily, Brian groping his way after.

"Why do you want me here?" Brian whispered.

"Because there's a laboratory in this house," Desmond whispered back. "And I might need an interpreter."

Moving to the back of the house, they came to the glassed-in conservatory. Desmond touched the light switch and overhead fluorescents blinked on, illuminating benches and tables covered in plants, potting tools, hoses.

"What are we looking for?" Brian asked.

"I don't really know," Desmond replied, "But I--"

He broke off, his attention captured by a darkened room off one side of the conservatory, from the doorway of which came a strange, gurgling sound.

They moved toward it, their feet crunching on the gravel floor. At the doorway, Desmond reached around the door jamb, feeling for light switches. He found them, flipped them on.

The room was full with small aquariums on tables, all filled with murky water and some kind of plants, the gurgling of the aerating pumps providing a creepy background noise. Moving closer, Desmond and Brian got a better look at one of the plants.

The plant rode on the surface of the water, its center formed by overlapping leaves, its roots hidden in the dark water. Reaching in with a fingertip, Desmond touched it, and they gasped as it unfolded, revealing on its glistening inner leaves a tiny skeleton.

"What the hell?" Desmond said. He moved to another aquarium, touched another plant, which also unfolded, revealing a similar, but not identical, tiny skeleton. He touched another, and another: all skeletons.

"Okay," he said. "This is weird. Even by my standards."

"What are they?" Brian asked.

Bending lower, Desmond could make out the labels. "They have labels," he said. "This one is _Microtitus oregoni._ Whatever that is."

Brian looked around, and on a nearby shelf he spotted a well-thumbed copy of the _Encyclopedia Animalia._ He pulled it down and turned to the index. He found the page.

" _Mictotus oregoni_... here. A creeping meadow vole."

"And this one," Desmond said, _"Sorex minutissinus."_

Brian flipped pages. "A least shrew," he said.

" _Mus musculus?"_

"House mouse." Brian set down the book, gazed at the plants. "They're like giant Venus flytraps..." he said.

"These are all the skeletons of small mammals," Desmond said. "Flytraps don't catch mammals, do they?"

"Look, below the labels: dates, weights," Brian said, pointing. "These are experiments."

"So?"

"So the purpose of experimentation is to find out what you _don't_ know," Brian said. "All the carnivorous plants I ever heard of trap insects... maybe the point of these experiments is to find out how these plants react to mammals."

"But why?" Desmond asked, staring at the plants. Then a thought occurred, and a look of grim curiosity crossed his face... he suddenly plunged both hands into the aquarium's peaty water.

"Desmond, don't!" Brian gasped. But Desmond was ripping the plant from its place, his hands bringing up from the water a swollen sac, dark red amid slithery roots. He was trying to be careful, but suddenly the sac burst, spewing bright red blood all over his linen suit.

"My God!" Brian said.

" _That's_ what they do with the mammals," Desmond said. "They take their blood. Vampire plants!" He turned to Brian. "How do you get from porphyrin rings in a textbook to, 'of course, vampires.'" he said, speaking aloud the question that had come to him in his cell as he'd painted the interlocking rings in his own blood, and Brian recognized the question he'd tried to ask Eleanor that day in the hall, just before she'd given him the book on radiation. "Knowing about these plants would really help with that cognitive leap, wouldn't they? Eleanor Warner is a scientist, Brian, but these plants are her true work, and she knew about them before she ever came to me."

"But... _why?"_ Brian said.

"I have no ide--" Desmond started to say, but then broke off, because he'd turned toward the door, the door through which they had entered, and there, off to one side of it sat a small table, a small table in a pool of light, on top of which sat two glass mugs. One of the mugs, Desmond saw as he drew closer to them, contained a milky, watery fluid, the tag of a tea bag still hanging over its lip; the other contained a red fluid, the same red fluid now spattering the front of his suit. The mug with the tea bag was etched with the word HERS, and the other, Desmond saw as it picked it up and turned it in his hand, was etched HIS.

Desmond looked from the mug to Brian, his eyes growing wide. "The dark one," he said. "The dark one who knows how people bleed." And there came into his mind a memory, a memory he'd forgotten he even had, buried as it was in the exigencies of the moment and all that had happened since. In his mind's eye he saw again what he'd seen in the cemetery the night they caught him, that last flash of the two men bending over his victim, the bloody hand of the dark-haired medic rising from the wounded throat to the medic's mouth, watched, as Eleanor's lover licked the blood from his hand.

"You _bitch."_ Desmond said, almost wonderingly.

"What?" Brian said, but Desmond was looking at his watch. "There's still time," he said. "Come on!"

He spun and darted out of the room, retracing his steps, Brian stumbling after.

"Desmond, wait!" Brian cried, barking his shin on some piece of furniture. "Where are we going?"

"My treason hearing!" Desmond called back. "It's starting in fifty minutes and I need to know, and there's just one way to find out!"

"But they'll capture you... find out what? wait, what...what's going on?!" Brian pulled up short as Desmond spun around to face him at the front door of the house, his hands on either side of the frame.

"She outs _me,"_ he said, eyes blazing. "She reveals _me_ to the world as a vampire? Oh, I think two can play that game!" He spun again, running out into the driveway, and Brian followed, almost running into Desmond's back, as Desmond had stopped short, was standing with his arms crossed, staring disdainfully at Brian's car.

Desmond looked at Brian.

"Ever ride in a Lamborghini?" he asked.

13

Federal Court

The courtroom of the United States District Court on Spring Street was packed, with local and international press jostling for room with officers of the United States Air Force and their lawyers, representatives from the NSA, The NRC and Homeland Security, Executives from IT&T and their lawyers, CG&P executives and their lawyers, Magna Studios executives and their lawyers, while guards armed with both automatic rifles and X-ray wands patrolled the perimeter. Deke Hollingsworth --now sober-- sat stoically in the front row, a pale Chuck Mahoney next to him, Courtland Warner and an empty chair reserved for Eleanor on Chuck's other side. Eleanor's lover, still unknown to most, sat in the row behind Courtland, and across the aisle, Judge Laverna Davis sat next to her husband. On the other side of the bar, the U.S. District Attorney and his staff had one table; Desmond's defense team, hand-picked by Cynthia, the other.

The door at the back opened, and Eleanor entered. Cynthia, who was standing in front of her table gathering papers, looked up, saw her, and gasped.

She had transformed. Her hair was down and softly styled, the mousy grey washed out in an auburn rinse. The clunky glasses were gone, her makeup applied with a deft touch. She wore heels and a wrap dress in a silky black knit, and without the lab coat Cynthia could see she actually had a figure. As she turned to enter the seating row, Cynthia's feminine eye noticed the fishnet stockings encasing her legs. Then the Federal Judge called the hearing to order, and Cynthia gathered herself and said her preliminary remarks, ending with the words all defense attorneys said at the beginning of every trial, on the off chance it just might happen:

"I move this trial be dismissed--"

"That won't be necessary, Cynthia," said Desmond Sharpe, striding down the aisle into the courtroom to audible gasps, guns and wands leveling at him from all directions. Behind him, Brian appeared, slightly green, hanging onto the door frame for support.

"Desmond!" Cynthia cried. "What are you doing here?!" Her eyes dropped. "My God!" she exclaimed. "Whose blood is that?"

"Mus musculus," Desmond replied.

"What?" Cynthia said.

"So, where is the little bitch?" Desmond wondered aloud.

"She's right here," Eleanor replied, standing.

"Oh, not you, honey," Desmond said and in an almost invisible flow of movement he was over the railing, knocking her aside, bowling observers out of the way, and fastening on her lover, propelling them both to the floor, his fangs driving deep into the veins of the man's throat.

The world disappeared. Blood, just blood, hot, mawkish, metallic: then a swirling blackness, and a sensation, undeniable, overwhelming, of vastness, of nothingness all around, of utter, annihilating, unbearable _space._ Then a light bloomed, dusky, febrile, as deeply red as venous blood, a light that resolved itself into a star, a smoldering sun shining upon a dark world of jagged black mountains, untracked forests, and bogs, endless bogs, bogs stretching away into the perpetual night, bogs filled with bloody plants, plants harvested by hundreds, nay, thousands, of black-haired, pale-skinned people, people who drank blood on an alien world.

Desmond withdrew his fangs, stared in horror at the man beneath him. Impossible, but blood never lied. Blood never lied.

"I'm still telling," Desmond said.

"I can't stop you," said Hemlock, playing out the last of the rope.

Desmond stood, faced the courtroom, the cameras, the eyes of the world.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he announced. "You know what I am. But you do not know what these people are. They are not what they seem. They are, in fact--"

Quick as a cat, Eleanor pulled the red wig she'd worn onstage at the Galaxy Cinema out of her bag and tossed it at Desmond's feet.

He stared at it, the up at her, at Courtesan, at Hemlock, and a series of images began to flash before his eyes:

The wig on the floor.

The wig on the girl at the theater.

The girl at the theatre, stripping to her corset and fishnets.

The fishnets on Eleanor's legs.

The plant bursting blood through his hands.

The blood on Hemlock's hands.

Eleanor, mouthing the words "I accept those odds."

The alien world of Hemlock's mind, and the white faces staring at him, expectant.

The faces of the audience at the movie theater, turning en masse from the screen to the back row, as if turning to him, also expectant.

And finally, the marquee of the cinema itself, blinking GALAXY, GALAXY, GALAXY.

Desmond stared, aghast, at Eleanor, and finally, finally got it, realizing simultaneously that it had been a game all along, a great game, and that he had lost, because he couldn't say it, just couldn't, because if he did, vampire or no vampire, they'd lock him up for a looney.

"That squirming sensation in your forehead?" Amborella said. 'That would be the mindfuck." And then she added, simply, "Check...mate."

"What?" said Cynthia.

"We're aliens," said Courtesan behind her.

"What?" said Cynthia

"You didn't see the montage," said Hemlock.

" _What?!"_ said Cynthia.

"Oh, fuck it," Amborella said, and she threw back her head and threw out her arms and the music crashed in, music without apparent source or support, music that swept up every living soul in the room, because music _can,_ and it caught Desmond, who was laughing now, in on the joke, and he was singing back, though he didn't know why or how. "How am I doing this?" he yelled at at the end of a bar.

"Just relax, go with it," Amborella yelled back, and then was on to the next verse, running to and being swung around by Hemlock, who grabbed the tie to her wrap dress and spun her back into the fray without it, resplendent one more in corset and fishnets. She came back to Desmond for the chorus, and the music was so bouncy and happy and infectious it got them all, lawyerly toes tapping, soldierly bodies swaying, the judge shaking his gavel like a maraca, the court reporter diligently recording the lyrics.

Leaving Amborella, Desmond caught up Cynthia, twirling her around, and then she was singing too, and she knew that somehow, someway, everything was going to be okay.

The last chorus, and it was the aliens on one side and Desmond, Cynthia and Brian on the other, in perfect harmony, then a final, joyous reprise and it was over, and the judge was banging his gavel furiously on its sounding block.

"Cease this at once!" he demanded, coming to his senses. "This is a courtroom, not a cabaret! We have a hearing to conduct!"

"No, I don't think so," Desmond replied.

"I beg your pardon?" the judge barked.

"Well, your Honor," Desmond replied, "I think the plaintiffs are about to drop the charges."

"What?" said the judge. "They are?"

"Yes. CG&P, because if they don't, and they're claiming me as their property," Desmond said, turning his head, nailing Deke and Chuck with his gaze, "Then they become legally responsible for my actions under the laws governing product liability." He smiled as the two executives blanched, having obviously never thought of that.

"If, on the other hand, they release me," Desmond continued, "I'll be glad to pay for all the damages myself." He addressed the lawyers from IT&T. "You guys want a new satellite? I'll buy you a new satellite, with more bells and whistles than you can imagine." He addressed the military officers. "You, too." He turned back to the judge. "And everybody who lost money or suffered in any way because the satellites collided, I'll take care of them, as well."

"You can do that?" said the judge.

"I'm four hundred years old," Desmond replied. "I have more money than God." And suddenly he was across the courtroom, nose-to-nose with Hollingsworth.

"Besides, Deke," he said, sotto voce, "If you don't release me, I'll tell the nice Federal Judge over there how I personally witnessed you kick an unconscious woman into a swimming pool. Deal?"

The District Attorney weighed in. "But what about the treason?" he said.

"What treason?" Desmond replied. "I had a problem, and taking out the satellites was the only way to get rid of it. I never meant to overthrow the government. If you want me to stand trial for treason, okay, but I think you're going to have a hard time proving it. And if there is no treason, then there is no conspiracy."

"But what about the murders?" the D.A. said.

"Mr. District Attorney," Desmond sighed. "Do you have one shred of evidence that I ever committed one single murder? Let alone one hundred and forty-six thousand? Do you?"

"Well, actually..." said the D.A.

"Exactly," Desmond said.

"There is still the battery charge brought by Judge Laverna Davis," the judge reminded them. Sighing, Desmond looked at Judge Davis.

"Judge Davis?" he asked. Judge Davis exchanged a long, meaningful look with her husband.

"I drop the charges," she said.

"So, out-of-court settlements! Cynthia, write these people checks, I'll sign them tonight. Deke? You letting me go?"

"...Yes."

"Mr. D.A?"

"...Yes."

"Military guys?"

"....Yes."

"Well then," Desmond said, holding out his arms and turning like a circus ringmaster. "That's that! Happy endings can be bought!" and the room applauded.

"Just one goddamned minute!" cried the judge, and it was clear that there was something bothering him, something he was extremely loathe to mention but which, in good conscience, he just couldn't leave alone.

"What was up with all that singing?" he demanded. "Care to explain that?" And suddenly Desmond knew a way.

"Of course, your Honor," he said lightly. "There are vampires in Transylvania."

The judge stared. "Well of course there are," he said. "Everyone knows that. Well then," he continued, "After careful consideration, and pending a more thorough hearing at a date to be determined, I hereby find that Johannes Van der Hoeven, now known as Desmond Sharpe, is the legal property of himself, with all the rights and responsibilities adherent thereto, and this hearing is adjourned!" He banged his gavel, and the room erupted in a mighty cheer.

Desmond scooped up Amborella, spinning her around.

"Marry me!" he cried.

"I can't, I'm already married," she replied, her husband moving up like a shadow behind her.

"Well then, what do you want?" Desmond said. "Diamonds, pearls, the Taj Mahal? Name it!"

"I don't need your money!" she laughed.

"I must do something!" Desmond pleaded.

"Fine," Amborella said, squirming out of his grasp, "Buy us Oakley Court."

She moved away to Hemlock and Courtesan, gathering their things, and Desmond turned to Brian.

"What's Oakley Court?" he asked. "Beats me," Brian replied.

They all moved into the hall outside the courtroom, around a central atrium, where they were swarmed by reporters.

"Desmond! How do you feel?" yelled one.

"Desmond, what was all that singing?" yelled another. "Is there going to be a _King of Vampires_ sequel?"

"Dr. Warner, why are you dressed like that?" yelled a third.

"This is impossible," Desmond said. "Want to get away?"

"We can go to the safe house where we've been staying," Amborella replied.

"Okay," Desmond said. "Just hang on to-- _where the hell have you been?!"_

The media thronging the hallway parted as water as another vampire, tall, broad-shouldered, skin a rich brown, matted dreadlocks halfway down his back.

"I called you, Maximillian!" Desmond said, furious. "I called and called!"

"Oh, I was warned to lay low before all of this started," Max replied, unperturbed. "We were all warned." Desmond closed his eyes, experiencing a moment of pain.

"By the Warner," he said.

"It was explained to us that it was in our best interest to do so, until certain matters were sorted out," Max said. "But now that a high mortal court has found in your favor, we feel their world a significantly safer place for us to be."

"You always were a selfish bastard, Max," Desmond said.

"Oh, it was partly for your benefit, " Max replied. "You had to learn the risks of your behavior. So when we were asked to curtail our own activities to help you, we complied."

"For me? You all wanted to help me? You were concerned about me?" Desmond said, clearly touched.

"Er, not exactly," Amborella coughed. "Max agreed to help, but he did exact a price."

"Price? What price?" Desmond said.

Amborella and Max looked up, to the floor above, as many other vampires gliding to the railing, each and every one holding out his or her personal copy of the CG&P torture file.

"I hate you!" Desmond pouted.

"No you don't," Amborella replied. "Now about that safe house..."

"Yes, where it is?" Desmond asked.

An hour later, Desmond, Max, and the aliens stood outside the door to Desmond's mausoleum.

"You've got to be kidding," Desmond said.

"Safest place in L.A.," Amborella replied. "You were going to kill me, remember?"

"'Bring forth men children only,'" Desmond said to her. "'Thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.'" Amborella laughed, and together, they went inside.

From the outside, the mausoleum was a neglected ruin; on the inside it was a splendid, Italianate villa arranged around a central courtyard, with lush plantings and a sparkling fountain. A huge banner stretched across the back wall read WELCOME HOME DESMOND, and more vampires applauded snarkily as Desmond walked in, flipping them birds with both hands.

"I love your garden," Amborella said, "But your landscaper has given you all white flowers, because you told him you were only going to visit at night. He didn't know the sensitivity of your eyes. I'd have given you a greater variation."

"Yes, botanist?" Desmond smiled as they took seats around a wrought-iron patio set, the other vampires milling in the background.

"Botanist by training," Amborella grinned back. "Botanical hematologist by necessity."

"And that planet I saw in Hemlock's mind...?" Desmond said.

"Venereal," Amborella replied.

" _Venereal?"_ Desmond echoed, before thinking oh, right, of course.

"Named for the Venari, a race of blood-drinking mortals," she continued, and Hemlock made a thumb-and-pinkie, Hawaiian 'mahalo' gesture.

"Oh," Desmond said. "Okay. And how can I help you?" he asked sincerely.

"You already have," Hemlock said, and placed on the table a small black box, which he opened, exposing a row of sealed test tubes, each one containing a pinkish-red liquid, a pinkish-red liquid that was glowing.

"We worked on it at home," Amborella said. Desmond picked up one of the tubes, twirled it between his fingers.

"So that's _it,"_ he said, marveling.

"That's the physical manifestation of _it,"_ Amborella replied. "That's _it_ caught in a web of organic chemistry." She shrugged. "Whatever else _it_ might or might not be, frankly, Desmond, I don't give a damn."

"We're going cross this with single-cell bacteria," Hemlock continued, "Bacteria that will feed upon the blood from our plants, bacteria that will convert iron into magnesium, generating power, bringing light and warmth to a previously dark world..."

"Freeing us from our dangerous reliance on a single-crop economy," added Amborella.

"And once we have it, a cheap, safe source of biological nuclear power, the galaxy will come to us!" Courtesan finished, a certain megalomaniacal tone to his voice.

"Ensuring the prosperity and security of the Venari for generations to come?" Hemlock suggested quietly to Courtesan, suggesting that Courtland really, really wanted to re-think his position.

"Well, yes," Courtesan said, abashed, "That too."

"And we're sorry about Tommy," Amborella said.

"I'm not," Desmond replied. "He was a nasty little cuss. So," he said, trying to wrap his head around it, "This whole thing was what, a giant shopping trip?"

"You could call it that," Hemlock replied. "I call it a wedding present." He and Amborella rubbed noses, obnoxiously cute. Desmond blenched.

"Glad I could be your guinea pig!" he complained.

"So you had a lousy fortnight," Amborella responded. "It was going to happen sooner or later. Science has known about the similarities between the porphyrin rings for over a hundred years. Nuclear fission has been understood for decades. Honestly, this collision has been overdue for more than a century, since Stoker published his novel the year before Curié discovered radium. It was going to happen sooner or later... just imagine if it hadn't been us."

Desmond stared at her, silence stretching out until she finally said "What?"

"You _like_ me." Desmond said.

"Well, maybe a little," she replied, fighting a grin.

"I _am_ the center of the universe!" he said wonderingly.

"You are _such_ an asshole," she sighed.

"And so now everyone is at peace," Max said, clamping his hands on Desmond's shoulders. "My friend, we must take our leave of you. The dawn approaches."

"Yes, I feel it myself," Desmond said. "I feel as if I haven't slept in years."

He rose, and Max and the other vampires vanished like wraiths.

"There are mortal beds inside," Desmond said. "You're welcome to them."

"Deal," Courtesan said, yawning. He, too, rose. "You coming?" he said to Amborella and Hemlock.

"In a minute," she replied, and the others disappeared into the shadows.

"I must sleep," Desmond said. "Will you wait for me tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

He moved to a huge, ornate marble sarcophagus and pushed back its carved-stone lid. "You know everything else," he said, "you might as well know this, too." He climbed inside, lay down on the quilted velvet lining.

"I know. We trust each other." Amborella replied. Desmond's expression slackened, his eyes glazed over, and he was gone, asleep. Together, Amborella and Hemlock managed to push the stone back in place.

Amborella turned, intending to walk inside the mausoleum, but found her way blocked by Hemlock.

"Oh. Hi," she said.

"Hi."

"Suppose there's an extra bed inside?" Amborella said. "Suppose it's in a private room?"

"Who needs a bed?" Hemlock said, removing his jacket and throwing it up on top of the sarcophagus.

"What, here?" Amborella said.

"It's been too long," Hemlock said, "And I am so tired of sharing you with another man." He lifted her bottom onto the sarcophagus, then hopped up next to her, pushing her back onto his jacket.

"Hemlock, stop it!" Amborella mock-protested. "Stop it! Oh... stop it some more!"

14

Farewell

The marquee of the Galaxy Cinema proclaimed the engagement of _The Midnight Vampire Trap,_ and on the stage Amborella, in a floor-length gown of black silk and sewn eel-skins, a jeweled black veil tucked into the low chignon at the base of her neck, and Desmond, in a new designer tux, advanced upon one another, singing a stately, operatic duet about saying goodbye, their voices spiraling to the rafters, bringing the audience to tears. The song over, they embraced, the audience cheered, and the movie began, even as the ink on Cynthia's petition to the Supreme Court asking Vampire-Americans be granted full rights as citizens was still drying.

As the audience fell into rapt attention of the screen, Amborella led Desmond behind the screen and into the alley behind the theater, where Brian waited with Courtesan, Hemlock and the luggage.

"Well, this is it," Amborella said, tucking the deed to Oakley Court into her pocket.

"You really can't stay?" Desmond asked.

"No, we've been away too long as it is," Amborella said. "Besides, I have a promise to fulfill." Desmond looked at Hemlock.

"I see," said the vampire.

Hemlock stepped forward, handed Desmond a folded note.

"I, uh, wrote this for you," he said shyly. "Do me a favor, don't read it until we're gone, okay?" Touched, Desmond nodded.

"Is a spaceship going to pick you up?" Desmond asked. "Do you have to go somewhere special?"

"No, this is good. Goodbye." Amborella said, stepping over to the alien men, and she, Hemlock and Courtesan began to fragment, breaking up into thousands of tiny particles, until a gust of wind swept them up, into the night.

"Wow," Desmond said, his heart swelling.

"What does the note say?" Brian asked. Sniffing back tears, Desmond ripped it open.

"Why, you little _fucker!"_ he exclaimed.

Brian stared. Desmond held out the note. "'We had sex on your coffin while you slept,'" he read.

Brian laughed, and Cynthia stuck her head out of the alleyway door.

"Desmond? You're missing your movie," she said.

Together, Desmond and Brian re-entered the cinema, Brian taking a seat next to Cynthia, Desmond remaining off to the side, in the shadows next to the screen. He pulled the note from his pocket.

"' _We had sex on your coffin while you slept,'"_ he read again, and then, to himself, he added, "And did you there conceive a child, Hemlock?"

In a bound, he vaulted from where he stood to the front row, landing before a startled Brian and Cynthia.

"Brian! Cynthia! Get up!" he cried. "We're going to NASA!"

THE END

Your move, Fox.
