by J. R. Rain
The attorney crossed his arms in front of his chest and studied the young man in front of him. “You didn’t mean to kill her, did you, Aaron?”
“No.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
“With all my heart.”
“And do you miss her?”
“Every minute,” said Aaron. “Of every day.”
“Aaron, do you believe you are a vampire?”
Aaron didn’t move. Not at first. But then the left corner of his lip curled up, revealing a small section of the mammoth tusk that hung from his upper jaw. The young man nodded, and kept on nodding.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Very much so.”
* * *
Aaron Parker was sentenced to life in a high-security mental institution. Having saved the young man’s life, the attorney had done his job and was pleased, although he would forever be known as that vampire’s attorney, something he would later regret.
A month after sentencing, a sedated Aaron Parker was hauled into the asylum’s dental office, a creepy room located in the far corner of its vast basement. The single chair was commonly known as the “torture chair” by the asylum’s residents. After all, any patient with a tendency of biting the staff was subjected to the removal of all of his or her teeth.
And Aaron had a hell of a tendency to bite.
After an hour of strenuous work, an exhausted dentist held up two extraordinarily long canines, both of which would later be purchased by a popular occult museum in Hollywood, where they were proudly displayed in a polyurethane case near the bones of the Elephant Man.
A month after the removal of Aaron’s canine teeth, a guard at the asylum was found dead at his desk, his neck having been thoroughly chewed through, nearly decapitating the man. There was surprisingly little blood found at the scene.
Seven months later, the occult museum was robbed, too, its owner killed on site in a similar fashion. The only items stolen were the vampire’s two fangs.
The whereabouts of Aaron Parker, aka the American Vampire, aka Fang, are unknown to this day...
The End
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Vampire Moon:
Deleted Scene #1
Author’s Note: Like movie-makers, authors sometimes leave whole scenes on the cutting-room floor. The reasons for this are too numerous to name, but I suspect we cut scenes for the same reason movie editors cut scenes: they, the scenes, just don’t work. (And luckily for writers, we don’t have actors’ egos to contend with.) Unfortunately, our deleted scenes are often long forgotten, or worse, truly deleted.
But not by me. I rarely delete anything completely. Instead, I keep a folder of “outtakes.” Sometimes I’ll go back to this outtake folder and cull material that didn’t quite work in one scene but might just work in another scene. Mostly, though, the material just sits there, forgotten even by me.
Well, I didn’t want the material below to be forgotten forever; indeed, I quite liked the two scenes from Vampire Moon. So, why did them delete it from Vampire Moon in the first place?
First off, the first deleted scene transpires after Samantha Moon punches through a sheet of bulletproof glass at the Chino State Prison in California. (A convicted murderer threatens her kids, and Samantha, ah, shows her displeasure.) I knew her actions would warrant a deeper investigation by the police. Having the police investigate my vampire detective too deeply wasn’t the direction I wanted the story to take. So I decided to handle the aftermath of the glass-punching scene in an entirely different way (as you can read in Vampire Moon). Still, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the first deleted scene. I hope you do, too. —J.R.
Vampire Moon
Deleted Scene #1
Kurt Jones, the Chino State Prison Warden, was an older man with a surprisingly gentle-looking face. He sat behind his plain desk, leaning back in a squeaky chair, steepling his thick fingers under his thick chin as he studied me. Just outside his office door stood two guards, watching us.
Or, rather, watching me.
The warden continued silently studying me with his kind eyes. Eyes that were, I suspected, deceptively kind. No doubt they could harden in a heartbeat. But they weren’t hardened now. No, if anything, they looked lost.
He looked lost. Confused.
As he kept watching me, I kept sitting in the small chair in front of him. He took a deep breath and seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth again, and somehow looked even more perplexed.
Finally, after about five minutes of this, he shook his squarish head and leaned forward a little in his seat. The chair squeaked loudly.
“You punched your fist through a bulletproof glass barrier,” he finally said, his first words to me since sitting in front of him.
I said nothing. I looked down at my right arm. The deep cuts I had suffered when I had reached through the jagged opening had already healed.
“You punched through a bulletproof barrier,” he said again, but this time, he wasn’t looking at me. He seemed to be trying to wrap his brain around the concept but, judging by the utter confusion in his voice, failing miserably. He looked up at me. “Do you have anything to say about this?”
Bulletproof, yes. Vampire proof, no.
“The glass might have been cracked,” I said.
“But the glass is three inches thick.”
“A big crack,” I said.
He stared at me. His mouth opened a little. I saw his lips moving, trying to form words, but then he gave up and closed his mouth again. After a moment, he looked down at a piece of paper in front of him. The paper sat askew. He straightened it and read from it.
“According to the prison hospital X-rays, you broke his nose, his jaw, his right cheekbone, his nasal cavity, and seven teeth.”
“He threatened my children,” I said.
“We know.”
We were silent some more. I heard people talking excitedly outside the warden’s office. There was a pretty good chance they were talking about the freaky woman in the warden’s office.
Me, of course.
The warden next pulled open the narrow center drawer in his desk, fumbled inside, and then lifted something out. He shut the drawer again. He set that something on the desk in front of him. It was a chunk of broken glass. A big chunk of glass.
“That’s a piece of polycarbonate thermoplastic, able to withstand clubs, axes, hammers, and especially bullets.” He stared down at it as he spoke. “It’s made with dozens of layers of plastics and glasses, and is the latest of its kind. I will have it tested, but I most certainly do not think it was cracked or defective.”
I said nothing. The broken section of glass looked like the world’s ugliest paperweight.
He went on. “So, that means there’s a very real possibility that you actually punched through it with your fist.”
There was nothing for me to say; hell, he wouldn’t like my answer anyway.
“Help me understand what happened here, Ms. Moon. I mean, I’m going to have to write a report on this. There’s going to be legal implications. I can’t just say you punched through a bullet-resistant piece of three-inch glass.”
“Sure you can,” I said. “But I would suggest you liberally use the words ‘defective piece of glass’ throughout your report.”
He sat back and studied me. After twenty seconds, he said, “How did you do it, Ms. Moon?”
There are very few who know my secret. The warden here wouldn’t be one of them. I held his gaze steadily as I spoke.
“Adrenalin. Anger. We’ve all heard stories of mothers lifting crashed cars off their children.”
“So, you’re going with ‘anger’ and ‘adrenalin’, huh?”
“What other explanation can there be?” I asked. “Am I free to go?”
“You almost killed one of my inmates,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”
Finis
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Vampire Moon:
Deleted S
cene #2
Author’s Note: This second scene deleted from Vampire Moon was a matter of taste. I felt that Samantha was just too...vicious in the story. Too calculating and too cold-blooded. How Sam eventually deals with a murderous husband is handled quite differently in Vampire Moon. Here, though, you can see Sam’s slightly more murderous side. Enjoy! —J.R.
Vampire Moon
Deleted Scene #2
I landed on the hospital roof.
A moment later, closing my eyes and seeing myself in my human form, I found myself standing naked, high above the prison below. As usual, I didn’t feel myself transform. It just happened, and it happened instantly and painlessly. A true metamorphosis.
Feeling vulnerable—being naked does that to you—I trotted over to a door, the roof’s access point. The doorknob was locked, so locked that it didn’t even jiggle. I gripped the knob again and turned with a little added strength. With a groan, the mechanisms in the lock snapped apart and I pulled the door open.
The dark stairwell was lit by only a dusty, mesh-covered light bulb. I moved quickly down the metal staircase, padding lightly on bare feet, careful not touch anything.
I paused at the third floor, the prison hospital’s ICU. Although I hadn’t worked long as a federal agent for HUD, I had certainly worked long enough to get acquainted with most of the local prisons. More than a few times, I interviewed prisoners. And one or two times, I had even interviewed prisoners in this very hospital.
Granted, I had never done so stark naked in the middle of the night.
Tonight, though, it wasn’t going to be an interview.
The door onto the floor wasn’t locked. As is the case for many prison hospitals, the building wasn’t quite as tight as the prison itself, which accounted for why most prison break-outs occurred here, in the hospitals.
It was late, and the hospital should be quiet. There would be plenty of guards, certainly, at least one in each room, and definitely a few on each floor. There would also be plenty of cameras, too.
Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about cameras.
I stood behind the metal door, away from the glass window, and listened. A few seconds of this later, and I was certain there was no one outside the door, or anywhere close, for that matter. Not to mention, my sixth sense would have alerted me to danger. I think. I hoped so, at least.
Anyway, all of my senses, both physical and non-physical, were telling me the coast was clear. So I used my middle knuckle to gently push down on the lever, and used my shoulder to push open the door. I may be a vampire, but I still had prints.
I peeked out into the hallway.
* * *
You want surreal? Try standing in a prison hospital hallway naked.
Above me, yes, was a camera. I knew from experience that I would not show up on film, either digital or celluloid. But I did very much show up live and in person and so I kept an eye out for anything living. So far, I was alone. To either side of me were elevators. To my left was a sort of cage that I think might have been the pharmacy. To my right was a long corridor that led to some activity and brighter lights.
I slipped down the hall, as naked as the day I was born.
There was what appeared to be a nurse’s station at the far end of the hallway. I could see a security guard leaning against the wall directly ahead of me. If he would look to his left, he would see a very naked vampire.
I did my best to keep to the shadows and that was when I found what I was looking for. It was a storage room. The door was locked. I took care of that with a quick twist of my wrist. I slipped inside and flicked on the light. It was, in fact, a big storage room, filled with shelves of everything from cleaning agents to nursing smocks. It was the smocks that I was after.
In a blink, I was wearing one. A baggy one, granted, but it would do the trick. I also grabbed a rag which I sprayed with disinfectant. Vampires could still leave fingerprints, unfortunately.
I exited the storage room and looked for my next target.
I found it easily enough.
It was a fire alarm near a door a few yards away. With my hand wrapped in the rag, I yanked down on it hard, and the building erupted nicely into chaos.
* * *
Most of the armed guards had stepped out of the room and were conferring with each other. Many were on radios. The alarm screamed, rattling the old building. Doctors and nurses were running to and fro.
One nurse wasn’t running. One nurse was methodically checking each of the rooms until she found the one she wanted. No one noticed me or cared. I was just another nurse checking on her precious wards. Except this nurse had anything but benediction on her mind.
Ira Levin had a room to himself. It even looked like he had a view. Granted, it wasn’t much of a view. More of a dirty, mesh-covered window set high on the wall, barely big enough to shoot arrows from had this been a medieval fortress instead. Still, the small window would have afforded sunlight, and when one is on Death Row, even sunlight is a rare luxury.
Ira was awake and looking around, blinking. No doubt he had been asleep just moments earlier. His face, I saw, was still mostly bandaged. Even from here, looking through the door, I could see the dozens of dark stitches that criss-crossed the sections of his face that weren’t covered in bandages.
The guard barely looked at me. He was a big guy with a heavily muscled chest. At least, it was heavily muscled in my imagination. I slipped inside and he barely looked at me.
I kept my face turned away from Ira as I walked around his head, pretending to examine some equipment.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “What’s going on? We got some kind of fire.”
“Something like that,” I said. I was next to his bed, looking away, running my hands over some tubes. I could feel his eyes on me.
“You guys gonna get me out of here or something?”
“Or something,” I said. My heart, which generally beat slowly and deliberately, pushing my supernatural blood throughout my undead body, had picked up. I heard it pounding in my ears.
I would love to tell you that my heart picked up because I was nervous. Because I was about to do something I had never done before. I would like to tell you that what I was about to do caused me so much guilt and regret that I nearly turned back.
I would like to. But I can’t.
The truth is, I was more excited than I had been in a long, long time. Something was coming over me. Something raw and primal, something alive and dark. And it pushed me forward recklessly.
I could see the guard clearly through the window. He was supposed to stand in the prisoner’s room at all times. However, apparently, that all changed when the fire alarm sounded. Now he was out in the hall, hand on his weapon, apparently waiting for orders. He glanced inside at me and I made sure to look busy. He looked away again as his walkie-talkie crackled. As he unclipped it and spoke into it, I turned around quickly and faced Ira Levin.
He had been looking out the window, at the guard, but now he looked back at me. His face was heavily bruised and misshapen. He looked very little like the man who had taunted me a week earlier. His eyes seemed slightly glazed. No doubt he was on a lot of painkillers, not to mention he had just been roused no doubt from a deep sleep.
He seemed about to ask me something pedestrian—perhaps if I could get him some water, or help him relieve his bowels—but then something crossed his damaged and battered face. More accurately, it crossed his eyes. That something was recognition.
“You!” he started to say.
I don’t think he even finished the word. I lunged forward and clapped my hand over his mouth, careful not to let him bite me. Next, I pulled the pillow out from behind his head, and in one swift motion, replaced my hand with the pillow, covering his face completely.
I looked out the window. The guard was still on the walkie-talkie. A nurse ran by. Another guard ran by. The sirens continued to wail.
Ira kicked and fought me. I put my weight on him, binding his arms to his side, care
ful that nothing flailing could scratch me and inadvertently collect any evidence.
My head was pounding. My own blood was veritably surging through me. I had an image of a lioness pinning down a gazelle, her ferocious jaws clamped around her prey’s throat, catching her breath even while she waited for her meal to perish.
My stomach growled ridiculously loud. I fought an overwhelming desire to rip out his throat and drink his foul blood. I fought and fought and fought the feeling. A dozen different times, I nearly gave in. A dozen different times I reminded myself that Ira absolutely must appear to have died naturally.
Finally, the kicking stopped. His body convulsed beneath me a half dozen times. As it did so, I watched the guard. He was still talking heatedly into the walkie-talkie, glancing left and right, but never in the room.
I lay on Ira’s body as his life left him. In the moment that it did, it sort of sagged and deflated and the energy in the room instantly dissipated. I was clearly alone with a corpse.
In the moment, his various life-monitoring machines went nuts. There was a lot blaring and beeping, and I quickly tucked the pillow back under his head, relieved that his eyes hadn’t bulged out. As they were, he was staring at me blankly. I glanced inside his open mouth. He bit his tongue, but not too badly. A random heart attack could result in a similar injury. I wasn’t worried. The blaring of the various monitors did not at first get the guard’s attention, as they were mostly lost in the screeching sounds of the fire alarm.
But he must have caught my movement, because he was now in the room asking what happened. I brushed past him and told him I had to find a doctor, ASAP.
He nodded and let me go.
I went down the hallway, made a right, passed a half-dozen sprinting nurses going in the opposite direction, and then made a beeline to the storage room.
