“Phooey.”
Shocked to the very core of his being, his grip loosened and I dropped sprawling to the concrete floor landing on my car keys. Ouch.
“Phooey?” he echoed, as if he had never heard the word before. Then again, maybe he hadn't. Monsters lead such an insular life.
“Can you watch a video tape of the sun?” I asked. “Look at a poster of a sunrise? Touch a painting of a glorious sunset?”
He paused. “Well, yes,” he admitted hesitantly.
“Then who cares?”
That stunned him for a moment, and then the thing came back strong. “I care!” he roared making the walls vibrate and a rain of dust sprinkled down from the rafters. “To see the sun! The glorious sun just once more...”
“Crap,” I retorted rudely, wiggling a finger in my ear to stop the ringing. “You're super-strong, can turn into smoke, fly as a bat, run as a wolf, hypnotize people, shrink to an inch in height, or grow to ten feet tall, you're immune to diseases, get all the babes you want and since you rob your victims, you're filthy rich!”
“Yes, these are true,” the thing grudgingly acknowledged. “But in return, my kind are hunted everywhere we go. Forced to live lives of quiet desperation. No family, no friends. And we must kill to live! What is your clever answer to that, sir! The blood of innocent people will smoke on your hands for eternity!”
Smoke? Hmm, nice visual. I got to my feet and shifted my car keys to a front pocket. “I don't plan to murder innocents.”
“And whom shall you slaughter?” he asked in smug contempt, crossing his powerful arms. Wow. He had a $10,000 dollar Rolex Presidential watch on his wrist. Keen.
“Criminals,” I said, reclaiming my chair. “Some street muggers, if I encounter any, but mostly organized crime figures. People protected by laws bought under the table. Murdering bastards that no honest cop can touch. I'll fill my belly with their blood. Fat rich blood. I'll drain loan sharks, rapists, drug smugglers, hell, I may move to the Middle East and declare my own jihad on terrorists!”
His eyes went level with mine. “You're serious,” he said after a moment.
Stoically, I gave a grim nod. “Damn straight. And if some cop should accidentally get on my trail, why should they stop me? I'm not slaying little children or blind widows or anything like that. I'm zapping crooks, cleaning house for them. Doing the world a favor.”
Frowning thoughtfully, he began chewing on a taloned finger. “Perhaps,” he muttered hesitantly.
In a dramatic gesture, I ripped open my shirt, exposing the neck. “Drink away, old pal. Been exercising and taking vitamins for the past month. No booze, no drugs, no fatty meats, lots of fiber. I'm ripe and ready for the taking. Anxious to become immortal this very night.”
“As you request,” the vampire acknowledged graciously. “By the Dark One, it will be pleasant to have company after all these decades alone.”
Alone, like he knew what that really meant. Now I wasn't thrilled by having another guy place his lips on my throat, but the fangs only stung for a moment. And even as I began to feel woozy, I started to feel fine again. In a minute, he stepped away, a line of red drool flowing down his jaw.
“And that's it?” I asked, tenderly fingering my neck.
He gave me a crimson smile, but a friendly one. “Yes. In three days, you shall awaken as one of us. A vampyre!”
“Great,” I replied reaching into my pocket. Ah, there it was. “And the term is vampire these days.”
He snorted in disdain. “What care I for the chatter of the food?”
I scowled and said nothing.
“By the way, how did you find me?” he asked curiously, dabbing at his lips with an embroidered handkerchief of fine Irish linen. “I am rather good at hiding.”
Keeping a hand in my pocket, I shrugged. “Relatively simple. The dogs told me. They knew exactly where you were hidden.”
All amusement instantly departed as his cat eyes went perfectly round. “The dogs told you?” he asked confused. “What dogs?”
“The pet dogs of your victims,” I snarled, aiming the .32 automatic pistol inside my pocket. “After all they are the ones who asked Bureau 13 to have me find you.”
“The Bureau!” the vampyre snarled in rage and rushed forward, talons raised for a kill.
But I had been ready for that and instantly triggered my weapon. He jerked backwards from the sledgehammer impact of the tiny wood bullets as if they were bazooka shells. Hmm, not a bad idea. Maybe next time.
Aiming carefully, I tracked the body as it toppled over, making sure every precious mahogany round hit him in the heart. The last two splintering slugs burst through the desiccated corpse and only a handful of ancient dust sprinkled to the cold stone floor.
The undead was dead. That paid a lot of debts. Satisfied for the moment, I used my free hand to beat out the flames on my coat jacket from the discharge of the miniature pistol and started for the stairs. As a duly authorized federal agent for the ultra-covert Bureau 13, it was my job to patrol the streets of Tacoma, Washington and protect the local citizens from hostile supernaturals: ghostly crack dealers, demon bank robbers, alien weapon smugglers, robot Nazis, atomic bedbugs, whatever. There was a lot of strange stuff out there, and most of it wanted to eat us.
Unfortunately, I was the only Bureau agent in my hometown and the job was becoming impossible to handle since I could only work a couple of days a month. So I went to downtown Los Angeles and found a nice California vampire.
When the Bureau recruited me long ago, I learned there were rules about how curses operate. Lots of ‘em actually, but the top one was: a big curse cancels out a smaller. Which was exactly what I had counted on here.
As a vampire, I could use my new supernatural abilities to patrol Tacoma and stop crime every night. Every single night, all year long! That sounded mighty good. I really loved my work protecting America, and it had just been so damn frustrating waiting for the three days of the full moon to become a measly werewolf.
THE END
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Doomsday Exam [Bureau 13 #2] Page 25
