Nightlord: Sunset (4 page)

I wasn’t even coming close to floating.  It occurred to me that my weight problem might be about to kill me.  I resolved to never again get into water deeper than my chin once I got out.

If I got out.

So I did the only thing I could think of: stay as calm as possible and walk as fast as I could toward the shallow end.  It had a sort of nightmare quality to it.  I had a sense of infinite hurry, backed by my decided need to breathe, along with a creepingly slow uphill struggle.

I’ve never noticed how long an Olympic-sized pool is.  I noticed then.  About fourteen thousand miles, give or take a few hundred yards.

I made it.  I had red flashes behind my eyelids and bright spots dancing before my eyes, but my head finally broke the surface.  I blew like a whale, I think, and kept walking, getting my head completely above water and gasping.  Then I realized Travis was right there. 
Lifting
me and hauling me forward—he was completely underwater, lifting and shoving while holding his breath.  I think he saved my life.  I know they’d never have managed to get me out of the pool for mouth-to-mouth in time.

We made it the last few yards to water shallow enough to stand in and still breathe.  We both gasped for air and slowly walk-drifted to a corner with stairs.

“You okay?” he asked, panting.

I nodded, still too out of breath to answer.

“You must’ve been down for four minutes, man.  What happened?”

“I can’t swim,” I gasped.

“Well, yeah, you’re a lousy swimmer—”

“No,” I broke in, then coughed for a moment, “I don’t float.  I can’t.  Sank like a stone.”

We reached the three-foot deep corner and the stairs.  I sat down and put my head down on my knees.

“So you sink?” he asked.  “Interesting.”

“Yeah.  Remind me to buy a lifejacket.”

“Sure.  How about one of the inflatable kind?” he suggested.  “You know, we should have seen this coming.  You weigh too much for your build.”

I just nodded.  I never floated well anyway, but I could at least swim.  Now I was trying to swim with a hundred-pound weight strapped to my back.  No wonder I nearly drowned.

“Jacuzzi?” Travis suggested.

Relaxing was a good idea, but I really didn’t want to have to deal with water at all.

“Sauna,” I countered.  Travis nodded and helped me up.  No wonder vampires had that running water phobia.

We were in the university clinic that evening, waiting for sunset.  It was a slow night in the clinic, which doubles as an emergency room for the campus; the local hospital staffed it.  I was sitting in a quiet spot, wired to an EKG and EEG and a bunch of other acronyms, wondering what Travis hoped to learn from this mess of wires.  I thought to ask him about some of the things he was adjusting but had an interruption.

The sunset started.  I settled back on the bed and tried to relax.

A horde of ants crawled out of my skin and started to mambo.  Just as they got going good, they set fire to themselves and switched to the lambada.  I was not appreciative.  At least my guts weren’t cramping up this time; I felt nauseous and ill, but not like some sadist with a penchant for knots had been handed my intestines.

It turned off.  Again, it was like someone turned down a dimmer switch to off—not instantaneous, but a rapid fading to zero.

I sat up and noted I was soaked in sweat again; not as bad as the icky goo the last couple times—I’ve smelled as bad after a long afternoon in the dust and heat, mowing.  But it was definitely not pleasant.

Travis was staring at me.

“What?’

“You’re pale, and your EKG just flatlined.  Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel fine, aside from being wired like a Christmas tree.”

He examined the machines, hands trembling slightly.  He watches me heft three hundred pounds, break world records for jumping, and defy human biology by sinking like a rock—but the graphs had him all a-tizzy.  Go figure.

“This is unbelievable!  You have no heartbeat—no heart action at all.  And your EEG altered markedly,” he said, examining a strip-chart.  “I haven’t seen a brainwave graph like this before.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.  I said it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

I shrugged.  “Okay.  Now, can we get me unwired?  I’m hungry.”

“Sure.  Can I take a couple of x-rays first?”

“Fine.  Irradiate away if you feel you must.  But hurry.  I’m not kidding.  I feel starved.”

He hurried. 

Back at his place, he was frying up a steak; we’d stopped to pick up a lot of meat.  After draining several pounds of it for me, he was cooking some for himself.

It wasn’t enough, but it took the edge off.

“So, what else do we know?”

“The lab report on your blood came back; you’re O positive, you didn’t eat recently, and you have no identifiable pathogens.  No dice.”

I frowned while he turned the steak over in the skillet.

“Shows what they know.  I’ve stuffed myself all day long.”

“And you were hungry again when we took the blood sample.”

“Okay.  I see your point.  So how do we find an unknown pathogen?”

“Search me.  Without having a clue what we’re looking for—or telling someone about it—we’re out of luck.”

“Great.  What else?”

“Well, when the sun went down, you did a fine job of becoming dead.  I’m still wigging out about that.”

I looked at him as he calmly added salt and some butter to the skillet.  Wigging, indeed.

“So I’m dead?” I asked.

“Well… technically, no.  You have brain activity—a lot of it, too, in ways that people generally don’t.  It’s downright weird.”

“I gathered.  Go on.”

“You don’t breathe, you don’t eat—except to drink blood.  You don’t have heart action, nor can I hear any sounds of digestion or anything else with a stethoscope.  Your x-rays show your flesh as being a lot more dense than normal—but your bones are
more
transparent to x-rays than usual—and your mouth has some peculiar dentition.”

I ran my tongue over the sharp teeth, upper and lower.  They slid out, lengthening slightly; I worked on it for a moment, concentrating, and managed to retract them.  It was like concentrating on moving just one toe, or learning to wiggle your ears, but I was getting it.  It explained the pains in my mouth during the first three days, anyway.  The fangs have to retract
somewhere.

“Which leads us to what conclusion?”

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I’d say you’re a vampire, but you apparently get better during the day.  Since you don’t fry in the sunlight, that shoots down the vampire idea.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” I countered.  “There are legends about vampires that walked in daylight; they were just weaker during the day.  Could be the ultraviolet, maybe, or other solar radiation.”

“What about the night-stalking, day-fearing, bloodthirsty fiends of evil that haunted mankind and wantonly slew anyone they wished, killing mercilessly in their nocturnal orgies of blood?”

I looked at Travis.  He grinned.  I grinned back.

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” I replied.

“Good to see you still have a sense of humor.”

“I may be dead, but I’m still good people.  So let’s assume I am a vampire, a kind that doesn’t toast in sunlight.”

“Okay.  Are we postulating vampires exist?”

“Yep.  Let’s go ahead and add most other supernatural beasties as well, just to be safe.”

“Great.  Can I be a werewolf?”

“You’re hairy enough.  You need sharper teeth, though.”

“I’ll talk to my dentist.  Go on about vampires.”

I thought about it, remembering all the mythology and folklore I’ve read.  I have an eclectic library stuffed into boxes.  Someday, I’ll have shelves for it all.

“All right.  There are a lot of legends and folklore about vampires.  A common thread to most of them is blood drinking.  ‘Why’ varies from culture to culture, but it’s pretty universal.”

“What are the exceptions?”

“Female vampires—succubi—sometimes fed on seminal fluid.”

“Wow.  Lucky guy.”

“Not considering the fact it also sucked the life out of him.”

“Ouch,” he replied, wincing.  “What a way to go.”

“Male versions of such creatures—incubi—would feed on the sexual energies of women.  In all these cases, it’s a symbolic consumption of life energies, really.  Blood, semen, sexual power—all just forms of energy, when you come down to it.  The energy of life.”

“So you could get laid instead of drinking blood?” he asked.

“Or both, if I really wanted to be unkind.  I’ll skip that for now; I’ve got too much on my mind.  Besides, I have no idea how to feed on sex—and no smart remarks, please.”

Travis looked thoughtful and sat down at the table with a plate.  “You mind if I eat in front of you?”

“Not so long as I can eat in front of you, someday.”

He nodded and started in.  “You know, with no heart action, I’m not sure you
can
engage in sexual intercourse.  With no blood flow to fill the erectile tissues, you’re probably rather limp.”

I thought about it and realized he had a point.

“Could be.  That would put a damper on the evening, certainly.”

Travis chewed and looked thoughtful for a while.  I had some thinking to do, myself.  This could be doable.  If sunrise and sunset were as bad as it got, slurping down restaurant meat drainage could be done.  I’d regret not being able to swim.  I’d regret not being able to watch a sunrise.  But…

“Eric?”

“Hmm?”

“You mentioned that Sasha knows a lot about this.  She’s the one who caused it, after all.”

“Yes.”

“Could we just ask her what she knows?”

I hesitated.

“I suppose so,” I answered, slowly.

I didn’t want to ask her.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her, if anything.  It’s no easy thing to be told you’re the reincarnation of a long-dead vampire count and you’re a vampire now, by the way, congratulations.  She struck me as being way too hung up on the guy.  While it was probably romantic, love never dies and all that, it made me think of obsession, insanity, and lots of loose bits rattling wildly in the engine compartment of her brain.

While I was pretty sure I liked her—okay, I was sure; she’s was a great looking piece of woman and had a real talent for…  um… she’s the one that made me think of succubi—I wondered if I wanted to get any more involved with her.  Maybe a few days… weeks… years… later.  When she wasn’t thinking of me as her long-lost lord and master.

I realized something.

I
did
like her.  A lot.  Moreover, I was both jealous and irked.  Jealous of the ancient fellow who once had her love, and who she still sought.  Irked in that she did not see
me
when she looked at me.  She saw
him
.  I wasn’t so sure she really cared about me.  I was more sure she was just after the man I resembled.

Yeah, I had to admit it to myself—I was angry about that.

“We could,” I continued.  “Or I could.  I’m not so sure she’d want to discuss it with anyone else.  Obviously, nobody else is really in on the secret.”

“Good point.  So, do you think you can turn into a bat, or something?”

Bless that man.  He can sometimes tell when I need a distraction.

“I don’t know.  How does one go about it?”

“Kinda like folding up like a telescope, I would imagine.  All you have to do is figure out how to start.”

“
Alice.”

“Yup.”

“Okay, so how does one
start
turning into a bat?”

“Search me.  That’s your problem.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be fading out around that grin, about now?”

“I’m a werewolf, not a cat.  Besides, I’m too busy eating.”

I sighed.  “Okay, let me think about it.”

So I thought about it.  Being a bat.  Leathery wings instead of arms.  Little tiny feet.  Fangs—okay, I didn’t have to imagine the fangs.  Big ears.  Fur…

I opened my eyes.  No soap.

“Didn’t work,” Travis said, mouth full.

“So I see.  I’ll keep practicing.”

“Go on and talk to Sasha.  Maybe she can teach you.”

I shrugged.  “I’ll get around to it.”

He chewed vigorously for a moment, swallowed, and said, “No, you’ll go now.”

“Now?  Why?”

He set the silverware down and leaned back.

“Eric, you’re… not quite right anymore.  We don’t know anything about this condition of yours.  All we know is what it’s done to you—and probably not all of that.  I surely don’t understand how you manage to survive without heart action and breathing.  We need to know more about this; she’s the only one who knows.  And I know you.  If you put it off today, you’ll put it off tomorrow—and you’ll never do it.”