The Midnight Vampire Trap

by L.S. Richards

  “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.”