Emil, now his co-worker at the lab, continued to accept Michael as no one else ever had, and their friendship was a bond that would never be broken.
And then, one night, he met Martine. She worked in a different section of the lab. She wasn’t a scientist but she was brilliant. And beautiful. And funny. And when she looked at Michael, he couldn’t detect any disgust at all. She seemed only interested in his intellect—his scientific curiosity and the kindness that was often hidden behind his biting words. He kept his sickness hidden from her, even though he longed to tell her the truth.
Michael refused to seem weak in front of her.
Martine liked Emil, as well, and the three of them bonded—in the facility and the world outside. They would often leave work and find places where they could continue their conversations and intellectual arguments, in particular at a bar in a small town near where their laboratory was located.
It was on one of those nights, after Emil had left early to see another friend across town, that Michael and Martine had kissed for the first time. He would never forget it. His first kiss. With the woman who would become the love of his life. It was perfect.
And then… it wasn’t.
Michael’s blood condition worsened. His doctor told him that there wasn’t much time remaining. Weeks. Maybe months. He confided in Emil, and his friend promised they would fight it. Emil would do everything in his power to save his best friend’s life.
* * *
BACK ON the roof, Michael looked away from the moon. The memories were so strong. It was as if they were playing out in front of him. He didn’t want to see this next part, but the images followed his gaze even as goosebumps washed across his skin.
Despite the painful thoughts, the strange liquid he’d ingested still flooded his body with pleasure. He stared at a nearby building, and the memories seemed to play out across its walls like a flickering movie on a screen.
* * *
EMIL’S PASSION to save him led Michael to an idea. Something that he had been researching at the laboratory. A procedure involving bats.
Vampire bats.
What he and Emil did would be illegal, but they didn’t let that stop them. Indeed, Morbius had no choice. He had a life now. Had a woman who loved him and whom he loved desperately. He wanted to live.
Theoretical science gave way to practical testing, and they reached the point where it was do-or-die. They decided to perform the procedure on a boat, out at sea, where no one could stop them, and Morbius spent every last penny he possessed outfitting a chartered yacht far from Greece, at an English seaport.
He and Emil returned to the lab for the final equipment they would need, and as they prepared to leave, Martine insisted on accompanying them. Morbius found himself unable to say no.
They booked a ride on a tanker that took them through the sun-drenched Mediterranean and eventually dropped them off at the seaport, where they made their way to the yacht. Despite Martine’s curiosity at what her lover and his friend had planned, they kept the details a secret from her. Morbius sometimes wondered if everything would have turned out differently had he told her the truth. About everything. Perhaps she would have talked him out of it.
Perhaps all the lives he had destroyed could have been spared.
Emil fought with him. He wanted to tell Martine what they had planned, but Morbius forbade it.
The night of the experiment, Michael and Martine had dinner on the deck, talked quietly, and watched as the sun set over the water. It was one of the most beautiful things Morbius had ever seen, perhaps the happiest he had ever been. Which made saying an early good night to her that much harder. He had to work, he told her. Her final words to him, before his transformation, were heartbreaking.
“Of course,” she said. “I understand, my love, but do not work too long. You seem… so pale.”
They kissed, and then Michael made his way below decks, where Emil greeted him. The machinery was ready.
First, Morbius donned an insulated suit he would be cursed to wear in perpetuity. After that, Emil helped him climb into gear that made it look as if he was about to walk on the moon. Once the helmet was locked in place, Emil stared through the glass and looked his best friend in the eyes.
“Are you sure…?” Emil asked. “This is highly risky, Michael.”
One last opportunity to avoid his fate.
“Unless this shock treatment succeeds… against all hope, all odds,” Morbius had answered, his voice muffled, his eyes wild with desperation, “I’ll measure out my life in days. Perhaps hours.”
“I… know,” Emil had responded, turning to the computer and beginning to input the commands necessary to begin the experiment. “But electrical creation of blood cells is something that’s never before been attempted,” he continued, “let alone achieved. If only we had time to gauge all possible results, all potential side effects…”
Morbius closed his eyes. He knew the moment had come, and heard Emil’s final words before they reached the point of no return.
“As you say,” Emil agreed, “we have no choice. What side effect could possibly be worse than death?”
* * *
IF ONLY Morbius had known. If only he had listened. He had learned since that night that there were many things worse than death.
The images continued to play out in front of him as he crouched on the Manhattan rooftop. It was surreal, as if he were both watching and experiencing the events simultaneously. Emil hit the button that began the procedure, and in the present he could almost feel the pain of the electrical shocks that had coursed through his body, that sent the altered vampire bat’s blood coursing through his veins.
The pain had lasted a moment.
Had lasted a lifetime.
The next thing Morbius knew, Emil was helping him get the helmet off, helping him out of the chair. Michael felt so weak at first, so cold, and the overhead lights burned into his eyes. His brain. That was the first indication that something had changed, that something was very wrong.
Poor Emil.
He helped Michael to another room. To rest, to recover.
The world went red, and without knowing how it had happened, Michael found his hands wrapped around his best friend’s throat. Squeezing. Ignoring the gurgling cries of the man who had tried to save his life.
Until Emil was dead at Morbius’ feet.
Michael had wept in the moments after he realized what he had just done. He had killed a man—something he never could have imagined. He stared at Emil’s corpse for several long minutes, then climbed back up to the deck, desperately needing to get some air, to think.
And then the thirst overwhelmed him for the first time.
The absolute need to drink human blood. He could smell Martine’s, even from the other side of the boat. It smelled so enticing.
Realizing what was about to happen, he came to his senses and threw himself off the side of the ship.
From that day onward, his life had become a perpetual hellscape. He had transformed into a monster—there was no other way to describe himself. Had murdered his best friend. Watched the love of his life placed in thrall to a powerful man named Reverend Daemond. Killed the innocent, over and over again.
* * *
SCREAMING, MORBIUS launched himself into the sky, almost hoping he would somehow be engulfed by the light of the moon and burned to a cinder.
As he rode the wind currents, another wave of ecstasy wracked his body, pushing the memories out of his mind; he smiled, taking in the metallic beauty of the city. The lights shimmered and humans milled about, oblivious to the bizarre creature hovering above them.
“No!”
The voice echoed from below.
At first, Morbius wasn’t sure if it was real or a product of the bizarre fluid he had imbibed. He looked around, didn’t see anything. It had been a figment of his imagination, after all.
“Please!”
The voice again. Desperate. Pleading.
Morbi
us’ mind cleared somewhat and his eyes found the source of the cries. Gold Street ended in little more than an alleyway, where the trash had piled up and shadows congregated. There, a woman was being pulled deeper into the darkness by a man whose face Morbius couldn’t make out. But it wasn’t just any woman.
It was Martine.
Without thinking, Morbius dove. The wind pushed against his face but he could barely feel it, was barely aware of anything except the shock of blond hair that belonged to the love of his life. He had been looking for her for so very long, ever since she had been abducted by Daemond. But her trail had gone cold, and Morbius had found himself diverted by Amanda’s plight, focusing on that rather than his own
And now, here she was. Martine. How was it possible?
It didn’t make sense.
It also didn’t matter. They would be reunited.
Finally.
Morbius landed and dropped into a crouch just behind the female figure, then rose up to his full height. From this new angle, the moon’s light revealed the face of her attacker, and Morbius felt the breath sucked from his lungs. Reverend Daemond stared back at him, a cruel sneer on his face.
Morbius hesitated but Daemond didn’t. He pushed Martine aside and lunged, shoving a knife deep into Morbius’ stomach. Dark blood spilled out, but Morbius barely felt it. Normally, he was strong—incredibly so, ever since the transformation—but being stabbed should have yielded much more pain. Perhaps it was another side effect of the strange blood, he mused in a distant corner of his mind.
Daemond stared down at the blade protruding from Morbius’ stomach, a look of surprise and consternation crossing his face. As the black blood slowly leaked onto his hand, Daemond let go of the knife and attempted to pull back his arm, but he was too slow. Morbius’ claw-like fingers clamped onto the man’s arm and wrenched it to the left, easily breaking the bone and sending it exploding out of its flesh casing, followed by a spurt of blood.
Daemond screamed and collapsed to his knees.
Morbius smiled. He had dreamed of this day.
The moonlight hit Daemond’s face and neck, and Morbius realized at that moment, with absolute shock, that he felt no hunger whatsoever. He had no interest in draining the life from his opponent, at least not using his fangs.
Morbius blinked, his senses still scrambled, and watched as Daemond’s blood poured from his ruptured arm and flowed onto the dirty ground below. But then the man’s hair began to grow, and became… lighter? Was this some sort of trick? Certainly the man had access to dark magic, but no, this didn’t seem to be his doing. His face was transforming as well, scruff appearing, and multiple rings in each ear.
It wasn’t Daemond at all.
Thinking his brain was playing tricks on him, Morbius turned quickly. Martine was there. She had pressed herself against the nearby wall, eyes going back and forth between the two combatants, terrified of both.
“Martine… it’s me,” Morbius said as softly as he could, while the man continued to groan behind him. “It’s Michael.”
“Stay away from me!” she yelled and her features began to change, too. Hair growing shorter, darker. Nose elongating, eyes changing color. This wasn’t Martine—it was a woman he didn’t recognize. Morbius had inadvertently stopped a mugging, had done the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
A growl escaped his lips as he leapt away, back to the top of the nearby building and the safe shadows therein. From there he watched, his skin still prickling, as the woman ran back to Fulton and flagged down a police officer. Within minutes, several emergency vehicles arrived. The criminal was treated, and placed into the back of the ambulance, where he was handcuffed to a stretcher.
The first officer put away his notebook and spoke to the woman. She shook her head and began to walk away as the incident faded away from the city’s consciousness. At the end of the street, however, the woman stopped and looked up into the darkness. Morbius wondered if she could see him. The smallest smile appeared on her face… or did he imagine that?
And then she was gone.
New York pulsed around him and Morbius sat back, moving out of the shadows, letting the moonlight wash over him. Despite the fact that his mind was playing tricks on him, his body was alive with intense sensory palpitations. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this at peace with himself and his surroundings.
Michael Morbius closed his eyes again, and smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
AMANDA AWOKE from a nightmare where she was covered with thousands of tiny spiders.
It was the same dream she’d been having ever since she had nearly been eaten by a giant, demonic arachnid. Since she had been tagged as a human sacrifice by her boyfriend and her sister. Her own sister. It still didn’t seem real. The memory of the betrayal was a hundred times worse than the horrifying image of the spider.
How could Catherine do that to her?
Drawing in a deep breath, Amanda counted to three, and then released it. She had read in a book that this simple exercise could greatly reduce stress and anxiety. It usually worked. But right now?
Not so much.
A noise came from outside her small bedroom, the one she shared with Michael, and she realized it was the same noise that had woken her. She blinked rapidly, willing the sleep out of her mind, then stood up. Opening the door slowly, she peeked out and saw Michael standing at the kitchen table, washing his hands. The hot water handle glistened red.
Off to one side, a makeshift patch of cardboard and tape hung from the window.
“Michael…” she said quietly.
The living vampire whipped around, his fangs bared, but then instantly checked himself, his entire body relaxing at the sight of his friend.
“Amanda, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
She had never heard his voice sound quite like that. It was softer somehow, maybe even… happier? That didn’t seem possible. Michael was often short with her, sometimes downright rude, though she knew the bad attitude came from a place of pain. This seemed like a very different Michael Morbius than the one she had come to know over the last several weeks and states.
“No, I was awake,” she lied. “But what about you? Are you okay? You drank that weird blood and then blasted out of the window. Where have you been?”
Morbius walked over to the table and sat down, pink water dripping from his fingers and onto the floor. Liz and Amanda had spent half an hour cleaning up the shattered glass and taping cardboard over the gaping hole. Michael had pushed back through it during his re-entry. He wasn’t exactly the dream roommate.
She smiled at the ridiculousness of the thought, of the idea that she was debating the merits of bunking with a vampire, and took a seat across from her pale-skinned companion.
Morbius closed his eyes and sat silently. For a moment, Amanda thought he might have fallen asleep. And then he spoke without opening his eyes.
“I can still feel it,” he said. “That strange blood. Working its way through my body. The effects are diminished… I suspect they’ll be gone entirely within an hour, but it’s still there. I… I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
Amanda took that in. He had told her some of the things that had happened to him since he’d turned himself into a vampire. Stories of other worlds and superhuman beings. So this was quite an admission.
“Is that good or bad?” she asked.
Morbius opened his eyes and stared into hers. It usually unnerved her when he did this, because she could sense the hunger he was fighting, even when he was doing his utmost to hide his desire to bite into her neck and drink her dry. But not now. She saw no such desire in his expression.
“Good,” he said, sounding surprised by his own answer. “It’s good. My hunger was gone. I felt at peace with myself. I saw the world laid bare, as I think it was meant to be seen.” Each word was tentative, as if he didn’t trust them to be true.
“That’s… that’s amazing,” Amanda said. “I’m really happy
for you. It must have felt so great to be out there and…” She paused, and looked at his hands. “And not have an urge to attack anyone.”
“Well…”
“Well, what?”
Michael looked down.
“I may have attacked someone.”
“Michael, you just said—”
“It was a criminal, Amanda,” Morbius said, looking back up. Despite what they were discussing, she fought another smile. He looked almost like the child he had once described to her. That bullied little boy in Greece. It was moments like this where her heart bled for this poor, cursed man. Vampire. Whatever. He wasn’t evil. At least, she didn’t think he was. Not when she got right down to the deepest part of his soul.
“He was mugging a woman,” Morbius continued, “and I… well, I broke his arm in half. But I saved her.”
“Huh,” Amanda responded, inwardly cringing at the image. “Well, I guess that’s… positive, then?”
Morbius stared at her for a long time, looking as if he was wrestling with his next sentence. She waited, gave him the time he needed, and then he finally said it, quietly. Almost a whisper.
“I thought the woman was Martine.”
“Oh,” Amanda said, her stomach turning. She knew how much Michael missed the love of his life, how worried he was for her. It was a devastation that Amanda knew all too well. “But it wasn’t her.”
“No,” Michael answered after a moment. “That blood Liz gave me, it… it did something, to my brain. It took time for me to get control of it, of myself, but by the end of the night I figured out how to sort through what I was seeing, to use the side effects to my benefit.” He leaned forward. “That blood might just be the answer to all my problems. I may never need to feed on a living person ever again.”
“That’s… that would be amazing,” Amanda said, and she meant it. She knew that Michael agonized every time his thirst led him to murdering an innocent victim. Deep down, she was afraid of him, too. Always had been. She often wondered if she would wake up in the middle of the night and find him hunched over her, his long teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her neck. “I’ll ask Liz if she can get more.”
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