From: D Echelbarger Subject: ITOK: The Last Vampire (01/02) WARNING: If you're expecting my usual light humor/rampant silliness, you'll be disappointed. This is unquestionably the most depressing piece of fiction, fan or other, that I have ever written. Read at your own risk Nick climbed out of the Caddy and slogged wearily to the elevator. Another day of desk work and he'd walk into the sun. Really and truly walk into the sun, and end it all. It was just so damned *boring*. He slammed the heavy elevator door harder than he had to, and jerked the lever over. For the millionth time, he remembered when it all started, the day the Enforcers came.... ------------------------ Nick awoke with a *THUD*. Literally, as he hit the floor with enough force to stun him. By the time he'd recovered and opened his eyes, four Enforcers had him pinned, one on each limb. A fifth held a long, thick, very sharp stake to his chest, and a sixth brandished a large mallet menacingly. "What?--" Nick asked, muzzily. He'd been sleeping on the couch again, and the glare through the skylight told him the sun was still up. "Wait!" he cried, as the sixth Enforcer raised his mallet. "Before you kill me, at least tell me what I did!" "We are here to talk, Nicholas, not kill." LaCroix's voice, from somewhere above Nick's head. "Always provided, of course, that you are willing to be reasonable," the master vampire purred. Nick twisted his neck frantically, trying to get a glimpse of LaCroix. After a moment, LaCroix walked into sight. His face was a grim, sorrowful mask, and he had a minicam slung over one shoulder. "What the hell are you up to, LaCroix?" Nick snarled. "What's all this about?" "You see?" LaCroix asked the Enforcer with the mallet. "He truly knows nothing about it." The Enforcer growled. LaCroix walked over to Nick's entertainment center and inserted a tape in the VCR. "Watch," he told Nick, and pushed . Shaky video footage, looking down into an alley. A familiar voice shouting, "Stop! Police!" A figure running, slamming a chain-link gate behind itself, fumbling at the gate for a moment, and running on. Two figures running up to the gate. The camera zooming in, blurring, then steadying and focusing on the two men at the gate. Nick, rattling the locked fence as Schanke catches up with him. His own voice, faint but clear. "You go around; I'll climb over." Schanke agreeing, running out of sight. His face, still on-camera, transforming-- eyes glowing, fangs protruding-- as he rips the gate from its steel anchors and flings it into the darkness. Himself, racing down the alley with inhuman speed, a blur on the screen. Stopping at the bottom of a fire escape, with his quarry barely in sight, two floors up. Flying upward, to land on the third floor just as the fleeing criminal starts up the next flight. Pulling the man up and through the opening, one-handed, eyes still ablaze... LaCroix pressed a button on the remote, and the picture froze, with Nick's obviously vampiric features caught mid-screen. "That", he said, very softly, "is why we are here, Nicholas." "Where did you get that?" Nick asked, but his mind was racing. "From tonight's satellite feed for a US newsmagazine," LaCroix replied. "Every one of their stations has a copy by now. Far too late to retrieve it, as you did last time. So it is up to us to repair the damage." "By killing me?" Nick demanded. "That is one possibility," LaCroix agreed, calmly. "Our friend there--" he gestured at the Enforcer holding the stake-- "wanted to kill you, videotape the act, and release it to a rival TV newsmagazine. That would confirm your death, and hopefully give the rest of us a chance to get away, before they started looking for more of us." He smiled, then, the paternal, patronizing, Father-knows- best smile Nick hated. "I had an-- alternate suggestion. One that would save your life, *and* our anonymity. If you agree, our friends will let you live...." "What is it?" Nick asked. He was desperate enough to grasp at straws, and LaCroix knew it, damn him. "You will call a press conference, before *this*--" he waved his hand at the TV screen-- "airs, and you will announce that you are a vampire." Nick gaped at him. This was the one possibility he had not even considered. "You will tell them," the master vampire continued, "that you are the *last* vampire, the only one of your kind left alive. You will convince them of it. "You will live with *all* the consequences of that telling, for the rest of your life. And you will *never*, under *any* circumstance, contact another of your own kind again," LaCroix told him. "Not myself, not Janette, nor Miklos, nor Feliks--- no one. Do you agree?" "But--- but why?" Nick asked, confused. "I thought no one was supposed to know about us. Isn't that what the Enforcers are *for*?" The six Enforcers growled at him, and at LaCroix. LaCroix stared them down, and explained. "Mortals are becoming more and more sophisticated, adding more and more technology every year. It is only a matter of time until the developed countries have too complex a system for us to circumvent. Until we are discovered. So, our friends have agreed to allow you to become a test case. A guinea pig, if you will. If you can win acceptance into human society, it may be possible for more of us to 'integrate' ourselves. If you fail--- well, at least you will have had time to say goodbye. Is it agreed?" Nick gulped, and looked up at the six grim faces over him. Looked *over* the thick, sharp stake pointed at his heart. "It is agreed," he said. --------------------------------- The elevator reached the top, and Nick pulled open the door and entered the loft. He'd done as they asked, made the announcement--- and his life had changed more than he had thought possible. First, the press, the interviews, the cameramen following him everywhere. Then, the medical experts, descending on him to test, to prod, to dissect Nat's newly-published notes on his "condition". Nat had gone into research, and was working full-time on a cure for him. Some days, remembering that was the only thing that kept him sane. The hardest part had been the way people changed, suddenly began acting differently around him. Cohen was hit with a tidal wave of transfer requests. Men who had never shown the slightest interest in religion started wearing crosses to work, and eating garlic in quantity. One of the detectives even started carrying holy water in his hip flask, and that lack of trust had really hurt. Nick had saved his life, a week before. In all the chaos, all the changes, Schanke had surprised Nick most of all. His initial reaction (according to the other detectives on duty when the interview had aired) had been a triumphant bellow of "I *KNEW* IT!". On Nick's first day back, Schanke had buttonholed him and told him that while he, Schanke, didn't think telling all was a good idea, he, Nick could count on his partner to back him to the hilt. *Then* he'd handed him a business card for a butcher shop, and told him they had the freshest pork blood in town. *And* said that if he'd come over for dinner tomorrow, Myra would dig out her grandmother's blood pudding recipe.... Nick had stared at his partner in stunned amazement for a minute, then accepted the invitation. The pudding was, as it turned out, delicious, and for the first time in 800 years, Nick took leftovers home from a dinner party. Nick ate at the Schankes' an average of once a week, now, and Myra was always coming up with new recipes for him. Her latest creation, "blood pie," had been surprisingly tasty. As if in response to the thought, his stomach growled at him. He walked to the fridge, lifted a hunk of leftover pie onto a plate, and walked toward the living area. The day after his first dinner at Schanke's, the lawsuits started arriving at the precinct. First, from people he'd arrested last week, last month, last year--- all suddenly claiming "the vampire" had hypnotized them into confessing to crimes they hadn't committed. Then, every suspect he arrested, even the ones he caught red-handed, filed a police-brutality and wrongful-arrest complaint. Within two weeks, Cohen had received so many subpoenas that she gave him a choice: accept a permanent desk job (with a token promotion, so it wouldn't look like he was being punished) or turn in his badge. "It isn't that you're not a good cop, Nick," she explained, wearily. "It's just that the department can't afford any more lawsuits. Even if we win them all, they're killing our budget. I wish there was some other solution, but--" She shrugged. "Sometimes, there's nothing you can do about something that stinks." He'd said he understood, and accepted the "promotion". So, now he spent his nights at a desk in Records, the only place they could find where he couldn't be accused of hypnotizing prisoners, intimidating witnesses, or trampling the rights of the free press. He was Detective Lieutenant Nicholas Knight, head of Records, and his working life was so incredibly dull that death seemed appealing by comparison. Nick bit into his blood pie, and sat on the couch, ignoring the stacks of mail waiting in the table. That was another change. Since he'd "come out", he'd received so much mail Nat had convinced him to hire a secretary to deal with it. He'd called up a temporary service, and explained that he wanted someone to open and screen his mail, and type up replies from dictation. They'd quoted a rate, and sent someone over. She quit the next day, and the service sent another. And another. He'd gone through 30 secretaries in 3 weeks. None had stayed more than a day; some had only lasted a couple of hours. The service insisted it wasn't anything he'd done. They just quit. It wasn't, he mused, as if the job were all that difficult. Just open his mail, sort the junk from the letters, and divide the latter by type. Deal with the routine questions-- it was amazing how many people wanted to know, for example, if he closed his eyes when he slept-- by sending form letters. Letters on legal issues went to his lawyers. Requests for money-- the Inland Revenue *still* wasn't done with him on that score-- were to be funneled to the now-independent Brabant Foundation. Queries on the medical aspects of his condition were forwarded to Nat's newly-formed Brabant Institute for Metabolic Research. Requests only he could answer got typed from dictation. A pretty simple job, he'd thought. And yet, the temps kept quitting, and the piles of unanswered mail grew... Finally, the service had said they had only one more employee to send, and she wouldn't take the job unless he agreed she didn't have to sort the letters by content, except to throw away obvious junk mail, or answer anything unless he dictated the reply. Faced with three weeks of unanswered letters, he'd agreed. When she'd arrived the next day, he'd discovered that his new secretary was an Episcopal nun. Sister Elizabeth was polite, efficient, and unobtrusive. They'd worked out a system of standard form letters for the most common questions that came through the mail. He spent an hour after work each night sorting letters into piles, and dictating answers for the handful that really did need personal replies. These seemed to be mostly requests from historians and anthropologists, and Nick found that he usually enjoyed trying to answer their questions about the customs, habits, and lifestyles of long-ago times. Sister Elizabeth would usually arrive sometime during the day, while he was asleep, bringing the previous day's dictation for signature. When she left, she'd take the dictation tapes and signed letters he left out, and he'd have a new pile of letters to sort through and answer. It had taken them two weeks to organize their respective work schedules and deal with the backlog of opened-but-unanswered letters her many predecessors had left. Only now were they beginning to deal with the stacks of never-opened mail that had been piling up. Nick finished the last bite of pie. Nat and he had reached a compromise on the blood issue. He agreed to drink no liquid blood, and she agreed to say nothing about his consumption of cooked food that *contained* blood. Licking his fingers, he walked to the dining area, where a stack of neatly typed replies awaited him. He uncapped his fountain pen and began signing letters. Five minutes later, Nick set the newly signed letters aside and began on the six stacks of new mail. The first pile was date-stamped two weeks ago, making them the last of the backlog. He sorted through them quickly. Autograph requests, interview offers, two questions from graduate students in, respectively, Medieval Studies and Comparative Linguistics... the usual mix. He finished sorting the stack and pulled the next one over. The top letter was date-stamped yesterday, which meant Sister Elizabeth had finally caught up. He skimmed it, tossed it on the "file unanswered" pile-- he really didn't need *another* investment banker, even if the man *did* specialize in "very long term investment options"-- and picked up the next. It was a single typewritten sheet: ----------------------------------- "Thus sayeth the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring evil upon thee. According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the West, and his glory from the rising of the sun. For he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries. Sever the wicked from amongst the just, And cast them into the furnace of fire." The Lord has spoken. You shall perish by fire, even as God has decreed. Repentance is impossible for the soulless. Prepare yourself for Hell, spawn of Satan. ------------------------------ There was no signature. Nick crushed the paper and threw it in the trash. For a moment he was back in Rouen, watching Joan of Arc burn... Then he shook the memory off, and picked up the next letter. It was a request for a donation for the medieval exhibit at the ROM. He tossed it on the appropriate pile, and picked up the next. ---------------------------- Darling Nick--- We've never met, but I've watched all your interviews, and I feel I know you. I will be in Toronto next week... ---------------------------- Three sentences later, Nick's jaw dropped. It seemed this young woman was certain *she* could overcome his "little problem with self-control" when it came to sex with mortal women. She explained how, in excruciating, explicit, *excessive* detail.... He'd always been rather conventional, in regards to sex-- a residue of his strict Medieval Catholic upbringing-- and was shocked and horrified at some of the things she was suggesting. Collars? *Gags?* MUZZLES? He deposited it hastily in the trash, and devoutly hoped that Sister Elizabeth hadn't noticed its contents.... The next two letters were from people claiming to BE vampires, and wanting to meet him. Since he *knew* he's been declared -persona non grata- by the Enforcers, the writers were either delusional or fakes. They both went into the "file unanswered" pile. The seventh letter was a request from a graduate student, who seemed to think that he would be an expert in Late Roman Empire medical practices. Since Nick hadn't been *born* yet when Rome fell, he dropped it on the "decline politely" pile. The eighth was from a woman who wanted to "save your species from extinction" by volunteering for conversion. It joined the two delusion-vampire letters. The ninth was from a Broadway producer famous for his elaborate musicals. It seemed he thought Nick would be perfect for the lead in the musical revival of _Dracula_ he was putting together. Especially if Nick was willing to finance it.... It joined the letter from the medical-history grad student. Letter number 10 was from a young woman who wanted to "ease your loneliness". She'd included a picture, which would have made Nick blush, if he were capable of blushing. He dropped it quickly in the trash, and tried not to speculate on just *where* the boa-constrictor she was wearing started. With the sort of morbid fascination most people reserve for multi-car accidents and celebrity trials, Nick began sorting the stacks of mail by type. Personal mail, from people he knew, in one pile. There was very little of that. Research requests, medical queries, and other legitimate concerns in another, only slightly larger, pile. Offers of sex, "therapy", or "blood donation" in another. The pictures that accompanied this stack ranged from school-yearbook photos to some things Hustler wouldn't publish. Requests for interviews, book rights, movie rights, et al in another. Rantings by religious fanatics, animal rights nuts (did they really think drinking cow was as wrong as drinking human?), and general crackpots (one of whom accused him of faking his vampirism "for the fame and money") had their own pile. Job offers, which ranged from offers of stunt work from the Toronto film community to invitations to join an anti-terrorist squad, made another pile. Volunteers for vampiric conversion rivaled the religious nuts in quantity. Another pile for them. People who claimed to *be* vampires, werewolves, banshees, and Immortals got their own pile, too. He was beginning to see why the other 30 secretaries had quit. Nick was down to three letters when the buzzer for his front door sounded. Grateful for the break, he walked over to the video screen and toggled the camera on. "Yeah?" he asked. "Delivery," the guy in the brown uniform said. Nick sighed. Another anonymous gift. He was getting really tired of them. The last one had been 20 live brown rats, from "an admirer" who had obviously read _Dracula_ once too often, and thought Nick would enjoy a "fresh snack". He shuddered reminiscently and buzzed the man in. Even in his most desperate moments, he'd never been reduced to drinking *rat*. When the lift arrived, Nick pulled the gate open. "Nicholas Knight?" the man asked. "Yeah, that's me," Nick agreed. The man whipped a folded paper out from behind his back. "You have just been served." Nick took the papers, numbly. "Two subpoenas," the man informed him. "Have a nice day." He pulled the door shut and the elevator started back down. Nick stared at the papers in his hand, then went over to the phone and pressed the speed-dial button for his lawyer. "Andraski, Taylor, and Cates. The office is closed at this time, but if you leave your name and number, we'll return your call as soon as possible. *Beep*" "Yeah, Nick Knight. Tell Mr. Cates I just got served with two more subpoenas. Have him call me when he gets in." Nick hung up, hesitated, then flipped the first one open. Someone named Quong Ji Liung was suing him for--- wrongful death? Puzzled, he scanned further. As he spotted a name, and a date, his jaw dropped. Quong Ji Liung was the great-grandson of Mai, the acupuncturist LaCroix had killed in San Francisco in 1912. And he was suing *Nick* for not warning her of the dangers-- claiming *Nick* was responsible for her death. With a dreadful certainty, he opened the second one. William Lee Pickering was suing him for the wrongful death of his great-great-grandfather, who had been an overseer, killed while hunting down two runaway slaves. The overseer who'd tried to burn Nick alive, 130 years ago. Stunned, Nick wandered back to the table full of letters. He'd just sort the last few out, then call Nat, ask her to come over and talk... He needed to talk to someone. The next letter was an offer of a guest lecturer position at Cambridge. Nick added it to the "job offers" pile, and picked up the next. And smiled. It was from John Mellenbaum, one of his students from his stint in the University of Chicago Archaeology department. Johnny wanted him to come out to a dig in Afghanistan this summer. Nick added the letter to the all-too-short "personal" pile. The last letter was on a sheet torn from a yellow tablet, and written with a thick-leaded pencil in an awkward, childish hand. --------------------------- Dear Mr. Knight, My name is Suzie. I am seven years old. I saw on TV last night that you are a vampire. They said that you don't get sick and that you won't ever die. My daddy died two years ago, and my mommy is very sick. The doctors say she won't get better. If she dies, me and my little brother will have to go live with my daddy's sister, who doesn't want us, and said so right out loud. Could you please make my mommy a vampire so she doesn't have to die, and Billy and I can stay with her? I promise she'll be a good vampire, and not bite people, only cows, like you do. Thank you very much, Suzie -------------------------------- Nick groaned and buried his head in his hands. A few minutes later, he stood up and walked to where he'd left the remote control. This was it. He couldn't take it any more. Better to die than to have to face another night like this one. In despair, he stepped in front of the windows and pressed the button to raise the blinds. The sun had been up for some time now. It would all be over, very soon..... "I really don't think that's a very good idea." Nick whirled around and stared open-mouthed at LaCroix. The master vampire was standing just under the stairs, watching his protege with dispassionate sympathy. "What do you want, LaCroix?" Nick snarled. Of all the things he *didn't* need right now, another confrontation with his master topped the list. "What I always want," LaCroix answered smoothly. "To help you. Guide you. Be your friend." He smiled, for Nick had involuntarily taken two steps toward him, and was now clear of the path the sunlight would take through the windows. "I thought you weren't supposed to have anything to do with me?" Nick growled. Even now, he couldn't admit that he had missed LaCroix, these last two months, almost as much as he had missed Janette. "No," LaCroix corrected him, patiently. "*You* were to have no contact with *us*." He shook his head, saddened by his protege's naiveti. "Nicholas. Did you really think we would keep no watch on you at all?" Nick swallowed his anger, and asked again. "What do you want?" "I am here," the other vampire explained, "to offer you a way out of your predicament." Hope raised its head. Nick squashed it brutally. "Explain." "It is obvious that this little experiment of mine is a failure," LaCroix told him. "So, if you will swear to follow my instructions, I will help you escape from it." "How?" Nick asked. There was a catch; there had to be. He just had to find out what it was. "I have a friend, in Australia. A rather inhospitable continent, but not as uncivilized as some. He would be willing to take you in, as a guest, until the public forgets about your little revelation. You need only agree to stay there until I, and the Enforcers, agree that you have been forgotten sufficiently for your reappearance to be safe." LaCroix smiled. "There is even a large cattle ranch nearby, so you would be able to acquire your preferred nourishment without difficulty or question." "What about Natalie?" Nick asked. "I'm afraid the good doctor is much too well known to simply disappear. And, of course, with 'the last vampire' gone, she will have no further reason to continue her researches. I suppose," he added, with an air of magnanimity, "you *could* correspond with her, eventually, using a pseudonym of some sort." "No one will believe I'm dead," Nick objected. "Not without proof." "Oh, they will have proof," LaCroix assured him, and pulled a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. "The remains of one of our own kind, who walked into the sun a short while ago," he explained. "We need only deposit it in a suitable location, to be discovered by some innocent third party. Your secretary, perhaps?" Nick stood quite still, considering. He couldn't continue as he was. The utter futility and isolation of his current job, the insanity of interviews, tests, mail, the unexpected loneliness of never seeing one of his own kind... it was simply intolerable. But to take LaCroix' offer... It was exile. Nick had never been to Australia, but he knew enough about it to know that the Outback was one of the most isolated places reachable by modern technology. If he agreed to be placed in a ranch in that environment, he would be virtually under house arrest until LaCroix and the Enforcers agreed to free him. It would be too isolated to escape by flying in a single night, and he wasn't stupid enough to believe they would leave him there without a watchdog. And with the media attention he'd attracted, it could be 50 years or more before they let him leave. And he would never see Nat, or Schanke, or probably even Janette, again.... He considered all his options and realized that, really, he only had one. If he could find a way to take it.... He looked up at his master, and spoke quietly. "You won't need the ashes, LaCroix. I won't be your puppet again." Before LaCroix could react, Nick flew backward, crashing through the uncovered windows of the loft into the bright midday sunlight. In a few seconds, he was gone. The independent film crew that was parked permanently on the roof of the next warehouse caught it all on tape. It was the lead story on the evening news. Finis