The last wisps of sunlight still clung to the sky as Conrad walked the streets of Mistwood. The toothless echoes of the sun’s power didn’t so much as warm his skin. A younger vampire might have burned, but the older Conrad grew, the greater his resistance to the sun became.
Conrad did not long to day walk as some vampires did. Even as a human, he had always preferred the night. There was a blissful calm, a serenity that the darkness carried. The din of the day served only to remind him of human life, struggling daily and toiling away only to one day die and be erased from history by time’s sweeping hand.
As a baby, Conrad had been taken in and raised by vampires. His night mother had also served as his true mother. He had always seen both sides of the curtain and he had always longed to exist on the dark side of the sun—the side that had true freedom and not the charade that powerful humans sold to those beneath them.
The streets of Mistwood were fairly quiet. It was a Sunday night, so there were no reveling clubbers or drunken shenanigans to be witnessed. Conrad did not mind the rowdiness of cities at night. In fact, he found it intriguing. Humans spent their weeks working for the weekends, and when they finally arrived, they greeted them with reckless abandon. In those alcohol-addled moments, humans seemed to forget they were mortal. They forgot they could and would die. They lived truly in the moment, and it was fascinating to see. Conrad’s human life had not been like that; his human life had been in service to his night family. He did not begin to live until after he had died. For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to be human in this modern age. He wondered how it felt to consume so much alcohol that he forgot the worries of his week and lived with careless freedom for just one night. Drinking alcohol would do nothing for him, but he could become intoxicated if he drank the blood of a drunken human. How many humans would he need to consume to get so inebriated, he wondered. He snapped out of his ruminations when the door of the pub he’d been unconsciously staring at swung open.
A scruffy man staggered out and had to lean against the wall to stop himself from tumbling over. It was little after 5pm and the man was already addled. Conrad watched the man with cool indifference wondering what had reduced him to this state. He wasn’t curious enough to find out.
Conrad turned and entered the park opposite the pub, slipping soundlessly into the shadows that cloaked the recreational area. It was mostly empty now, but Conrad could hear the sounds of a few people who were unperturbed by the falling darkness. A single streetlight stood over the children’s play area, but the rest of the park remained unlit.
Three teenagers were sitting under a leafless tree smoking marijuana. The pungent aroma of the plant hit Conrad’s nostrils before he even saw them. He moved on unnoticed through the peaceful park until he found a woman sitting alone on a bench. She was hunched over, her downtrodden gaze fixed on her phone, the blue light casting a cool glow on her face. Conrad approached silently, listening to the gentle beats of her heart. She wore a fruity perfume; he didn’t detect any scents of sickness underneath it. Drinking the blood of the sick was disastrous, for the sickness was transferred through the blood into the vampire. Conrad had learned that lesson the hard way when he’d drank the blood of a man with smallpox. A sick vampire was a weak vampire, and a weak vampire was vulnerable.
“Hello there,” he said softly, drawing her eyes up from her phone. His presence brought a cloud of uneasiness to her face. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look rather sad this evening.”
The woman quickly looked around, and seeing that they were alone, she grabbed her bag and pulled it onto her lap. “Uh, yeah. I’ve had a bit of a bad day. I should be getting back.”
“What is troubling you?” he asked, taking a step forward.
“Oh,” she said with a humorless laugh. “It’s just work stuff.”
“Ah, yes, the biggest burden of the 21st century. What profession do you work in?”
“I’m a lawyer,” she said and her eyes gleamed with a hint of pride.
“The pursuit of justice, a valiant endeavor.”
“Valiant! Only a non-lawyer would say that.”
“I may not be a lawyer but I do work in the enforcement of laws.” It wasn’t a lie, he enforced the law for the Nytarch, although vampire laws were somewhat more ambigious than human ones.
“You’re a cop?” Some of the tension left her shoulders and she pushed her back back onto the bench.
“In a manner of speaking. Is a tough case bringing you down?”
She laughed drily and slumped back on the bench. “If only it was that simple.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “How much time do you have?”
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“Infinite,” Conrad replied, smiling at a joke the woman couldn’t understand.
“Wow, you must be the only one.”
Seeing that the woman was now more at ease, Conrad approached the bench and sat down a respectable distance from her. “Indeed, the human experience does seem to be defined by being busy—hustle culture, I believe they call it. I’m Conrad, by the way.”
“Conrad? That’s a bit of a weird name. I’m so sorry, that was really rude.” She pressed a hand to her mouth even though the words had already left it.
“Not at all. I appreciate a woman who’s not afraid to speak her mind. Although, I prefer outdated to weird.”
She smiled, relieved not to have offended him. “Hey, a rare name is a good name. My name’s as common as dirt. How many Rachels do you know?”
“This may come as a surprise to you, but not that many.”
She snorted. “In my hometown, you couldn’t move for Rachels.”
A ludicrous image appeared in Conrad’s mind of a person pushing his way through a sea of women all called Rachel. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rachel. If you’re not struggling with a case at work, what is it? Perhaps if you verbalize your distress, it might alleviate the pressure.”
“Verablize my distress? Do all Brits talk like you?”
“Sadly, they do not.”
“That’s a shame, it’s oddly charming.” Her shoulders sagged with a heavy huff as she looked out at the dark treeline. “I spent months working on this case. I put the whole thing together. I stayed at the office every night, pouring through book after book after book. Contract after contract after contract. I won the case. Me. I did it.”
“That sounds like rather a good thing?”
“Ha! Yeah. And you know what I got for it? A fat bonus. You know what my case partner, Ben Carruthers, who went home at 5 every night and dumped all his work on the paralegals, got?”
“A smaller bonus?”
“He made junior partner.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah—ah. Not so verbose now, eh?”
“It was your dream to become a junior partner?”
“No! Of course not. It was just a stepping stone. I want to do something meaningful, you know?”
Conrad sat up straighter, now she was getting interesting. “Such as?” he said, giving her a gentle push.
“I want to work my way up and make a name for myself. Instead of wasting my time getting corporations out of tax trouble and settling copyright disputes, I could do something that will affect average people. If working in corporate law has taught me one thing, it’s that this country is being ruined by greedy corporations that only care about their bottom line. They will bend every law and every regulation and slip through every loophole if it means making more money. My firm literally helped a company get away with killing employees through negligence just last month. People are suffering so that rich people can get richer.” She grew more impassioned the more she spoke, so much so that she had to stand and began to pace as she fired out words. “I could become a judge and be the one who makes the decisions in these cases. I could run for public office. Become the State Attorney General.”
“Is that what you want?” He knew that it wasn’t, he could tell that she was holding back. She wanted more. Much more.
“No. God, no. But I could do it. I’d enjoy it too. With my knowledge of how corporations in this state behave, I’d know exactly who to go after. I’d make a name for myself as the woman who put greedy businessmen in jail. From there, I could be General Counsel. Maybe I could even be Governor. Who knows, once I’ve achieved something real at the state level, I can move up even higher.” Her heartbeat was picking up speed with her rapid movements, like a train on a straight stretch of track. “Federal judge. From there, I could launch myself into a cabinet position. Think of the things I could do for this country as the head of the DOJ. That’s where the real power is. I could root out all the crooks that corrupt this country and finally hold them accountable. And after that, I’ll take my seat on the Supreme Court.” A smile spread across her face, and she stopped moving, standing totally still as she envisioned her dream. There it was, her full aspiration laid bare. This woman wanted so much more than Mistwood could ever offer her.
Conrad pounced. Rachel’s gasp was smothered as he wrapped his iron-strong arms around her and sunk his fangs into her throat. Succulent blood poured over his tongue, setting his taste buds on fire. He groaned as he gulped it down, his throat coming alive as though charged with an electric current. Every vampire had their preferred flavor and Conrad’s was ambition. Nothing tasted better than the blood of a person who was buzzing with the desire of their own aspirations.
Her rigid body softened in his arms as she gave in to the pleasure of his bite. She let out an unwilling moan of satisfaction as her arms embraced him and held him closely.
The faintest flavors of what she had last eaten hit his tongue. Cheese, some sort of meat, perhaps a bagel. The dry tang of white wine, not enough to intoxicate him or even give him a mild buzz.
He drank only what he needed; he was not a greedy vampire who gorged on blood or one who relished in killing. He preferred to leave his victims alive.
Rachel’s body sagged as he withdrew, weak from blood loss. Conrad caught her and delicately guided her back to the bench.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice slow and drawling, no longer excited for what the future held. He bit into his palm and pressed the wound to her mouth, making her swallow his blood. He’d drank from her, and now she could drink from him.
“Relax,” he said softly and she did. The puncture marks on her neck closed as she slumped against the bench. Conrad lowered into a squat so he was able to look into her hazel eyes. “You will remember only our conversation and nothing else. When I leave, you will call an Uber and go home to rest. When you wake up in the morning you will feel great. More than great. You will be filled with motivation to achieve your dreams.”
Conrad drifted into the shadows and watched the woman rise and make her way out of the park, fingers gliding over her phone screen as she ordered an Uber. After a little rest, she would recover from the blood loss, and the vampire blood in her veins would hurry the process along. She would return to her life without the knowledge that this incident had ever happened. And at some point tomorrow, she would learn that her colleague Ben Carruthers had sadly passed away, opening up the route to junior partner.
