Sundown. Only a couple hours before Grant Roberts needed to be at work. Grant paced back and forth in his bedroom, free from any and all natural sunlight. Watching the alarm clock on the nightstand beside his bed, Grant just sighed and laid down on the bed. Staring at the stucco patterns of the ceiling, Grant quietly contemplated his conversation earlier this morning with Amy Moore. Grant’s quiet moment was rudely interrupted by Seth, who showed up right alongside Grant on the bed.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Seth asked Grant, who was slightly startled by Seth’s appearance.
“Cripes, can’t you just knock on the door like a normal person?!” Grant said as he quickly got up.
“Normal? In this place? You gotta be joking!” Seth laughed. “Anyways, why so down, Charlie Brown?”
“It’s this Amy woman…” Grant paused. Seth jumped in with a faux British accent and said. “Ah yes. Amy Moore from ‘cross the pond.”
“Yeah,” Grant sighed. “In a way, she reminds me of an old school chum. But that can’t be realistic since she’s probably been dead for quite some time and yet here I am.”
“Right, right,” Seth said. “So, why not ask her out and get to know her better then?”
“Oh come on! You know how it’s going to end for me. Sooner or later she’ll find out I’m a vampire. Then she will either run off screaming or be all disappointed and bring me down with comments like ‘oooh, you don’t sparkle like Edward’ or ‘oooh, you don’t have a deep southern drawl like Bill Compton’!”
“You know, for a soulless minion from the depths of Hell itself, you have way too much baggage and hang-ups.”
“You really think so?” Grant asked.
“Well think about it. You spend so much time agonizing about being recognized, as you like to refer to, a typical atypical vampire. Yeah, so you don’t feed off random people for kicks and got all the guilt-ridden angst to keep you a tortured soul.” Seth stated.
“So that’s all I am? A cliché? An immortal cliché and walking dead stereotype?” Grant asked.
“Well stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. So basically – if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
“Wow, that seemed kind of random to bring up.” Grant said confusingly.
“Sorry,” Seth apologized. “Sometimes I get a bit of some kind of vocabulary nerd stuck in my thought process. I guess what I’m trying to say is if you’re tired of being looked at like a cliché, do something un-cliché like then.”
“Easy for you to say. The typical vampire tends to feed off anything with a pulse and doesn’t take up residency with a ghost and a werewolf!”
“See? One step from breaking the norms of your people!” Seth said enthusiastically.
“Not really. Even if I could continue on the façade of being ‘normal’ I still have to keep this on in public! Thankfully I can keep it concealed at work,” Grant said, pointing to the “V”-marked armband.
“Then do something else about it then. Join the pro-vampire rights movement. See if you can convince our Member of Parliament to support that private member’s bill. Sue the mainstream media for its portrayal of vampires.”
“Really? Sue the mainstream media?” Grant said inquisitively.
“Yeah sure, why not?” Seth replied back sarcastically.
“That may not be a half-bad idea there.”
“Other than the fact that it would be impossible for you to actually appear in a court during the day. And I don’t think any self-respecting lawyer would be that insane to take a case, no matter if there is the chance of just a nice ‘go away’ out-of-court settlement.”
“What about that lawyer we keep seeing on those late night ads?” Grant asked.
“Claire Sawyer? Vampire Lawyer?” Seth asked. “You’re considering using a lawyer who advertised in between ‘That 70s Show’ reruns and Bowflex infomercials?”
“Hey, didn’t you date her back when you were still alive?” asked Grant.
“Yeah we went out on a few dates. She was the co-chairperson for my atheists club too. Heard a rumor she and a TA from gross anatomy once did it in the cadaver room. Her head probably wasn’t on all that straight…” Seth paused and then went on to say “On second thought, she might be the best person for this job!”
“Perhaps I should give her a call and see if she is interested in taking such a case, huh?”
“Yeah, sure, maybe. And here I thought I was just making an innocent joke.” Seth said as he shrugged his shoulders.
“An innocent joke that could be so crazy that it just might work.” Grant said with a smile on his face.
“Concentrate hard, Miss Russo,” a rugged-looking Navajo man said as he lit another candle while Kaitlyn Russo sat across from him. Kaitlyn sat on a stylish-looking mat, eyes closed and taking in deep, shallow breaths of air. The smell of incense permeated in the room, which was dark other than for the light created by the candles that were formed in a circle around both Kaitlyn and the Navajo man. “Focus only on the sense of smell, Kaitlyn,” he instructed. “Now, picture yourself back at the crime scene earlier this morning. Focusing only on smells, go back to the events this morning.”
Quietly and in a meditative state, Kaitlyn began to speak: “I remember the smell of blood in the air. Wasn’t fresh, maybe six, seven hours old. It was more so the guts that nearly set me off. Again, wasn’t fresh, but the coolness of the night might have preserved it. Something about it, made me feel like wanting to get closer in to the body and really smell it. To taste the result of a kill.”
“When was the last time you showed your true form, Kaitlyn?” the Navajo man asked.
“Almost three years to this date. Although this summer I did just take on my wolf form for about a week during the anniversary of my attack.” Kaitlyn quietly responded. Standing in the background of the Navajo man was Laura Whitehorse, looking in and observing the entire session. With Kaitlyn’s proclamation brought out, Doctor Whitehorse decided to ask “Kaitlyn, was there anything you did during that week you wish to share with us here and now?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Mostly running free during the night. Finding myself waking up in the morning naked miles away from my uncle’s cabin out near Evansburg. That is all I can recall.” Kaitlyn responded.
“Hm. Even more interesting,” the Navajo man said as he got up from the floor. “You can open your eyes, Miss Russo,” he instructed and motioned towards Doctor Whitehorse to turn the lights on in the room.
“Well, what do you two figure was up with my little panic attack this morning?” asked Kaitlyn.
“The full beast form has been dormant in you for so long it could very well be seeking any kind of environmental triggers to allow it to escape,” the Navajo man theorized.
“But maybe it wasn’t so much the body that got me concerned. It was once the Ravine Reaper was brought up that almost got me going.” Kaitlyn added in to the conversation.
“But if everything you told us here now, you haven’t gone full lycan within the city limits, so you should have nothing to worry about then, right?” Doctor Whitehorse asked.
“Yeah, but I am just worried if some ambitious investigator decides to open the Mill Creek case, and despite my best efforts to cover my own actions in it, perhaps there the truth will come out.” Kaitlyn said defensively.
“I always found it interesting that during that period of your life, you sought after men who were suspected or soon to be convicted sex offenders in various forms,” the Navajo man went on, “Rapists, child molesters, and even the occasional solicitors of prostitutes all felt your wrath.”
“Which we discussed before as it being my way of seeking some sort of retribution for my own unsolved and unexplained attack.” Kaitlyn said in an almost exasperating tone. “It’s been well over twelve years now and here I am still carrying the effects of that night while the son of a bitch who drugged and raped me is probably still out there! Or for all I know, something that night got him and saved my life. Or for all I know, he was the one who made me this monster that lives inside me.” Kaitlyn’s eyes began to slightly tear up, at that point Doctor Whitehorse approached Russo and extended a comforting, sympathetic hug.
“We have been over this time and again, Kaitlyn.” Doctor Whitehorse said with the warmth and compassion of a mother figure that over the years she had become to Kaitlyn. “You were the victim that night. And until we know for sure what happened that night we won’t be able to fully heal you.”
“I know,” Kaitlyn sniffled a bit and hugged back. “I just want to try and forget that whole night but as long as I carry this beast, I cannot just let go of the past.”
Doctor Whitehorse let Kaitlyn out of the hug and went on to say “Which is why we are here, Kaitlyn Russo. While you may have went after those who were guilty or suspected to be guilty, there was the chance some innocent lives were taken too.”
“And that is why I came to you for help,” said Kaitlyn, as she walked towards her coat which was draped on a chair. As she put the coat on, Kaitlyn felt a vibration in her left pocket. It was her cell phone. Noticing the number on the call display screen belonging to Simon Fererra, Kaitlyn knew it was going to be work related and needed to call back right away. “I gotta get going here,” Kaitlyn said to both Doctor Whitehorse and the Navajo man.
“Please call me if you need to discuss things further, okay?” Doctor Whitehorse said to Kaitlyn, who was busy placing her coat on.
“Will do. Thanks again for everything.” Kaitlyn said as she waved goodbye and closed the door behind her. Once she had left, the Navajo man sat down on the floor and went into some sort of trance. Confused and concerned, Doctor Whitehorse asked the man “Some sort of vision?”
“The balance of power here seems to shifting,” the man said in a hushed, monotone voice. “There are forces here at work that have yet to reveal their true intentions.” With that last statement, the man then collapse back first onto the floor. All Doctor Laura could do was watch and sigh, knowing well that this prophecy could very well play into the life of Kaitlyn Russo – one way or another.
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