Dark Moonlighting (29 page)

Judge Yoest gave the jurors their
deliberation instructions before releasing them to reach a verdict.
Caleb and I stood behind the defense table as Yoest retired to her
chambers. My former boss motioned for me to follow him as he walked
towards the courtroom’s exit. I walked out beside him with a half
dozen officers in tow. There were ten more in the hallway, and two
of them reluctantly vacated the closest bench when we emerged.

“Have a seat (You frighten me when you’re
standing next to me),” Caleb said solemnly. “I know that I don’t
have to tell you that the longer a jury is out the better chance
you have (We both know you don’t stand a chance). In fact—,”

Caleb was cut off in the middle of his
thought by a bailiff who emerged from the courtroom and tapped him
on the shoulder. The court officer, who was either named Chris or
John, looked at me with disgust before saying to Caleb, “The jury
has reached a verdict.”

Caleb looked down at his watch and whistled.
“Forty-seven seconds (Wow),” Caleb announced. “This trial is
breaking all sorts of records (Let’s wrap this up. I might have
enough time to give an interview that will make it on the evening
news).”

After barely having enough time to stretch
our legs, Caleb and I reentered the courtroom with the squad of
policemen on our heels. Judge Yoest, clearly amused by the short
duration of the jury’s deliberation, sat down as everyone settled
back into their seats. She banged her gavel twice to quiet the
hushed conversations that were taking place.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Yoest
asked.

“We have, Your Honor,” the jury’s foreman
answered.

Yoest stared at the foreman for a moment.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” she said unprofessionally.

“We find the defendant… guilty,” the foreman
said dramatically.

The sentence was a surprise to no one, but
several people in the gallery decided to gasp for the sake of
tradition. Cheers filled the courtroom a few seconds later, and
Judge Yoest allowed the spectacle to continue for a moment before
banging her gavel and calling for order in the court.

“We will reconvene Friday morning for the
sentencing,” Yoest announced. She smiled at me in triumph. “That’s
when you’ll learn if you get life in prison without parole or death
by… uh…”

“A wooden stake through my heart is probably
your best bet,” I said helpfully. “Lethal injection
might
work, but you’d have to pump gallons and gallons of sodium
thiopental into me. It probably wouldn’t be practical.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Yoest said with a
nod.

“Stop helping her (You moron)!” Caleb said to
me before turning towards Yoest. “I can’t believe the death penalty
is even on the table (Holy shit, I might be able to ride this case
all the way to the Supreme Court)! Illinois hasn’t executed a
prisoner since 1999, and—”

“Save it for Friday,” she said dismissively.
“I think you’ll find that the new governor is more than willing to
make an exception for this particular case. This court is
adjourned,” she concluded. She banged her gavel and withdrew to her
chambers.

“Don’t worry, Nick (Worry a lot, Nick),”
Caleb tried to reassure me. “We’re going to fight this all the way
to the top (You’re boned, and I’m already outlining the book I’m
going to write about this trial in my head).”

Before I could respond John, or possibly
Chris, the bailiff came over to escort me back to the parking
garage. He kept his hand on my arm as we passed through the
courtroom’s hallways. The police did their best to keep the mass of
journalists and spectators away from me. I was nearly overwhelmed
by the volume of the questions and taunts shouted towards me.

“Don’t worry, fang boy,” Chris/John said.
“You’ll still get to do a lot of
sucking
in prison… it just
won’t be blood!”

Epilogue: All Bad Things…

Lance Flowers and his two sluts are dead.
Nathan Smalley, the unpleasant man who guards me during the night
shift, just showed me the newspaper article about their mysterious
deaths. Their bodies were found piled together in the living room
of a cheap apartment in Starside. Their heads were found in the
kitchen. Nathan, ignorant of the specific details of my case, is
cackling madly at my stunned reaction. He probably believes that I
am sad to learn that other vampires have been killed. I should be
happy about the news, but it raises a serious question in my
mind.

Who killed them? Who had the ability to
locate, fight and decapitate three of the strongest and fastest
predators in the world? The only person who believed my side of the
story was Jasmine. She is a competent police officer, but she does
not possess the expertise to have performed such a feat. Even if
she had managed to recruit others to help her, the execution of the
three vampires had been too clean and precise to have been
performed by amateurs.

It is unlikely this new development will
change my fate. While the confirmed existence of other vampires in
Starside should be excellent grounds for a stay of execution, the
State of Illinois is quite insistent that I be put to death.
Although I have not heard from him, I am sure Caleb Hass is arguing
with the authorities even as I write this. That is, of course, if
he can pull himself away from his book tour.

“You’ve got a date with a nice, hard woody,”
Nathan says, clearly irritated that I have ignored him and gone
back to writing. “And then you’re getting staked through the
heart!”

“A prison rape joke? Really?” I question.
“First off, I’m the only prisoner in this wing of Reagan Memorial.
Secondly, I expect better from you.”

The lights are dim in my part of the prison.
However, the shine of the full moon is illuminating the left side
of my captor’s face. It is giving him an eerie glow that is only
made worse when he smiles menacingly at me. The image is
disconcerting to say the least, and it reminds me of a nightmare I
vaguely recall having over a century ago.

“In six more hours it won’t matter,” Nathan
mocks. “You won’t have to worry about trading insults with me
anymore… because you’ll be dead.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I say in annoyance. “It’s a
good thing too. Your material has been going downhill fast lately.
And it wasn’t that great to begin with.”

“Blah,” he responds in his Dracula voice
while he shrugs his shoulders. Without another word, he resumes his
short patrol route back and forth past my cell.

In terms of completing this book, I have
definitely cut it close. It took me a long time to write the
chapter where Christina dies. Even with the recent demise of Lance
Flowers, I think it is still important that I have finished the
story. If there’s one thing—

A gray blur just shot past outside of my
prison cell. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, and whatever
it was moved far too quickly for me to get a good look at it. The
shriek that Nathan let out is a good indication of what the blur’s
target was. The guard is now screaming in agony, and I can also
hear the sound of clothes being torn and… snarling. The gray blur
darts back in front of the door to my cell and pauses. My mouth
drops as I inspect the figure.

“Wolfman?” I ask in disbelief.

The creature, excited from killing Nathan,
pants heavily from his snout. He is almost seven feet tall, covered
in gray hair and bulging with muscles. He is shirtless, but the
pants he is wearing look to be uncomfortably snug. His pointed,
furry ears perk up as he sees me. His tail, which is poking out of
a small hole in the back of his pants, wags furiously.

“Uh, I have a name,” the bipedal wolf says
indignantly with a distinctively human voice. “It’s not like I call
you Vampire Guy.”

“Sorry, Chuck,” I apologize. “What are you
doing here?”

The werewolf’s lips curl up, and his deadly
canine teeth are visible as he snarls. He plants his foot against
the bars of my cell as he grabs onto the door with both hands. His
arms quiver as he pulls with all his might. After a moment, the
door cracks open with an awful sound. Chuck stumbles backwards but
quickly recovers. His snout starts to recede as most of the gray
hair disappears from his body. He shrinks by a foot, and his
muscles melt away almost instantly. Within a few seconds his
transformation is complete. Chuck, who now looks like a gray-haired
old man, tightens the belt on his loose-fitting pants.

“I still owed you one for saving me from the
Nazis,” Chuck finally responds.

“Oh, right,” I answer with a nod of my
head.

“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” he
shouts at me.

I examine the open cell door and the face of
my old friend. Is it really—

“Why the hell are you still writing?” he
demands. “They’ll be on us any second now. Let’s go!”

It dawns on me that Chuck is making sense, so
I

* * *

Thanks so much for reading
Dark
Moonlighting
. It’s the first in a series of four novels.
Dark Moonlighting 2: Kruse Control
will be released…
whenever I get around to writing it. Or, if I never bothered to
update this file, maybe it has been out for years. Eh, you can
always Google it… unless Google isn’t a thing in your time period.
I should probably avoid making references that could potentially be
so dated. You know what? Screw it, I’m going to double down.
Gangnam style! There, I know that’s going to be an old reference
within three months. Take that futuristic people! Have fun looking
that up on your magical telepathic interface devices!

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Dark Moonlighting
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