The Long Game

Disclaimers: All of the characters and concepts concerning Moonlight don't belong to me, sadly enough. They are the sole property of CBS, Joel Silver, and many other people with lots more creative talent. Please don't sue me. I'm finished with school and I still have no money. Nor do I look to make any with this introspective little tale.

I'm a feedback whore. I'll be checking for comments. Often. Feed me please! Thank you!

What do you do when your wildest dream suddenly comes true? When you wake up one morning and realize that your deepest, most impossible desire has been made one hundred percent, perfectly real?

You're like the guy on welfare who's won the lottery. You're Steve Jobs with the iPod. The man with a fatal disease who's discovered it's disappeared overnight. You decide to enjoy it, of course. To forget about everything and live in the moment for however long it lasts.

Because you're sure that, like all good things, it's bound to come to an end. You'll spend the money all wrong and be left with nothing. The knockoffs will take over the market. The disease will come back.

Coraline never told me how long the compound lasts. I'm in the middle of this mortal cure, and I'm already projecting forward to the end. How will I know when it's fading? Will it be like a switch? One moment, I'm human, the next I'm a vampire? How blood starved will I be when the fangs come back, and will I be able to control myself? I've stashed a cooler in the car with a sixer inside just in case. Funny, isn't it? I don't need the blood anymore, but I'm terrified to be without it.

Sometimes I find that I'm checking myself like a neurotic, looking for signs or symptoms that aren't there. It wasn't like this in the beginning, but now, as days have turned into a week, I'm fighting to enjoy the moment, struggling with the fact that this human experience is going to end. What will I do when it's over? When the food loses its taste and the sun starts to burn?

Today Beth took a long lunch, and I went with her to visit Josh's grave. I stood off a little ways, giving her time. Five minutes became fifteen, then thirty. At some point, I realized that I was sweating hot and my shirt was sticking to my underarms. When Beth finally got up, I saw she'd been crying, but slowly, as she walked towards me, the corners of her mouth curled up in a tiny little smile, and she brushed at her cheeks. When she got to me, she reached up and pulled my sunglasses down. "Your nose is red, and you're going to have raccoon eyes."

So much for perpetual coolness, huh?

Anyway, since I'm in worry mode, and therefore not in the right frame of mind to sleep, I'm sitting here on my couch, blankets pulled up over my knees and scotch in hand, trying to make sense of the past few weeks. Which has to start, of course, with Coraline.

When we were first married, I loved her wildness. She had this crazy, anything goes spontaneity that sucked you in and pulled you along. It's the same quality I came to hate. There were no 'normal' days with Coraline. Every day-- hell, every couple of hours-- was different. It might be pure blissful heaven, or it might be wretched hell, but you knew it would be eventful depending on her mood. I rolled with it and lived one moment at a time. Keeping up with her was all consuming. There was never any chance to think of what I wanted, never any time to get my feet on the ground. She spun me around so fast, I didn't know which way was up. I loved her and wanted her, twenty four seven.

Whenever I needed to think, or things got too crazy and I was about to lose it, I'd walk away, searching for some peace and clarity. Sooner or later, she'd come and find me, saying all the right things with hurt in her eyes, flashing that blood red smile, and I'd follow her home like a dog on a leash.

Twenty two years later, Coraline is someone I know…and someone I don't know at all. Somewhere between the fire and now, she's learned how to plan. Or maybe she's always known how, and hiding it was another one of her manipulations. That's the tantalizing, infuriating thing about Coraline. You never know where the truth lies. She mixes truth, or her perception of the truth, with omissions and outright lies until you don't know what to believe.

One thing's for sure, Coraline's playing for the long game. Just look at the facts.

Cynthia Davis, a three hundred year old vampire who moved with the haute couture, jetsetter crowd, suddenly decided to go back to college in the 90's. How can I describe how much she must have hated it? I dunno. Think Paris Hilton in jail- for real this time. That might come close.

In 1999, she'd gotten a BS, in 2002 a Master's in Biochemistry, and in 2006, a PhD. Now, there's no doubt vampires have vastly superior senses and heightened visual recall, but mostly we learn the old fashioned way, just like everyone else. The university's records claimed that Cynthia had entered in 1995, which meant that she'd spent eleven years munching on collegiates and studying organic chemistry. In America, no less.

Cynthia loved Coraline like family, but that had to take some convincing. I doubt Coraline said, "I love Mick so much that I must make him human again." Yeah, right. Cynthia never had much use for me, so whatever they meant to use the compound for had to be worth all the risk and effort.

Power and money are the obvious answers. Except Coraline was loaded. She'd had nearly 400 years to build her fortune. And well, to put it mildly, compound interest IS your friend when you're a vampire. Besides from what Josef said, Lance and his clan live on a totally different plane, separate from vampire or human society and untouched by it except on their own terms. That takes money and power, and Coraline was part of the family.

Of course there's more than one kind of power. Let's imagine Coraline did find a way to make the compound's effects permanent. I know there are a lot of vamps who love what they are, but I can't be the only one who'd go back. I'd give everything I have- steal what I didn't have, do just about anything for a chance to be mortal again. Then there are the vamps who'd use it on their own kind. A little scratch, a little blood, a little compound, and your worst enemy would be returned to the mortal coil. Of course, that sort of revenge wouldn't work. Never leave an enemy behind who knows how to finish you. And heaven help you if he had a friend to turn him back. Payback for vampires is always about blood.

No, there's got to be another reason Coraline was trying so hard to make the cure permanent. A personal agenda. Something that I'm not seeing quite yet. Whatever it was, she was willing to kill her own kind to try to make it work.

The Cleaner told me that the bodies she found outside the lab were all newly turned. Coraline claimed they were rogues, and, in her abstract sort of way, she was probably telling the truth. I think they were rogues, in the sense that their sire abandoned them. The problem is I think she was turning humans, then experimenting with the compound and trying to turn them back. She was getting them 'at birth' so to speak, then trying to cure them while the transition was still new, before the body had time to transform fully.

Did I mention my fears about being blood starved after I turn back? From what the Cleaner said, there were a lot of bodies.

Wonderful.

So how did Lance and his henchman find us? I'll bet he had Coraline's place in the hills watched. I'd never sold it after…well, after. Point of fact, I never touched anything of hers. I walked away after that night and never looked back. Physically, anyway.

So whenever Coraline set up shop there, Lance probably knew about it. But he'd ordered his people watch her, not act. He needed to gauge exactly what was going on and who knew about the compound. No, Lance hadn't decided to jet across the Pond until she disappeared. Then he came. Fast. She'd had the compound for a year and hadn't slipped up. And then, just as he was starting to get somewhere, poof, she was gone.

Which begs the question, did Cynthia know Lance was coming when she sprang Coraline from the hospital, or did she know that Coraline's time as a human was almost up? The first would suggest they had someone on the inside of the family, so to speak.

Which also begs the question, why, with the entire world to hide in, did Coraline come to L.A.? Why play games with me when she had everything to lose? I saw the look in her eyes when Lance staked her. Whatever was waiting for her back in France was her worst nightmare. I've seen Coraline beg before, but never like that, not even when the flames took her. And Lance, that bastard, he enjoyed it.

Yeah, L.A. was a bad place for Coraline to visit. And that's where the "I love Mick so much…." comes back into play. And this time, it's not Cynthia who needs convincing.

Beth showed me the pictures Coraline took of the two of us. There are dozens of them, starting from our first meeting. Man, Coraline must have been laughing her ass off when I screwed up with Haggins' son, because I'd never so much as gotten a whiff of her in all those weeks. But she was following us, stalking us. Watching me. Watching Beth. Befriending Beth weeks before she ever let me see her. Laying down a foundation with Buzzwire that held up under scrutiny.

Chances are Coraline really had spent considerable time in New York before coming to L.A. Beth checked her out thoroughly when I asked her to. The professional contacts she'd made were real enough, and they went back for years. One thing's for sure though. When Beth had 'Morgan Vincent's daddy' on the phone, the hand gripping the receiver was probably sticking out of a freezer.

Which means that Coraline has vamp friends in New York. Friends who might know something about the cure. Or maybe not. It wouldn't have been strange for her to ask a vamp to vouch for her human cover story should someone come calling. Of course, that friend didn't need to know that she actually was human.

Still. There might be some leads back East.

Finding Cynthia would be better. She's up to her neck in all of this. Problem is she's disappeared too. I found hotel footage of her beating a hasty retreat two hours before Coraline came to my apartment. Both of them knew the big boys were in town.

Which brings me right back around again. Why give me the cure in the first place? Why not run?

And, since we're asking the hard questions: Why break cover at all? Coraline had clearly been planning all of this since 1995, possibly longer. She'd laid all the groundwork, made the contacts, prepared everything from laboratory specialists to freaking photography credentials, until she was ready to steal the compound a year ago and start researching on the run.

A run which concluded here, with Coraline in the one place Lance would know to look, and with me, wondering why she did it. Did she mean any of it? Was she really trying to make up for what she'd done? Does she finally, finally understand what she took from me, and how badly I want it back?

Or did she know that, no matter how far or how fast she ran, that Lance was coming for her? That no matter where she went, he would eventually find her and take her back to their sire? If that's true, then she was hedging her bets. Giving me just a taste of mortality, knowing that I'll need more. Trusting that I'll come for her to get it.

Even if I don't chase after her, she knows I'll be working on her behalf. Lance may have most of the compound, but Coraline made sure I understood there was more hidden away somewhere, just out of reach. Somehow though, I don't think there's all that much anywhere. Lance said something to her on the laboratory floor about needing it if there were another Reign of Terror.

Dear God, please don't tell me they've forgotten how to make it. Or that some herb or root or something has gone extinct in the last three centuries.

Regardless, I can be sure that Coraline's little silver box has been returned to its owner, and that I'll never see it again. As for the rest, well, that's something I can work with, if I can find it.

Tomorrow, I'll go to Logan and have him put a trace on all of Cynthia's accounts. I'll have him track Morgan Vincent in New York too. If Logan can discover what blocks or neighborhoods she frequented, maybe he can hack into old video surveillance feeds and see where she was going.

I can tell myself all I want that I'm simply going to live in the moment, that I won't allow Coraline to manipulate me all over again. But I know better. I'll want to be moving on this just as soon as the effects of the compound wear off.

Not that I'm going after her, because I'm not. I haven't been that stupid in twenty two years.

For now, however, it's time to put these 85 year old bones to bed. Otherwise it'll be noon before I get up, and I'll miss breakfast with Beth.

Hey…has it gotten colder in here? Where'd I put that other blanket?