Edmund reached up and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a yellowing sleeve before he extracted the needle. He watched with satisfaction as his patient's eyes lost their rabid glow, the teeth shrunk down to normal size, and the skin flushed with fresh color. Sitting before him now was an ordinary Gaian boy with messy blue hair and sparkling green eyes. "Thanks Edmund!" he said happily as he jumped down from the table and dashed out the door.
Behind him, Edmund heard a grunt. He turned and raised his eyebrows at his friend, Johnny Gambino, who was busy setting out more needles. Johnny was shaking his head.
"Why do we keep doing this, Edmund?" His golden locks bobbed and swished as he spoke. "You know perfectly well that that boy'll be back in less than a day, just the way he was when he came in here. We keep giving these brats the cure, then they run off and get themselves bitten, so they can fly around and bite people before turning around and crawling back for the cure so they can start all over again. What's the point, old friend? What difference are we really making?"
Edmund sighed and turned back around, a fresh needle in hand, waiting for the next patient to walk in. "All we can do is keep administering the cure and hoping that we don't run out. We cannot influence every last Gaian; I just hope that when the supply is completely gone, no one will have regrets about what state they find themselves in. But when you think on it, you might as well hope for it to rain boots or for Bass'ken Lake to fill up with cheese, for all the probability of it happening."
A black-haired girl walked in next, sitting down expectantly and fixing Edmund with her narrow, feral eyes. As Edmund swabbed her arm and prepared to insert the needle, the girl snarled almost involuntarily, her fangs still red from a recent feeding. As the needle sank into her arm and the cure began to make its way through her, her eyelids drooped and the fangs began to vanish. Edmund smiled, and then sighed. Another one down, and hundreds more to take her place. So far there was still plenty of cure to go around, but for how long he didn't know. He knew that Johnny was right in a sense; many of the Gaians that came back to be cured of their vampire state had been there several times, putting their bodies through the taxing pain of being made human, only to turn around and in less than a day get themselves bitten by one of the many who were still vampires. Many were doing this by walking right into what was once the vampires' base of operations: the Von Helson manor. Bold as brass they would walk in, opening themselves to a vampire bite, which would most assuredly come.
It was hard to believe that less than a week ago, access to the bases was denied to the opposite side, and all of the attacks had taken place all over Gaia. Humans armed with chainsaws and stakes, and the vampires with their great strength and razor-sharp fangs. It had been a week of terror and madness.
After the black-haired girl left, Edmund lowered his head, brought his hand up, and rubbed his temples. They had been at this since sun-up, and it was beginning to tell. He looked up as Johnny's large meaty hand rested on his shoulder. Johnny's face was just as haggard, and he looked at Edmund with a small smile. "Go on home, Edmund. I'll see to any that come in the middle of the night." Edmund almost declined, but he realized that pushing himself too hard would only result in him being more likely to make a mistake come tomorrow, and he liked being careful despite the war's end.
He picked up his long gray coat, strapped his sword within easy reach, and walked out the laboratory door, up a long flight of stairs and out of the bunker, into the night. It would be a rather long walk to Durem, but he liked the cool night air, and he knew without boasting that with the leader of the vampires, Vladimir Von Helson defeated, and his right hand man Zhivago gone missing, he was more than a match for any other vampire that he might cross this night. He didn't think it likely that he would run into any; when the war had ended so abruptly, many of the vampires had fled, some back to the manor, others to various other hiding places, and while they were seen ever so often mingling with the humans in various parts of Gaia, they had been keeping a low profile ever since. And although a truce had been called, there were still pockets of individuals who sought out the other side with a vengeance, and it would be a long time before the fighting stopped entirely, if at all.
Somewhere to Edmund's right, a twig snapped, sounding as loud as a gunshot in the silence of the night. Edmund stopped dead in his tracks, barely a few yards away from the entrance to the bunker, his hand on his sword hilt. Looking into a gathering of trees off to the right, he could almost make out a pair of glowing eyes watching him intently from beneath an unruly bunch of hair the color of dried blood. Recognition crossed Edmund's features, and he eased his grip on his sword hilt.
Here was a vampire, a girl he was certain, who for some odd reason had taken to watching him and the comings and goings of the lab since the middle of the war. She never approached, but always hid in the shadows and watched. She never bothered the humans who came around constantly, and she never bothered her fellow undead as they came to be cured and re-join the fight as humans.
When the war had been in full swing, Edmund had chased her away from the base entrance with others of her kind, and she had fled along with them, but she always returned after a while, sometimes as long as a day, to continue her mysterious vigil. He had called out to her once, "Are you here for a cure?" She had started and vanished. Edmund had heard a tinny, high-pitched screeching, and he looked up just in time to see a small black bat taking off in the night as though pursued by a hawk. An elder, he had thought, for he knew that the most powerful of the vampires were rewarded with the ability to change into a bat, in recognition of the number of humans they had bitten. Though it disgusted him, it also fascinated him. Was she a spy? What could she possibly discover outside of the base, when all of their workings were inside? Wouldn't an elder be better suited for the battlefield anyway? What was she doing then, if spying was not her intention? He had received no answers, so he had to be content with letting the questions swirl around in his mind, and still this girl saw fit to continue to watch him as closely as though she was expecting him to do a trick.
"What do you want?" he said loudly to the group of trees and the eyes that peered out. The twin yellow pinpricks of light faded, and then went out. Edmund felt as though his ears had been stuffed with cotton; the silence was suddenly overwhelming. He fancied he could still hear the last lingering echoes of his spoken question before it vanished, unanswered. Edmund narrowed his eyes, his fatigue momentarily forgotten. If this vampire girl chose to remain silent, then he would find out himself just what she was after. He tightened his grip on his sword hilt and walked backwards until he was well into the trees and shrubs that bordered the path. He could vaguely see the eyes, the yellow glow renewed, scanning the area for him like a pair of searchlights. Keeping low to the ground, he broke into a kind of trot to the left, making no more noise than the wind passing through the clusters of leaves. He had done this once when Louie had been sneaking around the base area, and he was certain it would work again.
Sure enough, after he had crossed the path a ways ahead and doubled back, it wasn't long before he saw a figure crouched in the bushes, peering intently at the now-empty path. A pale white hand stood out like a beacon against the dark bark of a tree she was steadying herself on. She was so intent on trying to locate him that like Louie, she didn't hear him at all until he was almost immediately behind her. Quick as a wink, he drew his sword and brought it down against the tree with a resounding THUNK, so close to her head that it neatly cut off a few strands of the girl's blood-red hair. She turned around with a small gasp, her mouth's O of surprise framed by two long, thin fangs. She squeezed her eyes shut and a few things happened at once. With her eyes screwed shut, the glow they had been emitting was shut off as abruptly as a lamp being switched off. There was a tiny poof sound, then a frenzied flapping mixed with a small thud as something hit the ground, and Edmund found himself with a face full of terrified bat. He swatted it away with his free hand, and it fluttered off, keening at the top of its little bat lungs. He peered down at where the vampire had been sitting and saw a dark yet familiar rectangular shape lying on the ground. He picked it up and discovered that it was a small book, bound in aged leather and covered in various stains and small tears. Trying not to look at the more reddish-hued stains, Edmund looked back up in the sky in the direction the vampire bat had gone. But it had already vanished, and the night was still and quiet as it continued serenely toward dawn. Edmund looked down at the book again, and almost without thinking, he shoved it deep into his coat pocket and continued on his way.
When he finally reached his home in Durem, he hurriedly unlocked the door and rushed inside, no longer confident that he wouldn't run into any unexpected company this night. He wondered for what seemed the fiftieth time what in Gaia he was going to do with the vampire's book. Once she noticed it was missing, she was bound to come looking for it, and it wasn't as though he had the anonymity of the average Gaian. He was a well-known figure, even more so since this war. He knew at least one vampire knew where he lived, and there was no way of knowing whether or not that information had been shared. For what seemed like the hundredth time, he wished he had just left the book by the tree where it had fallen.
But the deed was done, and as he hung up his coat, he could just see the bulge the book made in the pocket, almost as though it was demanding that it not be ignored until its kidnapper determined what was to be done with it. He reached into the pocket and pulled it out, absentmindedly turning it over and examining it. Aside from the stains and small tears, there was nothing else on the cover, no writing to indicate what might be written inside. No clasp or corner protectors decorated it, and when he chanced a quick look at the inside cover, there was no name. The writing, he saw as he flipped the pages, was neat, but rather thin and spidery, and he hoped to the powers that be that they were in red INK instead of what immediately came to mind when he saw the red letters. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he gave it one last hard look, and it was almost as though the tears and stains on the book were coming together to make a face of stern disapproval, saying "Well are you going to read me, or just sit there like a dummy and try to burn a hole through me with your eyes?"
Edmund placed the book on a table next to his armchair by the fireplace, then went off to change and make himself a cup of hot tea. When he returned, he sat down, opened the book, and began to read.