Title: Moo Juice
Author: Honeybat
Summary: Too much of a good thing is not good for you, as Nick finds out in this strange tale. A humourus look at his choice of drink. This story was one of the finalists in the Forever Knight Fanfiction Awards 2001.
Part 1
Nick glared at Tracy when she leaned forward in the Caddy and turned the dial with an impatient twist. Within seconds the dark thoughtful wisdom of the NightCrawler was replaced by the rapid blast of words from a local news broadcast.
"Hey, I was listening to that," Nick objected halfhearted.
"So?" Tracy shot back at him. "This stakeout is boring enough without his dreary blabber about doom and gloom."
"Didn't they tell you at the academy that stakeouts are 'supposed' to be boring?" He moved to turn the dial back to CERK.
"You're the one who's been on vacation. I'm the one who's been stuck at her desk, doing paperwork for two weeks," she interrupted.
"…and that senior partners always decide what goes on the radio?" The station was back to the NightCrawler.
Almost before his hand had left the knob, she switched it back to the news again. "Yea, right. Is that on the same page where it says the junior partner always does all the paper work?"
The war was on; he could see it in her eyes, her tense posture and in her increased heart rate. He had clearly pushed all the right buttons to get her young hormones flowing. Instantly he forgot all about the monologue he had been following.
"It's my car," he quipped back, trying desperately to ignore the beast within who was starting to stir at the promise of conflict. "My car, my radio, my decision.". Why did she have to smell so darn delicious when she was angry? Where did that thought come from? With a firm twist, he had the talk show back on, and was able to lean away from her.
"Anything's gotta be better than that NightCreep, Nick."
Not anything…but pretty much, Nick had to agree. But, he'd never admit it. Instead, he pretended to look at her as if she was crazy. He enjoyed that game immensely.
"Okay okay, maybe not. It's just…" she made a visible shudder. "…he bores me to death."
He knew she'd wanted to say something else, and it made him want to smile at her politeness even in an argument. He instead shrugged. "It's an acquired taste. He sort of grows on you." 'Over the centuries,' he wanted to add, but stopped himself in time.
Before he could add any more arguments, she again turned the dial.
This time he let it be. With her swift movement, he got a good whiff of her warm fragrant blood right up his nose. For a slight moment the beast slipped past his usual iron control, and instead of arguing he had to clamp his mouth shut around his fangs. "Alright, alright," he mumbled, trying not to sound too gruff.
"Sure, make it sound like you've sacrificed your soul."
He couldn't breathe, he couldn't risk getting even more aroused. What was the matter with him? He usually didn't have any control problems around Tracy. It took all his willpower to return his teeth to normal. He forced a shrug.
She looked strangely at him.
He knew it wasn't like him to fold like that, and she knew it. "I guess it couldn't hurt to hear what's going on in the world." he rationalized, and hoped she would buy it.
"Whatever." She settled back in her seat, back to her earlier bored stare at the building across the street.
Nick took a hesitant breath, afraid to be overwhelmed by her blood again. He had to get over it, leaving wasn't an option. He turned away from his partner as he closed his eyes, and tried to think about something else…anything else…anything but the warm alive body by his side, pulsating with life, beckoning to him. The hunger tore into his gut. He needed to feed. Peacefully chewing black and white cows passed before his eyes when he closed them briefly. Still one more hour before their shift was over. He had to make it until then. He had to.
He dared glimpse at Tracy. She was using her binoculars to try and spy their target through the dark windows on the second floor. She obviously hadn't noticed his state. He wished he had never gone on that vacation with Screed and his Carouche friends. He couldn't believe they had talked him into live prey. He hadn't been able to get any cold stuff down since he got back, and now 'this'.
"…in Europe; foot and mouth disease are spreading uncontrollably. As the authorities were starting to get the disease under control, a new outbreak in southern parts of Scandinavia and northern Germany has taken everybody by surprise…"
Nick gulped, and felt a new knot of guilt work his way up his throat, and finally take his mind off Tracy. He traced one of the strange blisters on the inside of his lip with his tongue. He had been so occupied with the rush of live food; he hadn't really noticed them before. Some cows had tasted a bit different than others. How could he have been so blind?
Part 2
Nick punched his security code with a hand not entirely steady when he finally got back to his loft. The last hour, and the drive home, had been hell. The hunger had only grown, and it was a small miracle that Tracy had not found out his secret. He had not been able to retract his fangs at all the last twenty minutes. He still couldn't, and now his eyes were like fiery suns, and he was shaking with hunger for what was waiting for him on his kitchen table.
Nick wondered what was wrong with him when he was actually looking forward to the inferior blood of cows, instead of dreaming of a bottle human vintage. "Damn, I must be turning Carouche," he muttered.
Nick's eyes flashed red as he lost control over his appearance, when a massive wall of foul smelling cows blood hit him in the face right inside the elevator door. Blood, the whole floor was covered with it. A slight splashing noise made him look down. It was slowly pooling around his feet into the elevator. "What the…" he began right before he saw the new cask of blood he'd left on the kitchen table. It was slowly dripping its contents onto the floor.
"Merde!"
Disgusted by the potent smell, and the total waste of it all, he hovered over to the cask to check if any of its contents remained. He felt panic rising when he realized that the contents of the cask was all he had, his only supply. He'd cleaned out his last spare bottle the day before.
Nothing, the leak was right at the bottom, and the drops he'd seen had been the last. "That damn butcher!" he grumbled disappointedly when his feet sank down into the well-soaked carpet with a sickening wet sound.
He was already reaching for the phone when he realized he couldn't call Natalie, even if it was kind of an emergency. She'd go ballistic if she saw this mess, and found out he not only bought bottles of blood, he bought it by the barrel. And he sure as hell couldn't call LaCroix. It was bad enough LaCroix knew of this obsession, he wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing just how pressing it was.
His legs started to shake as another wave of hunger swept over him. Helplessly, he sank down on his knees. Desperately, he grappled at the carpet, bringing it to his mouth as he fell forward down onto the floor. The blood, he had to have it. Desperately he half bit, half sucked at the carpet, rapidly losing every last scrap of dignity. Compared to a human life, dignity was an easy sacrifice.
The green open fields of south Denmark:
Nick was grabbed by his collar and forcefully pulled off the white and black-patched neck to which he was attached. His hideously lengthened fangs were almost torn out by the sheer force of the violent yank.
"What do you think you are doing?" the stern voice of his father and Master growled in his ear.
"Having dinner," Nick slurred through red, blood dripping lips, trying to get back to his meal. What the hell was LaCroix doing there?
"My, my, going Carouche on me are you?"
"Let me go," Nick squirmed helplessly; his feet still a foot off the ground.
"Oh NO, you are going to snap out of this! NO son of mine is going to live off cows! You should be glad I found out about this before the whole community found out. Do you have ANY idea the amount of humiliation I'd suffer if this came out?"
Nick didn't listen; he was starting to become desperate. He had to get to that cow. That was all that mattered. He was HUNGRY! "Let me go you bastard!"
"It was bad enough when you drank it from bottles. But that was at least civilized. You, flying around the countryside sucking blood from cows is NOT!"
"I don't care, let me go!"
LaCroix didn't listen. "No arguments. You are going back home with me." He grabbed Nick around his waist and flew back towards the nearest town. It was time to go back to the real world.
When LaCroix was that determined, nothing Nick could do would change his mind. They returned to Canada the next evening.
He lay face down on the floor when he came to his senses again. This time when the shroud of pleasant confusion left him, the hunger was not as desperate, and the floor was considerably cleaner. Pushing himself into a sitting position against the couch, he shivered in disgust over what he had just done. He disentangled a piece of carpet from his left fang and tried to wipe off the sticky liquid around his mouth with his sleeve. Only smearing more of it across his face with his soaked shirt.
"What's happening to me?" he wondered, not for the first time the last few days.
Screed's idea that he'd come "Farm hunting" with him and a gang of other Carouches had sounded very appealing when the struggle to stay off human blood had started to become a bit too much. He had thought that maybe drowning himself in the blood of cows or whatever farm animals he could find, would take his mind off the human variety. Natalie's protein drinks sure didn't help. All they did was make him hungrier, weaker, and one step closer to disaster.
The warm bovine blood, and the rush of the nightly hunts, flying across the green fields of his native countryside, did take his mind off just about everything in his current incarnation. However, not in the way he had hoped. There were something about those cows that made him go absolutely nuts if he didn't get a fix. Something in their blood that he'd never tasted in Canadian cows.
He shook his head clear from the haze he'd been in. He looked at the broken cask of blood. This could be trouble, whatever had affected him so strangely in Europe, was also in this blood. He thought back to that news broadcast Tracy had turned on in the car. Could this be something he'd gotten from cows with Foot and mouth disease, or perhaps Mad cows disease? How was it even possible for something like that to affect him in this way? He was a vampire; he was supposed to be immune to all disease.
Whatever the cause, he just had to get off the live variety, and soon; or he would be forced to relocate to a more rural area. The craving had only increased since he got back. Before that demon possession he'd been able to go days without blood. Now, not only was he unable to stop drinking, he seemed to be doing just about anything to get it, even if it meant flying miles and miles for live cows, or lick his own floor clean.
"I gotta get a grip!" he groaned, getting off the floor to go upstairs for a shower before bed. He felt exhausted, as he always seemed to do after one of these feeding frenzies. Why was that? He should be feeling strong and in control after he fed, not dizzy, confused and completely exhausted.
The hunger was back to a more normal stirring in the back of his mind, and yet he barely had the energy to fly up the stairs.
Ten minutes later, he was clean and asleep in his bed.
Part 3
Nick nervously fingered the newspaper while he waited in he sun lit waiting room for his turn with the dentist.
He tensed when the door to the examining room flew open and Vachon came running through it with a scream on his bleeding lips.
"It's not worth it! It's not worth it…" Nick heard Vachon scream all the way down the stairs to the street below.
He swallowed nervously and fingered at his fang tips. He couldn't keep them. They were the last evidence of what he'd been. Everyone would know as soon as he opened his mouth. Such a strange turn of events that the disease that had turned them all back to human, had also frozen the more demonic features on their now human faces.
"Sceed!" the heavy built wrestler nurse barked loud enough to make the group in the waiting room jump.
"Ai, ai ain't doin' eit!" the bald Carouche abruptly decided and chased Vachon down the stairs.
Nick gulped again. It was his turn next.
The nurse looked at her pad, and then barked "Knight!" making Nick too wonder what the hell he was doing there at all. Nick wanted to sink down through the floor when she looked at him with hard, absolutely cold eyes.
Without a sound he got to his feet. He didn't know if he could even get a word out if he had tried, and followed her inside the anonymous gray door; into what might as well have been hell on earth. How did the mortals do it? Even the thought of someone poking around in his mouth, messing with his teeth, terrified him with a vengeance. He'd long lost what little food he'd managed to get down that morning, and still he felt nauseous. His stomach was in a knot; pain like ever the first hunger of a Vampire.
"Sit down!"
Nick climbed obediently into the chair, carefully avoiding the many torture instruments lined up on trays or hanging in cables from the ceiling. If not for the many windows letting in the sun and the faint sounds of Spadina Avenue at noon, it could have been a torture chamber of medieval times.
"Dr Moo will be right with you," the nurse snarled. She must hate him, Nick decided.
Briefly alone, he tried unsuccessfully to relax. For the last time he wrapped his lower lips around the tips, half biting, half chewing on it. Eight hundred years, and now they would be gone forever. They represented a part of himself he'd loathed, the very tools of destruction; and yet they were a strangely calming presence in his mouth.
"I see my practice has become a veritable zoo these days," someone blurted out behind Nick's head, and made him bite down a bit too hard on his lip.
"Ouch!" Nick groaned, licking at the trickle of blood. Damn the suckers were still too sharp.
"Alright…Knight is it? Let's get those suckers out once and for all, shall we?" The dentist said in between an idle chew on a green toothpick, barely acknowledging Nick.
"Yeah, it's time," Nick replied, his determination rapidly dissipating when the moment started to close in on him.
"Open wide!" Dr. Moo commanded, leaning closer, revealing an even row of big square teeth to Nick. Was that how he was supposed to look?
For a moment Nick was totally unable to open his mouth at all. 'I'm not a Vampire! I'm not a Vampire,' he repeated over and over in his mind. He had to get the fangs out, or he'd never be able to get back to work. Hell, he'd never bee able to show his face again if he didn't. "Okay, doc," he finally agreed and opened up.
"Good little Vampire," the dentist said as he poked at Nick's right fang tip. Nick shivered and tried to move away when he noticed the glimmer in the dentist's eyes at the sight of the fangs.
"Now just relax, and this will all be over in a moment," he said, reaching for something on the tray.
Nick winced and squeezed his eyes shut at the sight of the powerful pliers the dentist flashed before he moved in on the fangs. "You know, it's almost sad to take out such healthy teeth," he said, but to Nick he didn't sound one bit sorry.
"How about some anesthetic, doc!" Nick wondered, squinting at the doc through his new blue colored lenses.
"I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem to work on you guys. I must have injected enough to deck a cow, into the guy in here before you, and it still didn't help."
"Please, doc?" Nick felt nauseous, no wonder Vachon had screamed as if he had been left to fry in the sun.
"Your choice," the dentist said and put the pliers down for a moment.
Nick calmed down momentarily, having managed to prolong the procedure with a couple minutes. That was until the enormous needle was injected into his gums, right between the fangs and the teeth. The crunching feeling of the needle going in, raking along the roots of his fangs made him stiffen in the chair to the extent of his ass leaving the seat. "Aaawwrghhh…" he tried to scream at the rough treatment.
'It works, it works!" Nick thought to himself as his upper lip and his tongue went completely numb the next few minutes.
When Dr. Moo returned, Nick felt considerably calmer, his mouth was completely numb and he was convinced it would be a piece of cake to do the last step of actually pulling his beloved fangs. The overwhelming sense of loss almost overwhelmed him when he realized this was it. He closed his eyes; he didn't want to see it happen any less than he wanted to feel it.
His eyes sprung open with the excruciating pain when his first fang was ripped out of his mouth. "AAAAaaaarrrgggh!" he sat upright with a jolt. Only to be roughly pushed back against the chair again with something hard and heavy against his chest. He looked down. Hooves?
"Mooooaaaahahahahaha…" The dentist was laughing insanely.
Nick turned and met the crazed eyes of a cow face to face.
"What!"
"Nick? Nick!" a distant voice called. "You're moaning!"
Confused, he blinked. The dentist office, the mooing dentist, and the blinding sunlight were replaced by the safety of his car, and Tracy. The stakeout. He ran his tongue across his teeth. He was okay. It had only been a dream, an absurd dream.
"Are you okay, Nick? I thought for a moment there you had a toothache or something."
He touched his mouth thoughtfully. "Nah, only a bad dream." 'Maybe LaCroix was right; I gotta start cutting down on cow,' Nick thought with a shudder. "Did I miss anything?"
"No, just another boring stakeout."
The End