And the Rest is History
42
Reverie
I am the terror that flaps in the night.
An alleyway.
A thief looking through a wallet.
The coins jumped out, spinning in the air.
They formed a word.
No
He let out a scream, dropped the wallet and ran.
He was suddenly faced with a crowd of angry people.
"That's him!" The woman cried, "Get him!"
"Argh!"
The thief ran, the sound of the lynch mob constantly behind him.
They were going to chase him forever.
He saw a police car and raced up to the side.
"Please, they're trying to kill me!"
"Who?" The police officer said in concern.
"The..." He broke down into tears.
"I stole a wallet. I don't care, just lock me up, get me away from those people!"
In the warehouse, the robbers tossed their stolen wares on the table.
Phones, ipads, a jewelry box, a wallet.
Bells jingled in the air.
"Woo-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
A hula hoop, came circling towards them.
They stepped out of its way.
The hula hoop sprang up from the ground and caught them between it.
"Pla-ay-ti-me!"
A clown, dressed in purple and orange bounded into sight.
"Hello, little Bill. And you must be George." He smiled gaily at them.
"Oh my god no!"
"No, please!"
"How about we play a game?"
"No, no please!
"I hate clowns!"
"Oh, I'm sure you'll get over it."
The clown smiled contentedly.
"Now that you're my captive audience for the rest of eternity."
They struggled unco-ordinated to get out of the hula hoop.
"Oh, you can't escape us, can they, Mr Banana Brain?"
He produced a banana clown doll.
"That's right, Ben!" The doll squeaked, "Unless they went to the pen!"
"Hey!" The clown turned away from Bill and George to face the doll.
"Mr Banana Brain, how many times do I have to tell you: don't tell them the loophole in the game! We can't keep having our audience running off to jail, every time it's your turn to speak!"
The clown looked around at the empty spot and to his audience reaching the door.
"Oh, you can't escape me!" He let out a peal of laughter. "We're going to have so much fu-un!"
In the park, two people, noisy, eating Hungry Hippo burgers, leaving the trash strewn about.
"Aw, cute dog." One of them laughed, looking at the phone.
"Lemme look. All this one's got are some funeral pictures."
"Oh, morbid." The first one scoffed.
"What's that?" The second one jumped, "Snake!"
A moment and tree roots had caught their feet. Vines wound around their arms, raising them upside down into the air.
"What're these?" A green figure with purple hair appeared from the darkness, "Weeds... in 'my' pristine park? The figure regarded the mess on the ground in contempt, "Pickpockets 'and' litterbugs?"
"Who are you?"
"What are you going to do with us?"
The figure smiled, "What else?" The greenery tossed them to the ground. "Spi-ike? He called. A giant duck sized venus fly-trap raced to his side.
He pointed severely at them. "Mulch these weeds!"
The fly trap snapped its jaws. The pair ran as it made off after them.
Heartless.
Sensing himself watched, Drake opened his eyes and looked up to the vampire watching him.
"Why?" He asked hoarsely, "What have I done that's so much worse than them?"
"You know, you have a really funny way of looking at things."
Drake swallowed, realising what he was sensing, "You're full."
"Yeah, it's not the fastest way to eat." the vampire chuckled, "But it's the funniest."
Drake looked away from him. "I don't... know."
"What?" The vampire shrugged.
"It isn't just fear. I mean; how can that feed you?"
"Oh." The vampire uttered, "Because I rolled a low score on the sanity check when I became a vampire. And since I'm always low on that, I just focus my empty stomach feeling on that instead of blood."
Drake flinched, feeling the bite mark on his neck. "Do you even think of blood as food?"
"Uh, well..." The vampire shrugged, "If it's a demon it's all you can eat central. But I've learned to focus my mind past that." He knelt down in front of Drake, "This world, beneath the surface. Within your blood. We're connected."
"No." Drake flinched and shut his eyes, looking away. "You're using me."
The vampire stood up.
For a long moment there was silence.
Drake swallowed, "You know, it'd really help if you just admit it."
The vampire sighed. "Then yes. I am everything you think I am." He stated weakly, "I am the thing that you fear most. I am Darkwing Duck."
"You are not Darkwing Duck!" Drake returned heatedly. "I would never do this!"
"Do what?"
"Bite someone!"
"Darkwing vampire, then." The other threw out in a cursory tone, "Is that better suited for your sensitive stomach?"
Drake snorted in distaste. "You can't use people."
"Like S.H.U.S.H. used you? I get why you're ticked. They only treat you nicely to get something out of you. That's the way, isn't it? The minute you give them that big shiny bauble they hate you again."
"No." Drake returned, "it's not even that good."
"Ooo." The vampire knelt down to him. "Tell me the tale of these despicably dirty dishes."
Drake swallowed, "They take advantage of the curse. Again, again, and again." He shook his head slowly, "I can't get free of them." He sank his head back into his arms. "You're no different than they are."
The vampire watched him in quiet silence.
Drake sighed, looking up wearily, "You couldn't have just asked me?"
The vampire stood up. "Excuse me, Darkwing Duck. Vampire, here. I seem to have misplaced one of my intended victims. You happen to have seen a guy; average height, in his seventies, wearing a classic detective outfit? Because, man, I get hungry just thinking about this case."
Drake swallowed, "You monster."
"Yeah; that's why I sent Hooter to ask." The vampire smiled halfly.
Drake shuddered. "You bit him."
"How else does it make sense?"
"Why bite him? Why bite me?"
"Because... you let me do it." He sighed.
Drake looked away.
"You know..." The vampire was reticent, "I'm waiting for you to ask me."
Drake swallowed, "Ask you what? You want Larkis Dovesworth. You want the thing that got him."
The vampire frowned, "Yeah, that's the trouble with being a vampire; at the heart of every grand plan lies the same old broken record. Let's talk about you. What do you want?"
"Now you're trying to get me on your side."
"No I'm not." The vampire scrunched his face up in disapproval, "that was a lousy block. Tell me what you want."
Panic jolted through Drake. He emptied his mind, focusing on the room around them, the window, the grey and black of the other's clothes.
The vampire chuckled, "while you're at it could you look into mine? It's a bit of a junkyard in here."
Drake gulped, "How-how long have you been in my head?"
"Let's just say, I got what I needed when I bit you."
Drake contorted his face in pain, "then why are you bothering with me now?"
"Why 'am' I bothering you now?" The vampire rephrased, kneeling down to him again. "What do you want from me, heartless?"
"You keep calling me that," Drake swallowed. "What have I done to get such a horrible title?"
"Enough." The vampire answered, shaking his head. "You've done enough."
Drake shook his head, looking away. "What do you want from me?"
The vampire stood up and paced for a moment.
"Tell me about you and Agent Hooter. Why do you resent him?"
Drake shrugged, "I mean, what can I say? He's tried to kill me four times."
"Really?"
"Oh, he has valid reasons." Drake discounted. "Of course."
"The ends don't justify the means."
"I thought I had him." Drake frowned, "Called him out and everything. But Doctor Vykes had tampered with the evidence and I based my whole scene around that so I got it slammed back in my face. Now he knows I don't trust him, he's holding his cards very close to his chest."
"There's that name again. Doctor Vykes invented those special autopsy procedures."
Drake shut his eyes. "Hooter gave Bellum the authority to perform them on me. I've already had the first stage done." He breathed, "All he needs to do is orchestrate a way to knock me out so he can take me back to Doctor Bellum for the second stage. The tri-section will end my ability for higher reasoning and after the quad-section I won't be getting up."
"No amount of broccoli is going to help you fix that."
"No." Drake agreed plainly, "no it won't."
"And that's why you let me bite you."
Drake looked at the vampire. "I honestly don't know what happened. Didn't you use your allure?"
The vampire shrugged, "Not unless you count 'I'm not going to kill you' as attractive."
Drake gazed back at him. "Yeah, that's pretty attractive."
"You need help." The vampire snorted.
"What, and you don't?" Drake raised an eyebrow.
The vampire laughed. "If there's ten points on an average person's sanity meter, mine's capped at five."
He sat down beside Drake.
"So, you're blocking me on this like you blocked Hooter on Larkis Dovesworth."
"I wasn't blocking."
"You're still blocking!" The vampire glared at him. "And I'm trying to help you, so you want to hear me out?"
"Help me?"
The vampire's beak twitched. "What do you know about the family curse?"
"Quite a lot, actually!" Drake retorted. "It's passed father to son, there can only be one son, it doesn't activate unless you take on the mantle... What do 'you' know?"
A note appeared floating in the air between them, the red markings were strange and indecipherable to Drake.
"According to Dovesworth's alchemical report on 'your' blood, it was some kind of christening gift on a baby vampire. Since Sir Quackmire Mallard made the biggest impression on the book of our ancestors, one can only assume it must've been him." He smiled, licked his beak, "There's a vampire in your blood, five hundred years buried. You and me dig it up and your Hooter can knock you out all he likes. Doctor Bellum's autopsies won't put a scratch on you."
Drake chuckled wearily, "Me, a vampire?"
"You want to bite me?"
"No..." Drake frowned, disbelieving. "I don't."
"So you want to bite Hooter?"
"I don't want to bite anyone!"
"Okay, so let's fix that first."
"Ah, what-!" There was a closing in feeling, an invisible vortex. Drake tried to shift out but suddenly the manacles were a thing working against him. "What are you doing!" He breathed raggedly.
"Sucking the life out of you." The vampire answered, his teeth half lowered. "Being part duck and part vampire, you have twice as much as everyone else."
Drake slumped, weak, dizzy, struggling to focus. "Ow." He breathed sharply.
"That's hunger, you're feeling." The vampire cooed. "Your body's reacting to the low metre gauge."
Drake couldn't focus, could barely see. "I can't... I can't, blur..."
"Are you sure that's a blur? Are you sure it's not energy you're seeing?"
Drake blinked through the blur. "Energy?"
"Stolen it. Like the antijack did."
Drake felt a flare of temper. "Used me like I'm nothing!"
"Good, focus that temper. Use it; get your energy back."
"Give it back!" He said severely to the great field of energy before him.
The sound of the vampire's smile broadened, "Take it." He whispered, "before something else happens."
A sense of urgency rushed through him.
Drake seized him closely, "Bite..." Amidst the energy field was a circulatory pattern. He leaned closer, pressed by the feeling of weakness, dizzy against the sight of energy.
The taste of blood poured down his throat. Strength flooded back into him.
A fire raged, a volcano, smoke, rain poured, thunder cracked. From the ramparts of Mallard Manor, Drake looked out over a dry moat. Drake felt a hand on his shoulder, a distant voice growing stronger from somewhere across the raging fire.
Blearily, Drake blinked back the scene. In the darkness, he turned his head to see Steelbeak kneeling, watching him.
Drake caught his gaze.
"Aw man." Steelbeak said regarding him with a frown. He pulled his hand away, "he's done a real number on you."
Wearily, Drake got on his hands and knees, the manacles and chains clinking together. He sat up. "He got you too?"
"I'm the one he cut his teeth on."
"From the other universe." Drake sat back, rubbing his head. "...What was that?"
"He's asleep." Steelbeak shrugged, "That's what 'that' was."
"But I was... he made me..." Drake put his hand to his beak. "It was vivid."
Steelbeak raised an eyebrow. "Made you what?"
"Bite him back."
Steelbeak regarded him for a moment. "That explains why your eyes were black."
Drake grabbed Steelbeak's arm, "Did I actually bite him?!"
"No." Steelbeak answered immediately. "You've been tranced out since he bit you; then you fell asleep."
"A dream turned my eyes black?"
Steelbeak frowned. "Yeah. Packs a real punch, don't it?"
"I'm going for lunch. Anything you think won't turn your stomach right now?"
"That's not like you to help so much."
Steelbeak stood up, "Take it or leave it. So long as you're not throwing up over the place."
Drake smiled at that, "Salad sandwich, thanks."
"Right." Steelbeak left through the door.
Drake sank back to a seat against the wall, regarding the manacles around himself. They felt very real now. During that whole conversation, they'd barely been there. A dream.
Was any of it possible?