The Sire, Part 1
Fandom: Moonlight
Characters: Mick/Beth/Josef
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: After last tv episode, "Sonata"
Author's Note: Seventh in my post-"Sonata" series. Mick realizes he had successfully sired another vampire long ago. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
If you’ve ever wondered if vampires dream, well, they do. But my dreams are nothing like when I was human. As a vampire, my dreams are disjointed. Hazy. Vague. It’s more like just the suggestion of a dream, and when I wake up, the feelings are there, but there is nothing specific I can put my finger on. I know I’ve dreamed, but I don’t know about what. It’s very frustrating, because I used to love to dream, and it’s yet another thing that has been taken from me. So it’s odd to say that I have a recurring dream; but I think I do. I guess it’s more like I wake up with a familiar feeling. But one day, that dream suddenly came into vivid focus, just like when I was human, in vivid color, and with sound. And it scared the hell out of me.
In my dream I am recently turned, and I can’t seem to get enough to eat. Coraline only likes fresh blood, so she and I go hunting nearly every night, preying on prostitutes and night watchmen, and anyone else unlucky to be out at night. It is on one of these occasions that I find a longshoreman, passed out at the docks. I notice that someone else has already drawn blood, though by hitting him over the head with something sharp, not by feeding on him. Head wounds bleed. A lot. The blood in the air is irresistible, and I drink from him, but he is already nearly dead before I start in, and I feel his heart rate slowing. In the War, I had to kill to save my country. As a vampire, I didn’t want to kill someone just to satisfy my own desires. And I had been a medic in the Army; I still felt the innate need to help.
“Coraline,” I say, feeling the poor guy’s life slipping away. “He’s dying.”
She just shrugs. “It happens. Looks like someone else beat us to it anyway. Just drain him, and let’s go home. It’s almost dawn, and I need my beauty sleep.” She yawns delicately into her hand.
“No, wait!” I remembered what Coraline had done to me. How she had changed me. I bite into my own arm, and allow my blood to drip into the man’s open mouth. He does not respond. I don’t see him swallow.
“Mick,” she says in disgust. “What do you think you’re doing? He’s too far gone. He’s not even drinking it. And besides, you’re too young of a vampire to even think of siring someone. You can’t even take responsibility for yourself yet.”
I wait a few minutes, hoping it has worked. Hoping he will open his eyes, and I will know I’ve saved him. In my dream, I can’t make out his face. I know he is a big man, with bulging muscles, with various tattoos on his arms. I notice an unusual tattoo on his chest, which I can see because his bloodstained shirt is unbuttoned part way. My God, I think. He was in the Navy. He had been in the War.
But it doesn’t work. He appears to be gone for good.
“It was just too late, Mick,” Coraline says. “Sometimes it doesn’t work.” I know she really doesn’t care; she just wants to go home. So we left him there. She pulled me up and dragged me away with her superior strength. “Come on before someone sees us.”
My last sight was of him lying there, the early light of dawn suddenly illuminating the tattoo on his now death-gray chest. It is like a mini Pearl Harbor memorial, with the USS Oklahoma, and “1941” emblazoned in bright blue. Then, I wake up.
I know that it wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory. I awakened bathed in sweat, despite the coldness of my freezer bed. Beth had asked me once if I had ever turned someone. I couldn’t answer her at the time, because I honestly didn’t know. I had often wondered about that man, my brother in arms, whose death I had contributed to. Sometimes, I liked to imagine that I had been successful, that he had awakened and begun his new life as a vampire, thankful that he was still on the earth, if not actually alive. But later I realized that that was a selfish wish, so I prayed that he had died peacefully, never to know the horror of being a bloodsucking monster.
The memories came flooding back about that time. How Coraline had laughed at me as I scoured the papers for the next week, looking for the report of a murdered sailor. I constantly had the radio on so I could listen to the local news. But nothing was ever reported. A couple of days after the incident, I had risked returning to the docks, but found nothing, not even any bloodstains. I began to think it was all in my imagination, so I guess it stayed that way for fifty years, in kind of a mental purgatory.
I had somehow forgotten about the tattoo, had pushed it out of my mind along with many other horrible things I’d done after I’d first been turned. But that dream had again brought everything fresh into my mind. And now I knew the awful truth-I had seen that Pearl Harbor tattoo again after that night. It was on the chest of one of my best friends, Daryl Morgan.
There was only one person who would understand my plight-Josef. He too had issues with turning humans to vampires, and we also had pretty complicated personal issues regarding turnings. So, after showering off the cold sweat of the dream, I arrived at Josef’s office in the late afternoon. You never know what you might see in Josef’s office. Sometimes he was getting a massage, sometimes a private feeding, sometimes he was actually working. So I was not surprised to see him in a portable barber’s chair, Bluetooth ear piece in, while his scantily clad barber gave him a trim. Another lovely was giving him a manicure. I had to smile.
“Have you ever heard of a salon?” I asked, taking a seat on a black leather couch in his newly refurbished office.
“Salons don’t give me the kind of personal attention I crave, Mick.” I noticed the recent bite marks on the barber’s neck.
The barber brushed off his neck, and removed the protective cape he’d been wearing. The manicurist finished buffing his final nail, and began packing her things. Josef shooed them away.
“You can come back later to clean up,” he said dismissively, but tempered his words with a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the behind for each. They were sizing me up too, and I smiled appreciatively as they left.
“You’re such a charmer,” I said after they’d gone. He recognized my sarcasm.
Josef got out of the chair, dusting off his shoulders. “Is that coming from the ball or the chain?” He zinged back.
I chuckled. “I’m happily shackled, my friend. Simone might have something to say about your recent activities, on the other hand.”
“Mick, Mick, Mick. You’re forgetting our understanding. She understands that I won’t be giving up my freshies, and that’s also my understanding as well. If she’s unhappy, she knows where the proverbial door is.” I know he was being overly cavalier. While he certainly wanted it both ways, I had a feeling that for Simone, he would give up the freshies if she simply asked. Their version of an open relationship wasn’t for me. I was fine with drinking from a bag when Beth didn’t feel like donating. He sat in the matching chair across from me. We sat in companionable silence a moment, and I knew Josef was waiting expectantly.
“Something you want to share with the class?” He finally asked.
“There’s something I’ve never told you, Josef. I only mention it now because certain details have recently cleared in my mind.”
“Do tell,” he encouraged curiously.
“I turned someone once. Successfully. But I didn’t realize it until now.”
Rarely can you surprise worldly and ancient Josef Kostan. But surprise him I did, this time.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
I told him everything about the incident, ending with the dream and the realization that I was sire to Daryl Morgan.
“And he has no idea.”
“I don’t see how he could,” I said. “He was never conscious during the whole process, that I know of. But there has always been a weird connection between us.” I laughed humorlessly. “I guess now I know why that was.”
“Yeah,” said Josef in wonder. “It was always strange that you were both turned in the same year in the same city. To tell you the truth, after hearing Daryl’s story, I wondered if old Mrs. Bloodthirsty hadn’t changed him too.” He was referring, of course, to my ex-wife, Coraline.
“That thought had occurred to me too,” I confessed. “But no, I was the irresponsible and selfish one this time.”
“Siring is a huge undertaking, meant only for the older and experienced vamp. Coraline should have stopped you, or at least hung around long enough to see if it had taken, then helped you with the poor bastard.” I knew he was thinking about Sarah, the woman he’d attempted to turn, but who was still in a coma fifty years later, lost between both worlds. She had never aged but never awakened either. It was a painful thing for him, even now.
“Well, Dad, any advice?” Technically, Josef was my sire, after he had re-turned me. Coraline’s vampire “cure” had given me a few days of humanity, but I had begged Josef to turn me back when that was the only way to save Beth. But he definitely didn’t like being called “dad.”
“Don’t call me that,” he said absently. I couldn’t help grinning at my own old joke. “But aside from you, my luck at turning hasn’t been great. I did turn another before Sarah, but he went a little crazy and got himself killed. That was about two-hundred years ago in Italy. But that’s a long story. So, after four-hundred years, you can see why I haven’t exactly been eager to turn anyone else. Till you, that is. But that, as you know, was an emergency.”
“So that rules out Simone,” I ventured, although I knew that was a touchy subject.
“Yeah,” he replied simply. I let it lay for now.
“So, do I tell Daryl? That’s my quandary here.”
He thought a moment. “No. What will be gained, Mick? He’s gonna be royally pissed, I’m sure. You’ll just bring all those bad memories back for him, just to clear your own conscience. You might lose him as a friend. And it is a little hard to believe that you didn’t put two and two together until now, ten years after you met again.”
He had a point, and it was a good one. But Daryl was a good friend, who had only recently saved my life, and this seemed a pretty crappy way to repay him. But I also didn’t like to lie to him. And if I didn’t know who my sire was, it would likely drive me crazy. Then again, knowing who my sire was had nearly driven me crazy. It was a catch-twenty-two.
“Do you know who your sire was?” I can’t believe I had never asked him that. I guess I thought it was none of my business, that he would have told me if he’d wanted me to know. But I needed some insight here. His answer surprised me.
“No. I was attacked in an alley in Prague, turned, and left on my own. I’m a self-made man in many ways, my friend.” A ghost of a smile haunted his lips. “Looking back now, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. If you have a sire who’s active in your life, you are under his control, answerable to him the rest of your existence. No, while it was hell that first year, I learned to survive on my own. That was the most invaluable lesson of my second life.” He looked at me. “Trust me on this, Mick. You did Daryl a favor. You were such a young vampire, that his tutelage would have fallen to Coraline. Now would you have wished that on anyone?”
Well, that was a rhetorical question. I got up to leave. I had a lot to think about. I also wanted to run this by Beth, but I thought I knew what she would say. Maybe that’s another reason I’d gone to Josef first.
“Thanks, man,” I said, shaking his hand. He surprised me by the extra squeeze. He was not one for showing affection, at least not if a humorous barb wasn’t attached.
“Good luck, Mick. I don’t envy your dilemma. Let me know what happens.” As I walked out the door, I heard his phone ring. His voice rose in immediate consternation at whatever the caller had told him. I smiled at Josef’s pleasant business style.
Characters: Mick/Beth/Josef
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: After last tv episode, "Sonata"
Author's Note: Seventh in my post-"Sonata" series. Mick realizes he had successfully sired another vampire long ago. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
If you’ve ever wondered if vampires dream, well, they do. But my dreams are nothing like when I was human. As a vampire, my dreams are disjointed. Hazy. Vague. It’s more like just the suggestion of a dream, and when I wake up, the feelings are there, but there is nothing specific I can put my finger on. I know I’ve dreamed, but I don’t know about what. It’s very frustrating, because I used to love to dream, and it’s yet another thing that has been taken from me. So it’s odd to say that I have a recurring dream; but I think I do. I guess it’s more like I wake up with a familiar feeling. But one day, that dream suddenly came into vivid focus, just like when I was human, in vivid color, and with sound. And it scared the hell out of me.
In my dream I am recently turned, and I can’t seem to get enough to eat. Coraline only likes fresh blood, so she and I go hunting nearly every night, preying on prostitutes and night watchmen, and anyone else unlucky to be out at night. It is on one of these occasions that I find a longshoreman, passed out at the docks. I notice that someone else has already drawn blood, though by hitting him over the head with something sharp, not by feeding on him. Head wounds bleed. A lot. The blood in the air is irresistible, and I drink from him, but he is already nearly dead before I start in, and I feel his heart rate slowing. In the War, I had to kill to save my country. As a vampire, I didn’t want to kill someone just to satisfy my own desires. And I had been a medic in the Army; I still felt the innate need to help.
“Coraline,” I say, feeling the poor guy’s life slipping away. “He’s dying.”
She just shrugs. “It happens. Looks like someone else beat us to it anyway. Just drain him, and let’s go home. It’s almost dawn, and I need my beauty sleep.” She yawns delicately into her hand.
“No, wait!” I remembered what Coraline had done to me. How she had changed me. I bite into my own arm, and allow my blood to drip into the man’s open mouth. He does not respond. I don’t see him swallow.
“Mick,” she says in disgust. “What do you think you’re doing? He’s too far gone. He’s not even drinking it. And besides, you’re too young of a vampire to even think of siring someone. You can’t even take responsibility for yourself yet.”
I wait a few minutes, hoping it has worked. Hoping he will open his eyes, and I will know I’ve saved him. In my dream, I can’t make out his face. I know he is a big man, with bulging muscles, with various tattoos on his arms. I notice an unusual tattoo on his chest, which I can see because his bloodstained shirt is unbuttoned part way. My God, I think. He was in the Navy. He had been in the War.
But it doesn’t work. He appears to be gone for good.
“It was just too late, Mick,” Coraline says. “Sometimes it doesn’t work.” I know she really doesn’t care; she just wants to go home. So we left him there. She pulled me up and dragged me away with her superior strength. “Come on before someone sees us.”
My last sight was of him lying there, the early light of dawn suddenly illuminating the tattoo on his now death-gray chest. It is like a mini Pearl Harbor memorial, with the USS Oklahoma, and “1941” emblazoned in bright blue. Then, I wake up.
I know that it wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory. I awakened bathed in sweat, despite the coldness of my freezer bed. Beth had asked me once if I had ever turned someone. I couldn’t answer her at the time, because I honestly didn’t know. I had often wondered about that man, my brother in arms, whose death I had contributed to. Sometimes, I liked to imagine that I had been successful, that he had awakened and begun his new life as a vampire, thankful that he was still on the earth, if not actually alive. But later I realized that that was a selfish wish, so I prayed that he had died peacefully, never to know the horror of being a bloodsucking monster.
The memories came flooding back about that time. How Coraline had laughed at me as I scoured the papers for the next week, looking for the report of a murdered sailor. I constantly had the radio on so I could listen to the local news. But nothing was ever reported. A couple of days after the incident, I had risked returning to the docks, but found nothing, not even any bloodstains. I began to think it was all in my imagination, so I guess it stayed that way for fifty years, in kind of a mental purgatory.
I had somehow forgotten about the tattoo, had pushed it out of my mind along with many other horrible things I’d done after I’d first been turned. But that dream had again brought everything fresh into my mind. And now I knew the awful truth-I had seen that Pearl Harbor tattoo again after that night. It was on the chest of one of my best friends, Daryl Morgan.
There was only one person who would understand my plight-Josef. He too had issues with turning humans to vampires, and we also had pretty complicated personal issues regarding turnings. So, after showering off the cold sweat of the dream, I arrived at Josef’s office in the late afternoon. You never know what you might see in Josef’s office. Sometimes he was getting a massage, sometimes a private feeding, sometimes he was actually working. So I was not surprised to see him in a portable barber’s chair, Bluetooth ear piece in, while his scantily clad barber gave him a trim. Another lovely was giving him a manicure. I had to smile.
“Have you ever heard of a salon?” I asked, taking a seat on a black leather couch in his newly refurbished office.
“Salons don’t give me the kind of personal attention I crave, Mick.” I noticed the recent bite marks on the barber’s neck.
The barber brushed off his neck, and removed the protective cape he’d been wearing. The manicurist finished buffing his final nail, and began packing her things. Josef shooed them away.
“You can come back later to clean up,” he said dismissively, but tempered his words with a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the behind for each. They were sizing me up too, and I smiled appreciatively as they left.
“You’re such a charmer,” I said after they’d gone. He recognized my sarcasm.
Josef got out of the chair, dusting off his shoulders. “Is that coming from the ball or the chain?” He zinged back.
I chuckled. “I’m happily shackled, my friend. Simone might have something to say about your recent activities, on the other hand.”
“Mick, Mick, Mick. You’re forgetting our understanding. She understands that I won’t be giving up my freshies, and that’s also my understanding as well. If she’s unhappy, she knows where the proverbial door is.” I know he was being overly cavalier. While he certainly wanted it both ways, I had a feeling that for Simone, he would give up the freshies if she simply asked. Their version of an open relationship wasn’t for me. I was fine with drinking from a bag when Beth didn’t feel like donating. He sat in the matching chair across from me. We sat in companionable silence a moment, and I knew Josef was waiting expectantly.
“Something you want to share with the class?” He finally asked.
“There’s something I’ve never told you, Josef. I only mention it now because certain details have recently cleared in my mind.”
“Do tell,” he encouraged curiously.
“I turned someone once. Successfully. But I didn’t realize it until now.”
Rarely can you surprise worldly and ancient Josef Kostan. But surprise him I did, this time.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
I told him everything about the incident, ending with the dream and the realization that I was sire to Daryl Morgan.
“And he has no idea.”
“I don’t see how he could,” I said. “He was never conscious during the whole process, that I know of. But there has always been a weird connection between us.” I laughed humorlessly. “I guess now I know why that was.”
“Yeah,” said Josef in wonder. “It was always strange that you were both turned in the same year in the same city. To tell you the truth, after hearing Daryl’s story, I wondered if old Mrs. Bloodthirsty hadn’t changed him too.” He was referring, of course, to my ex-wife, Coraline.
“That thought had occurred to me too,” I confessed. “But no, I was the irresponsible and selfish one this time.”
“Siring is a huge undertaking, meant only for the older and experienced vamp. Coraline should have stopped you, or at least hung around long enough to see if it had taken, then helped you with the poor bastard.” I knew he was thinking about Sarah, the woman he’d attempted to turn, but who was still in a coma fifty years later, lost between both worlds. She had never aged but never awakened either. It was a painful thing for him, even now.
“Well, Dad, any advice?” Technically, Josef was my sire, after he had re-turned me. Coraline’s vampire “cure” had given me a few days of humanity, but I had begged Josef to turn me back when that was the only way to save Beth. But he definitely didn’t like being called “dad.”
“Don’t call me that,” he said absently. I couldn’t help grinning at my own old joke. “But aside from you, my luck at turning hasn’t been great. I did turn another before Sarah, but he went a little crazy and got himself killed. That was about two-hundred years ago in Italy. But that’s a long story. So, after four-hundred years, you can see why I haven’t exactly been eager to turn anyone else. Till you, that is. But that, as you know, was an emergency.”
“So that rules out Simone,” I ventured, although I knew that was a touchy subject.
“Yeah,” he replied simply. I let it lay for now.
“So, do I tell Daryl? That’s my quandary here.”
He thought a moment. “No. What will be gained, Mick? He’s gonna be royally pissed, I’m sure. You’ll just bring all those bad memories back for him, just to clear your own conscience. You might lose him as a friend. And it is a little hard to believe that you didn’t put two and two together until now, ten years after you met again.”
He had a point, and it was a good one. But Daryl was a good friend, who had only recently saved my life, and this seemed a pretty crappy way to repay him. But I also didn’t like to lie to him. And if I didn’t know who my sire was, it would likely drive me crazy. Then again, knowing who my sire was had nearly driven me crazy. It was a catch-twenty-two.
“Do you know who your sire was?” I can’t believe I had never asked him that. I guess I thought it was none of my business, that he would have told me if he’d wanted me to know. But I needed some insight here. His answer surprised me.
“No. I was attacked in an alley in Prague, turned, and left on my own. I’m a self-made man in many ways, my friend.” A ghost of a smile haunted his lips. “Looking back now, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. If you have a sire who’s active in your life, you are under his control, answerable to him the rest of your existence. No, while it was hell that first year, I learned to survive on my own. That was the most invaluable lesson of my second life.” He looked at me. “Trust me on this, Mick. You did Daryl a favor. You were such a young vampire, that his tutelage would have fallen to Coraline. Now would you have wished that on anyone?”
Well, that was a rhetorical question. I got up to leave. I had a lot to think about. I also wanted to run this by Beth, but I thought I knew what she would say. Maybe that’s another reason I’d gone to Josef first.
“Thanks, man,” I said, shaking his hand. He surprised me by the extra squeeze. He was not one for showing affection, at least not if a humorous barb wasn’t attached.
“Good luck, Mick. I don’t envy your dilemma. Let me know what happens.” As I walked out the door, I heard his phone ring. His voice rose in immediate consternation at whatever the caller had told him. I smiled at Josef’s pleasant business style.