The Truth About Bats

by David Mitenko

Table of Contents
Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

* * *

Whatever I could stuff into my backpack I hauled down to the address Krista had sent to me on my PDA. She signed her message with cute little x’s and o’s. And some colons too; I interpreted these as bite marks.

Masceth and his coven? I could have sworn a coven was for witches only, preferably thirteen — but what do you call a group of vampires? A murder? A gaggle? — lived on the edge of downtown, on the top floor of a nondescript, brick building. I pulled the elevator gate open and stepped out into a studio apartment. Caged lights hung from rafters and the large, arched windows along the wall were all equipped with automated shutters. A low, ominous growl drifted across the high ceiling and swallowed the echo of my footsteps.

“Michael, over here,” Masceth showed his head from behind a partition. He was sprawled out on a low, leather loveseat. The other vampires with him were on similar furnishings. “You can toss your stuff over there. We don’t have any spare coffins right now, but there’s a couch and a heavy blanket in the basement.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess that’ll do.”

“No worries. We’ll order a new one as soon as... Hey! Who started without me?”

The growl that had been hanging in the air turned into a roar. I came around the partition and saw that they were playing a racing game on what was possibly the most advanced entertainment system I had ever seen. There was a wall sized plasma screen, speakers like evil sentinels pulsed with malicious vibes and a gaming console that I knew wasn’t going to be legally available in the country for another several months.

“Hi.”

“Oh. Uh, hey.”

A pretty but vacant-eyed adolescent — in fact she didn’t seem like the sharpest stake in the bundle — was slouched on the floor, up against the sofa. She smiled up at me and I noticed there were a couple of other goth adolescents like her. My vampy senses said they were human. I think it had to do with the way they smelled. Or something.

One of the vamps snarled and threw down her controller, out of the game. Without even asking she took one of the youths by the neck and hauled him up towards her teeth. She sank into his blood, his eyes rolled back in ecstasy, and then just as quickly she threw him away and turned her attention back to the screen.

“Let me see!” One of the other kids whispered excitedly and crawled over. The victim pulled back his collar and showed off the bloody marks on his neck. Even as I watched some sinister power puckered the skin around the wounds and pulled them shut.

Once I had been an aspiring doctor. Up until about twenty-four hours ago, actually. I ran triathlons, went to brunches, socialized in the university library. And now these were going to be my companions for the rest of eternity: a bunch of slackers who sat around eating junk food and playing video games all day. I was going to have to come to terms with this.

After unpacking some of my things I decided to pedal off the stress. I still didn’t know what I was going to do about the MCAT’s, but wishing I had just stayed in and rented a movie wasn’t going to change anything. There was a bike route I kept reserved for whenever things were too wound up and I needed to unkink myself. It hadn’t been ridden in a while because of the studying. I changed behind one of the partitions and was on my way out when Masceth stopped me.

“Whoa, pause the game, pause,” he dropped his controller in disgust. “Where the hell are you going?”

“For a bike ride.”

“A bike...? As in a bicycle? No vampire in my coven is going to get on one of those. Look at... What the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s riding gear.”

“It’s spandex,” he told me. Car engines revved on the screen.

“You got a problem with that?”

Masceth saw the look on my face, spread his hands and shook his head. “Ah no, I guess not. A vampire in spandex? That’s the cutting edge of fashion. Look, Michael, I know this is all pretty new for you, but now that you’re a vampire there’s going to be certain things you can’t do anymore; like going for a walk in the daytime or dressing like an idiot. You’re going to have to be more, ah, what’s the word, metrosexual but with fangs...” he snapped his fingers.

“Perpetualsexual,” someone offered.

I left. As I walked away my ears picked out someone mutter. “You sure can pick ’em, Krista.”

“No kidding,” some other vamp piped up. “What happened to that last one you turned? Wasn’t he the one who thought he could work on his colour in a tanning booth?”

“Hey, Michael!” Masceth shouted as I pulled the elevator gate shut. “You can at least take off that ridiculous helmet. With that outfit it looks like some sort of novelty dildo tip and — trust me on this — personal safety isn’t an issue for you anymore... I mean, aside from some well documented exceptions.”

* * *

On the fourth lap I realized I was going to collapse from boredom long before exhaustion set in. With my new supernatural stamina I could’ve beaten Lance Armstrong provided the Tour de France was done at night. I had almost been sideswiped three times and dodged the door prize — riding full speed into the opening door of a parked car — twice. It was time to stop. Even with Masceth’s reassurance I didn’t want to find out what it felt like to grow back a collapsed skull.

On the way back I figured out what it was. I could have wrapped myself in reflective tape, turned into some weird, flashing, mummy-vampire hybrid but all anyone was going to see in their rearview mirrors was a dark, riderless bike. Great.

Frustrated, no closer to working anything out, I locked up my ride and went to the corner store down from the lair. I swiped a sport drink from the shelves and greeted the friendly, middle aged man at the counter. He smiled at me knowingly, and by some magical sleight of hand when I went to take my bottle the fluid inside had changed from power-ice blue to a deep, wine-coloured red.

“Hey, what’s this?”

“Good. Good for you,” he replied enthusiastically. “Drink!”

“No, I don’t want this,” the store was obviously in cahoots with Masceth. “Give me back my Gatorade. What did you do with it?” I leaned over the counter to look for the switched drink.

“No, no! Not good. Drink!” He gestured at the red bottle in the counter.

The events of the last twenty-four hours began to wear on me. I felt the sharp edge of canines pressing into my lips when I snarled: “Give me back my drink.”

He snarled back. It was a high, warbling, human sound but a snarl none the less. Startled, I took the red one and stepped back into the night. It was blood of course, cold. When it hit my lips it was as if I had flung myself out a window and sunk into soft darkness. I sucked back the rest of the bottle and threw it away, panting. The night glowed. Someone was trying to steal my bike.

I swept down on the would-be thief and dragged him into an alley. “That’s my bike, asshole,” and when I bit into the warm rhythm under his neck I began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be okay. It was that good.

Once I was sated I placed my victim gently onto a pile of garbage bags to recover. He was conscious, but barely. As he sank into the filth he moaned gently, “... what kind of vampire rides a bike?”

* * *

The majority of my friends were pretty cool with me dropping out of school. Some of them come by occasionally, but I can see we’re beginning to drift apart. I guess people change and we can’t all be friends forever. My parents stop by a lot, mom brings over home-made blood sausage. After she toned down on the garlic, the vamps took a real liking to it.

I keep myself busy with the correspondence courses now. As it turns out there’s a college in some eastern European country that does medical school through the mail. And you don’t have to have an MCAT score to apply, either.