Liquid Blue STB Published in Dark Moon Digest

The good folks at DMD have edited my Liquid Blue story, and this finished product will be in their E-Zine and their hardcover circulation. Great stuff!

COMMENTS ON FIRST READING—I really liked this! You did an fabulous job of describing the horrible effects of Liquid Blue. This is a completely developed story, with whiffs of HIV and drug addiction making it feel real for all of us. I have very few changes to suggest! Congratulations on an excellent story!



Liquid Blue



Before I destroy William Mercer, the greatest vampire slayer who has ever lived, let me explain the dynamics of our relationship.

The old man has been hunting me for his entire life. Damn him and his limitless fortune. He's more than one hunded, and he should be dead and rotting in the ground by now, but his science and his hunger are too potent. Time and age mean nothing to him in the face of his ultimate vendetta.

Sometimes I think back to nineteen and twelve and I try to understand what the motivation was for me to do what I did. I haven't figured it out in a century, and I don't think I ever will. I wasn't even thirsty at the time. I thought it would be fun to antagonize the rich young man on the deck of one of the first luxury steam ships. I killed his lover, and now he wants to kill me, along with the rest of my kind.

I had no idea at the time how boundless his fortune was. He survived to tell the tale to anyone who would listen, even after I brought the ship down. He started recruiting others for his cause, mostly religious fanatics and mercenaries who couldn't find real work.

We should have killed him when we had the chance.

Technology wasn't on his side, then. We murdered every toadie that he sent at us, and we reveled in our insignificant victories. We had no idea. He staked the first vampire in a back alley in Chicago a few weeks after his first son was born. A close friend of mine. It was the first of a long, long list of casualties on our side.

We were foolish to assume that the life of a single vampire would sate his vendetta. We were stupid to assume we had established a truce.

Since the day that I sank my teeth in to Mercer's first love, we've all suffered for it. He's the most relentless vampire hunter in the history of our existence, and he has enough money and power to keep us on the run forever. Imagine George Soros, remove his interest in the third world, and replace that interest with an absolute loathing of the undead that is founded in the greatest ideals of revenge that mankind has ever seen.

Mercer was quiet for a long time before he invented it. Thirty years or more, at least. We thought he had given up, and we didn't torment him. In the nineties, we were certain that we would remain at peace, keep our numbers low, and sustain ourselves on as little blood as possible. The modern age had not been very friendly to us.

He decided riding out in to the sunset with a crossbow wasn't his way of doing things. He started writing billion-dollar checks to pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and chemists, looking for a large scale method of wiping us out. He hired his own crack team of science whizzes from Harvard and MIT. He spared no expense. Liquid Blue was born in a Cambridge Massachusetts laboratory at 2:43 a.m., on December 27th, 2009.

On New Years Eve, we counted nine hundred dead, and one hundred and thirty unaccounted for.

For the last century, my kind have been running in fear. All because of me. That is my burden. Liquid Blue exists because of me.

We tried pooling our own resources together across Europe, California, and the Northeast. Money wasn't an issue, but none of us were as devoted to our cause as he was. Our different clans and broods fought over who would run what aspect of whichever defense and our efforts ended in broken failures and halfway completed measures that couldn't be carried out without multiple cooperation fronts in a dozen countries or more.

The weakest vampires locked themselves in makeshift cellars and basements just before sunrise in the vain hope that they wouldn't be discovered until after dusk. But Mercer didn't have to find them any longer. As soon as they smelled Liquid Blue, they came running, and he and his cronies pumped enough of that intravenous death juice through them that they exploded like bulging ticks in a storm of blue goop and blood. Some ran straight in to the sun, combusting like lemmings to the delight of the old man.

The smart ones like me just kept running. We plugged our noses.

Now, amidst a volatile modern world, we see what a dangerous foe we face. I've found his laboratory on the island of Maui. It's taken me four months to find out how to bypass all of the security measures he hs established at this compound, but I've succeeded in crawling through the ventilation shafts. Soon, I'll be dropping down on his assistants, to slay them one by one. There's no telling how many we've lost in this place. It makes me sick to think about it.

I remember nothing of when I was human, like these slugs in their lab coats, prancing around on floors you could eat from, pulling in seven-figure salaries just to eradicate something that most people don't know exists. It seems like so long ago, but even if it happened yesterday, I wouldn't have an inkling of being human. It's as if that portion of my memory has been walled off by barbed wire, and I cut myself to ribbons trying to get access to my own former human thoughts. I've let them go. They're never coming back. [Gorgeous description!]

I've been nervous as any member of the undead at the times when Mercer has drawn near, but I have never feared for my unlife as I do now. I am alone, and behind enemy lines. Soon, I will put the first casualty on Mercer's side of the list. It will be his first loss in our little war in over twenty years.

I don't have room to be sorry, or to apologize to my brothers and sisters for bringing Mercers’s hell down upon them. All I can do is fight, and possibly sacrifice myself for the greater good --- or evil, if you disagree with my motivations.

I don't have time to drain this scientist who thinks his intellect has surpassed the ancient disease of vampirism. There are none of my family left to celebrate his massacre at my side. Mercer is more important.

A few months ago, I saw a vampire drink Liquid Blue. I was horrified for the first time in my unlife.

I saw a perfect creature, that can move faster than a cheetah and dismember flesh faster than a great white shark, rendered completely helpless, shivering in neon spasms of sapphire death, a slave to nothing but the thirst. [Gorgeous!]

I've felt so helpless.

I became terrified for those who couldn't resist. And so many couldn't. They would drink as much as of it as they could get down their gullets, and then their faces and arms and legs would bulge up with overflowing blood. For a moment, you could see them in absolutely perfect ecstasy as the blood flowed through their bodies. They were like heroin addicts, shooting up for the first time after days of withdrawal. Any vampire that partakes in Liquid Blue experiences the greatest feeding of all time, and then violently expires only seconds later, when the blue acid corrodes them from the inside out.

It can be a real challenge to describe fear when you are one of the most perfect predators on the planet. But it is impossible not to be afraid when one has watched a hundred of one’s brothers and sisters sprint to a trough of glowing blue goop like it is their only reason to exist. The truth is, we vampires will always be perfect predators, but that doesn't mean that we can't substitute our prey for liquid poison.

I witnessed our hunters, who would lie in wait for hours for the perfect moment to strike on any normal night, but they blew their covers in less than a second after one whiff of that hellish blue juice. Mercer rejoiced in watching our kind scamper to their demise like children to a dinner bell.

But I have a stronger will than most of my kind. That's why it is up to me to kill him and everyone else inside this building.

Liquid Blue doesn't just dry us up and freeze our limbs, leaving us prone and writhing on the floor like cattle before slaughter. Something in the compound synthesizes with our makeup, and the reaction is different, depending on the lifespan of the vampire. I don't understand it scientifically because none of our agents have successfully pilfered a live sample. I do know that if you've been around for a few centuries, drinking from humans as much as you damn well please, like me, then you should expect a spectacular end—you should expect that your whole body will burst open like an overfilled balloon, and that you're going to make an awful mess.

Some of us drank it voluntarily, knowing it would be our last moment, because it does taste that good. The vampires who were tired of running for their lives and living by sipping the blood of sewer rats --- they couldn't resist it. They were the ones that Mercer enjoyed watching the most, because when they were reduced to nothing but instincts, they became animals. He loved to put us down like rabid dogs, watching us drink ourselves to a violent death.

I know Mercer better than anyone else. I know, if we have any chance of survival, I'm going to be that chance.

I can smell Liquid Blue everywhere in this scientific white hell. It's so hard to resist.

The third and most deadly aspect of the formula is that it's harmless to humans. They can pound glasses of it like it's a Red Bull, and if we feed on them after they’ve ingested it, we're dead. We can tell if they've only recently consumed it, because their skin are slightly tinged electric blue, but most of us descend in to blood rage so quickly that we can't pay attention to the signs.

Now I've finally found him, and I can't erase the damage he's done. My kind faces almost certain extinction. Even if I drain every last drop of blood from his miserable, wretched body, the knowledge and power Mercer has given to the human race will be too much for my kind to overcome. Surely, even if I destroy him, he's printed the formula and put it in a safe place for the next in line to continue his work. He has four sons, all multimillionaires. Surely, one of them is as smart as he is.

We may be doomed, but at least this man won't survive for what he's done to us. I will never know the logistics of how he has managed it, but Mercer has extended his own lifespan for long enough.

His lab assistants lay around this polished, high tech white room, staining the floor with blood that I have spilled. I didn't drink a drop from any of them. I murdered them as fast as possible and lurked in the shadows until he showed his face. I see the same look on his face as I did so long ago, on the ship. But he is not as frantic as he was back then. He is experiencing loss for the first time in a long time, and I hope it tears him apart inside.

He's standing in front of me holding an empty syringe. His eyes are glowing; they are icy omens of death. Mercer has injected himself with Liquid Blue, because he can't fight me face-to-face without it.

This will be my last feeding, I know. It's only fitting that two of history's unknown greatest foes should perish together in this immaculately kept and deserted facility where so many of my kind have met their permanent end.

I have decided that death is too good for this sophisticated predator, William Mercer. He will turn after I have bitten him, and I will force myself not to drink too deeply. Long after my body fails me, even when the blue liquid is dripping out of my eye sockets and has melted my teeth in to wet, slimy ash, he will become what he has hated for so long.

I've saved every last desire of thirst, every last remnant of my blood lust.

All for him. All for William Mercer.