Dark Moonlighting Read Online Free Page B

aren’t you (Even I’m mildly interested in your
next case)?”
    “Yes, sir. Keep your fingers crossed,” I
responded with a sly smile.
    “Triple D?” Christina questioned.
    I was taken aback momentarily by the
intensity of her staring into my eyes. She made more eye contact
with me than any other person I had ever met. Before that moment I
did not even know that there could be varying degrees of eye
contact. I always assumed there was either eye contact or there was
not. Christina’s eyes bore into me unceasingly, refusing to shift
awkwardly around the room like the eyes of any other person in her
position would have. She barely even blinked. Neither the question
she had asked nor the answer I was going to give were interesting
enough to elicit such attention. Her strange action left me
unbalanced, and I shifted my eyes to my shoes like a nervous
schoolboy.
    “I’m trying for an insanity plea. So it’s a
mental disease or defect defense. Triple D,” I answered.
    “That sounds so interesting,” she said in
such a passionate way that it would have been more fitting had I
just revealed the presence of space aliens to her.
    “I’m sure you two will get along just fine
(I’m bored with this, get the hell out of my office),” Caleb said.
“Christina, you might even become as successful as my youngest
lawyer here (No seriously, get out). What are you Nick, twenty-six,
twenty-seven (This conversation is cutting into my drinking alone
time)?”
    “Twenty-six,” I answered for the 651st year
in a row.
     

Chapter Two: Plagued
     
    I had forgotten my socially awkward
introduction to Christina by the time I reached McClane County
General Hospital. The sun had set during my commute, which allowed
me to use the surface parking lot without fear of dying on my walk
into the building. I parked in a remote area so I could change out
of my suit and tie and into a pair of scrubs before I entered the
hospital. I took the elevator down one floor where it deposited me
in the basement. One of the doctors from the morgue smiled
halfheartedly at me as I passed him on the way to my office.
    During my murder trial, the prosecutor
described the basement of the hospital as a place reserved for
corpses. As I was not undead, the statement was an inaccurate
attempt to paint me as inhuman to the jury. It was, however, not
too far off from an appropriate description of the morgue workers.
They were a depressed and quiet bunch, likely due to their chosen
vocation. With the basement filled with corpses and workers who had
no life in them, most of the rest of the hospital’s employees
avoided the area like the plague.
    I, who incidentally survived the plague,
loved working in the basement. My fake medical condition required
an office without windows. Basement real estate was not at a
premium, and the space I was allotted was easily twice as large as
any of the offices above ground. Having my own office at my age and
level of experience was itself a peculiarity. Of course I had
actually been practicing medicine for two centuries, but the
administration of the hospital only saw me as a genius child. They
decided quickly that they had to have me when I applied for the
position six years earlier. This was based mostly on my fake
medical test scores and glowing recommendations from doctors in
Massachusetts who did not really exist. If any of them had doubts
about hiring me, they were quickly won over when they saw me in
action.
    Even after I was exposed as a vampire, many
people believed that I was some sort of genius. I like to assume
that I am smarter than most people, although I have never undergone
an intelligence test to prove that theory. The main reason I was
able to master three difficult professions is a simple matter of
time. I was born in central London in 1340 and became a vampire in
1366. It took some time to get used to being a vampire. I had to
learn what I could do, what I could not do and how to hunt without
getting caught. A