Nightlord: Sunset by Garon Whited Read Free Book Online

and helped me up.  No wonder vampires had that running water phobia.
     
    We were in the university clinic that evening, waiting for sunset.  It was a slow night in the clinic, which doubles as an emergency room for the campus; the local hospital staffed it.  I was sitting in a quiet spot, wired to an EKG and EEG and a bunch of other acronyms, wondering what Travis hoped to learn from this mess of wires.  I thought to ask him about some of the things he was adjusting but had an interruption.
    The sunset started.  I settled back on the bed and tried to relax.
    A horde of ants crawled out of my skin and started to mambo.  Just as they got going good, they set fire to themselves and switched to the lambada.  I was not appreciative.  At least my guts weren’t cramping up this time; I felt nauseous and ill, but not like some sadist with a penchant for knots had been handed my intestines.
    It turned off.  Again, it was like someone turned down a dimmer switch to off—not instantaneous, but a rapid fading to zero.
    I sat up and noted I was soaked in sweat again; not as bad as the icky goo the last couple times—I’ve smelled as bad after a long afternoon in the dust and heat, mowing.  But it was definitely not pleasant.
    Travis was staring at me.
    “What?’
    “You’re pale, and your EKG just flatlined.  Are you feeling okay?”
    “I feel fine, aside from being wired like a Christmas tree.”
    He examined the machines, hands trembling slightly.  He watches me heft three hundred pounds, break world records for jumping, and defy human biology by sinking like a rock—but the graphs had him all a-tizzy.  Go figure.
    “This is unbelievable!  You have no heartbeat—no heart action at all.  And your EEG altered markedly,” he said, examining a strip-chart.  “I haven’t seen a brainwave graph like this before.”
    “What does it mean?”
    “I don’t know.  I said it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
    I shrugged.  “Okay.  Now, can we get me unwired?  I’m hungry.”
    “Sure.  Can I take a couple of x-rays first?”
    “Fine.  Irradiate away if you feel you must.  But hurry.  I’m not kidding.  I feel starved.”
    He hurried. 
     
    Back at his place, he was frying up a steak; we’d stopped to pick up a lot of meat.  After draining several pounds of it for me, he was cooking some for himself.
    It wasn’t enough, but it took the edge off.
    “So, what else do we know?”
    “The lab report on your blood came back; you’re O positive, you didn’t eat recently, and you have no identifiable pathogens.  No dice.”
    I frowned while he turned the steak over in the skillet.
    “Shows what they know.  I’ve stuffed myself all day long.”
    “And you were hungry again when we took the blood sample.”
    “Okay.  I see your point.  So how do we find an unknown pathogen?”
    “Search me.  Without having a clue what we’re looking for—or telling someone about it—we’re out of luck.”
    “Great.  What else?”
    “Well, when the sun went down, you did a fine job of becoming dead.  I’m still wigging out about that.”
    I looked at him as he calmly added salt and some butter to the skillet.  Wigging, indeed.
    “So I’m dead?” I asked.
    “Well… technically, no.  You have brain activity—a lot of it, too, in ways that people generally don’t.  It’s downright weird.”
    “I gathered.  Go on.”
    “You don’t breathe, you don’t eat—except to drink blood.  You don’t have heart action, nor can I hear any sounds of digestion or anything else with a stethoscope.  Your x-rays show your flesh as being a lot more dense than normal—but your bones are more transparent to x-rays than usual—and your mouth has some peculiar dentition.”
    I ran my tongue over the sharp teeth, upper and lower.  They slid out, lengthening slightly; I worked on it for a moment, concentrating, and managed to retract them.  It was like concentrating on moving just one toe, or