Chapter 6: I Love the Night

As Caine opened his quivering eyes, he could quickly smell a distinct scent of blood and rot. His body was sore, as if he had been beaten up by gangbangers in the middle of a New York alleyway, and his head was pounding, leaving his vision fuzzy. This sensation was not at all familiar. Caine remembered that he slept on his actual bed, but the thing below him felt hard and chilly, with a little moist texture contacting his skin.

"Ugh..." he muttered for god knows how many times in these few days, his palm holding his pounding head to try to alleviate it. Yet, when the palm touched his forehead, Caine could once again feel a wet and slimy sensation from it, which half-jolted him awake.

He stayed for a few seconds in that position, waiting for his vision to clear out, and when it did, he saw a fairly bizarre image surrounding him, but he was not at all shocked.

He was merely on the chilly floor of his flat, leaning against a wall in the corner of the room, with carcasses of large street rats encircling his formerly sleeping body, their blood still fresh, pouring down onto the ceramic towards Caine.

"Fucking hell…" He mumbled. He had no recollection of accomplishing any of this; the last thing he remembered was seeing a crescent moon in the sky. He fell asleep, waiting to check if the information he summarized was correct.

And that appears to be correct based on what he is seeing right now...

His gaze shifted to the palm that had touched his forehead, and he noticed that it was stained with rat blood, and he could also feel it in his lips as well. Caine could now smell the tantalizing smell of blood, though it was tinged with a foul odor, most likely from the rats themselves.

Caine gulped; he could somehow feel that his throat was getting drier and drier as if he were thirsty for water, but instead of the clear liquid, he thirsted for something else: the crimson liquid that was covering his palm right now.

"This is going to be a problem." Caine mumbled to himself once more. "I'm not sure if this bloodthirsty 'sleepwalking' is a one-time occurrence or if it will happen again if I'm starving for blood..."

Not wanting to waste any more time, the investigator jumped up from his sitting position and attempted to locate something to clean this place up.

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About an hour later, as the pool of rat blood was cleared from the floor, Caine was finally able to clean himself properly. He stood in front of his bathroom sink, meticulously cleaning up the dried blood on his palm, mouth, and other limbs that had been contaminated with it. When he glanced in the mirror, he saw nothing; it appeared that he had been completely turned into a vampire, a creature of the night, as the stories claimed.

He continued to wash the blood, and saw the deathly pale skin slowly revealing itself in between the crimson color. The reality has somehow hit the detective, that from the looks of it, he was no longer human.

He had noticed differences from before this night happened; he could hear more clearly, smell scents he hadn't noticed before, see objects in greater detail, and even feel like he were to hit the wall right now, it would shatter. But he could also feel that lingering feeling of darkness, an addiction in the corner of his mind that would instantly devour him if he couldn't satiate it, the beast that is constantly watching him, waiting so patiently for him to make a mistake so that it could take over his body.

It appears that this 'beast' is also the one who's responsible for the rat hunting rampage...

Caine also notices that it is neither morning or afternoon; it is seven o'clock in the evening of January 4th, and he has missed an entire day of work. His phone must have been full of missed calls and texts, but he prioritized cleaning himself, he's not in a rush, he usually works late at night anyway.

Caine dumped his soiled garments in the trash after a few minutes of scraping off the dried blood, then changed into something different. He eventually sat on top of his bed and checked his phone.

He was correct; twenty-one missed calls from the station flooded his inbox, with a couple of them coming from strangers or personal phone numbers of his coworkers.

Caine could only groan as he read through each missed call, and at first, he wanted to call back to report, but then he remembered something else that required attention, so he contacted someone else.

His phone beeped incessantly while he waited for his call to connect, and eventually...

"Hello? Detective Donovan?"

"Evening, Doc." Caine greeted the man that he called the Doc from the coroner's office. "Are you in the morgue?"

"Uh, yes, do you need anything?"

"Did you lock the fridge of the female vic?" Caine inquired. "Did something strange happen to the body?"

"No… Why do you ask?"

"I'm just making sure she doesn't turn into a vampire anytime soon." Caine expressed it plainly. "It's been three days since her death."

"So? What's the link?"

"There's a historical writing that says if a victim of a vampire attack isn't buried within three days, he or she will be resurrected as a vampire," Caine replied, rising from his bed and strolling towards the window, watching the gloomy sky conceal the crescent moon.

Caine heard the doctor scoff. "Do you have any scientific evidence that you could provide to back up that claim?"

"Well, it's difficult to say." Caine stated softly. "Anyway, please call me if anything happens to the body."

"Wait, are you serio—"

Caine hung up before even waiting for the doctor to finish speaking. Without wasting any more time, he dialed another number, this time to the police station.

"Donovan, is that you?" A voice from the phone said, It's the usual receptionist, Mahoney. "Where in the hell have you been?"

"Ugh, long story." Caine stated. "Anyway, why are you calling me so frequently? It doesn't usually go like this."

"Your partner, remember?" Mahoney stated. "She's been waiting for you in the precinct since this morning."

"She?" Caine furrowed his brow.

"Yeah, Detective Sabrina Morrel, a rookie from San Francisco, apparently."

"That's quite the transfer, from west to east." Cain made a remark. "Alright, I'll go to the station right now; give her a coffee or something while I'm on my way."

Mahoney let out a sigh. "Already on it."

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Caine drove his faithful Chevy through the dark streets of New York while his radio played a song named "I Love the Night" by Blue Oyster Cult through the speaker. The investigator appears to love the music, singing along with the lyrics as he carelessly adjusts the steering wheel.

The music made the journey feel swift and rapid, and Caine arrived at the station in no time. He walked towards the entrance of the precinct, spinning his car key between his fingers, clocking in for the night.

"Evening, Mahoney, where's the rookie?" Caine inquired as he stood in front of the receptionist.

Mahoney was just about to greet the detective, but then she noticed that he was a little bit different from the last time she saw him. "Donovan, you look... really pale… Something happened to you?"

"Really? I thought I was always like this." Caine dismissed. "Anyway, where is she?"

"There." Mahoney pointed at his office. That's already a source of concern...

"Great…" Caine let out a sigh. "Did she—"

"Clean your office? She certainly did." Mahoney made a shaky motion with her head. "She's quite the eager one."

"Yeah, I can see that." Caine made a humming sound. "Alright, see you around, Mahoney."

With a nod from the woman, Caine walked deeper towards the police station, through the countless desks of the officers on duty, and arrived at the entrance of his office. When he came into the door, the room felt strange to him; the formerly cluttered desk had become tidy, files from cold cases had been neatly arranged, and the weeks-old coffee cups had been cleanly removed.

Caine notices the young woman in the corner of the room still sorting case files and filing documents.

"You know you don't have to do this, you know?" Caine made a remark, causing the woman to turn around. "You'll just have to wait."

"Sir," the woman said. "I've waited since this morning and have nothing to do."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I normally work at night unless there's an emergency or the case requires it, and please, no 'sir'." Caine stated as he walked to his desk and placed his car keys on it. Finally, he extended his hand and introduced himself to the woman. "I'm Caine Donovan. To be honest, I was expecting a stuck-up forty-year-old, not a rookie."

The woman raised her hand to shake his. "My name is Sabrina Morrel. I guess you got lucky. Though, you being only three years older than me is certainly new in this line of work."

"You're twenty-two? Just got promoted, I presume?"

"Yeah, from SFPD," she said, nodding.

"Well, welcome to the one percent, Morrel." Caine stated.

"One percent?"

"According to statistics, only 1% of officers under the age of 30 have been 'promoted' to detectives." Caine went on. "You're also a woman; that's got to be less than 0.1 percent. Anyway, let's get this work started."

The woman swiftly moved her gaze to the stack of paperwork on the desk. "Which case will we be working on?"

"This particular one." Caine remarked, pulling a file from the drawer rather than the stack Morrel had just sorted.

The woman opened the file and raised her eyebrows. "The Everett case? I thought you solved it. That's how we got his name."

"No, we need to figure out who murdered Everett." Caine stated. "Someone else killed him that night, and it was definitely not me."

Morrel went through the case files and saw the autopsy and evidence analysis reports. "Well, there are no fingerprints on the knife, but that doesn't mean you didn't kill him; you were using gloves that night."

"If I were to murder him, there would be blood on my gloves, splatter on my coat, and his body would be facing me." Caine brought this to our attention. "Except for the female vic's blood, there were no traces of blood in my clothing in this case. My unconscious body was facing him, while his body was facing the alleyway in which I had entered."

"Right…" Morrel nodded, continuing to read the report, until seeing something peculiar. "Wait, what's this? Traces of silver powder? Is the murderer a jeweler?"

"While possible, the murder intentionally poured silver powder onto the knife; look at the amount of silver; he didn't accidentally leave it there."

"Why, though?" Morrel was perplexed. "Did the murderer think he was fighting a vampire or something?"

Caine simply chuckled at the question, returning his gaze to the window and watching the clouds glide across the sky. "Maybe, maybe not."