Episode Nine (2/23/01)

"Since you're intelligent enough to have understood the German that I spoke to the lieutenant just now, I'll give you a choice: Combat in the arena for your freedom or evade capture by one of our hunters for your freedom."

"Just like the last election," Rose DeVega spat venomously, "none of the above."

"You don't understand..." As if responding to a cue, a stark white, larger-than-average werewolf (with the average size being 7 feet, 500 pounds) lumbered toward Rose and stopped short of violating the "space" of the vampire explaining her limited options. "You're no longer part of a 'democracy,' you're not even part of a nation, you're part of the food chain now. And if you don't choose right now, you'll be part of his food."

Rose should've stayed indoors. There were more than enough people partying in the streets the previous night (with it being the turn of the century/millennium and all) to sedate the hunger of even these beasts. But she had to find her lover. The last time Rose saw Lily Sloan she was slamming the door of their apartment after yet another fight about money. When Rose later ventured out to see if Lily was at her usual neighborhood pub, the whole world had changed. On the lighter side, the very money they'd argued over no longer has any sway over their lives due to Y2K. But on the dark side...

"All right, tell me how these 'hunts' of yours work." Rose didn't dare engage in whatever combat the vampire had in mind. Her martial artistry was nowhere near Lily's.

"Very simple, really. First, my name is Captain Rancor of the Vampire Empire. And you best remember that, because if any other hunter catches you, the flag might not be enough of a deterrent." At which point Rancor produced a pillow case-sized flag with a full harvest moon in the dead center of its blood-red field. In the middle of the flag's moon was a swastika that looked as though it had been plowed into the lunar surface by a gigantic finger, and on either side of the defaced planetoid were enormous bat wings.

"You will be given a head start--I'm not going to say how much of one--and you're to keep this flag on you and visible. Otherwise, any of the others out on the streets tonight that are above you on the food chain might let their appetites overwhelm their orders. Now go!" After reluctantly taking the flag, Rose asked while backing away in the direction of the nearest exit, "But who's my hunter?"

"I'm not going to say that either!" The extra-large werewolf growled for Rose to run and she did but only after melodramatically blowing her nose on the flag in defiance before bolting out the door. Captain Rancor rolled his slit, almost feline/reptilian eyes and beckoned for the young (when bitten) vampire lieutenant who Silverbullet had wounded earlier to stand before him. "You're to be her hunter. Evidently, you sorely need the practice seeing as how you let a human stab you this badly."

"Captain, it was a metallic Negress! A robot built by the Africans, perhaps--"

"What? Have you lost your mind? I was going to let you wait until you had completely healed before sending you after the Latin woman, and now you're telling me... Get out of my sight, boy!" After rubbing his nearly mended wound, the lieutenant unenthusiastically spirited off after Rose, arduously morphing into a bat as he went.

Calming considerably, Rancor resumed speaking English. "Assuming the rest of you are true Aryans, do you want to be 'Leeches' in the hopes that one day you may join our order? Or..."

Rose DeVega has been a librarian about as long as Lily Sloan has taught high school history (which accounts for her knowing German--not to mention her love for Oktoberfest), and it was their occupations that brought them together. Lily needed everything the library had on the Jewish Holocaust to teach the latest section of her history class and they argued because Rose (being a comic book fan) kept insisting she check out Art Spiegelman's Maus, citing that it had even won a Pulitzer Prize...

"What-a-prize-Hans!" It hadn't been five minutes. Rose ran nonstop from the Sin City Arena back in the general direction of Lily's favorite pub where she had first been picked up (and assumed to be Aryan) almost a day ago, and reminiscing nostalgically caused her to run right into a pair of patrolling werewolves.

"Wait!" The second member of the wolf pack held up Rose's flag for inspection, and since she was still holding on to it for dear life, Rose was dangling as if from the edge of a cliff in the process. "She's-on-the-hunt."

"No!" the first one retorted. "I'm-hungry-now!"

TO BE CONTINUED