"Dead Drunk"

Dead Drunk
“Shadows: Stories of a Hunter”, Part Seven

Josh Wolvest walked into the bar and looked around. Marly’s Bar ‘n’ Grill was a favorite haunt for the hunters, the hunted, the special and the unnatural. For anyone who wanted to drink in peace when anywhere else they would be run out.
Joe Marly, the proprietor and bartender, modeled the place after an old western bar. Round tables with spindle chairs around them where scattered throughout the room. And in the back there where four pool tables on a raise portion of the room.
As you walked into the establishment, to your left was the bar. Behind the bar you could usually find either Marly or Jesse Markley, his stocky bombshell of a waitress. It was from behind this long counter you would find the many liquors, micro-brews, beers, and ales. Behind the bar area was a kitchen, from which juicy steaks and burgers were served along with thick fries and green salads.
Marly looked up from the glasses he was drying and stacking behind the bar.
“Officer Wolvest, can I get you a drink?”
Wolvest scanned the interior until he caught a glimpse of a dark figure in the back corner.
“Yeah, give me one of your best micro’s.”
The fat old bartender scratched his balding scalp and glanced at the figure in the back of the bar.
“You here to see him?”
Josh Wolvest pushed aside a stray lock of dark brown hair and popped a few peanuts from a bowl on the counter in his mouth.
“Yeah. He been here long?”
Marly nodded, “Since about nine-thirty tonight.”
Wolvest glanced at the figure, “And its nearing midnight now. How much has he been drinking?”
The bartender poured Josh’s drink and slid it across to him.
“A lot. Enough to kill a normal person, and even a werewolf would be staggering by now.”
The off-duty cop closed his bright-green eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Okay.”
Marly eyed the figure again, “You gonna talk to him? I was supposed to close up shop at eleven-thirty.”
Josh looked at the bartender, “Why haven’t you said anything to him?”
“I have met Vampires, cops, mercenaries, assassins, Werewolves, and many other unsavory and violent characters. They scare me, sure. But the look on his face, the steel in his voice when he came in here tonight, it terrifies me.”
Josh gazed at the hardy older man. Not much phased Marly, and for the dark figure to inspire that much fear in the man said a lot.
“I’ll talk with him. Put whatever he has had on my tab”
Wolvest left payment on the countertop and, picking up his drink, crossed the bar’s floor the where the figure sat, shrouded in darkness.
“Nick, how is life?”
Nick Shadow, Vampire half-breed and hunter of mythical monsters, looked up with smoldering eyes.
“Josh, life is hell.”
Josh sat down across the table from Nick and looked with amazement at the collection of bottles on the table in front of the Hunter.
“That’s… that’s a lot of alcohol.”
Nick laughed harshly, “Heh, Not enough. It’s never enough.”
Josh nodded, “Want to tell me what the occasion is?”
Nick remained silent for a moment, then his voice whispered across the table to the other man.
“I saw Susan tonight.”
Josh’s eye’s widened, “Oh… like, “see her” see her or…”
The Hunter shook his head, “From a distance.”
Wolvest set his drink on the table among Nick’s glasses and bottles.
“How did she look?”
Nick smiled, and his usually emotionless face almost managed to convey sadness.
“She looked good… She was beautiful.”
The Hunter’s smile suddenly turned nasty, his fangs glinted evilly from behind his lips and his eyes narrowed to two gleaming red pinpricks. Even his hair seemed to rise slightly, adding to the unnatural rage that welled up from the once-human’s unbeating heart.
“Life! Life is such a bad joke! It allows you to remain a hair’s breadth from everything that makes this existence worthwhile, but at the same time prevents you from touching it! Do you know, I can’t become drunk or even intoxicated? I can’t die, even by my own hand, and believe me I have tried!”
Josh looked down, unsure what to say to the half-dead. Finally, he looked up into the Hunter’s raging face.
“Nick, I can’t begin to understand what it feels like. You know I lost my father in a gang-related shooting when I was young. And my mother died before that of cancer. I only know loss; I only know what it is like to have to do without something you can’t see anymore.
But what I have learned is that what we lose makes us what we are just as much as what we have. Because of my father’s death and my search for vengeance, I took a path that led me to here. I became a cop, took on my dad’s old job, and made it so much more than he even dreamed of.”
Nick snarled quietly, but let Josh continue.
“You were a cop as well before the Vampire tried to turn you. Yes, you may have lost your life, but you gained a life at the same time. You have saved so many people since then, people who may have died had you not been attacked by Proteous. I know it hurts to look back at your old life and see what you lost. But you can’t dwell on it, it will tear you apart. Please, remember that. The past is the past for a reason, you cannot always be looking to it if you wish to move into the future.”
Josh threw back the rest of his drink before getting to his feet.
“There is nothing more I can say. I paid for your tab, now the only thing I can ask is that if you still feel the need to feel sorry for yourself, you go somewhere else to do it. Marly needs to close up.”
Nick’s features had settled back into their normal impassiveness.
“Josh…”
Josh Wolvest turned to look at the Hunter, “Yes?”
A sharp canine fang was revealed in the Half-breed’s smile.
“Thank you.”
Josh simply nodded and, exchanging glances with Joe Marly on his way out, left the bar.
Nick rose to his feet a few moments later and also exited the bar. He stood outside the door for a minute, staring at the crescent moon in the sky.
Josh was right, Nick’s past was just that, his past. And while he could miss all he wanted, he could never get it back.
Besides, Nick Malcolm, Atlantia beat-cop, husband and father, was dead. Only Nick Shadow, Vampire Half-breed, protector of mortals and hunter of monsters remained.