Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 18:36:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Author James <authorjames2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Trials of a Real Dark Knight 4

Disclaimer: This story, though maybe not in this chapter but in subsequent
chapters, will have celebrities in it.  I have no knowledge of their
sexuality and this is not intended to imply their sexuality.  This is all
from my own mind.

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel and all related characters created by Joss
Whedon.  Copyright 20th Century Fox.

Batman, and all related characters created by Bob Kane. Copyright DC Comics
and Warner Bros.

X-MEN, and all related characters created by Stan Lee. Copyright Marvel
Comics and 20th Century Fox.

The Vampire Chronicles and all related characters created by Anne Rice.
Copyright Anne O'Brien Rice.

Star Wars and all related concepts created by or based on the universe
created by George Lucas.  Copyright 20th Century Fox, LucasFilms Ltd. and
Lucas Books/Ballantine Books.

I don't know for sure if I will use all the above elements, but just in
case, I have myself covered.

This story has taken on a life of its own.  From its inception a year ago,
I had only thought it would last ten chapters maximum.  As you can see, it
has grown tremendously.  Mostly due to readers emailing me and telling me
they've enjoyed it or have received help due to certain issues addressed.
I've enjoyed writing this story but it would not have been written without
men and women reading it and telling me they've enjoyed it.  I do hope that
you continue to enjoy each new chapter as our hero lives and grows.

I have received many emails from people who have enjoyed it and some from
those who do not.  I would enjoy hearing from you.  Any emails you send,
please tell me what chapter and story you are commenting on.  Please note,
my email address has changed.  At the end of July, my previous email
address will no longer be active.  Thanks.

authorjames2002@yahoo.com

I also have several online messenger services.  If you want to chat with me
in real time, email me and tell me the services you use and I will tell you
my screen name.

Chapter 4 Interbelt

	The vampire James walked into the club with a grin on his face.  He
was going to enjoy a night out on the town.  "Batman may be in town," he
thought, "but that doesn't mean I can't have fun."
	The first thing James did was look for the most heterosexual,
masculine man he could find.  Walking around the club no one found James
suspicious.  He blended in fairly well with his black leather pants that
had zippers over key erogenous zones, a black sleeveless shirt, and a long
black leather overcoat.  The only strange thing is that he wore his
sunglasses even in the darkened nightclub.
	The vampire James approached his first victim.  The man was an
attractive man, obviously heterosexual and very macho.  He was scouting out
which ladies to go after first.  James, however, had other plans for this
stallion.
	James walked over to him.  The guy was busy laughing at some joke
one of his buddies told.  James slipped a leg over the man and sat on his
lap.
	"What the fuck are you doing?!" the clubber declared.
	"Relax," James soothed.  "It doesn't mean you're a homo if another
guy rides you, does it?  It just means you enjoy getting fucked hard,
that's all."
	"What are you talking about?"
	"Just relax.  Let me do all the work, stud."  James reached down
and unzipped the man's pants.  He reached in and pulled out an enlarging
cock.
	"I don't know if I like this," the man said hesitantly.
	"Oh, you'll love it!"  James reached down and unzipped a zipper on
his leather pants opening up the back, revealing his hole in the back.  He
guided the clubber's dick to the hole and inserted it.  James lifted up and
pushed down hard, feeling it pop into place.  "What's your name?" James
whispered. "So I can scream it out while I ride you.  You want the ladies
to know you are a stud, don't you?"
	"It's Chad," he answered.  His insides were churning with
nervousness.  He didn't now what to make of a guy sitting on his cock.  But
he was horny and this guy was offering.  And if the guy did what he said he
would do, Chad could turn out to be very popular with many of the
spectators, who began a small crowd to watch.
	James started his anal ministrations, working Chad nice and slow to
make the pleasure build up.  "You're so big," James said.  "I like how you
feel in me."
	This worked in making Chad harder and more stimulated.  "Yeah, ride
me," Chad ordered.  "Ride my big guy."
	"Oh, yes!" James responded.  He leaned down and unbuttoned Chad's
shirt.  His tongue played on Chad's nipples, launching Chad's pleasure into
new heights.
	"God, yes!"
	James nibbled a little on the nipple, teasing Chad even more.
Finally, when the nipple was nice and erect, James bit the tip off.  The
pain mixed with the pleasure made the scene rather erotic.  Chad didn't
care about the fact his nipple was gone.  All that mattered was the erotic
pleasure he was getting.
	The crowd of watchers kept growing.
	"Yes!  Yes!  Yes!" Chad moaned over and over.  "I'm almost there!
I'm almost there!"
	James could feel Chad's orgasm mounting, closing in upon the
natural high he was feeling.  James had Chad right where he wanted.  James
leaned in and kissed Chad's neck.  Chad leaned his head to one side to give
James better access, exactly what a vampire wants.  James opened his mouth
and encased Chad's neck in his mouth.  His teeth found the carotid artery
and James began his feed.
	At first the pain was kinky for Chad.  It caused him to orgasm
rather hard and scream rather loudly.  The club sparkled and then his sight
faded into the darkness of death.
	James pulled off of Chad's neck and swallowed the last little bit
of blood in his mouth.  Then he stood up.  The slurping sound of the
cum-covered cock heard as it came out of James.  James used his hand to
close Chad's eyes.  'No need to let others know he's dead,' James thought
to himself.
	People just looked at Chad rather concerned.  Spectators were
mumbling that the orgasm must have been so intense that Chad passed out.
The guy riding Chad turned to the spectators.  "Who is next?"
	Two guys raised their hands simultaneously.
	"Come right up, guys," James said.  "You, sit here."  James turned
a chair close to Chad around so the back of the chair was at the table.
"And you sit on the table."  The two men quickly obliged him wanting to
take part in such an erotic situation.
	Once in place, James undid the pants of the man sitting in the
chair.  He sat down on his lap, the man's dick easily going in as James'
hole was already lubricated with Chad's cum.  James leaned forward over the
guy he was sitting on and undid the pants of the man on the table.  He took
the man's dick and placed it in his mouth, making it a threesome.
	James worked the guys for several minutes, feeling them get closer
and closer to sexual ecstasy.
	"Yes, yes!" the guy whose cock was getting blown exclaimed.  "Suck
that cock!"
	James reached up and massaged the guy's balls, that way he could
tell when the man was close to orgasm.  They drew up and his cock began
pumping.  As it pumped into James' mouth, James bit down hard, severing the
cock from its owner.
	"AHHHHHHH!" the guy screamed in pain.
	With having a cock so hard, a lot of blood was in it.  James kept
his mouth around it and sucked the blood from his body through the penile
vein. The man grabbed James by the head to pull James away.  But James
grabbed his wrists and kept on sucking, drinking, feeding off of the man
through the vein.
	The guy slumped back onto the table in death.  James released the
man and looked at the guy he was riding.  James leaned in to kiss him.  The
man felt something pressing against his lips and thought it was James'
tongue, so he opened his mouth.  James pushed it in further and then pulled
off, leaving whatever it was in his mouth.  He reached up and pulled out a
dick.
	"UUGGHH!!!" the guy screamed.
	James reached over and snapped the man's neck.  But he did not get
up off the guy.  He kept going for several more minutes until he felt the
man's body react with an ejaculation.  Then he stood up.  "Who is next?" he
asked.
	The club-goers screamed in terror and began running away.
	"So you are going to make me work for my food, huh?"

	The black Suburban pulled onto East Market driving through downtown
heading east.  I looked out the tinted window and noticed people flooding
out of a building, a building I recognized as the Interbelt, a club
accepting both gay and straight clubbers.  The people were screaming in
terror.
	"What's going on?" Punisher asked.
	"The patrons of that club are screaming."
	"I wonder what's going on?"
	"Pull over up here and we'll check it out."
	"I really don't have time for this.  I have to find Exeter."
	"I'm going to make time for this!  The Friends of Humanity are a
big deal!  But it doesn't mean the rest of humanity is ignored, either."
	Punisher rolled his eyes at me and pulled over in the nearest
parking lot.  I jumped out of the Suburban and ran toward the club.
Punisher wasn't too far behind me.  He wasn't carrying any of his rifles
but pistols hung at his side.  He was coming prepared to defend himself,
which was good.  I hoped, however, that he wouldn't have to use the
weapons.  I didn't want anyone to die.
	We came up on the entrance.  I grabbed someone running away.
	"What's going on?" I asked.
	"Some guy in there...just killed...three guys."
	I released the man and headed into the doorway.  I looked around
and saw a man in leather with his mouth buried in some unlucky girl's neck.
A vampire.
	I lifted a table with my powers and threw it at the vampire.  It
shattered to pieces.  The vampire turned and I saw his face.  James.
	"You!" he said as he dropped the drained girl to the floor.  "I
come up to another city to let you have Canton, but you follow me.  You are
unbelievable!"
	The Punisher pulled out a pistol and fired at James, hitting him
square in the chest.  James whipped backwards with the impact but didn't go
down.  Punisher didn't know he was a vampire.  James was not the kind of
vampire with the furrowed brow and yellow eyes. He was the vampire species
that retained their soul, the vampire that retained its humanity, the
person who changed into an immortal.
	James stood upright.
	"What the...?" Punisher said.
	"He's a vampire."
	"But his brow isn't bumpy?  Why isn't he demon-like?"
	"Because the species he belongs to isn't demonic.  They retain
humanity, although it's hard to believe with this guy's reputation."
	"Why do you keep haunting me?!" James exclaimed.
	"Because what you are doing is wrong!  Search your soul and see
that it's wrong!"
	"What soul?  I have no soul!  I'm a vampire!  A being that survives
by consuming blood!  You think I'm a vampire with a soul?"
	"Yes.  No one ever explained to you the kind of vampire you are?
Not all vampires are evil and demonic.  I've met some that are kind.  They
still have their soul.  From the looks of you, you have a soul."
	"I haven't had a soul since Junior High," James said.  There was no
anger or malice in his voice.  It was quiet, cold, unemotional.
	"Get the people away from here," I whispered to Punisher.  I took a
step closer to James.  "What do you mean?"
	"I told you!" James said angrily.  Then he calmed himself.  "I have
always been the freak growing up.  People did not like me.  I tried to be
nice.  I tried to be good.  But no.  No one wanted me to be good.  I had
this position in everyone's life as being the bad guy.  The troublemaker.
Let's just say I'm living down to my expectations."
	"You don't have to live by others' expectations, James.  You can
live to your own expectations."
	"The only ones I have now are the ones handed me by those I thought
loved me."
	"You can change them, James.  You don't need to listen to those
voices.  They are gone.  It's just your voice now.  It's just you.  You can
stop."
	My desire to end his evilness had a new addition, a desire to see
him turn good.  Could someone so horrible actually become a being of
goodness?  Could someone who had performed such heinous, uncaring crimes
become someone who would do good in this world?  I didn't know.  But I
wanted to try and find out.
	"The only voice that should matter to you is what your heart tells
you, what your soul says to you.  Listen.  Quiet your mind and listen to
the still voice."
	The room became quiet.  All I could hear was my own heart beating.
Punisher had gotten the people out.  All that remained in the room was
James and I.
	Was this what the angel foretold?  Was this a trial to determine
who I was?  If I helped James, perhaps I could be Eric again.  I could gain
back the humanity I had before the accident.  Losing your memory you lose
yourself.  You lose who and what you were.  The new me was okay.  But the
trials the messenger told me were coming were to see if I would reclaim the
Eric McCoy that was before the explosion.  The psychologist.  The lover of
all life.
	This was a trial to bring Eric back but it wasn't just about me.
If anything it was about James, the poor tortured soul that stood before
me.  His soul, his humanity was in the balance as well.  It was my test to
see if it could be brought back.  I determined in myself to bring him back
from the darkness that surrounded him.  His soul was on the line.
	"The still small voice, James.  What does it say?" I asked in a
quiet voice.
	It was an absurd picture.  A man dressed in a Bat-suit quietly
speaking to a leather-dressed vampire of matters concerning the heart and
soul.
	"It's too quiet for me to hear," James whispered.  "Could it be
gone?  Could I have finally done what I sought to do?  Repress my soul so
much that it disappeared?"
	"You tried to suppress...?"
	"I was evil, right?  I was bad.  I had no inclinations in me to be
good.  I tried to be good.  I did what I should have.  But I got nothing in
return.
	"Then this happened to me.  I became the embodiment of evil.  I
became a being who fed off living blood to survive.  I didn't want to be
this way.  I didn't want to hurt others.  But all I heard was the wrongness
of being a vampire.  I could not escape my destiny of being an evil
creature.  So I accepted it.  I let it take over.
	"The humanity was strong at first.  It cried out in guilt every
time I fed off someone.  I didn't want to kill the person.  But I would
grow so hungry the little bit would not be sufficient.  I had to have more.
The hunger would be so terrible that I couldn't think.  I had no moral
reasoning.  Instinct took over and I fed.  I drained the person until there
was no blood left.
	"When I came to my senses, I looked to see who I killed, who I
murdered for my own survival.  It was a little girl.  I killed her to
survive.  I had truly become a monster.
	"The newspapers in Canton, Akron and Cleveland, as well as all the
news channels told of the monster who killed the little girl.  Over and
over it was announced how evil this being was.  The being was me.  I became
the sinister murderer of children.
	"Taking the life of a child was the pivotal moment for me in my
crossover to the darkness that rested at the edge of my conscience.  I had
no choice.  The community would not accept my apologies.  They would not
try to understand what I had become.  They didn't know how to help someone
like me.  I could have turned myself in to people who didn't understand and
force me down the path of despair to evil or I could have gone down the
path alone.  Either let others walk me down or choose to go down the path
myself.  I was through letting others dictate my life.  I went down the
path alone, repressing any and every attempt of my humanity to reason with
me.
	"I became who I am today.  It was a long and treacherous path.  The
nights were arduous, as I would remember the faces of those I killed.  I
blocked them out of my mind.  The voice that cried up in guilt became
quieter and quieter.  It was years that I ignored it and just a few moments
ago that I actually took time to listen."
	"Is it there?"
	James listened for a moment.  "Yes.  It's still there."
	"What does it say?"
	James became quiet for several moments.  Looking into his eyes, I
saw he truly struggled to listen, searching for the voice, the words it
spoke.  I watched as tears formed in his eyes.  One trickled down his
cheek.
	"What have I done?" he whispered.  His hands flew up to his face
and he collapsed to his knees.
	I ran to him and knelt beside him, placing my arms around him.
	"Oh God, what have I done?" he cried.  "I've let them win.  I've
become the monster they all said I would be.  I allowed them."
	"It's okay, James.  Don't hold back the tears."
	His heart was breaking, the hardness giving way to the softness of
flesh.  His humanity was coming back to him.  How long it had been gone,
but it was coming back to him.  For so long it was repressed, but his
humanity was taking over, his soul was being ignited.  This vampire started
his road to redemption with letting his heart feel remorse.
	Sirens outside brought my attention back to my environment.  James
lifted his head up and wiped the tears.
	"They are coming for me."
	"Yeah."
	"Should I let them take me?"
	"They won't know what to do with a vampire.  They won't know how to
feed you or to keep you out of sunlight."
	"Then I would end up dying."  A smile formed on James's face.  "I
can rest in peace."
	"Can you?  Will you be able to rest in peace?  Or will you go to
your grave with the knowledge of all the wrong you did not being righted?"
	"But do I have the right to make amends?  For what I've done,
perhaps I need to die and spend eternity in torment."
	"As much as this society would like to see that, God has higher
purposes for us.  Eternal torment is reserved for those who don't take the
chances at redemption.  You've been handed the chance to redeem
yourself. Will you take something God has given you and throw it away?"
	James considered it.  "I don't know.  That's not a decision I can
make."  James looked up at me, looked deep into my eyes.  "Be my
conscience.  Make the decision for me."
	I stood up, reached down and took his hand.  "Let's get started on
redemption."
	James stood up.  We heard the voices of the police outside.
	"Come out with your hands up!  If you do not come out, we will come
in shooting!"
	"If they come in and I leave, they will know I'm alive.  They will
never stop hunting me down."
	"Then this moment, the evil you dies."
	"How?"
	I relaxed my body and felt the different molecules, finding ones
that were volatile.  I found the gas heating system.  I manipulated them to
extreme volatility.
	"Grab on," I said.
	James reached around me from behind and held me tightly.  I lifted
us up to the ceiling and caused the molecules to explode.  The heat lifted
us up and through the ceiling as the Interbelt was engulfed in flames.  It
was total destruction.
	I flew us over to a nearby building and we watched in silence as
the flames roared destroying the building.
	"If there were a body, they would never find any remains in that
inferno.  You are free. Your old life is over."
	"The evil me died in there," James said.
	"It's time for the good you to build a new life.  What do you say?
Are you up for the challenge?"
	"I don't know if I am.  But my soul is smiling.  It tells me there
is hope."
	"Then there truly is hope."

To Be Continued...

What a profound chapter!  It opened with James committing a very horrible
crime and ended with his start on the road to redemption.  Was I wrong in
doing this? Should Batman have killed James?  I want to hear your opinions.