....Disclaimer: I do not own Moonlight or any of its characters. Occasionally one of them speaks to me and I take dictation. No disrespect or copyright infringement is ever intended -- just a way to pass the time.
Rating: PG13
First published: 8/2/2010
Killing Time
There is a difference between justice and vengeance. If there were justice, I wouldn't be here.
Now, I have a score to settle. I come to avenge a man who was not my friend. But should have been.
For a vampire, every day is filled with life and death decisions. Sometimes they cost you a piece of your soul. Sometimes, they don't. Tonight, I'm running a tab.
The entrance of the bar is lit with the color of blood, and it whets my appetite for what waits inside.
How many? Ten. Twenty. They wear their sins like war paint, badges of dishonor. Their brotherhood has branded them like livestock, corralled them like cattle for the slaughter. But they don't interest me.
As I move through the herd, pulses pounding with tequila bravado rise above the hyped up Latin beat. The building chorus empowers me and I am ready.
All eyes are on me now. I am outnumbered, outgunned, and completely in my element.
My question goes unanswered. My action does not. Each piece of metal that tears my chest fortifies me -- makes me stronger. They may have the firepower, but I'm the one calling the shots. I could crush them like the shards of glass beneath my boots. But I’ve made my point.
When they see me -- the real me -- they scatter, abandoning the fallen, and running from the truth. The resolve of my enemies flickers like faulty neon, as they are confronted with reality beyond reason. There is only one reason here, and it is mine. I come for blood.
Righteousness and hunger swirl with the rising smoke, indistinguishable. Undeniable.
It's time.
I cast off chains forged by my own conscience and tightened by eternal regret. I am as cold and as dark as the night.
I am more than myself. Greater than the man I pretend to be. Deadlier than this little thug ever imagined. He doesn't understand that evil is a matter of perspective, and right now, I've got the better vantage point.
It's almost too easy. He feels it too, as we engage in this twisted foreplay before the final act.
Beyond the humiliation, I see the desperation and despair that hover somewhere between fighting to stay alive and realizing that there's no stopping the inevitable. That loss of control, of inner will, is the ultimate defeat. I could tear him open and let him bleed out slowly, like his latest victim, knowing that each labored beat of his own heart brings him closer to his last. But I don't need to. He sees his life running from my lips, his death fixed in my eyes. In that instant, he knows.
There is no salvation.
As I send him over the brink, the surge of blood delivered by his final breath brings me my release. And for just a moment, in this killing time, I am completely free.
I hadn't thought about it when I writing this, but I have to say that working through this and finally posting was as liberating for me as it was for Mick. 
I said to someone last night that this was not my "usual" Mick voice -- if I can claim to have such a thing -- but I think it's as much a part of him as the "Angel" we usually see.
?
A great answer to the challenge.
when need be.