My Bad Boy Werewolf Quadrillionaire Space Lord

10 - Awaiting the Night

Luca smirked as the incorrigible — and surprisingly strong — space pirate fingered the trigger her ship's railgun. The hiss and whine of charging capacitor banks was eerily similar to the sounds a certain pair of sisters from the Elevation Space Station resort made the last time he visited the place.

And he was very familiar with women threatening him, though usually it was a derivative of 'rock your world'.

The vampire's displeasure was significantly more troubling. Alcuard looked ready to pummel Luca's skull into paste with a rock, which was a dramatic change from the nearly feral, lustful hunger that had been on his face a few minutes ago.

"Izzy," Luca said. "Do you remember seeing a theoretical meteorologist on television recently? A woman in her thirties talking about the salt content in children's tears being perfect for the climate seeding project?"

"I, uh. Yeah," Isabella admitted. "Yeah, I do. A lot of people thought she was full of crap."

"She was. I had a bet going with a group of hedge fund managers that scientists can be bribed. As it turns out, they're actually pretty cheap," Luca admitted.

"They were in my time, as well," Alcuard agreed.

"Basically, I offered to pay for her PHD program for saying that the terraforming project required a list of absurd ingredients," Luca explained, and he laughed to himself. "Nonsense stuff. The blood of virgin women, the tears of small children, ground-up childhood toys, nose hairs from old men, the beard trimmings of a hipster, the spit of a nun, some soot from Pompei, the ash of the Mona Lisa, seven blocks from the pyramids, and water from the last glacier."

"She said you needed all of that?" Isabella asked, her mouth open in shock. A common sight for Luca whenever he took off his shirt.

"Yep," Luca said with a smirk. "It was so much fun."

"But the Mona Lisa is still in the Louvre!" Isabella exclaimed.

"Is it?" Luca asked with a wink. "Or is it fixed to a wall in my yacht?"

"So you're not injecting the blood?" Alcuard asked. "Or drinking it?"

Luca found it fairly surprising that the vampire sounded as serious as he did. "No, why would I do that?"

"I am relieved to hear it," Alcuard said. "Then in turn, let me tell you about the A Lien account."

"I had lain in my cryo stasis pod for over six thousand years. Try to imagine it. Six thousand years unable to do any more than think. Unable to move your eyes, your fingers, any part of your body, but being cognizant of every second as the centuries crawl their way into becoming millennia," Alcuard began to complain.

"You must have nearly gone mad," Isabella breathed vapidly.

"Oh, I went mad a few days in. Unfortunately, insanity is only so entertaining. Unless you have a writer's imagination the novelty of madness can only sustain you a few weeks, and you're left with nothing but your thoughts and your ebook collection. Mostly it's just boredom, unless something starts to itch. But in 1880, my COFFIN's transmitters began to detect that their signals were being received by a device. After a great deal of work, I managed to communicate with a gentleman named Nikola Tesla."

Alcuard chuckled and raised an imaginary glass to the sky. "Ah, what a mind that fool boy had. I gave him some pointers in design based on some electrical engineering books I had saved, and in thanks, he offered to pay me. But when I explained our predicament, we estimated together that it would take hundreds of years for me to be found and freed. And so, he generously took five thousand dollars, not an inconsiderable sum, but he said he stole it from a vile scoundrel of a man named Edison. He then deposited it in an account, and instructed the bank that interest accrued should be reinvested."