Seeing Double

Seeing Double - Part 1

He waited until well after midnight. He knew Maddie and that dullard, Jack, would be deep in REM sleep by then. Shivering as he floated out of his body, he stretched and yawned like a vampire rising out of a crypt.

It felt good to expand his ectoplasm again, free from that meatsack. Sometimes he wondered why he still bothered to lug the thing around. But as he looked at himself tucked into bed, his long silver hair neatly arranged on the pillow he assured himself that it was a handsome package. Maddie would prefer it to the blue skin and fangs of his true form.

Yet Vlad was no longer used to containing himself within his human half for long. Least of all in his own home, where he'd normally float about freely.

It was best to get used to restraint now, he reasoned, when he married Maddie it would be best for her not to see.

It would have been better, he thought sourly, if she hadn't left him to waste away for so many years. Waiting for her to leave that damn fool, waiting for her to reach out. When she didn't he felt as if he might as well be dead. He had allowed his muscles to atrophy, he would forget to feed the damn body, he'd leave it in bed, he-

But no use dwelling on that now. He'd bounced back. Regained his strength. The body was perfect now. Well muscled but refined. His clothes were perfect, his hair shone. Vlad didn't need to examine the body again to know that.

The time he spent waiting, regretting, yearning for her... Well, it would not matter once Jack was dead.

Not tonight, of course, he knew that would arouse suspicion. Oh he had a grand plan, he would re-integrate himself into their lives. They'd be best friends again, the three of them. He'd move to Amity Park, soon enough, he'd join the business. Funding, they needed funding now that the ghosts were flooding the city. They needed new tech, maybe a team of interns, researchers, Vlad had connections to universities and government officials.

Maddie would be overjoyed and then, the tragedy. A grieving widow.

But not tonight he reminded himself as he flew around the mansion. Like a new father pacing in a hospital room, he flitted from one room to another, anxious and impatient. As soon as he'd seen the buffoon it had been all he could do to stop himself from leaking out of his skin, he'd wanted to leap out and into the other man's hulking body.

He'd wanted to clamp down on his neck, squeeze the life out, Take a bite out of his flesh. If he could Vlad wanted to-

What was that?

Vlad froze, his ghost halting halfway through the floor. The floor of the ballroom, that is, while his head poked out of the ceiling in the kitchen. It wasn't that he'd heard a noise, there was no disturbance in the mansion. All the humans in the building were accounted for. He could feel the heat of them in each guest bedroom, their bodies peacefully slumbering.

His own body, too, lay as if asleep. Though he knew the state he left it in each time was akin to a coma. Should a doctor examine him while he was away, he knew his human half would be hospitalized. He had, in fact, been hospitalized several times.

But what was that? He felt it in the air. A disturbance, a vibration, a ghost? It wasn't the dairy king. That old man was a guppy, his existence a pebble dropped into a pond. This fellow on the other hand... Felt like a boulder.

Then a blast of ectoplasm shot at his head and he crashed back the way he came, through the ceiling, and the presence was a volcanic eruption.

The first attack caught him by surprise, but Vlad was prepared for the next one. His shields were up and he sent a clone after the intruder. The ghost put up a fight, he was a powerful little thing, but even a volcano is powerless against the sun.