“When we found out we couldn’t kill them, we built a prison. We came to calling it the Prism, a sort of joke. You see, since the one thing that can stop them is sunlight, we had to imprison them in a giant prism. Well, technically, it’s a series of prisms, but that’s not important. We planned it out really, really well. Down to the last detail.”
“So, why have you come to me?”
“The stars are going dark. We’ve known for some time. People with telescopes have started noticing it now. Soon, the country folk will too. You’ll see it with the naked eye. Whether or not the people in the cities will even look up, I can’t say. It’s some sort of cloud, I’m told. I don’t think anybody really knows. In fifty years, we’re going to be in it.”
“Okay, so you have a prison full of vampires, well designed, and the end of the world, I guess. What do you expect me to do about it?”
“We got people working on survival plans. There’ll be casualties, but we should be able to outlast it. No, the problem is, when whatever this is comes, this darkness, it’ll block out everything, the sun too. When that happens, the Prism, however well designed, will go dim. It needs to be sunlight; there’s no substitute.”
“The Prism goes dark and then—”
“They return. Hungry, unkillable, and maybe a hundred years before they have to worry about sunlight again.”
“A hundred years!”
“Maybe. Maybe more, maybe less. Hard to say. We don’t know what’s happening. What I do know is that if these things escape, they’ll destroy us. We won’t have any way to fight.”
“So, why tell me? What do you want?”
“We were tracking one of these things to put in the Prism when we found you. You show up on the scene and that thing disappears. I think you killed it.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t be killed.”
“I can’t kill them. Nobody I know can, except, I think, you. We’ve been watching you since then. Five, as you call them, vampires. You’ve killed five of them, or got rid of them somehow. We’d like to know how. We’d like to know before the world ends.”
Tale Told 