Originally for Theme Thursday: Zeal

Deep in the heart of the Department of Intersecting Lines, Vampire Detective Bloodforth Hemalton double-checked that the chains, ropes, and cuffs holding the suspect were secure. Once he was sure the human couldn’t move, he took a seat across the table from him. “So tell me, son, what’s your real name?”

“My name is Zachary, Zachary Smith,” the suspect protested.

Bloodforth shook his head in disappointment. “I’ve been doing this for five hundred years. I can smell you unnatural freaks. So tell me,” Bloodforth leaned in until they were almost nose-to-nose, “what’s your name?”

“I told you, it’s Zachary.”

“And how, exactly, do you spell that?” Bloodforth added just a hint of hypnotism to his gaze, just enough to loosen the man’s tongue.

“My name is Zachary,” he finished the statement unwillingly, “Xachary with an ‘x’.”

“Xachary with an ‘x’,” Bloodforth snarled. “You dared enter the city with one of those names. You self-entitled, egotistical narcissist. Did you ever consider what would happen if you signed your name? Did you?”

“I’d have used a ‘z’,” he protested.

“He’d’ve used a ‘z’, he says. Until you didn’t!” The vampire pushed himself off the table and started gesticulating wildly as he paced. “You’d shove your cross-y name in some poor vampire’s face and laugh as he turned to dust.”

“But what about ‘t’s?” Xachary asked. “Those are crosses, and I’ve seen them all over the city.”

Bloodforth shook his head at the man’s audacity, “Don’t try to change the subject. I’m sure you’ve heard our history. The Rex Riots. The Felix Fracas. The Alexandra Affair. We at the Department of Intersecting Lines will do anything to prevent those dark days from returning.”

Bloodforth sat back down and stared, until the human broke down and asked, “What- what happens now?”

“Now, son, you need to think really, really hard. You’ve got two choices. First, you vanish. It’ll be like you never existed. The second option,” Bloodforth placed a pen and a change of name form on the table, “is you sign this to get rid of your heretical name. What’s it going to be?”

He was surprised that Xachary accepted the second offer so quickly. No self-respecting vampire would have chosen life over family lineage. He loosed one of the man’s hands enough for him to sign. Bloodforth gave the document a quick glance to make sure that everything was in order, read the signature, and died in a screaming pillar of fire.

Xachary finished unlocking and untying himself from the chair. He put on the pile of ash’s clothes as a disguise and walked out of the police station. He’d see the vampires dead, he promised himself again, or his name wasn’t Xachary Xerxes Xavier IX.