*One*
"Déjà-vu," Agent Scully muttered under her breath. She turned toward me and began her usual speech of non-confidence. "We must've investigated a hundred cases involving unsubstantiated claims of vampirism. Where have they led us? Nowhere. What have we concluded? Nothing. Who in their right mind can work up the nerve to even show us any respect anymore? Nobody. Mulder, we are joke. This is embarrassing. I don't want to spend taxpayers' money trudging out to yet another small town in a Midwestern state to stay in a cheap roadside motel and listen to the testimonies of people who are all too immersed in their own counter-cultural folklore!"
"Gee, you make it sound so romantic." I pouted. "And for your information, plenty of the claims have been very well substantiated."
"There's nothing supernatural about the exsanguination of livestock, Mulder. It's a little creepy, I'll admit, but not unexplainable. And as for the human victims," Scully motioned to the papers on my desk – case files of a couple of vacationers killed last week in Fort Dodge, Iowa, "well, that's what we have the Violent Crimes Unit for."
"There's something more to this, Scully, and I don't know how to convince you except to say – when's the last time I was wrong?" I looked into her eyes. This was more than vampirism – this was vampires. This was a town full of people who lived their daily lives with the knowledge that in the old dark mansion up on the hill, there existed, and had existed for as long as they could remember, a proverbial Batman and Robin of the macabre. "You don't see anything supernatural about a self-contained population which is of the mind that drinking blood is what those boys in the castle do when they run out of tea?"
Scully looked at me and I could tell she was starting to cave. These things were always more fun than they were trouble, and she knew that. Besides, it wasn't like she had a date this weekend or something.
Slowly she let out a sigh of defeat. "This is the last time, Mulder ... And promise me one thing? Don't drive a stake through anyone's heart unless you're sure he's a vampire."
I smiled.
next, please