Ryan Marcus

Dr. Ryan Marcus

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Forty-five years old, sporting an MSc in computer science from Harvard and a M.D. from Berkley, Dr. Ryan Marcus has fathered two sons, had three wives, and lives alone in a big, beautiful home with a huge yard, a pool and a helicopter pad. Alone for five years after his third and final divorce, Dr. Marcus's life was taking a turn for the better when he met Laila. She was beautiful; a tall, leggy blonde, sexy, sensual, smart, alluring; everything Ryan Marcus wanted, everything his wives never were.

Until one night when she walked past a mirror accidentally and hadn't focused her will to make herself appear in reflections.

That made the doctor wonder. Then there was the cameras he had hidden in his home. She was blurry in the recordings. Apparently they were well hidden enough that the woman didn't know they were there. And there was the fact that she'd never stay the whole night.

And then there was that one time she grew fangs at the wrong time. He ran. She ran faster than he ever could. She tried to wrestle him to the floor. He was lucky and slipped free, finding his way to the nighttable where his very nice, very expensive licensed handgun rested. The doctor desperately snapped a shot off that blew off a chunk of her head just by dumb luck.

When that didn't stop her, and she kept on coming, fangs out, telling him to drop his weapon and the compulsion almost overcoming him as he looked into her eyes, he knew he had no choice. Gunblasts rang out. He had no choice. He had no choice. That was what he kept telling himself as he fired again and again.

On the fourth hit, she stayed down, but he kept firing in a panic. That was when the weirdest thing happened as his clip ran dry. The girl he was falling for became a pile of ashes.

Since then, nothing had been the same. His computer skills had gone toward researching what had happened. His medical practice had become a daytime chore to fuel his nighttime obsession. He had kept on training his shooting and had gotten pretty good with semi-automatic pistols. His diversion was his flying.

He had done a lot of good work with his company that he had helped to found. WesternLife was an excellently-regarded, fast-growing chain of private medical clinics that helped to support the State of California's medical apparatus. The WesternLife Head Office was in downtown Sacremento, and Dr. Marcus had a large, spacious office there. Cush job, if he was willing to sit around. He couldn't. Not after what he'd seen. He needed to stay busy. If he was in the office, he'd be searching for clues, learning more and more about the occult underworld that he had inadvertantly ran into. So he kept his practice up, rotating between clinics and popping in as he was wont to do. When the Chief Medical Advisor from Corporate showed up in his chopper and scrubbed up, nobody got in his way; he was damn good at what he did and even clinic head physicians were happy to see him.

It had been two years since then, and Ryan Marcus was slowly stabilizing, becoming accustomed to the world as he now saw it. Vampires existed. It made it hard to trust that everyone else wasn't one for sure. Who knew what else was out there? One thing was for sure. He'd find out. The supernatural world might've run into Ryan Marcus, but now it had a contender on its hands as the doctor continued his journey into the World of Darkness.