Just keep telling yourselves that.  It makes the hunt that much more fun for me.

A human child – in my car.  Oh, joy!  I could hear her heartbeat slowing to an easy rhythm as she fell even more deeply into the comfort of sleep.  The warm scent of her living blood was thick and sweet in the confined space, so I opened a window to try to escape it, to keep my head clear and able to think.  It was all I could do to not crawl out of the window and run off into the sheltering night. 

I turned on the radio and as quickly turned it off again.  A familiar and strangely appropriate Boingo song was playing, and I really wasn’t in the mood to listen.

It was only with extreme effort that I finally wrestled my face back into its mask.  My throat felt impossibly dry, even though I had recently fed till I was sated, and the dark part of me whispered reasonably that I could easily slake that maddening thirst with what was close to hand.  

Despite my knowing in my dead heart that this was only a child, little Miss Megan was in the same amount, if not more danger any other human was from me.  Fortunately, I have scruples, unlike some others of my kind, who would have treated her as little more than a convenient juice box and then discarded her corpse.  I beat back the thirst as much as I could, reminding myself that I had indeed fed earlier and that my response wasn’t need, but sheer greed.

I don’t normally deal much with living humans in an enclosed space, and especially in such close quarters as the interior of my car.  It can be difficult in the District Attorney’s office at times, but I’ve learned how to control myself in such public places and to keep the windows open to dissipate as much of their scent as possible.  The courtroom is more of a battle for me, with its judge, bailiff, clerk, other staff and sometimes even jurors, but I’ve come to consider that to be an ongoing test of sorts.  I also feed as heavily as possible before confronting that particular ordeal.  It makes it a little easier to ignore that oh-so-reasonable voice in my head.

Of course, Fred’s safe from me, because my senses don’t accept him as possible food, thus he acts as the very necessary buffer between me and the outside world as much as possible.  That overwhelming need for self-preservation keeps my mask carefully in place – well, except for tonight’s little surprise.

I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times humans had been in my car and lived to tell about it.  My car is another thing entirely.  My car is just that.  Mine.  And my true self knows it and has at times responded accordingly.  The last was a foolish human who thought it would be fun to carjack the well-dressed red-headed guy in the cool little old sports car.  If he hadn’t stabbed me, I might have let him live, but that black leather jacket had been a gift, damn it!

My pretty little old sports car?  An old Porsche Carrera convertible.  I had found it in the classified ads a couple years ago as a rebuilding prospect.  I’d found most of what I needed so far to fix her up, but the right rear quarter panel still needed some work.  Messing with Bondo just isn’t my forte, as I’ve never been much of an artist.  I’m more the slap it on and hope for the best kind of vampire.  This doesn’t lend itself very well to recreating the gentle curves of a car’s body.

In addition to salvage yards, The Benz Bin, an online auto parts site for German cars, had been a godsend of sorts, offering a lot of genuine parts for Graciela, as I called her.  She was drivable, but she wasn’t going to win any races.  At least the insurance on the little beast was cheap.  That was a quiet little blessing.

There’s this fantasy put forth in books, television and movies that vampires all have lots of money and spendy little things for which they give little care, apparently having the ability to replace them on a whim.  It’s pure bullshit, really. Money’s as tight with me as with most humans, and I don’t throw it around needlessly.  Otherwise, I’d have gotten myself a car that wasn’t already halfway to the junk yard when I took her in.

Fred had been in my car more than a few times over the past two and a half years, but then, he was completely safe because my nose told me he wasn’t human, and it was human blood I craved.  His last serious drunk had ended with him worshipping the porcelain god in my nearly unused bathroom, and my dog cringing in the corner when Fred flashed some fang and growled at her when she got a bit too friendly with him.  I’d bundled him into my car and driven him back to his Boyle Heights apartment, so my dog could have some peace and quiet.  I’d put bouquets of flowers into my car and home as soon as I could manage, to chase away the stench of alcohol and sweat.  Yeah, I know.  It doesn’t sound very he-mannish, but then, I can’t abide the smell of artificial scent products.

I suppose the next question is how a vampire gets valid personal identification information like a Driver’s License when their birth certificate is really just a notation in a family Bible lost a sometime in the distant past.  Well, I could tell you that, but if I did, I’d have to kill you. 

No, really. I’d have to.

My mind kept going back to this evening’s surprises.  Why was this mysterious vampire keeping company with a human?  It’s not as if a vampire can use a human “friend” as a periodic snack bar.  It’s the bite that turns a human, no matter how small.  One sip from this “Pat”, and Megan’s Mom would be dancing the Night Fantastic.  No blood exchange is needed.  Another thing Stoker tanked badly, when you think about it.

Once the skin is broken by a vampire’s teeth, or an open wound is touched by a vampire’s tongue, it’s only a matter of time until the human is turned or dies in the process, much like turned, rather than born werewolves.  That’s the reason I kill my meals before I eat, or destroy the body enough afterward to prevent a vampiric resurrection of sorts.  Previously dead bodies don’t turn, and a severed spine also prevents the pitter patter of baby vampire feet.  If I didn’t, they’d be either dead or a new vampire within a week’s time.

Soft noises behind me ripped me from my reverie and back into the here and now, as Megan had started mumbling in her sleep and writhing on the back seat.  Pulling over, I could hear the child’s heart beginning to race as whatever night terror chased her through her dreams, and found myself reaching a hand back to touch her forehead, murmuring soothing noises in my throat, willing her to calm.  Her eyes flew open and she clutched at my arm like a tiny tick.

“Hey, Megan, it’s all right, honey.  Try to get back to sleep,” I told her, willing a reassuring smile onto my face.  She clambered into the front seat and into my lap so fast, I wondered if she was part monkey and caught myself checking for a tail.  Shapeshifters did come in all shapes and sizes, I’d found in my many years of UnLife.

Megan climbed into the front passenger seat, locking the seatbelt around her, continuing to look at me all the while.  It was obvious that sleep wasn’t part of the program anymore.  “Do you live far from here?”

“Not too terribly far, Megan.  I wanted to let you know that I have a big dog at home.  Are you afraid of dogs?”

“No!  I love dogs!” was her quick response.  For some reason, the thought of a dog at my place was a good thing for her.  If it kept her quiet and happy, I was all for it.

“My dog is really big, Megan, and hasn’t been around a lot of…people.  Give her a little bit of time to get to know you and I’m quite sure you’ll be friends,” I told her.  Marguerite the dog would, I’m sure, be quite puzzled at having a human in the house.  I’d had the occasional service person by to fix plumbing, install the cable television or other utilities, and at those times, I’d kept her in another room, so as to make her more sensitive to the difference in the smell of humans, which she hadn’t really been around since she was a tiny pup. 

I pulled back onto the road and we continued to my home in silence.  Megan reached out a hand and covered the back of my own.  I know that my skin was very cool, but she appeared to have been familiar enough with this “Pat” vampire often enough to be comfortable with my unnaturally cold flesh.  For some reason, she seemed to be taking comfort in that contact.  She tightened her fingers over my own momentarily as I pulled into the driveway.  The sun was starting to make an appearance on the horizon, and my body was crying out for rest.

I could hear the dog snuffling at the bottom of the door.  I knew she could smell the little girl and wanted to get up close and personal with her.  This was going to be an interesting meeting, to say the least.  Putting a cautionary hand on Megan’s shoulder to hold her back, I opened the front door and suddenly found the dog’s huge paws on my chest as she tried to push past me.

Megan made a soft noise in her throat and the dog jammed herself between my side and the door and went straight to the little girl, who held herself very still.

The dog, nearly half as tall as the girl, took several deep sniffs of Megan’s face and clothing, and then gave her face a tentative lick.  Megan wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck and I watched a fast friendship form.  It truly surprised me.  Perhaps the dog could smell something of what the girl had endured, but I really had no idea. 

“Uh, Megan…I need to get inside and get some rest,” I said quietly.  She looked up at me and pursed her lips, her eyes thoughtful.

“Yeah, Pat stayed over a couple times.  I should have thought more.  I’m sorry I’m so much trouble,” she apologized to me.

“Megan, you don’t need to apologize,” I replied.  I scooped her up into my arms and carried her inside, Marguerite the dog dancing alongside me as we entered my darkened home. 

Once I stepped inside, away from prying eyes, my face relaxed into its normal features.  It was a natural thing for me to do, and then I remembered Megan and cursed myself for a fool.  I waited for her sharp intake of breath, any expression of shock or fear.  It never came.

 Instead, Megan reached out a hand to touch my cheek.  Just like that.  No hesitation or anything like it.  Her hand drew down my cheekbone and ended at the corner of my mouth.  Then she leaned in and kissed me.  I don’t think I’d ever experienced a gentle touch to my face when I looked like this.  I’d certainly never been kissed.  It grabbed at my heart and caused a depth of feeling I hadn’t experienced since I was alive.

She wriggled out of my grasp and down to the floor once more, putting an arm around an ecstatic Marguerite.

“It’s okay, Mr. Reese.  Go rest.  I’ll be okay till you wake up.”  Then her face grew dark and serious.  Even deadly. 

“And then we find out who hurt my family.”

By Sarah Peters

Copyright 2009

“Hey, shithead!  Gimme your wallet!”

Pretending surprise, I looked up at my assailant, a fairly nondescript fellow in a filthy tee shirt and ripped blue jeans, a sardonic smile playing about my lips.  I could see the anger build in his eyes as he realized that I was not doing what he had rather peremptorily demanded.  I’d never been good at taking orders, even during my stint in a couple branches of the military.

An old six-shot pistol clutched in his hand was suddenly being waved at me in a vain attempt to frighten me into acquiescing.  His rank stink made me wrinkle my nose in distaste.  It was obvious that water was not a close acquaintance with this person.  I doubt they even lived in the same neighborhood.

“I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I told him softly.  “In fact, I think you’re going to hand me that gun.”

My rather offhand denial promptly shot that building anger to a crescendo, causing the man to lose control of himself.  Or at least the muscles of his right index finger, anyway.

Accompanied by an angry muffled oath, the sound of gunfire crashed through the dimly lit alley, quickly followed by a thick wet sound as the bullet impacted flesh. Even after all these years, I still found myself clapping a hand to the wound, but then I allowed my hand to fall to my side and continued to look at the shooter.  My ratty-looking assailant waited expectantly for his apparently well-heeled prey to fall as well.

Allowing myself to look down at the splash of red that was spreading across my chest, I gave a sharp bark of laughter and shook my head in mock sadness, pretending to mourn the loss of my formerly pristine green t-shirt. I really needed to wear more lived-in clothing when I went out on one of these little jaunts.  This shirt still had creases in it, for God’s sake!  Oh, well.

The thug looked at me as though his dirty little world had been turned on its ear. His victim should have at the very least screamed and grabbed at his chest in a vain attempt to stem the flow of his lifeblood. This was not how things were supposed to go! 

I snorted with a kind of humor he would and could never understand. The idiot had gone hunting for housecats and found a tiger, instead.  Well, well, well…

Dragging my index finger through the wettest looking part of the crimson stain and then bringing it to my lips, I licked the finger clean again. Horrified, my would-be murderer took a stumbling step backward, falling onto his backside, unable to catch himself before he fell.

“You’re just a stupid little bastard, aren’t you?” I laughed derisively and took a step forward, staring deeply into his eyes. His heart thundered in my sensitive ears and my nostrils flared at the intoxicatingly sweet scent of his terror. The aroma created an old though still familiar reaction in me that was very like what I had once had when extremely hungry after a long day of work, back when I was still human.  Sometimes, though not often, I found that I still missed a juicy steak, done to perfection over flames.  Modern electronic cooking didn’t look like it did any justice to solid food.

With stronger hunger pangs brought on by blood loss and my momentary nostalgia, I found myself unable to hide any longer, not that I really wanted to hide, anyway.

I let my mask drop, allowing my skin to lose its color and become deathly pale, relaxing my control over other aspects of my appearance, so the thug could see what he faced.  The monster he had so foolishly attacked. The last thing he would ever see in his short, miserable human life. I saw him making obscure motions with his fingers and realized he believed he could drive me away with religious symbols. I had not attended church in a long time, yes, but it had nothing to do with not being able to abide the symbols and rituals therein. I had simply discovered a kind of atheism after my aspect changed to what it was at this moment in time.

I laughed again and took another step forward.

The thug opened his mouth in a soundless scream, his eyes becoming huge with a shock and horror that made his bowels release, fouling his clothing and adding their sharp stink to the air. Paralyzed with terror, the gunman could not make his arms and legs work to scramble away, and he could only continue to stare at me, the redhead who towered over him.

“Please…please…don’t…” his words came out in a nearly airless whisper. His mouth worked, opening and closing soundlessly, making him look like a fish gasping for air.

In response, and flashing a lunatic’s grin, I leapt onto my stunned assailant, knocking the gun from his hand. Straddling the gunman, I leaned in, coming nose to nose with the thug and then smiled, exposing a full set of fangs. I licked at the man’s throat, dragging my tongue along the skin and feeling the great vein throbbing therein.

“You really should have bathed more,” I breathed softly, nipping almost playfully at the soft skin. I had a bad habit of playing with my food when it had pissed me off enough during the hunt. The fool’s intent to murder me was what sentenced him to the drawn out terror he now experienced.

Once the man’s fear had worked his heartbeat to a fever pitch and the sweet aroma of his terror spiced the air irresistibly, I swiftly twisted the man’s head around to face backward, killing him instantly.

My fangs quickly tore a ragged hole in the side of the man’s throat, exposing the carotid artery, which I broke with a quick nip of my teeth, allowing the blood contained therein to burst forth to flow down my throat. Even though he was dead, his blood was still warm and would be alive for a little while longer. However, if a corpse is more than five minutes old, I won’t touch it with the proverbial ten foot pole.  By that time, it would begin to stink, at least to my sensitive nose, of death and decomposition.

Literature and the large and small screens usually got an important part of being a vampire wrong. A pair of little holes was not going to do the job needed in order for me to feed. Opening a sizeable wound was the only way to get enough flow to allow me to feed in that short period of time.

Take my word for it:  Vampires just are not mosquitoes.

I drank deeply from the gaping wound I had created, my lips locking around its edges so that no blood was lost as I drew down the precious fluid within the corpse.  Finally, I withdrew and dropped it to the ground, using my talons to rip a larger, deeper wound into the pale throat, nearly tearing the man’s head from his body, and quite effectively disguising what had occurred. The dead man’s blood tasted sharply of drugs, and I was once again grateful that drugs do not affect my kind. While the taste definitely left something to be desired, it would still nourish me.

I had discovered long ago that killing my prey before feeding was one of the best ways to avoid inadvertently creating another of my kind. I just do not think people of today’s Western society and their expectation of instant gratification, could handle it. Learning to be a successful and safe vampire took quite some time, and in some cases, years, and a lot of patience.  I was nearly at my own bicentennial, and had the benefits of a fairly unsophisticated and scattered human population during which to learn what I needed to know.

In this day and age, feeding from the dregs of society helped to keep their numbers in check and kept me from having to drink the stale bagged stuff, which pretty much tasted like shit to senses honed to taste subtle differences in hemoglobin. Even the drug-tainted stuff from the dead man tasted better than blood gleaned from the Red Cross.  That was not to say I had not periodically been forced to do so when conditions made normal feeding impossible, but it was similar to the difference between drinking urine and drinking a fine wine. Urine will rehydrate you, but it is going to taste fairly horrible in the process. I have had to do that, too, when I was still a human being.

I tossed the body off the edge of the pier and into the stinking, polluted salt water. By the time someone found the body, it would more than likely be thought my victim had exsanguinated into the water, which would explain the missing blood. I hoped that ocean dwelling wildlife would have taken their own samples of my gift before that happened.  There was no point to wasting food if it could be eaten.  It would likely be the best contribution this waste of space had ever made to the world.

After carefully wiping it down, the gun followed the thug into the water, where it quickly sank into the depths and was lost from sight. Digging two fingers into my chest where the bullet had entered, I removed it and sent it down into the water to follow the gun. Helped by the new blood, the wound I had created closed quickly and without any sort of mark to show that anything had happened.

I felt my cell phone vibrate and swore softly, pulling it out and checking the Caller ID information in the soft glow of the front screen. Shaking my head when I saw who was calling, I answered.

“This is Terry. Any particular reason you’re calling me right now, Fred? Got a death wish or something? Where? When? Survivors? Twelve years old? Fuck. I’ll be right there.”

Yes, I am a vampire, one of the creatures out there that people pretend do not exist. Yes, there are more than vampires out there in the world. Some benevolent, and others not so, and you might be surprised to see which side they fall on.

No, I am not one of those reluctant vampires that have been portrayed in a lot of the more popular entertainments in the past twenty or so years. I enjoy the hunt and the eventual kill. Playing with something as intelligent as a human being is a challenge and makes the end so much more satisfying. It excites me and makes me feel strong and proud.

Yes, mine was what could be called a rape turning, but I know that if I had not been made into a vampire, I very likely would not be around now to enjoy the world as it is in the twenty first century, with all its scientific delights, closet geek that I am. I know that I have to feed to survive and that there are no dietary alternatives, so I have adjusted my hunting to meet that need and garner as little attention as possible in the process.

The popular conception of vampires is roughly correct, but only roughly. We may indeed walk in the sunlight, but at that time, our strength is greatly diminished. Stoker actually got that part right. We, and you, too, can see our reflection in mirrors, and there are photographs out there of many vampires, people just did not know they were vampires when those pictures were taken. It might have been embarrassing if that one United States President had been outed to the world at large. His werewolf Vice President had very nearly been outed on that night he very injudiciously spent with the hooker. She and her blackmailing pimp had very quickly been turned. 

Into fertilizer, that is.

No, we cannot eat or drink anything other than the blood that is the sole component of our extremely limited diet. We cannot turn into anything other than what we are. So no, I cannot turn into a bat, or a wolf or mist or anything like that. I can make myself appear more human, but that’s it and that requires a lot of control on my part to maintain. It’s easier to appear as I am: a vampire.  Deathly pale skin, four very sharp fangs, black on black eyes… There are very few times when I’m safe enough to allow myself the luxury of that kind of relaxation, so most times, you would think I was as human as you.

Stakes cannot kill us, silver has no effect on us…if you want to do in a vampire, it’s best to behead us or burn us and then scatter our ashes, as we are amazing resilient, even after becoming a crispy critter. I know that from very painful personal experience.

Ow. Maybe I will share that story with you sometime, but not for now.

I will not try to claim that there have not been some times that I have regretted who had to die in order to feed me, but I try as hard as I can to avoid situations such as those. Sometimes, the situation demands that I feed, and those situations often involve a serious loss of control on my part because something catastrophic has occurred. At times like those, even my own sweet Irish mother would not have been safe from me.

Today’s more sophisticated society and better forensic knowledge have made it a bit harder for me to hide from those who might capture or kill me, so I have had to be creative in order to live in a fairly densely populated place like Southern California. You cannot just kill someone and leave him or her to rot. You have to use methods that obscure what you have done and do it in such a way that it is not going to create too many pointed and direct questions. The way I killed humans and then disposed of their bodies in the twenty-first century came as the result of a lot of study of human physiology and what I needed to do in order to muddy the forensic waters a bit.  This meant that I tended to reside in areas with bustling coastal industries and the kind of busy waterfronts that would draw the kind of individuals such as the mental midget I had just sent on to his maker.

Fortunately, forensics are not as cut and dried as some fictional television series would have you believe, as with very few exceptions, they have to get the bad guy or gal in jail by the time the hour is up so you can watch the next show and its attendant load of commercials.  Forensic science can take a very long time to get the job done, and not everyone keeps souvenirs with them after they commit a crime, unlike what some books, television shows and movies might put forth in order to close a plot hole.

Around the time I was turned, when the country still had wild and wooly territories that had not yet reached Statehood, just before the American Civil War, life was hard and could truly be downright brutal. People died all the time, and not always neatly and cleanly, like in one of those romance bodice rippers that seem as popular today as they were a hundred years ago. I could remain in an area for at least a few months before I had to move on, just by keeping my activities to certain areas of town where violence was commonplace.

I had spent most of my vampire childhood in the American South, feeding on dying soldiers of both sides of the War of Northern Aggression, as the Southerners like to refer to it. It is interesting to note that one can often find blood drinkers around war zones.  It’s just easier to locate and feed upon prey in those kinds of arenas because body disposal is so much simpler than in a bustling but relatively peaceful community. After the end of the main conflict, I hung around as a Yankee carpetbagger and preyed on those who would have happily seen a return to the old ways.

But these were modern times now, and I had my job to do.  It’s just that incidents like the one I had been called to investigate now bothered even old, cold-hearted me.

I got to the scene of the crime about an hour after Fred’s call. I swung by my place for a shower, to let the damned dog out to do his business and to get a quick change of clothes. The bloody shirt would have been a bit difficult to explain. I found myself sending a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens, just in case someone was listening, as traffic was minimal – for a change.

The location of the crime was only about ten miles from where I live in the Los Angeles suburbs, and I was able to take surface streets to get there.  Of course, it was also about three in the morning, and things tended to calm down sometimes, even in suburban Los Angeles County.

When I got there, police cars were everywhere, blocking off the street at both ends, and officers appeared to be canvassing the neighborhood, as well as keeping well-meaning but nosy people out of the crime scene area. A familiar little Mini Cooper was parked near what appeared to be the scene of the crime, so I headed in that general direction and into the house that seemed to be the center of everyone’s attention.

My assistant, Fred Sanders, walked over and nodded curtly at me, then stood back unobtrusively after pointing out a little girl who sat on the edge of a bed, arms clutched around her. He had a notebook and pen in his hand, ready to take down anything important.

What looked like old college texts lifted the bed frame higher than it would normally be, giving a sort of Princess and the Pea look to the bedroom.  Teddy bears and horse statues covered nearly every surface.  It was a typical little girl’s room, except for the bloody shoe-prints that stained the camel-colored carpet.

Even if Fred had not pointed her out to me, I would have known who I needed to see. Her aspect was downright painful to me and it was all I could do not to run from the room to escape it.

Sometimes, my job sucked shit, but it was my job and I had to do it.

I could smell the child’s fear and despair and found myself very glad that I was old enough to be able to keep my mask in place. It was not all that long ago that I would have had to excuse myself or find some reason not to open my mouth in the first place. My fanged visage is my normal appearance, with my human features the disguise I wear to “pass” in predominately-human society. 

I walked over to the little girl and crouched down so I could look her in the eye.  I took her chin in my hand and tried to look at her with an earnest expression. Vampire emotions are different than human emotions, and I worked to be able to give a creditable and credible performance. Kids can see through a lie faster than most adults will give them credit for doing.

“I’m Deputy District Attorney Terry Reese. I’m really sorry about what happened to you and your family tonight. It was a terrible thing. I know this can’t be easy, but can you tell me anything you remember?”

The little girl looked up at me, her dark eyes huge and lost. The predator in me reacted to the fear it smelled and responded accordingly. I could not help myself as I reached out and took the child into my arms. I could feel her heart thudding wildly in her chest and I absently began stroking her back to try to calm her. I murmured soft, comforting nonsense words in her ear and was pleased when her heart rate began to slow to a more natural level. At first her body was stiff with her fear, but over time, the little girl began to relax in response to my attention and stillness. Finally, she pulled back a bit and looked at me again.

“Some people broke through the door and started shooting. I hid under the bed as fast as I could. My little brother Sam wasn’t fast enough…” she burst into fresh tears as she indicated the small form concealed under a pink Hello Kitty blanket. I continued to hold her until she got hold of herself once more, waving off the Children’s Services drone who attempted to intervene.

“It was just the three of us…Mama, Sam and me. They were watching TV in the living room, but I had to do my homework, so I was in my room,” she sobbed. “And now it’s just me.”

“Did you hear them say anything while they were here?”

“I heard them say my name, but I stayed real quiet so they wouldn’t find me. I was so scared.”

“What’s your name, sweetheart,” I asked.

“Megan. Megan Trimbley.”

“Do you remember what these people looked like?” I pressed her gently.

“No. I’m sorry. I saw their feet, but that’s it. I think I moved so fast, they didn’t know I was in the apartment.”

“Thank you, Megan. If you don’t mind, I’ll probably be asking you some questions again later. Other people are going to be talking with you as well to find out all the information they can about this.” I pulled a small off-white rectangle from my pocket.

“This is my card.  Feel free to call me anytime. If I don’t answer, leave a voice mail message and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.” Without thinking, I laid my hand against her cheek and was surprised when her small hand quickly came up to cover it.

“Your hand is cold,” she noted softly, squeezing it gently. I withdrew my hand as quickly as I could without appearing to panic. The drone from Children’s Services approached again.

“Megan, I’m Yvonne from CSD. I’ll be taking you with me to our facility downtown where we can take care of you,” she said, with a smile that was too bright, but that did not reach her eyes. I immediately found myself feeling put off by this officious twit.

“It may be awhile before she’s ready to go, Miss…” my voice trailed off expectantly.

“Hughes,” the woman supplied bluntly. I could smell something on the human that caught my attention. Something that really shouldn’t have been attached to someone in her line of work. I smiled up at her, knowing my eyes looked devoid of emotion. A mirthless chuckle sounded from Fred.  Obviously, he could smell it, too.

“Is there a reason you smell like gunpowder, Miss Hughes?” I asked suddenly.

I heard her heartbeat suddenly race wildly, thundering in my ears and threatening to overwhelm my carefully maintained appearance of humanity. I reached out a hand to grab her arm, tightening my grip considerably when she tried to pull away. The woman, whatever her real name was, squealed in pain. I curled one arm protectively around Megan as I stood, never relinquishing my hold on the imposter. Fred put a hand on the woman’s other arm to help hold her still.

“Officer! Hold this woman. I don’t think she’s who she claims to be” Fred barked.

One of the uniforms hastened over and quickly cuffed the woman. After a grunted prompting from Fred, the Officer proceeded to Mirandize the suspect. The last thing we needed was a suspect being released on a technicality. The anonymous but very loud woman was dragged off to a squad car, kicking and screaming and shouting invective. Another officer came and hobbled her legs as well so she could be bodily bundled into the waiting police cruiser and taken to Central Booking.

“You’ll be okay, Megan. We’ll talk to that woman and see what we can find out from her,” I reassured the child. I had to get away from the little girl, as her proximity was becoming entirely too much for me. Almost as if on cue, Fred came and rescued me from Megan’s grip.

She turned to look at me as Fred eased her away from me, her face showing the trust that Fred always seemed to create.

“Thank you, Mr. Reese,” she told me softly. Her eyes strayed over to where her brother lay and tears once again threatened to come. I hated seeing kids cry, really cry.  No one so young should ever have to cry or suffer so much.

“You can call me Terry, honey. Was that your Hello Kitty blanket, Megan?” I asked her quietly. She nodded dumbly.

“Sam really liked it and would fall asleep in front of the TV while he was wrapped up in it. He liked it when I’d make him into a burrito with it,” she told me, a single tear trickling down her left cheek. Deep emotions I didn’t know I had were beginning to bubble and boil within me, something which did not often happen, as I had learned to control myself very well over the long decades.

My true self was becoming truly angry that this young girl had been terrorized and I knew that there was a chance that the perpetrators would very like never see the inside of a police station, much less a courtroom, if I found them before the other authorities did.

“Hey, Megan, I’ve got to go now and see what I can do to find out why all this happened. I’ll talk with you as soon as I can.”

“But where am I going to go? I don’t have anywhere to go,” the little girl asked reasonably.

“Fred here is going to make sure that you get to the right people so they can watch over you. Like I said, you can call me anytime, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can if you have to leave a message.  You can trust Fred.  He not only works for me, he’s my friend as well.” Fred gave me a sideways smile and gave a slight mocking bow.

“Your friend, eh?  I’ll put that in my diary,” Fred commented wryly. He hefted the little girl into his arms and headed for the door. “I’ll see you at the office later this morning, boss.  I’m going to catch a few z’s after I take the princess here to CSD’s offices and get her checked in properly. I won’t leave till I watch them tuck her into bed.”

“Okay.  I should be there by about noon.  I’m going to get some sleep, myself, if I can manage it.  I haven’t been getting enough lately.”

“Later, man!” Fred said over his shoulder.

“Later, Fred…Megan.”

I left that little girl’s apartment barely able to contain myself.  My anger that this little human had been so terrorized was only exacerbated by the fact that I was overtired, so my control wasn’t what it perhaps should have been. I knew that it was stupid to get worked up over human doings, but just as vampiric strength is greater than humans’, so is the depth of emotion we can and do feel. It was one of the reasons we tended to remain solitary. While we had those greater emotions, it didn’t mean we were any better at maintaining our composure than a human could their own. Those few vampires who had long term romantic relationships walked an emotional tightrope more like Occam ’s razor than what was contained within Ringling Brother’s Big Top.

I could feel my fangs trying to force themselves out of the cover of my gums, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.  I wrapped every ounce of control I could muster around myself as I strode to my car.

I almost made it before two thin, though surprisingly strong arms wrapped themselves around my midsection and pulled back, hard. Having been startled to the point of breaking my concentration, my full set of fangs burst forth and my normal appearance followed close behind. Without thinking, I turned, glaring down at Megan, with what in no way could be considered a friendly expression, and that little girl who had already seen such unimaginable horror in the past few hours saw my real self.  She never flinched, only looked me in the eye with a completely serious expression.

“Find the people who hurt my Mama and my little brother. Don’t let them do this to anyone else,” she said earnestly, and then turned me loose. I turned away quickly, working desperately to put my mask back on, maybe make her think she had imagined what she saw, but I was so shocked I couldn’t pull that kind of control together. Walking around me to face me once more, Megan wrapped her arms around me one more time and hugged me tightly, squishing her small face to my chest and screwing her eyes shut, squeezing tears out from beneath those tiny lids.

Fred came running up and gently took her into his arms, eyes wide with his own shock, his skin pale, but not at what he was seeing about my appearance.

“I’m sorry.  She wiggled her way down and was out the door before I could stop her,” he apologized. “I’ll get her to CSD right away.”

That little girl looked at me expectantly.  She wanted a response from me. I couldn’t bring myself to let her down.

“I promise, Megan. I’ll do everything I can for you,” I promised her.

“Thank you, Mr. Reese. I’m sorry if I scared you,” she told me in all seriousness.  I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped me. The world had indeed been turned on its ear. Then her next words, softly spoken, as if she knew they were private words, shocked me even more. “Mama had a friend like you. Pat. She comes over a lot.”

I stared at her in disbelief.  Flabbergasted, I sat on the curb.  Fred lowered her to the ground and she sat beside me.

“Pat told Sam and me that we couldn’t tell people about her, and I never did till now. But I thought it would be okay to tell you, since you’re like her. She would come over on Friday nights and we’d play Scrabble and other games till Mama said it was time for bed.”

“How did you find out that she is like me, Megan? We don’t normally show ourselves as we are,” I asked the disturbingly mature little girl. 

“She came over after Daddy came over and hit Mama.  Daddy was gone when Pat got to our house, but Mama was all bloody from what happened. When Pat got mad about it and started asking questions of Mama, she didn’t look like regular people anymore. I didn’t get scared because Mama didn’t get scared.  I think Mama knew what she was before that.  After Sam and me saw her like that, she never looked like regular people again. She said it felt good to be herself.  I’m glad she’s my friend,” Megan told me with a proud little smile. “I have her phone number if you want to talk to her.  Maybe she can be your friend, too.”

Betcher ass I’d want to talk to this she-vampire I’d never met in the two and a half years since I’d come to Los Angeles. Vampires tended to be rather solitary, which could really suck after awhile, and maybe this vampire would know something that would help me to solve this case and make things better for the little girl who stared at me with a trust I didn’t feel I’d earned.

“Where is your Daddy now, sweetie?” I asked her. More often than not, victims knew their attackers, and from what Megan had already shared, this asshole seemed perfectly capable of violence. It wouldn’t be the first time things got so horribly out of hand with a noncustodial parent. That whole “if I can’t have them, no one can” crap.

“He lives with a friend of his in Woodland Hills, so we don’t see him very much,” she told me. I nodded, knowing this was going to be one of the first aspects of this investigation for me. Then I asked her how I could get in touch with this Pat (Patricia?) vampire.

Megan rattled off a string of numbers which I committed to memory. I’d been blessed with perfect recall, even while I was still human, so paper wasn’t necessary for me. It sounded like a downtown L.A. number. Perfect recall had its good and bad points.  It was great in situations like this; however it cursed me with being able to remember tiny but still terrible details of my past, before and after my turning.

I stood, Megan following suit, just standing there, watching me.

“Fred, I don’t think that Children’s Services is the best place for her right now. I think we have to keep this in-house, if you know what I mean.” My assistant nodded his understanding and carefully took the girl into his arms, cradling her to his chest carefully. She turned that same very trusting look on my sometimes furry friend and rested her head against his chest, looking at me with one eye and a crooked smile. Was her trust misplaced? She knew about vampires, and that made her life forfeit if word of that simple fact reached other vampires who weren’t quite so stick in the mud about things when it came to what they would and would not do to potential food. Knowledge was dangerous in this case.  So very dangerous for this small person.

Fred gave me a look I was sure I didn’t like, apologetic as it appeared.

“I don’t have anywhere to bring her, Terry,” he told me, professionalism gone when it was pretty much just us monsters. “I’ve got family over.”

Shit. I hadn’t realized it was that part of the Cycle again so soon.

This was not my preferred way of doing things at all, but it looked as though I had absolutely no choice in the matter. After pulling off my coat, I held out my hands for the little human and took her from Fred, wrapping her in the blue pinstriped Brooks Brothers blazer. I tried not to glare at Fred, but knew it was pointless to be mad at him. I knew what he was trying to very carefully tell me. He was right. His place was not the place to bring little Megan right now.

“Come up with something reasonable for them,” I told him, gesturing toward the cops with a quick jerk of my head. “I’ve got to get some rest and it’s going to be interesting, at the very least, with Little Miss Sunshine here visiting.”

Exhibit A was now snoring softly in my arms, the fingers of one hand tangled in my hair and the other hanging limply. I shook my head as I looked down at her pale face turned inward toward my thinly covered death-chilled flesh and headed the few feet to my car. 

Helpfully opening my car door for me, my friend and assistant settled Megan into the back seat without waking her and expertly strapped her in. Fred had a lot more experience with young ones in his short twenty seven years than I’d had in my much longer lifetime. Parts of me envied him that, but most of my other parts were just as grateful I didn’t have descendants to worry about. My part of the family line had ended with me, so there was no one for me to be checking up on, which was just as well.  How did one explain one’s existence to modern family plausibly?  That whole “Cousin Barnabas” thing just does not work in Real Life.

Not saying a word, Fred nodded at me once and left for the house of horrors, coming up with whatever excuse his clever mind would use to explain why I was taking the lone witness with me. I had faith in my only friend. I guess I had to, since we knew each other’s dirty laundry and kept it secret.

 I slid tiredly into the driver’s seat, sighing deeply. Looking in my rear view mirror as I pulled away from the curb and looking at Megan sleeping peacefully, listening to the unaccustomed and odd sound of breathing in my car, I found myself wondering, not for the first time…

 What have I gotten myself into this time?

I did warn Frank about my mood during That Time of the month.   Repeatedly.   That’s the main reason he wasn’t eating with me tonight.  I just couldn’t take it anymore and had snapped.

You’d think that after twenty five years of marriage, he’d have figured out that I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be with when Aunt Flo was here for her monthly visit.  When the blood comes, that’s when my claws come out and my fangs erupt.  I’m really not a nice person at that time.  Of course, a lot of women are like that.  I’ve been part of women’s groups who have discussed the subject, ad nauseum.  I’ve heard of many marriages ending because men Just Didn’t Get It. 

Frank was no exception.   Captain Stupid just had to stand on my last nerve.  It’s what he was best at, really.  The man could win awards as an honorary blond.  Sometimes, I even found myself wondering why I fell in love with him in the first place.  I came to the conclusion that it was because he was so good in bed and he was the only guy I’d gone out with who my parents had really liked.  And before you say anything, the only reason I haven’t gotten a divorce is that even though I’m non-practicing, I was raised a Roman Catholic and can’t get over the idea that divorce is a sin.

Bitching about my cooking is a sure way to get my dander up at the best of times…but when I’m on the rag, you’re taking your life into your own hands.  Frank should have known that when macaroni and cheese is the one item on the menu, I’m probably not thinking very clearly and that a wide berth should be kept.

How many of you have been with a guy who can’t seem to get that you want to be left alone at certain times?  Who hasn’t figured out that there are times that silence is indeed golden, and that shutting the hell up is the better part of valor?  Lots, I’m sure.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that my periods have been getting more and more uncomfortable.  The ache goes down to my bones and over the past few years, I can barely stand straight when I’m menstruating, and with each month, it gets worse.  Ibuprofen doesn’t work at all, despite what my gynecologist has suggested, but then, I suppose I should be brighter than to listen to a man telling me about what will work for a woman’s body.  Silly me.  Silly him.

So, anyway, I’m standing…well, crouching, really, at the stove, waiting for the noodles to finish boiling and then Frank comes into the kitchen, big as life and nosy as hell. As soon as he sees what’s on the menu, he starts complaining about it. 

It’s like he can’t help himself.

“Look, Frank, if you want something different, you can always take me out or order in,” I tell him in what I think is a reasonable tone.  I don’t even know why I made the suggestion, as his response is always predictable. 

His response is that he doesn’t think we should spend money frivolously and that I should be able to make a big meal with what’s around the house.

 Just like everyone else, the recession has hit us hard and money’s tight.   I think the last time we ate out was over six months ago.  Instead, my cupboard sports half a case of macaroni and cheese, some tins of tuna, peanut butter, popcorn and whatnot.  There’s some freezer-burned hamburger in the back of the freezer, but it really doesn’t appeal to me.  I can’t remember when we bought it, and that makes it even less appetizing.  Frank insists that since it’s frozen, it doesn’t have an expiration date. 

I think he’s insane.

You know, I don’t remember the last time we went to see a movie.  Frank is under the mistaken impression that ordering DVDs to come in the mail is the same thing as seeing it in a movie theater.  I really have no desire to see him slouched in his recliner in his tank shirt, slurping down a beer and shoveling microwave popcorn into his mouth.

Also, at some unknown time, Frank came under the mistaken impression that I’m some sort of short order cook, and that I should cook whatever the hell he thinks I should.  I let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“Frank, you bleed like a stuck pig for several days in a row and tell me you’re going to be on your best game!  You’re lucky I can stand this well.”

I was treated to a long discourse on the many times he’d hurt himself over the years, but bravely carried on with whatever the hell he was doing, showing not a sign that he was in fact bleeding to death.  Funny, but his idea of bleeding to death is my idea of a scratch.  Are all men so pathetically dramatic?  I was beginning to think so.

I growled at Frank to get out of the kitchen and leave me alone, but he persisted.  He just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.  He really seemed determined to get my hackles up and wasn’t going to stop dogging me until he’d finally got me to truly lose my temper.

“Frank, I mean it.  Get.  Out.  Now.  I’ll bring you your dinner when it’s done cooking!”

He responded that he wanted me to make something else, that he wasn’t going to eat the macaroni and cheese.  He sounded remarkably like my little sister’s son, Bobby, whining that he wasn’t getting what he wanted.

Keep in mind that my little sister’s boy is four years old, and that Frank was a man of fifty five.

It was only a matter of time before I tore him a new one.  It’s funny, but for some reason, when it finally happened, he’d seemed surprised.

It felt good.

I slurped down the last chunk of meat and carefully licked the blood from my paws with relish.

Well, this was sure a hell of a lot better than macaroni and cheese!

     I could feel my fangs trying to force themselves out of the cover of my gums, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.  I wrapped every ounce of control I could muster around myself as I strode to my car.

     I almost made it before two thin, though surprisingly strong arms wrapped themselves around my midsection and pulled back, hard. Having been startled to the point of breaking my concentration, my full set of fangs burst forth and my normal appearance followed close behind. Without thinking, I turned, glaring down at Megan, with what in no way could be considered a friendly expression, and that little girl who had already seen such unimaginable horror in the past few hours saw my real self.  She never flinched, only looked me in the eye with a completely serious expression.

     “Find the people who hurt my Mama and my little brother. Don’t let them do this to anyone else,” she said earnestly, and then turned me loose. I turned away quickly, working desperately to put my mask back on, maybe make her think she had imagined what she saw, but I was so shocked I couldn’t pull that kind of control together. Walking around me to face me once more, Megan wrapped her arms around me one more time and hugged me tightly, squishing her small face to my chest and screwing her eyes shut, squeezing tears out from beneath those tiny lids.

     Fred came running up and gently took her into his arms, eyes wide with his own shock, his skin pale, but not at what he was seeing about my appearance.

     “I’m sorry.  She wiggled her way down and was out the door before I could stop her,” he apologized. “I’ll get her to CSD right away.”

     That little girl looked at me expectantly.  She wanted a response from me. I couldn’t bring myself to let her down.

     “I promise, Megan. I’ll do everything I can for you,” I promised her.

     “Thank you, Mr. Reese. I’m sorry if I scared you,” she told me in all seriousness.  I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped me. The world had indeed been turned on its ear. Then her next words, softly spoken, as if she knew they were private words, shocked me even more. “Mama had a friend like you. Pat. She comes over a lot.”

     I stared at her in disbelief.  Flabbergasted, I sat on the curb.  Fred lowered her to the ground and she sat beside me.

     “Pat told Sam and me that we couldn’t tell people about her, and I never did till now. But I thought it would be okay to tell you, since you’re like her. She would come over on Friday nights and we’d play Scrabble and other games till Mama said it was time for bed.”

     “How did you find out that she is like me, Megan? We don’t normally show ourselves as we are,” I asked the disturbingly mature little girl. 

     “She came over after Daddy came over and hit Mama.  Daddy was gone when Pat got to our house, but Mama was all bloody from what happened. When Pat got mad about it and started asking questions of Mama, she didn’t look like regular people anymore. I didn’t get scared because Mama didn’t get scared.  I think Mama knew what she was before that.  After Sam and me saw her like that, she never looked like regular people again. She said it felt good to be herself.  I’m glad she’s my friend,” Megan told me with a proud little smile. “I have her phone number if you want to talk to her.  Maybe she can be your friend, too.”

     Betcher ass I’d want to talk to this she-vampire I’d never met in the two and a half years since I’d come to Los Angeles. Vampires tended to be rather solitary, which could really suck after awhile, and maybe this vampire would know something that would help me to solve this case and make things better for the little girl who stared at me with a trust I didn’t feel I’d earned.

     “Where is your Daddy now, sweetie?” I asked her. More often than not, victims knew their attackers, and from what Megan had already shared, this asshole seemed perfectly capable of violence. It wouldn’t be the first time things got so horribly out of hand with a noncustodial parent. That whole “if I can’t have them, no one can” crap.

     “He lives with a friend of his in Woodland Hills, so we don’t see him very much,” she told me. I nodded, knowing this was going to be one of the first aspects of this investigation for me. Then I asked her how I could get in touch with this Pat (Patricia?) vampire.

     Megan rattled off a string of numbers which I committed to memory. I’d been blessed with perfect recall, even while I was still human, so paper wasn’t necessary for me. It sounded like a downtown L.A. number. Perfect recall had its good and bad points.  It was great in situations like this; however it cursed me with being able to remember tiny but still terrible details of my past, before and after my turning.

     I stood, Megan following suit, just standing there, watching me.

     “Fred, I don’t think that Children’s Services is the best place for her right now. I think we have to keep this in-house, if you know what I mean.” My assistant nodded his understanding and carefully took the girl into his arms, cradling her to his chest carefully. She turned that same very trusting look on my sometimes furry friend and rested her head against his chest, looking at me with one eye and a crooked smile. Was her trust misplaced? She knew about vampires, and that made her life forfeit if word of that simple fact reached other vampires who weren’t quite so stick in the mud about things when it came to what they would and would not do to potential food. Knowledge was dangerous in this case.  So very dangerous for this small person.

     Fred gave me a look I was sure I didn’t like, apologetic as it appeared.

     “I don’t have anywhere to bring her, Terry,” he told me, professionalism gone when it was pretty much just us monsters. “I’ve got family over.”

     Shit. I hadn’t realized it was that part of the Cycle again so soon.

     This was not my preferred way of doing things at all, but it looked as though I had absolutely no choice in the matter. After pulling off my coat, I held out my hands for the little human and took her from Fred, wrapping her in the blue pinstriped Brooks Brothers blazer. I tried not to glare at Fred, but knew it was pointless to be mad at him. I knew what he was trying to very carefully tell me. He was right. His place was not the place to bring little Megan right now.

     “Come up with something reasonable for them,” I told him, gesturing toward the cops with a quick jerk of my head. “I’ve got to get some rest and it’s going to be interesting, at the very least, with Little Miss Sunshine here visiting.”

     Exhibit A was now snoring softly in my arms, the fingers of one hand tangled in my hair and the other hanging limply. I shook my head as I looked down at her pale face turned inward toward my thinly covered death-chilled flesh and headed the few feet to my car. 

     Helpfully opening my car door for me, my friend and assistant settled Megan into the back seat without waking her and expertly strapped her in. Fred had a lot more experience with young ones in his short twenty seven years than I’d had in my much longer lifetime. Parts of me envied him that, but most of my other parts were just as grateful I didn’t have descendants to worry about. My part of the family line had ended with me, so there was no one for me to be checking up on, which was just as well.  How did one explain one’s existence to modern family plausibly?  That whole “Cousin Barnabas” thing just does not work in Real Life.

     Not saying a word, Fred nodded at me once and left for the house of horrors, coming up with whatever excuse his clever mind would use to explain why I was taking the lone witness with me. I had faith in my only friend. I guess I had to, since we knew each other’s dirty laundry and kept it secret.

     I slid tiredly into the driver’s seat, sighing deeply. Looking in my rear view mirror as I pulled away from the curb and looking at Megan sleeping peacefully, listening to the unaccustomed and odd sound of breathing in my car, I found myself wondering, not for the first time…

     What have I gotten myself into this time?