Thank you, Peter, for having me as your guest today. I’m very excited to be here to tell you about my newest gay erotic paranormal fantasy, In Blue Poppy Fields. The book will please not only all fans of Belial, the Prince of Trickery, the Lord of Lust and the Antilight… aka Guardian Demon, but all readers who love vampires.

Maybe not all… as vampire stories differ greatly. Some have gloomy, horror atmosphere, some are full of blood and violence, still others brim with dark sensuality. How should you know ours would be to your liking? Apart from reading a sample chapter on Amazon or Smashwords to get a feel of the tale, you can learn about various aspects of a vampire’s life in our world during In Blue Poppy Fields release tour. Let’s first take a look at the book and then we will move on to our topic for today. Vampires and pain.

In Blue Poppy Fields blurb: A victim to another man’s cruelty, talented and beautiful theater actor Adhemar Lebeau learned not to trust and not to love anybody but himself. Falsely accused of his master’s murder, he has to accept assistance of mysterious Count Sanyi Arany to later discover his savior is a vampire. Forced both by a fatal illness and aftershocks of torture experienced during his unjust imprisonment, Adhemar agrees to the only possible cure. Rebirth.

Healed in body but not in mind, he guards his independence, free will and heart. He is not able to give love, only the fulfillment of lust. Yet, satiation of sensuous longing is not enough for his Sire and he knows it. When an eerie malady strikes and seems to deplete Sanyi’s life energy for unknown reasons, Adhemar understands his fears and agrees to keep a street boy, Reyach, as a pet for both of them in hope it will soothe the unspoken worries.

Out of necessity he finds himself in the role of the only hunter in their company, and out of attachment he accepts the responsibility readily. Indulgence in blood and carnal pleasures fill his nights and vampiric powers give him the feeling of safety. Until the evening when he carelessly falls prey to High Demon Belial’s plays that quickly turn into more than either of them has bargained for.

In spite of a hard start, Adhemar feels burning urge deep in his heart and no matter how much he denies it, the cause of the strange sensation is a budding seed of affection brought to life by the insufferable demon. But letting Adhemar learn to love somebody other than him is not what seemingly innocent Reyach plans.

Alright, the blurb itself didn’t give any insight into a vampire’s relationship with pain. The truth is that it is a love and hate relationship. Here is why:

A vampire’s heightened senses sharpen every perception. Whisper sounds like loud talk, taste of blood differs from victim to victim, the night sky glimmers with myriads of stars, the air is full of wafts of pleasant or not so pleasant aromas. He can learn to control the extent to which he allows himself to be engulfed in such a gale of sensations. But one sense he seldom tries to block. Feeling. It provides incredible satisfaction in carnal pleasures which quickly becomes addictive. But there is a downside to it. Delight and agony are just as intense.

If you cut your finger, you feel a moment of sharp pain and then a relatively long, annoying throb. Magnify the first sensation tenfold and you will understand but an echo of a vampire’s agony stemming even from such a minor wound. Fortunately, a vampire can heal himself fast and also has an enormous capacity to withstand pain. So, even if he suffers greatly, it seldom stops him from whatever he is doing at the moment when the throes jolt through his body.

Not every time does a vampire attempt to heal his body fast though. He distinguishes between a good and bad kind of pain. While he will, like any other being driven by self-preservation instinct, try to recoil from the latter and heal any damages to his body as soon as he can, he will not try to stop the former.

The good kind of pain occurs only in situations that do not put his life in danger. A typical moment involving this kind of pain is the point of Turning, also known as Rebirth, seen from the perspective of the Sire. While it is a painful experience, the adrenaline rush coursing through his body at that moment can become just as addictive as pleasure.

The boost of energy, the increase in his strength, senses heightened to their maximum resemble seconds before an orgasm so much that vampires seek to live through this rush again. Combined with endorphins released both in pleasure and pain, it provides them with a powerful feeling of being alive.

Yet, it would be impractical to give birth to a new vampire every time they wish to get enclosed in such sensations. That is one of the reasons why a vampire loves to indulge in bloodsharing if his lover is one of his own kind. Lovemaking twined with giving and taking blood stimulates even higher release of endorphins and floods a vampire’s body with intoxication of pleasurable pain. Not speaking about the fact that the adrenaline rush and endorphins coursing through one’s veins change the taste of blood for better.

And that reveals a reason why many vampires like to inflict pain before they feed or in a sensual play. But this is already a topic for another article in the release tour program.

If you are interested to learn more, you can find a list of topics and the schedule of the whole tour here.

We spoke about pain today and so also the excerpt will be full of agony. The following two paragraphs are from a scene involving Adhemar, Sanyi and Vincent:

Once again his digits found a bloodied, ferocious mouth without any negotiations and prized it open. Holding Sanyi’s jaws apart, Vincent wrought him off Adhemar’s throat, repeating again and again: “It’s Adhemar,” until the words finally sank into the vampire’s mind and his straining body sagged in his tight hold. “Good, good, ’tis done, ’tis done, Sanyi,” Vincent whispered right into his ear, holding him close, feeling him tremble with guilt and pain. Adhemar’s fangs weren’t considerate, he could tell that much still before a first anguished moan leaked out of Sanyi’s mouth. In agony of piercingly dull throes assaulting his wrist unknowingly and in shame of his earlier behavior. “Shh, it won’t take long. You’ve given him new life,” Vincent cooed, pressing his cheek to Sanyi’s head, soothing and calming the vampire’s memories. The blindfold of bloodlust Sanyi had had on allowed him to do it. To lie for both men’s sake. He knew that without him there would have been just death without rebirth but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need the credit but his Sanyi was desperate for it. And so he lied without a tinge of shame, praising, crooning, encouraging him to hold on a little longer. Convincing him not to think of the other night. “You’re his Sire, ’tis done, ’tis done,” he kept murmuring, feeling Sanyi’s body pressing into his embrace in need for reassurance. He understood. No vampire should be made to Turn somebody so soon after his own Rebirth. But this time it was the only way. And he could only help Sanyi through the moment and through the flood of painful recollections.

Laborious breaths and growls as the two vampires worked their way through the Rebirth pangs mingled with his soothing whispers in a strange melody. In a mesmerizing melody permeating the darkness of the room. He knew Adhemar couldn’t really hear him now, completely enthralled by his first feeding, but Sanyi could and he kept murmuring to him softly, softly, softly.

Did the little peek into our world capture your attention? In Blue Poppy Fields is currently available at Amazon and Smashwords.

It can be read without being familiar with other books in the Guardian Demon Series but you now have an opportunity to win one of the twelve copies of Trails of Love I Crawl Part 1 that opens the beguiling world of this series. Participation is easy enough for anybody over the age of eighteen. The more you help others find me and Guardian Demon Series books, the more chances to win you will have.

What can you do?

• Recommend my books in reader discussions on Goodreads, Shelfari or other platforms you are active at
• Follow my blog, like my FB page, follow me on Twitter
• Rate my books on Goodreads
• Review my books on Amazon, Smashwords, B&N or Goodreads
• Feature my books and your reviews of them on your blog if you have one
• Tell your friends about Guardian Demon Series
• Tweet about In Blue Poppy Fields, FB links to release tour articles, reblog them, Pinterest them, Stumble upon them… whichever platform you fancy is welcome

My giveaway form will give you more suggestions. Winners will be announced on my blog on the 11th of April.

I hope to see your entry in the giveaway and thank you for your help in spreading the word of mouth about Guardian Demon Series.

With this I hand over Peter’s blog back to him. It has been my pleasure to be your guest, Peter. Thank you for having me over today.

It was my pleasure to have you. Dear Readers, Does this have you curious for more? Then enter Ciaran’s giveaway:

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Story Beginning

Hanging a map of Philly had required removing a few pictures from the wall, but Martin couldn’t be bothered to care. Hand clutching onto a notebook, his eyes jumped from the page to the pins he’d positioned across the metropolis, a frown tugging at the corners of his lips. The project had taken two days and required weeding through not just his initial twelve cases, but the other unresolved ones on his docket. Honing in on the ones which featured postmortem knife wounds consumed the most time. Those got the red pins.

Running his fingers through his messy hair, he reached for his cold cup of coffee and swallowed a gulp. A half-eaten bagel and an ashtray full of cigarette butts lay on the table beside his files, which were strewn about in a haphazard mess. Martin sighed, knowing he should shower and wishing he could summon an appetite, but the crime scene photos from the Davies murder kept playing in his head like a bad song on repeat. Pools of red had soaked through the plush, white carpet. The victims bled out, the same way Jill Franklin should have, had she merely been stabbed.

Peter Dawes must not have had a taste for the stuff yet.

Martin shook his head. The rational part of his mind still thought this was all insane, but the dots were finally connecting in what was once a nonsensical investigation. Even if the improbable wasn’t true, Dawes could have been acting under the influence of this woman – whatever she was – and locked in some form of hypnotism. Maybe Carlos only thought he saw teeth. Or maybe the woman had dental prosthetics and was using Dawes as her muscle. Martin hadn’t figured out how to explain the supernatural yet, but he was sure something could force this to make some twisted sort of sense.

Vampires didn’t exist. Regardless of how he was treating this case now.

Reaching into his pocket, Martin plucked a cigarette out of his pack and continued staring at the wall. Bill had done a meticulous job of picking out the cases he felt had the strongest connections, but there was still an undercurrent of suspicion within the other cases; an eerie omen that told Martin they could very have been orchestrated by Dawes, too. “People snap…”

“… The doctor sold his soul to the devil…”

“… All of the time,” he told himself. “This one just happens to have a vampire fetish.”

Smoke rose from the end of the cigarette when he lit it. Martin reached for the notebook and went back to revisiting the crime scene locations on his list. The collection of red dots had formed a cluster, with a few others scattered about the city as though he’d wandered off and…

… Got hungry…

… Pursued another victim somewhere else. But the largest concentration of points seemed to be establishing some sort of base of operations. Perhaps that’s where he’d been living this whole time while surviving off the radar. Martin stuck the final pin into the map and backed away, his eyes fixed on the Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia. The pins branched out several blocks to a couple of miles in each direction before becoming sparse, but this only served to affirm where the killer’s home was.

“Fucking snake in the grass,” Martin muttered. “Hiding in plain sight with the gangs and crackheads.” Was this what happened to Bill Frazier? Did he see this area staring back at him and decide to wander into the lion’s den? Martin considered someone with Peter Dawes’ level of insanity and wondered how good of an idea it was to go there alone. If Dawes really was the murderer…

“Sidearm. Loaded. Even if he’s got fifty fucking knives, I’ll be armed.” Martin wasn’t sure how to scare his target out of hiding, but canvassing the area would at least feed the pangs of intuition driving him. A distant voice in the back of his mind issued the words of warning, reminding his better judgment that others went before him and vanished. He knew more than most of them had, though. Wasn’t this what he was supposed to do? Wasn’t he a police officer, after all?

“No such things as vampires.”

Silently, he wondered if those would be his last words.

***

The evening was mild for late May, with the wind providing enough chill to necessitate the use of a jacket. Pedestrians wandered up and down Ridge Ave., a transit bus screaming toward the Northwest and pausing only to pick up new passengers. Dilapidated buildings had been interspersed among houses with bars and gates. Small, urban churches painted a bleak picture of light inside the darkness. Martin found himself lost in the morbid thought of how many funerals they probably paid host to throughout the year.

He had attempted to dress as casually as possible; something reminiscent more of an unassuming neighbor, than a cop looking for a killer. The shoulder holster had remained at home and the gun tucked into the back of his pants. His jacket concealed his police microphone and the inside pocket carried his badge. Prepared or not, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a child playing an adult’s game.

Perhaps he should call for backup.

“And explain this to Graham?” he asked himself. “Yeah, right.” No, this was up to him for now. If he could catch Dawes, then Martin would talk to the Lieutenant. Martin wouldn’t have to mention the word vampire, then. It would be sufficient enough for him to say he located a murder suspect.

But first, Martin needed something to go on.

“You’re around here somewhere, you bastard.” Martin continued walking around the area he had outlined in red with his marker. He wrote down cross streets and possible intersections to examine, encompassing a swatch of asphalt approximately ten city blocks either way from his starting point. The city was active and alive, with plenty of people…

… Prey…

… Starting their night as Philadelphians often did. Lots of liquor. A lot of mischief. It all made Martin wistful for the simpler days, when he was carting off drunks and arresting disorderlies; not chasing after pseudo-immortals. ‘Think like your target,’ he chided himself. ‘You’re evading an arrest warrant while still wanting to get your kicks. Where do hide out?’ Martin paused at an intersection and peered up at a non-descript estate he figured housed a few floors of apartments. A quick glance at the cross-streets summoned an image of the map hanging from his wall. The epicenter laid somewhere around the corner, just a block or two down the street and maybe a little more North. Turning to head in that direction, he glanced first at the front doors of the apartment building and froze when one of them opened.

Martin’s heart leaped into his throat at who he saw walk out.

While a few others emerged with him – all of them a little too well-dressed for the neighborhood – the man Martin honed in on broke away from the pack, a deliberate tenor to his walk. He jogged down a short set of stairs, his black, wing-tipped shoes moving swiftly toward the sidewalk, and adjusted the black suit jacket he wore. At the bottom of the stairs, he hesitated, affording the detective a better look. Martin swallowed hard. There stood the medical student whose picture lay in Peter Dawes’s file folder.

Or, at the very least, he looked like he was the same height and build. Short, brown hair; sunglasses concealing his eyes. They called to mind the person Jill Franklin had last been seen with and the black suit added further credence to the suspicion. He did appear to be in his mid-to-late twenties and even if he wasn’t Dawes, he was close enough to the scene of Jill Franklin’s murder to be pulled in for questioning.

No, it was Dawes. Martin knew it. Yet, at the same time, there was something a bit different about the man. The great humanitarian and model citizen seemed far removed from the man who placed a cigarette into his mouth and pulled a lighter from his pocket. No, this man screamed of danger, emanating enough intrigue that the ladies probably ignored the warning sirens for the chance at a romp in the sheets with him. The Peter Dawes of the interviews sounded like he wouldn’t be caught parking in the wrong spot. This one looked more than capable of murder.

The end of his cigarette burned a brilliant orange and with the first puff, he flicked the lighter closed and pocketed it. His temporary stop transformed into a purposeful stride again, and Martin realized it was now or never. Call for back up? Write down the location he just emerged from? While both appeared the options of a sane man, Martin imagined Dawes on his way to another murder and opted for the third door. He started tailing his target, staying as far from Dawes as possible while studying him as much as he could. The former doctor seemed oblivious to everything around him; stuck on whatever task he had set his mind to accomplish. Other people passed him and both parties remained apathetic toward the other, although his walk did slow a little when a woman passed and looked him over.

He stopped as if debating something. Then he stepped up his pace once again. Martin smirked to himself.

‘Not this one. Right, Dawes?’

Only a half block down and across another intersection, Dawes made an abrupt turn down a side street. The light turned, forcing Martin to stop and look both ways, crossing quickly when the endless stream of oncoming traffic abated enough to allow him to run. Martin frowned and looked ahead. The fading figure of Peter Dawes was continuing down the street without skipping a beat.

“Shit,” Martin said, picking up the pace of his stride. When the rest of the traffic passed, the buildings flanking them created a quiet vacuum, with them the only two people walking down the street. Dawes was ahead of him by at least a hundred yards, but Martin slowed his pace in favor of moving with more stealth. Reaching behind his back, Martin drew his gun and kept it concealed by his side. His suspect appeared none-the-wiser to the fact that he was being followed.

Until Martin’s shoe hit a rock.

The noise was slight, but Dawes stopped immediately and raised the cigarette to his mouth in one careful motion. Martin paused as well and sized Dawes up, wondering if he was going to turn around and look behind him. A cloud of smoke rose from Dawes’ mouth and still, the man did not motion one way or the other. Instead, he remained frozen in place.

Martin took a deep breath to steady his racing heart.

As Martin exhaled, a smile broke out on Dawes’ face. He flicked the cigarette away, toward a neighboring building littered with construction warnings and scaffolding. The detective remained still, his gaze fixed on the man in front of him. Out of instinct, he cocked back the hammer of his gun. Finally, Dawes shifted to face Martin.

An eyebrow raised, he examined Martin while the detective kept the gun lowered at his side. The two engaged in a stalemate, neither moving except to breathe. No, Martin appeared to be the only one doing that; he couldn’t see any sign of the characteristic rise and fall of the other man’s chest. Instead, the statuesque posture returned, interrupted only when Dawes tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

Martin finally spoke. “Are you Peter Dawes?” he asked, shouting toward the tall figure. The traffic resumed its steady flow, but neither one acknowledged it; both seemed intent to carry on the staring contest for a few beats longer. Martin expected Dawes to start running. With his list of charges there was no way he’d stay to face the music. Yet, Dawes remained in position.

Dawes smiled. Then he began to laugh.

The sound bore a sadistic amount of pleasure to it. Advancing a few paces, Dawes stopped again and continued staring at Martin while grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Well, that has to be one of the more interesting questions I have been asked lately,” he said, his voice carrying an odd intonation. Chilling. Educated, and yet cold-blooded at the same time. “And, who might you be?”

Martin felt the impulse to flash his badge, but didn’t motion for it. “My name is Detective Martin Sanchez. I’m with the homicide division of the Philadelphia Police Department.” Martin listened to the echo of his voice, which sounded a lot more confident than he felt. “Mr. Dawes, you have a warrant for your arrest, for the murder of Lydia Davies and Liam Collins. You are also wanted for questioning in connection to several other murders, including Detective Jill Franklin.”

The laugh from before was nothing compared to the one that followed the list’s enumeration. Martin felt like he’d slipped a punch line into the statement without intending to and was forced to wait for the suspect’s laughter to subside before hearing a response. “My, you must be a clever mortal,” Dawes said, using the final word with a hint of disdain. “One of you has not has not come snooping around in some time. You daft creatures are still working on that adulterous wench’s case?” Dawes shook his head. “I hardly thought you would be so persistent.”

Martin didn’t want to admit he was the first one in years to touch the case. “That’s what happens when you keep killing people, Dawes…”

Dawes flicked his hand up to stop Martin, grimacing as he did. “Please stop using that name.”

“What would you prefer I call you?”

“Nothing, thank you. And spare me the lecture. If you expected me to issue some sort of remorse, you came to the wrong being.”

“No remorse, huh? Not even for Jill Franklin or Bill Frazier?” Martin swallowed hard, struggling to maintain an air of authority despite how much the exchange unnerved him. “How about those other people you’ve murdered? Not a shred of fucking remorse for any of them, Dawes?”

While Martin expected saying his name again would generate some response, Dawes only continued peering at Martin until a grin swept across his face once more. The heart inside Martin’s chest continued to pound and Dawes knew it; he was feeding off it. Martin was scared out of his mind.

“Come alone, Detective?” he asked.

Martin shook his head. “I have several units dispatched as we speak,” he said.

“Don’t con a con artist – you reek of fear. You have no cavalry. It is simply you and I, is it not?” The air around him changed, from annoyed to cunning within moments. Martin raised his gun a few inches as his skin began to crawl, but Dawes did something far different than Martin expected.

He looked to his left, at an alleyway intersecting the side street.

Then he looked at Martin deliberately before dashing toward the building under renovation.

Dawes disappeared down an adjoining alley. Martin swore under his breath, ignoring that he’d just been issued a dare as he uncovered his police microphone and keyed it. “Officer needs assistance. Murder suspect being pursued close to the –” He spun to glance toward the street signs again. “– Intersection of 31st and Page. Request all available units as suspect is believed armed and dangerous.” Releasing the button, Martin started a sprint for the alley, turning the corner and charging several paces before stopping. Dawes had vanished again like a ghost. The area contained no sign that he’d been there and the construction site was…

A plastic sheet covering an open doorway fluttered as if it’d been disturbed. “Got you,” Martin muttered as he dashed for what appeared to be a side entrance. Lifting the sheet with his free hand, he aimed the gun in front of him and slipped into the vacant building as quietly as possible. The plastic fell behind him when he let it go. Clutching the gun now with both hands, he snuck down a corridor which emptied out into a main vestibule. Two large rooms jutted from the left and right, but a quick glance revealed no sign of the suspect whatsoever.

Martin frowned while slowly pacing toward a flight of stairs. The son of a bitch was here somewhere, he just knew it. “Come on, Dawes, where are you?” he said as his gaze jumped around, afraid to settle on one place for too long. Closing the distance between himself and the staircase, he looked upward and began ascending. The building had to have been at least four stories tall, with God only knew how many rooms on each floor above. It was a fucking rat trap and now, he was the rodent.

Releasing a sigh, he walked up the next stair, but hesitated before proceeding any further. He was five seconds from calling it off when two things happened, one right after the other. First, the recollection of those damn crime scene photos resurfaced as if Lydia Davies was calling out from the great beyond and asking him to avenge her murder. Jennifer Graham spoke next, asking Martin if he thought it wasn’t worth setting all of these victims’ families at ease. Compelling, though they were, Martin still didn’t know if he was keen to search this building from roof to cellar for his killer.

That’s when Martin heard a shoe scuff against the floor on the next level up. At once, Martin’s fear was replaced by a sense of victory. “There you are, asshole,” he said, a smile breaking out on his face.

Martin started up the stairs again, this time taking one after the other, ascending without hesitation. As the stairs twisted in a ninety degree angle, he leaned against the railing and snaked around the bend without giving his target a clean shot at his chest. Dawes was probably armed with something; might have had a gun as well for all Martin knew, but there would at least be a knife. Yes, the sociopath wouldn’t be caught without his weapon of choice. ‘Brought a knife to a gun fight…’

“… In and out, like the guy was some fucking butcher…”

‘… Did you, Dawes?’ Martin mused as he reached the second floor and pressed his back against the wall. He lifted his gun and looked from side to side, but didn’t have time to do much else.

The room in front of him was encased in shadows, with a tiny amount of moonlight sneaking through one of the plastic-draped windows. The moonlight caught a glimmer, but no sooner did Martin see the sheen of the blade than it sank deep into his shoulder and pinned him square against the wall. Yelping, Martin let go of the gun inadvertently and heard it hit the gritty concrete underneath him. One fleeting second was all he had to regret letting go of the pistol before his shoulder wailed at him.

He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth against the pain, then forced himself to gaze at the knife once more. The handle jutted out of him and a patch of crimson red blood was already staining Martin’s coat, but the laughter of Satan distracted him from studying it much further. Martin turned his head and glanced toward the shadows again.

“Stupid fucking mortal.” The words came out deliberately, with a condescending tone permanently etched into the man’s voice. “I am not one easily given over to mercy, Detective, but I thought I would see if your confidence would outweigh your sense of self-preservation. Should have listened to that petrified little heartbeat of yours.”

Dawes emerged from the shadows, staring Martin down with a wicked smirk curling the corners of his lips. The sunglasses on his face did nothing to mask the coldness in his eyes and Martin knew right then and there he had just made the worst mistake in his life “You wished to capture me?” Dawes asked, almost intentionally hiding something in his mouth. “You wished yourself a waltz with the devil?”

This time he grinned widely, and when he did, Martin’s heart became a permanent tenant in his throat.

“Then let us begin.”

Story Conclusion (Coming Soon)

Story Beginning

The Feds only glanced at the case once before dismissing altogether.

Martin remembered sitting in the corner of the room, drinking coffee as the FBI agent shrugged off Carl Powers. “You’re looking for a serial killer when there’s nothing to support the idea,” he said brusquely, walking past the rank and file detectives as though the building was on fire. “At best, you have a few homicidal Goths or a gang of vampire wannabes who’re concealing their work using knives. I’m willing to bet, though, that half of these cases are just stabbings that your department has mislabeled.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Powers said, looking something like the small dog chasing after the big one. “These murders are not random. In fact, we have reason to believe there may be more. We have a ton of unsolved homicides that…”

“That just seems to suggest your department is inept, sir. What do you want the Federal Bureau of Investigation to do about it?”

“Help us!” Powers stopped in his tracks. The entire homicide department watched as he threw up his hands and raised his voice to the federal agent. “You barely looked at the Franklin murder case, Agent Blane, and didn’t bother to listen to two words I had to say about the other cases. We have enough evidence to suggest these murders are linked together. Fucking hell, they’re all happening in the same section of Philadelphia!”

Blane turned around, facing the latest piece of meat being tossed at the dogs for consumption. Truthfully, Powers was just at the end of his rope; that’s why he called the Feds in the first damn place. The federal agent was less-than-sympathetic to his cause, though. “Sir, what you have are some fringe Goths or a gang war – just like every other city in the United States – and that’s your jurisdiction, not ours. A serial killer has a modus operandi and ‘he prefers women’ is not enough. You don’t even have the physical evidence to link the same killer to each murder. No fluids. No hair, fabric, anything that has appeared at each crime scene that you can use. All you have is a hunch and I’m doing you the favor of saying you’re wrong.” He nodded to Powers. “Good day, sir.”

The fed stormed out of the office and, in his wake, left Powers’ hope for salvation, shattered into a thousand pieces. Powers stared at the doors, looking more like a madman than Bill Frazier had ever looked to Martin.

It was hard for Martin to buy that Bill started believing in the undead.

Running his fingers through his hair in a huff, Martin glanced from the wall of his apartment to the table positioned in front of his couch. A long-forgotten cigarette wafted smoke in front of his notes, next to a cup of coffee which had grown cold hours ago. Martin’s mind wandered through the maze laid out before him by Bill, a few conclusions becoming more and more evident. Agent Blane was full of shit. This was no gang war.

But then, what was it?

Martin sighed, sitting back against the stained fabric and flat cushions. He didn’t need to reread the files; he knew them all by heart. When Bill disappeared, there were ten murder victims who had his interest piqued. Nobody doubted they all looked suspicious, with similar stab wounds and punctures. Bill took two additional cold cases on independently, though, and linked them to the others. There was something Bill recognized in each case that proved the same person was behind them all, something none of his successors were able to pinpoint themselves.

Pictures of those twelve victims hung on Martin’s wall, the major facts of each case jotted onto paper and tacked beside them. All, but one, were female. Two found in similar, if less graphic, positions as Jill Franklin. What set them apart had nothing to do with gender or any form of externals since eight of them weren’t targeted for sex. Random was his modus operandi, but there was something else that connected Bill’s original ten. Something Martin noticed when Jill Franklin died.

The knife wound on each victim was postmortem. The coroner from each autopsy had confirmed as much. And while the crime scenes were devoid of spatter and mess, the victims themselves had lost a lot of blood from a secondary wound.

“… A guy murdered his girlfriend and then became a vampire.”

Martin frowned at his notes. The crime scenes were way too clean for anyone’s taste. No hairs. A couple of black fibers in one that could have belonged to anything. Most happened outside, in places contaminated by city debris and Mother Nature. For all they knew, there could have been plenty of physical evidence, but nothing linked directly to the victim. Martin swore as he picked up his pack and lit another cigarette. He took a drag and continued staring at the photographs in front of him. There was more to this. Bill wouldn’t have arrived at a conclusion straight out of a fiction novel without a damn good reason; he just wasn’t that unhinged.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Isn’t that right?” Martin sighed. “Alrighty, then. What the fuck did you find, Bill?” Nodding to himself, Martin rose from his seat and padded to the bedroom. There had to be something in the box of evidence he still had scattered on top of his desk at work.

It only took Martin a few minutes to shower and dress. As he entered the police precinct and marched to his desk, he nodded at Lieutenant Graham and said, “Cleaning that shit up and getting it back down to the basement,” before continuing on his trek. She nodded, a pleased expression on her face that indicated she bought it. Good, Martin thought as he approached his desk. Now he wouldn’t have her breathing down his neck.

The box and its contents were exactly as he left them, with the tape recorder and Dawes’ file placed in the center of Martin’s desk. Martin picked up the tape recorder and plucked out Chloe Poole’s interview, so he could return it to its case. With a flippant toss, Poole returned to her crypt…

“…Yes, he was acting a bit strangely…”

… And joined the others who believed Peter Dawes should’ve been nominated for sainthood.

The others.

Martin stared into the box and raised an eyebrow. He’d not bothered with the other co-worker interviews because the reports all indicated a lot of the same that Miss Poole had to offer. Peter wouldn’t kill anyone. Peter wasn’t that kind of person. No, not even if his girlfriend was caught in bed with another man; he’d sooner kill himself. Fucking spotless record. Not even a traffic ticket. What the fuck made him pull the knife on his girlfriend, then? The answer to that question had to be in there somewhere.

Martin glanced around quickly for Lieutenant Graham’s location before digging further through the tapes. Names were followed by their relevance, listed as ’Temple Med Ctr.’ or ’Landlord’, but one tape in particular stuck out to Martin as he rifled through and stopped to study at it.

‘Carlos Velez – Coffee Shop’

He hadn’t seen this one on the original interview list. In fact, he hadn’t seen any mention of any tape-recorded conversations with anyone from the coffee shop. This had to be one conducted by Bill himself. Martin looked around again and hesitated while Lieutenant Graham walked into her office, waiting until she closed the door before pocketing the tape and rifling through the rest of the box. Seeing nothing else that piqued his interest, he grabbed for the crime scene photos – throwing them on top of the Dawes file – and put the lid back on the box of evidence. Martin stole a quick moment to slip the tape player into his pocket, too, and threw the pictures and file folder on top of the box before grabbing it and starting for the basement.

Well, he told her he’d be returning the box. He didn’t promise everything would be in it.

***

The cop working the desk down in archives was easy to pacify. Martin claimed the folder and photos he snatched from the top of the box were from a different case. His coworker offered nothing more than an apathetic shrug, not even bothering to examine the contents of the box before walking off to shelve it. Martin mused that he could have probably snatched the blood-soaked knife from inside and walked off with it…

“Son of a bitch knew what he was doing. In and out, like the guy was some fucking butcher.”

… And nobody would have given a damn about it.

Instead, he only had his sidearm and his contraband when he found himself sitting in the middle of JFK Plaza, revisiting his conversation with Bill from three years back. His hand drifted slowly into his pocket as he considered what could have been flying around in his friend’s head; the things he didn’t vocalize to Martin knowing he might sound insane. Martin thought up an amendment to their conversation – the one where the fatigued and haunted Bill Frazier confessed that maybe his ghost was a vampire. Somehow, Martin could picture this with much more clarity now.

“I must be fuckin’ out of my mind,” Martin said, but he still slipped the tape out of his pocket and placed the small tape player next to him, so he could extract the three-year old testimony from its case. Within a few seconds, the tape was secured inside the player and Martin’s thumb hovered over the ‘play’ button. He felt like Alice about to enter the looking glass.

Before he could stop himself, he pressed play.

Bill Frazier was the first to speak. “This is Bill Frazier. Interview conducted June 17, 1983, approximately six months after the Davies murder. Witness Carlos Velez – Hispanic male, twenty-two years old – present. Mr. Velez was a college student at Temple University at the time of the murder. Mr. Velez, thank you for agreeing to this interview, sir.”

“You’re welcome, Detective,” Carlos said, sounding very lucid, if a bit apprehensive.

“Now, for the record,” Bill said, “You were present at the Broad Street Café on the evening of January 20, 1983, am I correct?”

Carlos paused to take a deep breath. “Yes, I was.”

“And you claim that you recognize the man in this photograph?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“For the record, this is a photograph of Dr. Peter Dawes – Caucasian male, twenty-eight years old at the time of the murder.” Bill paused. “Could you please tell me what you remember about that night, Mr. Velez?”

“Yes, sir.” Carlos hesitated for a moment, indulging in another cleansing breath that reminded Martin of a woman in labor. Whatever he was about to say was difficult for Carlos to force out. “I… I used to be a regular back around that time. I came here after classes to do homework and read since I shared an apartment with a couple of rowdy roommates.” He let out a nervous laugh. “Kinda… hard… to get any studying done when your roomies invite their friends over to get drunk all the time.”

“Understood,” Bill said. “For the record, you’re a student of Temple University?”

“Yeah, pre-med.”

“And you were here doing school work on the evening you spotted Peter Dawes?”

“Um, yeah. I’d actually seen him a few times. He’s one of the doctors down at the hospital. I remembered him ‘cause he helped my roommate once. Nelson got a little screwed up and split his cheek open after falling down the stairs. Dawes stitched Nelson up.”

“What was your impression of Dawes?”

“Seemed like an okay guy.” Martin pictured Carlos shrugging. “He ribbed on Nelson for getting smashed. Made me laugh, in any event.”

“How did Dr. Dawes appear on the night in question?”

“He was really fidgety. Something was bothering him. He relaxed when this red-headed chick sat down near him, but I could tell something was off about the whole thing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Carlos hesitated. “You ever watch those movies where you know the main guy’s about to walk around a corner?” he asked rhetorically. “And you know there’s some ax murderer waiting for him with an axe? Well, that’s what I kept thinking when I saw him talking to this lady. I don’t know why I kept watching them, but I did and, you know, I kept thinking to myself that he shouldn’t be talking to her. She was doing something to him.”

“Doing what?”

Carlos’ voice became soft, as though he was lost in the recollection. “She was fucking with him. Fucking with his mind. His eyes got really distant and he looked just like those people that get hypnotized on TV.”

“So, this red-headed woman was hypnotizing him?”

“That’s what it looked like to me.”

“Did you hear anything she was saying?”

Carlos hesitated. “Nah, I didn’t. But…”

“But what?”

“But, after they’d been talking like this for a bit, I saw her get creepy close to him. Just for a few seconds, almost like she was about to do something to him. I was staring by this point and… Man, I don’t know how she didn’t pick up on it. She might not have cared, for all I know. ‘Cause only a minute later, he got up and left. When he walked away, she just grinned like the fucking devil.” Carlos paused and began to murmur. “She was the fuckin’ devil. Fuckin’ monster, that’s what she was.”

Bill paused before issuing his next question. His voice became oddly quiet as well. “What makes you say that?”

There was an interminable pause. “I saw that bitch do something after that,” he said.

“What did you see?”

Carlos scoffed. “You won’t fuckin’ believe me.”

“I took the tip you called in seriously, Carlos. Try me.”

“No, I don’t want you to tell me to see a shrink or some shit. I’ve seen a shrink already and he nearly committed me, alright? People keep telling me I didn’t see what I saw, but I fucking saw it. I only started coming back here a month ago because I was afraid I’d see that redhead again.” He stopped. “And I’m not one of those druggies either, before you accuse me of that. Never touched the shit in my life.”

“I know you’re not. Now, what did you see her do?” There was silence. A vision entered Martin’s mind of Bill leaning forward in his seat and staring straight into the young man’s eyes. “I know you want to tell me, Carlos. You can trust me; I’m not going to call you crazy. I just want to know the truth.”

Carlos hesitated once again. Then he began to speak. “She left and I just shook my head and started packing up my books. It’s funny –” He laughed sardonically. “– ‘Cause I finished my coffee and thought to myself that the doctor sold his soul to the devil. And then I left and saw it.”

Bill remained quiet, waiting patiently for the young man to continue his story. It took a long pause and a deep breath, but Carlos found the will to keep talking. “I walked outside and turned the corner to head back to the apartment. But then I heard something weird; some people talking from behind the building. I should’ve never fucking stopped, but I did. I even looked around the building, too.

“She was with some other guy dressed in a suit. He was holding a girl and the girl was thrashing around, but the guy had his hand over her mouth so people couldn’t hear her screaming. I should’ve done something, like yelled or called the cops or some shit like that. But it happened too quickly and I was too shocked to think of that.” He took an uneasy breath. “I swear to God, I saw her bite the woman – she had these two, massively long teeth that went right into the girl’s neck – and the dude held this girl still until the girl was fucking dead.”

Carlos’ voice cracked with the final words. Martin blinked as Carlos sniffled and laughed – Martin assumed at himself. “You know, I’m not one of those Goth people and shit. I don’t fuckin’ sit in my room thinking, ‘I wish vampires were real.’ But I saw them. I saw the bitch’s teeth a-a-and there was blood on her lips and everything. They just… threw this girl in the dumpster –” Another sniffle. “– And talked about her like she was a piece of meat. She said something about her tasting good and being able to do something now, but I just ran. I ran and nearly fucking shit myself as I kept seeing the girl die in my head.” He paused. “You said this dude killed his girlfriend?” Another sniffle. “I bet that redhead made him do it. That’s probably what they were talking about in there.”

Bill didn’t know what to say. The tape ended abruptly and Martin hit the stop button when nothing but dead air followed. His first inclination drifted toward one of Carlos’s fears; he figured the kid was some sort of drug addict or not right in the head. However, Martin’s instincts knew that wasn’t right. The kid was lucid. Scared, but still he knew exactly what he was saying and said it just like any other eyewitness to any other occurrence a little less supernatural.

“So, what, do you think this Dawes guy did it?”

“Wouldn’t matter if he did. Nobody can find the bastard anyway.”

“So, you agree that this man completely fell off the map – this man who, if I remember correctly, never jaywalked prior to this case – and has been on a killing spree ever since?”

“… I kept wondering if the man he saw was related to the coffee shop. He said he was meeting someone there.”

“… I finished my coffee and thought to myself that the doctor sold his soul to the devil…”

“I swear to God, I saw her bite the woman…”

“Bill thought Dawes was a vampire?”

“People don’t completely vanish.”

“He nearly covered it up with that knife wound, but there were two fucking puncture wounds and the knife wound barely bled out.”

“Holy shit, what am I thinking?” Martin asked himself as he leaned his elbows against his knees and slid both hands up to his temples. In one hand, he still clutched the tape recorder, as though he had forgotten it, but was too stunned to let it go. All of the voices in his head kept shouting their testimonies at a volume Martin could not ignore. So, this is what it felt like to tumble down the rabbit hole. So, this is what it felt like to lose your mind.

Martin shook his head. What would make a model citizen go on a three year murder spree?

“If he became a vampire,” Martin muttered and his grip upon reality finally let go. He dropped the tape recorder. It smashed into pieces when it finally hit the ground.

Part Four >>

Ciaran himself is a gifted wordsmith who favors paranormal fantasy of the erotic variety. Flynn favors such things himself, but that usually ends poorly for the other person involved.

Here are the rules…

The Rules:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

Now, as part of the rules dictate one must list seven things about them, allow me to share the honors with Flynn.

• My birthday is March 6, 1954, but Flynn acknowledges his as January 20, 1983. This was the date of our turning.
• My aunt and uncle raised me on the outskirts of Philadelphia, in a town called Abington. I went to Abington High School whose mascot is… a ghost.
• This is my favorite song:
• And this is Flynn’s:
• I have a secret affinity for poetry. Pablo Neruda is my favorite poet and this, my favorite poem:
  “Tonight I can write the saddest lines.Write, for example,’The night is shattered
  and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

  The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.” (Read the rest here.)

  Flynn… may or may not have a penchant for it as well…

  eternal kiss of death i bring
  with silver tongue and sharpened teeth
  a wicked denizen of night,
  abiding slumber i bequeath

  all you who rest in ignorance,
  you silent dreamers lost in spring.
  the chill of winter overwhelms.
  eternal kiss of death i bring.

  all you who dance within the dark,
  who come upon your lifeblood’s thief.
  i lure you to the grave’s embrace
  with silver tongue and sharpened teeth.

  you damned and finite mortal ghosts,
  immersed in decadence and spite.
  i taste your sins upon my tongue,
  a wicked denizen of night.

  you’ll not escape the judgment come,
  the threshing plow of blade in sheath.
  with one fell swoop, you’ll breath your last.
  abiding slumber i bequeath.

• I have not had the chance yet to have a katana custom made for me, but should I ever, I have already planned this as the tsuba (hand guard):
  
• One of my favorite memories centers around a class I took while in college. I was late in packing up, with my next class only forty five minutes after my first thus leaving me in the position of having to run from one building to another. In my hurry, I dropped a book and grimaced in horror as a female classmate tripped and tilted sideways. By some sheer luck, when I reached out my hand to grasp her, the resulting momentum landed her on my lap.
  She and I had a date the following night.
  Flynn says his favorite memory is of the redheaded florist he murdered in the middle of her flower shop. A close second, he says, involves a brand new blade, a brunette tied to her bed, and the sight of her gagged while he sated her more carnal desires…
  Afterward, he says, he sated his.

Now, to present the next victims… err, I mean those individuals whom I wish to “tag”.  Stand and present yourselves…

• Steven Montano
• Steven Luna
• Stephanie Fuller
• Justine Dee
• MR Graham
• Jessica Fortunato
• Noree Cosper
• Liberty Montano
• JR Wesley
• Elizabeth Barone
• Thomas Winship
• CJ Listro
• Kayleigh Grian
• Emma Kathryn
• Drops of Ink

More of The Vampire Murders to come soon, dear friends.

- Peter

Martin could almost see the conversation.

The nurse’s name was Chloe Poole, a fifteen year veteran of Temple University Hospital that often worked the same shifts as Dr. Peter Dawes. On several occasions, she assisted him and seemed to know him better than any of the other nurses they had interviewed. Martin formed a mental picture of this nurse sitting down with the interviewing detective, possibly inside one of the hospital’s waiting rooms. “Miss Poole,” the interviewing detective had said, “Please tell me what you know about Peter Dawes.”

By now, she knew what happened to Peter’s girlfriend, Lydia Davies. The newspapers were right on top of the story when two bodies were found by Davies’ neighbor, Regina Donaldson. The front door had been left open, providing Miss Donaldson the jarring sight of two warm bodies and a room covered in blood when she entered the apartment. Martin figured it still haunted her in the wee, small hours of the morning. Hell, it would have unnerved a seasoned veteran like him, too.

Lydia Davies had been ushered into the afterlife next to a man named Liam Collins. Although there was no proof the two had been romantically-entangled, there was enough circumstantial evidence to see how Peter Dawes could have thought so; Collins was only partially-dressed and both bodies had been found in Miss Davies’s bedroom. The initial news reports never named a suspect and subsequent stories possessed a strange apathy toward even speculating motive.

Chloe Poole could read between the lines sufficiently enough, however.

“I know he was no murderer,” the tape-recorded voice said, speaking from three years in the past. “That’s why you people are asking about Peter. I don’t know who killed Lydia, but he wouldn’t ever harm her.”

“How do you know that, Miss Poole?” the detective asked from the corridors of time as well.

“You didn’t know him, sir. Peter wouldn’t harm anyone, especially not Lydia. Lydia meant the world to him.”

“Not even if Miss Davies had been involved with another man?”

Chloe Poole laughed. “That’d never happen.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She felt the same way about Peter. They weren’t attached at the hip or together every day, but every time I saw them, I had no doubt about their relationship. In fact, she was just here a couple of weeks ago to meet Peter for dinner after one of his shifts.”

“And everything looked alright between them?”

“Peter was stressed, but he looked happy to see her. Nothing seemed wrong with her.”

“You say stressed?”

“Yeah, you try working the emergency room for twelve hours straight. It had been a tough day. This place takes a lot out of you.”

The interviewing officer paused to switch tracks. “How long did you say they’d been dating?”

“Two years, I think.”

“So, during the course of two years, they never talked about getting married?”

“It’s the 80s, dear. Couples wait years before getting married these days. Peter had started mentioning it recently, that he was thinking about proposing to her.”

“Any problems between them during that time? Notable fights or threats or anything?”

“Nope. Never saw any spats. He never complained about anything other than the fact that they were always so busy.”

“And Mr. Dawes has never done anything that would alarm you?”

“No,” she said, chuckling again. “Sir, no offense, but he was a typical guy. Would get mad, happy, sad, frustrated just like anyone else.”

“Now, what’s this about Dr. Dawes being absent from work for five days prior to Miss Davies’s death?”

There was a pause. Martin raised an eyebrow.

“Miss Poole?”

She hesitated again. “Sir, no matter what, Peter wouldn’t kill someone.”

“That’s not what I asked. Two people have died, Miss Poole. I know Mr. Dawes was a friend, but if he’s the one who killed these people, then you know as well as I do that we have to determine the truth. His fingerprints were found on the murder weapon.”

“Probably because he’d touched the knife before. He was constantly at her apartment.”

“Ma’am, was Dr. Dawes absent from work?”

“Yes. He did disappear pretty abruptly.” Chloe Poole sighed.

“And was he acting any differently than usual before that?”

This time the pause was interminable. Martin could see the detective eyeing Chloe with a deliberate stare as she looked away and frowned. Finally she responded, “Yes, he was acting a bit strangely. He was very edgy and impatient the entire week before he disappeared. A patient walked in looking for him and when Peter failed to walk out of the examining room, I went in to check on them. They were both gone.” She paused. “I kept wondering if the man he saw was related to the coffee shop. He said he was meeting someone there.”

“Who was he meeting?”

“I have no idea. Thought it was a woman, but he made it sound pretty platonic.”

“Why had he been acting edgy?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe said a bit softer. “I just know what kind of person Peter Dawes was. No matter how agitated he was, killing anyone would be the furthest thing from his mind. That boy had a heart of gold.”

The interviewing detective paused before issuing his next question, but from there, the conversation became nothing more than reinforcement that Peter Dawes was a good man. Bill Frazier followed the lead and questioned the workers at a local coffee shop, but all they could tell Bill was that the sainted doctor was seen speaking to a redheaded woman on the day of the murders. She lingered for fifteen minutes after he left before leaving herself. No one knew her name, but she was a regular who vanished after that evening as well.

“Is this the new Bermuda Triangle?” Martin muttered to himself as he continued digging through case files and tape-recorded interviews. It seemed as though everyone connected to this case was vanishing; the suspect, the red-headed acquaintance. Several investigators. Bill Frazier. Martin sighed and finally plopped down in his chair with Peter Dawes’s file in hand. The moment he opened it up, he was instantly startled by the first page that greeted him.

A picture of Dawes from medical school was attached to a dossier describing him. Martin’s eyes honed in on two features that rang a bell of recognition, from Jill Franklin’s murder. Tall. Twenty-eight years old. He had been a handsome man and looked like he could easily turn a lady’s head, even one in search of a deranged killer.

This begged the question, however, of what happened to Dawes if the man Martin saw in this old photograph was truly a serial killer. What would cause an otherwise model citizen to snap and not only kill his girlfriend of two years, but to go on a three year killing spree, all while slipping through the shadows of Philadelphia without so much as using his social security number? Bill Frazier had originally concluded Peter Dawes probably committed suicide, which seemed the more logical notion. However, once the first few victims in these serial murders emerged, Bill became convinced the jilted lover of this case was something more.

“Bill, I think you’re out in left field…”

“… About 6’2” or 6’3”. In his twenties. Brown hair…”

“… But I don’t have any better leads.” Martin sighed and continued staring at the picture, trying to picture the young man with dark sunglasses and a black suit, but what the others said two years ago was true – his description coincided with half the white male population of the city. With a sigh, Martin flipped the page and formed what he thought was the more plausible mental image, that of the heartbroken young doctor drowning in the Delaware River.

“Son of a bitch knew what he was doing…”

Martin pursed his lips in thought. Placing the tape player down onto his desk, he reached for Dawes’ folder again and opened back to Bill’s notes. Flipping past the initial entry, he passed the boring notions of Dawes’ spotless criminal record and reached the final pages of the file. However something seemed to be missing.

Bill’s notes abruptly came to an end, mid-sentence as Bill started writing additions to his initial notes. Martin flipped the page over and expected to see the sentence continue, but the back of the page was blank and no further notes followed. Only school reports and a birth record rounded out the remainder of the file. A quick rummage through the rest of the box showed nothing had fallen out of the file. Martin frowned. Now the case files were disappearing.

“Somebody needs to put a tent above this circus,” Martin said to himself as he shook his head. He scratched the back of his neck as he continued staring into the box and finally took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Rubbing his eyes, he lifted his wrist to peer at his watch and noticed for the first time that he’d been working Bill’s old case for the better part of the evening. It was time to take a…

“Sanchez? Working pretty late, aren’t you?”

Martin looked up in time to spot Lieutenant Jennifer Graham ten feet before she arrived at his desk. Glancing down, he took inventory of the mess his personal area had become before looking up at the middle-aged brunette he reported to. She appraised it in the same manner and smirked. “This is a promising sight. Are we following a lead on the serials?”

He paused to glance at his watch again. “A possible one, anyway. Going to break for dinner now.”

“Huh,” she said thoughtfully, allowing her eyes to drift across the box and its disheveled contents before picking up the file that had been placed upon Martin’s desk. She flipped it open, but then she stopped at page one. “Why do you have this file, Sanchez?”

Martin blinked. “Like I said, it’s a possible lead.”

“Sanchez, this is a cold case. Not a lead on the serials.”

“Actually, I think they might be connected.” Martin waited until the Lieutenant looked back at him before continuing. “Bill Frazier seemed to think so, too. This guy dematerialized and no more than a few months later we started getting the first rash of suspicious murders.”

“We have a lot of suspects that disappear. What makes you think it’s Dawes and not any the other suspects from the hundreds of cold case files we have locked in archives?”

“I don’t know. Bill seemed pretty damn convinced and I wanted to know why. A detective’s intuition isn’t anything to sneeze at.”

She raised an eyebrow and then peered down at the file again. “So, you agree that this man completely fell off the map – this man who, if I remember correctly, never jaywalked prior to this case – and has been on a killing spree ever since?”

“I didn’t say I knew for sure, just that he was a possible lead.”

“Martin, let me give you some advice.” The Lieutenant peered up at Martin again, this time with a plaintive look in her eyes. “Don’t pursue this lead. Bill originally thought he committed suicide and all of the evidence we have has suggested the same thing. He cracked, killed his girlfriend when he found her with another man, and then offed himself. We’re just missing a body.”

She shut the file folder, passing it back to Martin before she turned to walk away. The implied order lingered where she left it. Martin glanced down at the folder and immediately thought of the missing notes, though. Was it possible?

“What did he end up saying?” Martin asked before he could stop himself. He watched as the Lieutenant paused in her tracks and turned to face him. Martin continued. “There’s a missing page. You said he thought Dawes committed suicide, but I know that changed. He confided that much in me before he disappeared.”

“What did he tell you?” she asked, her eyes scanning him as though waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“He said the cases were connected. Why was this file tampered with?”

Lieutenant Graham sighed and walked back over to Martin’s desk. “Do you really want to know what happened?”

Martin raised an eyebrow. “Well, it would be nice. Since you don’t think I should pursue this lead.”

She nodded. “You know what it’s like to watch a man go insane? Well, that happened to me with Bill. He started working the serial murders and before I knew it, I saw a sane man go from thinking some guy with a knife and a vampire fetish was screwing women and knocking them off… to thinking that a guy murdered his girlfriend and then became a vampire.”

The eyebrow remained arched. “Bill thought Dawes was a vampire?”

“I put him on administrative leave,” she said, “And ordered him to get evaluated by a psychiatrist. That’s why he disappeared, Martin. He went off to find this ‘vampire’ and never returned.” The Lieutenant paused for a deliberate moment before glancing at the box of evidence. “Peter Dawes killed himself.” Her gaze returned to Martin. “And this killer is still out there. Now unless you feel it’s not worth setting these victims’ families at ease, I suggest you refocus. This bastard is toying with us. He needs to be stopped.”

She turned again, but this time Martin didn’t stop her. Instead, he settled back in his seat and studied the file folder in his hands, the name looking back at him as if mocking him. The beige colored background with the typed black letters that formed a name that formed a riddle. How the hell did Bill get this far only to go crazy?

Without bothering to pack up the box, Martin grabbed his coat and left the riddle to simmer overnight. For now, it was late and he didn’t figure staring at the same information for another ten hours would grant him any new insight. Martin needed to get inside Bill Frazier’s head.

Just not so far that he ended up going crazy himself.

Continue Reading…

As a disclaimer, since this was a piece written for fun, there wasn’t much corresponding research. The police work here is straight out of television cop dramas and may or may not be plausible.

Part One – The Latest Victim

“Shots in the Dark: The Crime Scene” by Evan Lavine

“Your vampire’s back.”

Detective Martin Sanchez rubbed his eyes and sighed, reluctant to look up at the man standing in front of his desk. With that one sentence, Charlie Masters ruined his entire day and Martin didn’t think it was going to get any better. Ignorance is bliss; that’s what the wise people always said.

Well, they never had to work for the Philadelphia Police Department.

Slowly, his eyes drifted upward until Charlie filled his line of vision with his incredible girth. The beat cop was no spring chicken and it showed in the laugh lines that made themselves pronounced when Charlie regarded the look on Martin’s face. “Sorry. I know it ain’t a hooker, but -” Charlie tossed the file folder onto Martin’s desk. “Happy birthday, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Martin said, speaking through a clenched jaw that could have cracked walnuts if one were poised between his teeth. Martin sighed and watched Charlie stroll away from his desk, with Charlie indulging in a hearty chuckle over something less-than-amusing. Another murder and still, the son of a bitch could stop to chortle.

Silently, Martin hoped he never developed that screwed up of a sense of humor.

Shaking his head, Martin’s eyes drifted to the folder, pausing to examine everything humanly possible about the exterior so he could prolong having to open the damned thing. Hell, why did he need to do that anyway, he knew exactly what it was going to tell him. More than likely it would be a woman – though, sometimes, the sadistic son of a bitch would leave a guy or two as if teasing the next person working his case. The pictures would vary because his modus operandi never remained the same, but two things would remain consistent about the victim in each case.

They’d have a clean cut across their neck, sometimes other stab wounds interspersed throughout their body. What made them eerily macabre was the presence of puncture wounds hidden underneath some of the shallower cuts. The cases would exhaust the list of suspects quickly, leaving no further avenues to explore. Just an unknown shadow that seemed to be perpetrating each murder.

Martin hadn’t wanted this assignment in the first place. It was referred to by homicide detectives as ‘The Vampire Murders’ and bore with it a curse that had become legendary. The first person to work the case disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was followed by a wake of bad luck for several who followed. Bill Frazier. Martin remembered that name and found himself revisiting it quite a bit more now that he’d been passed the torch. Bill himself didn’t start off with this wave of murders. It had been a completely different case that led to him becoming involved.

The cases hadn’t even been related, either. The double homicide that occurred near Fairmount Park had gone cold, but that case had a suspect. It was a classic crime of passion; two bodies slashed to ribbons with a kitchen knife and left to unceremoniously bleed out on the woman’s white carpet. The perpetrator vanished into thin air, but within a few months strange cases started surfacing around the same neighborhood that reminded Bill a bit too much of that double homicide.

He and Martin had the chance to talk about the case once before Bill disappeared. They snagged two hot dogs and sat in JFK Plaza, stopping to fight off the pigeons in-between bites. “This whole thing’s fucked up, Marty,” Bill said as he swallowed the last bite of his hot dog and shook his head. His eyes were fixed on the fountain in front of them, but Martin could tell Bill’s mind was visiting someplace else. “It’s been months since that Davies case went cold and son of a bitch if these others make me think of that girl lying face down in a pool of her own fucking blood.”

Martin lit a cigarette, having finished with his lunch a long while back. “Yeah?” Martin asked. “What about it?”

Bill shook his head. “Son of a bitch knew what he was doing,” he said. “Those were fucking clean cuts, one right across the guy’s throat. The other one through the girl’s chest.” Bill raised his hand, thrusting it forward with an imaginary knife in his hand before retracting it. “In and out, like the guy was some fucking butcher.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between the two, Bill lost in his thoughts and Martin content not to know much more about them. Still, the quiet begged for somebody to finally break it. Martin took a deep drag of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke. “Didn’t you guys get some prints from the knife?” he finally asked.

“Yeah,” Bill said. His eyes shifted toward Martin. “A doctor named Peter Dawes. Spotless fucking record, not even a damn traffic ticket. The guy was a boy scout, if you went by what his co-workers said about him. He worked the ER over at Temple.”

“Yeah, but we all know about these fucking boy scouts, Bill.”

Bill huffed. “Tell me about it.” He shook his head. “But he went up in smoke after that. Completely. Vanished.”

“People don’t completely vanish.”

“Happened, though.”

“Did the Feds ever look at it?”

Bill laughed. “You and I know about the Feds, Marty. Yeah, they threw me a bone. They scanned his social, did some searches, the routine shit, but there was nothing. Nada, zilch, zero, nothing. No family to question; he was an orphan whose aunt and uncle had gone on to the Great Beyond, too. The victim’s family never met him. He completely fell off the map.”

“So what does this have to do with the case you’re working now?”

The color drained from Bill’s face, as though he just remembered he’d been damned to hell. “I’ve never had to look at pictures like this,” he said. His eyes became distant again. Haunted, almost. “Throats sliced. Clean cuts. Some of ‘em with knife wounds just like that Davies girl. But that’s not the worse part of all of it, Marty. With this last one, the Coroner added something to the list.” He paused, as if for emphasis. “Puncture wounds in the neck. He nearly covered it up with that knife wound, but there were two fucking puncture wounds and the knife wound barely bled out.”

Martin raised an eyebrow at his friend. “So, what, do you think this Dawes guy did it?” he asked, only meaning the question facetiously.

Bill sighed and dusted off his hands. “Wouldn’t matter if he did,” Bill said as he came to a stand. “Nobody can find the bastard anyway.”

Martin didn’t want to admit it, but he choked back a laugh that day and nearly said, “Bet he became a vampire,” in the same tone of voice that Charlie had used with him. He could almost see Bill walking away, looking a lot like Martin these days with just as much of a cross upon his shoulders. “Maybe he did, Marty,” the Bill in Martin’s mind responded. “Just maybe he fucking did.”

Instead, Martin watched Bill walk away in silence, then shook his head again as he finished off his cigarette. He didn’t know it at the time, but Bill Frazier would vanish three weeks later just as mysteriously as his suspect. No body was found. Not a damn soul had seen him since the night he kissed his wife goodbye and went to follow another lead. He was the first cop to fall victim to the curse.

Bill Frazier certainly wasn’t the last. While the next detective passed it on to his successor unscathed, Jill Franklin was not so fortunate. She was found murdered in her apartment and the condition of her body sent a chill up the spine of every other homicide detective in the precinct. She had been tied to her bed and stripped to nothing but her skin. And a clean knife wound had nearly severed her head from the rest of her body.

Martin pretended not to notice Jill Franklin’s photographs when they were passed around by the other detectives; however, curiosity got the best of him. He fell victim to being another voyeur to this freak show of an investigation, but had some insight he was sure most of the other rubberneckers didn’t have as they looked at the pictures.

“He nearly covered it up with that knife wound, but there were two fucking puncture wounds and the knife wound barely bled out.”

The blood running down Jill’s neck was conspicuously limited to one side, as though another injury happened first before the perpetrator slit her throat. The rest of the gash, gory though it was, looked far too clean to be the death blow. Martin had a funny feeling she was already dead when the jugular had been slashed.

He kept this observation to himself, though.

The murder sent the department into a flurry. The media caught wind of the killing and drove the community up in arms as they all demanded justice for the fallen police officer. While they treated the case like an isolated incident, homicide knew this was no mere coincidence and the undercurrent of loosely-linked investigations became a full-scale serial killer hunt. The department primed themselves for the influx of tips and waited for their murderer to up the ante now that one of his murders hit the public spotlight.

However, Martin knew this perpetrator paid no attention to the headlines and, even if he did, he didn’t care. No, this man was floating in a different world, cut off from the whirlwind of activity swirling all around him. Thoughts of this apathetic murderer filled Martin’s mind during one of the final precinct meetings centered on Jill Franklin’s killer. His eyes distant and his mind elsewhere, Martin held the paper coffee cup in his hand tightly and continued trying to figure it out. The brainstorming happening to the left and right of him was mere background noise as far as he was concerned.

“We get any leads yet?”

“Nothing. The tips are all bunk. Only thing that showed some promise was that a witness saw her leave a bar with a guy dressed in a black suit, but the witness didn’t see anything off about the guy.”

“We get a good description on him?”

“Yeah, but not much we can use. About 6’2” or 6’3”. In his twenties. Brown hair. Half of Philadelphia, basically.”

“Aside from the height. Any surveillance video?”

“Not a goddamn thing. He did have sunglasses on, but what the fuck does that mean, that he’s blind?”

“Yeah, right, a blind serial killer.”

“It could happen.”

“Whatever the case, the guy makes no sense. There’s no pattern to any of these murders. For all we know, he could have killed a hundred other people outside of the few we’ve linked together.”

“Anything we can use from the other cases?”

“Don’t even have a witness ID on the perp from any of ‘em.”

“Well, what about forensic evidence? She was naked, we have anything back from lab?”

“Nothing we can use.”

“Damn it. What the fuck is this perp doing anyway?”

“He was toying with her,” Martin muttered before he could stop himself. All eyes focused on him. “He knew he was going to kill her, but he was toying with her first.” His eyes rose to meet the others, an uneasy surety emerging the more he spoke. “We’re not dealing with a standard serial killer, we’re dealing with a killer. Period. He just likes to murder whatever the hell he can get his hands on. There’s no rhyme or reason. And we’re never going to find this bastard ghost.”

The rest of the room fell silent, the host of detectives, cops, and superiors staring at Martin as he raised his coffee cup and took a drink. Although it took another two years to happen, his words that day were probably what damned him toward his eventual fate.

The uproar surrounding Jill Franklin’s murder eventually subsided. Her case found its way onto the pile of cold case files, just one more folder on a growing pile that all got shoved onto Martin’s desk two years and five detectives later. One more detective disappeared without a trace. The rest were taken off the case when they failed to dig up anything new. Only one other incident happened within the police department that was tied to the case and even then, they didn’t know for sure. A cop named Tony Pilliteri was found in an alley with two puncture wounds on his neck. He spent two weeks in Jefferson Hospital before he was transferred to a mental institution in Bethlehem.

They said that during his more lucid moments, Tony muttered something about the devil. But Martin passed it off as the ravings of a madman.

Instead, Martin now found himself staring at yet another case folder, willing himself to finally open the damn thing and face the music. Slowly, he complied with duty and was greeted with the photos for this crime scene. Yeah, happy fucking birthday to you, too, Charlie.

Stephanie DiPaulo. A twenty-two year old graduate student at Drexel University, she found herself at the wrong place in the wrong time and followed the big, bad wolf into a vacant alley. The first few buttons of her blouse were undone, revealing a substantial amount of cleavage in the photos, but her vacant stare unnerved Martin far more than the condition of her clothes.

“You like the ladies, don’t you?” Martin murmured aloud. He rubbed his face with his hand and sighed. “No pattern though, you sadistic prick. Redheads, blondes, brunettes. Goths, preppy girls, women with nothing, women with money. They’re all lookers, but that’s it.” He wrestled with the notion of what this killer could be doing; why this perpetrator chose certain girls and not others. While the FBI serial killer bullshit he’d learned told him the killer was trying to recreate the first murder, Martin knew this had nothing to do with murder one.

No, he was just screwing around with them and killing them. Too diverse for any of them to be like the Davies girl.

“You don’t know that it’s him,” Martin said, scolding himself. Still, the photographs in front of him only seemed to awaken the memory of Bill Frazier that much more. The chest wound was identified as the cause of death and staring at Stephanie DiPaulo’s crime scene photos made Martin think of that day in JFK Plaza again.

“Son of a bitch knew what he was doing. Those were fucking clean cuts. . . In and out, like the guy was some fucking butcher.”

The secondary wound was the customary slice through the neck. Martin leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Damn it, Bill, talk to me. Are you trying to tell me something? Has anyone else tried to examine the Davies murder with this?” He frowned at the file and knew the answer to that question already; nobody had because nobody thought to link the two pieces together. With the Davies murder, they had a suspect; one that just vanished into thin air. With these cases, there was just a shadow; one as elusive as Peter Dawes himself.

Martin sighed and closed the folder. It was time to take a trip down to the archives.

Continue Reading…

I wonder at the men who sit on death row, what they think about on the eve of their execution. I presume their lives become a whirlwind of events – those sorts of things one does when they have affairs to bring to order before what becomes an eternal sabbatical. Death is sobering. Seeing death can’t help but affect even the most hardened killer. It is the tie which binds us all, mortal and immortal alike.

It is the tie which binds me to the events about to unfold.

“You’re Nothing But a Mistake” by Olga Masià

When the Delaware Valley Covens execute Sabrina, they will put to death a two hundred twenty-three year old vampiress. They will end a woman who once bore an indomitable spirit; a spirit which once inspired me as no other before it crushed me beneath its weight. I have readied myself to be declared this coven’s master, but in order to unseat Sabrina, I must confess the greatest of my crimes. And my lips have never testified that I knew what my mistress turned while I held her latest conquest in my arms.

I have sheltered him under my wing. I have taught him what it means to be a vampire, against every fabric of my being which has screamed otherwise. I have loved Flynn when I should have loathed him into ash and bid his curse be gone. In sheltering the assassin, however, I have allowed an atrocity to continue which should have never come to pass.

I have watched the elders fall; the underlings of so many covens perish by Sabrina’s capricious hand. I knew all along her youngest immortal child would be just as much a mistake as her oldest had been, speaking it to her when I gave Flynn his name. She, in turn, mocked me by making it the most infamous name in all of Philadelphia. I will accept my final laugh as her verdict is rendered by the six remaining covens of this area. Then I will plead my contrition to Matthew Pritchard and pray The Fates be merciful to me.

Regardless of how merciful Master Matthew is to me, this will still mark the end of an era. One hundred and six years. As Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb, I bore my neck to Sabrina and by the blood of her wrist became what I am today. Sometimes, I wish I could go back in time and relive those moments once more; kiss her lips again when her tongue told me no lies and the reserved love she had for me remained a thing of hope, not a thing of despair. I wish I could lie beside her again and imagine our next destination; dream of the next century as though we’d still be together through it. It’s taken all my power not to go to her tonight and make love to her one last time.

Instead, I sit at my desk, seeing the city of Philadelphia illuminated before me in what I can only describe as a dizzying array of fluorescent light. There are times I miss the oil lamps and the horse-drawn carriages which preceded the motorized vehicles the humans drive around on their way from one meaningless stop to the next. I wonder if they see the sands of time erode the world around them the same way a vampire does. I wonder if they know the same travails we do in their much more finite lives. I wonder.

In so many ways, I have forgotten.

It comes to me again when I least expect it. The scent wafting from a bakery will remind me of the shop where I bought scones nearly every morning. The smell of cigars and pipe tobacco takes me back to the pubs of Kilkenny and I can hear the music playing if I stop and close my eyes. The sight of a university reminds me of the colleges in Dublin and sometimes, I can feel the salt air on my face and recall what the shores of Galway with the sun shimmering off the ocean’s surface.

Thinking on my human days leads me back to my immortal ones, though, and I have not known many without her present. Her – the siren who beckoned me into immortality with her red hair and penetrating brown eyes. Excluding my years spent as a human, I have known her for one hundred and six years and, of those, spent ninety-two by her side. Within the bounds of such an era, I have loved and lost; seen the world and relished sights and sounds from many different cultures. I learned to speak seven languages. I developed a passing knowledge of two others and taught myself how to read both Latin and Ancient Greek. The strains of Tchaikovsky have been played for me by hands almost as masterful as the composer himself. Men and women have warmed my bed, sometimes both in the same night. And I have savored what it means to be a vampire. All with her.

And now, the chapter closes as I do what I should have done five years ago, when she lined my immortal brother in her sights and claimed he would be hers. Rather than holding back the scared, blood-drenched human and watching him be made into a vampire, I should have fled to Matthew’s coven and warned him of what she meant to do. Maybe Demetrius was right when he told me I played a dangerous game which has cost the lives of ‘innocent’ immortals. Since I bear the burden of those sins, I will accept whatever punishment befalls me when I testify against Sabrina tomorrow night.

It might very well mean my death.

The past few weeks have been spent trying to figure out what brought us down this current path. One cannot help it; with the death of something familiar comes the unexpected, and the unexpected causes us to cling to the familiar. Better the devil you know than the one that you don’t. But I cannot trace this current path without winding back even further, to a time before my human mother even held me at her breast and sang lullabies to me in Irish.

If I somebody asked me write the story of my maker, this is how it would begin:

Once, there was a woman named Mary Ravensdale, born in Dublin, Ireland in the year of our Lord Seventeen Hundred Twenty-Seven. She had been left at a nunnery and fled for London when still a lass of sixteen years old. The stage took her in as its ward and made her an actress, until an Earl came upon her and was smitten by the fiery redhead such that he made her his courtesan. He provided her with a home on his estate. She served him well until she went from beloved to property within fifteen years. Through it all, though, her shoulders never slumped, her temperament shaken by nothing. That is, not until the last year of her human life.

It seems all of our stories culminate as such. Some tragedy or chance encounter leads us into the arms of immortality and lulls us into the death slumber of transformation. So few of us know the hour of our final death, however, and it is only because Sabrina languishes in ignorance that I see the need to reflect for her. For both of us.

Memento Mori, my sweet Mary. I have left you for another lover and his name is fate.

***

Curious to read more?

This entire week, Eyes of the Seer is only $.99 on Amazon.com. No catches. If you do not have a Kindle, Amazon has Kindle applications you can download for your phone and even your computer. Not to be outdone purely by offering one book at a discount, however, we have even more for you.

Rebirth of the Seer, the second part of The Vampire Flynn Series, is available for free from now until November 1st. This means, essentially, you can own the first two books for the low price of less than a dollar. Fate of the Seer – is slated for release sometime in Spring 2013, so get ahead now and stay tuned for more updates.

• Flynn: Twitter | Tumblr
• Robin: Twitter | Tumblr
• Monica: Twitter | Tumblr

We promise not to bite… unless you say “Pretty Please”.

Now, for the official news. Many of you who have followed my author account on Twitter have expressed interest in a special sort of Giveaway and we have decided to make it a pre-Halloween treat, if you will. This is especially for those of you who have purchased Eyes of the Seer and Rebirth of the Seer for your eReader, but shall hopefully spark the interest of those of you tempted to start the series, who prefer the “dead tree version” of your books. Without further ado, allow me to announce the…

Vampire Flynn Series Print Version Giveaway

Yes, that is right, the lucky winner shall receive both EotS and RotS in paperback form, both autographed should the lucky winner decide to have their copies signed by yours truly. In addition to this, we are also throwing in a set of the character trading cards, featuring Flynn, Monica, Sabrina, and Robin. My brother and I highly suggest using Sabrina’s in the spokes of your bicycle.

I jest.

Mostly.

In any event, generating entries for this giveaway is relatively easy. We are utilizing Rafflecopter to make it fair for all of our entrants. Here are your choices:

1. Tweet about the Giveaway. This is the only daily option, so if you wish to generate the most entries, this is the best way to do it.
2. Like Eyes of the Seer and Rebirth of the Seer on Facebook. Each like shall give you an entry.
3. Follow @peterdawes on Twitter. Because I relish entertaining you in bursts of 140 characters.

In addition, there are two choices which afford you multiple entries in one fell swoop:

1. Write an Amazon.com review for Eyes of the Seer or Rebirth of the Seer. This will win you five entries.
2. Tell us who you would cast to play Flynn, Robin, or Monica in a movie version of The Vampire Flynn.

So, without further ado, good luck. Or, as some bizarrely-dressed woman said in a movie I have seen recently, may the odds be ever in your favor.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As I am certain a few of you may have surmised, there have been some changes taking place around here. With the release of Rebirth of the Seer, and our successful debut at Otakon, we have been plotting and scheming all sorts of things for Crimson Melodies as a whole. Fortunately, I was able to direct some of this creative energy toward a lingering conundrum.

Art by Heather Watson

In the Prologue for Eyes of the Seer, I expressed both the fact that I became vampire in 1983 and that I was approaching you twenty-five years after my turning. While I have since reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine immortal years, my adventures have hardly waned. As such, even when the last part of the original trilogy – Fate of the Seer - is published, more had already been planned to follow.

The problem was how I would present it.

I originally planned another trilogy. I even wrote the first two books in the follow-up trilogy and made it through the tumult my sadistic writer thrust me into, though rather scathed on the other side. The problem came when we made it to the sixth book. Put bluntly, the sixth book… is a behemoth.

Now, I could pretend to be Stephen King in all my pretentious glory and cackle as you perused something roughly the size of the unabridged version of The Stand. (Well, perhaps not that bad, but close.) Or, I could take the rather convenient break in action which occurs halfway through the book and divide one large, Song-of-Ice-and-Fire-esque tome into two smaller offerings. This sixth work, tentatively titled The Enemy Within is separate from The Vampire Flynn books in its tone.

Books Four and Five, however… are quite a bit more like their older three brothers.

So, an executive decision was made. In a fit of whimsy reminiscent of Douglas Adams, I am creating a trilogy in five parts. Or, more accurately, The Vampire Flynn Trilogy has become The Vampire Flynn Series and shall encompass Books One – Five of my autobiography. You know of Eyes, Rebirth, and Fate of the Seer. Permit me to introduce you to their two new siblings: Return of the Seer andThe Immortal Seer.

I hesitate to share the premise of either book just yet, because they are rife with spoilers, but if you do not mind being spoiled, I have two short excerpts at the end of this post. I would like to have both Fate andReturn out next year, but can promise Fate of the Seer at the very least. I can also promise that, so long as I possess this calling, I do not see The Fates being finished with me yet, not even after The Enemy Within. ;)

Thank you, friends, for continuing with me in my adventures.

***

An excerpt from Return of the Seer:

“Did you think you would be rid of me?” he asked, loathe dripping from his voice. The weight of his stare fell onto my shoulders, but I refused to acknowledge it as he continued speaking. “You no doubt figured it has been six years and you have walked as a human for all this time. You pretend to be one of these people when we both know you are something much different.”

I could issue nothing in response. The figure continued pacing around me, however, in cold, calculating steps until the sight his shoes entered my line of vision. The fact that I recognized them only made the situation more surreal.

He chuckled. “Come now, seer, do you not wish to look me in the eyes after so long? Do you think by changing your appearance it shall not be like staring into a mirror, remembering the vampire within you? Tell me what you say to yourself when you notice after six years, nothing has changed about you. Tell me if you cut your hair, you would not look precisely the same way you had before.”

He crouched and I finally looked at him, seeing the demon himself peering back at me. He lowered the sunglasses protecting his eyes, but failed to writhe and scream the same way I had when he and I had been one in the same. Instead, a wicked glint crossed a pair of emerald green irises and fingers the same length as mine smoothed back hair the same color. As he opened his mouth in a wide grin, two fangs descended, a laugh which chilled me to the marrow passing through his lips.

The assassin. My dark side. The entity I had feared the most all these years. He nodded. “You cannot escape what you are,” he said. “And if you think immortality is through with you yet, you are sorely mistaken.”

An Excerpt from The Immortal Seer:

I marched into my room, rage drowning out every other emotion lobbying for position within my psyche. Under one arm, I carried a long, wooden box and around my shoulder hung a black bag filled with the items I had procured while wandering the streets of Toronto. The brisk, purposeful stride marking my entrance back into the coven had garnered the attention of everyone I passed. Now, they gathered at the doorway of my room, afraid to confront me directly after what had transpired with Emily.

Let them gawk, I thought. I no longer cared.

Placing my bundles down in the sitting room, I took my suit jacket off and threw it onto a chair before reaching for the black bag. A familiar vestige lay atop everything else, and as I pulled it out I spared no time for reminiscing. Each arm slid through the straps of the leather holster I had acquired. I motioned for the wooden box and placed it onto the couch, hands settling on the lid and thumbs lifting the brass snaps which secured it shut. When I opened the lid, I finally permitted myself a pause, eyes surveying the collection of three finely-crafted throwing daggers. So this was what it had come down to.

Once again, I would be the vampire slayer.

The story of their romance never made it into the pages of Eyes of the Seer, but it made a significant contribution as they decided the fate of a vampire assassin. Like two parents arguing over the future of their child, Michael and Sabrina warred over their ignorant newborn. Only the roles were reversed: Sabrina would be the demanding task master of a father while Michael would seek to nurture the young immortal and help Flynn toward his own path.

The following could be called an outtake. For anyone who reads Eyes of the Seer, it could be a behind-the-scenes look at one scene in which Michael storms away after exchanging angry words with Sabrina in French. In just that brief exchange, however, sixty years of travels and a century of history tumbles onto the page. Sometimes, as writers, this is the easiest way we can give characters dimension: by also giving them a history.

***

The Journal of Michael O’Shane
December 22, 1983

“Pen and Journal”

San Francisco seems like an eternity ago on most nights. On other nights, it feels like it just happened yesterday. My arms buzz as though Sabrina still shivered in them, scared and uncertain of how the world had changed now that we were no longer its gods. The woman I have known since that day has been the victim-turned-villain of her own tale.

Most nights I try to avoid the arguments. They seem to happen anyway. Tonight was another of those incidents I regret, but fell into like the fool that I am. I don’t know why I care what happens to Flynn. His fate has been etched in stone since the day he was turned. When he took to the sword, Sabrina found the perfect use for her pet.  The woman once terrified of the word ‘seer’ laughed at my expense when he beat me in a sword fight, as though I should’ve been a match for somebody born to slay vampires.

I suppose it was her form of poetic justice. “Teach him how to be an assassin, Robin.”

I should’ve said no. I should’ve risked derision and exile and thanked The Fates for the blessed release when I no longer had to wake within the confines of this prison. There are a hundred places I could’ve gone with warmer reception and better opportunities. I keep returning to this, though. The devil I know.

But I said yes in a moment of weakness, one that had nothing to do with her. As she made the request, I realized in all of this, Flynn was an unwitting pawn. I had allowed her to turn him vampire instead of murdering him when I had the chance. I had shunned him when it was my normal duty to instruct the vampires in this coven. In doing so, I spared him the benefit of a saner, sounder mind. Now, she had a mission for him and disaster loomed should her plans unfold without my intervention. I said yes because my younger brother needed an advocate.

I have been rendered impotent, though. Whatever love he and I have fostered hasn’t eclipsed her siren song and now, he seeks to do her bidding. I have spared myself the comparison between him and Timothy and lie to myself right now, saying it doesn’t sting. He wasn’t mine to start with. But I see him walk to his demise and wish these past few months of instruction had done more than reinforce his ability to handle a weapon. I am at a loss. Maybe there was something more I could have done. Something I failed to do. He wasn’t mine to start with and here I am, second-guessing myself.

I should leave, but I know I won’t.

As she entranced him with strokes to his ego, I saw her tendrils of seduction coil around him and I didn’t experience the concern I should have. I felt jealous. I remembered the times she used to lull me into the sweet embrace of decadence and tasted envy on the tip of my tongue. I stormed away not only because she was winning the battle, but because I couldn’t risk losing my composure in front of Flynn. I won’t leave this coven, but only because she has yet to win the war.

She is a bitter pill I keep swallowing; a smouldering torch I continue to bear. On the nights when San Francisco feels more like yesterday, I am back in 1941. The cross I carry for her seems much more reasonable, because she is a scared and wounded woman and I am the man who protects her. This is 1983, though, and she no longer desires my plebian ambitions and I care little for her devious schemes. I should be done with this at last and decide what to do with my next century.

A vampire not even a year old dangles by a thread, though, stuck to the web she continues to weave. I wish I could say I lingered to protect a lover, but neither would have me. I am a second and a mentor, choking back his own pride in the hope some beauty is forged from the ashes. Perhaps I should stop living in the past. She might unnerve me less if I do.

‘Is fhearr fheuchainn na bhith san duil.’  It is better to try than to hope.

Sláinte,
Michael