Page 63 (1/2)

Chapter One

Shannah had followed hiht for the last four months At first, she hadn’t been sure why, other than the fact that she was dying and out of a job and had nothing better to do

She re by the backin the Pot Pourri Café across the street fro a cup of hot chocolate when she saw hie from the theater It had been late October, near Halloween, and the theater had been running classic vaht of the week The old Bela Lugosi version ofDracula had been playing that night

The stranger had been wearing a long black duster over snug black jeans and a black T-shirt

With his long black hair, her first thought was that he could have been a vampire himself except that his skin was a dusky brown instead of deathly pale A wannabe vampire, obviously She knew there was a whole cult of them in the city, men and women who frequented Goth clubs

They wore black clothes and capes Sos and pretended to drink blood She had heard that some didn’t pretend, but actually drank blood Others role-played on the Internet in vampire and Goth chat rooms

Shannah had been sitting by thein that saer the second tiht,down the street, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, which were black again During the next feeeks, she saw hi down the saht, which she supposed wasn’t really all that strange After all, she went to the same café and sat at the saht

One evening, si to do, she left the café and followed hiht, and the next And suddenly it was a habit, a way to spend the long, lonely nights when she couldn’t sleep Soh the park across from City Hall So and silent as the bronze statue of the town’s founding father that was located near the center of the park

While following theblack duster, she learned that he went to theand always sat in the last row He wandered through the hts in the local pub, invariably sitting in the shadows in the far corner He always ordered a glass of red wine, which he never finished Other than the wine, she never saw hiht popcorn or candy at thein the mall

When she followed hiant two-story house at the edge of town The house had bars on the s and a security screen door, and was surrounded by a block wall that h, coate She wondered what he was hiding in there, and spent untold hours pondering who and what helord? An arms dealer? Some sort of international spy? A reclusive millionaire? A serial killer? A ination knew no bounds

The holidays ca, and no one came to visit him As far as she could see, he didn’t celebrate Christe frontNo colorful lights adorned his house He didn’t go out to celebrate the New Year But then, neither did she As far as she knew, he didn’t buy flowers or candy on Valentine’s Day, nor did he go to visit a lady friend He was a handsoed the question, asn’t hePerhaps that hy he alore black Then again, ood on him

She camped out in the woods across fro, but she never saw hi the day He took a daily newspaper, but he never picked it up until after the sun went down The same with his mail He never had any visitors He never had pizza delivered No repairmen ever came to call

She wasn’t sure when she started to think he really was a vaht about it, the ht He lived alone He didn’t eat He alore black He never had any visitors She never saw him with anyone else because…

He was a vampire

Vampires lived forever and were supposed to be able to pass immortality on to others