Blacke Harbor

A sharp blow to his ribcage startled the vampire back into reality.

“Whata’ piece a’ work.”

The vampire turned and found himself eye-to-eye with a man he had never seen in the bar before. The stranger jerked his head of sandy red hair up toward the television mounted high on the back wall of the bar and continued. “Ain’t no way they’re let tin’ him get away with that one.”

“That one”, the vampire saw, was the lead story on the evening’s ten o’clock news. It was the story of a man who was accused of abducting, raping and then murdering a dozen young women over a period of about a year. At the man’s arraignment hearing his attorney mounted a defense based on mental defect. The alleged murderer, his attorney claimed, suffered from the delusion that he was a vampire.

A crystal glass of brandy slid across the bar. “Thank you,” the vampire said to Riley. He kept his eyes fixed on the television screen, using the distraction of the news story to send a clear message to Riley. He wasn’t interested. Especially tonight.

“You look like you had a rough day,” he heard her say in the purring voice she seemed to adopt just before her shift ended every evening.