I nodded.

  “So I hear him come in. I know I heard him, because our front door creaks. So I close my eyes, because I know I’ve got another two hours of rest before I do my physical therapy exercises, and he helped me with those. And I sort of hear him in the room, but I’m not really awake, and then a hornet stung me in the arm.”

  “A hornet?” Repeating what a witness said was a way to show them you were listening, and subtly encourage them to keep going.

  “I thought it was a hornet. Or a spider bite. A sharp pinch. In my upper arm. And I swatted at it—and that’s when I saw…”

  She gazed into her webcam like I was the object of her fear.

  “What did you see, Marjorie?”

  “A man. Standing over me.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was tall. Wearing a mask. Well, half a mask. Over his nose and mouth and neck. It had a picture on it. Almost like a Halloween mask. But this was just thin fabric.”

  “A balaclava,” I said. I’d known someone who wore a balaclava, and the memories were terrifying.

  “It had a drawing of fangs on it. Like a vampire. But that wasn’t the scariest part. The scariest part was the eyes.”

  “What about them?”

  “They were red. Bright red.”

  “Do you mean bloodshot?”

  “No. The pupils were red. I’ll never forget them. It was like he had a fire inside his eyes.”

  Interesting. “What color was his hair?”

  “I don’t remember that. Right after the hornet sting, I got really dizzy. I think I passed out.”

  “Can you tell me what you do remember?”

  “I was… upset. Scared. And the Destiny Drac… well… the first time I opened my eyes… he was petting me.”

  “Petting you?”

  “Stroking my hair. Saying ‘It’s okay. Everything’s okay.’ Like I was a dog. It was terrifying.”

  “Can you remember the voice?”

  “Soft. No real emotion. Kind of flat.”

  “Could it have been a female voice?”

  Her features scrunched up. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What’s the next thing you remember?”

  Marjorie seemed to be near hysterical. “Those… eyes. He was squatting next to the bed, staring up at me. He had a tube in his mouth… sucking my blood… there was a needle in my arm and he was sucking my blood.”

  “So the mask was down?”

  “No. There was a hole in the mask, on the mouth, that the tube went through. I… I can’t get it out of my head… him leering up at me… making those slurping sounds…”

  Marjorie sobbed, covering her face with her hands.

  I gave her a moment, feeling like a heel for making the poor woman revisit this awful memory.

  When she calmed down a bit, I continued. “What happened then?”

  “When I woke up, he was gone. My husband was back, with my medication. I told him what happened, and at first he didn’t believe me. Then he saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “The Band-Aid. On my arm. Where the tube had been stuck into me.”

  A Band-Aid? Interesting. I consulted the incident report.

  “Was there any sign of forced entry? Broken door? Broken window?”

  “No. He just walked right in. My husband said he locked the door, but obviously not.”

  Or the door was locked, and Blood knew how to use lock picks. I checked my notes again. “You went to the hospital after the attack.”

  She sniffled. “Yes.”

  “Did you get a toxicology screen?”

  “A what?”

  “Did they test your blood? After you were drugged?”

  Marjorie blinked several times. “Drugged?”

  “The hornet sting. It sounds like you were injected with something.”

  This seemed to be news to her. “I… no… they didn’t check for any drugs. The detective never said anything about that.”

  “Detective Kertis,” I stated.

  “I don’t remember his name. But he didn’t seem very concerned. He acted almost annoyed, like he had better things to do. Hardly asked me any questions.”

  My two interactions with Detective Kertis hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes each. But he struck me as a decent cop. Or at least one who went through the motions to get the minimum done.

  His case reports, however, were lazy and sparse. Which was at odds with a police officer who was so concerned with this perp that he wanted Harry and I to consult.

  I recalled his first visit, right after we’d been admitted.

  BEGIN FLASHBACK

  We’d spent hours talking to local cops, explaining what had happened to us. They took notes and acted sympathetic, and it didn’t appear that we’d be charged with anything.

  After they left, we had a brief respite, and then another one showed up.

  He came to our hospital room door, dressed in the standard Destiny uniform, complete with a tan cowboy hat. Tall, broad shouldered, thick chest. He looked like he knew his way around a bench press. Like all of us, he wore a face mask.

  He took off his hat and rapped on the doorframe.

  “I’m Detective Kertis. Can I come in?”

  “It depends,” Harry said. “Do you have beer?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “If I gave you twenty bucks, could you get us some beer?”

  Harry had asked that of every single person who’d come into our room. None had complied.

  “I suppose I can do that. You’re Harry McGlade. I know about you. You’ve had quite the career. I liked that TV show.” He glanced at Sam, then glanced away. “Um, maybe this would be better to discuss privately?”

  “Sam, want to take Dad for a wheelchair ride?” Phin asked. “Maybe we can find some ice cream.”

  “I want chocolate ice cream!” Sam declared.

  “I also want chocolate ice cream,” Harry said. “And don’t be stingy with the sprinkles.”

  Phin managed to get into his chair, and Sam helped push him out of the room.

  “I appreciate it, ma’am.”

  “Stop calling me ma’am. I’m Jack.”

  He grinned in an aw shucks sort of way. “I know. Jack Daniels. A real hero. We didn’t even know you moved into town. You’re about the most famous cop in the country. And right after you come to Destiny, you stop the biggest serial killer of all time. It’s an honor to meet you. Both of you.”

  “What’s with all the ass kissing, Detective?” Harry asked. “Not that I don’t enjoy some sloppy, wet ass kissing.”

  He shifted his weight from one leg to another, the keys in his front pocket jingling. “Well, I came here to ask you, both of you, if you’d help out with a case of ours.”

  Harry and I exchanged a look, knowing exactly who he was talking about.

  “The Destiny Drac,” I said.

  The detective’s eyes widened. “You know about the Destiny Drac?”

  “Weirdo who sucks blood?” McGlade asked. “We met the asshole. We’re each down a pint or two.”

  “We’d be honored if you took a look at our case files. It’s more than just assault cases. This person has murdered at least six people, as far as I can piece together.”

  I closed my eyes. My family had just narrowly avoided yet another encounter with psychopaths. I didn’t want to press my luck and go seeking another one out.

  “Let’s do it, Jackie. We could use the excitement.”

  “Are you on crack?”

  “Not at the moment. Why? You got any?”

  “We don’t need any more excitement, McGlade.”

  “We need to help out.”

  “No we don’t. We need to rest. And heal.”

  “If this is a bad time…” Detective Kertis began to back up, toward the door.

  “It’s a perfect time, Detective Klingon.”

  “It’s Kertis.”

  “Just stick around, Detective Morris—”

  “Kertis.”

  “Detective Arbogast.”

  “That’s not even close. It’s Kertis. K-E-R-T-I-S.”

  “Let me worry about the names, Detective Pancreas. Jackie wants to do this. I know her. We’re BFFs.”

  “Is that true, Lieutenant Daniels? Can you help?”

  It had been a while since a cop called me lieutenant.

  “You just want us to look over the case files?” I asked. “Nothing else?”

  He nodded. “Nothing else. Just a professional consult. That’s all.”

  “It’ll be harmless, Jackie. We won’t even have to leave this room.”

  END FLASHBACK

  And now here I was, out of our hospital room, getting sucked into another violent crime investigation. Kertis had seemed a bit shy during our first encounter, but that could have been a good ole boy routine he used to facilitate cooperation.

  I considered the second time he’d visited, this time bringing expensive craft beer, which excited McGlade almost to the point of a priapism. After dropping it off, I questioned him a bit.

  BEGIN FLASHBACK

  “I looked through the files, Detective. Carefully. Something keeps sticking out at me. You said you suspected Blood of six homicides. But the modus operandi for those murder cases seems different than Blood’s other victims. Like an entirely different person. The murder victims—they had flesh removed. Cut off. Like they’d been butchered. That’s a different MO. Likely a different perp.”

  Again Kertis had taken off his tan cowboy hat and played with the brim, studying his boots.

  “Well, ma’am, I’ve read about you and some of the bad guys you nabbed. There’s a term you used before. Escalation. When a perpetrator gets more and more violent, over time.”

  “That does happen,” I admitted. “But according to your victim reports, not a single survivor has mentioned anything more than a non-consensual blood donation.”

  Kertis’s dark eyes met mine. “That’s not true, Jack. This Blood character, you reported that he beat you and Harry up with a baseball bat. That sounds like escalation, don’t it?”

  It did. But we might have been an exception, because Harry had provoked Blood. Harry had the tendency to bring out the worst in people. I wished I had a dollar for every time I wanted to hit McGlade with a bat.

  “I can attest to the escalation,” Harry said. “So can my broken bones.”

  Kertis winced. “I’m concerned that Blood had some sort of close bond with Rita and Larold Goodall. All three of you reported that Rita was a cannibal. Maybe Blood has been trying it out. Like putting on your parent’s shoes, to see if they fit.”

  “Plus there’s the moon phases,” Harry chimed in. “The homicides, and the flesh removal, were all within a few days of the full moon. Maybe Blood switched from a liquid diet to something with a little more meat during the lunar cycle.”

  I considered it. Dissociative identity disorder, once upon a time known as multiple personality or split personality, was extremely rare. Numerous movies, books, and TV shows to the contrary, people didn’t commonly change into other people.

  Or werewolves, regardless of McGlade’s belief system.

  “Like a werewolf,” McGlade added, barging in on my thoughts. “Maybe Blood thinks he’s Dracula, but during the waxing and waning gibbous moon he thinks he’s the Wolfman.”

  “Or it’s two different people,” I countered. “It’s likelier it’s two people.”

  “If it’s one person or twenty, our little town has had enough of monsters,” Detective Kertis said. “Whatever you can do to help us stop this is most appreciated.”

  “You’re welcome, Detective Jerkass.”

  “It’s Kertis.”

  “Just keep bringing the beer,” Harry said, “and we’ll be your monster hunters.”

  END FLASHBACK

  I stared at my tablet, at Marjorie, wondering why the Detective Kertis I met seemed so different from the one she met.

  Then again, every cop had bad days.

  “So, do I need to go back to the hospital?” Marjorie interrupted my reverie. “Check to see if I’d been drugged?”

  “The drugs wouldn’t be in your system anymore. The time to check was immediately after the incident.”

  Marjorie threw up her hands. “So the police didn’t do their job, and the ER didn’t do their job, and this psychopath is still running around.”

  That seemed to be the case.

  “Thanks for talking to me, Marjorie. If you remember anything else, here’s my contact info.”

  She clicked off without saying goodbye. In my notes I located the next victim I was scheduled to call. He’d been attacked a year prior to Marjorie. I invited him into the video chat room and waited for him to join.

  Hopefully he’d help me figure this case out.

  BLOOD

  Busy busy busy, so much to do, only so many hours in a day.

  The child’s blood I’d consumed earlier reenergized me, and I was getting my checklist done.

  Hospital work; check.

  Talking to Flesh: check.

  Spying on Jack, Phin, Harry, and Sam without them knowing; check.

  Plotting next move; check.

  Grabbing my snack; not yet.

  There was currently someone already waiting in line at the snack bar. But he’d be gone soon enough.

  How much of life is just waiting around, am I right? A person who has lived until ninety years old will have been asleep for thirty of those years. I’d wager that they spent another thirty waiting for stuff to happen.

  Waiting for elevators. Waiting in line. Waiting at stoplights. Waiting to board the plane or train or ship or whatever.

  We’re always waiting for a show to come on, or some movie to come out, or new videogame or downloadable content to drop. Waiting for our devices to update. Waiting for a book to be released. Waiting for Mom to take us somewhere.

  You probably want to know about my parents, and what my awful childhood was like, and how they abused and neglected me, and all of that Holden Caulfield kind of crap.

  So while we’re waiting, maybe we should talk about all the abuse I suffered to turn me into a vampire.

  You want to hear about my parents locking me in a box under the bed for days at a time, and all I had to eat were the bugs I could catch.

  Awful, right?

  Or that they would chain me to the radiator and beat me with a belt until I bled, and how I used to suck on my wounds to get my strength back?

  You want juicy stuff like that, don’t you? Stuff that makes you cringe. Stuff that conjures up dark and sinister images in your mind because it’s a safe, vicarious thrill to read about bad things that happen to other people.

  Maybe I learned about blood from finding my Mom’s used tampons in the garbage.

  Too gross?

  Maybe I had some extreme medical condition. An illness. A disability. A disfigurement. Something that made others tease me, bully me, hate me. So my only recourse was to feed upon my oppressors.

  Too cliché? Perhaps. But isn’t everything a cliché?

  Maybe I watched too many horror movies, and I began to identify with the monsters. They had power. People feared them. A vampire can turn into a bat, seduce and hypnotize people, had superhuman strength, and couldn’t be killed by normal means.

  Or maybe I had no parents. I was a product of the foster care system, being systematically beaten and raped and abused and neglected until I retreated into a fantasy world.

  Maybe I was raised in extreme poverty. In one of those Third World countries that always seems to have a war going on. Or some disease outbreak. Or drought or famine or tsunamis or volcanos or insert your own horror here. In order to survive, I had to feast on my community.

  Or—here’s one of my favorites—at daycare, the satanic counsellors used me in blood rituals while they worshipped the devil. That scenario could include all manner of perversions. The mind boggles. They could have forced me to have sex with goats, made me eat entrails and severed limbs and excrement, hung me by my heels and drained my blood on a Black Altar to summon demons.

  Which one of the above do you think is true?

  How about… none of the above.

  I grew up normal and healthy in middle-class suburban United States of America. My parents loved me. I wasn’t abused, or bullied. I wasn’t disabled, or sick…

  Until puberty.

  That’s when I learned that my insides were drying up.

  I know what you’re thinking. I just gave you a litany of fake creation scenarios, so you think that my cells losing moisture is just another made up story.

  Or that maybe I’m delusional. That I have a mental health problem.

  Occam’s razor, right? What is the simplest explanation that requires the least amount of evidence?

  Easy. Blood is insane. Case solved.

  Except I’m not insane. If I were insane, I’d be the first person to know it. And I’d get the proper medical help. It would be a lot easier to take a pill every day and talk to some shrink about my dreams than sneak around, sucking human blood and trying to avoid getting caught.

  So I’ll tell you how this began.

  Or maybe showing you is better. Let’s go back a bunch of years to see what young Blood had to deal with…

  BEGIN FLASHBACK

  I know… this flashback thing is gimmicky, right?

  But all methods of storytelling involve gimmicks. Theater has an imaginary fourth wall that the actors are supposed to ignore, but it allows the audience to view the play. Movies and TV shows have editing, which cuts from one scene to the next and is impossible in real life, and they also use unrealistic techniques like montage and slow motion and extreme close-ups and Dutch angles.

  What’s the literary equivalent of Dutch angles? How can you skew perspective in a book?

  Maybe an unreliable narrator?

  But I’m getting off tangent, aren’t I? This is supposed to be a flashback.

  I’m eleven years old, at the local park/playground/softball field, and I’m going to do a penny drop off the monkey bars because there aren’t any parents around and they got all overprotective when kids did stuff like penny drops.