Note, I wrote this story about a year ago and posted it in facebook. I kind of have a thing for fake detective stories.”

Chapter 1

Nine in the morning is a little early for somebody to come into my office, considering the work I do. The summer sun is beating down on the window but the blinds are pulled all the way down. I don’t need the sun right now. I’m hungover, cranky and didn’t sleep.

Also, I’m a vampire.

She walks in wearing a red gown and red lipstick. Red like the blood that’s coursing through her veins. Blood I could smell since she entered the building. That sweet, bloody blood smell that my heightened vampire senses instinctively seek out because I’m a vampire. She sat down in the chair opposite my desk, a mere five feet away from the ultimate hunter. The vampire.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make an appointment. I’ve never needed to see one of… you before.”

A vampire? I chuckled in my head. “A detective?”

“Heh. I guess a lot of people feel silly walking in here.”

That little sarcastic laugh sent a shot of breath in my direction. Toothpaste, a bagel and blood. I could take this five hundred pound desk, fling it out from between us with my vampire strength and bite into her soft, warm neck. I would, had I not vowed to never take a human life to satiate my undead vampiric thirst.

She begins to speak again, the way a hamburger would speak to somebody who has given up eating meat but still really wants to. “My husband has been murdered. The police have written it off. They say he was attacked by wild animals.”

If only she knew there was a beast in the very room she sat. A vampire beast. “Wild animals?”

“Yes. There’s no physical evidence but he was torn limb from limb. He-” She begins to choke up, a tear runs down her face. Skin covering muscle tissue and blood. She pulls out a file and hands it to me. Pictures from the crime scene.

This work looks familiar.

“I know this sounds unusual. I’ve heard you’re specialty is unusual cases.”

“Unusual cases seem to find me.” They do that when you’re a vampire.

I rush her through the details. It’s been days since I’ve drank an animal’s blood. I only drink blood from animals. “My fee is $200 a day, plus expenses. I’ll contact you in a week with whatever I find”.

“$200 a day, plus expenses. Just like Rockford.” Except Rockford wasn’t a 350 year old vampire. “One more thing-” She grabs my arm as I show her the door “Your arm. It’s so cold.”

“I have the flu.”

“Is it contagious?”

“Only if you get too close”

She grabs my arm again again, still recoiling slightly from the cold, dead skin of a vampire. “There’s something you need to know about my husband.”

I look her in the eyes. I can hear her pulse quickening, pumping liquid ambrosia through her body. Her body that’s filled with my vampire version of heroin is now right next to me. She inhales.

“My husband was a mummy.”