Excerpt from A Problem with Werewolves. Dan's girlfriend presents him with an unpleasant surprise.
Monique stepped back, and her eyes captured mine. “I’m a
vampire.”
A three-word statement of the impossible, I thought. I
searched her face but failed to detect any sign that she was joking or
subjecting me to some test.
“I’m a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire. I was born in
a small chateau not far from Grenoble. A distant relative attacked me when I
was thirty years old and made me into an undead creature. After that horrible
evening, I lost my husband and two daughters. They were eleven and seven.”
I couldn’t swallow,
and my racing pulse thrummed throughout my body. Her serious manner didn't
change. I looked at the remaining whiskey and downed it in one gulp. Though the
room was chilly, perspiration formed on my forehead. This isn’t real, I
thought.
In Dark Journeys, short
stories and dark poems describe perilous paths taken
by mortals, vampires, and
other creatures of the night. Some survive, others do not. Why not join
them on their journey through the gates of hell, so to speak.