Vampires Don't Sparkle! Read Online Free Page B

collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journa l, among others. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
His favorite type of vampire is the relentless, feral-at-the-core blood beast that, regardless of outer appearance, is the true embodiement of all-consuming darkness and evil: Christopher Lee’s Dracula , Jerry Dandrige in the original Fright Night , Marvel Comics’ Dracula , Stephen King’s Barlow in ’ Salem’s Lot and the corrupt inhuman thing in his story “Night Flier,” the Master in Skipp and Spector’s Light at the End , Prince Vulkan in Robert McCammon’s They Thirst , the monstrously gluttonous creature in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula , among others. Soulless, merciless, remorseless and insatiable … that’s what makes a truly great vampire.
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    “Y ou got some blood on the corner of your mouth,” Al said.
    An unnaturally long black tongue slithered out of Dylan’s mouth to lap away the excess gore. He smacked his lips when he was finished.
    “You gotta watch little details like that. That’s the sort of thing that’ll give you away.”
    “You telling me someone will see a smear of red on my mouth and think, ‘Holy shit! That guy’s a vampire!’” Dylan smirked. “I doubt it.”
    “Human senses may be duller than ours, but they can recognize a predator when they spot one – at least on a subconscious level. People start getting suspicious of you, they’ll call the cops. That happens, and you’ll have to find new a hunting ground. As it is, we can only stay in the same area a few months. A year tops, if we’re careful. Why make life harder on yourself if you don’t have to?”
    “Yeah, I guess so,” Dylan said grudgingly.
    The two men sat in the front seat of a red-and-white van with the words Community EMS painted on the side. There was nothing to identity what community, which was exactly the way Al wanted it. In a town of any decent size, people – even police – didn’t look twice at emergency medical vehicles. Not only was it a great cover, it was a damned good lure, too. The blue uniforms Al and Dylan wore put people immediately at ease, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to approach them with some sort of medical emergency and ask for their help. Talk about having your food delivered! And if a cop ever did pull them over, they had a plausible reason for why someone was strapped down to a gurney in the back. Just transporting a patient, officer. Acute anemia. Real serious.
    Al had parked the van outside a UtiliMart, two rows away from a fluorescent lamppost. He wanted their vehicle to be visible, but not too visible. He’d been running the EMS scam for four years now, moving from town to town as necessary, and if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that, as in real estate, success was spelled location, location, location. And an extra-large helping of patience didn’t hurt, either – especially when it came to breaking in a new partner.
    Dylan was in his late twenties, stocky, with a shaved head, stubbly beard, expanders in his ears, and tattoos over much of his body. He looked like a tough customer, but when it came to vampirism, he was about as green as they came. He’d been turned less than a month ago, not by Al, but by some bitch working the prostitute angle, a scam as old as the Pleistocene. She hadn’t stayed with Dylan. Why would she? Most humans didn’t turn after they’d been drained, and most vampires had a “feed or die” mentality when it came to any progeny they might unwittingly create. Al had found Dylan working a rest stop in Kentucky, doing his best to subsist on the occasional sips of blood he managed to steal from truckers. He’d been half-starved and half-crazed when Al took him in, and they’d been