Once we were able to connect him to the houses, everything fell into place. Depressed, angry, and abused as a child, Young had decided to re-visit his own misery on the foster homes he’d lived in as a child. Recently divorced and fired from his job at the hospital weeks prior for tampering with the donations, Billy Young might as well have had a bull’s eye painted on his forehead. We’d narrowed it down to the handful of workers in the hospital’s blood bank-the ones who had direct access to the vampire donors-and the rest was easy.

The daylight-challenged folks tended to eat people who poked at them with sharp things-go figure. Not exactly an easy thing to get your hands on, vampire blood. You didn’t even need a match, just a little direct sunlight and… whoosh. The arsonist was using the one thing that would burn faster and hotter than gas, kerosene, or propane. We discovered quickly-well, in fairness, Shane had discovered quickly-the source of the problem. He’d been stumped by both the intensity and apparent lack of accelerant. We’d been hired by one seriously ticked-off landlord to investigate the mysterious infernos that had left the fire investigator scratching his head. The Victorian house was burning, hot and fast like dry tinder. Immediately, I coughed and gagged, places deep in my stomach clenching against the scorching hot air. It was beating so loudly that it drowned out all other sound. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the frantic pulse of my heart. Seeing him lying there, looking so completely helpless, only fueled my slowly rising panic.ĭespite my yelling and kicking, he lay useless in the corner of the closet as the house blazed around us. As I grew old and time stole away all my other memories, those would remain. These things were burned into my mind, scars written across my heart that would never fade. I didn’t have to see his eyes to remember their exact shade of blue I didn’t have to hear him talk to remember the exact timbre of his voice. Could the dead dream? And if so, what did they dream about? As he slumped in the corner with his thin face slack, I watched his eyes moving restlessly behind their lids and wondered if he was dreaming.

It took skill and planning to take down a vampire, even a newbie like Shane. Shane lay across from me in a crumpled heap, still unconscious from the dart full of animal tranquilizers the arsonist had hit him with. I bucked wildly against my restraints, fighting against the panic trying to seep into my brain. Rancid-smelling smoke assaulted my nose and singed my throat, which was already raw from screaming. The closet was dark, except for the flickering light beneath the door. Icussed under my breath as the ropes binding my wrists tore at my raw flesh.

Chasing Daybreak by Sherry D. Ficklin