In the Company of Vampires

PROLOGUE Fran, the wind whispered. My mother’s voice was just as distant as the wind. “Honestly, Fran, I have no idea what you thought you were doing—” I tuned her out to listen as hard as I could for the elusive sound that flirted on the edges of my awareness. Fran. It was Ben. I knew it was Ben, and he needed my help. Desperately. I ran into the darkness to find him, the nightmare re-creating an event that somewhere in my brain I recognized had actually happened, but this version of it was twisted by both the passing of time and my own tormented emotions. The moon was out, but its illumination did not reach through the dense forest. I dodged skeletal branches of trees as they tried to snatch at my hair and clothing. I’m coming, Ben! I will save you! Too . . . late . . . Desperation filled me, both mine at the need to find him, to help him, and that which he was pouring into me: the knowledge that I wouldn’t be there in time. Sobs of pure frustration caught in my throat as I battled my way through the eerily grabbing tree branches until at last I saw a dark shape slumped up against a dead tree. Ben! He wore the tattered remains of a leather jacket, his shirt completely gone, his face, arms, and torso stained dark with a crisscross pattern of blood oozing up from deep slashes. As I ran toward him, his body slumped to the side. Too . . . late . . . I screamed in wordless horror as he died in front of me, the sound echoing in my head until I woke, drenched with sweat, from the nightmare. “Nightmare again?” came a sleepy voice from the other side of the room. I swallowed back the fear that clutched my throat. “Yes. Sorry I woke you.” “ ’Sokay. Just stress. G’back to sleep.” “I will, thanks.” I turned my pillow over to the cool side, my heart as sick as my stomach. It wasn’t just the stress of my job that had given me the nightmare. I was having them more and more frequently, making me all that more desperate to escape my life. I lay back down, and prayed for dreamless sleep.