A PEEK INTO THE FIRST NIGHTS OF OUR TALE..as it was on September 28th, 2010

Revisit the nights when Sarah was still mortal and her strange, little, hidden bookshop, known as PHILADELPHIA AFTER DARK, catered to 'the night shift'.... The Enemy took a victim last night. I know it. I felt it. He was not of this city and must have been passing through. Maybe he had business with other life-eaters. That is what I suspect. My local brethren seem to agree. We meet in a certain place to discuss the passing scene. For the past forty years, that place has been The Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities, a nineteenth century edifice with squeaking old, wood floors, low, antiquated lighting and heavy, dark paneling. They have row after row of aged, glass display cases featuring such treasures as a life-cast of Chang and Eng, the first scientifically studied conjoined twins, along with countless huge jars filled with embalming fluid and tragically deformed babies. When it comes to the adult specimens, they save only the heads. Bob gets us in. He has a job there. He is the night watchman. It's ironic, a vampire with a pension plan and health benefits. We don't know what he would do should they ask for a urine specimen. I presume he would borrow some, just like a drug addict. We sit on a few eighty year old, decrepit folding chairs, back near the two-headed babies. I don't know why. I guess because it's just so cozy there. Baylah, our Beyonce look-alike, says this place is the perfect spot for us, because it is a refuge for dead freaks. She thinks that's funny. Bob and I do not. Getting back to the recent victim. We think he was a male, a young male who appeared to have about twentyfive human years. We get visions and that's how he looks. The Enemy and his dogs (he befriends the most vile, junkyard strays) cornered their sad, lonely prey in a dark, forgotten wharehouse. He was torn apart (I mean it. quite literally torn apart.) by the vicious beasts. When he was reduced to dripping scraps of oozing meat adhering to broken bits of bone, they devoured him. The dogs had to eat fast, for a 'dead' vampire always ignites into a cold, blue flame and disappears, just as his human victims do. But the flesh was already inside them and the blue, radiance shooting through their canine bodies provided knowledge. It is said that The Enemy occasionally slaughters one of his hounds and dines on the  pale, oily meat. In this way he too gains a certain measure of power. He learns things about us, things that we do not want others to know. That's why we're careful, never absentmindedly wandering into isolated places, as those of our kind often do. But old Philadelphia is filled with such out-of-the-way gems and I miss them. Maybe The Enemy will go 'way? He's done that in the past. Perhaps he'll kill a few 'tainted' mortals and disappear? It's just that the ones he finds lacking often turn out to be the very best. He's not like us. We only kill bastards. But that one is  demonic. We are something else. Now, forgive me, but I must go to Sarah. She needs money. She needs help to keep the little bookshop snug and dry. Soon I will resume the role of 'angel' and another stack of bills or maybe some sparkling little bijou will find its way into her pocket. After all, ask and you shall receive..... Just be sure you ask for something 'nice.'

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