After Dark
The Vampire Next Door, #2
by Rose Titus
Publication date: February 23rd 2018
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
BLURB
In Night Home: The Vampire Next Door Volume I, the fact that vampires truly exist was almost accidentally made public when a story presented as fiction seemed all too real to an amateur vampire hunter, who at the end, was made to remain silent about the secrets he discovered
But it doesn’t end there: the tale circulates as far as the west coast, where a small community of vampires have been quietly hiding; and to them, also, this story is too close to reality to be just a fantasy. But while they take the time to decide whether to attempt contact with their own kind so far away, they have their own local problems to deal with.
A savage and barbaric serial killer, suspected of being a vampire, lurks in their own city, stalking the innocent at night. Will the vampires be able to stop the killer before they are blamed for his acts of extreme horror?
And that’s not all. A beautiful yet tragic and suicidal young woman wanders like a lost angel from out of the darkness and into their midst, hoping a vampire will make her end swift and easy.
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EXCERPT
Alex drifted slowly through the back door to step down into the darkened entrance to the well-kept old building’s lower levels. On the upper floors there was an exclusive restaurant that catered to the wealthy and sophisticated; below, on the ground level there was a dance club, which attracted a completely different crowd of people—many with spiked purple hair. But under the dance floor, underground, there was served another kind of people. This dining area was not well known to many above ground.
He surveyed the area. A few tables were empty, but most tables had one or two people sitting and talking. And there she was, in the corner, alone, waiting for him. His sister Alexandra looked up and nodded to acknowledge him. He went to her table and sat down. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” she put her fine crystal glass down. “Jim Ellison left a message on my answering machine. I was surprised to hear from him after so long a time. He said, ‘I know you’re asleep but I’ve got some shocking news.’“
“What is it?” he knew that Jim called everything shocking, incredible, amazing, mind-boggling. That was his profession. He wrote for the tabloids, the ones that reported on flying saucers and Bigfoot.
“So, I kept calling, and finally got him,” she sighed. Alex noticed that she sighed a lot lately. “Says he’s got something he wants us to see. Well, you know, the business he’s in, he’s always looking for unusual things, searching the web for news of the odd.”
“Has he finally captured the Sasquatch?” he smirked. He did like Jim, but also enjoyed having a laugh at his line of work. That was how they met. Jim had been allowed to do “an article” for his so-called newspaper, the kind of tabloid newspaper people picked up in the supermarket checkout line and took home to read just for fun. The article was titled “Civilized Vampires Come Out After Dark.” It was agreed by the community to allow him to publish it because no one believed anything in that sort of newspaper anyway.
“No, he hasn’t captured the Sasquatch, and he hasn’t had a ride in a flying saucer either. He thinks he may have found more people like us.”
“Really? How? Someone write the editor of that cheap paper?”
“No. It’s… well, you know how some colleges have magazines that students write for? I guess nowadays they’re all online. Jim searches the internet for anything he could use, and he found this article by a college student on the East Coast. It’s a story about vampires, but not the movie kind. The characters in her story, they are very much like us, Alex. Living, breathing… and all the rest, stop aging after thirty, and then gradually lose tolerance for the sun, live to be about three hundred. He told me over the phone about it. I haven’t seen it. I asked him to send it, but he said he might be travelling through, so he might come by and drop it off. “
“Oh, well, we’ll wait until he shows up, then.”
She lowered her voice. “But that’s not the only reason I asked you to come by.”
“What?” He hoped it wasn’t bad news; her tone seemed serious.
“Someone seems to be watching us, Alex.”
Author Info
Rose Titus resides somewhere in cold, dreary New England with two manipulative cats and a very out of date computer with which she creates horror and fantasy fiction. She also has a restored classic Buick to ride around in while in search of adventure.
For travel she has stayed the night in an allegedly haunted castle, has taken a boat ride on Loch Ness, and has visited the Bermuda Triangle -- without getting lost.
Her work has previously appeared in Lost Worlds, Lynx Eye, Bog Gob, Mausoleum, Weird Terrain, Descend, The Dead River Review, and other literary magazines. She also writes regularly for Blood Moon Rising Magazine.
When she's not working or writing or messing with her old car, she waits by the mailbox for her Fortean Times to arrive.
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