The are the fangs of a killer, Danny...
No, not all vampire books are like Twilight!
When I released Stake-Out 10 years ago, everyone asked me one singular question as soon as I said, “It’s got vampires.”
“Is it like Twilight?”
Ma’am, what part of “adult urban fantasy with vampire hunters and a secret government agency executing the paranormal” sounds like Twilight to you?
No offense to Bella and Edward, but that was a YA paranormal romance. And while Stake-Out DOES include some romance, it’s not the forefront of the Paranormal Detectives Series. Nor is it in any way young adult.
See for yourself…
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Detective First Grade Daniel Mancini was on assignment to follow a homicide suspect. The man was suave, British and rich. He was also suspected of murdering two women in the past two weeks. It was Danny’s mission to put the perp behind bars … at least, until he could get a needle in his arm. He should have had his partner with him, but she was on maternity leave and the Chicago Police Department was short-handed, so he was on his own that night.
He followed the man from his house in a rural and affluent suburb to the South Side of the city, in one of the worst neighborhoods.
It was foggy and cold; felt more like mid-March than June. He watched his perp chat up a young woman on the corner. Prostitute. The other two had also been initially classified as “Ladies of the night”, but the second one turned out to be the runaway wife of a high-powered lawyer. She’d left because he beat her and withheld any money he earned from her. He would’ve killed her eventually; this way, she ended up deader sooner. It was her death that put this investigation at the top of Homicide’s priority list.
He brought along his smartphone to photograph or film the bastard talking with the woman, for proof. He hung back as long as possible, hating the thought that he might cause a woman emotional trauma by waiting, but, in order to make the charges stick, he needed to catch the man in the act. He clipped the phone to his belt, hoping the video camera would catch everything. He needed his hands free.
Keeping one hand on his gun, he crept closer, keeping his distance, until he heard a woman’s gurgling scream. He dashed into the alleyway and what he saw changed his life forever.
The woman was on the cold, wet, dirty concrete, trying to scream again. She couldn’t, because the killer was latched onto her throat with long, needle-sharp fangs. Most of them were about an inch long, except for his canines, which reached over three inches. Her clothes were torn and blood flowed from her abdomen. He could clearly distinguish the bite marks as those he saw in almost every old vampire movie ever made, but these were worse. Those tiny fangs also caused marks, little bloody pinpricks in the skin.
“Freeze! Police!” he cried, taking out his gun. He fired two shots, which, on a normal man, would’ve proved instantly fatal. On this particular one, it was like firing a BB gun at a rhino.
The creature looked up, his pale face ghoulish in the waning light from the lamppost a few feet down. The whites of his eyes were blood red and his pupils were entirely black, like a bat’s. His face had elongated somehow, to accommodate the mouthful of fangs, two of which were still protruding more than the others to pierce the skin. His jaw was slick and shiny with the dark, sticky lifeblood of the girl who now breathed her last breaths. The hiss that issued from his evil mouth was like that of a Hellborn snake. His eyes widened even more, making Danny feel faint. The ground swam beneath his feet, and his vision began to darken at the edges.
He passed out in the alley. His last sight, the poor dead girl with blood flowing from her unearthly bite marks and then slowing as her heart stopped beating.
The last thing he heard was a small shuffling and footsteps coming toward him before all thought ceased.
Want more? Come discover what happens to Danny once he wakes…