Free Rafe's Rules by P.J. Tallis Page A

vampires and how they want to stay hidden among us. Okay. Sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes.
    So I looked at the wounds on Mrs DeVane’s arm, and I nodded.
    ‘I’ve been noticing them for the past two, three months now,’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘Every time they seem to be getting better, I wake up one morning and they’re worse again. Not every day, just sometimes. And there are others.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Here.’ She shuffled back in her chair and lifted a foot onto the desk. At the back of her tiny ankle, just in front of the Achilles tendon, there were two more marks.
    ‘And, uh… somewhere else. In a more, ah, intimate area.’
    ‘Your inner thigh?’ I offered.
    ‘Yes.’ She stared at me. ‘How did you –?’
    ‘I know my stuff,’ I said.
    I didn’t really mean inner thigh but I said it to avoid upsetting her sensibilities. Actually I meant groin . The femoral blood vessels run there, a rich seam of the red stuff. And that area’s usually well hidden from public view, unless you’re a stripper or a porn star. Neither of which I thought applied to Mrs DeVane.
    I opened my laptop. ‘I need some details about your husband,’ I said, as I started a new document.
    He was Oscar DeVane, age thirty-six, a stockbroker who was clearly doing well for himself despite the recession, judging from the way his wife was dolled up, and from his address. They lived off of Mountainbrook Drive in Green Island Hills, where some of the most expensive real estate in Columbus, and indeed in the whole of Georgia, was to be found. The happy couple had been married three years, had no kids, and had been getting along fine and dandy until around seven or eight month ago, when Oscar had become aloof and moody, and had started coming home late.
    ‘Of course I suspected an affair,’ said Mrs DeVane – Letitia, her name was – sniffing. ‘So I hired a private investigator. Not someone like you. A… normal one.’ She darted a quick glance at me. ‘Sorry. No offense.’
    ‘None taken.’ She was right. What I do is pretty freakin’ abnormal.
    ‘The PI followed him around for two weeks, but all Oscar did in that time was wander the streets, aimlessly. Night after night, just roam around, following no particular pattern.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘He never met anybody, never went to bars or strip clubs or anything like that. Then he’d come home.’
    It was classic behaviour. The newly turned undead go through this phase of disorientation, of yearning, which can last several months. It’s before they’ve completed the transition to full vampire status, and before they’ve discovered the need for human blood to sustain them. One theory is that they’re responding to some primal, atavistic call of the homeland, wherever that is. Transylvania, maybe. Or it could be another planet, or hell itself. I don’t know where these creatures came from, and frankly I don’t much care. I just want to send as many of them back there as I possibly can.
    ‘Do you have a photo of Oscar?’ I asked.
    She rummaged in her purse – Louis Vuitton, natch – and handed over her cell phone. I looked at the image on the screen.
    Wow. Letitia had bagged herself a looker.
    He was smiling at the camera, a perfect set of brilliant white teeth contrasting with his deep tan. Jet-black hair flopped roguishly over his forehead and his eyes were intelligent and smokey. His cheekbones were like blades, his chin firm and cleft.
    ‘Is this recent?’ I asked.
    ‘Last week.’ She sniffed again. I pushed a box of Kleenex across the desk but she’d already produced some fancy lace hanky thing which she used a corner of to dab her eye.
    A vampire with a suntan? you’re asking. And with teeth that have been made the way they are by orthodontic science? Fair points, both. If, that is, you buy into the legend in every detail.
    Maybe once upon a time vampires burst into flame if sunlight touched them. Not today. Now they roam the