Better still, he was young and healthy again.
He bit the tip of his index finger and watched the blood well into a good-size bead, then put touched it to the baby's mouth. She made a face at first, then began to suck.
"Looks like we've got our work cut out for us, little one. We seem to have experienced a setback on the way to a brave new world, but it's only temporary. We'll get there eventually, and you'll play a big part. Oh, yes, little one. I have big plans for you."
Alternate Epilogue
Joe says: While brainstorming on the phone with Blake, we got to talking about what would happen if the dracula contagion could infect animals. That led to his rat scene with Adam, and this scene. The idea was to make the contagion a cause for not only vampires, but werewolves. Dracula bites dog, dog bites man, man becomes wolfman. But it just didn't fit, and seemed tacked-on. If we do write Draculas 2, this might be a sub-plot. Or this might become another book called Werewolves...
Epilogue
Jeremiah Fisk took another swig from the bottle of Early Times and switched off his television with a scowl. For the past hour he'd been watching the media speculate on what exactly had happened at the Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. First they'd called it a rabies outbreak. Then it was a fire. Now they were saying it was a natural gas explosion.
"Gas explosion my ass," he said.
Fisk lived near the hospital, just a few miles away as the crow flies. He saw the cop cars speed past. Saw the military vehicles.
He also heard the BOOM--strong enough to knock his bowling trophies off his shelves--and saw the fireball shoot up into the sky, bigger'n the Republic Plaza in downtown Denver. Ain't no way that wasn't some kinda army bomb.
Fisk padded into the kitchen, and stepped barefoot into something warm and wet.
"Goddammit, Zeke!"
He squinted at the floor, saw a smear of blood. His goddamn German Shepherd. Must have killed something else. Last time it was a rabbit that Zeke had half-eaten then hid behind the sofa. Fisk only found it because it had begun to stink.
If that stupid dog dragged any more varmints into this house, Fisk was gonna chain the mutt outside for a month.
"What did you do this time, Zeke?"
Fisk followed the trail from the linoleum to the carpet--goddamn dog!--and then found Zeke crouched next to the front door, snacking on something.
"What have you got there, dog?"
Fisk bent over to reach for it, and Zeke snarled at him. He gave the dog a smack on the nose, making him drop the animal.
But it wasn't an animal. Not a whole one, anyway.
It looked kind of like a rat, only its teeth were huge--as big as Zeke's.
It was the damnedest thing Fisk had ever seen.
"Where'd you get this, boy?" Fisk asked his dog.
Then he noticed the blood dripping from Zeke's muzzle.
"Shit, Zeke. You hurt? This little son of a bitch take a chunk outta you?"
Fisk pried up his dog's lip, and was shocked to see most of Zeke's teeth had fallen out.
Rabies? Was the news story on the TV true?
Naw. Rabies didn't work that fast. Zeke was fine a few hours ago. And it didn't make animals lose their teeth.
Didn't make their teeth grow back, neither.
And Fisk watched, dumbfounded, as Zeke's new set of teeth grew impossibly long, shearing through the dog's cheeks, its mouth stretching open, as he leapt up for his owner's throat.
Desert Places
A bonus excerpt from Blake's novel, DESERT PLACES, also available in the Kindle Store...
On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I'd risen at 5:00 A.M. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o'clock, I was writing, and I didn't stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I'd caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I'm close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.
I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.
I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I'd been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He'd be cursingthe drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.
For once, my mailbox wasn't overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.
Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel's and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water's edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.
The lake is more than a mile wide where it touches my property, making houses on the opposite shore visible only in winter, when the blanket of leaves has been stripped from the trees. So now, in the thick of spring, branches thriving with baby greens and yellows, the lake was mine alone, and I felt like the only living soul for miles around.
I put my glass down half-empty and opened the first envelope. As expected, I found a bill from the phone company, and I scrutinized the lengthy list of calls. When I'd finished, I set it down and lifted the lighter envelope. There was no stamp, which I thought strange, and upon slicing it open, I extracted a single piece of white paper and unfolded it. In the center of the page, one paragraph had been typed in black ink:
Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady's name is Rita Jones. You've seen this missing schoolteacher's face on the news, I'm sure. In her jeans pocket you'll find a slip of paper with a phone number on it. You have one day to call that number. If I have not heard from you by 8:00 P.M. tomorrow (5/17), the Charlotte Police Department will receive an anonymous phone call. I'll tell them where Rita Jones is buried on Andrew Thomas's lakefront property, how he killed her, and where the murder weapon can be found in his house. (I do believe a paring knife is missing from your kitchen.) I hope for your sake I don't have to make that call. I've placed a property marker on the grave site. Just walk along the shoreline toward the southern boundary of your property and you'll find it. I strongly advise against going to the police, as I am always watching you.