The following article contains the Prologue and Chapter 1 from my new novella "Power In The Blood".  Now available at Amazon.com.

If you wish to purchase a copy, please check the Amazon Kindle Link shown at the end of this article.

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PROLOGUE

As Heather sauntered past his table, Martin Sullivan allowed himself a moment to enjoy the scrumptious nature of the young woman's figure. Her body was slender and very shapely, having a delightful muscle tone that came from working out three times a week. On this particular evening, Heather's legs were adorned by stockings that were very sheer and had a shading that was commonly referred to as "Barely Black". This gave Martin's favorite casino hostess a look that was decidedly different from the jet black ballerina tights being worn by every other hostess in the establishment.

As far as company management was concerned, there was nothing improper about a hostess choosing to wear sheer hosiery. Most of the girls preferred to wear heavy tights because there was much less chance of them having a serious snag or run after only one evening of use. In Heather's case, a minor bending of the normal procedure was her way of informing Martin that she was in the mood for having sex with him this evening. When her hosiery was off black and very sheer, it always meant that the stockings were thigh tops and that she wasn't wearing panties beneath her skirt.

Martin would have another three and a half hours to ponder the knowledge that his lady friend was wearing absolutely nothing under her hostess uniform. Her five hour shift on the floor would end thirty minutes before his eight hours of dealing black jack. The girl would be waiting for him at his place this evening when he arrived with a pizza and a six pack of soft drinks. Not the most romantic of dinners but each of them planned on eating just enough to prevent hunger from getting in the way of screwing each other's brains out.

At the immediate moment, the only thing distracting Martin's brain from thinking only about Heather was the fact that he was back at the same table with his least favorite player. In his fourteen years of dealing Black Jack, Martin Sullivan had never seen anyone have as much obscenely good luck as Arthur Trice. This was the man's fifteenth or sixteenth Monday evening of walking into the Swan Casino with only one hundred dollars in cash and walking away with more than three thousand. Trice clearly wasn't counting cards, Martin was absolutely certain of that. He'd helped catch his share of cheaters over the years and all of them invariable had a handful of odd little traits that started giving them away within an hour or two.

"Have you ever noticed that no one drinks at his table?" The previous Monday's Pit Boss had asked Martin, just after Trice had left the casino.

"People at his table had drinks this evening," Martin replied.

"There were people who had drinks in front of them but no one was downing what was in their cup," The Boss countered. "As soon as our friend Mr. Trice put himself at that table, anyone who had anything alcoholic immediately stopped drinking it. And people who are even the least bit inebriated tend to avoid sitting at a table once he's there. Joe and Jane Lush may be going over to check out what's happening but they'll always turn and go somewhere else."

"He must radiate a special kind if Karma," Martin joked, a touch of exasperation in his voice.

"Not quite certain what the little twerp is radiating!" The Boss had said. But if I ever catch his smarmy ass cheating, I'm gonna make sure that all ten of his greedy little fingers get broken."

Martin was pretty sure this particular Pit Boss was merely venting his anger at being taken for a sizable loss on four different occasions. Trice was just plain lucky. "Luck coming out the ears" as Martin's grandmother had been fond of saying. Whenever Trice sat down at a Black Jack table, the winning percentages of every single person at that particular station seemed to improve by well over two hundred percent.

In theory, the odds for Black Jack should be weighted towards the players. Having absolutely no discretion in what he was doing as he gamed against the people who were seated around his table, the Dealer had to keep drawing cards for himself until his point total had reached or exceeded the number seventeen. That would leave someone like Martin with only a four point safety margin. At twenty two points or higher; the Dealer would be busted and any player who hadn't already gone over twenty one would automatically win, no matter how low his or her point total might be.

In the real world, the problem for the players was that they had absolutely no control over who might be sitting at the table with them. Any Sam or Sheila could plop down at an empty space, put their chips on the table and start playing a hand. Which meant that three or four conscientious individuals might be carefully watching each others card patterns and doing a good job of forcing the dealer into going over his limit. Then one boozer who was much too intoxicated to think anywhere near straight would plop his ass down in a chair and quickly begin to ruin the game for everyone else.

Now that the Dealer rotation had put him back at the same table with Trice for an hour, Martin began to take account of the fact that none of the players would drink anything with alcohol in it. Even more unusual was the fact that though three people walked away and four new ones came in, the group continually played in a way that maximized the profits of Arthur Trice. Each individual generally played to win but there would be odd moments when a man or woman would refuse to take a card, even though their hand really needed the extra point value. In each instance of a person skipping his or her logical deal, Trice was provided a much better chance of drawing a good card or Martin was handed an increased probability of going over his limit.

I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on you from now on, Mister Trice. Martin thought to himself, as he looked directly at the tall slender man seated on the number four chair.

You'll have to turn your back at some point, my friend! Martin could hear in his mind as Trice looked up from his cards and grinned directly at him.

Martin Sullivan was cited for negligence that evening after suddenly walking away from his table and leaving the casino without signaling the pit boss first. Fifteen hours later, his mutilated body was discovered in a restaurant dumpster three blocks away.

CHAPTER 01

- Vixen -

"We appear to be dealing with a loon who thinks he's a Vampire," I'd said to the other eleven members of my task force on the second Thursday of September.

Only five of these officers were individuals I was actually used to working with. The person in my position will generally have three or four days to compile a team. I'd been forced to cobble this one together in less than twenty-four hours. I'd also had to miss my Wednesday evening manicure and pedicure appointment and was not at all happy that Carlos wouldn't be able to squeeze me in till this coming Tuesday at the earliest. The fingernails, I could do a better than average job of touching up on my own but I don't trust my little piggies to anyone other than Carlos Emmanuel.

"During the past eight weeks, our suspect has killed at least eleven people in the greater Chicago area." I continued." Four in Chicago proper and another seven in the surrounding communities. All eleven had severe mutilation marks on their necks and all had been drained of more than two thirds of their blood."

"Lieutenant Van Dyne!" One of the new guys shouted out as his hand shot up into the air above his head. From the corner of my eye, I could see Tom Grayson smirking and wincing at the same time.

"Not meaning to sound picky," I said to him with a soft smile. "But the title is Chief Investigator. In spite of the silver bar you see on my name tag; I'm a contract employee for the department, not a career Police Officer."

"Chief Investigator," He corrected himself, with a slight smile of his own. "Has there been any particular pattern to the lifestyles of the victims?"

"Not that we can tell at this time," I answered. "Three girls and one guy were most likely street hustlers. After that we have an Atlanta businessman, an Episcopal Priest, and a woman from Seattle who was here for a job interview with Sunrise International Bank. One guy was in town for a horror movie festival and a fairly curvy blond had an ongoing gig as eye candy at numerous trade shows and some of the more heavily promoted professional wrestling events. The most recent victim was a Black Jack dealer at the casino in Lexington."

"Has there been a blood draining pattern in any other major city?" Lieutenant Grayson inquired.

"Montreal had a rash of similar killings about six years ago," I replied. "London and Edinburgh seemed to face the same sort of thing about four and six years before that."

"So we're dealing with a guy who's jumped from Britain to Canada and then here." He commented.

"Not necessarily," I responded. "Correlation does not always equal causality."

"Would you mind saying that in everyday English?" He joked and I had to wait for the chuckling to die down.

"I'll try to keep it to words of two syllables or less just for you Tom," I countered, "This might not be the same guy or gal. We're waiting to hear more from Scotland Yard and the RCMP."

My relationship with Tom Grayson would be best described as "complicated". Two individuals who help each other get the job done but have little desire to be friends in even the slightest degree. The friction started with me getting recruited by the department to be their newest Project Coordinator when Grayson thought the job should have been his because he had seventeen years on the force and was good at creating resource flow charts and writing incident reports. The man knows that I didn't actually apply for the position, that the department came looking for me and this prevents him from actually hating me in any way. But there's been this massive wall of tension standing between the two of us during the past three and a half years and we've barely been able to do more than sand off the rough edges.

Tom and I do interact well professionally and we look just a bit too good standing next to each other. Which causes a few well meaning but completely clueless individuals to believe that we should pair off and produce absolutely adorable babies. A significant minority of the busybodies in the Chicagoland media seem to have this strange desire to see Tom and me produce a batch of perfect little cubs and then allow all of them to draw lots for who gets the pick of the litter. And the more determined these well meaning pea brains are to shove the two of us together, the more conviction Grayson and I seem to have about putting the maximum possible amount of distance between his body and mine. Almost impossible when that guy and this girl are the yin and yang of what makes this unit function. I have a natural talent for recognizing complex patterns that most people would overlook while Tom understands department protocol and procedure twice as well as anyone else I've met. I swear the man could probably do a better job of filling out paperwork in his sleep than over half the department manages to accomplish while awake.

If it were just a matter of looks, I'd be all over Tom Grayson before either of us could even blink. The man's in his early forties and his body fills out a three piece suit just a little too well. He's got that "Professional Boxer With A College Degree" look going for him. Ruggedly handsome and just a little too aware of that fact.

Which leads to Tom's major failing as a potential relationship partner. There's a certain style of woman that Grayson is consistently drawn to and most of their ilk seem too much like the type of call girl I tried to pass myself off as the couple of times I was helping with a sting operation in the warehouse district. Tom has an almost fatal weakness for females who look much too good in a mini skirt on a bar stool. The ones who are always a little too eager to have a few drinks with an off duty cop or firefighter. My friend Claire jokingly calls them "Adoration Vampires". I once asked her what she meant by the term and she explained that certain individuals get an emotional boost from hanging out with important people and receiving attention from them. Made a bit of sense after I'd thought about it for a few minutes.

Strike three for Tom and me is that Project Coordinators have traditionally been the rank of Detective Lieutenant or higher but I snuck in the back door as an Investigator. Until I signed on as the P.C.O. for the newly created Seventh District, the metro government had always used the title of Investigator as a way to temporarily bring in an outside expert or two and give them police authority for a short term period of about thirty to ninety days. Like the time they deputized a dozen accountants to allow them to help with a massive insurance fraud examination. But there's nothing in the regs that say an Investigator appointment can't be long term so they offered me a one year contract with the possibility of a three year extension. Then they invented the title of Chief Investigator and engraved a Lieutenant's bar on my name tag so Detective Sergeants would know that I didn't have to put up with any of the crap they might be tempted to toss in my direction.

In his own strange way, Grayson did me a favor on the job and title situation. Before Tom started raising seven different kinds of ruckus, the powers that be were planning on waving the shooting exam requirement and simply allowing me to serve as a desk officer. Like I said, the man knows department regulations forward, backward and sideways and he quoted the higher ups chapter and verse and made them issue a statement that I would have to pass the firearms test or the job offer would be withdrawn. Having my weapons proficiency  certification makes it a lot harder for anyone to say that I got this job because strings were pulled. The few individuals who still try to make that complaint also tend to be the types who aren't allowed within half a mile of any hotel that's hosting an X-Files Convention.

The Northern Illinois Certification Office field tested fifty-seven other people on the Saturday afternoon when I showed up to prove my stuff. Of the forty-three who passed the shooting exam, I scored in at sixth place. There's something to be said about being raised by an uncle who enjoyed putting meat on the table the old-fashioned way.

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Travis Clemmons / Power In The Blood