Ben had wanted to be a vampire since he was ten years old. Now he was standing in a disused hospital ward with an unconscious vampire at his feet, and he was finally going to make his dream a reality. This was not how he’d ever envisioned his transformation taking place, but he would not turn it down because the circumstances weren’t how he’d imagined. He was literally shaking with excitement about what was about to happen, and it had been brought about by the simple act of overhearing a conversation.

He had been on the night shift at Maidstone Hospital and had been called to the Intensive Care Unit to clean down a recently vacated bed. Ben preferred working the night shift because, even on the busier wards, it was far quieter than during the day. He could take a bit more time with his work and felt less like there was a constant anvil pressing down from above, ready to crush him if he took even a second longer than was necessary. On the night shift, he was more likely to actually get his breaks rather than having to work through them. It was just a bit more chilled.

He made his way down the near-empty, pastel-shaded corridors, humming a little ditty. Most people he knew didn’t like hospitals. They said they smelled funny and made them think of sickness and death. Ben had always found quite the opposite. He liked the mixture of clinical and chemical smells that filled the building. Some patients produced odours he didn’t enjoy so much, but most of his work revolved around cleaning up after the patients had left, by which time he was spraying their smells away with his trolley full of odour killing chemicals.

It was nearing midnight and at that late hour, even the ICU was quiet. Most of the patients were sleeping and all non-essential lights had been switched off. There was only one nurse at the nurse’s station tapping away on the computer. The clicks of her fingers on the keys were infinitely louder in the quiet of the night. She glanced up, sparing Ben a passing smile, and pointed at the bed that needed cleaning. He returned the smile and went by with his trolley as quietly as possible, trying not to wake any of the patients.

He parked his trolley by the foot of the bed and began pulling on a pair of latex gloves, ready to make the bed fresh for the patient that was waiting somewhere else in the hospital. He pulled the blue curtain around the bed closed so that he could work in privacy. He didn’t like to be watched while he worked, not even by one solitary nurse whose name he did not know. A bed being vacated this late at night probably meant that somebody had died in it. Working in a hospital had exposed Ben to plenty of death, but it didn’t stop him from wondering about the people who’d passed. Who had been in this bed? What kind of life had they lived? Had they left anybody behind or were they the last to go? These were the questions that ran through his mind as he began stripping the sheets off the bed and bundling them into the waiting bin on his trolley. He was pulling out the fresh sheets to remake the bed when he heard perturbed whispers emanating from the other side of the curtain.

"Why is all the equipment switched off? This looks like a serious case of incompetent negligence, if not outright sabotage." Ben recognised the mix of arrogance and condescension as that of Dr Lewis Pratt.

Dr Pratt was one of the few clinicians who looked down his nose at anybody who wasn’t a doctor or nurse—even some nurses were subjected to his snobbery. Porters like Ben were so lowly that Pratt didn’t even learn their names. Unfortunately for Ben, he’d attended the same secondary school as Lewis Pratt, so Lewis knew his name. He even knew Ben was short for Benedict, which Ben was not too pleased about. Lewis and his friends had bullied Ben relentlessly throughout secondary school and Ben had been glad to see the back of him when they’d both gone to different colleges. It was just his luck when Ben had turned up for his first day of work at the hospital and saw Lewis Pratt. He’d thought that spending years training to be a doctor would have turned his school bully into a decent person. He’d been wrong. Lewis had resumed tormenting Ben as if he’d never even stopped. The only difference was there were no teachers to ask for help, and the senior staff would always side with a doctor over a porter.

Hearing the note of panic in Lewis’ voice brought a small smile to Ben’s face. However, that joy was overridden by curiosity.

"Sabotage? But that would be…" Ben recognised the second speaker as Nurse Bounty. Unlike Dr Pratt, she could be nice when it suited her. When Pratt was around, she tried to impress him by being just as snooty as he was. It was pretty obvious that she had the hots for him, but Lewis had a girlfriend. How any woman could put up with him, Ben did not know.

"He’s your patient. You should have been watching over him," Pratt hissed.

"I can hardly stand at the end of his bed and watch him like a hawk. She’s not my only patient," Bounty snapped. ‘Maybe if you came onto the ward a bit more often…’

"Don’t you dare." Pratt’s voice turned darker and Ben could feel the tension growing through the curtain like a grim mist. ‘An investigation will need to be carried out. We need… What is that?’

"What? What is what?"

He heard the fabric of sheets moving and saw Pratt’s silhouette move towards the head of the bed.

"Look at this. It’s like two injection sites on the neck. How did these get here and why? What was he given?"

Ben saw Nurse Bounty move closer to inspect the marks. For a moment, a stunned silence fell over the compartment beyond the curtain.

"Well?" Pratt demanded.

"I don’t know. Why would I? Nobody would do that. It looks more like a snakebite to me."

"A snakebite," Pratt repeated the word slowly, his voice totally deadpan. ‘Do you keep many snakes on the ward?’

Bounty answered with a frightened sigh. ‘What do we do?’ she asked at last.

Dr Pratt took a moment, likely to assess the situation. "A patient is dead. The circumstances are… suspicious. If we don’t report it then it will be worse for us in the long run. There’s CCTV all over the hospital, if somebody is responsible for this, then the camera will have caught them coming over here."

"What does this mean in terms of… Oh!" Nurse Bounty’s eyes found Ben through a gap in the curtain. Pratt’s beefy hand appeared at the edge of the curtain and tore it open. His eyes glinted dangerously when he saw Ben staring back at him and his lip curled into a sneer.

"I thought they paid you to clean, not to eavesdrop on conversations that are leagues above your pay grade."

"What did you hear?" Nurse Bounty asked. She was trying to project the same arrogance as Pratt, but she was too nervous and her voice trembled with each word.

Pratt spoke before Ben could answer. "I wouldn’t worry about what he heard. It’s not like he could have understood any of it."

Ben balled his hands into fists at his sides, fighting back the urge to punch him in the face. It wouldn’t have done much good since Lewis was considerably larger than Ben and would easily beat him in a fight. He’d beaten Ben up plenty of times back in their school days. Not to mention that it would only get Ben fired.

"I understood well enough that your negligence has caused someone’s death," Ben said, speaking the words like a poker player uncovering a winning hand.

Pratt stepped forwards, so he was standing over Ben, his vicious eyes glaring down threateningly. "I’m warning you…"

Pratt continued with his threatening speech, but Ben was no longer listening. Now that Pratt had moved out of the way, Ben had a clear view of the dead patient in the neighbouring bed, and he could see the little marks on his neck. He knew what they were as soon as he laid eyes on them. They weren’t needle injection sites, and neither were they from a snakebite. No, he was looking at a vampire’s bite.

Most people would have found a snakebite or an injection site far more likely, and most people in their twenties didn’t believe in vampires. But Ben wasn’t most people. He’d seen a vampire.

When he was a little boy, he’d lived across the road from a recreational park. His bedroom window was at the front of the house and overlooked the park across the road. He used to keep his curtains open just a fraction at night so he could lie in bed and watch the park whilst he fell asleep. There was something almost mystical about watching a moonlit park whilst he drifted into slumber; especially when there was a full moon and the whole park was washed with silver. Most of the time, it was empty, but not always. Sometimes he’d see foxes, other times older children would hang out down there, and once he’d seen a couple of old drunks vomiting on the roundabout. At the age of ten, it was the foxes he was mainly interested in.

One night there were no foxes, nor any older kids, or drunks. Instead, there was one lone woman. She was wandering aimlessly on the grass outside the play area, her summer dress was blowing lightly in the breeze. Her shoulders were slumped forwards and the way she dragged her feet across the grass told Ben that she was upset about something. She drifted into the play area and flopped onto the bench facing the swings.

She sat dejectedly on the blue metal bench, her hands on the metal with her fingers lightly curled. She was just outside of the light cast by the lamppost and stared out into space. Ben couldn’t see her well enough to see her tears, but the way her shoulders shook and bobbed was evidence that she was crying; even a ten-year-old understood that. Ben watched with his head on his pillow, wondering what could have made her so sad.

Ben was just dozing off when he saw that she was not alone. Just a few feet away, standing by the bushes behind the girl, was the silhouette of a man. The moonlight fell on him in such a way that made his shadow stretch out across the grass like a giant. Ben sat up and pulled his duvet around him tightly, suddenly wide awake and freezing cold. His skin erupted in goosebumps and he wanted to close the curtains, but he could not. Something about that figure on the grass was too captivating to let Ben stop watching. The man didn’t move. He stood perfectly still, like a statue, watching the crying girl. She hadn’t even noticed he was there.

Ben blinked and in that brief second, when his eyes were closed, the man vanished. Ben pressed his face to the window and peered through the glass, sure that he must have been mistaken, but sure enough, the man was no longer standing by the bushes.

But he wasn’t gone.

He was standing in front of the girl now. Her shoulders were moving no longer. She was frozen in place, staring up at him. The man extended his arm, his fingertips under her chin, guiding her eyes to his. Something about the dark figure seemed so majestic. He exuded a kind of power that, even at Ben’s young age, drew him in. He could feel the magnetic pull of the stranger even from across the street.

He stared on avidly, wondering what was going on. His heart was hammering so loudly that he could hear it. He felt the same as when his dad let him stay up late and watch the grown-up movies.

The man’s fingers edged down and snaked around the woman’s throat. She might have tried to pull away, it was hard to tell from such a distance, but if she did, the man held her still. Then he darted forwards. He moved with the speed and elegance of a serpent, a viper going in for the strike. His head went to her neck and the two of them collapsed onto the bench.

Ben thought perhaps he was kissing her, but then he noticed her face was turned away from the man’s. The light from the lamppost reflected off her eyes, which were wide open and staring across the park. Her mouth was stretched to its limits but no sound was coming out.

He was attacking her.

And yet she was not putting up a fight. She didn’t resist the strange man at all. His arms were around her, hugging her body to his as he continued to nuzzle his head into her neck. The embrace went on for minutes, and Ben didn’t breathe for the entire duration. All he could do was watch. Even as he sat frozen and watching, his intrigue turned to terror. Confused though he was, he could tell that something sinister was taking place before his innocent eyes.

The girl’s body went limp and her head sagged like a marionette puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. The man released her and let her fall down on the bench like she didn’t matter at all. He spared a glance around to make sure they were undisturbed, and then he took hold of the girl’s limp arm in one hand, and in an amazing feat of strength, he tossed her through the air and flung her into the bushes.

Ben watched as the motionless body slipped beneath the leaves, consumed entirely by the shrubbery. It was as though the bush was a grim accomplice to the man’s heinous actions.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled something out. A handkerchief. He dabbed at his mouth delicately, like a posh person at dinner. When he was finished, he popped the hanky back in his pocket and then he was gone. Ben hadn’t seen him move. It was like he’d just vanished into thin air.

It was several minutes before Ben could move again and when he could; he called for his mum. He didn’t just call; he screamed. Both of his parents came running up the stairs and rushed into his bedroom. Their faces were wrought with worry. They looked around frantically as if they expected the strange man to be there in the room with him.

When they were sure that there was no imminent danger, they sat down on his bed and listened as he told them everything he’d seen. Dad looked out the window, but obviously, he couldn’t see anything because the strange man was long gone. He couldn’t even see the woman on the bench. He laughed lightly and told his son that he must have been dreaming. He closed the curtains fully and then put Ben back to bed. As they went down the stairs Ben heard them whispering to one another.

"You don’t think he saw some poor girl getting… you know?" Mum said.

"What? Raped? God, no. Sounds more like he saw a vampire," Dad said and laughed.

It was that simple, casual joke that began Ben’s lifelong obsession with the creatures of the night.

At school the next day, he went to the library during his lunch break and searched the internet for every bit of information he could find on vampires. During a one-hour lesson, a child can get very little work done, but if left to research something that really interests them for an hour, they can get an amazing amount done.

In that one brief hour, he’d learned more about vampires than he’d learned about anything else in the entire school day. He’d read so much that when he arrived home that night and saw the police tape around the playground, he knew it was a vampire attack. A dog walker had found the woman’s body that morning. She’d had two puncture wounds on her neck and had apparently died of blood loss. Yet there was no blood on the ground.

The authorities assumed that someone had killed her elsewhere and dumped her body in the park. But Ben knew better because he’d seen what had happened. Strangely enough, his parents never brought it up. They never took him to tell the police what he’d seen. Maybe they didn’t want to face up to the fact that their son had witnessed a murder and they had simply laughed it off. They probably thought it was best to forget it had happened and do nothing that might remind him of what he had seen. But he needed no reminding. That single memory had remained prevalent in his mind ever since.

Over the subsequent years, he searched every corner of the web for vampire lore. He read every book, fiction and non-fiction. He watched every documentary, every movie, and TV show. As he got older, he visited famous vampire sites.

He never encountered a vampire. He never even caught a whiff of one, no matter where he looked. But he never stopped believing in them. Because that memory never faded.

And now, after sixteen long years, a vampire had finally come to him.

Hospital management called the police and a full investigation was launched into how the patient had died on the ward. Being found with two little stab marks and no blood in his body was weird enough, but the fact that all the monitoring equipment had been switched off was what pushed the entire affair into murder territory. And when they tried to review the security footage, they found it had been erased.

Nurse Bounty, as well as the other nurses who had interacted with the patient that night had been suspended pending an investigation. Others were also being investigated, including Dr Lewis Pratt. Management had made it quite clear that more would have been suspended if the hospital could afford to lose the staff. Just about everybody who worked that night had been interviewed by the police, including Ben, not that they seemed interested in what he had to say.

Security throughout the hospital had been increased. Nobody was allowed in or out of the hospital without being booked in and out. Ben only hoped that the additional security didn’t scare off the vampire—if they hadn’t moved on already. He’d waited over a decade to come across another creature of the night and he did not want them to slip away. He felt as though the vampire was within reach, he just needed to know which direction to look.

He spent the twelve hours after the attack thinking about where the vampire might be and what they were up to because the attack just didn’t make sense. The way that the vampire attacked the patient in the ICU was not subtle at all. Draining the person’s blood and turning all the equipment off was just asking to get caught. And why would they not just steal blood from the massive supply of it in the blood bank? Maybe the attacker was a freshly turned vampire, and they hadn’t quite finessed the art of keeping under the radar yet. Or perhaps there was something that Ben wasn’t seeing, something that would make everything make sense.

There was security everywhere when Ben turned up for work the following evening. Every time he turned a corner, he saw another security officer keeping a watchful eye on the place. Even a vampire was going to have a hard time moving around unseen.

The Accident and Emergency Department was considerably less busy. Since the news had reported the murder to the public, the people had taken their chances at one of the other hospitals in the area. Luckily, the area was spoiled for choice when it came to hospitals and there were plenty in the surrounding towns. Fewer patients meant less work and that made Ben a happy porter. Kind of. He could never be truly happy because he hated his job. But he was on the verge of escape. He just needed to find the vampire.

Ben finished cleaning down a recently vacated room, pulled open the door, and held it with his foot whilst he manoeuvred his trolley. A red-haired young woman smiled as she passed and wiggled her fingers in a girlish little wave. He smiled and returned the gesture and then watched her disappear around the corner. She’d looked far too cheerful for somebody who was in a hospital so late at night.

He pulled his trolley out of the room, blocking out the sound of the squeaking wheel, and started towards the supplies room. Then he saw the security officer and he stopped. He was slumped on the floor against the wall, his head hanging over one shoulder as if he was taking a nap.

Ben froze, staring at the fallen man. His hands were gripping the trolley so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. He glanced both ways up and down the corridor. He was alone. For a few seconds, his mind was totally blank, too shocked to conjure a single thought. Then his brain kicked back into gear.

That woman must have seen the officer on the ground like this and done nothing. Or, the more likely scenario was that she had been the one to put him on the ground. That woman was the vampire.

Ben approached the security guard slowly. He didn’t want to get any closer to what was most probably a corpse, but he really wanted to confirm that he was right. Sure enough, as he closed the space between them, he saw the two little puncture marks on his neck.

The vampire was still in the hospital. And now Ben knew what she looked like. His fear turned to excitement in the blink of an eye, despite his conscience telling him how inappropriate that was. He’d just been within touching distance of a vampire. And far from being concerned that she’d nearly been caught, she’d smiled and waved at him.

He abandoned the trolley and charged down the corridor in the direction she’d gone. It was reckless to go chasing after a vampire, but he did not care. He wanted her to make him like her, and that would not happen by being cautious. The corridor broke off in three separate directions and she wasn’t in any of them. Ben had no idea where she’d gone. He wanted more than anything to keep looking for her, to not stop until he had found her.

But he could not. He’d discovered the scene of another murder and every corridor of the hospital had a camera in it. There was a camera pointing right at him. There was every chance that the vampire woman would erase the footage again, but if she didn’t and they caught Ben running away from the scene of the crime, then they’d think he was in on it. Especially if they saw her waving at him as she’d gone past.

He had no choice but to report what he’d found. He went back into the room he’d just come from, picked up the phone, and called the security office. Within minutes, the corridor was closed off, and the area was flooded with additional security personnel and the few lower management figures who were on the night shift. Questions were coming at him from every direction. Ben barely had time to answer one question before five more were fired at him.

He was thankful when the police finally arrived and shut down the whole circus that had filled the corridor. The police officers were furious to find the crime scene full of hospital staff. There was a lot of shouting about contamination as they cleared the corridor, sending several red-faced members of staff back to their departments. They cordoned off the entire area and then ushered Ben into a vacant room to question him about what he’d seen.

The uniformed officers didn’t interview him. They told him to wait for a senior officer to arrive. The longer he waited, the more nervous he became. He sat, his leg shaking, seemingly of its own accord, thinking about what questions he was going to have to answer. It was odd how nervous you could become even when you had done nothing wrong, he thought. Innocent or not, he was the first on the scene and the only witness. That never seemed to bode well in the movies. The longer he waited the more he started to suspect that they were leaving him deliberately as some kind of tactic to make him more pliable.

It was about twenty minutes before somebody finally arrived. A man in his late forties bustled into the room, the tail of his mac drifting in behind him. He wore plain clothes and his tie was knotted loosely around his neck, the top button of his shirt undone. Ben spied a thin silver chain that vanished beneath his shirt.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr…?" He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"Blake. Ben Blake," Ben said, sounding like somebody doing a feeble James Bond impression. His cheeks reddened in embarrassment.

"Mr Blake." He carried the free chair across the room and sat down in front of Ben, staring him dead in the eyes without blinking. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Castling. I’m leading this investigation. I just need to ask you a few questions about what you saw.’ He took off his glasses and began wiping the raindrops from the lenses using the end of his tie.

He didn’t treat Ben like he was guilty, but that didn’t mean he didn’t think it. Cops had all sorts of psychological tricks to convince people they were on their side. Ben thought very carefully about how much he wanted to tell him. If he didn’t tell him about the woman, then he would be the only suspect. If she hadn’t erased the security footage, then they would catch him in a lie and then at the very least they’d think he was an accomplice. Honesty seemed to be the smartest play, so he told Castling everything from the moment he’d left the room he’d been cleaning.

"How large would you say the woman was?" DI Castling asked. He had his notepad on his knee and was jotting down everything Ben told him.

Ben shook his head as he thought back to the encounter. ‘About average. Five-three. Something like that.’

"Build?"

"Slim. You know, normal size."

"So, she wasn’t muscly like a bodybuilder?"

Ben had to stifle a laugh at the ludicrousness of the question. "No," he said, barely containing a smile.

Castling noticed he was trying to keep a straight face, and he smiled on Ben’s behalf. "I appreciate how odd my question was. I’m just trying to understand how an average-sized woman could overpower a rather beefy male security guard. Do you see my point?"

Ben made a small awkward noise as he realised what Castling meant. Obviously, the simplest explanation was the truth, that she was a vampire, but Ben got the impression that the detective inspector would be less than willing to investigate that lead. "I don’t know," he said instead. "By the time I came out, she was already walking away. She might not have been the one to attack him."

Castling’s brow furrowed, and he looked back down at his notes. His tongue flicked out and licked his top lip, moving the hairs of his moustache. "That would mean that she saw him on the ground and walked past without a care," he astutely pointed out.

All Ben could offer was a shrug. "I don’t know. Like I said. By the time I came out, he was already down and she was leaving."

"Indeed." He flipped his pad closed and tucked it into his breast pocket. "I’ve got your details, so I’ll be in touch if I have any more questions. And if you do remember anything, give me a call." He passed Ben a small business card that he tucked into his back pocket.

Castling stood up to show Ben out of the room as if he was the visitor instead of Castling. "You’ll probably want to go home and get to bed or something. It’s never pleasant seeing your first dead body."

"Oh, it’s hardly my first," Ben replied as he stepped out of the room.

"Excuse me?" the detective said, aghast. His fingers were touching the notebook in his breast pocket, threatening to pull it back out.

"Oh!" Ben laughed, catching on to how that must have sounded. ‘I just mean because I work in a hospital. I’ve seen a fair few dead bodies.’

Castling’s posture relaxed again and he returned the smile. "Of course." He shook his head at his own silliness. "You have a safe night."

Ben gave him a polite nod and then got out of there before he could say anything else that might incriminate him.

Ben went straight home to have a nice, warm shower. He needed to clean the sight of the security officer’s empty staring eyes from his mind. There had still been a good few hours left on his shift, but it turned out that being the first to discover a murder scene met the criteria for getting to go home early. Not that his supervisor and been particularly pleased about it. And he was still expected to be back for his shift tomorrow. Any trauma he might have been experiencing had to be dealt with before his next shift began.

Whilst he was cleansing himself beneath the warm spray of water, an idea hit him like a blow to the stomach. There was an unused ward in the hospital that had been closed to cut costs. A janitor went in there every once in a while to keep it clean, and there were rumours that horny staff occasionally went there to hook up, but other than that, it was deserted.

It was the perfect place for a vampire to hide between victims. Before Ben had even finished with his shower, he’d already formed a plan. He would go to work a few hours before his shift tomorrow and visit the disused ward with the protection of daylight. If he was right, and the vampire was hiding there, then he would find her and convince her to turn him into a vampire. How exactly he was going to achieve that last crucial part he wasn’t too sure, but he’d figure it out when he got there.

As planned, Ben arrived at the hospital three hours before the start of his shift. His fingers fidgeted in his pockets as his nerves and excitement overloaded. The sun wouldn’t set for at least an hour and hopefully, that would give him the advantage that he needed. Vampires were at their most vulnerable in the daytime, so he’d have the best chance of success if he found her before dark.

Security was even tighter than it had been the night before. The security team was photographing everybody who entered the hospital, including staff. Ben allowed them to take his picture and then he produced his staff badge, of which they also took a picture before allowing him to pass through. As he made his way through the halls, he noticed more security personnel than ever. It wasn’t just security staff that Ben noticed, but police officers as well. No chances were being taken that a third person would be killed. He had no idea how the hospital was paying for the increase in security; it looked like they were more security officers than there were medical staff.

"Ben! Ben!" a voice called from behind. Ben turned to see Izzy taking fast steps down the corridor to catch up with him, a huge beam stretching her lips across her face.

Ben had always been a bit of a loner, but Izzy was the one friend he’d somehow kept hold of ever since primary school. She was one of the few kids at school who hadn’t avoided him to avoid getting bullied themselves. In fact, she’d even stood up to some of the bullies on his behalf. Back when they’d both been fourteen Izzy had punched Lewis Pratt right in the jaw. Watching him fall back in alarm was a memory that Ben still enjoyed to this day.

"I heard you found the security guy last night? Are you all right?" she said as she fell into step beside him. Ever the concerned friend.

Ben shrugged nonchalantly. "I’m all right. Just a dead guy. Not like I haven’t seen one of those before, eh?"

Izzy chuckled quietly. "Apparently, the police searched the hospital from top to bottom last night to try and find anything that could help the investigation."

Ben tried to hide his dejection as his heart sank. If they’d already searched everywhere and found nothing, then what chance did he have? The vampire must have fled the hospital. Then again, the vampire would have known that they’d be looking for her last night, and during the hours of darkness, she could’ve gone anywhere to evade them. She had the entire town at her disposal. She also had whatever vampire powers she possessed. Despite Ben’s extensive research on the subject, it was unknown which of the vampiric abilities were real and which ones were merely myths. In fact, pretty much everything he knew about vampires was unproven. If he hadn’t seen one himself sixteen years ago then he wouldn’t believe in them.

"Did they find anything?" Ben asked. Izzy shook her head, disappointment crawling onto her face, but her disappointment was not for the same reason as Ben’s. Izzy wanted her workplace to return to the safe environment it had been before. They both wanted security but whereas Izzy wanted it from the way things were, Ben wanted it from change.

"But you saw a woman right, and you think it was her?" So that rumour had spread already.

"Yeah," Ben said distractedly, deep in thought. He was tempted to tell Izzy about his suspicions. She knew all about his vampire obsession, and although she found it fascinating, she did not believe in vampires herself. Ben knew that if he told her what was really on his mind, then she’d give him a sympathetic look and then try to talk him out of going looking for the vampire. She might even try to go with him, just to make sure he didn't run into a murderer, which would only complicate things. If things went south with the vampire, then Izzy could end up getting killed and Ben would never be able to forgive himself. No, it would be best for him to keep it to himself until he’d proved it was true and there was no danger to Izzy.

They chatted a little more about the situation before parting ways. She headed for the pharmacy where she worked and he went to the abandoned ward. His prospects were pretty low, but it was still worth a try. He had nothing to lose from having a look.

The ward was not locked. It didn’t need to be. There was nothing anybody could steal in the ward. The only equipment that was kept there was unused and broken. It had become a graveyard for all the old equipment that was too expensive or difficult to dispose of.

All the lights were still on, which seemed counterintuitive considering it had been closed to save money. Having all the lights on must’ve been increasing the electricity bill by quite a bit. Then again, in a building like a hospital, it probably wasn’t noticed. Maybe the police had left all the lights on after they’d searched. Not that it mattered. It was interesting the things the mind thought of in times of nervousness, Ben mused. He was on his way to find a vampire, and here he was worrying about the hospital’s balance sheet.

The corridors were clear and clean. There was a bit of dust here and there, but otherwise, it was pretty spotless. Ben’s trainers squeaked on the vinyl flooring and the sound bounced around him. He tried fruitlessly to muffle the sounds. If there was a vampire, then he was broadcasting his approach like beeps on a radar device.

He looked in each room that he passed, checking for any signs that somebody was hiding out. The police had searched during the night when the vampire would have been active, but he was searching whilst the sun was still up. Hopefully, the vampire would be asleep and unable to hide from him.

There was something serene about the peaceful corridors in this ward. It was such a stark contrast to the bustling nature of the rest of the hospital where there was barely a moment of peace.

He pushed open the next door he came to and saw that the room was submerged in gloom where the blinds had been closed. As he cast his eyes around, he saw several items of hospital equipment that should not have been there because it was all very functional. A bed complete with bedding and a trolley with medical items were the most immediate to catch his eye. Ben stepped into the room carefully, and at once his arm prickled and the hairs there rose. There was a definite foreign presence in this room that his senses were making him aware of. It was like the sensation of being watched only far stronger.

She was here. He knew it.

Straight away, he crossed the room and tugged on the string to open the blinds. The afternoon sunlight flooded into the room, dispelling the gloominess, and his nerves eased a little. The beam of sunlight that cut across the middle of the room offered him all the protection he’d need if the vampire decided to make him her next victim.

At the far end of the room was a hospital bed with secure restraints that were used when patients could not or would not remain still. Next to the bed was an IV infusion pump. Neither piece of equipment should have been left in the graveyard. A steel trolley stood just next to the window. On it, somebody had left several syringes. Some were empty, but most of them were full of a clear fluid. He picked up one syringe to see that it was not labelled. The lower compartment of the trolley was occupied by rows of glass bottles that had obviously been taken from one of the medicine storerooms. Ben squatted down and took hold of one bottle to read the label. Silver nitrate solution. Further reading showed that the solution contained 63% silver. Some of the vampire myths claimed that silver was harmful to vampires, which made it even more mystifying that it was here.

A door creaked behind him and Ben jumped to his feet, the glass bottle still clutched in his hand. The woman with the exquisite red hair was standing in the bathroom doorway, watching him curiously. She had her head cocked to one side and her brow was furrowed, knitting her arched eyebrows together. Ben noticed that her skin was just a fraction paler than an average person’s would be, but not so much that it would cause alarm. The pupils of her eyes were just a little too large, especially since the sun was pouring in through the window. Now that Ben was getting a proper look at her, he was certain that she was a vampire. Even without the peculiarities in her appearance, the woman just exuded a kind of otherworldly air about her.

She regarded Ben with interest. She made no moves toward him and seemed entirely content to remain where she was. Ben could feel his pulse picking up speed and urgency, and he hoped she did not notice. The last thing he wanted a vampire to focus on was his pulse.

As if reading his mind, her eyes crawled down to his neck and the tip of her pink tongue snaked out and slithered slowly across her lips. Her eyes glinted mischievously. She knew the effect she was having on him and she savoured it. She was a lion toying with a gazelle before the moment of doom. Ben started to regret his decision to come here. Even in the daytime.

His eyes flicked over to the window. It was his saviour. The light that spilt in cut straight across the room, right up to the exit. Her access to the exit was cut off. The only way to get to the door was by stepping into the sunlight. He had the advantage.

She glanced over at the window and Ben saw the understanding fall over her. She looked back at him, her blood-red lips twisting into an amused smile. Then she took three strides forwards and stopped right in the centre of the beam of sunlight, raising her arms up to demonstrate her immunity to the sun’s rays.