Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

natural. A vampire is magic, not science. And if this is what happens when a vampire kills, then how are the police finding bodies? Why is there a guy in my freezer?
    She put on her shoes and socks and resumed walking. It was starting to get light and she quickened her pace, checked her watch, then broke into a run. She'd made a habit of checking the time of sunrise every morning in the almanac so she wouldn't be caught too far from home. Five years in the City had taught her the streets, but if she was going to run she had to learn the alleys and backstreets. She couldn't let anyone see her moving this fast.
    As she ran, a voice sounded in her head. It was her voice, but not her voice. It was the voice that put no words to what her senses told her, yet understood. It was the voice that told her to hide from the light, to protect herself, to fight or flee. The vampire voice.
    "Killing is what you do," the vampire voice said.
    The human part of her was revolted. "No! I didn't want to kill him."
    "Fuck him. It is as it should be. His life is ours. It feels good, doesn't it?"
    Jody stopped fighting. It did feel good. She pushed the human part of her aside and let the predator take over to race the sun for her life.
    Nick Cavuto paced around the chalk outline of the body as if he were preparing to perform a violent hopscotch on the corpse. "You know," Cavuto said, looking over at Rivera, who was trying to fend off a reporter from the Chronicle at the yellow crime-scene tape, "this guy is pissing me off."
    Rivera excused himself from the reporter and joined Cavuto by the body. "Nick, keep it down," he whispered.
    "This stiff is making my life difficult," Cavuto said. "I say we shoot him and take his wallet. Simple gunshot wound, robbery motive."
    "He didn't have a wallet," said Rivera.
    "There you have it, robbery. Massive blood loss from gunshot wound, broke his neck when he hit the ground."
    The reporter perked up. "So it was a robbery?"
    Cavuto glared at the reporter and put his hand on his thirty-eight. "Rivera, what do you say to a murder-suicide? Scoop over there killed this guy, then turned the gun on himself – case closed and we can go get some breakfast."
    The reporter backed away from the line.
    Two coroner's assistants moved to the body, pushing a gurney with a body bag on it. "You guys done here?" one of them asked Cavuto.
    "Yeah," Cavuto said. "Take him away."
    The coroners spread the body bag out and hoisted the body onto it. "Hey, Inspector, you want to bag this book?"
    "What book?" Rivera turned. A paperback copy of Kerouac's On the Road was lying in the chalk line where the body had been. Rivera slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves and pulled an evidence bag from his jacket pocket. "Here you go, Nick. The guy was a speed reader. Snapped his neck on a meaningful passage."
    Jody glanced at the lightening sky, ducked down an alley, and fell into a trot. She was only a block from home, she'd make it in long before sunrise. She leaped over a dumpster, just to do it, then high-stepped through a pile of crates like a halfback through fallen defenders. She was strong in the blood – high, quick and light on her feet, her body moved, dodged, and leaped on its own – no thought, just fluid motion and perfect balance.
    She'd never been athletic in life: the last kid to be picked for kickball, straight C's in phys ed, no chance as a cheerleader; the self-conscious, one-step dancer with the rhythmic sense of an inbred Aryan. But now she reveled in the movement and the strength, even as her instincts screamed for her to hide from the light.
    She heard the policemen's voices before she saw the blue and red lights from their cars playing across the walls at the end of the alley. Fear tightened her muscles and she nearly fell in mid-step.
    She crept forward and saw the police cars and coroner's wagon parked in front of the loft. The street was full of milling cops and reporters. She checked her watch and backed down the alley. Five minutes to sunrise.
    She looked for a place to hide. There was the dumpster, even a few large garbage cans, three steel doors with massive locks, and a basement window with steel bars. She ran to the window and tried the bars. They moved a bit. She checked her watch. Two minutes. She braced her feet against the brick wall and pulled on the bars with her legs. Rusty bolts tore out of the mortar and the bars moved another half inch. She tried to peer into the window, but the