Desire After Dark by Amanda Ashley Page B

two of the walls; round tables covered with red-checked cloths stood in the center of the floor.
    When she returned to see if there was anything else he wanted, Duncan took his courage in hand and blurted, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to go out with me one of these nights?”
    Vicki started to say no, then thought how nice it would be if she could tell Mrs. Heath that she’d had a date. “I might. What did you have in mind?”
    â€œDinner and a movie? Just dinner? Just a movie? I’m easy.”
    â€œI’m off on Sundays and Mondays.” She slid his bill under the salt shaker.
    â€œHow about Sunday night? I could pick you up about what, five? Six?”
    â€œSix is good.” Tearing a page out of her pad, she wrote her address and phone number on the back and handed it to him.
    He looked at it briefly, then folded the paper in half and put it in his shirt pocket. “Sunday at six,” he said with a smile. “Of course, I’ll probably see you before then.”
    With a nod, she went to clear table two.
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    Duncan whistled softly as he left the diner. It was too nice an evening to go back to the hotel. Instead, he took a walk about the town. It wasn’t a big place but it seemed prosperous enough. The people were friendly. They nodded to him or called a greeting as he passed by. It was the kind of place that reminded him of the old days, when most towns and cities were small and people didn’t bother to lock their doors and everybody knew everybody else’s business. A nice town where people expected to die of old age surrounded by friends and family, not dragged into the woods to be dinner for a hungry fiend.
    He clenched his hands into tight fists as he felt his anger and his hatred rise within him. Vampires. They had been the bane of mankind since time began. The Undead could be found in every civilization known to man as far back as recorded time. Every culture had its own account of vampires, whether they were the tales of the vukodlak in Croatia or the lupi manari of Italy.
    And just as there had always been vampires, there had always been vampire hunters. For centuries, all the firstborn males in Duncan’s family had been hunters. Duncan knew his family was something of a rarity. Most hunters never married. Wives and children could all too easily become victims, pawns in a never-ending war between good and evil. He knew that being a hunter wasn’t something that was passed from father to son in other parts of the world. Being a vampire hunter wasn’t inherited. Rather, it was a calling that might come to anyone, like being a priest.
    Edward Ramsey was the only hunter Duncan had ever known who had been turned into the very thing he had once hated and hunted. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he, himself, were suddenly turned. How had Ramsey reconciled what he had been to what he had become? What was it like to hunt mortals instead of vampires? Did it have the same kick?
    He thrust the thought away and concentrated on his reason for being in Pear Blossom Creek. Three women had been killed and drained of blood. All had been redheads. All had been young and single and lived alone. It sounded like the work of Dimitri Falco, yet Henry Adams claimed that he had destroyed Falco in South America. Of course, it was always possible that Falco was dead and it was just a coincidence that the three murdered women had all been young with red hair.
    Tom grunted softly. He had never believed in coincidence, which meant that either Falco was still alive or another vampire was copying his M.O. Either way, Vicki Cavendish was in danger. And she wasn’t the only woman in town who fit the description of the vampire’s victims. There were Suzie Collins, who worked at the post office, and Rhonda McGee, a nurse who worked the night shift at the hospital.
    Stretching his arms and shoulders, Duncan decided it was time to