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did that have to do with how old, or how undead, my father was?
    He leaned forward. “See, it’s like this. When you’re changed, it takes a few days for some of the human functions to cease completely. Oh, the heartbeat stops right off and the breathing as well, but some of the other things take longer. Tear ducts still work normally for the first day or so before you cry only pink due to the blood-to-water ratio in our bodies. You might even piss once or twice to get it out of your system. But the main point is that he still had swimmers in his sacks.”
    “Ex cuse me?”
    “You know, luv. Sperm , if you want to be all technical about it. He still had living sperm in his juice. Now, that’s something which would only be possible if he’d been newly changed. Within a week at most. Right off, then, you can pinpoint almost exactly how old he is, in vampire years. Add that to any recent deaths around that time and place matching his description, and bingo! There’s your dad.”
    I was stunned. Just as promised, in a few seconds he’d given me more information than my mother had known all of my life. Maybe, just maybe, I’d stumbled onto a gold mine. If through him I could learn more about my father and killing vampires, and all he wanted in return was to pick the targets…well, then, I could stomach it. If I lived long enough.
    “Why do you want to help me find my father? In fact, why do you kill other vampires? They’re your own kind, after all.”
    Bones stared at me for a moment before replying. “I’ll help you find your father because I reckon you hate himmore than you do me, so it’ll keep you motivated to do what I say. As for why I hunt vampires…you don’t need to bother about that now. You have more than enough to concern yourself with. Suffice it to say some people just need killing, and that goes for vampires as well as humans.”
    I still didn’t know why he wanted me to work with him in the first place. Then again, maybe it was all a lie and he was biding his time, intending to rip my throat out when I least suspected it. I didn’t trust this creature, not for a moment, but right now I had no choice but to play along. Find out where this led to. If I was still alive in a week, I’d be amazed.
    “Back to the subject at hand, luv. Guns don’t work on us, either. There are only two exceptions to that rule. One, if the bloke is lucky enough to shoot our necks in two and our heads topple off. Decapitation does work; not many things can live without a head, and a head is the only part on a vampire that won’t grow back if you cut it off. Two, if the gun has silver bullets and enough are fired into the heart to destroy it. Now, that’s not as easy as it sounds. No vampire will stand still and pose for you. Likely he’ll be on you and the gun shoved up your arse before any real damage is done. But those silver bullets hurt, so you can use them to slow a vamp down and then stake him. And you’d better be quick with that silver, because you’ll have one very brassed-off vampire on your hands. Strangulation, drowning, none of that does anything. We only breathe about once an hour for preference, and we can go indefinitely without oxygen. Just a breath now and then to put a dab of oxygen in the blood and we’re sound as a pound. Our version of hyperventilating is to breathe once every few minutes. That’s one way to tell a vamp is tiring. He’ll start to breathe a bit to perk up. Electrocution, poisonous gas, ingestible poisons, drugs…none of those work. Got it? Now you know our weaknesses.”
    “Are you sure we can’t test some of those theories?”
    He wagged a finger at me reprovingly. “None of that, now. You and I are partners, remember? If you start to forget that, maybe you’d best remember the things I just mentioned would work really well on you.”
    “It was a joke,” I lied.
    He just gave me a look that said he knew better. “The bottom line is that we are very hard to put