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does?”
    “First the vampire has to fully drain the person. Then, just before the moment of death, the person has to drink the vampire’s blood. The window of time to act is very short. If you wait too long, the human dies. If you act too soon, he dies in agony…or worse.”
    “What could be worse?”
    “Supposedly, if the person survives, he becomes a vampire, but it’s all wrong.”
    “Wrong how?”
    “I don’t know! I’m no expert, okay? It’s stuff I was told. Ray always made out it to be one of those scary stories for misbehaving children.”
    Gabe couldn’t bite his tongue anymore. “Okay, that’s it. Who the hell is Ray?”
    Harvey took a moment to reply. “Stan and Ray are Dill’s…boyfriends. They took care of me right after I was turned.”
    “So they turned you?”
    “No,” Harvey said, clamping his mouth shut.
    Fair enough, Harvey had as much reason to be wary of him as he was of Harvey. It stung all the same.
    They screeched to a halt. Harvey put the car into reverse and maneuvered into a space too small for it. He wedged it in, but not without tapping the cars parked on both sides.
    “What? They’re called bumpers for a reason,” he said, catching Gabe’s accusing gaze.
    They were at the Nightcrawler, a seedy-looking bar far from the touristy parts of town. Above the door, a green neon worm attempted to drown himself and his sorrows in a tall cocktail glass. A familiar prickling sensation alerted Gabe to the nearby presence of undead.
    Harvey turned to him, his face pulled tight. “It’s a vampire-owned bar…but you figured that already, didn’t you?”
    Gabe nodded.
    “Keep cool, okay? There’s no real danger in there. The owners wouldn’t stand for it.”
    “No worries,” Gabe said, doing his best to sound convincing.
    At first look, the place was no different than an average neighborhood dive. A battered pool table took up one corner, and a dartboard and tacky bar mirrors hung from the walls. Some classic rock song was blaring from the jukebox. The customers, both male and female, were clad in denim and leather. Gabe couldn’t have easily told the living and undead apart just by looking.
    The bartender was the biggest vampire Gabe had seen to date—a tower of bulging, tattooed muscles, sparsely clad in black leather. He greeted Harvey with friendly familiarity. For whatever reason, Gabe didn’t like it. He tried to listen in on their conversation, but the two leaned close to each other, and the music blared too loud. So Gabe detached himself to explore a little. Like a shift in tide, the other patrons moved around too, seemingly aimless, but Gabe found himself in close proximity to a couple of vampires—a male and a female—who were eyeing him with open and hungry interest. Before anything could happen, Harvey appeared by his side, put an arm around Gabe’s waist and pulled him outside, to the obvious chagrin of the other two.
    “You didn’t have to rescue me like a damsel in distress,” Gabe grumbled once they were on the street.
    “Rescue? Never crossed my mind. I was simply marking my territory.”
    “That’s all right, then, I guess.”
    “You’re too scrumptious to let wander around alone.”
    “Now there you go making me sound like a girl again,” Gabe groused, but in truth, Harvey’s audacious ways were rubbing off on him.
    “Never, my Angel,” Harvey said.
    “So what did you find out?” Gabe asked, getting into the car.
    “Nothing. Gus hasn’t seen Dill recently.”
    “Was he a regular here?” It cast a certain shadow on Dill’s character in his eyes.
    “He and I came here a few times. You know, boys’ night out, to give the old guys a break. It’s more like my kinda place than Dill’s, but I thought if he was looking for a vampire to turn him, he might try it here,” Harvey replied, driving down the narrow street with the velocity of a bat out of hell.
    “Your kinda place?”
    “Yeah, I like my men a little on the rough side. Does that