Blood Love

The bell tolled over his head as he stepped into the bar. The place was uncharacteristically deserted for a Saturday night. Flies littered the ceiling like clumps of ashes. The man behind the bar swabbed a glass with a greasy rag.

"What you havin'?" the man asked without looking up, squinting one eye to inspect the shine.

He perched on the edge of the stool, tense, the reassuring pressure of his gun pressed against his back. "Jack. On the rocks."

The barman nodded and prepared the drink. He slid the glass across the tabletop and the other man grabbed it, knocked it back.

"You want another?"

"Yeah."

He knocked back that one, too. And waited.

And waited.

He knew when his guy stepped in ten minutes later. The air changed. Static crackled. He slapped down twenty bucks for the drinks and walked right up to the newest customer. A rough beard concealed his face. The rest of him was wrapped in a thick, black trench coat. He smelled of smoke and death.

Stillness pervaded the space. Blood boiled his veins. There was no mercy; no humanity. Only rage and anger and bloodlust.

Before the man could even utter a word, he grabbed him around the neck and bashed his forehead on the table, simultaneously pulling his gun on the barman and warning him not to move. The man in his grip groaned.

"Alfred Jenkins?" he asked.

"What's it to ya?"

He bashed his head into the table again before yanking him up. "We're gonna have ourselves a little talk."

He asked the bar tender for a private place to chat, and he peacefully obliged. The sign on the window was turned to "closed". The door to the back room was locked. Alfred Jenkins was tied to a chair with a bundle of old rope and practiced knots. His eyes fell to the picture slid across the table, of a woman with bright red hair and freckles and a crooked, mischievous smile.

"Her name is Hayley Stephens," Jason Lambargo growled, eyes flashing with the promise of danger. "And either you tell me where she is, or I put a bullet in your head."