CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Police Officer Sadie Marlow was sitting in her patrol car, preoccupied by thoughts of Maria, the mentally unwell girl she’d met in the hospital, and the police chief’s reaction to Maria’s premonition of an impending vampire war. After the girl had descended into silence, Sadie and her partner, Brent Waywood, had been ushered away, told to go back to the station and await further instruction. Then it had been hours of silence, of evasion, of Sadie’s questions going unanswered. And so, as the night began to draw to an end, bringing with it the last hour of Sadie’s shift, she’d found herself in her patrol car with Brent responding to a residential disturbance, none the wiser about what was going on.

She was just pulling up to the curb of the house in question when the patrol car’s radio crackled and a voice sounded out. It wasn’t the usual emergency call operator’s voice, but the police chief’s.

“Officer Marlow, I need you in the center of town. Now.”

Sadie leaned forward and hit the r