It did the trick. I felt nothing but the buzz of alcohol and painkillers in my system. Above all, I saw nothing.

Three weeks later, a drunk driver took most of my family. After that, and after I found my dad swinging by his throat, I was gone. I remember nothing from the last half of my year as a cop save for loads of crushing pain. It was then that I faced my fate, spit on it, and kicked it in the balls.

I was so much of a mess that my sergeant demanded I take a drug test. The results were bad. They didn’t just ask me to leave the force, they kicked my butt and threw me bodily from the station.

It was the final straw. Still, I didn’t care. I laid in the gutter until I had the strength to stagger to a liquor store. I was beaten down, twitchy, and paranoid. Faces stared, some dumbly, some seemingly loaded with malice. I had lost it all. Soon I would come apart at the seams, or if I was lucky, just collapse and die.

Then it happened. I was walking, swigging rotgut, alongside a small shadowy park off Fifteenth Street, just short of Mount Pleasant. It was a dark moonless night, yet when I glared into the park I could see clear as day. I saw the figure of a man looming over a woman. At first I thought they were making out, and I began to turn away to get back to feeling sorry for myself. Then I saw the moist glimmer of fangs.

Vampire.

I tossed the bottle, smiled, and cracked my knuckles.

I ran into that park feeling every ounce of the pain in my chest, every loss I’d suffered, and most of all, the hatred I felt for the horrible luck I had. I channeled the rage into my body, feeling strong, sober, and clear-headed. In reality, I was out of control, drunk, and over-confident.

I attacked the vampire with such ferocity that the bloodsucker seemed frightened and tried to get away. From me, a mere human! In that moment, I gave up trying to run away. If the dark wanted me, it had me.

I ripped the head from the vampire’s shoulders with my bare hands, pissing on the fate that was handed to me. This was my life. I had arrived.

And that, to make a short story long, is why I hate going to the precinct. It reminds me of my family and the sorry state of my life.

Blout was waiting for us outside the door of the coroner’s lab, chewing on a big sloppy cigar. Normally I dislike cigar smokers, but he pulled it off. Blout was a large, wide-framed black man in his early forties, very dark and tall. In fact, he was almost as tall as Mo’Lock. He always wore dark suits that made him all the more imposing, making me feel small and unimportant in his shadow.