Vampire Shift - By Tim O'Rourke Page 0,1

of a white-washed building. Any anxiety that I felt disappeared on seeing it. I knew that I’d found the police station where I had been posted to. They would be able to point me in the right direction to my lodgings, and it would give me a chance to meet with some of my colleagues before I started my first nightshift the following evening.

Parking the car just outside, I pulled my jacket tight about my shoulders and ran towards the old wooden door below the blue lamp. Pushing against it, I stumbled into the station and out of the howling wind and driving rain. I must have looked a right sight, my black hair matted in dark, wet streaks to my forehead and cheeks, my face pale with the cold.

“Can I help you?” someone asked me.

Looking up, I could see a small front counter. Sitting behind it was a police officer. He had short, grey hair and was clean shaven. He was about forty-years-old. He was dressed in his uniform and was sucking on an old looking pipe, which pumped clouds of blue smoke into the air.

“Can I help you?” He asked again.

Straightening my hair and pulling it from my face, I smiled and said, “I’m Kiera.”

He looked back at me as if he didn’t have the slightest idea as to what I was talking about. So holding out my hand for him to shake, I stepped towards the front counter and said, “I’m Kiera Hudson. The new recruit?”

Again he looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. Lowering my hand, I added, “Force headquarters sent me. I’m to be stationed here.”

Then with a sudden look of recognition on his face, he stood up and came towards me. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t in full uniform at all, but was wearing a pair of jeans and carpet slippers. He appeared to lean to the right as he walked, as if he had a limp.

“Hudson,” he said, thumbing through some paperwork on the other side of the counter. “Hudson. Kiera. Oh yes,” he said, plucking my file from beneath a mountain of paperwork. Then looking back at me, he said, “You know you’re getting old when the new recruits look younger than my daughters.”

Noticing the three stripes on his shoulders, I asked, “Are you in charge here?”

Placing my file to one side, he smiled back at me and said, “Kind of, but not really. I’m Sergeant Murphy – Murphy to my friends,” and thrust out his hand. Taking it, he pumped my arm up and down until I thought it might just fall off. “We do have Chief Inspector Rom, but we don’t see him much. He pops his head in from time to time and that’s the way we like it. Don’t want the boss nosing around,” he said, winking at me as he puffed on his pipe again.

Knocking my fringe from my eyes, I noticed that Sergeant Murphy was wearing a small tiepin which was in the shape of a crucifix. I thought this was a little odd as we’d had it instilled into us at training school that we were only to wear police insignia on our uniforms – nothing else – especially not anything religious or anything that might cause offense.

Sergeant Murphy saw me looking, and his fingers went straight to it. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Straight from training school where you’ve had your head crammed full of all the things you should and shouldn’t do.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, not wanting to offend my new sergeant in the first few moments of meeting him.

“Well, let me tell you something, little lady,” he said leaning over the counter towards me, his voice dropping to a whisper. “This little cross here will offer you more protection than any can of CS spray, a baton, or a Taser. They don’t mean diddly-shit in The Ragged Cove.”

“Don’t listen to the old fart,” someone said from behind me.

Spinning round, I saw another police officer step into the station out of the rain. His raincoat dripped water all over the floor, and it ran from the brim of his helmet. Taking it from his head, he shook the rain off. Unlike Sergeant Murphy, this police officer was younger, no older than twenty-two. He had short black wavy hair, green eyes, and a handsome looking face.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, taken aback by his sudden presence. His jaw line was sharp and square