It really was a dark and stormy night, and my third-shift head wasn’t going to let me get any sleep. The sudden downpour forced me to pull off way earlier than I might have, into the empty lot of a truck stop motel. The rig would never make it up the front range with rain coming down like that. 

The motel had a big, blinking sign. Vacancy. Vacancy. Dark all around except for the distant neon snake of the highway and the blue beck-and-call of the fluorescent indoors. I’d been there before, probably, but wouldn’t remember it. Those places all look the same out on the plains.

There were only two or three other rigs parked around in the dark. Nothing stirred when I pulled in, but nothing would stir in that kind of rain. Instead, everything vibrated at some frequency that made it hard to notice anything strange. It’s a spiritual white noise, rain like that. A humming all around you. And everything looks strange lit up by neon. 

I know a hooker when I see one. She was long and lean as a hunting dog, with that pillhead pale skin. She looked a little sick beneath the fluorescents, standing at the end of the motel by where the light gave way to empty dark. She must have darted through the rain, though, because her shirt was sticking to her in a way that made me wonder how much cash I had. 

Usually, lot girls hunt in packs. Or at least hang out in them. I’m used to pulling into a place and seeing a couple to a handful of girls sharing cigarettes and shooting the shit. But she was the only other person in sight. It was a strange feeling. Like we were the only two people in the world. It drew me into her. 

I flashed my high beams, lighting the scrubby land beyond the parking lot. A couple eyes glowed back at me. Coyotes. The hooker strode over through the rain. Not fast. When she reached my side door she was freshly soaked. 

“Whatcha looking for, honey?” she asked. Her voice was raspy. A smoker’s voice, but it sounded good coming out of her. I looked her up and down. She was worse up close, but not so bad. She had pretty black eyes and big lips. She was skinny in that same drugged-out way but it looked like somebody had bought her a set of tits. “What are you charging?” I asked. 

“Eighty for the cat, but if you’re hard up I’ll suck you off for a couple of twenties.” 

I frowned. “I don’t look like I can afford it?” 

She smiled a little. “Not really. So what do you want?” 

“I want to fuck you,” I said. 

“You got the money?” 

“You wanna come in out of the rain?” 

She shook her head and stayed put. “You got the money?” 

I rifled around in the glove compartment for my wallet and found two fifties in my billfold. It was fortunate I’d just started the route. I’d have been fresh out on the other side of the mountains. 

She hoisted herself up into the cab and shut the door behind her. She smelled like cigarettes and cheap perfume. Not too much though. Good hookers never wore too much. 

“You got change?” I asked, holding out a hundred. 

She shook her head. “Nope.” 

“Then what’ll you give me for the extra twenty?” 

She thought for a moment, then said, “You can kiss me after.” 

I laughed. “I’d rather kiss you before.” I did actually want to kiss her. She had those big lips, and they were pale like the rest of her, so I knew she didn’t have any lipstick on. She didn’t have much makeup on at all, which I liked, even though it made her look sick. Her eyes were lined in crayon-looking black. She was young, but not young enough to worry about. A couple of crows feet are good insurance. I wanted to kiss her. I figured she’d taste like cigarettes. 

“Fine,” I said. 

She smiled without her teeth. “Alright honey,” she said, slipping a pair of black panties off under her wet skirt. “How do you want it?” 

We did it in my bunk behind the cab. It was quick, but not too quick. Afterward, she put her panties back on and we slid back onto the bench seat where I’d left my wallet on the dash. I pulled out the fifties and she reached for them. 

“Wait,” I said, snatching them back. Her face twisted up funny, but softened when I said, “You owe me a kiss, remember?” 

She smirked. “That’s right, baby.” She leaned in and kissed me full on the lips. Cigarettes and weed. Beneath that it was only skin. No fruity lip gloss. Just the taste of a woman. I was surprised by how much it made me want her again already, but I was out of cash. She slipped her tongue between my teeth and I made a stupid little noise. Then her mouth was trailing down my jaw to my neck. I leaned back in my seat, figuring she knew this place had an ATM and was trying to wring another fifty bucks from me. I was probably the only business she’d had all night. 

Then she bit me. 

It hurt, bad, but I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move. I felt something slip between the ligaments in my neck. She pulled away, grinning. Her eyes black, her mouth dripping with blood. 

“Sorry, honey,” she said. “Couldn’t help myself.”

I grabbed my neck. My hand came away bloody. A cool tingling spread beneath the skin and radiated around my body. I wondered if I was going to pass out. 

“What the fuck?” I managed. 

“Sorry,” she said again. She looked genuinely apologetic. “We can call that your payment. No worries.” 

“What the fuck?” I said again. “Did you just...”

“Drink your blood?” she interrupted. “Yeah, a little.” 

“Like a—”

“A vampire, yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. You’ll be alright though. It’s not actually so bad.”

“What the fuck?” It sounded like a skipping song now. “What—what are you saying?” 

“Well, it’s like a germ, honey. It’s in there now. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.” 

I could have killed her then. I might have, but I didn’t want to.  

“Deal with what? Drinking fucking blood?” 

“You’ll like it,” she shrugged and produced a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Reds stuffed in her bra. “Now, anyway.” 

I snatched the pack from her. “Give me one of those.”

She gave an indignant pout. “You’re mad, huh?” 

I didn’t answer. I knew a cigarette wasn’t going to help me. It rattled in my shaking hand. 

“You got any weed?” I asked. 

She smirked, touching a BIC lighter to the end of her cigarette. “You got any money?” 

“Fuck you.”

“The bite gets you the fuck,” she said. “I didn’t ask you to pay for that, did I?” 

“No offense, but I’ve had pussy worth eternal damnation and that wasn’t it.” 

“Honey,” she took a drag. “You’ve never had pussy worth eternal damnation.” 

Still, she produced a joint from the ratty bag on the seat beside her. “Here,” she said. “Call it an apology.” 

I don’t know why I didn’t get angrier. Instead, I just got quiet. It was something old girlfriends had complained about, back when I still bothered with girlfriends. We sat like that for a while, me puffing on a joint, her taking drags off her cigarette. I cracked the windows because there was nobody around, and it sort of didn’t seem like it mattered anymore. Rain pattered in. I watched the distant shadow of the mountains, waiting for light to break against the peaks of the front range. After a long time of quiet and smoke and our thighs touching on the worn leather of the bench seat, I got brave enough to ask, “So, what’s going to happen to me?” 

“Well,” she said. “It won’t happen all at once, but you’re gonna turn into a vampire.”

“Just like that?” 

She reached over and took what was left of the joint between her own fingers. “Just like that,” she said in a cloud of smoke. “It’s a little different for everyone. Not like in the fairy tales, at least, not anymore. Maybe the bug changed, I don’t know.”

“So there’s others? Vampires, I mean.”

She chuckled, “Oh, tons. Especially out here. Out west I mean.”

“Why?” 

She just shrugged and took another puff, then squished the remnants into my dashboard ashtray. “You accepted this pretty quickly. The vampire thing. I mean, you didn’t even do the ‘vampires don’t exist’ bit.” 

“Guess not,” I said, because I didn’t understand it either. Maybe because vampires just seemed like another thing that might as well exist. The world is full of monsters. The weed had taken the edge off my fear, and now I just felt strange, but something about her set me at ease about it all. “So can I only go out at night?” 

She laughed. “No, but you won’t be suntanning, that’s for sure.”

I thought about all the things I liked to do, of which there weren’t that many. I’d worked night shifts most of my life. Sleep came hard, so trucking came easy, too. And I liked to be alone.

“You got a wife?” she asked. I shook my head. “Good. Hard to explain that one.”

“Can I still eat garlic?” 

She laughed again. A deep, belly laugh this time. I actually smiled. “You can eat it, but you’re gonna get the shits after. Like, big time. Oh, and silver. Silver’s gonna burn your skin, but only like an allergy. You’ll get a rash.” 

“There goes all my fancy jewelry,” I said. She smiled, too. 

“There’s some good stuff. You can see in the dark. You don’t have to sleep. You never get sick. You’re basically invincible, except for the big ones—cutting off the head, stake through the heart. Oh, and you don’t age.”

“You don’t age?” 

“Nope.” 

“So how old are you?” 

She thought for a moment. “Sixty-six in January.” 

She didn’t look a day over thirty to me. “So I’m gonna live forever?” 

She shrugged. “If you want to, I guess. But who wants that? Not me. Not like I’m getting into heaven anyway.” 

It was something I hadn’t considered: my eternal soul. Hadn’t even crossed my mind. In the distance, the highway was turning blue. The rain had stopped, and fast food signs started to glow, floating in the air on their pylons. Taco Bell and the golden arches like neon sunrises to the east. 

“Why me?” I asked plainly. 

“Night shift driver,” she said, without hesitation. “Figured it wouldn’t interfere with your lifestyle too much.” 

I hated that she was right, but she was right. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wouldn’t really make much difference. I could still drive my truck, sleep in the back when the sun was out, which I did already. Work night shifts the way I’d always liked anyway. I could do that forever, I guess. It’s not like I was getting any older. 

“This can’t be a bad line of work, for a vampire,” I said. “You know ...” 

“What, this?” she gestured to herself, like she was wearing some kind of hooker uniform. “I got into it because I got bit, believe it or not.” 

“You weren’t doing this before?” 

“I was stripping near Tulsa. Place out in the middle of nowhere. Clientele was mostly truckers like you. Modern day cowboys. That’s how I liked to think of them. Then one day, this guy bites me in the back room. Bouncer ran in but the guy just kind of disappeared into the shadows. I’ve still never figured out how he did it.”

“Damn,” I said. “Were you angry?” 

“Well, I didn’t really know what was going on at first. I had to learn it all myself.” She lit another cigarette and sighed. “But you meet others. It’s way more people than you’d think. I’d bet a good half of the people you see around truck stops at four a.m. are vampires. You get a radar for it. Learn things. It’s like a little community. Cute, right?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s fucking freaky.” 

She smiled. “Well, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of now.” She paused. “Anyway, I’ve been doing this ever since. Quick money. Easy blood. That’s the hard thing. Tough to get close enough to drink somebody’s blood if you’re not fucking them.” She paused again and looked me up and down. Stained T-shirt, pouch of a gut hanging over my worn-in jeans. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she added. 

I chuckled. Again, we fell quiet. With warm discomfort, I realized this was the first time I’d spent more than an hour with any woman in years. I’d been paying for it for a while, once I got too ugly to earn it. And traveling around like I do; all the weird hours. It just falls to the wayside. But I didn’t think I’d feel right hiring girls just to turn them into vampires. 

“So, what happens if you don’t … you know … ”

She was quiet for a breath too long, like she was remembering something she didn’t want to think about. “You ever been in withdrawal? Like, real withdrawal? I’m not talking quitting smoking here.”  

I shook my head. 

“It’s worse. At some point, your body will just make you. Better to stay yourself, you know?” 

“That’s dark shit,” I said. I turned away to look out the window at where the first shred of orange light was touching the highest peak. I wondered if it was going to hurt. 

“For what it’s worth,” she added. “I am sorry. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess.” 

Maybe it’s what I get for paying for it, I wanted to add, but I worried she might not take it for the joke it was. 

“Are you angry at him now?” I asked instead, looking back at her. She was pretty in the twilight. A little bit of golden brown in the black of her eyes. 

“Who?” she asked. 

“The guy.” 

She laughed. “What guy?” 

I didn’t say anything. I already knew she knew what I meant. There was something so easy about her, in spite of everything. 

“Not really,” she said after a while. “It was hard to watch my mom die, but I guess I would have done that anyway. That’s the hardest thing. Losing people. But after they’re all gone, you’re free. You can drift along. Make a little money here and there. Be a cowboy. I always liked that life, anyway. It’s easier when you take away all the stakes. The getting old. The getting killed.” 

I thought again about what I had to lose and came up empty. Still, I wondered if I’d be better off getting somebody to put a stake through my heart. Maybe it was the weed, but the thought didn’t terrify me the way it should have. Just seemed like a more complicated version of something I’d considered plenty of times. 

“You just drift around then? You don’t want more?” I asked. I don’t know why. 

She shrugged, and after a moment answered, “Do you?”

I had to think about it. We sat there in silence again, both thinking about it. She was the first to speak again. 

“There’s never really been more,” she said. “For people like us, I mean.” 

I chuckled, “Vampires?” 

When I looked at her again her eyes were soft and beautiful. 

She shook her head and smiled. “Cowboys.” 

She didn’t say anything else. Morning came suddenly as the clouds cleared. It felt different on my skin, but not bad. Not yet. She pulled a pair of shades from her ratty purse and put them on. I kept expecting her to reach for the door handle, but she never did, and I never found myself wanting her to. 

“You want a ride somewhere?” I asked. 

“Where you going?” 

“Through Colorado Springs. Then up to Salt Lake.” 

She shrugged and smiled a little. She was prettier in the light of morning. A little more human. 

“Might as well.”