Author: Poetics

Waving another late-night traveler across the border, Officer Peters glanced at the large office...

Motes of dust kicked up by their entrance to the private balcony floated in the dim, gas-lit air of the aged opera house. Madame Opal, the elder vampire who had been continually involved in the development of the San Francisco peninsula from her arrival in the 1840s, stood facing the empty stage far below, as if ignorant of her guests from Sonoma County.

Approaching the foreboding, Victorian-era opera house that remained all but invisible to mortal eyes, the small contingent of Sonoma County vampires felt increasingly unnerved. With broken windows hanging open to the night air and paint peeling off in sheets, the building looked like it hadn’t seen a touch of maintenance or renovation since …