“But just to make sure, I went down to the library, switched on the computer and typed ‘vampire vs. werewolf fight winner’ into the Google search browser.The machine whirred for zero point twenty-three seconds before it came up with some four million results. Obviously, I wasn’t the only nutter interested in this stuff. I clicked on the first link and groaned. Over sixty per cent thought a werewolf would kick a vamp’s ass any time. Dammit!”

“You thought I was a werewolf?" Dervish asks."Yes" I answer hollowly."You ass.”

“I’m sixty-eight” he said, “I first bucked hay when I was seventeen. I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life. And dammit, that’s just what I’ve gone and done.”

“I turned on the television and watched a movie about a girl who’d fallen in love with both a vampire and a werewolf. I’d already seen it a million times, so my eyelids grew heavy, fairly quickly. Ten minutes later I was out cold in my bed and dreaming of Duncan, who turned into a werewolf and was trying to kill my own vampire boyfriend. Every time I tried to see the vampire’s face, however, it was a blur.”

“Instead of being the A/V dweeb about to ask the head cheerleader to the prom, I was the finished-second-place werewolf about to ask the vampire's wife to shack up and procreate. Nice.”

“Vampires? You think vampires are real? Seriously?""The werewolf is asking me if I believe in vampires?”