Third Strike by Heather Brewer

running. “A man needs help! Somebody call an ambulance—a man was just attacked!”
    No one in the café moved—no one but Joss, who jumped up from his seat and hurried outside, pushing past the people who were frozen in shock that something violent had just occurred in their vicinity. As he moved out the door, he saw a man in his midtwenties lying on the ground in a pool of blood, his skin paling as the seconds ticked by, his neck bleeding profusely. He was losing blood. A lot of blood. And if someone didn’t do something quickly, the man was going to die.
    Joss pulled his overshirt off and knelt beside the wounded man, pressing his shirt into the man’s neck. Keeping pressure on it might be enough to save him, but not without professional help. He looked at one of the onlookers and made sure the man met his eyes. Then, calmly but firmly, said, “You. Call an ambulance right now. Tell them this man has had his carotid artery severed and has lost a lot of blood. They need to hurry.”
    The man nodded and pulled out his cell phone. Once he’d dialed and was actually speaking to someone, Joss relaxed a bit. That was the thing about people in a crisis situation. No one would take responsibility unless you handed it to them.
    His overshirt had soaked through, but he kept the pressure on. The man’s face was turning white. With one hand keeping pressure on the wound, Joss removed his T-shirt with his other hand, pulling it off over his head. He pressed it into the overshirt as hard as he could without strangling the poor man.
    A group of people was gathering and chatter moved like a wave through the crowd, but Joss didn’t take any of it in. The woman who’d entered the café had come back outside and was standing beside the man, ringing her hands in worry. Joss met her eyes and spoke calmly. “Did you see who did this?”
    â€œHard to remember. It’s all a blur.” She shook her head, looking very much as if she felt she wasn’t being much help at all. What she didn’t realize was that she’d just told Joss some pretty key information about the attack. She had difficulty remembering the face, which suggested mind control. Which meant that it was a vampire that had attacked this man, further evidenced by the gushing neck wound. Messy, messy, messy.
    A man in a tan polo shirt stepped forward and said, “Whatever it was that got him ran down the boardwalk and into the woods right after. I saw him. Must have been a psycho or something. Do you think it could be a serial killer?”
    Joss didn’t bother explaining that in order to be a serial killer, there needed to be a series of similar deaths. In the distance, he heard an ambulance siren. He gestured for the man to kneel beside him and then put the man’s hands on the T-shirt in place of his own. “Keep pressure on this. And keep people away from the woods. Where exactly did you see the attacker go?”
    â€œAcross the street from the boardwalk entrance, straight into the trees. Be careful, kid. Maybe you should wait for the authorities.” The man’s eyes widened, and Joss nodded in response. He wasn’t about to tell the guy that when it came to vampire attacks, he was one of the authorities.
    He hurried away from the scene, down the boardwalk. As he moved, the ambulance passed him, and he hoped they’d be able to save the victim. It was only then that it occurred to him that his stake had been exposed to all of the people on the scene. He wondered if any of them saw it there on his hip, and if they had any idea what it was. Once he reached the end of the boardwalk, he stepped into the woods and slipped his stake from the holster, ready for anything.
    He hoped, anyway.
    The woods seemed eerily still as he slowly made his way deeper inside. No birds sang songs above him in the trees. No breeze rustled the leaves overhead. No woodland creatures stirred in the