Steal Often, Live Well

By Anne Hutchins

He drinks your life, not your blood.

It’s mid-19th century England. A young man, bored with his mundane life, meets an ancient man in a seaside pub who offers a gift of endless life…and lives. But is it truly a gift for a restless man, or a burden for tired one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Hutchins
• Release date: May 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513088730

Anne Hutchins

Anne is a native Californian and is quite proud of that distinction. She has held a wide variety of jobs ranging from deli worker to working at an advertising agency and at brokerage firms; she also drove part-time for Uber. In 2000 she left the corporate world of cubicles and ubiquitous break room snacking to pursue a career in Web development. She is also a content writer, blogger, and devout WordPress evangelist. Anne writes in several genres: science fiction, romance, and mainstream. Visit her website, annehutchins.com and her Facebook page, facebook.com/annehutchinsauthor for more information. Coming soon, a time travel romance, Mind Diver. She lives in San Diego.

Book preview

Cover designed by Anne Hutchins

Painting by Hans Baldung (1484 – 1545)—Three Ages of Man

Please don’t call me a vampire.

I hate that. I truly, truly do.

Besides, I’ll be out of this shit-hole in a few weeks and you can forget you ever met me. No one would believe you if you told my tale – why, I doubt you would believe my story once I’ve told it to you. But it doesn’t matter – I’ll be gone and you shall have this tale of mine. Go ahead; try telling your friends after I’ve taken my final leave of this place. They’ll lock you up in a cracker factory for it. Who knows? Might be worth it – better food, no work detail...

Anyway.

If you want to attach some sort of romantic moniker to how I gain my sustenance, then call me a taker of souls. It’s not quite accurate, but a bit closer to the mark in defining what I am. I mean, the term vampire is so...over-used, it’s become colloquial.

Excuse me?

I don’t have time to explain colloquial, you dolt. Get a dictionary for Christ’s sake.

Anyway.

Vampires drink the blood of their victims; some ghouls even gnaw at flesh, or so I’ve been told. It’s such a nasty, distasteful business; and a mess, besides. You must also grapple with your victims a bit; personally, I don’t care for that sort of close contact. I have no desire to have the taste of human flesh upon my tongue. And always hunting at night, fearful that sunlight should turn your immortal flesh into a mound of ash. Oh, and if you don’t feed soon enough, your flesh begins to corrupt and suppurate into the corpse you should be. Well, I digress.

So.

I absorb bits of a person’s life, his personality – even his appearance – until there’s nothing left of him. I assume his life, simply put. I slip into it the way you’d slip into a piece of clothing, one item at a time: underwear first, socks, pants, shirt, shoes, belt. You get the idea. Soon you have a complete package. That’s