Excerpt: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Prologue – Dead Men Tell No Tales: Authors Note

Life is never straight forward. Sometimes I think that death may be the easy way out. I’m not contemplating suicide or anything, I can’t. By that I don’t mean that I haven’t got the courage to kill myself. I mean that I physically can’t do it. Technically, I should be dead anyway, or at least on the verge of death. My resting heart rate is less than twenty beats per minute; I barely breathe and can go for more than a week without sleep. You see, ninety-six years ago, something happened to me. Something happened and my life changed forever. I mean that quite literally.
If you believe the stories, I am the stuff of nightmares, a bloodthirsty and sadistic killer who cares for nobody but himself. The truth is I used to be like that. A long time ago though. Thankfully, that part of my life is over now. I’m a changed man, if you can call me a man. These days, I hunt down my own kind, the ones who haven’t seen the light and changed their ways. The ones who continue to senselessly slaughter the innocent, just to get a fix.

This is a story is about a monster. A cruel demon who stalks the city of London in the dead of night. This is the story of the hunt for him and how, in doing so, the past comes back to haunt all those involved in ways that they could never imagine. This is my story. It is the story of how I went from a self obsessed playboy artist to sadistic killer and eventually to a freedom fighter and defender of the people... It is a story about love, despair, friendship and murder. It is a story that I have never told anybody before. I therefore don’t know why I have decided to write this book, perhaps the time is right at last.

For Morgana and Amelia, I will love you both until the end of time...