Excerpt:

Once upon a time ... No, this isn't that kind of story. Those are tales of light and magic. This ... this is a story of darkness and earth, and the things that not only live but thrive in it.

We are your red-eye pilots, the taxi drivers that take you home from the bars, the emergency room nurse or doctor when your child can't breathe in the pre-dawn hours. Many of us were human once, and some of us still wish we were. Now, however, we are both more and less than you.

We love and plan, both with our own and with humans; fight and kill when we must, because death causes so much attention. Some of us give into madness and become monsters from which movies could be made.

We live, hold down jobs, pay our taxes, and eventually die just like you. You'll never know we were there if things go right, and that's probably for the best. I know the stories make us immortal, and while that makes for a wonderful, scary monster to terrorize people with, it's far from the truth. Then again, most of what's in the old stories isn't quite true.