Chapter one

The last few seconds of life are intensely precious. The old myth that your entire life flashes before your eyes is false though, there is simply not enough time for more than a few regrets to pierce the panic and rage and fear. 

Stupid of me to leave the car. I am not young enough to fight off the three dahlmers that have appeared around me, though I try. One goes down under my asp, broken fragments of nasal bone driven up into his skull - dead. I whirl to face the next, siren rising in the distance as my asp broadcasts its radio call for help. 

He lunges. The knife he holds slips into my stomach with sickening ease. I double as the pain hits, and use the movement to increase the speed of my asp, shattering his cheekbone and forcing an eye out of its socket. It was worth replacing the steel tip with stainless jacketed lead. I turn. And the third one shoots me. Fade to crimson, then to black.

I wake to the cry of the alarm. Always the same damn dream. The other ghosts agree - though we do not talk about it much - our dreams are always of the death.