About 'Salutaris'

 Priest. Professor. Musician. Vampire. Long a prisoner of the Church, John Hance is damned to eternal life drinking the blood of Christ instead of the blood of humans. An enigmatic girl becomes his student at the obscure college where he's taught for nearly seven years. She knows too much about him. Is she insane or ingenuous? Or is she a divine emissary sent to remind him that, sometimes, justice is something else?

Whenever a frightened young singer opener her mouth to him for the first time, Hance remembered Mary Guaire. She had made the same noises when Marsden tightened the 

bejeweled garrote around her throat, turning the Queen of the Night's aria into a mess of bubbling squeals as the sparkling chain severed the route between breath and life.

The lamentable business had occurred long ago, when people played fortepianos and  electricity was an experiment with lightning. But every time Hance had cause to envision Mary Guaire, he could never entirely dispel the impulse to flee, and he could never quite accept that there was no need to throw a candelabrum on a body, intent on hiding murder amid the carnage of fire.

That morning, as a late summer rain slapped the window, he sat back from the harpsichord and waited as the girl cowering at the music stand whimpered to a halt. She knew she lacked talent. He could tell. She bore the stigmata of humiliation: the wound-red cheeks. The crinkled brow. The runny eyes. And yes, the voice of a dying Mary Guaire ...

Available in print and for Kindle on Amazon and Amazon UK.