Eighty miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, somewhere between San Clemente and Wilsonville, squats a small diner cum gas station called The Way Out. Years ago, this had been a thriving business, where it was common for a hundred of the big rigs to roll into the parking lot on any one day. But then a passing biker gang killed a waitress, and route 270 was diverted, and people stopped coming. The Way Out vanished behind a veil of dust and time, but to some, like Lazari Darga, it remains the stuff of legend.

He parks his black haunted house of a station wagon beneath the blinking neon sign and winds down the tinted windshield. The sun is low, safe enough now, and a thick haze lingers over the desert hills. It is a chilly early evening, and Darga has driven a long way. As he stamps across the tarmac towards the diner, the dust of ages rising from his ancient longcoat (peeled from the body of a British cavalry officer he'd killed in the trenches), he feels a flutter of excited anticipation in his dead heart for the first time in decades. And a ravenous hunger, as intense as any he has known.

He pauses before the double doors. Everything is perfect, just as he'd imagined. To his left stands a low grey lichen-smeared block of rooms, where, doubtless, he will be busy tonight, and in the smaller lot next to these, five cars, as expected. The diner itself is shaped like a sombrero, with a round, tomato-coloured, jauntily-tipped crown. There is something of the temple about it - fitting, he thinks, for the home of the Kashdek, the feast that all his kind must undertake before their journey into the Bleak.

The Bleak. Where all the years of slaughter, all the restless journeying and hiding, all the savage hunger, has been leading them. Not quite an afterlife - they are not truly living, so cannot truly die - but a hidden dimension drenched in blood, where they will remain in a state of transcendent engorgement for all eternity, unmolested by time or enemies. After killing the five, he will take himself into the desert. He will enter a twilight world where he will roam for many days until the Bleak is revealed to him. It is all that he and his brethren believe in, and all that they crave, besides blood.

He pushes open the doors and steps in, gleefully conscious that his blood-teeth are becoming erect. He fed only two days ago - a middle-aged nun in Miami, before he set out - but she had been a mere aperitif. He gazes at the white granite counter, so much like an altar, and mulls upon the sacred blood that will soon be spilled upon it. The pictures of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams above it are a triptych of tackiness, yet appropriate. And then she steps through the door to the kitchen, and smiles at him, and all he knows is his rancid desire.

"You are Amata," he says, mouth dry.

The girl chews ruminatively and blinks. She is perfect, too - dark bobbed hair, pale skin, wearing a gingham waitress' uniform which, he observes, doesn't fit her well. She extracts from her pocket a notebook and pencil. "No, there's no one of that name here. I'm Lori. You want anything?" She nods at the counter. "There's the menu."

"Do I want anything? Am I hungry?" He laughs. "Oh, I see. Thank you, Lori."

He picks it up. The only menu he is interested in is on a piece of paper - well-folded, long memorised - in his coat pocket.

Amata - the young woman. A seductive blood, redolent of cherries.
Gilgoth, the male cook, thick and still, cloudy like whiskey.
Rubati, the teacher, her blood like thin red wine, slightly phlegmy.
Seth, the young hero, fast like lightning, blood charged with struggle and poignant fear.
And Nabu-bel-uzur, neither man nor woman, mysterious, full of contradictions, and bitter like liquorice.
The Eternal Banquet.

As he watches the girl busy herself about the till, he wonders at the Elders who created this place, who bent time to serve their appetites. To think, he will kill this girl, kill all five of them tonight, and tomorrow they will be back here again, alive, innocent of their everlasting destiny, reset for the next hungry visitant.

"A coffee," he says, sitting on the bar stool. He thinks he can see the throb of a vein in her neck, smell her pulse of blood. He could kill her now, but that would be too unkind, and somehow blasphemous.

 "That's a strong accent you've got, pal," says Lori. "You not from round here?"

"No. I am Turkish." He clicks his very long sharp nails on the counter. "I have travelled far. The Kashdek - or should I say, The Way Out - is hard to find, but there are a few who know its location. I have been looking forward to my visit."

"Wow," she says, raising an eyebrow. "Well, we'll do our best to...make you comfortable. You wanna room for the night?"

"Oh yes."

"I'll let the manager know for you."

Presently she pours out his coffee. He sips it. "Ugh," he complains. "This tastes of ashes."

She sits down opposite him and lights a cigarette. "You going on someplace?"

"I hope so. The Bleak."

"Bleak?" She shrugs. "Don't know it. Is it far?"

He nods. "A world beyond worlds. A place of fattening and gorging. Of ripping flesh, and spilling blood, for ever." He sees her recoil slightly at his foul breath, the oily dead stench of his lank hair.

Nonplussed, she taps out her cigarette. "Sounds real nice. I suppose we all gotta get away sometime." She gazes past him, towards the desert. "I'd like to travel. Europe, I think. Rome. My father's Italian. 'Course, I don't like it too much here. I'm not gonna be a waitress for ever."

He sneers. He can't control himself anymore. "There you are wrong, my dear." He walks to the door, flips the sign to closed. "It is your fate to be nothing else."

He strides towards her. He is aware of his menacing size, his preternatural strength, and he revels in the fear he imagines she is experiencing. "You do not need to be afraid. As a rule, when I kill someone, they stay dead. But not you. After your evisceration, your corpse will vanish, as will your car from the parking lot. And then, twelve hours later, you will drive in again, and report for work, none the wiser, ready for the next of us. And you will do this forever. You have been here, looping, providing us with nutrition for our great journey, for many, many years. Such is the wisdom and craft of the Elders."

She backs towards the kitchen door. "I've got a gun under the counter."

He shakes his head. "No, you haven't. I know everything about this place. You only have a small kitchen blade, and that isn't enough to hurt me, dear Amata." He reaches for her, clasps her throat with his talons, tugs her towards him. "I will try not to spoil your delicate beauty."

And then she is vaulting over the counter and is on him, and surprised, he staggers back, knocked off balance, and chukchukchuk there are three silver bolts poking from his chest, and then something white flashing across his throat, and all his stolen blood flooding down. He falls heavily onto his back, outraged and suddenly afraid, and she is ramming down with her fists, and then he is nothing because he has become a trough of stench, a puff of blood and ash.

She stands, coughing, shaking him from her hair, kicking his empty coat and boots under the table. The door opens and another young woman, taller and harder faced, enters and looks about.

"Already? Thought he'd be tougher."

"No. Came onto me straightaway. Usually they wanna talk a while. Ugh." She tufts up her dusty hair. "Madison, he's all over me. I smell disgusting."

"You can use the shower in number five. Who was he?"

"Lazari...Darga. Pretty old, nightwalker, Turkish originally. Been offing oldies in Florida for years." She sighs. "Never ceases to surprise me that nosfers swallow that dumb myth. The Kashdek. In a New Mexico filling station, of all places. Funny though," she adds, "when I was on him, he didn't put up too much fight. Like he wanted a way out."

"Maybe he did. And you were happy to oblige him." She squints at her phone. "Abel says he's set up another one, tomorrow. One of those gross biker dudes."

"I hate those guys," says Lori. "Nasty."

"So we've got till morning," says Madison, taking Lori's hand. "I'll play Amata tomorrow. In the meantime, you go get showered. I'm taking you into Santa Fe. There's a new Brazilian restaurant. Great reviews. And don't say anything, I'm paying. My treat."