Sherlock glared at the body at his feet. Lestrade had promised him something unusual, not something so... well stereotypical. A town with hundreds of years of vampire themed urban legends experiences a series of bloodless murders?
Normally he'd be thrilled at the prospect of such a case, it obviously involved a cult, or a deranged, albeit clever lunatic.
Those were always such a FUN nut to crack.
However once he'd seen crime scene photos, his mood changed. Despite the lack of blood it looked more like an animal had been gnawing at the poor fool's throat than a practiced hand slicing a jugular, and judging by the crime scene it was found at (a small creek that had recently swollen past it's banks with a heavy storm) well as the rate of decomposition, it was quite possible that the killer was a wild dog, or a bear, and that the lack of blood was a simple matter of it bleeding out, which any good coroner could determine if they weren't thinking of demons and spooks already.
Sherlock decided to humor the local law enforcement and examine the body a little closer, as if anything he found wasn't going to reinforce his theory.
Unfortunately what he found managed to do just that.
The dead man's throat had been mangled, but the bruising suggested that either he had a "friend" (possibly romantic interest) which had a little too in to role playing, or the someone had latched onto the wound and and sucked on it.
The bruising suggested that the incident had happened very shortly before death, meaning that the vampiric role playing, at least of the harmless variety, was out of the question, leaving his killer as the culprit. As he looked closer at the wound, he noticed something that wasn't apparent from the photos, the bite marks on the neck were definitely human.
Although Sherlock tried to remain professional, he couldn't help the hint of a smile to form on his lips as he started to dial John's number.
Let the game begin.