Claiming the Vampire Slayer

Chapter One: The Search

The sound of movement skittering over stone makes me pause.

I'm about a hundred feet into a tunnel beneath an abandoned well, sixty miles away from the nearest town. It's almost noon—the resident vampires should be practically comatose at this time of day.

I steady my breath to help slow my heart's rhythm.

Be calm and focus, I remind myself.

There's not much room to maneuver in here. Every move I make must be purposeful and strike true.

I grip my stake tight and focus ahead of me. The only sound I hear now is the throbbing of my own pulse and breathing.

A fast, crunching staccato on the rocks tells me the vampire is on the move.

I widen my stance, readying for its approach.

For a split second, I see black eyes and sharp fangs barreling toward me before I pivot out of its way, thrust my stake forward, and use his own momentum to send him sprawling behind me.

The high-pitched scream and gurgles he lets out as his lungs fill with putrid blood are chilling.

In an unexpected and crazed move, he flies upward, crashing into me and breaking us both through the nearest tunnel wall, into an area I don't know.

I roll away from him, then come to a stand, ready to fight. I give my surroundings a quick once over—by the looks of it, we burst into some catacomb.

Turning back to my immediate problem, I watch as he writhes on the ground and tries to grab the stake. He squeals as he tries to tug it out, blood pouring from his mouth, nose, and the wound in his chest.

The beam of my UV flashlight hits his face, and the skin began to bubble and burn.

I see the exact moment ravenous hunger turns to fear and desperation. His body shakes as he turns his face to me, grimacing as his skin burns.

He's a young man, likely turned in his early twenties. He isn't Marcellus, though, as his fangs are too short and dull to be as old as Marcellus is rumored to be.

A vampire's teeth sharpen with age until they can pierce without pain. This young one probably tore out his victims' throats to feed.

"Please," he gurgled. "I don't want to die."

"The people you ripped apart and drained didn't want to die either," I spit.

I walk toward him, coming within his reach, and he lunges.

I kick the stake deeper into his chest so that the tip protrudes through his back. His body quickly begins to decay, leaving only bones and a skull with small pointed canines in seconds.

I pull a tube half-filled with liquid from my backpack, break one of the canines off, then drop it into the tube just as the other bones crack and crumble to ash. The tooth stays intact in the preservative.

I take my stake out of the ashes and shake it off, getting rid of the residuals.

After looking through the wall we crashed through, I decide to follow the catacomb in a spur of the moment. Now that I know for sure that vampires are down here, I palm the stake and continue on carefully, listening for the slightest sound or movement ahead.

There's nothing scarier than seeing a snarling face come at you out of the dark at lightning speed. I spent nearly two months in training conditioning myself not to flinch from a surprise attack.

I had nightmares for another month from the trauma, but at least when I'm frightened now, I instinctively lunge with the stake.

Going into a potential vampire lair blind, especially without backup and proper gear, is never a good idea. It's literally in the Slayer Handbook that you should always have someone to watch your back.