Vampire Hunter: Corey Crowgarden's guide to killing vampires for fun and profit.

Lesson 6

Whatever you do:
DO NOT LET IT FREE
The county Coroner is the key.
After all, he's, (or she or occasionally it, after all corruption is non-discriminatory) the one who decides what constitutes "suspicious" or not.
That's why we started to burn them and not just leave them staked.
"Hmmm.. dead body with a three foot post sticking out of it's chest, is that suspicious?
Naaa."
When you read in the paper about how a John or Jane Doe died in a house fire and the coroner has not ruled it as suspicious... well, I'm not saying we had anything to do with that but I'm saying we didn't.
The Fifth amendment is always your best friend.
Fangers have the ability to corrupt people and institutions. Nothing is sacred and nothing is safe.
Not even between hunters.
Some of the best hunters I know, and maybe "best" is a misnomer, most effective hunters are just as ruthless as the vampires or any of the tainted.
Some of them are tainted, and I mean that in the worst possible way.
I am going to tell you about my first rodeo, my first bowling night.
We usually have a cop, or in my case a "bylaw enforcement officer" ... a parking Nazi give us the information. My first job out of school was as a parking Nazi. It was an okay job, a nice walk spoiled as they say. I was a reservist and knew one of the other parking Nazi's and he got me the interview.
I was just a kid and he was an older guy. He was in great shape though.
No one notices us.
We walk around or drive around giving out parking tickets, no one really suspects us. We are just part of the scenery.
I am sure there was some one like Tim at the top. Probably still is.
So you have a bunch of military and former military guys keeping tabs on a place. We aren't technically the "police" and as far as anyone is concerned we are looking at the street, not the houses.
Then one day the guy at the top has us visit the house in force. We reason with or overcome the tainted in the house and check on the fanger. The dead body in a very dark, often north facing room.
We stake them.
If we have tainted amongst us, they will hang the fanger in an archway or doorway, slit its throat and let it drain into a large mixing bowl, or a cleaned out garbage can, in a pinch.
Sometimes they will bottle the blood into used Pepsi or Coke 2 litre bottles.  It will usually fill two, sometimes almost three, depending on the size of the fanger.
The ones that can reach out and mind fuck you, like Lord What's it, will be paralyzed by the stake but mentally thrashing and screaming the whole time.
You have to be REALLY Careful and observant of each other, ESPECIALLY the tainted, at this time because if that fanger gets free it will totally fuck you all up.
It will reach out with its mind and tell you anything, make any deal it will never live up to (maybe that's the wrong term, unlive up to?) any deal it could Welch on if you let it free. It will plead and beg, make promises and lay curses...
DO NOT LET IT FREE
If you start to fall for it..
LEAVE.
It WILL kill you all in its frenzy. It is pitiless and remorseless in the best of times, and when it is in the blood lust frenzy it is the absolute WORST of times.
Sunlight will destroy the body, burn it. Drag it into the sunlight and let Dr. Sunshine do the dirty work.
So there you are, the fanger is nothing but a burn mark on the old carpet. You have bottled the blood that will maintain its potency until at least the full moon without refrigeration.
The tainted among you will have had a sip or maybe (probably) two.
Now what?
Well, most fangers have been around for more than a natural life time, and they keep the stuff they had around them when their heart actually beat.
A lot of old stuff... antiques.
You just have to worry about other fangers taking too close of an interest in the disappearance of their "frenemy".