It was shortly after two in the morning when the vurdalak came to visit. I had been waiting on my porch since nine with the standard monster hunting equipment, a bag of snacks, a pint of coffee, and a specially designed arcanometer I had built specially to detect the vampire. I also took twenty milligrams of adderall. Or thirty. Anyway, it was around two when the modified arcanometer started beeping and a few minutes more before the vampire showed itself. The thing walked down the street until it was right across from me like some kind of wild west standoff. It had curling blonde hair, was of about average height, and it seemed to have a traditional sense of wardrobe. There was a long coat and plenty of black.
"You should have fled," said the vampire. "Or did you think I would run from so meager a threat."
"I was about to say the same thing, shithead," I said. "Also, I realize you're trying be all elegant and a tiny bit archaic, but we both know you only got turned a few years ago. So stop trying to talk like you're three hundred or something; you're embarrassing yourself."
"Fine," said the vampire. "Let's just fight it out then. I hope you do better this time. I've never had a chance to really throw down with someone."
"Sorry," I said. "But I don't give a crap about an intense fight or your delusions of grandeur. I'm here to seek justice for the dead and protection for the living." Then raised a hand to the air and said (in my very best black preacher voice), "For whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall blood be shed. Can I get an 'amen'?"
At that moment, Cynthia blew a low note on her flute and lifted the concealing enchantment she had placed at the beginning of the night. She started another tune to help bind the vurdalak, but we all knew it would probably be over before she was finished. Before she started on the tune, Mr. Reynolds fired a shot from a hunting rifle. The silver bullet hit the vampire in the abdomen, and I could see it still working out what was going on when Mr. Reynolds landed another shot on the leech. Then it got a dart in the shoulder from Shauna Freeman, the single greatest crypto biologist I have ever met. The dart carried a specially designed serum, but since most vampiric bloodlines don't have beating hearts it wouldn't be able to spread very fast. But I did think I could detect a slight limpness coming into the leech's right arm. I started to advance, calmly firing silver bullets as I did. The vampire may have been a noob, but it still had enough sense to know things were not going as expected. It ran.
Too bad Lucia's brother was there with a tetsubo. The weapon is basically a giant baseball bat covered with metal studs, and it was used in feudal Japan to bust through armor. This one belonged to a famed monster hunter from the nineteenth century named Miyako Oshiro. He hit the vampire squarely in the chest, knocking it to the ground. In a few moments Shauna and Mr. Reynolds had joined us along with a few others to hold it down as I hammered a stake into its heart.
By the way, a stake to the heart doesn't actually kill most vampires. It just puts them in a sort of stasis. I would have finished the job, but I owe Shauna, and she's never had an undead specimen to play around with. I look forward to reading her reports.
Anyway, I just finished talking to the cops who responded to the gunshots. Who by some bizarre coincidence happened to be the Agency's local police contacts. Life is so strange sometimes. I'm in the clear, and between the fact that he's totally innocent and whatever cleanup the Agency will be sending I'm pretty sure Esteban Ramirez will be clear too soon. In the meantime I'll see about helping to provide for his defense and all that jazz. But not right now. Right now I need to sleep.
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