This book has four parts and at the beginning of each part I will have a short description, as you have already seen. Feel free to skip it. It's like the back of the book type of thing. I have to apologize for this chapter. It's a little slow and distant, but that's because it's an overview. Hang in there until the second chapter. You won't regret it!
THIS IS EDITED BY THE WAY!!!
(Btw, I made a bit of playlist for this book; the link to it is the "Open External Link" Section)
Each chapter has its own song. This chapter's is Who Let The Dogs Out by Baha Men.
Also, the picture is Aerie.
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Part 1
Chapter 1
Slayer-To-Be
The red eyes stared at me with thirst and determination. They quavered and shook. The small beady black dots that were his pupils searched my body, looking for some weapon other than the crosses I wore on my hair tie and the stake in my fist. He laughed a wicked low organ key like laugh. Was it ugly? Not in the least. In fact, it was seductive and attractive. But, gathering all my training, I resisted its pull.
"You want me," he accused in that voice. That voice that made a mere echo out of his laugh. God how I wanted it. His lips pulled back over his teeth at my obvious distraction. Perfect white light-reflecting teeth not unlike his veins, which were mirrors like in the sun, showing me my fear.
"Yes," I answered truthfully. Keeping my voice even...it was hard but I was skilled. The best. I could do it. "I want you...dead."
He barked a laugh. "Hilarious, Slayer. Truly. But be honest to yourself. You don't want me dead. No. Never dead," he put a harsh emphasis on that last word, pausing slightly to ponder his statement.
I smiled easily. "Believe what you like, Atierious," I chuckled to myself. "But I will walk away, and you will burn."
"Come and get me, Slayer."
"It would be my pleasure," the words were mocking and sincere at the same time. I knew what he said but I also knew what he would do. And he would be the one to attack. They always were.
He hesitated, like maybe he thought I wasn't serious but then took a step back, a motion so quick I could hardly see it, and dove at me. Nothing but training held me still until the very last moment, for my body screamed to run. But mere milliseconds before he made impact, I leapt to the side, letting my body swiftly transform the dive into a roundhouse landing solidly between his shoulder blades. His feet barely made contact with the ground before he was flipping around, desperately grabbing at me. My dagger was already in my free hand, the one that wasn't holding a stake. It slid between his watch band and wrist, like it was meant to be there, hooking him. The metal chain snapped and the blade bit into his skin.
He growled at that and swung a arn out for my head. My knees bent in a duck and my hand grabbed at his wrist, the dagger resheathed in my belt. He struggled against me but I was winning. I shouldn't have won; I wasn't stronger than him by any means, but the sun was melting his veins, making him weak, and I was wrapping the chain of my eleven inch cross around his wrists, like sadistic shackles. His flesh flamed and melted away where it touched the religious emblem.
He kicked at me and screamed violently. I rolled my eyes and shoved my elbow into his chest. "Quiet," I snapped as he stumbled backwards and slammed into a wall.
Angrily, he threw himself at me, grunting like an animal. My stake was out and he proceeded, idiotically, to run right into it.
Wailing. Horrible crying piercing into unforgotten wounds of my childhood. Wounds from my early days of slayerhood. It brought back that awful feeling of fear as I woke up screaming, the horrible image of vampires plaguing my dreams, night after night. That was prior to discovering I was a slayer, when the extent to my knowledge of the mythical blood sucking monsters was but obsession.
The beautiful creature, the marvelous man like monster, fell to his knees as his back hit the wall again. His blood was liquid; I could see it. His skin, still transparent in the sun, now showed, not frozen mirror-like veins, but real ones. I couldn't see my reflection anymore, just the rush of blood that should not flow. The stake in his heart made it beat once more, something it hadn't done since the early eighteen hundreds. This was too human a reaction for him, it made him weak. Made him agonize. Made him easy to kill.
When a vampire is revived, he will suffer eternally. He can't be saved once he's revived. If his blood melts then he can take venom from another vampire and that will refreeze it, but once his heart begins to pump, he is forever lost.
I pulled the lighter from my back pocket and let the flames lick at his cold hard skin. It caught.
From his mouth came a cry so agonizing that I wanted to keel over and weep. I felt so much pity for him, the poor poor creature.
Five minutes was all it took to completely destroy the entire body of Atierious and send him into an oblivion I would never know of. Where ever he went, he was gone. I bent down and picked up my cross, brushing away the ash. "Goodbye Atierious," I murmured and spared him one last long and remorseful glance.
Then, rearranging my face into a glare, I turned and ran off down the alley. It was almost eight. I had to get to school.
* * *
I hurried through the classroom door, pushing the stake in my leather purse farther down. The clothes I wore were conspicuous enough: leather and more leather. I didn't really need to be subjected to a bag check. Were that to happen, I'd be permanently removed from school by the law. I'd been pulled out before, but only by my mother that time.
When I was thirteen, the first symptoms that I, Ariel Millon, preferably Aerie, was destined to be a vampire slayer began to ensue. I stopped paying attention in class and turned to drawing highly descriptive pictures of beautiful and perfect people; forgive their completely scarlet red eyes. Soon after that I developed a strong fear of blood. If someone started bleeding in my presence I forced them to let me wrap their wound so tightly in gauze that it had to be cut with a knife.
It only got worse after that.
I was pulled out of school then, just after my birthday actually. A wonderful welcome into my teen years. I had been home school material for exactly two days when I took a walk to Alsea Library (my hometown in Oregon) and checked out a book on vampires. I became instantly intrigued with vampire lore, and started to write a report on them.
This became my life. In the morning I woke up at six, on the weekends I worked until noon when my mother required me to eat, but didn't bother on the weekdays when she was at her teaching job, had the bare minimal of what I was offered, hurried to the bathroom, rushed back to my room, went to the table at seven for a bare bones dinner as I ate only what I must, wanting only to get back to my books, took a bathroom break, worked until two, then went to bed and dreamed of vampires. My morning wake-up call was the sound of my screaming from the fear of the horrific monsters I was so obsessed with. My life revolved around them.
Of course I had my school studies, but they came all too easily. I never really had to try with them, but I did them anyways, even though I never really saw the point.
It turned out that vampires had a regular body temperature of thirty degrees. They had pupils that were small and beady and black usually, although they changed size just like humans did. Most people who saw them and survived did so in the sun, thus...The rest of the eye, however, was completely red. No white. Just red. They maintained their human hair color but inevitably the skin became alabaster white, regardless of their former human tone.
As far as fangs went, they had them, but when they weren't aroused by blood, the fangs merely looked liked pointed canines. The bite of a vampire was one of the most awful and wonderful experiences that someone could suffer. The venom that coated their teeth and fills their mouth paralyzed the victim and made them believe their pain was pleasure.
And then there was the sunlight thing. The skin of the vampire was always translucent but in the sun, and under fluorescent lights somewhat as well, the veins shimmered and reflected like mirrors. They played a trick on the mind, leading the victim to believe that he or she was experiencing more fear than they actually were.
Staying in the sun for long periods of time was unhealthy although the vampires wouldn't burst into flames; they would simply become weak, weak enough to kill. If they stayed out for too long, their veins would melt and the only way for the blood to refreeze, was for the vampire to be bitten by another, thus replacing the lost venom in his or her system.
Without blood a vampire wouldn't die, but became completely incapacitated after a while.
To kill a vampire was simple. Use crosses. Crosses burned the skin it touched, making it singed and black. When possible, the vampire should be staked. The act of staking a vampire didn't turn it to dust or anything. It made its heart start beat once more. If their blood was melted it hurt less. If it was still frozen, well let's just say pushing frozen blood through thin membranes is one of the worst pains any conscious being can ever experience. And that was when you burned it. And if somebody wasn't there to do it, most burned themselves on their own, else wise they'd suffer agonizing pain for the rest of eternity.
Vampires couldn't read minds or control people from afar, despite what stories told. They could, however, control people, slayers, and vampires of lesser power if they were making skin contact. The only reason slayers could win in a battle was because they fought when the vampire was weak already. Otherwise...well, it'd be bad.
And then there was the process of changing a human into a vampire. When bitten, a lot of venom got into the human's blood stream already. So after a vampire's own blood was added to it, the transformation began. However, the way to draw liquid blood without melting veins was by cutting the vampire's skin with a cross blade (a cross whose long point was a blade). It took five days, on average, for the transformation to be complete, each day more agonizing than the last. It was told that each day was spent suffering for the pain the victim caused another in their life, until every last person had penance. When completed, the vampire who stabbed himself finally healed, but if something stopped it from completing, the vampire would begin to bleed to death. And when all the blood was gone, the vampire would turn to dust.
I lost twenty pounds that year. My hair darkened two shades, and my skin lightened four. Ms. Millon was really worried about me and tried to get me to see a therapist but I talked my way out of it. It wasn't long after that my eyes started to change colors with my moods.
For my fourteenth birthday present my mother took me shopping. I wanted new books though, not clothes, and since it was my birthday, she reluctantly agreed. When I went to the bathroom that morning to get ready, what I saw made me scream.
The person staring back at me in the mirror wasn't Ariel Millon. I knew it. Her large exotic stormy blue eyes, having obtained their color from the anticipation and excitement of getting new information, were nothing like my normal-sized soft brown ones. Her dark brown hair contrasted with her light skin like coal on snow. Her thin lips were glowing red with dehydration, and her cheeks were sallow, making her cheekbones more prominent. I stepped back and looked at how her clothes fit. They clung to her body only enough to stay up. One wrong twist of the waist, however, and she would have her jeans around her ankles.
My clothes had always fit perfectly, my hair had been a bright brunette, my skin had been pale, but never so as it was this stranger's was, my lips had been light pink, and my cheeks a little on the pudgy side. Now, all of that was gone.
I had never noticed the weight loss and the hair, skin, and eye color change before, but I did now. Now I knew why my mother had been so worried. I was not only a hermit with a crazy obsession over mythical monsters, but I was self depriving and unkempt. I felt horrible for making her go through that, and vowed that I would start trying to make myself more presentable, however that could be done.
* * *
At a book store in Eugene I found a text that caught my eye: The Life and Development of the Slayer. It told of women who trained and devoted their entire lives to fighting and killing vampires. Slayers were predestined to be who they were and weren't, technically, related to their parents. Regardless of what their parents looked like they took on the traditional slayer form: slender, dark haired, and relatively muscular. They didn't have bulging muscles or a ton of definition, but they were definitely fit. Up until they were teenagers though, they appeared to be just like every other child in the world. It was when they hit puberty that they were birthed into slayerhood.
Slayers lived in every country and were trained to protect the innocent people that lived inside their territory. The size of the territory varied depending on the type of transportations available to the slayer.
A slayer-to-be must seek an older slayer to mentored by or else the pull of they're calling would send them to face a vampire without training. Thus, ending their life.
The quality of a slayer's blood, as far as a vampire was concerned, was based on their skill as a slayer. The better the slayer, the better the blood.
Slayers were perfect. They were exactly the new topic of discussion I needed in my paper. Rather reluctantly my mother bought me every book in the store about them, grumbling the whole time about how my clothes were falling off and my shoes had holes and all I wanted was a dozen and a half scary stories. Like I didn't have enough nightmares already. I ignored her though and concentrated on how I was going to format the topic of the slayer into my paper smoothly.
I spent a week after that sitting in front of my computer editing my three hundred and sixty-seven page paper (pages on Microsoft Word, that is). When I was finished I began my research on slayers and once my fifteenth birthday rolled around, it was a seven hundred and eleven page book.
During that short year I learned of a young twenty-seven year old slayer named Jacqueline Terse that lived in New York City. She was experienced, had killed twenty-eight vampires in her eight years of slaying, and was looking to mentor a newbie. Even though I didn't think I was a slayer-to-be, it really hadn't crossed my mind, I was intrigued and wanted to meet her.
That evening I put on my prettiest smile, my best fitting clothes (which had enlarged another two sizes) and went to dinner with a goal. I ate a big plate of food and struck up as much conversation as I could possibly bear. At last, while my mother was washing the dishes and I was helping by wiping off the table, I asked her about going to live with my aunt Becky (my father's younger and much more fun sister) in New York for a while.
We argued for almost a half an hour. My mother didn't want me to leave in the least. I explained to her that I just wanted to go see the city for a while, that I had a lead for my book, and that I wanted to go escape my room for once. Finally she agreed and within four days I was on a plane to the Big Apple with my entire wardrobe, my book, my school work for the first three weeks, and my research books.
But merely a day after I arrived I caught a bus to Jacqueline's house. It was hardly what I expected: a cozy little cottage in a quiet suburb. The girl who answered the door was five foot three, skinny, and rather beautiful. She had a short mop of messy black hair, full pink lips, a delicate nose, and light blue eyes. She was wearing tight black leather pants that laced up the sides but didn't meet. Two inches of her toned thighs were exposed. She was wearing a tight polyester tank top that showed off an inch of her flat belly, cool leather armored gloves that laced up to almost her shoulder, and high heeled leather boots. The weird part was she seemed to have a warm yellow glow to her, like she was an angel or something.
The girl introduced herself as Jacqueline Terse. The Jacqueline Terse. I gaped. This was her. This was a real slayer. She told me to call her Jackie and announced that we would start slayer training immediately and she wouldn't take no for an answer. I groveled and told her that I wasn't a slayer, that I had just come to ask her questions, but she batted her hand at me and said simply, "Of course you are."
She made me stretch, run almost three miles in laps around her house, and work on fighting stances. You'd expect, that considering the most exercise I had done in the last few years was walking to the kitchen, that I'd be tore up by the end, but I reality, I wasn't. In fact, I felt like I could almost do more.
She took me to dinner at a restaurant by her house and asked me what I knew about vampires. I handed her a copy of my book and told her that that was all I knew. She was extremely impressed and asked if she could change but a few things. I told her that she could change it all. I'd be thoroughly honored.
I was nearly bursting with questions when she asked me if I had any to ask, but only one mattered at the moment, the rest could wait.
"Are you sure that I am destined to be a slayer? I mean, what I am feeling and how I was acting pointed towards a slayer, and the signs match up, but I am still not completely sure," I said quietly. Her yellow glow turned light pink. I decided I'd have to ask her about that.
"Of course you are meant to be a slayer. I knew that the moment I saw you. For many reasons; first, you looked just like I did when I went to my trainer. Without the cuts and bruises, and trauma markings in my eyes, of course. But like how I looked before I tried to go up against that vampire on my own..." her eyes glazed, absorbed in the memory.
"You fought a vampire without training?" I interrupted.
She came out of her trance with a smile. "Yes. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done, but I did it. I didn't know what I was when I started changing. There were no slayers in the area and I didn't think to research it; I was too scared by the pictures in my mind and jumpiness to want to know. I didn't want to find out that I was a phscitzo or something," she laughed at herself.
I smiled a little, but it wasn't real. I was still worried that I was a bit of a physcitzo myself to really find it funny.
"He was at his good years, but, thank God, he wasn't skill. That's the whole reason I'm alive today. All he did was grab my shoulders and try to bite. I was able to thrash around enough to keep him from getting his teeth into me, and by the time I thought to kick him, the sun had weakened him enough that it worked. Not that I knew that.
"He dropped me and I grabbed the first thing I saw: a broken chair leg. Using it as a make shift stake, I stabbed him in the chest. What really scared me was when he didn't bleed. Stupid right? To still think he was human? Yeah. But I was pretty stupid then.
"He lit himself on fire, after beating me up as much as possible. I fought with him, trying to put the fire out. Even though he had tried to kill me and had blackened my skin I still didn't want him to die. It was then that I realized that his skin was ice cold.
"I was scared enough of that to run from him, holding myself in terror. It was as sat there, curled in a ball in the corner of the alley, that I saw his eyes, those oh so scary blood red eyes that bore holes into my skin and made me feel like I was dying.
"Just after he turned to nothing but ash my trainer found me. She had been tracking an ally of his and instead of finding him she found me. Good for nothing and covered in bruises. I'm worth something now though, I'll take credit enough for that.
"But anyways, I looked then just like you do now. And also, you recognize a slayer when you see one. It's kinda like a sixth sense. You'll get it as you mature.
"Couple those with this book and you have more a potential then I have ever seen on a young slayer before. Does that help?" She smiled at me, her face warm and happy and her glow becoming more pink.
"Yes...Thank you," I added. "For everything. I really appreciate it. I have no idea how I'll ever repay you."
"Don't sweat it, Aerie. In time you'll repay me. You'll become an awesome slayer and kick some serious vampire butt and that's all I'll ever be able to ask for."
I smiled, knowing I was going to really like spending time with Jackie.
In time I learned that the reason I could see colors around Jackie was because I already had my sixth sense, and it was a lot more developed than anyone other slayer's. I was able to see the emotions, the auras, of other slayers, but only slayers. For me it made it easy, because then I was always aware of who my allies were. I also learned that when a slayer touches a vampire for the first time, they are flooded with a complete sensory overview of the most important moments in the vampire's life. I also discovered I was weird there too. I could also feel the emotions that the vampires had felt, something no other slayer could do.
Jackie bought me clothes just like hers and taught me how to fight a vampire like a professional. I had only been her student for two and half months when I killed my first immortal, and it was amazing.
A week after I turned sixteen I returned to Alsea with a motorcycle Jackie had bought me as a birthday present and her blessing. She had told me I was as ready as ever to protect my territory and I was eager to get back and assume my role as protector.
At present time I have been sixteen for eight months now and have killed nineteen vampires in that time, seven of which were in New York. I guess I was a natural, more so than anyone has ever seen or so I was told by the three other slayers I have met besides Jackie: Taylor Yerlint, whose territory is the city of London and its surrounding area, Aliyyah Suries from a small village just west of Cairo, and Felicia Twills who guards the territory just south of mine, in very northern California. They were all my friends, but Felicia, who we call Fairy was my best friend. We hung out a lot and I got along better with her than with anyone else.
My mother completely disproved of my new attire but as long as it stayed up and I wasn't expressing much interest in boys, then she was tolerant. She didn't like the bike either and made me drive her car a lot but on sunny days she let me out sometimes. That and when she needed the car and I wanted to go visit Fairy. I spent a lot of money on gas in perspective, since I did often go to visit my friend in Garberville, California and she me. We hunted together a lot and more often than not I actually told my mother I was going to visit Fairy when really I just needed to go out and hunt. It gave me the opportunity to do the entire circumference of my territory.
Although my mother probably wouldn't be glad to know that I got my kicks from killing, much less killing frozen stone cold creatures with the strength of a hundred men that feasted on the blood of humans, she was happy. She didn't know what I was, or who I was, for that matter, but that kept her mind safe, even if her life wasn't when my existence was bringing in vampires in massive hoards, more so than anywhere in the world (being that I was such a good slayer, they all came to take their shot at killing me, and in turn drinking my rather delicious blood, I reckon). She needn't be having mental breakdowns when I was already threatening her life.
I loved my mother, and because of that, I had to admit that she is safer not knowing me, no matter how much it hurt me to have that be true. At least I have Jackie, Taylor, Aliyyah, and Fairy to talk to about every aspect of my life. They knew what went on in my normal human life and what went on in my slayer life.
A week ago, Ms. Millon informed me that it was time I went back to school. I had been home schooled since the eighth grade, and she thought that I needed the social experience back. I tried to explain to her that I wasn't a hermit anymore. She had met all four of my friends, she knew that I spent time with them and that I was socially ept, but she insisted.
Today was my first day back in a real school. Nothing big had changed. The people were taller, had better come backs, and could drive, but other than that, they were still the immature fun-loving children they were in middle school. But they were good people in the end and that's all that mattered.