Chapter Text
“You want fries with that stake?”
Aubrey twirled around and, in one swift motion, plunged the short wooden spear into the monster’s heart. It staggered back with an agonized yell before dispersing into dust.
“Hah…maybe that was too cheesy.” She sighed and swept the residue off her clothes.
Returning to her original post, she sat down atop one of the larger headstones in the graveyard, swinging one leg over the other and stretching her arms. It was quiet now, but it wouldn’t be for long.
Given how small of a town Faraway was, one might have thought there wouldn’t be very many supernatural occurrences. They would be mistaken. For the past two years, Aubrey had spent every night waiting for the next evil to make its move, patrolling the town for enemies. She could get as many as five vampires a night, on the rough days.
Faraway was built on a Hellmouth, after all.
“Slayer…”
The creaky voice came from behind. Aubrey rolled her eyes as she turned around, not even bothering to stand up.
“Uh huh?” she said.
All the monsters around here knew who she was. The Chosen One. The Slayer. Having seen evil after evil defeated, they should all know they didn’t stand a chance. They just weren’t bright enough for that kind of critical thinking.
Ignoring the beginnings of a pathetic monologue, Aubrey sprung up and tackled the vampire to the grass and promptly eviscerated it with one short stab of her trusty wooden stake. The ashes dissolved into the night’s wind.
Stake at her side, Aubrey looked up. The sky was beginning to lighten. Soon, it would be morning. With a sigh, she walked over to one particular grave in the back of the cemetery. The flowers left there had been trampled. Most offerings at these graves were destroyed sooner or later. Whoever was bringing these flowers, though, had been persistent about it for a while now. It seemed every few days there was a fresh new bouquet. Aubrey still wasn’t sure who they were from.
She wouldn’t dare bring it up, though.
Mari’s death was a sensitive subject. Aubrey could only be glad there was no demon behind the tragedy; it had been a natural death, nothing Hellmouthy about it. Mari was just…dead.
It still hurt.
The sun was starting to come back up. Any undead who rose now would probably burn up on the spot. Aubrey gave one last look to Mari’s headstone and then began her trek home.
Her mom was passed out on the couch, as was typical. The house stank of beer. Aubrey wrinkled her nose and headed up to her attic bedroom.
Today was Sunday. The school bus would come in about an hour.
Aubrey settled into bed, not bothering to change out of her muddy, dust-stained clothes. Juvenile delinquency came with the job. That was what he had said.
But when had he been right about anything?
***
“Yo, Aubs! Missed you in first period.”
It was Kim, extending her whole arm to wave aggressively from across the hall.
Aubrey crept by the lockers, grimacing. Not everyone needed to know she was late. “Hey, Kim. Rough night.”
“What else is new?” Kim drawled. She placed her hands on her hips, causing her heavy blue backpack to tilt backwards and throw her off balance. She caught herself and beamed. “At least you’re here now, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Aubrey’s eyes scanned the hallway and froze on one familiar face. He was looking right at her, that same dumb disappointment as always etched into his features. A little blood drained from her face, but she wouldn’t let it show. Bitterness flooded her and she gritted her teeth. “Let’s go.”
Kel wasn’t important. He could play that stupid puppy dog game all he wanted. It wouldn’t change a thing.
Walking down the south wing towards Chemistry, Aubrey kept her gaze fixed firmly forward. The sounds of someone’s skull meeting metal…she would ignore it. This was a regular occurrence.
…No, she couldn’t ignore it.
Coldly, she lifted her head and watched in silence as Trevor wound up for another blow. Basil cowered against the locker. He saw Aubrey and stared pleadingly, desperately. Aubrey’s expression didn’t change.
Trevor picked him up by the shoulder of his shirt and, with his other arm, rammed Basil into the wall again. The locker was dented from the force of it. Aubrey watched blankly.
“Keep walking,” Kim said. There was a note of disgust in her tone. “Trevor’s got this.”
Aubrey’s gaze lingered for a moment longer. Basil was looking right at her, one of his blue eyes rimmed with purplish black. She couldn’t read his expression anymore. Both of them, staring at each other, appeared entirely unfazed.
Aubrey followed Kim around the corner to the classroom.
She had always been good in school. Academics weren’t exactly her thing, but she had a knack for most subjects, and she liked to learn. It was a pity that most of her energy went to slaying monsters nowadays. She could’ve been a mighty anesthesiologist. Instead, she was an unpaid Chosen One working for the good of humanity, at the cost of her time, friends, passions, grades, and soul.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of job offer that she could turn down. He had made that much clear.
Kim leaned over the lab table and gestured to the vial near Aubrey’s hand. “Psst…pass me that?”
Listlessly, Aubrey obliged.
Basil showed up at some point. He was holding an ice pack over his eye. Aubrey ignored him. He’d sit somewhere else.
Kim sighed. “Not that I’m complaining, but people have been even more violent with him lately. Something happen?”
Aubrey shook her head. “They just realized no one cares.”
After third period Chemistry was lunch. Aubrey and Kim joined the rest of the crowd headed to the cafeteria and began to walk down, when very suddenly, the chatter was interrupted by a scream.
It was a girl, a sophomore—Aubrey didn’t know her by name. She was staring, hands pressed over her mouth, at something on the floor.
Frowning, Aubrey pushed past the hysterical mob. The locker door to the girl’s side was swung open, but she had stumbled back several feet from it, staring in horror at what had fallen out.
A dead body.
“Stay back!” a teacher yelled.
Trevor.
“No!” another girl screamed. It was one of the cheerleaders. That’s right—Trevor had been on the football team. Aubrey wasn’t all that familiar with school gossip, but he was pretty popular, if she wasn’t mistaken. Maybe a girlfriend?
She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus from afar. Trevor was pale, and clearly not breathing, no matter what CPR the teachers were pitifully attempting to perform. That, and…
There were two almost imperceptible bite marks on his neck, and a peculiar smear of blood decorated his mouth.
The school was evacuated. Aubrey followed everyone else outside. She’d have to keep an eye out.
“I know who did it,” someone said—Mikhael. His eyes were obscured by his messy blonde wig, though it was thrown slightly off center by all the panic. The corners of his lips were tight, the kind of fear that might be mistaken for a smile. Mikhael lifted a finger to make his point. “It was Basil.”
Aubrey’s eyes widened. Part of her wanted to laugh. What? That’s stupid. The killer was a vampire. Basil isn’t a vampire. She just saw him.
But she couldn’t say that, and the impressionable kids around her were gasping and making other sounds of realization. They believed Mikhael, The Maverick, easily. Why wouldn’t they?
Basil might be bullied a lot, but everyone knew he wasn’t weak. He was thought of as volatile, emotionally unstable, even crazy. Of course everyone was quick to side with Mikhael’s baseless accusation.
“I heard he got a black eye,” someone said. “Straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s possible.”
“He’s always got that look in his eye,” a girl murmured.
“Now, hold on!” Surprisingly, it was Kim who tried to speak over the chatter. “Basil’s a creep, sure, but he’s not a killer. He was in Chem with me and Aubrey just now.”
“Was he?” a different girl retorted. “Did he leave with you?”
Kim opened her mouth to fight back, but couldn’t confidently answer. Classes were over eighty minutes, and neither she nor Aubrey had been interested in checking on him since he first walked in. Looking around the horde of evacuated students, Basil was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone?
Frustrated, Aubrey wove a path through the frantic crowd and sneaked back over to the school. She tried the closest side door. Locked, of course. Even in Faraway, a dead kid popping out of a locker would initiate some safety protocol. Not deterred, she pulled a spare bobby pin off her necklace and began to pick the lock.
Police sirens blared. She scrunched her brow in anger—cops were a Slayer’s worst enemy. She could throw demon encyclopedias in their faces and they would still deny the existence of the Hellmouth. If they saw the vampire bite on Trevor’s neck, they would insist it was just two really tiny gunshots.
She had never liked Trevor much, but she felt sick to her stomach thinking about how suddenly he had been killed, and maybe even sired. During the day, too…A vampire was soulless, unprejudiced in its violence, at least most of the time. What if it had been Kim?
Kel?
…Shut up. It wasn’t doing any good to worry about hypotheticals. Trevor was dead. She had to track down the killer, and prevent his corpse from being reanimated.
The blood on his mouth. That was the clue. A normal vampire bite didn’t pierce the lungs or trachea, and it wouldn’t result in coughing up blood. A normal vampire bite would result in death of the victim, and nothing else, and Aubrey prayed that was all this was, but the blood on his mouth—the vampire hadn’t just been interested in killing. It wanted to pass on its disease.
To sire.
Rather than draining the victim’s blood right there, a vampire would have to feed on their blood, and then make the victim feed on theirs…A mutual exchange, killing the human to bring them back as an undead the following night.
Trevor didn’t deserve that.
First things first—the killer. It was a vampire, so they couldn’t be in direct sunlight. Artificial lights, though, like the ones inside the school, were fair game. As long as they avoided windows, they’d be fine. They’d look like any other human student.
The lock gave a click. Aubrey reattached the bobby pin to her necklace and carefully opened the door. She unzipped her bag and pulled her stake from the secret compartment she’d sewn into the base. Footsteps light, she crept down the hall. The lights were still on, but the entire building had been evacuated, leaving it in a state of unsettling emptiness. The police would be sniffing out the place soon. Aubrey had to be fast in her investigation.
She glanced into each and every classroom. Maybe it was a waste of time, but the killer could be anywhere. Anyone she came across.
She rounded the corner and came face to face with a girl.
Shocked, Aubrey reached for her necklace again, this time furiously holding up the cross, but the girl didn’t react, staring in bewilderment.
“Uh, hi,” she said.
“You’re not a…” Aubrey shook her head. “You’re not the killer.” She swiftly moved her stake behind her back.
“No!” the girl cried, laughing in surprise. “I’m just hanging out.”
“Hanging out?” Aubrey repeated. “This is a crime scene. There’s a murderer here.”
“Eh. I’m not worried.” The girl gave a big shrug. “My name’s Cris. You a junior?”
Aubrey held back suspiciously. “Yes.”
“Cool. Me too. I haven’t seen you around, I don’t think.”
“I keep to myself.” Aubrey stepped slowly around her. “Have fun.”
“Well, what are you looking for?” Cris asked, eyes bright. “Wait, are you trying to find the killer?”
Aubrey tried to ignore her and continued to walk away.
Cris made a sound of understanding. “Oh, do you think it’s a vampire?”
Aubrey froze and spun around. Cris pointed to her stake, which was now plainly in view. Aubrey grimaced. “Maybe,” she said with reluctance.
“My family’s pretty into that Hellmouth stuff,” Cris said eagerly. “Not in, like, a cult way, just…interested. I just moved back here, so I wasn’t actually sure how many people know about it.”
“Not many.” Aubrey knit her brow when she heard Cris’ footsteps following jovially behind her.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. The whole vigilante shtick is really cool. I respect that.”
Aubrey didn’t respond. She approached the cafeteria and swung open the doors. Empty. The kitchens, too.
Eventually, students began pouring back into the building. Any other town would’ve probably canceled school for the week—not Faraway. Whether they believed in the Hellmouth or not, violent crime and the like was too common to take seriously. Cris and Aubrey eased into the crowd. Students were rushing to their lockers, swinging them open like they expected a corpse to be hiding in theirs too.
No Basil.
Poor Trevor. Aubrey hoped she could find his killer soon.
The school day came to an end with no further clues, and Aubrey returned home feeling irritated. Without even going inside the house, she took her bike from where it sat half-hidden in the bushes and pedaled into town.
It was further than the Othermart square, but not too far. Aubrey let herself autopilot down the road until she reached her destination, locked her bike to the rail, and walked inside.
“Got any info?” she asked.
The secretary, a girl named Katie, smirked. “Talking about that jock kid? Maybe a little. How much do you already know?”
Working at the Faraway Herald, Katie had a good sense of big events in the vicinity, despite not being a writer herself. Aubrey had been coming here for a while under the guise of being interested in gossip and crime.
Well, she was. Just not for the reasons Katie thought.
“I saw the body,” Aubrey said. “I want to know where he is now. Where’s he being buried? Cremated?” God, let him be cremated.
“Hmm…the morgue probably has him now. You know, the one by the train station? I guess it’s pretty far, but his parents are closer that way.”
Aubrey scowled. That would be at least a half hour’s bike. With a sigh, she placed her chin on her hand. “Cool. Weird, though, right? I saw the guy this morning. Now he’s poof.”
“Creepy.” Katie popped her bubblegum. She wasn’t that much older than Aubrey, with bright blue dyed hair and a cute checkered jacket. She had never been one to question Aubrey’s peculiar points of interest. “Police are calling suicide.”
“Huh? Wait, what? He was literally stuffed in a locker.”
“You know how they are. Something about no defensive wounds, unbalanced blood levels…They think he took a pill. Or overdosed, or something. Could’ve been accidental. That sort of thing.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Aubrey spat. “How would he get in there? I don’t think that girl even knew him.”
“If you say so.” Katie shrugged. “I don’t know all that much else, honestly, but the cops aren’t very invested in the case, from what I’ve seen. Don’t waste your energy on it.”
Aubrey sighed again. “Right, then. Great.”
So they had ignored the bite marks entirely. Typical.
“Hey, it’s okay. You went to school together, so it’s natural to be freaked out. When’s the last time a kid…you know…passed? Only a few months, huh?”
“Yeah, a senior girl. I didn’t know her.” Aubrey caught that vampire fairly quickly. It had been an ex-boyfriend with a vengeance. She couldn’t save the girl—Sophia, her name had been—but hopefully she could rest easy now her killer was turned to dust. It was rarer than one might expect for a vampire to hold a grudge like that, but Sophia’s death made sure Aubrey would keep personal history in mind.
“And your friend too. How long has it been now? Three years? Four? Town never forgets cases like those, though. Probably won’t forget this one, either, even if it looks like they’re dismissing it for now. Suicides are always sad.”
“Bring the community together or something. Sure.” Aubrey rolled her eyes.
“It’ll be okay,” said Katie. Her voice was warm and comforting. “It’ll get better. I promise. High school’s tough.”
You have no idea, Aubrey thought.
She gave a fake smile and went on her way.
She thought about biking to the morgue now, but it could wait. She was getting hungry and she’d rather not leave her homework for the bus, as she often did. Trevor could wait a few hours until sunset. It was possible that the killer would be there, too. There was a significant chance Trevor had just happened to be fast food for the day, but a daytime kill in the school? Aubrey figured it might hold a little more weight.
Opening the front door to her house, Aubrey’s hopeful mood was crushed by the shouts of her mother. Her shoulders sank. She shut the door behind her and tried to cross the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Her words were slurred. Again, typical. Somehow, she seemed to have gotten worse since Aubrey became the Slayer. If only she was possessed or something. That, Aubrey could deal with. The stench of beer reminded her that was not the case.
“Don’t walk away from me, young lady…eugh.”
Aubrey trudged into the kitchen and took a little box of chicken tenders from the freezer. The freezer…was not cold. Aubrey’s eye twitched.
At least the microwave worked. She sat up on the countertop and ignored her mom as she trailed off into nonsense. Eventually, her mom forgot what she was mad about and disappeared into her bedroom for the night.
Aubrey ate in silence, eyes closed most of the time. There were a few more hours before sunset. This was rest time. After cleaning up, she climbed the ladder to the attic, closed the trapdoor hatch, and lifted Bun-Bun from his cage. His fluff was one of life’s biggest comforts.
She set him down and rolled into bed. Her alarm clock would go off at 7:30pm, as it did every day, and she would spring up and start the night shift. For now, she got to sleep, homework be damned. These were the best hours of the day.
Aubrey was grateful.
Justice for Trevor would come soon enough.
***
Once the sun had set, Aubrey climbed out the window and performed her routine parkour across the tree branches. She pried her bike from the prickly bushes. If only she had a garage. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about it being stolen, since there was no way she could afford another one and it was her best mode of transportation around town.
The bike was also bright pink, but hey, even Slayers have style.
She began her ride up the street and listened closely for any suspicious sounds. Other than her familiar heartbeat, all she could hear was the quiet calls of crickets and cicadas. The night was peaceful. She rode in silence for a while.
There weren’t too many cars out, so she had the road to herself for the most part. Everyone else was at home, having family dinner, or getting ready for bed…In a sleepy town like Faraway, no one had any world-ending responsibilities. No one except Aubrey.
Aubrey eventually arrived at the train station, where Katie had said the morgue was near, and set her bike carefully against the building. She could walk the rest of the way.
Within a few minutes, stake and cross at the ready, she entered the morgue.
There were people working here, so she had to be quiet and quick. Find Trevor, wait for him to rise, and dust him. Simple.
She turned a corner and slowed down to an eventual halt.
Was it supposed to smell so strongly in here?
She found the courage to keep walking and pushed open the door to the next room over. It was full of corpses.
No, not just the refrigerated ones. Fresh ones, newly murdered, white uniforms marred with scarlet. There were at least three dead, and one pale body standing over them, fangs gleaming.
“Hi, Aubrey,” said Trevor. “Nice of you to stop by.”
Aubrey’s hand rose toward the cross on her necklace. “Easy, Trevor,” she said calmly. “You’re early.”
“I heard you’re the Slayer. Is that true?” Trevor asked. He arched a brow and gave a broad, bloodied smile.
Aubrey eyed the bodies on the floor. “You seem to have done a bit of slaying yourself.”
“Take it as an initiation. He helped me round them up for my first meal.”
“And who is he?” Aubrey asked. She was getting annoyed already.
“I told you she’d come!”
A third voice joined them and Aubrey’s eyes flicked to the side, then widened. It was a teen boy with dark hair and skin so pale he seemed to glitter under the overhead lights. Aubrey recognized him.
“You died last year,” she said. “Your family buried you in a different town. They said it was heart disease.”
“I came back,” he said simply. Gracefully, he strutted across the room to join Trevor on the pile of cadavers.
“What’s your name, anyway? I forgot. Been a while since anyone’s talked about you,” Aubrey told him.
“My name? That’s not important.” His voice was sickly sweet, like honey. “Trevor’s who you should worry about.”
Aubrey grimaced. She raised her stake and got into position to fight.
“Oh, no, don’t bother with your whole Slayer thing,” Trevor objected.
“And why not?” she asked sharply.
“We have big plans for you. Preparations are coming together…Really, at the end of it all, you might even be pleased.”
“I doubt that.” Still, when the two vampires started walking, she hesitantly followed, stake lowered. All vampires were cryptic, but she had a weird feeling about this. Maybe it was just because it was Trevor.
There was someone strapped to the table.
Aubrey stood in shock by the doorway while Trevor and his sire approached their victim, who struggled against his binds.
Basil.
“Did you invite me to this?” Aubrey asked after a moment. Her voice shook with anger and badly disguised distress. “You invited the Slayer to a murder?”
“He was just an easy target.” The sire waved a hand with a mild smile. “Though, you do sound interested. Would you like to participate?”
“No more talk,” Trevor said. “One human sacrifice will hardly be enough to satiate The Master. This one just happened to be a convenient catch, and with a close connection to the Slayer, he was invaluable. Capturing the Slayer, now…that would be interesting.”
“Who’s The Master?” Aubrey demanded. In any other circumstance, she would have vehemently denied the so-called close connection to Basil, but there were more important things to worry about now. She rambled on, “I mean, I think Mikhael convinced Angel to start calling him that at some point, but I highly doubt he’s involved in this cult sacrifice bullshit.”
“Maybe someday,” said Trevor wistfully.
Aubrey rolled her shoulders. “You know what?” she asked. “I’m over this.”
She dashed at them and lifted her arm over her head to strike. Unsurprisingly, both vampires slipped away to opposite sides of the room, each wearing an identical smirk.
She managed to launch herself at the sire, pinning him down. She elbowed him hard in the sternum and attempted to maneuver the stake over his heart, but Trevor tackled her from behind and started to wrap his hands around her neck. Before he could block her airway, though, he cried out in pain, hands glowing a fiery red—Aubrey’s cross necklace, torturous to vampires, had been half-hidden under her shirt. From where she laid on the ground, Aubrey kicked him upwards, sending him flying.
“Slayer strength,” the sire cooed, like he was watching a dog perform a trick.
Aubrey got from her knees to her feet and hurled herself once more at Trevor, who had begun to approach Basil. To her delight, the collision sent his head crashing into a drawer in the wall, a comically dazed look coming over his face. Aubrey rolled her shoulders back again and took the opportunity to catch her breath.
“You’re going after him and not me? I’m offended.” The sire waved his hands from the opposite side of the table. He gestured to Basil. “I suppose I’ll have to take this one and go—”
Aubrey gave Trevor one more solid kick into the shelves and used it to propel herself toward the other assailant, arms pinned to her sides like a missile. She skidded along the tile floor and, breathing heavily, lifted her stake.
“Getting tired?” he mocked.
“You wish,” Aubrey replied, leaning into the cliche.
Trevor was getting up—he hadn’t been in a good position to stake the way he had fallen, and Aubrey had learned to prioritize hostages over alleged victory. Despite her own humanitarian logic, though, she couldn’t help the hot resentment that brewed in the pit of her stomach when she saw both vampires still standing over her.
Maybe you should just let them have him.
No. They wanted Basil. They wanted his strength, his soul, and Aubrey’s too, but only if they could manage the fight. She was the only thing standing between them and their triumph.
She refused to give them anything they wanted. They only wanted him so that they could get closer to their goal, so she couldn’t let that happen. Whoever The Master was, her personal grievances with Basil couldn’t justify feeding him to this stupid evil plot.
She steadied herself and darted around the enemies to stand beside Basil on the table. His eyes were wide open, staring at her shakily. One eye bore a wide rim of black and purple. She chose to ignore him. It would be easier if he was a stranger.
“This is fun,” Trevor said gleefully.
“Perhaps now would be a good time for that power up.”
At the sire’s words, Aubrey’s posture tensed, face scrunching up. “Power up? What the fuck do you think this is, Super Mario?”
Trevor waved the sire away. “I can do this myself.”
To prove his point, he flexed his fingers and showed his true form. His strong, attractive features morphed into a monstrous mask, the soulless creature of the Hellmouth lying beneath his skin. His fangs gleamed. Aubrey had to stop herself from instinctively backing away. That face, on someone she knew, was a horror she wouldn’t be able to forget for a while.
She channeled her anxiety into action and began to quickly undo the straps tying Basil to the table. As Trevor rammed into her and knocked her over, Basil managed to shuffle backwards and free his legs on his own, staring down at the fight in terror. He braced himself, pressed his fists together, and delivered a hefty punch to Trevor’s exposed back. Trevor rolled over in surprise and Aubrey took the opportunity to catch the sire off guard. Sprinting at him, she drew back her arm and plunged the stake deep into his chest.
Her palm was sweaty around the wooden spike. She heaved for breath, head bent toward the floor, and slowly, dreading, looked up.
The sire peered down at her. “You missed,” he said. Holding a hand to the huge wound in the center of his chest, already beginning to heal over, he called to Trevor, “It’s time.”
Trevor got up and stared in abject horror. His monstrous face became distorted with misery and he shoved Aubrey away. “I don’t want to,” he complained. He looked exhausted.
Aubrey could only watch in wide-eyed bewilderment as the sire, leaning against the wall, whispered something inaudible to his victim.
Trevor’s eyes gleamed. Then, without moving the rest of his body, he reached into his pocket and slowly retrieved something.
Then he thrust his arm into the air and drove the scrap of splintered wood into his sire’s heart.
The elder vampire dissolved into dust.
Aubrey and Basil both choked back gasps of disbelief. The sire was gone. As a vampire, he surely would have been able to regenerate sooner or later, and yet Trevor had eliminated his own ally.
Trevor stretched his neck and let the makeshift stake fall to the floor. He gradually rose to his feet, but the purpose of his action was becoming clear—his energy had been completely restored by the kill.
Aubrey tried to gather herself in preparation.
“I was chosen as The Vessel,” Trevor explained in a solemn tone. “I was granted the honor of compounding the strength of my victims, and soon I will deliver my findings to The Master and oversee the Harvest. That is the role I will fulfill.”
Aubrey shrank a little, beginning to feel overwhelmed. Basil was crouching in the corner to her left. She risked a glance.
Oh, he was covered in blood.
She summoned her remaining willpower and stood. “I kill vampires every day. You’re not special.”
“My sire told me differently.”
He was walking towards her now, a renewed swagger to his step. She eyed the door; it was behind him, of course. She looked to Basil one last time and nodded her head toward the exit. He understood and scrambled away while Trevor growled in frustration, honing in on Aubrey.
“He doesn’t matter!” Trevor announced. “He’s just a weakling. You, though…you’re a full course meal.”
“Gross, dude,” Aubrey said flatly, and adjusted her grip on the stake. Her hands were really, really sweaty now. It was disgusting.
“Once I tell the other vampires I killed a Slayer on my first night, I’ll be famous,” Trevor said under his breath. “I’ll get jobs like this all the time. I’ll be unstoppable.”
Aubrey scrunched up her face. “Good for you, buddy.” She stood perfectly still for a few calculated moments, then dodged a sudden blow and swiftly tackled him to the floor. He was clearly stronger than before, the sire’s added essence providing further power, but the adrenaline rushing through Aubrey’s veins was enough to pin him down.
His hand was around her wrist, the stake hovering right above his chest. She groaned with effort. He laughed.
Eventually, he used a burst of force to throw her across the room. She rolled over herself and landed on her side, limbs sprawled everywhere.
“This is so much fun,” Trevor blabbered. He was walking steadily toward her. She had no energy left to get up—she was cornered. Was this it?
Trevor crooned, “Say goodnight, Slayer.”
Then his expression changed. His smirk vanished and he quickly spun around, and in seconds he was ashes drifting to the ground.
Aubrey stared in amazement at the empty space where The Vessel had been, and there was Basil. He was trembling, holding the little piece of wood Trevor had dropped; he had caught Trevor’s attention and staked him as soon as they were facing each other. Aubrey was impressed.
“I…have a stomach ache,” Basil said.
Ah, right. He was a total wimp.
“Let’s head home,” Aubrey muttered, avoiding eye contact. She propped herself up onto her elbows and sat up straight.
Basil nodded and pressed his lips together. His limbs were bruised, all of him visibly strained; he was struggling to hold himself together. He followed behind Aubrey as she led the way carefully out of the building and down the dark street.
“So…you’re the Slayer,” Basil said softly.
Aubrey shot him a quick glare. “You won’t tell anyone.”
“No, no, it…it explains a lot, heh…” He looked ridiculously pale.
“Don’t get a cold,” Aubrey muttered. “I don’t have any tissues on me.”
“Guess I should’ve brought a jacket to my kidnapping, then,” Basil replied sheepishly, shivering.
“Can’t help you there, unfortunately. You’re lucky my bike’s a two-seater.”
They made it to the train station and stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Basil asked nervously. Aubrey, standing in front of him, looked left and right.
She walked further along the wall, head turning every which way, and then finally she turned around.
In the dark, her brown eyes shone with anger. A message written in red paint was scrawled onto the wall behind her. They could only hope it wasn’t real blood.
Aubrey balled her hands into fists, nausea overwhelming her. She spat, “Someone stole my fucking bike.”
Written on the wall was, “The Master waits for your descent.”
Aubrey threw a punch into the building’s wall, leaving a mark. Goddamn it.
All of this was meaningless.
The seeds of the Harvest had been sown.