Ninth Grade Slays by Heather Brewer Read Free Book Online

imagine what it would be like to be hunted down and gutted. Hunted down, yes. But gutted? The thought gave Vlad a shiver.

5
    KILLER AT LARGE
    THE VAMPIRE SLAYER flipped open the latches on the old wooden case and ran his fingers over the soft velvet lining inside. One by one, he removed his tools and laid them gently on the cotton cloth he’d spread on the floor for inspection. It was nearly time to begin his hunt. He had to be sure he was prepared.
    He hefted the weight of the silver crucifix in his hand before laying it down on the cloth. He followed it with three bottles of serum, the rosary, the small hatchet that had been a gift from his grandfather, and the wooden stake—a beautiful instrument carved from ash and tipped in pure silver. He wondered, yet again, how many of the undead his great-great-uncle had taken down with this same stake. The slayer always thought about him whenever he opened the case. After all, the vampire killing kit had been invented by his great-great-uncle, Professor Ernst Blomberg, and passed down through the family since the mid-1800s. It was a longstanding tradition, as was keeping your slayer trade secret from everyone in the family other than those who had slain before you and those who would slay after you. There were over a hundred slayer families, of course, but only one slayer per generation ever joined the Slayer Society. And only a slayer could recognize the traits of the next slayer in his family line.
    Thinking back to the day he learned he was next in line, the slayer realized that he should have been pleased to be part of an ancient and honored tradition. But neither honor, nor notoriety in the Society’s close-knit circle, had convinced him to surrender to fate—it had been Cecile. Dear, pretty Cecile, with her blonde curls framing her tiny, freckled face, and her large green eyes, which had sparkled like emeralds.
    It had been an unusually dark, quiet night, and the lack of the usual household noises had woken him. From down the hall, he heard a tiny whimper. Cecile—his darling baby sister, probably having a nightmare. As any good sibling would, he crept down the hall to check on her, but what he found still haunted him to this day. It was what had driven him to accept his post as a vampire slayer. It was what pushed him on, every moment of every day, to hunt down the beasts and take their lives.
    He had turned the doorknob slowly, and the door swung open. Looming over a pale, unconscious Cecile was a vampire—her blood dripping from it fangs. After that, his memories were a blur. But he remembered clearly that it had been the day of her funeral that he’d been sworn in as a slayer, and just before the final blow in every battle with a vampire, he’d uttered the words, “For you, Cecile.”
    He looked over his tools. They were all in fine order. Apart from being a little low on holy water, the slayer was ready. He turned the stake over in his hands and smirked at a passing memory of an old film, in which a slayer was portrayed as a bumbling fool with a sack full of splintered wood. How ridiculous. A true slayer needed only one stake to take a blood drinker down. One stake and good aim. The heart is a small organ and, what’s more, hidden behind the ribs. If you don’t hit it just right, you’re going to have a very angry vampire on your hands. And nobody wants that.
    He remembered one of his first slayings with a sigh. It had gone well. He’d staked the vampire. No fuss, no muss. But after he turned to collect his tools he heard a noise. Whistling. He turned back to the undead monster. The whistling got louder. Something was wrong.
    The vampire sat up.
    Apparently, he’d missed the heart and punctured a lung. It was a rookie mistake, the first and only time he’d missed the heart. Lesson learned. A punctured lung was enough to slow down an older vampire but not enough to kill it. The more the vampire exerted itself