Three Years Later. Southern California.

Kat tore through the quiet suburban side street chasing after the fleeing bloodsucker. He, or rather it—Kat didn’t want to humanize the creature—moved fast. As far as she could tell, all vampires were faster than humans, but this one wasn’t faster than her Prius. She accelerated.

Unable to outrun her, the vamp cut between two Mediterranean-style stucco homes, leaping fences in a single bound.

She smiled.

Predictable.

She made a u-ey and two sharp rights. The vamp had run exactly where she expected it to and now stood in the middle of the road looking back at the direction it thought she’d come from. It turned around as her car slammed into it.

Its body flew through the air before it hit the asphalt hard; tumbling then sliding to a stop. Kat put the car in park, grabbed her wooden stake, and approached the wounded vamp. A sad whine escaped its throat, and she couldn’t blame the creature. Half its face had been left behind on the road. She didn’t feel bad for it though. If she didn’t do this, it’d kill more people. Innocent people. And if she didn’t end this quick, it’d heal.

She kicked its shoulder with her heavy boot, flipping the leech onto its back, then drove the stake into its heart.

That wouldn’t kill it, but it’d shut down its body, giving her all the time in the world to deal the final blow.

Learning about vampires hadn’t been an easy process for her.

A few months after her parents died, fuzzy memories had started returning—including the shocking vampires are real discovery. And once she knew that, she started spotting them everywhere.

It surprised her how often she’d catch one shadowing a blissfully unaware human. Stalking its prey.

Killing the first one had been a disaster. Angry and still reeling from the loss of her parents, Kat had snuck out of her grandmother’s house—not a hard feat considering Grandma was nearly blind and deaf—and found a vamp feeding on a human. She stabbed it with her homemade stake but missed the heart. Turns out ribcages aren’t all that easy to pierce.

The vampire ran. It seemed to fear her. She hadn’t known why. Maybe it was the stake in her hand. Maybe it had assumed Kat was a hunter like the ones who had saved her. She trailed it to a house and waited until daytime. When she broke in, it lay dead on a mattress. Not dead, really. More like…shut off.

Her heart raced all the same. In the end, her fear had been for nothing. She poked and prodded at it, but it never woke. Not even when she threw back the curtain to let the sunlight in, and it burned to a pile of ash.

Doing so also caught the entire house on fire, and, being the dry season, the flames spread to the neighboring homes. Oops. Thankfully no one died—except the bloodsucker—and she had gotten away unseen.

The past few years she’d learned what she could about vampires. They were stronger and faster than humans but by how much seemed to drastically vary by each one. Religious symbols had no effect on them—neither did garlic—but silver weakened and burned them. They could walk over water just fine, and she could see their reflection in mirrors. She had never seen another vampire shapeshift or fly…only the one.

The Pale Man.

Well. Most vampires were pretty pasty. But the Pale Man—the one who could turn into a swarm of bats—burned at her soul.

And one day, she would kill him.

But right now, she had a job to do. The staked road-kill vampire wasn’t going to kill itself. She pulled out a silver knife—purchased online—from her belt, and placed it against the vampire’s neck. The silver burned its skin with a sizzle.

“Ya know,” a man with a slight drawl said from behind her, “swords are a little better than daggers at removing heads.”

Recognizing the voice, Kat smiled before she looked over her shoulder. There he was. The cowboy-hunter from that night three years ago. He stood under a streetlamp, looking out of place among the manicured lawns and palm trees behind him. His arms were crossed, but he seemed more amused than angry. Though it was hard to tell with the way his hat cast heavy shadows over his rugged face.

Lock. The one who had tried to erase her memories and left Kat with her grandmother. A grandmother who had since passed away, leaving Kat with no one.

“Yeah?” she asked. “Got one handy?”

From under his duster, Lock drew a sword and tossed it to her. Kat caught it by the hilt and took off the vampire’s head with a single heavy swing.

The body began to decay but not quickly. A younger vampire.

Kat tossed the sword back. “That stuff you gave me didn’t take my memories away.”

“Gathered that.” He tipped his head at the vampire. “You do this often?”

“Often enough.”

“How many?”

“He’s number five.” Kat took a step towards Lock, but there was still a sizable stretch of road between them. “How do you do that disappearing and reappearing thing?”

Lock paused for a moment, then unbuttoned his shirt revealing the top of his chest. Covering it was silver tattoos, that reminded her of Norse symbols. “Each rune is inscribed with a spell, put on me by witches.”

She watched as one of the tattoos—two twisting lines inside of a circle—glowed bright green and Lock teleported a few feet forward.

Kat bit back a gasp. “You have a lot of tattoos. What else do they do?”

“Depends. I’ve been at this a long time. I’ve got some extra ones most hunters don’t, but the basic runes make a person faster, stronger, let me hide from vamps, that sort of thing.”

That’s what Kat wanted—to be faster and stronger so she could go after the vampire who killed her family. The Pale Man. “What do I need to do to get a set of those?”

“They come with a hefty price tag.” Lock rested his hands on his hips. “This is a war you’ve stepped into, and the only way to get the runes is to join the fight.”

“A war? Between vampires and hunters?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“A war no one has heard about?”

“We’re real good at hiding.”

Kat raised an eyebrow. “No way, everyone has a camera on their phone.”

Lock dug into a pouch on his belt and took out a metal stick only a few inches long and flicked it on the ground in front of her.

“What are you—” she started to ask but fell silent when Lock vanished. Kat looked around. No cowboy anywhere. But then she saw a shimmer.

When she focused, the air distorted. She moved forward, and an unexplained panic rose within her. As if her brain was telling her nothing to see here, move along.

But she didn’t move along. Determined, she kept walking forward until she passed through…something. It felt like a blast of warm air combined with a million spiders running across her skin. A shiver ran down her spine, and Lock appeared in front of her.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A veil. Like I said, we’re good at hiding.” Lock pulled a small glass bottle full of black liquid from his belt and held it out to Kat, his gloved thumb rubbing over the cap. “Wanna learn more?”

“What I want is to kill the vampire that took my family from me.”

Lock shook his head. “I can’t guarantee that’ll happen. But it’s too risky for us to leave some untrained girl, fueled by vengeance, running around burning down houses.”

“How did you know I—”

“This is my county. No one drops a vampire in it without me knowing, let alone a teenager that I’m responsible for.”

Kat narrowed her eyes. The hunter was hardly responsible for her. She had spent the last few years healing her own broken self while taking care of a senile grandmother. “You’ve been watching me.”

“Yep. Wanted to see how far you’d go. Which is why I’m offering you this now.” He held up the bottle. “You have a choice. Join us, learn to hunt vampires, or have your memories wiped. And I’ll be sure it sticks this time.”

“How do you wipe memories?” she asked, not expecting him to tell her but she wanted to know all the same.

He looked at her for a moment and tapped a different bottle on his belt, one with blue liquid. “What I gave you two years ago is a secretion from a creature called a billowog. Normally it takes away the past few hours of memories, but some humans are resistant to it. This time around I’ll take you to one of our prisoner vampires and have them suppress your memories—it won’t be so bad though, you’ll be able to move on with your life.”

“Vampires can do that? And you keep prisoners?”

“Yes and yes. Vampire blood can heal humans”—with his free hand he tapped a red bottle on his belt—“we have to get it from somewhere. Come on, Kathleen, we both know the choice you’re going to make here.”

Kat’s eyes fell to the black liquid. He was right. She had made her choice the moment he’d appeared. Hell, she would have begged him to let her join them if she could have. But she didn’t want to make it easy for him, not if she could get more information first.

“Billowogs, witches, vampires, what else is out there?”

Lock’s eyes flicked to the bottle he held out.

She snatched it from his hand and popped open the top. “You said you couldn't guarantee I’ll be killing the Pale Man—but I promise you that I will. He’s mine.” She knocked back the liquid. It was sweeter than she expected and almost at once darkness started to press in around her.

Her legs gave out, and Lock was at her side, catching her. “There’s a long line of people that want him dead. You’ll have to cut in front if you want him.”

“No.” Her words slurred. “They’ll be moving out of my way.”

Lock chuckled. “I believe it, brave Kathleen.”