The Chosen One

By Rick Hall

Prior to his death, legendary vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing, began the establishment of three unique academies to train vampire hunters. He never lived to see them completed. With his dying breath, Van Helsing uttered a prophecy that stated that one day a student would arise from one of the academies and this student would be the greatest vampire hunter of them all. To date, that prophecy has yet to be fulfilled.

Ethan, a small, timid, and clumsy orphan, is seen by many of his instructors as the worst student ever to be trained by any of the academies. Few expect him live long enough to graduate let alone enter the trade. This all changes when he is the sole survivor of a group of vampire hunters that are ambushed by a vampire prince and his nest. The fact that the youth manages to survive the massacre is nothing short of a miracle.

Alan Spangler is the head physician of the Van Helsing academy located at Lexington, Kentucky. After he and a group of physicians interview and observe the youth, he becomes convinced that the youth is the prophetic Chosen One and begins an investigation into the youth's background. As his investigation expands, Alan finds that there is more to the youth than meets the eye. Before the doctor can test his theory, Ethan and dozens of other hunters are sent on a suicide mission to destroy a vampire prince and his nest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491806746

Book preview

The

Chosen One

Rick Hall

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AuthorHouse™ LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

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© 2013 by Rick Hall. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   11/15/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0675-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0673-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0674-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914297

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

I would like to thank the following people who helped make this all possible. My Lord and Savior, for keeping a live this long. I literally should be here, but through His faithfulness, I am. My wife, Marsha Hall, for believing in me when no one else did. My parents, Verlis Hall and Estelle Fern Hall, who taught me to be practical. My grandmother Edna Hall, who taught me to laugh. My Mamaw, Hattie Mosley, who taught me what real love means and my surrogate mother, Jeanette Spears, who taught me how to dream. Last but not least, I want to dedicate this to all those who continued to dream when a dream was all they had. I beg you all to continue the fight and never surrender because it is indeed worth it all.

Rick Hall, November 14, 2013.

Vampire; the word alone is enough to strike fear in the hearts of many people. These creatures represent our deepest fears and most selfish desires. From their cravings for blood, that life-giving liquid that symbolizes mankind’s mortal existence, to their unchanging youth and vigor, they remind us that buried deep down in the pits of our very souls we all desire to live forever. Vampires offer us that opportunity. Unfortunately, the cost of an undying existence is eternal damnation.

Vampires have always been few in number. The reasons for this are two-fold. The first reason is that the vast majority of people from all races and religions believe that the cost of their immortal soul is too high a price to pay despite the promise of eternal youth, beauty, and charisma. The second reason is that only a vampire prince or princess can turn ordinary humans into vampires. Forget all the fiction that has been published or filmed about these nocturnal beings, not all vampires have the ability to bite a person and make that person become a vampire. Only a handful of vampires have the ability to procreate another vampire. Sure, all vampires can, with a single bite, force humans to become one of their living minion, but they don’t have the ability to promulgate the species. But for these two facts, vampires would have become the dominant species long ago.

Legend has it that vampires have only been existence since the fifteenth century. Vladislav Tepes, III, better known as Vlad the Impaler, was the first internationally known and most famous of these creatures of the night. Born in fourteen thirty-one and reputed to have died forty-five years later, Vlad of the house of Dracula, or Dragon, is considered a hero to some and one of history’s greatest arch-villains to others. He had a thirst for blood and as a result, tens of thousands of people, mostly Ottoman Turks or other enemies of his Transylvanian homeland, died heinous deaths in order to appease his insatiable appetite. It was rumored that his demonic desire for that deep, rich, crimson liquid combined with the loss of a beloved wife drove him to embrace the dark promises of vampirism.

The one thing the legends leave out is how he became a vampire. There are many theories about how a person becomes a vampire prince or princess, for they are made and not born, but to date, no one knows exactly what it takes to achieve that rank. Most believe that it involves some kind of curse while others think it is a choice. No matter how they achieve their statuses, vampire royalty is a bane to mankind.

Legends about vampires go back to the ancient Sumerians. Abraham, the father of the Jewish and Arabic people, lived in the Sumerian city of Ur, which contained legends of blood-sucking demons of the night. Gilgamesh, history’s first recorded piece of literary work is the story of a king who seeks immortality after the death of his friend, Enkidu, a wild-man with a savage soul rumored to have been raised by animals. These antiquated texts seem to point to the existence of creatures, if not vampires, then something very similar to them.

The greatest achievement vampires have accomplished is to convince mankind they don’t exist. Over the millennia, they have ceased to become real and have become the stuff of myths and legends. Whether this was by design or by accident, it has proven to be one of the greatest deceptions of the Nosferatu, which means the undead. Thanks to novels, films and television, vampires are now considered the product of many brilliant but overactive imaginations.

Despite their best efforts and working in conjunction with their unsuspecting accomplices in fiction and Hollywood, vampires been unable to keep their existence hidden from all of mankind. Still, there are many people who know of them and who are working tirelessly to wipe them off the face of the earth. The Catholic Church and other religious entities have been secretly fighting these unholy creatures for thousands of years. As with most wars, the church has had some smashing successes and some dismal failures during this ongoing war with the Nosferatu.

The greatest vampire slayer of them all was Abraham Van Helsing. A Dutch physician who also possessed doctoral degrees in philosophy and literature, Dr. Van Helsing was the man who destroyed Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. We can thank the gifted writer Bram Stoker for chronicling the legend that is Abraham Van Helsing. Throughout the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the good doctor and his protégés scoured the world weeding out nests of the undead.

Unlike previous vampire hunters who relied strictly on religious props, trinkets and holy relics to fight their enemy, Van Helsing and his followers mixed science and philosophy with their tools. As a result of the marrying of science and religion, the profession of vampire slaying became more refined and efficient. Prior to Van Helsing, the greatest asset a vampire hunter could possess was a strong body and quick reflexes, but afterwards, a keen mind and good intuition would also become key tools of the trade.

Van Helsing was one of the first people to recognize the importance of vampire dust in the war against the creatures of the night. Vampire dust was discovered in the late nineteenth century by a German immigrant to the United States. The man was a photographer and his discovery was made quite by accident. The dust doesn’t kill vampires outright, but something within its chemical compound prevents vampires from shape shifting or performing other feats of magic. As to how it works, no one knows. Still, it has been the greatest tool in the arsenal of the vampire hunter for the last hundred and twenty plus years.

Today, vampire hunting has become high tech and science has replaced much of the muscle and footwork. Even though technology has become the key element of the trade, hunters still need strong bodies and great reflexes. As he aged, Dr. Van Helsing realized that were he to combine the religious, scientific and physical aspects of the job, he could develop teams to root out and destroy vampires faster than the vampires could repopulate themselves.

Over the last few years of his life, Dr. Van Helsing began outlining plans for an academy to train future generations of vampire killers. It took the doctor years and countless meetings with various groups of leadership within the Catholic Church before the Pope would give his final blessing on the project. The groundbreaking on the first of three such academies would begin in Rome just twelve days prior to the death of Abraham Van Helsing.

The Roman Academy was completed in nineteen thirteen. A second academy was built in Buenos Aires in nineteen fifteen, whereas the third and last one was completed in nineteen eighteen in Lexington, Kentucky. To date, these are the only three such academies in the world, but plans for a fourth in Brisbane, Australia and a fifth in Johannesburg, South Africa have been submitted to the Holy See.

The three academies all share the same name, The Academy of the Holy Father, or See, but they are affectionately referred to as the Van Helsing Academies. They have but one purpose and that is to train exceptional youths in the art and science of vampire hunting. Students come from all over the world and are taught science, religion and combat training. The vast majority of these students are taken from orphanages or else are the children of former or current hunters. Given the fact that the average life expectancy of a hunter in the field is about eight years, most of the children from hunter families are usually orphaned or at least missing one parent by the time they join the academy.

Since the inception of the first academy, over twelve thousand vampires have been eliminated by graduates of the three institutes with students from the one in Rome responsible for removal of over five thousand.

During this same period, over seven thousand hunters or student hunters have been taken with thirty-three of them having been turned into vampires. Only six of those former hunters remain with twenty-seven having been destroyed, but those survivors have proven to be some of the most resourceful and dangerous adversaries for the hunters.

Legend says that any vampire can turn a person in to a member of the Nosferatu, but that is patently untrue. Only a vampire prince can perform such a feat. Throughout history there have only been ten such beings with Vlad Tepes being the best-known of the group. Today there are only seven princes or princesses left.

Not much is known about the deaths of the other two vampire princes but there are legends which may tell how the other two met their demise. One comes from ancient Mesopotamia that tells of a prince named Enkidu with vampire tendencies. His story comes from the legend of Gilgamesh and is believed to be the first recorded documentation of a vampire slaying.

The second slaying involves Saint George and his legendary slaying of a dragon, which also happens to be one of the forms that a vampire (male) or vampirina (female) may take when he or she feels threatened. Legend says that Saint George attacked a dragon that was terrorizing the local population. Even though this story has become an English legend as well as a Christian one, the events of this vampire slaying have nothing to do with England or Christianity. The destruction of this dragon was supposed to have taken place in Silene, which is located in modern-day Libya, not in England. Also, there is ample evidence that the Saint George incident took place before the birth of Christ and therefore precedes Christianity by several hundred years. There is an old Hittite legend of the Storm God, Tarhun, battling a dragon called Illuvankas. The story of Tarhun is amazingly similar to that of Saint George and is believed to be the origins on which Saint George’s legend was based.

The whereabouts of the last seven princes are unknown, but it is believed that they are scattered throughout the world. Each continent is rumored to contain at least one; the exceptions being Asia, which is believed to have two and Antarctica with zero. Those two vampires in Asia are rumored to be located in Russia, China or India. They are believed to be traveling together and are thought to be a male and a female. No one really knows for sure since most vampires are transient in nature.

For a century, the academies have been dedicated to searching out and destroying these seven individuals. With the help of new technologies, especially the dust, and new fighting techniques, the students of these academies have come close on several occasions, but, thus far, have failed in all endeavors to destroy a prince or princess. Still, the academies persist. They continue to fight because of a prophecy issued by Abraham Van Helsing only minutes before his death. As his eyes closed into eternity, the good doctor predicted that a student from one of the academies would one day arise to become an unequalled vampire hunter. This student would destroy the rest of the princes from off the face of the earth. This deathbed prediction has become known as the Prophecy of the Chosen One. To this day, it has yet to be fulfilled.

Chapter 1

The cavern was dark, dank and reeked of decay and death. Evil seemed to float on the air like a low hanging fog. It seemed as though a person could stick his or her hand through the moist fear permeating the area and wave it aside as easily as one would move a kitchen drape. The only sound that could be heard was the gentle thud of boots hitting the soft mud as a group of more than two dozen inexperienced hunters led by a hand-full of seasoned teachers stumbled their way through the murky blackness.

Tonight they were going to get their first real taste of the hunt. After nearly a year and a half of studying and training, tonight they were given the chance to prove their worth. Since this was going to be the student’s first live event, the teachers chose a relatively easy prey. They would go in at dusk and be out of the place in two, no more than three, hours. If all went well, as it should, this was going to be a cake-walk.

Hairs stood on edge and a sense of electricity filled the air as the group made their way down that rock-strewn corridor. After tonight, they would no longer be labeled hunter virgins by their fellow students. Come tomorrow, they too would be able to brag about their exploits as hunters.

The team was moving forward as cautiously as possible in order to keep from announcing their presence to the prey. They hadn’t gone three hundred yards into the main passageway when chaos descended on the area like and angry god punishing disloyal subjects. Suddenly, the walls of the cave opened up and began swallowing them one by one. Ethan, a small impish boy not yet sixteen, watched in horror as a long bony hand crowned with two-inch long claws for fingernails exploded through the back of the man walking directly in front of him. The youth’s eyes enlarged to three times their normal size when he heard the sickening cough as his colleague’s body sucked in its final breath of air and barked out its death song.

As if that wasn’t enough to scare the life out of him, he watched with nauseating horror as the claw slowly walked its way up the man’s spine clipping the rib bones as it went. The sound of ripping flesh echoed throughout the chamber. Despite a thunderous roar of activity taking place all around him, all the youth could hear was the popping of live flesh and rattling bones being ripped from the still-writhing body of a once powerful warrior. The bones snapped like fresh green beans in the hands of a careless child.

Despite all the chaos that had engulfed the teen, it was the blood that horrified him the most. Although Ethan could barely see it, his mind could hear it drip and gurgle as it drained the very life force out of a man dangling no more than three feet directly in front of him. As the blood began pooling on the ground, the youth could smell the coppery ooze mix with the dark moist earth. Together the two created a morbid stench so foul that it glued itself to the inside of his nostrils. The stench of that brutal act exploded in the air despite his efforts to rid his thoughts of the sickening aroma permeating the entire area. His stomach convulsed and then wretched when the scent wafted like smoke over the group and went into his mouth so that he actually began tasting the anger and bitterness of the violence that had just ended a man’s existence.

Look out! he screamed to no one in particular, but the words froze on his lips and thus nothing but silence was emitted from the teen’s mouth. Ethan stared in agonizing silence as the claw ripped the man’s left shoulder off the body leaving the head bobbing back and forth like a tiny piñata hanging off the side of the lifeless corpse. The body resembled a rotten, spotted banana that had split its covering into multiple pieces and was bursting through the cracks formed in its seams.

As the youth tried to scream for the second time, he watched a shadow slowly descend from the ceiling. As it fell, the silhouette flipped and managed to gracefully land upright on its feet. The specter landed with a soft thud less than five feet from where Ethan stood with his knees knocking uncontrollably.

His lessons in vampire hunting had taught him not to look directly into the eyes of a vampire. That was his only thought when he saw the creature. In spite of all his training, Ethan still looked upon the vampire’s face. As the creature landed, the first thing Ethan noticed was that it wore the face of a woman but not just any woman. Even in the dim light he could tell that this creature was strikingly beautiful. There was something about the vampirina’s eyes that held his attention. Gone were the bloody images he had just witnessed. They were replaced by the consuming desire to gaze upon this woman’s beauty.

Once the vampirina stood completely upright, Ethan wanted to shout at her and order her to remove a hood that was partially covering her face. He’d seen enough of that face to know that he liked the look of it and yearned to see more. That thought stunned him for a second and it would continue to hold his attention over the next minute or two. The youth would stay lost in this trance until the hooded female began to hiss like a giant snake. The fiend reached up with its bloody hand and gently pulled away the cloak that had covered her head. As the covering fell backwards it was replaced by a mane of flawless golden hair.

The body of the gawky youth trembled to see such a thing. Part of him had been expecting to see the head of a boar or some other deformed façade. Therefore, he was unable to fully grasp the reality of what he was actually gazing upon.

The face standing directly in front of him was that of a girl. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen but her eyes hid an ancient and evil soul. Her features were round, but evenly proportioned with a small nose, puffy lips and eyes so green they appeared to glow within the dim illumination of that cavern.

She hissed at him without moving her lips but he was still able to hear her resonating deep within his mind.

Get away or you’re next, echoed a voice from deep within his soul. The sound of her voice was so alluring that even the Sirens of Greek mythology would have been envious of its melodious charm.

The intelligent part of him wanted to get away from the spell the vampirina was casting upon him and he thought about running, but his mind was so captivated by those sad yet loathsome eyes he could do nothing else but stare into them. Gone were the ghoulish images from only minutes before hand. They were to be replaced by an uncontrollable yearning to be engulfed by the creature’s beauty. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and he yearned to touch her; to kiss her; to possess her. No other thought would enter his mind except the sweet animalistic desire to be controlled by this beauty.

His mind screamed for him to flee. It was ordering him to flee. He wanted to flee. He had to flee, but he couldn’t force himself to do it no matter how hard he tried. Those eyes held him in check the same way a spotlight will freeze a deer in place when it hits the animal late at night out on a lonely country road.

The youth’s body began to violently quiver and he nearly vomited a second time as he watched her begin to run her long slender tongue across the length of her bloody hand. She took about four or five extended licks before she looked at him and laughed. There was evil in her expressed amusement. Chills of revulsion ran up his spine and he tried to shake them off but couldn’t. Even though his body remained motionless, his mind desperately yearned to touch her.

But, there was another side to that laugh as well. It was playful and seductive. It was full of promise and temptation. He’d never experienced such an emotion before. It was raw, animalistic and it appealed to him on a level so base and vile that it shocked him to know that he could be attracted to it, but attracted to it he was.

Her eyes were drawing him into her like a moth to a flame. He knew that it was wrong and he knew he had to fight it, but his very soul craved to be touched by her; to be bitten by her; to be owned by her.

She waved to him with her hand and before he became aware of it, he had taken three small steps towards her. The teen knew that he shouldn’t and he didn’t want to, but he kept coming inch by inch by inch by inch. She smiled menacingly at him the whole time he inched closer and closer to her. Ethan understood that he was walking straight to his doom, but that only added to the raw pleasure his body was experiencing as he anticipated with delight the carnal images with which she was flooding his mind.

Having inched his way to her, the youth was now close enough to touch her. She licked her hand once more and then she smiled at him. Ethan’s body nearly exploded with delight when she flashed him that pearly white set of teeth. From the very edges of his toenails to the far ends of his hair follicles, his entire being seemed to be coursing with electricity. It was as if his every hair stood up and begged for her to take him.

Come my little one, she said and he could hear both the contempt and seduction in her voice, but he cared not a whit about it. His only concern was the complete sense of ecstasy that engulfed him like a cocoon. She motioned to him with her bloody hand. Come join me. I bring you the gift of love; eternal, undying and wonderful love.

The youth’s eyes widened for a split second and she smiled.

You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Come to me and I can remove all your pain. I can take away your sorrows. Your doubts! I can replace them… She stopped, lowered her head and slowly raised it up until she was looking directly in his eyes. I can replace it with looooove.

Unable to stop himself, Ethan dropped whatever it was he was carrying in his right hand. He smiled coyly at her and she nodded her approval. The teen reached up and pulled the collar of his shirt down so that she had an unobstructed path to the right side of his neck.

Goooooood, purred the vampirina as she reached out and gently caressed his neck with her non-bloody hand.

This will only hurt a little, she said as she stared into his eyes. After the initial pain is bliss like you’ve never felt before. Is this what you want?

Her words were answered with a silent smile and a soft nod.

Goooooood, she purred like a kitten. I will be gentle my lovely, oh so gentle.

Without saying another word, she opened her mouth to reveal the straightest set of teeth the youth had ever seen. Other than the two oversized canines, her teeth were straight, pearly-white and perfect. She was slightly taller than Ethan so she had to raise her head in order to plunge her fangs into the soft flesh of the boy’s neck.

Once the vampirina’s head arched back to its zenith, her eyes popped out of her head as her body spontaneously burst into flames. Although Ethan was only a few inches away from where she had been standing, he didn’t feel a thing when her body disintegrated with a quick but profuse blast of flames. Remarkably, he was not hurt by the flames from her death. Even the hairs on his arms were left unsinged.

In less than five seconds, the body turned to powder. The youth watched the whole thing with morbid fascination. Once she disappeared, Ethan looked at his left hand and noticed a slightly burned oak stick still being held within it clutches. The sight of that burnt piece of wood dangling from his hand forced the teenager to relinquish his grip on it.

The instant the released stick struck the ground his mind erased the entire incident from his consciousness. Unsure if he was awake or dreaming, Ethan stood there staring into the chaos that was surrounding him and saw nothing but horror. Not knowing what else to do, the teen turned his head to the right and saw an opening on the cavern wall. With reflexes a cat would envy, the boy made a mad dash towards the opening.

He would run until he could run no more. Several times he bounced off of the walls of the cavern and on at least three occasions changed directions when he came to a chamber with multiple exits. Stopping several times to catch his breath, the youth collapsed from exhaustion the sixth time he stopped to let his body rest. Two hours later he would awaken with absolutely no recollection of his having killed a vampirina. Although all other memories of that night would remain with him forever, he could only recall vague images of the outline her face. No other recollection of that hauntingly beautiful visage would ever jump into his mind and he would never be able to recall how she died.

Darkness completely engulfed him like a mother wrapping her child in a blanket. The area was so black he couldn’t see his hand two inches in front of his face. It was as if every vile creature he’d ever heard of had cast a spell of blindness upon him and then attempted to choke the very essence out of his body. As the made his way deeper and deeper into the pit of blackness, he could feel the darkness reach out and snap at him. It felt like thousands of tiny pixies feasting upon his bare skin. He could sense the electrical explosions from each nibble as these individual sprites sank their microscopic teeth deep into his naked flesh. The sensation was maddening and the teen wanted to scream in agony, but he dared not yell out for that, he knew, would be fatal.

After another hour of running as fast as he could, Ethan began to realize that he was the only one in the tunnel in which he found himself. All other thoughts but that one fled his mind. In all his life, Ethan had never felt so utterly alone. He had always been a loner, but he had never really felt alone. Here, lost in the eternal blackness of an unending pit, he felt as though he was the only person in the world and his single purpose for living was to survive; to make it to the light just one more time. How this was going to be accomplished, he had no idea, but that’s what he wanted to do, no, that’s what must be done because fifteen was too young to die and he wanted to live!

The darkness stuck like ice to his body causing him to shiver with each step he took. Desperately afraid of going forward, the youth was just as was terrified of going backwards. Once during one of his many stops to rest, he thought about turning on a flashlight, but knew that would be a foolish and fatal gesture. A light would tell the world where he was and for now, at least, he wanted no one to know his exact location. The longer he could keep his location hidden, the longer he would live. It was as simple as that. Darkness meant life and illumination meant death and right now the boy yearned to live.

What am I doing? he thought to himself. I must be crazy. I don’t need this. Killing vampires, who am I kidding? This is crazy. Surely, this is the nightmare of all nightmares. Images began to run through his mind. I’ll wake up in a minute and this will all be a bad dream, he hoped. I’ll laugh about it, but I won’t be able to go back to sleep; not this night.

Are you down there my beautiful little darling? echoed a booming male voice from somewhere up above but also within his mind. The tone coming from that voice was both sadistic and mocking.

The teen didn’t have a clue as to where he was, but he knew he’d been going downhill for the past several minutes, maybe even hours or more. The advantage of going downhill was that it had put some distance between himself and his pursuer or pursuers. That allowed him time to gather his thoughts and organize them. The problem with his situation was that the exit was somewhere up above him. The thought that he had the choice of being stuck down in that pit and starving to death or else surrendering his soul terrified him and he tried in vain to put it out of his mind. Still, it ate at him and that gnawing sensation was maddening. He felt like a rat caught in a maze with a hidden trap set to go off the instant he tripped it. Once it sprang that that would be the end of him. There would be no second chances in this place.

The youth had to force his body to breathe. He was panting in short, choppy intervals, his panic rising as the energy slowly drained from his body. The realization that he was expending more energy than he should only added to his heightened state of panic. As he fought to control his breathing, a new terror hit and he suddenly became frightened that he’d hyperventilate if he couldn’t get it under control. Were he to black out, he’d wake up either dead or worse, a member of the blood sucking undead. The teenage didn’t like either one of those options. Those thoughts only added to his anxiety and this forced his breathing to become even more sporadic.

Come on out my little one and I will make this easy for you, echoed a deep rich baritone voice off the chamber walls and into his head, even though Ethan guessed that the creature had to be miles away from him. Chills choked the youth’s spine each time that demonic voice called out to him.

The heinous creature was taunting him and he knew it. This was a trick vampires often used to lure people to their deaths. He’d read and studied about this but he’d never actually experienced it. He thought that he was ready for it, but considering his earlier abandonment of his fellow hunters; he didn’t want to test his unproven resolve. Ethan knew without a doubt that he was not strong enough to resist.

If only his team of vampire hunters had been ready for a large colony of vampires rather than the handful they had expected to encounter, then he wouldn’t be all alone trying to hide from a fate that was going to catch up with him sometime within the next few minutes to few hours.

The youth smiled out of frustration. He thought about quitting. He thought about dropping his weapons and walking up to the vampire and letting the blood sucker have its way with him. A quick snap of the neck and he’d be dead, but at least his soul would still be intact and that was the most important thing to remember.

Heaven will be worth all this, Ethan whispered as he attempted to put on a brave façade, but he didn’t really want to find out about Heaven. Well, not just yet anyway. He still had some living to do so he’d trudge on despite his apprehensions.

One terrifying thought that constantly played on his mind was the realization that he might surrender his up soul and become one of them. Were that to happen, the boy knew that he’d send his soul straight to Hell without passing go or even collecting two hundred dollars. The idea that he’d be forced to subsist on the life blood of other human beings sent chills racing down his