Death for the Born
an excerpt

DEATH FOR THE BORN

ONE

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.
Bhagavad Gita (250 BC - 250 AD), Chapter 2

The vampire slunk low through dead leaves and wet earth, a parody of the woman it had been in life. I followed close behind, my presence masked by thick shadows. Not that the creature would have noticed me anyway. It was a Revenant, little more than a savage, thoughtless, mindless, unaware of anything besides its insatiable hunger for blood and flesh. A hunger it would turn on some unwary victim beyond the cemetery gates, reducing some poor human to nothing but bloody bones and shredded meat.
Not on my watch.
I hunkered down beside a huge stone cross, one of the many rising from the unkempt lawn of Black Rose Cemetery, and watched the vampire. It moved quickly but unsteadily, like a colt taking its first awkward, graceless steps. Pale-skinned and wild-eyed, it cast around, sniffing the air, hunting for the scent of human prey. It was only a few feet from me. Hatred fired through my veins. They were disgusting creatures, the Revenants. Brutes, deserving of nothing but brutality. This one had been a pretty woman in life, I saw. Blonde hair fell across her chalk-white face, framing high cheekbones and pouty lips. Death hadn’t completely destroyed her looks, but it had sharpened them, honed then into something hard and cold.
If she fed well, some of her human wit would return, enough to make her aware of her vulnerabilities. Revenants grow more intelligent, more like their living selves, with each meal of human flesh and blood. They start to remember, start to think, start to understand what they’ve become.
Monsters.
She wasn’t going to feed well tonight, or any other night. I was going to kill her before she had the chance.