Holy water’s just gonna get you wet, garlic’s just gonna make your breath rank, and a crucifix is just a stick with a guy nailed to it. Nothing special. A Van Helsing like that comes after you, all you got to do is get him someplace dark and give his head a twist. After that, it’s all a matter of how much of his blood do you drink right away and how much do you drain off and mix with an anticlotting agent so you can drink it later.

But a real Van Helsing? That’s a different matter. A real Van Helsing knows that you bring a Vampyre down the same way you bring anyone down; only more so. A well-fed Vampyre won’t like taking a bullet in the leg, but it won’t stop him, not unless it hits the femoral artery and he bleeds out before he can stick a finger in there to plug the hole while it heals. And it’ll heal. Fast. A Van Helsing that knows that? Knows to put some large-caliber rounds into a Vampyre’s face, neck, chest? Or maybe to cut his or her head off? Or strangle him long enough to starve the brain of oxygen? Or has a handy tub of cement around to plant their feet in before dumping them off a bridge? Or has a big truck to run into them and roll back and forth over the broken body before the bleeding wounds can close and the bones knit? A Van Helsing who knows how weak we can become when unfed? Or how vulnerable to the sun? One who knows to look for the signs of feeding, the high mugging rates, the mysterious disappearances, the rumors among the squatters and the winos? A Van Helsing who really deserves the name? No one wants to fuck with that.

I put a couple boxes of Sugar Daddies back in place.

– Yeah, no one wants to mess with that. Funny, though.

Christian is looking in the hole in the guy’s chest.

– How’s that?

I start up the stairs to the shop above.

– Funny a Van Helsing gets all old school with the evisceration and the beheading, and the guy he’s carving up ain’t even infected.