Julia arrives at the school early. She wants to be able to get her books and find her locker and classes before many other students arrive so as not to waste any time on those tasks that could be spent making friends - assuming, of course, that there are any interesting people to be found here in metaphorical Siberia.

She enters the library, pauses only briefly to admire its cozy-looking layout, then marches up to the front desk.

"Hi, I'm here to pick up my textbooks? World History, Calc one, Bio, French two."

" - ah, yes. Julia Borgia, if I'm not terribly mistaken. I have something else for you, if you don't mind stepping into my office for a moment."

"...Dude, that's kinda creepy, do you know all the incoming students' names and faces?"

But she follows him into the office anyways.

He closes the door behind them and hands her a large, leather bound book from his desk. It appears to be titled VAMPYR.

"What you're holding in your hand is an introduction to magic, mystical phenomena, and the demonic forces, most notably the titular vampires. Julia Borgia, as of three weeks ago, you are a vampire slayer. That would be the reason for your dreams. I am here to answer any questions you might have, I assume you must have several."

"Yeah, I've got one, why am I being hazed by a librarian?"

"Hazed? - I suppose it is a difficult thing to imagine, that such important facts about the world are nevertheless not widely known outside certain circles. Perhaps if you read the book?"

He's just going to keep pushing, isn't he.

"OK, fine, I'll read your vampire book, can I get my real textbooks now?"

"Yes! Yes, of course." He exits the office and retrieves her textbooks. "Have a good time at school."

She has a good time at school. She makes some new friends, goes home at the end of the day to drop off her books, studies for a little, then grabs a quick dinner and heads to the Bronze, because apparently clubs in Siberia don't card.

She is walking back rather later in the night, in a bit of a bad mood from having discovered that clubs in Siberia do card, (just at the bar instead of the door) when she hears a girl scream. She grabs her pepper spray, rounds the corner into the alleyway and shouts "Hey fuckface!"

The scene she sees is not quite what she was expecting.

The girl has stopped screaming and is now staring sort of confusedly at the sky. She makes a token effort to break free, but doesn't seem to be able to do much.

Her attacker, a young man whose face looks rather more monstrous than the average monstrously deformed face, is so intent on biting into her neck that he barely even notices.

Well, then.

She marches up to the two of them, grabs fuckface by the hair, and sprays directly in his eyes. Maybe that will get a reaction.

It does!

Fuckface screams and scratches at her blindly.

The girl slumps back agains the wall of the alley, clutching her neck.

Wow, most people would just curl up on the ground screaming after that. She thinks. She's never actually pepper-sprayed someone directly in the eyes before. Whatever, he can't see and so he can't fight back very well so she's just going to keep hitting him until he lies on the ground moaning like he's supposed to.

Once that's done she gives him one last kick and helps the girl up.

"Are you OK?"

"I, uh. I think so? I'm, uh, I'm bleeding - he just - his face wasn't like that a minute ago - "

"Yeah boys are like that sometimes. No, wait, I don't know why I said that, that's really weird and alarming. Let's get you home safe, I'm Julia by the way, hi. Where do you live?"

She drags herself to her feet. "Willow. I live - uh - is he gonna be ok?" she asks, glancing nervously at the boy, still moaning in pain on the sidewalk.

As if he suddenly remembers that the two of them are still there, the boy pulls himself together and runs away as fast as his feet will carry him.

"Oh. OK. I guess he's gonna be OK."

"...Yeah, I guess. Pity. Let's, uh - gosh, that really is a lot of blood, let's do something about that first - "

Julia takes off her shirt and hands it to the girl; it's late summer in southern California and the night is not cold.

"I think you're supposed to put pressure on it? My house isn't far, let's go there and then look at this under a light and then maybe call an ambulance if it's bad, can you walk?"

"I think so?" says Willow, accepting the offered shirt and applying pressure with only a little bit of hesitancy. She follows Julia and manages to mostly ignore the fact that Julia isn't wearing a shirt anymore. "That was really cool, how you - what you did."

"It's just what any decent person would have done."

"Gosh," says Willow, 'cause she's not really sure what else you say to something like that but it's really, really cool.

They make it back to Julia's house without further incident, though they do attract a few stares on the way.

Julia leads her into the kitchen, turns on the lights, and grabs the first aid kit.

"OK, let's take a look - "

Willow winces when the cloth is pulled away, but is generally cooperative with this process. The injury is closing up now, but there are still two clearly visible puncture wounds in the side of her neck.

"How is it?"

"It doesn't look fun but it doesn't look too bad? And you didn't pass out on the way here so probably not too much blood loss. So we can probably just disinfect it and stick a real bandage on and you'll be fine. This is probably going to sting a little, sorry?"

She does that.

"So, uh, if you tell me where you live I can drive you home but if you're not in a rush why don't we go upstairs to my room, there's something I want to show you."

"Oh! OK. I guess my parents probably won't notice. If I come back late, I mean. And you did do the whole saving my life thing."

She leads Willow upstairs, grabs a shirt, grabs the book the librarian gave her, and starts to explain.

"OK so when I went to get my books at school today the librarian was being super weird and told me I had to kill vampires or something and gave me this book and I thought he must be bullshitting me until I saw that dude chowing down on your neck and that's kind of a big coincidence so maybe something weird is going on and it seems worth a look."

"Ohh. You don't think - I mean he couldn't have been a - I mean I guess he was - well, well, why did he tell you to do that, why not get someone who's not, you know, a high school student?"

"Not a clue. I'm kind of thinking we - or I guess just I, you don't have to be part of this if you don't want to - either read this and hope it has answers or we look up the librarian in the white pages and go to his house and demand some."

"Well, uh, reading the book sounds - safer."

"Oh, um, of course. Right. I can take you home now if you'd rather."

"No no I want to help! Just, you know, if there's a way to help that doesn't involve going outside and getting bitten again, that would be swell."

"Oh, of course. Well then, let's get started."

She cracks the book open, looking for an index or table of contents.

The book does, in fact, have a table of contents:

I. On The Vampyres And Ther Kin

II. On The Slayer Of Vampyres

III. On The Council Of Wachers

IV. On The Mysticel Arts

V. On Other Demonic Beings

Appendices

"OK so I'm thinking the first thing to do is confirm this isn't all nonsense. Maybe figure out how this says to identify vampires and then check that they exist? Or maybe there's something obviously magical we could do in the mystical arts section. We'll want to split the work somehow but I can't think of a better way to do that than turn-taking for a single book that looks to irreplaceable to tear in half."

"Right, that sounds good, no tearing irreplaceable books. Or books in general. Maybe if we start at the beginning, with the vampires?"

They start there.

The book informs them that all myths which posit that the earth was once a paradise are false; the earth was once a hell. The remains of its hellish origins can still be found today, most notably in the form of the vampires, demons in human skin which walk the earth, killing and making more of themselves. They are beings that know no remorse or goodness, beings completely devoid of love or of human compassion.

A vampire is created when another vampire drinks the blood of a human and forces the human to drink their blood, before killing the human. Vampires are vulnerable to beheading, a wooden stakes through the heart, sunlight, fire, and the sacred objects of the Catholic Church, most notably crosses and holy water.

The book is much more verbose about saying this.

"OK, so we beheading's obviously out, wooden stake is out, fire's out. So it seems like a test would be finding someone all weird-faced and pointy and either tying them up and seeing if they melt at sunrise or, like, getting a spray bottle of holy water from a church?"

"I think the first one is, uh, slightly illegal. If we're wrong. We could probably find a church and see if they give the stuff out."

"No duh beheadings are - ohhh you meant tying them up. Right. I bet the churches are closed right now so if we're not doing illegal stuff we should probably do that tomorrow. Drive you home?"

"Yeah! Yeah that sounds - that sounds good."

She rifles around the living room until she turns up Vanessa's keys and drives Willow home.

That's good. That's very good.

They do not run into any more vampires on the way to Willow's house.

There is enough space that Julia does not need to show off how she has no idea how to parallel park.

"Well, it was nice meeting you - sorry about the circumstances - I'll see you tomorrow? I can talk to the librarian and we can go to a church after school if you still want to investigate this vampire shit."