Thirty years ago, Tempest was a teenage vampire hunter who killed monsters on sight. Back then, she was secure in the knowledge of what was good and what was evil. Vampires were evil, and that was that.
Now, Tempest is still living in the same small town, but she’s middle-aged and negotiating treaties with all kinds of vampire blood gangs. Now, she knows that vampires are just people who drink blood, and that all people sometimes do bad things, but that no one deserves to be staked on sight.
Her marriage is breaking up, and no one’s on her side, not her longterm friends, not even her vampire ex, the one who’s still hundreds of years too old for her but now looks young enough to be her son.
It’s hard balancing being a vampire hunter, a wife, a mother, and a purveyor of as many side hustles it takes to pay the bills.
Maybe Tempest wishes things could be easy again. Simple, like they used to be, when monsters were evil and she was a hero.
Or maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe she simply misses being young.
But when she finds a dead body with a mysterious message that leads her to the threat of an old nemesis, she can’t help but feel a little giddy.
When you’re a vampire hunter, it feels good to have something to hunt.
This angst-filled parody/homage is a love letter to Buffy fans as well as a contemplation on aging, womanhood, male and female roles, friendship, and identity. Read it if you like to laugh one minute and ponder heady philosophical questions the next.
