Vampires and Slayers, and Other Stuff
Vampires are magical creatures. They are the living dead, or as some say, the undead. Their bodies are animated by a magical energy that’s as old as time. But it’s not a human magic, it’s demon magic, which came before human’s even existed.
See, the first vampires weren’t really vampires at all, they were just demons. Vicious, blood drinking demons. And, as long as they only had other demons to feed on there wasn’t any problem. Because demons don’t have souls, right?
Well, that’s not really true. Demons do have souls, at least some of them do, they just don’t have human souls. What they do have is a magical essence inside of them that for a demon, at least some of them, is the equivalent of a soul, just different.
See, it’s like this, a cow doesn’t have a soul, it’s just a dumb stupid animal. But a wolf does have a soul, it’s just a different kind of soul, not a human soul or a demon soul, it’s got a wolf soul. Does that make any sense? Well, anyway, some demons have souls and others don’t, and that’s just the way it is. But humans, they all have souls, unless they sell them, or loose them, or something else happens.
Anyway, like I said, the first vampires weren’t really vampires, they were just demons. But they were smart demons. They were hunters and stalkers and they were nocturnal. Not because they couldn’t hunt during the day, but because their special abilities (night vision and sense of smell, extra sensitive hearing, super strength and speed and reflexes) gave them an advantage at night when they hunted, so that’s why they were nocturnal, sort of.
So, anyway, for like a million years or more the first vampire demons just hunted other demons, and sometimes animals.
Oh, which reminds me, that’s where werewolves come from, sort of. It was a cousin or something of the vampire demon that got into a fight with a wolf and they bit each other and the wolf got turned into a wolf-demon, and then the wolf-demon bit a human and it got turned into a werewolf. So in a way, werewolves and vampires are sort of cousins, but they don’t like to talk about it much, because werewolves and vampires don’t get along very well, most of the time. Sort of like a family feud over who came first, chicken and egg stuff, but it can get pretty intense sometimes.
Anyway, back to vampire demons. Like I said, for like forever vampire demons hunted other demons and killed them. But something happened, I’m not sure what, and a lot of the demons started dieing off, or disappearing. I mean demons have always fought and killed each other, but I don’t really think that’s the reason they started disappearing. I mean, if some of the old books are right they would sometimes have wars and kill each other off by the thousands and thousands, and they always survived. So something else must have happened. Personally I think it had something to do with humans, and their souls, but I don’t really know for sure, no one does. But anyway, with fewer and fewer demons to hunt the vampire demons that were still around had to start hunting other things to feed on.
See, vampire demons didn’t eat real food, like meat and potatoes, or fruit and vegetables, stuff like that. They only drank blood, that was their only food. So, with fewer demons to feed on they had to start feeding more and more on different kinds of animals. But, see, that was part of the problem. Back then, when all the other demons started disappearing and stuff, there weren’t a lot of other things for a vampire demon to feed on. I mean there were a lot of animals back then, but most of them were either to small to make a good meal out of, or to big to make an easy meal out of.
I mean, think about it. There were plenty of little rodent type animals, but you would need a whole bunch of them at one time to make a decent meal out of them, and they were quick and liked to burrow underground, or hide up in trees, stuff like that. So they weren’t really all that easy for a vampire demon to hunt. And besides, a vampire demon had it’s pride to think about. I mean, they didn’t want the other demons that were still around to find out that they were sucking the blood out of rats and things like that. So they had to go after the bigger animals to feed on, and that could get pretty dangerous.
I mean, vampire demons were pretty strong and fast and mean and all that stuff, but they weren’t the biggest bad in the woods by any means. See, they were fast, for short distances, but running down an antelope or something like that, if they didn’t catch them right away, wasn’t something they could do. Now things like wild cows were something they could catch, but cows back then weren’t like cows today. They were mean and they had big horns and they would fight, and fighting with a wild cow was just looking to get yourself impaled on a big sharp horn. Remember, vampire demons were just demons back then, they weren’t the undead. They could be killed just as easily as any other demon. That’s not saying it was easy to kill them or anything, it’s just that they weren’t immortal like vampires are now. So that’s the way it was, almost anything that was big enough to make a decent meal out of was also big enough, and mean enough, to make the vampire demon have to work for his dinner. That’s when the vampire demons discovered humans.
Now I’m not certain of this, but probably the first humans the vampire demons fed on were probably those early cavemen, the Neanderthals, you know, the ones that all died off. Who knows, it might even have been the vampire demons that killed them off. But a lot of people think it was the later cavemen, the smarter ones, that came later, that killed off the early ones, I don’t know. But, anyway, it was probably the early ones that they first fed on and when they were all gone they started feeding on the later ones. But see, that was part of the problem too, the later ones were a lot smarter than the earlier ones, and some of them knew magic, and they all had souls.
Now I don’t know if the early ones, the Neanderthals, had souls or not, and I don’t know if any of them got turned into vampire humans or not, but I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway. What is important is that somewhere along the way a human got turned into a vampire human. I don’t know if it was on purpose or by accident, but my feeling is it was probably an accident. It was probably one of those fight to the death kind of fights and the vampire demon was draining the blood out of the human and the human probably bit the demon back and swallowed some of the demons blood before he died. Now like I said earlier, vampire demons didn’t eat meat, just blood. So once the vampire demon drained all the blood out of the human it probably just left him in a cave or maybe buried him so that other humans wouldn’t find him right away. Then after a day or two the human turned into a vampire human and rose from it’s grave as a living undead with the essence of the vampire demon inside of it.
Now I don’t know if it happened the first time or the hundredth time or the thousandth time, but somewhere along the line ether the vampire demons or the vampire humans figured out what was going on with the turning thing and learned how to do it on purpose. It was after that point when things probably got really scary for the humans.
This is what I know, about seventy-five to eighty years ago some people discovered some caves in France or Spain or someplace like that and it had a bunch of cave drawings on the walls. It became real famous at the time and then over time just sort of slipped off into history. But at the time a lot of pictures got taken and published, I think it was National Geographic or something like that. Anyway, about twenty-five or thirty years ago some smart guy doing some research for the Counsel came across the pictures and noticed something about them. Some of the pictures were about vampires. It took more research and an actual visit to the caves, but eventually the truth came out.
The cave drawings were dated back to about fifty thousand years ago and what they showed was drawings of human like monsters with fangs. There were drawings of the monsters biting humans in the neck and drinking their blood. Other drawings of monsters coming up out of the ground. Drawings of men stabbing the monsters in the chest with wooden spears and turning them to dust. Drawings of the monsters under the light of the moon and attacking men and monsters under the light of the sun bursting into flame. There was also a picture of men doing something, probably magic, that prevented the monsters from being able to enter the caves. (Think about that, fifty thousand years ago some raggedy assed cavemen dressed in bear skins or something cast a spell that was so powerful that even today it prevents vampires from entering a home without being invited inside first. That was some really kick-ass magic.) Anyway, what that all proved was that at least fifty thousand years ago there were vampire humans around and that there were enough of them to be a real problem.
The next thing I know is that about twenty thousand years ago, someplace down in Africa, there was a vampire problem that was so bad that really powerful magic had to be used again to end the problem. That was when the First Slayer was created. Now look, I’m really grateful that I’m a slayer and that there are slayers and all that stuff, especially since they have saved the world from total destruction to many times to count. But at the same time, what those Shadow Men did was just really wrong, and creepy.
I mean, here’s the story as I understand it. Apparently there was a vampire problem and the people in the area couldn’t deal with the problem. So a group of shaman, the Shadow Men, used their combined magic to capture a true vampire demon and extracted it’s demon essence, it’s demon soul, out of it’s body. Then they found a young girl that was just becoming a woman and they chained her up. (I don’t really buy that part about chaining her up, because people back then didn’t even know how to make chains. What they probably really did was use their magic to control her and prevent her from escaping.)
Anyway, they chained the girl up and forced the essence of the true vampire demon into her body and turned her into the First Slayer. What that did was to give the girl all of the strengths of the vampire demon, and because she still had her human soul it tied her to the human world as it’s defender. What it also did was to make her less than human and bug house crazy. The Shadow Men had to use their magic to control her and would send her out to fight vampires all alone. Which eventually led to her being killed by a vampire. But, the magic that had been used to create the First Slayer was so powerful that when she died the demon essence inside of her was transferred to another girl just like her and turned this new girl into a slayer, and just as crazy as the first one was. The Shadow Men were able to use their magic to find this new slayer and control her and force her to go out and fight against vampires too.
I don’t know how long that went on, thousands of years obviously. But eventually the demon essence inside the slayers must have become domesticated or merged with the human soul and stopped driving the slayers crazy. The Shadow Men, also over time, must have lost their abilities with magic, because they lost the ability to totally control the slayers. That’s when they became the Watchers and formed a Watchers Counsel, so that they could keep track of the new slayers as they emerged when the others were killed. They didn’t have magic to control the slayers anymore, but they used their knowledge and manipulated the young slayers into continuing the fight against the vampires and other demons of the world. (Oh, a little note of interest here: Apparently after the Watchers lost the ability to control the slayers using magic, if a slayer wouldn’t do what they told her to do, they would just murder the current slayer and when a new slayer emerged they would just pick up where they left off with the old one. Nice people, right?)
Okay, the next thing I know a little about is the Guardians. I say I know a little because actually nobody knows very much about them. Buffy, “The Slayer”, is the only one who’s ever met a Guardian, and she didn’t really live long enough to tell Buffy very much. What we know is that the Guardians were around for a long time. We don’t know if they were around before the Shadow Men or if they came after. The one that Buffy met told her that “The Watchers watched the Slayers and the Guardians watched the Watchers”. They also told her that they were the ones who made the scythe (the one used for the “Sharing”) and that they used it to kill the last true demon in this dimension ten thousand years ago. (I think that’s how long ago it was, but whatever, it was a long time ago.) Oh, just to clear things up. When the Guardian said “true demon”, what everyone thinks she meant, at least the Counsel researchers anyway, was the last “Great Demon”. Because there’s plenty of other demons around, if you know where to look for them and how to find them.
The next thing I want to talk about is souls, human souls, and what happens to them after a person is turned by a vampire. Okay, first off, a lot of people think or believe or whatever, that when a person dies their soul leaves their body and either goes to heaven or to hell, depending on the life they have led up to that point. But these same people will turn around and tell you that when a vampire turns someone and makes them become a vampire, their souls will go to hell for eternity. Now, personally I think that’s a bunch of bull-crap, because it doesn’t make any sense. Why in the world would a person who’s soul would have gone to heaven if a vampire killed them have their soul go to hell because they were turned. I’ve got my own theory and I’ll explain it in a minute.
There are only two vampires that have ever existed that have ever gotten their souls returned to them, Angel and Spike. Now, not counting all the guilt and remorse and stuff that they both seemed to have gone through after the return of their souls, from what I have been able to find out about both of them is that when their souls were returned to them they were just the same as when they lost them. In other words, neither one of them had their souls returned to them with memories of hundreds of years of torment. Now Buffy, who’s soul went to heaven when she died, when she was returned to life and her soul returned to her body had memories of love and peace and joy and stuff like that, which was what made it so hard for her after she came back to life. But the important part is that her soul came back with memories.
So here’s my theory. I think that when a vampire turns someone and the demon essence takes over their body and makes them one of the undead, their human soul just goes to a holding area, a sort of non-place. But, I think the human soul stays kind of linked to it’s undead body somehow, and that when the vampire finally dies, the link between the undead body and the soul is finally broken and the soul gets to go to either heaven or hell, whichever the person deserved before they were turned.
Okay, so that’s my theory, and if you think about it, it makes more sense than the soul going to hell theory. I mean, when Willow pulled Buffy’s soul out of heaven it took some really major dark magic mojo to do it. But when she restored Angel’s soul (twice), it took some major magic, but nothing like what it took to restore Buffy’s. Granted that heaven is a much nicer place than hell and a soul would be more reluctant to leave there than hell, but I still think it would take some major dark mojo to pull a soul out of there, but it didn’t. That’s why I think the soul didn’t go to hell. It was just hanging around somewhere, like in a coma or something, waiting to go wherever it truly belonged, heaven or hell, whichever.
Okay, now for some vampire stuff.
Vampires need to be invited into a home. It’s true, a vampire can’t come into someone’s house unless they’ve been invited. But the invitation has to be made by someone who actually lives in the house. It can’t be made by a stranger or even a friend, (not even a boyfriend or girlfriend who spends a lot of time in the house) it has to be made by the people who actually live there.
Holy Water will burn a vampire. It’s true, Holy Water will burn a vampire and if you can get it into it’s eyes it can blind them for awhile and if you can get them to drink it, it will kill them. Burns them up from the inside. But the important thing that people need to know is that there is all kinds of Holy Water. See, most people think that Holy Water can only come from one of those fountain things (whatever their called) that you see in the movies where those Catholic people stick their fingers into the water and then make the sign of a cross. But that’s not really true. Holy Water can come straight from a faucet, because it’s not where the water comes from that’s important, it’s the Blessing that’s important. As long as a priest or a priestess or a minister or a monk or even a witch doctor or a shaman or any other kind of religious or holy person does the blessing, that’s what’s important. (This is kind of gross, but it’s true, you could pee in a bucket and have someone bless it and it would become Holy Water. Neat, huh.)
Silver bullets, swords, knives, stuff like that, will kill a vampire. That’s all bull-crap. First of all, silver is to soft to go making swords and knives and stuff like that out of, it would bend up like a pretzel the first time you tried to use it. Sure you could take a good steel sword and coat it with a layer of silver, but it wouldn’t make the sword kill vampires any easier than just a plain steel sword. The thing about a good sword or ax or even a big knife isn’t what it’s made out of that’s important, it’s what you do with it, like chopping a vampires head off with it. And as far as silver bullets go, they don’t work either. Unless (bonus points here) the silver bullets are hand made out of little silver crosses that have been blessed. (You can do the same thing with making arrow heads if you want to. I did it once, but it takes a lot of work to make an arrow head out of a little cross, and like I said before, silver is soft.)
Crosses will burn vampires and chase them away. Well, yes and no. I mean it is true that if you hold a cross against a vampire it will burn them. But, if the vampire can knock the cross out of your hand and that’s all you’ve got, your screwed.
Wearing a cross around your neck will prevent a vampire from biting you. That’s another yes and no kind of deal. The big NO is the whole idea that just wearing a little cross on a little chain around your neck will stop a vampire from doing anything. First of all the vampire could just rip the cross off you neck and bite you anyway. Or, even if they didn’t rip it off, as long as they don’t touch the cross while they bite you what difference would it make. The big YES is to do what I did. See, a few years ago I bought this big dog collar with steel spikes all around it. I took out the steel spikes and replaced them with silver crosses and then I had this priest I met bless the whole thing. Now whenever I go out patrolling I wear it, and so far no vampire has even tried to bite my neck. Of course it wouldn’t prevent a vampire from biting me somewhere else, but hey, I’m a pretty good slayer to begin with, so I’m not to worried about it anyway.
Garlic will keep vampires away. More bull-crap. Most vampires don’t like the smell of garlic, but it won’t hurt them or anything. (I don’t know if this or true or not, but I heard that Spike use to eat it, on pizza and garlic bread and stuff like that.)
A wooden stake will kill a vampire. Hey, slayer here, weapon of choice and all that stuff. But a note of caution here. A wooden stake “to the heart” will kill a vampire. You go stabbing a vampire in the shoulder or the stomach or some other place, you might hurt them but it won’t kill them, more likely just piss them off. Go for the heart, always. Oh, and it doesn’t really have to be a stake, it just has to be made of wood. I mean you could use anything made out of wood, just as long as it has a point to break through the skin and muscle and it’s long enough to reach the heart. (Sure, Buffy, and maybe Faith, could pick up a piano and ram it through a vampires chest, but the rest of us, not so much.)
Sunlight will burn a vampire up. Okay, that ones true. But, just because it’s daytime doesn’t mean a vampire can’t be around. Just think about cloudy days. That’s right, so just because it’s daytime doesn’t always mean it’s safe. (Again, this is just stories that I’ve heard, but I was told that Spike had built up a kind of tolerance to sunlight and that he could go out into the sun for short periods of time without bursting into flames. Okay, I know, were talking about Spike here and everyone says he was special, I get that, but if one vampire could do it, even a special one, that sort of leads you to believe that others might be able to do it too.) So, the best rule to follow is that your never safe from vampires, period.
*******
Okay, that’s all I know. Well actually that probably isn’t all I know, but it’s all I can think of right now. I’m just hoping that it’s enough of what you guys want. Because I really do need a pay raise and I really do think that I’m ready to become a Level One Slayer. But just so you understand, it’s not that I want to leave Willows team or anything, because I really do like Willow, she’s the best. But from the things I’ve been hearing the last couple of days it sounds like the Counsel is going to be leaving a bunch of slayers here in L.A. now and L.A. is a kind of expensive place to live. I also think that I’m ready to lead a team of my own, that’s why I need to move up to Level One standing, so that maybe I could lead one of the new teams that will be staying here.
P.S. - I was talking to Xander Harris yesterday and heard that if he doesn’t stay here in L.A. he might be going back to Africa, and I was thinking that since he doesn’t have a slayer working with him over there that maybe he could use one, for backup stuff. So if I was a Level One Slayer I’d be more than happy to go over there and work with him, you know, as his backup. Of course if he does stay here in L.A., I think that I would rather stay here in L.A. too.
Thanks,
Sara Williams
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