Y'all can thank Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter for this fic. I enjoyed it way more than I was expecting. It's completely ridiculous but that's what's so awesome about it! I'm sure I'm stealing a few plot points from that movie but I'm okay with this.
Prologue
The world was a scary place.
William Murdoch had known this from a very young age after his mother was murdered by the most repulsive creature known to man, the vampire!
His tale of woe begins one terrible night at the tender age of eight.
Murdoch had always been a light sleeper and often wandered around the house at night. The door to his parents room had been slightly ajar and he had gone over with the intent of crawling into bed with them. Little did he know what devilment lay just beyond.
A stranger dressed in long dark clothes was huddled over the side of the bed doing something to his mother that he couldn't quite make out. Murdoch had been close to sounding the alarm but had been too frightened to do so. The stranger lifted his head and stared directly at him with the most terrifying eyes he had ever seen! They were glowing bright red and seemed to pierce right through him, paralyzing him to the spot! As the stranger turned to leave through the open window, Murdoch discerned a gleam of something sharp, white and dangerous.
As soon as he dared to move, he went over to his mother's side and saw the puncture marks in her neck and the still fresh blood trickling down. The sight had made him woozy and he had passed out shortly afterwards. The noise this made finally awoke both of his parents.
Harry, his father, had not believed his story even though the proof was right there in front of his face! Murdoch's mother, Mary, argued that the boy never lied and was not one prone to the fanciful. It didn't matter what they said, Harry simply would not believe what he hadn't seen with his own two eyes.
Though Murdoch kept watch the next night, he accidentally drifted off at one point. When he went to check up on his mother, she was not in her bed! Murdoch had awoken his father and together they had taken a lantern and the family dog to go search for her. They had eventually located her face down in the nearby stream, the last remnants of her life force flowing along with it.
Harry pulled her out of the water and tried to bring her back by shaking her but it was too late. The sound of sorrow that emanated from his father still haunted him to this day.
Jasper had sniffed the ground, barked and then taken off. They chased after him, into the forest for several minutes. When they came into a clearing, the moon illuminated a tall dark figure in the distance atop a forty foot high cliff. He turned around to grin at them demonically, with the same devil eyes shining down on them and then disappeared over the edge.
There was no sign of a body when they searched more thoroughly the next day. And still Harry would not believe Murdoch, (or at least admit to believing him). Instead he took to drinking his days away, rather than attempt to find the creature responsible for his wife's death. Murdoch never forgave him for this and doubted he ever would.
For many years after this while they were raised by relatives, Murdoch was plagued by terrifying nightmares and a burning hatred for the undead creatures. When he was thirteen he attempted to locate the villain who destroyed his family life but was unsuccessful in finding the devil.
His sister Susannah had been kept ignorant of the sordid affair and developed into a well adjusted young lady. At the age of fourteen she had joined the local convent. Murdoch was glad that she was safe from the horrors of the world.
After their father effectively abandoned them, Murdoch went to study with Jesuit Priests in New Brunswick. There he used their vast library to read anything and everything he could about the lore surrounding vampires. His research had been exceedingly brief. The priests library did not contain many works on supernatural entities.
But one of the priests discovered his interest in such things and promised to give him the name and location of an expert on the subject matter. There had been a condition though. Murdoch must turn eighteen and finish his studies with them first. Begrudgingly the teenage boy accepted the priests deal and with great impatience awaited the fateful day that he could learn how to avenge his mothers death.
The expert was situated in a small cabin some distance from a logging camp in Montreal. He was an elderly man by the name of Marcus Paxton. Paxton's knowledge of vampires had been all encompassing and Murdoch had learned what they were capable of, how to find them and most importantly, how to kill them.
While he wasn't training with the man, he worked in the lumber mill. Paxton said there was no better way to hone ones physique than through such gruelling manual labour. At the end of four months, Murdoch was in the best shape of his life.
Finally he was ready to take on his first vampire. Understandably he wanted to immediately go after his mother's killer but Paxton flat out refused. Instead he insisted on Murdoch sticking closer to home. Paxton gave him a name of a fellow logger and Murdoch had located and killed him by decapitation, the only sure fire way to make sure a vampire was truly dead.
Of course Murdoch wasn't so naive as to blindly murder someone without first finding proof. So he tracked the man for several nights and when he was satisfied that Paxton had correctly identified the logger for what he truly was, then and only then, Murdoch ended its plague inducing existence.
This exercise was repeated several more times over before Murdoch was granted leave to hunt down his mothers killer. Surprisingly the trail did not end in Nova Scotia, but rather started there. It took almost a full year to locate the disgusting creature's whereabouts.
Of all places it had settled in the busiest place in Canada, the city of Toronto! Murdoch was initially surprised by this because there were so many more witnesses and so many more chances to be found out in the city than in a little hamlet in the middle of nowhere. But then he remembered that this particular creature was a daredevil and liked taking chances. Three more days passed before he discovered the monster's lair. The abomination was staying at The Queen's Hotel of all places!
With baited breath Murdoch waited for the 'man' to return to his room so that he could jump out and surprise him. Just before sun rise the creature returned and Murdoch lunged at him with his trusty silver tipped axe. But the vampire was too fast for him and narrowly dodged getting his head chopped off. With the axe embedded in the wall, Murdoch was reduced to using a far less useful weapon, a wooden stake. The creature avoided this attack as well, snapping the stake in half and flinging Murdoch across the room and onto the bed.
Though dazed, Murdoch retrieved his next weapon, (a pistol with silver bullets) and aimed for its head. He missed, hitting the far side of the room instead. Before he knew it, the vampire was by his side, wrenching the gun out of his hands and partially crushing it. Then it grabbed him by the neck one handed, and began squeezing him into oblivion.
Using the last of his strength, (and wits) Murdoch found his silver knife and blindly slashed at the creature's hand. It hissed at him and dropped him to the floor. Murdoch took the opportunity to stick it into its heart. It screeched louder and attempted to pull out the blade. While the vampire was distracted, Murdoch ran to the wall and with a massive effort yanked out his axe. Spinning around, he hurled it at the monster's head, splitting it in two and finally the horrid thing collapsed to the ground, still clutching at the knife in its chest.
Their scuffle had made a considerable amount of noise in the near quiet of the early morn and Murdoch knew it was only a matter of time before the constabulary arrived (something he had never had to deal with before in small towns). So he retrieved his bloody knife and axe and hightailed it out of there, climbing out the window and scaling the wall to the back lot.
Even so it was a very near thing. Just as he dashed into a nearby alley, the boys in blue ran past, hollering at people to get out of the way. Somehow Murdoch made it back to the place where he was staying without being caught. For the first time in years, he slept like a baby, with a gleeful smile across his face.
The next day he travelled back to Montreal to thank Paxton for all he had done. The man wanted to know what he planned on doing with the rest of his life. Murdoch thought logging suited him just fine. Paxton disagreed. He told him that there was a growing number of vampires crossing the border and it was his duty to help stem the tide of malice. So for the next decade he travelled all over the country, killing whatever vampires he could find, occasionally teaming up with other hunters and later swapping horror stories over a pint of spruce beer.
As the kill count rose, so did his reputation. It wasn't long before he became a bit of a legend among other hunters (and the hunted) and those predisposed to believing strange stories overheard in taverns. Besides his keen mind, which many claimed was second to none, he had invented a number of apparati that were exceedingly useful in taking out the trash. His most notable and recent invention were a pair of parabolic lenses, that allowed him to see in the dark without being seen himself! As one can imagine, this allowed him to even out the playing field against the night walkers and many other hunters requested he make them a pair.
In 1893 he found himself back in Toronto to deal with a slippery vampire that had eluded him for weeks. Once the devil had been disposed of, he decided to take a bit of a break and actually take a look around the city, to see what it had to offer. His recollection of the place was hazy (since his mind had been consumed with a single goal) but he was still pretty sure that it had vastly changed since his last visit.
During the next day he came across a beautiful woman in the park. Thus far his life had been devoted to ridding the world of monsters and he had never really had any time for such things (but mostly he had stayed away from forming any real attachments for fear of losing them to a vampire seeking revenge). Try as he might, he simply couldn't stay away from her and he followed her around like he would his prey, working up the nerve to approach her. Somehow the idea of talking to her was more terrifying than facing three vampires at once, unarmed!
Eventually she had noticed him and then he had no choice but to go over. The conversation was awkward and stilted at first, (mostly on his end) but once they found their rhythm it became easy enough, like shooting a vampire in the head at close range with a shotgun.
After thirteen years of supernatural service, he decided he deserved a change. So he applied to become a constable and attend to the more mundane evils of the world. Not surprisingly his abilities made him a valuable asset among the constabulary and for a time, many of the younger lads looked up to him.
Before long Liza and he began courting and not long after that they were engaged! About a month before they were to be married, his worst fear came true and his beloved was killed by one of the vile monsters! He blamed himself for becoming attached, for inadvertently luring them to Liza, and worse than that, for becoming sloppy and losing his edge.
Murdoch vowed he would never love again.
Once he tracked down her killer, and disposed of them, he left the city, never intending to come back. But four years later he received a letter from a hunter friend (something Murdoch verified by comparing to an old letter, always wary to their tricks), urging him to return as he was in desperate need of help with a particularly cunning and dangerous group of vampires.
Reluctantly Murdoch agreed. His friend, Malcolm, had saved his life the last time they worked together and Murdoch was the type to repay his debts. Unfortunately, by the time he arrived, Malcolm was nowhere to be found! Murdoch investigated his friends hotel room for clues. There were none. Nor was there any information about the vampires he had been hunting.
Only one conclusion could be reached. The bastards had gotten to him first and erased all evidence of their existence!
Murdoch intended to make them pay. But first he needed to figure out who 'they' were.
He received a clue in the form of a dead young school girl. If the paper was to be believed, she had been found face first in a bird bath yesterday...after being drained of a substantial amount of blood.
The parallel to his own mother's death was unsettling but little more than a coincidence.
Now it was up to him to ascertain the creatures responsible and exterminate them. But once this 'case' was finished, he would leave Toronto forever, and nothing, and no one, would ever change his mind.
I apologize if anyone found it a bit too soon to read about his mothers death after this weeks episode but I had already written this before that aired. Just a strange coincidence I guess.