The Slayer Chronicles: First Kill Read Online Free Page B

don’t have any natural skills.” Joss shook his head adamantly. He was just a boy. Just an ordinary person.
    “Of course you do. You have incredible agility and speed, amazing reflexes.” Abraham spoke without question, and Joss couldn’t help but wonder how he could know these things about his nephew. The nephew he’d only rarely seen or spent time with. “Use the next few years to practice running, archery, wrestling, anything that you can to become the best. Then, after you turn eighteen, I’ll send for you. When you see a red wax seal on a letter, hide away and read it alone. It’s a secret. As is everything to do with the Society.”
    Joss nodded, taking this all in. “Can I tell Henry?”
    “No. You can tell no one. Nor can you discuss anything pertaining to the Society with anyone but those within the Society.” Abraham stood and reached into one of his outer pockets. What he withdrew, he placed into Joss’s hand. “This was your grandfather’s. He would have wanted you to have it. He was a Slayer as well.”
    Joss squeezed the pocket watch in his hand. Grandpa had been a Slayer, too. No wonder he’d looked on death as an adventure. Death, after all, was just a continuation of life to Grandpa, and it seemed his life had been a series of secret adventures. Death was just the next one. Grandpa was a Slayer. And now Joss was, too.
    As Abraham moved through the crowd, saying his good-byes, Joss looked down at his grandfather’s pocket watch. Setting the watch in his lap, he tore the photograph of Cecile, until he’d made a circle around her face, then placed it inside his grandfather’s watch. It was a reminder to himself to never forget, and to always, always remember those that you care about. He slid the pocket watch inside his front pants pocket and sat back in his chair, musing over exactly what the Slayer Society was, and exactly how they were going to help him take down the monster that had killed Cecile.
    “Hey.”
    Joss looked up to find his cousin Henry, wearing a suit that was too big on him, and looking like he felt very, very awkward. Normally Henry was a really funny guy, but even he, it seemed, knew when an occasion called for a more somber approach. “Hey, Henry.”
    “I’m sorry you’re not coming to spend the summer with me after all.” Henry’s eyes went wide, as if he’d just said the dumbest thing ever. “And about Cecile. She was a nice kid.”
    Joss nodded, trying hard to keep his thoughts away from his sister and the body lying in the coffin at the other end of the room. “Maybe next summer.”
    “Yeah. Maybe.” Henry hung his head. He didn’t speak anymore, just stood there awkwardly, likely wishing that he had some words of comfort to offer his cousin, but Joss knew that there was nothing Henry or anyone else could say. This pain ran deep, and only by erasing the cause of this pain would it ever go away.
    The man with fangs had caused this pain, and he would pay dearly for it.
    A preacher stood and said words that Joss couldn’t bear to listen to. After he was finished, everyone began filing out. Henry, who was sitting beside Joss, looked perplexed. “Where’s everybody going?”
    “To the dinner.” Joss furrowed his perplexed brow for a moment. “Isn’t it weird how people feel the need to eat after funerals?”
    Henry nodded. Then his mood brightened some. “Do you think they’ll have cake?”

4
     
    INTRODUCTION
     
    Joss slipped his pen inside one of the small pockets of his backpack and turned his attention back to the leather-bound journal on his lap. It had taken three years—three long, tormented years—for him to put pen to page and fully describe what had happened the night he’d lost Cecile. It was as if the pain of her death had somehow sealed the descriptive abilities within him and receiving his Uncle Abraham’s letter last week had finally set his pen free.
    He hadn’t told his parents about the Slayer Society. His uncle had strictly