E.E. Knight: Desparkler of Vampires

E.E. Knight has a great hometown write-up (In the photo, Knight is the one on the right.) If you aren't into his spectacular Vampire Earth series, then you should at least check out his Age of Fire books.

After all, there are only two kinds of people on this planet: Vampire People and Dragon People - you must be one of them.*

Anyhoodle, Knight's vampires are of the decidedly Lovecraftian sort - otherworldly, grotesque, uncaring. Not an ascot to be found among them.

"Beneath the heavy robes of bullet-resistant material the Kurians wear is a bony, angular physique of wiry muscle. Their knees and elbows can bend either way in an unsettling manner. Aside from the grotesqueness of its motions, this allows the Reaper to coil its entire body for a leap, climb rapidly, and change position in a hand-to-hand fight with terrifying speed. Their bones are not white, but rather a dull black, as are their pointed seizing teeth within their snake-hinged jaws. Their blood turns into a thick, tarry substance when exposed to air, so they rarely bleed to death.

...they use their long, flexible, beaked tongues to stab into the prey, using their teeth to fix on the victim as a lamprey does while they pierce poor wretch's heart with their stabbing lingular syringe...They are hard to kill, vulnerable only to massed firearms, burning, or decapitation....

Only a fool takes on a Reaper alone at night."

Entirely unrelated (unless they are a front for a vampire hunting operation): have you ever wondered what the most beautiful website in the solar system for a Ukrainian Orthodox Church might look like?

Me too. (The photo gallery alone is worth the price of admission.)

*I'm both. This places me in the unique class of "First to Die" during the Vampire/Dragon apocalypse.