Grave Reminders - Sierra Aguirre-Stoker, Pete Jemison, Shane Barrett

"Isn't it a little weird to be visiting a graveyard after hours?" Pete asks, glancing behind them at the chained gate.
"Well, I sort of wanted you all to meet him, and Shay can only come at night. Besides, unless they've changed their tactics a lot in the past couple years almost no one patrols this place. My high school friends and I used to come out here when we wanted to be sure no one would catch us drinking or smoking." She shrugs. "Now it feels kinda weird knowing I could have been sitting on my dad's headstone that time Javy convinced me to try my first cigarette."
Shay laughs, a sort of harsh sound that echoes off the stones. "Okay, you have to admit, that is pretty funny."
Sierra stops in front of a rough-cut, unassuming stone. It's probably from the ranch; her dad was the first generation not allowed to be buried in the family plot on their own land, but his family clearly wanted to leave a piece of his home with them.
It's like some inverted theory of home earth. Sierra kneels down, tracing the letters cut into the stone.
"Hey dad. It's me again. I brought friends this time. Well, better friends than I used to bring." She swallows, feeling warmth running down her night-chilled cheeks. "This is Pete, and this is Shay. Pete's my hunting partner. And Shay's a vampire but I think you might have liked him." She shrugs. "If it counts for anything, your brother doesn't actively hate him."
It's supposed to come out as a laugh, but it's more of a choked sob. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Stoker. Gotta say, you've got an awfully nice grave. Take it from someone that means something to." Shay lays a hand on top of the headstone, and this time, Sierra does laugh.
She knows what he's doing, but she doesn't mind. She'd rather laugh than cry, she thinks her dad would approve.
Pete just shuffles, clearly not as comfortable with the whole joking in the presence of the actual dead thing, but he takes a sprig of mesquite bush he'd found on the ranch earlier and lays it on top of the stone, tied around with a thin bit of red string. Apparently that's something from his family.
"Okay. We have two more to visit before we leave." Sierra leads the way to a pair of low graves with simple small stones at the heads, in a weedy, neglected corner.
"Who's here?" Pete asks.
"These were the graves of the vampires I staked." Sierra traces a finger over the stones. "When they died in a gang war, they were unclaimed and ended up buried here." Their ashes are scattered somewhere in the desert now, but it still means something to her to see the place they should have been laid to rest.
"Most hunters believe, on some level at least, that killing a vampire is simply freeing their soul. Like those stories about ghosts who are only trapped because they have unfinished business, and solving it helps them cross over." Sierra says. "But I didn't know that then. I didn't care about giving them peace, or freeing them. I just wanted them dead because I thought they were monsters."
"So what do you think? Am I a tortured soul you're doing a disservice to by letting me live?" Shay smiles a bit, fangs showing. "Would we both be better off if you freed me?"
"I think you could say the same thing to justify killing a human," Sierra replies. "As long as this life is what you want, I have no right to take it from you."
Pete taps Sierra on the shoulder and then points toward the entrance. "Lights."
He's right, a car is coming, and the way the road curves is going to send those lights right over all three of them.
"Okay, let's get out of here."