The Laura Caxton series is a vampire novel series by David Wellington. The first novel in the series, 13 Bullets, was serialized online in March, 2006. The next two novels, 99 Coffins and Vampire Zero, were published in book format. The fourth novel, 23 Hours, will be published in June, 2009. Like David Wellington's other novels, it is set in a world similar to the real world, but where vampires and other supernatural phenomena are rare but known and accepted phenomena.

The Laura Caxton series follows Special Deputy Laura Caxton and her mentor U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley as the attempt to exterminate the vampire Justinia Malvern and the curse she's attempting to spread throughout the Pennsylvanian countryside. Unlike the traditional vampire tale, which revolves around trite and tired notions of gothic mansions, crypts, and well-dressed vampires who pine for one impossibly passionate experience after another, the Laura Caxton series is new and refreshing take on the vampire tale, and its vampires are brutal, nasty, dirty, and hungry.

The vampires in the Laura Caxton series seem to lose their human appearances once turned. Their ears become pointed, their hair falls out, their teeth become wickedly sharp, and their skin becomes milky white, regardless of their ethnicity. Vampires must remain in their coffins during the day, as their bodies literally die each sunrise, their flesh melting into a noxious fluid riddled with dead skin and maggots. They regenerate when dusk comes, thus getting a new body each night. Physical damage, such as mangled ears, is repaired, but atrophy due to blood-starvation is not.

The method of transferring the curse is very different from the "traditional" way. To become a vampire, one must accept the vampire's invitation to undeath, and then kill one's self to be reborn. Vampires also have the power to resurrect their victims from the dead to create undead servants. These "half-deads" quickly decay, and thus have weak and fragile bodies. In combat, they typically use knives and other hand-to-hand weapons, as their hand-eye coordination is too poor to properly use firearms.

Vampires are nearly unstoppable. They exhibit increased speed and vastly enhanced physical strength. As long as they have a reserve of blood in their bodies, they can heal grievous wounds, including massive brain injuries, in seconds. The only way to kill one is by destroying its heart, which is protected by an area of steel-hard skin. It is suggested that a vampire with sufficient reserves of blood in its body may be able to heal damage to its heart in time to prevent its death.

If you are interested in reading 13 Bullets, you can find the full text here. It was published in book format in 2007.