Jacob Aldridge

Seventeen-year-old Blake Michaelson knows how to handle pressure. As Willow Creek High's star quarterback, he has spent years carrying the expectations of his teammates, his family, and a town that watches his every move-and as an openly gay athlete, he learned long ago that showing weakness can feel more dangerous than taking a hit on the field. But after a homecoming victory ends in bloodshed, Blake discovers that the monsters people whisper about are real.
A vampire attacks Blake and his friends on a deserted road, killing one of them, abducting another, and awakening something impossible inside Blake: supernatural strength, heightened senses, rapid healing, and an ancient power buried in his blood. Even more terrifying, his football coach already knows why. Beneath Willow Creek High lies the hidden world of the Helsing Council, an organization that has spent generations hunting vampires, demons, and creatures humanity was never meant to know existed.
Blake is not simply their newest recruit-he carries the bloodline of Michael, one of the oldest supernatural defenses ever awakened in a human being, and something ancient has been waiting for him to appear. Now Blake must balance football, school, friendship, love, grief, and a brutal new education in monster hunting while enemies close in on everyone he refuses to abandon. Because Blake has spent his entire life believing strength means protecting everyone around him, but in a war where the dead can rise, friends can become monsters, and even faith hides dangerous secrets, being strong may not be enough.
Approximately 92, 500 words, Blake the Demon Hunter is a young adult supernatural horror novel filled with vampires, demon hunting, dark mythology, action, friendship, LGBTQ+ representation, and the terrifying cost of discovering that some legends were never meant to stay buried.