Woods stars as Jack Crow, the leader of a team of vampire hunters. After his parents were murdered by vampires, Crow was raised by the Catholic Church to become their "master slayer". The plot is centered on Crow's efforts to prevent a centuries-old cross from falling into the hands of Jan Valek a reference to Valac , played by Thomas Ian Griffith , the first and most powerful of all vampires. Jack Crow leads his team of Vatican -sponsored vampire hunters in a daylight raid on an abandoned house in New Mexico.
Finding a 'nest' of vampires, the team subdue the creatures with gunfire, pikes, and wooden stakes, using a modified crossbow attached to a mechanical winch to pull them outside, where they are incinerated by sunlight. Despite disposing of nine basic vampire 'goons', Jack is concerned about not having found the nest's 'master' — an older and more powerful vampire. While the team drunkenly celebrates with prostitutes at a local motel, the master vampire, Valek, arrives and bites one of the prostitutes, Katrina, initiating her transformation into a vampire.
He swiftly murders the hunters, with only Crow and his trusted lieutenant Tony Montoya escaping alive with Katrina.
Disturbed that Valek recognized him by name, Crow orders Montoya to lie low with Katrina, hoping to use her growing psychic link with Valek to track him down. After burying his team and burning down the motel, Crow reports to his superior, Cardinal Alba, who confirms that Valek was a disgraced priest who led a rebellion against the church, leading to his execution and transformation into the first vampire.
Valek has already killed another group of slayers in Germany, and Alba instructs Crow to form a new team, accompanied by archivist Father Adam Guiteau. Suspecting that his team was betrayed, Crow interrogates Guiteau and dispels his heroic notions of vampire hunting, showing him a map of vampire activity which indicates the vampires are searching the southwest for an unknown object.
