In the comments to Jim Macdonald’s afformentioned post, Heresiarch outlines the convention one-shot version of the Jane Austen + Vampires plot.
I don’t really see Mary as a Slayer type. Really, if you’re going to follow the Buffy mold, pre-Slayer, Christian Slater-obsessed Buffy is like no one so much as Kitty. Imagine: Kitty flirts with a vamp at a party, and when she’s attacked, she uses her nascent Slayer powers and dusts him. Her Watcher waltzes on stage, gives the “Into every generation” speech, and is promptly killed by a vampire in order to Show That This Really Is Serious. However, he’d brought his library with him, leaving behind something for Mary to read that’s more interesting than all that stultifyingly moralistic claptrap she’s been surrounded with since birth.
Oh, and Wickham isn’t really a nasty bastard—he’s an amateur vampire hunter who started out when he discovered that Darcy’s little sis is a vamp—Darcy walked in on him trying to kill her, and took it the wrong way. His apparent dissolution is just a cover for his questionable slaying-related activities and an excuse to get him into brothels (a hotbed of vampire activity). Kitty teams up with him to investigate Darcy: how complicit is he in his sister’s predations? Is Lizzy in danger?
Of course, all this is before the zombies show up.
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