The plate is trimmed in gold; woven strands cover the armor in shapes I do not recognize but I appreciate the immense skill it would take to create despite myself—I’ve never had the resources available to make anything half as fine. The vampire has plumes of raven’s feathers, oil-slicked and gleaming in the red moonlight, jutting like horns on either side of his helmet—I wonder if they are trophies off the hunters his scouts have killed for him. Hunters wear feathers of the raven of the master hunter for luck; the stolen tokens churn my stomach. A crimson cape, also trimmed in gold, drifts through the air behind him. Unseen hands reach from the mist, pulling at its hem, fraying it slightly, as though something is trying to pull him back to the world from whence he came.
I grasp my sickle tighter. I think the only thing keeping my grip steady is the elixir in me.
“If he was not the anchor, are you? Tell me where it is. Tell me how to break it.” The voice is like plunging hot metal into water. Surely it cannot be from the creature before me… That voice…that primordial sound seems to have come from everywhere at once. It was not spoken so much as willed into existence. The words enter through my ears and curl in my mind like a serpent making my skull its new den. I can almost feel it—feel his raw power—sliding against the backs of all my innermost thoughts.
The vampire leans closer to Drew. His collar has been ripped off. The monster is going to kill him. I imagine the vampire drinking my brother’s blood and taking his face. I will not be able to slay the beast if he wears Drew’s skin.
“Let him go!” I shout, pulling the attention onto me before the vampire can act.
Drew jerks at the sound of my voice but he does not raise his head. He’s lost too much blood for that. Through our bond as twins, or the elixir, I can feel he’s alive, but only barely.
A huff of air. Amusement. The vampire lets out a low chuckle that sounds more like the distant roar of some beast, long forgotten, prowling the wetlands. “Another hunter come to avenge her fallen friends?”
So that voice truly was the vampire? They’re capable of speech? I’ve never heard of such a thing before. If it can talk, does that mean it’s capable of reason? And if it does have the capacity for higher thought then…then that means…
Everything has been a choice.
They do not hunt us as beasts. They hunt us because they have chosen to. Because they see us as nothing more than sport. I clutch my sickle tighter and don’t ask for the creature to free my brother a second time. There are only two things a creature like him knows—bloodshed and death. And I will give them to him.
“I am your quarry now!” I close the gap between me and the vampire, jumping. He tries to turn, but he’s too slow. The steel gauntlet covering his clawed hands is embedded too deeply in the stone. I wedge one sickle into the visor of his helmet and yank.
Steel meets iron with a clamor. His helmet flies, my sickle going with it. He staggers and I am thrown off-balance. I dig the tip of my other sickle into the stone, using it to pivot around, finding my feet. I tuck them under me, freeing the weapon with a twist. I might not have trained with the hunters, but Drew taught me the skills Davos passed on to him. And by day I was honing my body by hoisting coal, hammer, iron, and silver.
The vampire spins and, as I meet the hollow eyes of the monster, I remember too late what Drew told me:
Tomorrow, the vampire lord himself will lead his legions through the Fade… I will kill him.
This creature of nightmare and pure evil…he is the source of all our pain. He can speak because he is the mind of the vampire. It is because of him the people of Hunter’s Hamlet have fought and bled. It is because of him we are walled in, struggling to survive for the sake of the world beyond.
Because of him, my father is dead and my brother is dying.
His eyes are sunken against his cheeks. Folds of flesh sag underneath, leathered with an age that must be ancient. A deeply furrowed brow hunches over them, carving wrinkles between. What would be white in a human’s eyes is black for him, making the deep recesses they sit in on his face all the more pronounced. At their center is a gleaming yellow iris, like a wolf’s eyes caught in the lamplight of a dark night.
His nose is hooked and sharp, as though it is made of wax and was pressed too close to the inside of his helmet. His skin is sagging and gray, lifeless and worn. Two yellowed fangs protrude from his slightly parted lips as he gasps for air.
The lord of the vampires is a walking corpse, embellished with every frightful story passed down in Hunter’s Hamlet.
Monster. Yes. The word suits him. He is every nightmare and more. He is the wind that raked against my window as a girl. He is the shadow that lingered too long in the corner of my room. He is what I feared beneath my bed. What stalked me in my nightmares into my adult years.
The vampire lord freezes as he looks upon me. His haunted eyes widen slightly, shining ominously in the bloody moonlight. Those hungry eyes study me, as if already consuming my soul.
“What are you?” he rasps.
What am I?A strange question coming from a beast like him. I smile wildly. “I am your death.”
