Embers in the Dark (1)

The moon shone brighter tonight. Or perhaps his eyes had dimmed, and the world had lost its shape without them.

How long had it been? The years unspooled without end. Seasons faded like old ink on paper, their colors leeched by silence. Winter's breath came and went. Petals drifted, waters froze, stars were born and burned.

Yet he remained.

A glass of wine in hand, beneath a moon as cold and constant as himself, he remained waiting.

Waiting for the River to stir.

Waiting for his beloved to return.

.

.

.

Late autumn chilled the air, slipping between the shutters of sleeping homes. The last remnants of harvest lay bundled on stoops; baskets of apples smelling faintly of sweet rot and bundles of dry herbs waiting to be brought inside. Overhead, a silvered moon sat heavy in the sky, veiled in gossamer clouds. The cobblestone streets glistened faintly from an earlier rain, stretching through the town like veins of black glass.

It was supposed to be a quiet night in this small town in Duskmoore...

...if not for the sound of hurried footsteps, stumbling across the stone.

A young man sprinted through the side streets, lungs burning, coat flapping wildly behind him like broken wings. His boots skidded across the wet stones, nearly losing traction as he ducked into a narrow alley between a butcher's and a candle shop. The cloying scent of old blood and tallow clung to the damp air.

He didn't slow down at all. He couldn't.

He glanced over his shoulder—nothing. The street was empty. Just shadows and lamplight. No sound but his own ragged gasps and the frantic slap of his boots on stone.

But he knew they were following him. And they wanted him dead.

I didn't ask for this, he thought, the plea a desperate hammerbeat in his skull. I didn't choose this!

He had only wanted to live. Not in the dark forest, choking on decay. Not among the cold, ancient nobles who enslaved lesser spawn like cattle. Not crawling in the dirt to fight over rats and vermin, that hunger in his veins screaming louder every day until he could think of nothing else.

He just wanted to breathe. To feel normal again.

So why... won't they let me go?!

He broke through the far end of the alley, panting heavily. Lamplight spilled across the intersection ahead. If he could just make it to the bridge—if he could cross the river—

CRACK!

The sound split the air, a thunderclap in the silent town.

Something tore through his leg. Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in his thigh.

He screamed.

The world tilted, his leg buckling beneath him as if the bone had vanished. He collapsed, tumbling hard against the unforgiving cobblestone, his cry echoing off the close stone walls. His face struck the pavement with a sickening crack. Black blood gushed from the wound, its coppery-sweet scent filling his nostrils.

He writhed, clutching at his leg. The bullet hole burned, sizzling from the silver coating that felt like molten fire crawling through his undead veins. His vision blurred at the edges, tinged with gray. Still, he tried to crawl, dragging his ruined body through the slick of his own blood.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound of boots on wet stone approached from behind without hurry. A slow, measured, and utterly inevitable cadence.

With dread pooling like lead in his stomach, the vampire twisted to look over his shoulder, and his breath caught in his throat.

A silhouette emerged from the mist and lamp-haze.

Tall, slender, draped in a midnight blue cloak, the fabric stirring faintly in the wind like a funeral shroud. No haste. No urgency. Just the calm, terrible certainty of death coming to collect its due.

The figure stopped a few meters away.

There was a certain grace to that figure that stopped the dead air in the vampire's lungs, a preternatural calm that felt more still than the stones beneath them.

The cloak shifted.

A slender, gloved hand—the leather the color of old blood—rose from beneath and pushed the hood back. The fabric sighed as it fell away.

And he saw her.

She was beautiful. It was the first, stupid, irrelevant thought that pierced his terror.

A cascade of pale gold curls, each one seemingly spun from captured candlelight, framed a face of an almost doll-like beauty, porcelain and delicate, carved by a master who had never known a flawed line.

The vampire's heart, which had been still for years, gave a single, painful shudder against his ribs. The girl before him looked almost unreal, a painting given life. He could have stared at her forever.

But that urge died the second he found her eyes.

They were the color of winter sky just before a blizzard, a pale, glacial blue that held no light, no warmth. They were chips of ancient ice, windows into a vast and frozen emptiness. There was no malice there, no anger, no triumph. Not even contempt. Just... nothing. A void that regarded his trembling form with the passive interest of a glacier surveying a crashing ship.

This was not the beauty of life, with its warm flaws and smiling crinkles; this was the beauty of a funerary statue, achingly lovely and utterly cold.

"Please," he rasped, voice hoarse and broken, his body trembling violently. "Please—I didn't mean to—I didn't mean to kill that girl. I was just too hungry. I only wanted to live normally, I swear. I don't want to go back there—back to that place—"

She didn't answer. She didn't even blink. Her expression remained as placid and unmoved as a frozen lake.

She stepped closer.

Her revolver gleamed faintly in the lamplight, silver and wood catching golden sheen.

"Please," he begged, the word dissolving into a sob. "Please, I can't go back to the forest. Every day was torture. I—I'll behave, I'll stay out of towns, I'll disappear—"

Click.

The hammer of the revolver cocked. The sound was final. Absolute.

His breath hitched in his throat.

Before him was the abyss of the barrel, a perfect circle of darkness pointed directly at his head. His eyes flickered from the barrel to her face, to those glacial eyes staring down at him. Not a hint of mercy. Not a flicker of thought.

He was going to die. Truly die.

"P-please... I beg of you..."

Nothing. Not a trace of emotion in those eyes.

Terror—pure, undiluted terror—surged within him, burning away the last of his reason.

"F...f..."

He clenched his teeth, baring his bloodied fangs—a pathetic, desperate gesture.

"F-FUCK IT!" he snarled.

Then, with a guttural cry fueled by primal fear, he used the last of his strength to launch himself from the ground, claws extending, lunging at the hunter.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out, but he was already in motion, a blur of desperate survival. The bullet went past him, richocheting off the cobblestone, where he originally groveled. He barreled into her, knocking her back a single, half-step. His dirty, ragged claws slashed for the pale column of her throat.

Steel hissed from its sheath.

A searing line of silver met his lunge. The shriek of claw against polished metal grated the air.

The narrow alley erupted into a violent, one-sided dance—a flicker of silver and a flurry of ragged shadows in the mist.

He slashed wildly, driven by panic. She parried easily, her blade a perfect, unbreachable arc. Each move was elegant and deliberate. Not a drop of effort wasted.

He lunged again, fangs bared in a snarl. Her foot slid back, her midnight cloak flaring like the wing of a great bird. She turned with the motion and drove the heavy hilt of her sword into his ribs. The crack of bone was a sickening punctuation in the night. He staggered, the wind and fight knocked out of him.

Another strike—a clean, precise cut. Silver flashed, and his shoulder parted, tendon and bone yielding with a wet tear. His shirt was soaked in black. The cut burned and sizzled loudly from the blade. He let out a raw, animalistic shriek and fell to one knee.

Still, he forced himself up. Still, he fought, driven by a terror she could never comprehend.

He clawed at her face with his other arm in a final, pathetic gamble. She simply ducked beneath his arm, a whisper of movement, spun, and drove the pommel of her blade into the base of his skull. The impact was dull, final. He reeled, vision swimming.

The whole time, she never said a word. Never cursed. Never grunted.

She didn't even seem to breathe.

She just moved silently and gracefully, a waltz of death cloaked in blue.

Finally, with a guttural cry, he lunged for her legs in a last, desperate attempt to tackle her—

And her sword met him in the middle.

The blade drove straight through his abdomen with a soft, terrible sound, like a punctured wineskin.

He gasped—a wet, shocked exhalation.

The creature staggered back, the sword sliding free, and he fell, the cold wetness of the cobblestones a shock against his cheek.

Blood seeped fast from the sizzling wound, bubbling black and thick, steaming in the chill air. He pressed his hands to it, trying to hold his very life in, sobbing and choking. "P-please..."

The hunter stepped toward him, the soles of her boots stained black by the expanding pool of his blood.

"No more," he begged, voice cracking, disintegrating. "No more. Please... I'm sorry—I'm—"

She reached down. Her gloved fingers, cold even through the leather, curled into his hair, yanking his head back, exposing his throat.

The last thing he saw was her eyes again. A beautiful, frozen lake.

And in that lake, he saw himself. So filthy. So small. So insignificant.

Shhhk.

The blade sang its final, merciful note.

His headless body slumped backward, steam curling from the wound.

Blood pooled quietly into the cobblestone cracks, a dark ink staining the seams of the world. The waltz had been brought to an end. The only sound was the gentle rustle of her cloak brought about by the breeze.

Footsteps echoed behind her, slow and steady over the wet stone, a stark contrast to the frantic, panicked rhythm that had just been silenced.

A tall figure stepped through the alley's fogged edge, the lamplight revealing a broad-shouldered man in a deep violet coat trimmed with tarnished silver. The coat bore the sigil of the Duskmoore guild, a blue rose crossed by two blades, stitched just above the heart. His beard was short and grizzled with gray at the chin. His nose was slightly crooked from a break never properly set. But his warm, brown eyes, lined with the ghosts of sleep and laughter, settled calmly on the headless corpse without a flicker of surprise.

"Well," Garen said with a grunt, adjusting the worn leather strap of the great axe across his back. "He sure picked the wrong night to wander."

Elise said nothing. She was already wiping her blade clean on a spotless section of the dead vampire's coat, her movements economical and devoid of disgust.

Garen stepped closer, his heavy boots carefully skimming the edge of the widening blood pool.

"You move faster than a damn ghost, lass," he muttered, watching her clean the silver steel with methodical care. "You're making me look slow."

"You are slow," she stated flatly.

He huffed a quiet laugh, the sound rumbling in his chest. "Ruthless, as always."

She slid the pristine blade into its sheath with a soft, final click and turned to leave without another glance at her handiwork.

"You did not have to come," she said, the cold air misting briefly before her lips.

Garen fell into step beside her with a weary shake of his head. "Come now, my lady. You know Count Whitefield would have our hides flayed and tacked to his wall if we let anything happen to you." The words were light, but the protective duty behind them was solid, unshakable.

Elise didn't respond. Her pale eyes stayed fixed on the mist-shrouded street ahead, scanning for any threats as they made their way back to Cerulea.

Garen smiled faintly to himself, a private expression of fondness for the girl next to him.

The gaslamps flickered behind them as they were swallowed by the mist, the alley falling silent once more save for the slow, steady drip of condensation from the eaves.

Another successful hunt.