Something rustled in the bare tree next to me.
Turning sharply, I prepared for the worst to take me by surprise.
“Cawwwwww.”
I ducked out of the way of a swooping crow dive-bombing my head, tripping in my stupid heels, but instinctively catching myself on a nearby headstone which thankfully intercepted my fall.
“Damn bird!” I screamed out at the thing that perched itself on top of a dead log lying on the nearby ground, watching me with its beady black eyes.
In some superstitions, crows represented an omen of impending death; so, why wouldn’t there be one next to me? I mean, hell, every other bad luck is against me, so why not add one more shitty thing to the list?
“Shoo, you little shit.” I swatted at him, but he only did a couple of small hops along the log.
“Addelay…”
A flurry of wind lifted my hair off my shoulders, bringing the whisper that called for me close enough to lightly tickle the back of my ear. I quickly turned myself around in a complete circle to face... nothing but the same asshole crow, still sitting on the broken log watching me mockingly.
“Was that you?” He answered me with another throaty caw making me cringe at the loud cackle.
“Addelay…”
This time the beckon came from a different direction. I strained my ears to see if it was them playing tricks on me now. Being in a cemetery alone in the middle of the night tended to mess with all of your senses.
A human scream pierced through the uprise of wind that whipped my hair in all directions now, threatening to lift my dress up as well. I flattened my hands against my thighs, keeping it pressed against my shivering legs, so as to not give an embarrassing show to whatever lurked in the dark around me.
I broke into a sprint further into the middle of the cemetery, skidding to a complete stop when a large figure came into view.
“Xander!” I yelled out to him, breathless as his glazed-over eyes rolled into place, trying to focus on who was calling out his name. He lazily lifted his head that was resting on the tree.
“Adde? Adde is that you?” He questioned my presence, weak and disoriented.
Foolishly I ran to him. Seeing my friend I had feared would never be found instantly threw all of my common sense out the window.
His body was bound tightly to the base of the enormous tree -part three of my vision- that was now nothing more than a skeleton from the hands of winter. Dirt-caked ropes fastened his wrists one on top of the other and were suspended above him, leaking blood where the rope had rubbed his delicate skin raw, and was running down his well-defined arms. One more rope, wrapped around his waist, was keeping his torso securely fastened, and kept him from moving away from the tree.
Gashes still moist with blood spread across his chest, and deep, oozing cuts had been inflicted on his once smooth tan face. On his shoulder were what appeared to be large claw marks buried deep into his flesh. Liquid oozed from those too.
He writhed against the restraints, trying to free his freshly mutilated body. Rushing to his side, I stood on my tiptoes frantically tugging at the ropes that were keeping his badly beaten and bruised body confined. Sweat dampened his wavy hair, despite the freezing cold, and his skin was burning hot to the touch. My feet strained to boost me up higher, making my calves cramp up.
“Hang on Xan, I’m trying to get you down! I… just…can’t…seem to get it!”
The underneath of my nails started to bleed from desperately tearing at the knots in the tight ropes. Nothing was setting him free besides whatever put him here.
Putting aside being in a graveyard in the middle of winter, and untying Xander from a tree that someone had obviously fastened him to, something else wasn’t right.
His hands began to violently shake like something was controlling them from the inside. Then, just like that, every one of his nerves went AWOL.
“Ad…Adelay get away from me!” His voice cracked just as I got one of the knots loosened, but not completely unfastened.
“No! I almost got it Xander!” I was determined to get us out of here, whether it meant tearing every last one of my nails from my fingers or not.
“Adelay get away now!”
His voice trembled in a low growl, definitely not Xander’s usual voice. A euphoric laugh echoed in the air, making me instinctively drop my heels into the ground and let go of his bloody wrists. The laughter got louder, burrowing deep into my ears. I wobbled unsteadily away from Xander.
A man appeared out of the darkness behind us, clapping his hands together to applaud me. I recognized him instantly. It was the Sid Vicious lookalike from the club earlier.
“Glad you could join us, Adelay. Wow, I must give you an A for effort though. I would have never expected you to walk so easily into my arms. Well, that is until your little bloodsucker friends deserted you, taking all of your good judgment with them. Didn’t your vampire teach you to never wander off by yourself?”
“It’s you?”
“It’s you?” He mocked my question in a high-pitched whiny voice, moving his head from side to side when he did so.
My blood boiled at his sarcasm, making me spew out the first thing that came to mind. “Well, since we’re giving away applause and all, I want to thank you for inviting me to this cute little party of yours. The cemetery really adds to the Halloween flair.”
His eyes slit into a sharp glare. “You’re quite the little spitfire, aren’t you? You should have listened to your friend here and left like a good little girl. There’s no heroes tonight.”
He was probably right, I should have tried leaving the second Xander said to get out of here, but something about deserting my best friend, who had been hung mercilessly to a tree, just seemed a little immoral and unethical; and if it would have been that easy to leave, then this man would have never led me here in the first place. So, I refused to believe I would have been in any better of a situation.
“I think that would have been a lost cause to even try because you brought me here for a reason, didn’t you?”
“Maybe you are a little smarter than I give you credit for. Do you even know who I am, Adelay?”
I shook my head, unsure of how I should answer him because we had only been going off of suspicion, hoping Davin would find some answers before this day came. This man was obviously the culprit behind Xander’s disappearance, current torture, and present confinement to a big fucking tree; I knew that much.
“I think you know more about me then you’re letting on, but tonight I’m whoever you want me to be.”
His face slowly morphed from the skinny, baby-faced punk with spiky black hair that I had danced with in the club, to the man I had seen on more than one occasion with long black hair dusted with streaks of shiny silver in it and wide, yellow, scarlet rimmed eyes deeply set in his gaunt face, then to the sleek silver wolf on all fours; and finally back to the semi-attractive Sid Vicious lookalike.
Except his eyes remained unnaturally yellow this time. Definitely taking away the innocence he portrayed in the club to a much more frightful site.
I turned to Xander when a low moan escaped his throat, quickly backing myself further away from him as his body began to convulse, sending his eyes rolling into the back of his head. His head thrashed back and forth and every vein in his body looked like it was about to explode from underneath his skin.
“Stop it you asshole! Leave him alone!” I screamed to the man that was inflicting all this pain on Xander. He was nothing more than an innocent victim and didn’t deserve to be brought into this war.
“Stop what? This?” He looked at Xander’s shaking body. He was foaming at the mouth as his eyes rolled around inside their sockets, and his veins continued to pulse throughout his body in rhythm with his heartbeat that had sped up rapidly. Any normal human would have already gone into cardiac arrest.
“This only stops when I receive what I want, and what I have been brought to this godforsaken town for. Give me what I want, and I�
��ll go away. Give me what I want, and no more innocent people will be hurt. His time is limited; you really shouldn’t procrastinate.”
I watched Xander twist in pain. “What is it that you want?”
I knew exactly what he wanted, but I wasn’t about to let on that I had any kind of information about who we thought he was, his past (if it turned out that we were correct that he was Dalton Edwards) and what he wanted from all of us -- my cursed blood specifically.
“You have been playing this cat and mouse game for months. You stalk me, Davin goes after you, you disappear, he kills your friend, and it just goes on and on. Why don’t you spit out already why you’re here and save all of us the trouble of a day in, day out pursuit?” I was talking to him like he was a regular person that I would address on any other given day. I needed to remember this thing wasn’t even really a man; he was a monster and had every intention of killing me and draining me dry.
I had hit a sensitive spot though because within seconds his hands were around my throat, pinning me against a gravestone that dug uncomfortably into the middle of my back. “You should learn to hold your tongue, child. You think you have been spared your life because of your vampire?” He let out an evil snarl. “You have lived because I let you live. I could have ripped your heart out of your chest any time I chose, but I prefer to play with my victims. It makes the kill more thrilling.”
“Lucky me,” I gasped.
He flashed a sinister grin that showed a set of razor-sharp teeth jutting from his mouth where his human teeth had been moments before. “I hunt them down to the very places they thought to be their sanctuaries, taking over their minds, causing them to battle with themselves over what is real and what is not, bringing them chills they never thought possible; so that they can’t even sleep in their own bedroom at night anymore without dreams of me, slowly pushing them to the brink of madness.”
That part I knew was true. I had been having dreams of him before I even moved to Hanover. Each time was more vivid than the last, somehow making me feel violated; like I had to scrub away the dirty fear that oozed off of me when I awoke.
“Eventually, every corner they turn and every shadow that passes by they expect to see my face, feel my breath on their skin, preparing themselves for my strike that will end their pitiful lives. Then, when they least expect it, their nightmare becomes real and they watch me -completely powerless while I take every ounce of life from their body.”
“So why have you chosen me?” I coughed. He loosened his hold on my throat. My lungs welcomed the surge of stinging cold air.
“Why you?” He repeated my question. “You have something more. You have what I want...no, what I need; to finally reign the supernatural world with power beyond the imaginable. Every unnatural force will bow before me from the blood I take from you tonight. Demons, angels, witches, werewolves and, last but not least, your precious vampires.” He ran his tongue along his lips, making my skin crawl.
He wasn’t your familiar storybook werewolf that was a vampire’s nemesis, easily controlled with silver bullets; this creature was a demon himself. This demon thrived on blood, power, and torture. He was a hellhound.
“A hellhound, huh?” He laughed. He was inside my head hearing my every thought. “I couldn’t have chosen a more magnificent way to explain it, sweetheart. I’ve been more than just a werewolf for decades. I bet your vampire didn’t expect that. If he had he wouldn’t have left you alone for me to play with. I was once nothing more than a Loup Garou, living by human standards during daylight then turning into a werewolf once the sun went down during every full moon. Whoever it was that said you could only sell your soul once was nothing more than a fool. I suppose I sort of re-financed my soul if you will, rising as a demon lord but also continuing to present myself as a man or a wolf; whatever I choose. As long as I continue giving the master downstairs souls to claim, he replenishes me with more power, making me the paragon that I am. With much sacrifice I have gained forces on my side that would make your precious vampire regret ever going against me.”
His abnormal pulse palpated hard through the veins on the side of his head, making them rise and fall with each beat. Darker shades of yellow swirled around in his eyes, as if they had picked up a life of their own.
“I do know that the curse inside me is not all that you want.”
“You’re right. I struck the double prize when I found you tied to Davin Ashford. I have been in constant pursuit to seek revenge on those that tried to take my life three hundred years ago. Samuel should have made sure I was dead before he left me that night, and Eli should have never stuck his nose where it didn’t belong by taking in those boys that should have been left for dead.”
“That’s exactly why Eli took them in, because you did leave them for dead. Why have such hatred for something that was made out of your own infidelity? Whether you like it or not, they have your blood inside them.” I was speaking of Davin and Sully’s real father, who turned out to be an illegitimate child of Dalton’s. Of course, the blood that was inside of them was the human part of him before he had turned into whatever he was now.
“Ah, so I see they have filled you in on some family history, huh? After I kill you, I will bring the entire Ashford family to a slow and grueling death that should’ve been done a long time ago.”
“You’re not a god, you’re an overgrown dog! You won’t defeat them. No matter how many people you kill, or how much power you have, you will always answer to a higher power as long as you’re on this earth.”
His jaw clenched, showing I had touched another sore spot. “Tisk, tisk, Adelay.” He shook his head at me, deepening his thumb into the side of my neck.
The scarlet ring circling his yellow corneas darkened.
“I am more. I have spent centuries tracking down bloodlines that possess powers that can only be taken through bloodshed. You’d be amazed at what eons of curses and spells were put on the innocent. This has brought me to your infection. The angel of the night never knew that the sin of mating with a human would claim so many lives through the aftermath. Their wrongful one night of ecstasy produced the curse that has claimed your body now, to host its legacy. Every hundred years this curse passes itself onto the next person. Mutation has willed this thing to choose whomever it wants to move itself into, no longer sticking to one specific bloodline; thus, making it a pain in the ass to locate. It, my love, has found you.”
Calling me “his love” made me want to vomit.
“It thought it could fool me by hiding inside a mere mortal that doesn’t even possess one single supernatural ability! You’re not even a sensitive for Christ’s sake. I was supposed to kill that old crone, but she knew I was coming, and she rid herself of it before I could claim it as my own. It has been running from me long before you were ever a thought.”
Just my luck that gypsy hag left me to deal with a bloodthirsty werewolf demon that was going to use me for his satanic sacrifice.
But if she knew he would be coming to slaughter me, then why did she inscribe words into my flesh: Angels above as well as below protect my soul; almost as if the incantation gave me a chance of survival? There had to have been some kind of motive behind putting a tattoo on me I didn’t want. So, maybe she wasn’t as big of a bitch as I thought she was. Maybe there had been a little bit of couth in her rotten scheme.
Xander let out a slow and tedious growl. His convulsions were increasing, and every inch of his body dripped with sweat, melting the snow it fell upon. If I had been a little closer, I probably would have heard it sizzle. His transformation had started.
Dalton looked to him with pure pleasure as though his change was arousing to him. His arm dropped from my neck, so that he could tilt his head up to the full moon that was revealing itself from behind the clouds, glowing bigger and brighter than before, and let out an eerie howl.
Dalton’s fingers began to sickly lengthen in what looked like slow motion, his nails extending into sharp claws and his arms filli
ng in with rough patches of fur.
Xander screamed in pain as his body contorted also.
How the hell was I going to get myself out of this one? Davin had been right all along, and I didn’t listen to him. It was already too late for Xander, but I wasn’t dead yet and still had a fifty/fifty chance. Hell would freeze over before I gave in without a fight.
Bones grinded and shifted throughout their entire bodies, further progressing the change that was happening simultaneously to the two of them. Xander wailed in excruciating pain while Dalton’s look of pleasure intensified with each pop or rip of flesh, furthering his sadistic ecstasy. Their arms and legs had doubled in size and they were covered from head to toe in thick, rough fur. Xander’s was a mixture of light and dark brown while Dalton’s was once again his all too familiar gray with large patches of charcoal scattered through it.
Their mouths had stretched into monstrous snouts baring frighteningly sharp teeth; ready to delve into anything they came into contact with. Each shortened breath they took in showed every outline of their distended ribs, until they breathed out again and they disappeared, only to reappear seconds later.
Seeing Xander as this horrid creature pained me more than I ever thought possible, guilt tugging at my heartstrings that I had caused him to lose the life he had always known. Aspiring football star reduced to nothing more than a creature thirsty for death.
Xander’s head thrashed violently against the tree, begging to be released from the ropes that still held him in place. The ropes would only hold him for so long. Once released, he would go after whatever his new master told him to -which I knew would be me.
A tiny voice inside my head screamed run. So, for once I finally listened. Stumbling over my own two feet -high heeled no less- I fled towards the entrance of the cemetery. Not knowing how far it would take me before one of them caught up to me, but if I had any chance at all it was the only way out of here.
Snow pelted my face from Hanover’s first winter storm that had finally arrived. The bare skin on my arms and legs were numb from the icy air, and my hair was no more than a wet mess stuck to the sides of my face. But I continued to retreat to the wrought iron archway.
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