Crimson Nightmare

by Zoey Rivera

  She also found that using this magic exhausted her more than it had in the past. She began to run toward town as she was chased by the horde of beasts. She knew she wouldn’t make it at this rate with her injuries. She could feel the pressure on her leg whittling away at her health points as she continued to run on it.

  As the trolls caught up to her, she knew her only course of action would be to fight. Luckily, there were only three that had deemed her worth the chase. She turned around and accepted the confrontation head-on and proceeded to slaughter the monsters in front of her, unarmed, save for her fists and fangs.

  She felt disgusting tearing them apart with her bare hands but she knew that she needed to survive more than she needed her dignity. She tore their throats open with her fangs as she bounded from one corpse to the next. Feeding on them as to not waste an offering of the Mir. Their forms laid lifeless for a long while before she finally looted them. She managed to gain a couple items she knew she could sell in the town, if she ever made it back there. She gathered up her earnings and continued her trek toward town.

  As Cheyenne neared Gwintin, she could see Aidan in the middle of a battle with a vampire. She was slender with golden hair to her waist. Her appearance made her seem mature, maybe in her early thirties, but the limber way she thrusted herself at him made her seem younger and more energetic than a teenager.

  Cheyenne stood paralyzed as she watched Aidan defend himself from the woman. His sword decisively slicing at her flesh. Her HP draining faster than she could heal herself. She hissed from the ground, injured, and tried a feeble attempt to intimidate him. Aidan sauntered straight up to her, unfazed, and slowly stabbed his sword into her chest. His eyes unshaking, staring straight into hers.

  For some reason, Cheyenne felt her body instinctively move her out of Aidan's eyesight. She realized that she couldn't let him know that this is what she had become. That would be her lying there on the ground and she would lose him again. Her eyes welled up as she watched him spit on the woman’s body before walking away from her, not even bothering to check her for loot.

  Cheyenne had never seen Aidan be so cruel and disrespectful to an opponent, any opponent. He collected himself and waved as Johnny ran up to him. They chatted and Aidan seemed to relax. She could only guess from their movements that Johnny was probably going on about how he was seconds away from stepping in and backing him up. Aidan would softly chuckle and play along with Johnny's heroics. Cheyenne watched from her cover and saw them start to head back down towards town.

  “Aidan! Johnny!” a voice boomed across the field, leading a massive mob toward the Mir’s outer limits.

  “What’s happening, Peter?” Aidan called back.

  “We found another one of them in town. We’re taking her to the tree line to show those other creatures what happens when you try and mess with the town of Gwintin,” Peter smiled proudly at the other townspeople, hollering and cheering to fuel their mob mentality. “Join us!”

  “Of course,” Aidan said without a second thought.

  Two of the bigger men in the town brought the small girl vampire forward. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen, her size and features gave her the appearance of a twelve year old child. If she didn’t know better, she would have assumed she was, but no one under the age of eighteen was allowed into Eden. Her petite, slender body was bruised and beaten to near death.

  Cheyenne’s heart panged at the small, defenseless child being completely overpowered by the townspeople. She watched quietly to see what Aidan would do.

  Surely, he couldn’t… not her brother.

  Peter and the large men carried the squirming girl to a tree a good thirty feet away from Cheyenne. She wriggled weakly in their massive grips, giving any last efforts she had to escaping. She sniveled. The end of the rope Peter was holding was latched around a thick tree branch, leading down to the other end, tied around the girl’s scrawny, blue and purple neck.

  A bellow of rage roared from the mob as they awaited the vampire’s public hanging. Peter yanked with a mighty force, causing the girl to shriek in pain as she swung by her throat. She clawed at the rope as she slowly suffocated, savoring what little breaths she could steal. Peter tied the other end of the rope along the trunk to ensure she remained airborne.

  Aidan sauntered up, clicking away at his inventory, and equipping his fire staff. He turned back to the crowd and pumped the fist with the staff into the air, displaying the weapon to the masses. The energy of the crowd surged as he held it up in the air. He smiled. Cheyenne saw him quietly mouth a spell, causing the top end of the staff to burst into flame. This fueled the mob further as it erupted into wild cheers of bloodlust.

  He approached the young girl’s dangling body, placing the flame beneath her. The amber light licking at her shoe. She shrieked, weakly kicking with what little strength she could muster. The crowd roared, egging Aidan on. He willed the fire to grow with the mob’s screams, setting the young girl’s body ablaze. Her high-pitched cry pierced the air. They chanted and cheered as her body burnt to a crisp.

  Cheyenne stared in horror at the scene in front of her. A shiver shot up her spine as she realized the situation she was now in. She was one of them. She was a vampire. If she didn’t get out now, that would be her. Lynched up to a tree. Set alight. Left for dead.

  Cheyenne had found a tree to sleep in that night that was fairly out of sight and yet still accessible to see the city. She awoke on top of her tree to see Johnny wandering near the forest's edge. He was threatening a nearby tree with a sword.

  "So you think you're tough stuff, huh?" he stood awkwardly with the sword. It seemed as if he was holding a viper that could turn around on him and attack at any moment with how far he was holding it from himself. "You don't know who you're messing with!"

  She smiled down at her old friend and watched him continue this same line of threats to the immobile object night after night for a few days. After the first week, she had decided to reveal herself to him. At the very least, she was sure that Johnny wasn't a threat to her and she wouldn’t be a threat to him. She watched him approach the tree again that night and make his usual threats.

  "You don't know who you're messing with, you swine!" his voice shook as he screamed.

  "Oh? And who am I messing with?" Cheyenne stepped out from behind the tree and smiled at him, non-threateningly, she hoped. Johnny immediately dropped his sword and ran up to embrace her without a moment’s hesitation.

  His heart started racing as he held her tightly and she felt herself become hyper-aware of him. She had just fed, so she was able to calmly free herself from him and create a distance between herself and Johnny.

  "Shy, are you alright? How are you alive? Where have you been all this time? Are you starving? We need to get Aidan! We need to get you something to eat! You're probably dying - oh, I'm sorry, poor phrasing. You're probably parched. Shall we go back to the shop and make you something to drink? Do you like tea? I could go for tea. How do you like your tea?" Johnny took a moment to catch his breath.

  "Johnny, I'm not myself and I need you to calm down," she explained her situation to him. His response, to her surprise, was the widest smile of pure, untainted excitement. Something she was almost sure was never seen before in the history of Eden.

  "Do you understand what this means? We could learn so much from you! We could have a vampire on the inside to give us all the knowledge we could ever need to defend ourselves! We have to take you to Aidan and his crew!" he reached for Cheyenne’s hand to pull her toward town. She jumped back, further than she had expected herself to, she still needed to adjust to her new strength.

  "No, I can't and you mustn't tell Aidan that you saw me," she warned him.

  "You want me to not tell Aidan? Why?" he asked. The concern was more than evident in his face, let alone his voice. Aidan and Cheyenne were always inseparable, so Johnny knew that it would take a lot for Cheyenne to insist on keeping her whereabouts a secret from him.

  "I s
aw him coldly slaughter a vampire right in front of me. It's too soon. I can't get through to him right now without risking my life. No, it is safer to just allow things to continue as they are, for now anyway. We'll find a time to do this properly."

  He sighed and smiled at Cheyenne. They then headed back to the shop for tea and began coordinating her survival plan together.

  Chapter 4

  Cheyenne cleared her mind of what lie the past had been. She knew better now, she was naive then but she knew Richard for who he really was now. She had met the true beast within him and was determined to never allow him to ruin another person’s life. She looked over the tree line that masked her from the skyline of Gwintin. There was only one option and that was to stay and fight. It was decided, as long as Aidan was staying in town, so was she.

  A chill passed over the town as the air slivered through the gaps in the leaves. It had only been a day since Cheyenne stopped into Johnny’s shop to drop off this month’s rent payment, yet it seemed as though a lifetime had passed. The town of Gwintin seemed to exist outside of time as everything stood still.

  There was no market today, so the streets ran barren. Doors and windows were locked shut and the silence seemed impenetrable. Richard and his clan sauntered into the town. Without a word, as if all was already prearranged before arrival, they each split into groups and the shrieks began. Any opening they were given was another life lost. There was no shuffling of struggle in the air, only screams feigning into them.

  Aidan rushed out toward the direction of the screams and searched for any vampires he could manage to get his hands on. He tried to fight off some with other villagers in the town. The fight was beginning to feel hopeless but Aidan kept pushing through. He wrestled a rather tiny, lanky looking girl with pale freckled skin and strawberry blonde hair in a market toward the center of town.

  Despite her slender build, she managed to slam him against the store’s shelves with ease, as if he were a rag doll to be whipped around. He grabbed at her throat and shoved her through the door into the back room and against the wall, turning her face from him. She scratched and hissed at Aidan’s form behind her as he managed to restrain her against a railing protruding from the disheveled shop.

  “Where is Richard?” Aidan wasted no time.

  “Who?” The small girl smirked, finding herself entertaining.

  “Richard Lon, where is he? Last chance!” Aidan looked coldly at her and his glare made her smile vanish. The windows shook with the sound of company looking for the young girl. She was suddenly filled with a smug aura as another vampire entered the room. She looked away from Aidan and smiled.

  “Kenneth!”

  “Lilith,” Kenneth stepped closer towards Lilith on the ground and Aidan sliced both their heads off without a second thought. He sighed and left the blood stained room into the main shop area. It was still beaten up from his struggle with Lilith but it was still a better atmosphere to escape to than the other room.

  “At this rate, I’ll never find Richard,” Aidan said to himself. He was considering his next route when he was attacked from behind. A muscular pale woman with curly blonde hair twirling to her hips pounced on top of him and smiled down to him.

  “What a coincidence, I was just off looking for him as well. Glad I could get a little snack for the road,” her voice was vicious and yet fun-loving. She began to tear into Aidan’s armor. Her teeth exposed as she snarled at him. Aidan closed his eyes and a light began to emanate from his chest.

  “Expellere,” his voice boomed as the light expanded into an aura, solidifying and vaulting the woman off of him. She quickly regained her balance and attempted to rush at Aidan once more. A large vase broke over her head, rendering her unconscious. As her body gave out and crumbled onto the floor, a familiar face greeted Aidan.

  “I would appreciate a bit of a warning next time you plan on completely obliterating my shop, Aidan. You couldn’t have done this in the shop next door? That shopkeeper has been giving me trouble all month with his pricing and ‘higher quality’ supplies!” The shopkeeper’s fiery hair made his face look like it was burning even more.

  “Johnny, you think I aim for your shop?” Aidan joked and helped him carry the vampire woman into the backroom with the other two corpses. He removed the bindings from the smaller girl’s corpse and used them on the woman.

  “Yes, I think you do. I think you look along the whole lane of shops and go, ‘Oh well, it’s just Johnny’s shop. He won’t mind if I collapse it into the ground!’ And you just about do every single time!” Johnny’s face was so red it seemed like it would explode at any minute.

  Aidan massaged the poor shopkeeper’s shoulders. Eden was a hard place to survive and with the attacks on the rise, times have been even more rough than usual for the both of them and Aidan knew that.

  “Look, I’ll barter with the next vampire and ask them if we can move the fight over a couple shops to the Mcarthur's and let all hell loose on their shop. Happy?” Johnny pouted and avoided looking Aidan in the eyes. When he finally looked over at him, Aidan’s crystal blue eyes were sadly asking for forgiveness. Johnny rolled his eyes and patted the younger boy’s head.

  “Your salary for running Gwintin’s army came in today. Although, I should just keep it for myself to cover the damages,” Johnny pulled out the money, adding in the gold Cheyenne had given to him earlier, and handed the bag of gold and silvers to Aidan.

  “Thank you, Johnny,” Aidan looked over at Johnny’s face. He looked like he was trying to find the right words to say something but couldn’t quite form them. “What’s wrong?”

  “Speaking of payments…” Johnny’s voice trailed off but Aidan knew.

  “You don’t have to worry about me every time I’m paid the credits from Shy’s will. I promise, I am fine.” Aidan made a big show of putting a big smile on his face and leaning into Johnny’s line of sight so that he could see it.

  “It’s not that, although I do and will continue to worry about you every day because of that. Shy was one of my closest friends and she entrusted you in my care.” Aidan let out an amused sound of disagreement.

  “More of you in my care but…” Aidan shrugged and smiled as Johnny rolled his eyes and continued on.

  “I know it has been three years since the incident but I don’t think you have really moved on that well. You seem so hell bent on vengeance, have you taken a moment to just live? I think this town is an unsafe place for you to be, even outside of the vampire attacks. I think that you need a fresh start away from Gwintin,” Johnny said. Aidan leaned up against the store-front’s table and crossed his arms against his chest.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you to run away with me, Aidan. I’m going to Hallifax in a few days time, possibly sooner if I can pack everything I need fast enough. I am going to be taking the family horse, riding up there, and starting a new. New shop, new area, new start,” Johnny’s eyes seemed to be pleading with Aidan even more than his words. Aidan considered the possibility but quickly shook his head of the idea.

  “Riding a horse through the Mir? Johnny, you realize how unsafe that is? Were you planning on going alone before you asked me? You would have never made it!” Johnny gasped, mildly insulted at the truth.

  “I would have made it just fine, it’s only a day’s ride!” Johnny argued.

  “A day’s ride through the Mir!” Aidan shouted back. Johnny puffed out his cheeks childishly and crossed his arms, glaring at Aidan.

  “If you’re so distrusting of my survival skills and swordsmanship, then come with me and protect me! Aidan, I know you need out of this town just as much as I do. That is why I am offering. Please, come with me to Hallifax,” Johnny held Aidan’s hand in his own and the two of them just stared at each other for a long moment. There was a clashing sound in the back room and the two raced through the doors.

  All three bodies were gone and the railing was broken in half. The destruction of his shop should have thrown J
ohnny into a fury but the two of them were too busy staring horrified at the empty room. They looked to the corner of the room where a tiny window had once been and stared at the giant gap in the wall. How they had done this all so silently annoyed Aidan. He was right in the other room. Meters away. Why hadn’t he heard them?

  “See? Let’s just leave now! They will probably be reporting to Richard and they’ll come back for our heads, next time,” Aidan shook his head at Johnny.

  “Can’t you see? This is why I need to stay. There are threats here and more than just my own life I need to worry about.”

  “You sound just like she does,” Johnny said to Aidan without thinking. They both looked at each other and Johnny coughed as he corrected himself. “Did, you sound just like she did.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust your skills, it is that I think that sort of travel is just above it. Look, I will help you make the travel to Hallifax. Just to make sure you make it there safely. But I am returning to Gwintin immediately. I'll have to gather some of my own stuff for the journey but I'll go,” Aidan sighed. "I've just got to let a few people know of my departure but I'll be ready by tomorrow."

  Johnny’s face lit up and he ran to begin making preparations. He gathered together a backpack of gear and headed toward the Mir Forest. He knew that the tree line he was looking for was just a few miles north of town and only a few meters into the forest. It was a trip he made often enough to see Cheyenne that he never really felt that concerned with his safety.

  He eagerly trotted over to the tree line, not minding his surroundings. He felt a gust of air as he was swooped up into a tree. Johnny suddenly found himself face-to-face with Richard Lon. Richard’s milky white claws strangling him against the trunk. He could feel the bark clawing against his back.

  “Been a while, Johnny. How are you?” Richard smirked watching Johnny dangle and gasp for air. “Now, forgive my confusion at this reunion but why are you lingering in my forest? Because to me, it would seem you have a deathwish waltzing around so carelessly.”