by A. Q. Owen
I looked around, but there was no one there. After a few seconds of waiting, I put the bow down and looked out the little window. That’s when I saw the boots. I couldn’t see the rest of the person, but I knew from the position of the feet that whoever it was had collapsed on my doorstep.
I heard a screech in the forest, off in the distance. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, and it certainly wasn’t an animal.
What should I do? Was it some kind of trick? Was the person lying on my porch just setting a trap for me? Or did they really need help?
I took a deep breath and made a split-second decision.
I unlocked the main locks and flung the door open. At my feet was an older man. He had thinning gray hair and a weathered, wrinkled face. His clothing was odd, a brown tunic with a hood, loose fitting leggings, and the black boots that looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Then I realized what he was.
This guy was one of the believers, a person who understood the spiritual nature of the universe and put their faith in it.
I looked over him and noticed the tears in his clothing. It appeared he’d been attacked by some kind of wild animal. Was that what made the bizarre scream a moment before?
It couldn’t have been.
His back rose and fell, signaling that he was still breathing, but the guy was unconscious. I heard something snap in the forest off to the right. It sounded like a branch breaking under a heavy weight.
I exhaled and grabbed the stranger by the wrists. Dragging his dead weight across the threshold was beyond difficult. For a girl of only 120 pounds, pulling a man who weighed at least 180 was challenging to say the least.
More limbs snapped in the forest. The sounds were growing louder, closer, faster.
Once the stranger’s feet were inside I let his wrists drop to the floor, and hurried over to the door and tried to slam it shut.
The door struck something just before it closed and wouldn’t go any farther. I looked down to find the problem.
The stranger’s foot was blocking the door from closing all the way.
Outside, the noise grew stronger, drawing ever nearer.
“Oh come on!” I shouted at myself.
I pushed the stranger’s foot out of the way and slammed the door just as the noise sounded like it was about to bear down on the house. My hands worked the locks quickly, barricading me and the stranger inside.
I picked up my sword that I’d left leaning against the wall and held it firmly in my hand. I pressed my back against the wall next to the doorway, ready for whatever was out there to try to barge through the doorway.
The seconds drained by like a dripping faucet. I waited, afraid that even my breathing might give away my defensive position, but nothing happened.
I don’t know what I expected: A knock on the door? Someone trying to ram it? Or maybe there would be a flank attack through one of the windows?
My eyes flashed to the window in the living room. The curtains were drawn, just like Dad always told me to so that if anyone ever showed up, they couldn’t see inside.
Now I wished I hadn’t listened. At least I could see what was out there if their plan was to come in through the window.
“They…they won’t bother us in here,” the stranger said in a gravelly tone. He coughed for several seconds after getting out his sentence and then lowered his head to the floor again, resting it on his forearm.
I frowned. “Who…who are you? Why won’t they come in? Who’s out there?” The questions came out of my mouth like an avalanche.
The man’s eyes closed slowly, and for a moment I didn’t know if they were going to open again. Then they gradually cracked to nothing more than slits. “Your home…is pro…protected,” he muttered. “And not who, but what.”
His head slumped to his forearm again as his eyes closed.
2
I didn’t sleep much that night save for a few moments where I drifted off while lying on the couch. I wasn’t about to go back to bed, not with a strange man passed out on my living room floor.
When he finally woke, I was in the kitchen making breakfast and a fresh pot of coffee, just as I’d done for the last three years.
My back was turned when I heard the barstool shifting on the floor. I didn’t flinch.
“Good morning,” I said, as I poured a cup of the steaming brown liquid into a white mug.
“Morning,” he said. “How…how long was I out?”
“All night,” I said and spun around holding two mugs of brew. “Coffee?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, thank you. Normally, I drink tea, but getting a good cup of joe would really hit the spot right now.” He paused and stared at the coffee maker. “I see you’ve mastered electricity.”
The coffee maker was plugged into a power strip that connected to an extension cord. The system was far from elegant or tidy, but it got the job done. A little lamp was also plugged into the power supply to light the kitchen at night.
“It’s not that complicated,” I said. “Take a few pieces of iron, some copper wire, spin it in a wheel and store the charge in some batteries.”
“I’m impressed.”
I slid the mug across the counter until it touched the back of his hand. He was looking down at the countertop, rubbing the back of his head with the other hand.
“Thank you,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and put both hands on the mug. His lips moved, but he only mumbled in an inaudible whisper.
I took a sip of my coffee and eyed him with caution over the lip of my cup.
“Who are you? And what was after you last night?”
The man raised the mug to his lips and slurped some of the hot liquid. He winced, surprised at how hot it was, and then took another sip.
“What did I tell you last night?” he asked, placing the mug back on the counter.
“You said something was after you. I asked you who. You said it wasn’t a who, but a what. Then you blacked out. Sorry I didn’t move you to one of the beds. Your neck probably hurts from sleeping on the floor. I just didn’t want to wake you.”
“You look tired,” he said with a kind glimmer in his eyes, eyes that were bluer than the Caribbean used to be.
“I was up all night keeping watch.”
He shook his head. “Nothing can harm you in this place.”
My eyes narrowed. “You said that last night.”
“Did I? I don’t remember much about last night. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I just don’t understand what you mean by that. Why can’t I be harmed here? And what was after you last night?”
I paused for a second, waiting for his response, then remembered I still didn’t know the guy’s name. “I’m Evelyn, by the way. Everyone calls me Eve.”
He raised a suspicious eyebrow and looked around in a dramatic show of sarcasm. “Everyone? Who’s everyone?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Back when there were still people around. You know, before the collapse.”
“Ah yes. The fall of man. The moment in history when everything fell apart.” He took a sip of the coffee and smacked his lips. “That’s good coffee, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
“My name is Darius.”
“That’s a good name.”
“I appreciate it.”
“You’re a monk.” I said.
“How…what makes you say that?”
“Well, first off, those robes don’t give it away at all,” I said with a wink.
He looked down at his tattered clothes. “Right. Stupid. Anyway, yes, I am a monk from the order of believers.”
“I figured that, too,” I said with a smirk.
“Of course.” He blushed and took a big gulp of coffee.
“So, tell me, Darius of the order of believers, what were you running from last night, and why can’t it hurt us in here? What’s so special about this cabin?”
He drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. “It’s not the cabi
n that’s special, per se. It’s the location.”
“Location?”
“Yes. This land was a sacred place for the natives that occupied this area long ago. They blessed it, and that blessing has remained in place ever since.”
“Blessed it?” This guy was sounding a little kooky now.
“A blessing is a powerful thing, as is a curse.” His tone grew somber. “I fear that a great curse is coming, one that will ravage the land of humans and finish what we started.”
Now he was talking too fast. “Whoa, hold on a second. A curse is coming? What curse? And what are you talking about, finish what we started?”
“We started killing our own species millennia ago. First, we did it with wars. Then we began recklessly polluting our planet. We ignored the signs and thus sealed our fate. This scourge that is coming will finish the job unless….” He stopped for moment.
“Unless what?” I asked, curious.
“Unless someone powerful can rise up and defeat it.”
“Okay. And what is this curse, exactly?”
“The creature that attacked me last night isn’t human. It was Eliri.”
My eyebrows knit together and mirrored my confusion. “Eliri? What’s that?”
“It is the name of a race that was banned from roaming the Earth for nearly seven thousand years. They’ve been hiding, most of them deep in caves all over the globe. Others stuck to the forests, making sure they only hunted at night. Usually, people only reference them in wild ghost stories—legends or myths. The general population of Earth didn’t believe they were real.
“Now, however, the Eliri are coming. They have sensed the fall of man. Word has spread through their kingdom, and they seek to return and conquer, to enslave what’s left of us. They will swarm everywhere on this planet, slaughtering men, women, and children along the way until they have it all.”
I felt like I was listening to a fairy tale, one with a sinister twist. “So, the thing that did this to you last night”—I motioned to his shredded robes—“was Eliri?”
“Yes. They’ve gone by many names. The most common is vampiri or vampire.”
My eyes went wide with surprise. A second later, rational thinking took over. “Vampire? You were attacked by a vampire?”
Darius sighed. “I know. Most of the world’s population would say that’s crazy, that they don’t exist. When they were driven back by the last great believers thousands of years ago, part of the plan was to make people think vampires didn’t exist. It was a propaganda campaign of global proportions, but it was necessary to keep the peace.”
Well, that settles it, I thought. This guy is nuts.
“I’m just glad a werewolf didn’t get you,” I said. There wasn’t even a slight effort on my part to hide the sarcasm.
“Setiri? Not in this realm. They’re mostly in the north. They prefer to keep to cooler climates. I imagine very soon the Northern Realm will be overrun by them. Then there will be a great war between Setiri and Eliri, a war for control of Earth.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you about all this, but I’ve got to get to work. Crops to tend, chores to do. This little farm doesn’t run itself.”
“I can see you don’t believe me,” Darius said. “You think I’m crazy, that all of this isn’t possible.”
I just stood there for a moment staring at him.
I turned and set my empty coffee mug in the sink and turned on the faucet. The water sputtered for a second and then ran steadily as I rinsed out the cup.
“I know it must sound strange to you, but in my order we have studied all of these things.”
“Studied? Where’d you get a textbook for that?”
“The ancient scrolls my order keeps are full of fascinating things. Most of our time, however, isn’t spent reading them. Usually, we spend much of our days in prayer.”
“Prayer?” My eyebrows raised slightly.
“Yes. Monks all over the world spend their days praying, chanting, meditating. We do it to protect humanity.”
“Well, you all are doing a bang-up job considering we only had a few billion people die during the fall.”
He looked down at his cup and swallowed. “There was only so much we could do. Evil overwhelmed good. It came to a point where all we could do was sit and watch things unravel.”
“Look, Darius, I appreciate you sharing all this with me, but I really have to get to work. Those crops don’t tend themselves. And I’ve got a bunch of other work to do before it gets dark tonight.”
“I understand,” he said. “It was hard for me to believe at first, too.”
“Yeah. Little bit.”
“I didn’t come here by accident, Eve. Your parents didn’t build this cabin by chance in this exact place. It all happened for a reason. You are here for a reason.”
“What do you know about my parents?”
“I know that they disappeared, that you went into the city to find them but all you discovered was a place bereft of its former glory.”
Now he was treading on thin ice. “I don’t know how you know all that or what your game is, but you’d better back off right now, or so help me, I won’t hesitate to kill you myself.”
I raised the sword that had been on the counter next to me and pointed the tip at his throat.
“Your parents,” he said, “you believe they’re dead.”
“They are dead,” I told him. I shook the sword again to reinforce he was not going down a good path.
“No,” he said. “They were taken on the wagons to a train station. There, they were loaded onto a train car and transported north, to the zealot capital.”
Train car? Trains were something from the past that had made a feeble comeback when fossil fuels disappeared. I’d heard one once when I was exploring the valley below, but I never saw it. From what I knew, there weren’t many in operation. God knows what they used for fuel.
I shook my head. “No. Don’t say that. Don’t you tell me any of that. My parents are dead.” Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. I fought hard to keep down the emotions I’d buried so long ago.
“They’re alive, Eve. And they need your help. The world…needs your help.”
“The world?” I frowned at the notion. “I think it’s time for you to leave, Darius. Maybe get some help from a—”
I started to step around the island sink and head to the door to open it for him when a flash of blue light streaked through the kitchen. Everything around me plunged into darkness except for my strange guest and me.
A blue orb of shimmering light floated in front of Darius as he stood with both hands out, palms facing up.
“What…what’s going on? Is this a dream?”
“No,” Darius said. “It isn’t a dream.”
I looked into the glowing orb, half-curious and half-terrified. I wanted to turn and run, or maybe swing my sword and cut one of the guy’s hands off to make it stop. Something—I don’t know what—kept my hands still.
“Look into it,” Darius said, his voice growing more serious.
“What…what is it?” I barely got the words out before I saw something moving in the orb. It was a person. No, it was two people. At first, they were too far away for me to recognize, but their image drew closer like we were zooming in on them with a camera. It only took a second for me to know what Darius was showing me.
“Mom? Dad?” Tears started busting down the dams in my eyes. “What is this? What are you trying to do to me?” Rage, fear, grief, and a thousand other emotions rushed into my chest.
“What I’m doing, Eve, is opening your eyes.”
3
I sat with my hands wrapped around my knees and my legs pulled close to my torso. I was still trying to process what Darius had shown me in his glowing ball—despite what he’d told me for the last hour and a half.
My head shook back and forth as I tried desperately to deny what I’d seen.
“You can try to push it away all yo
u want,” Darius said, standing by the window and staring out at the forest. “That’s not going to make it go away.”
“Why did you show me that?” I said through clenched teeth.
“Because you need to know your parents are alive.” He paused. “And you need to know that you can help them.”
“Help them? How can I help them? I don’t even know where they are.”
“Ah, but you can find them. All you have to do is follow the path.”
I was getting tired of his follow the path crap that he’d been spewing. “What path, Darius? What are you talking about? And what was that glowing orb? Are you some kind of sorcerer or wizard or something? Because I’ll be honest: I don’t believe in magic.”
“That makes two of us.”
His comment took me a little off guard.
“Makes two of us what?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in witchcraft or wizardry, either. Although there are those in the world who do use those things for evil. Should you ever encounter one of those types, it’s best to run the other direction until….”
“Until what?” I asked, looking up from the floor.
“Until your understanding of the power is complete.”
This guy was talking crazy. It was way past time for him to leave.
“Okay. I’m done. You can be on your way. Thanks for stopping by. And you’re welcome for a safe place to crash. Feel free to come by the blessed abode again sometime when you’re not running from vampires and werewolves.”
I got up off the floor and unlocked the door, swung it wide open, and waited for him to go.
He simply stood there by the kitchen island with an awkward smile on his face. “Eve, I know you must be confused, scared, a million things right now. But I tell you the truth. You can save your parents. And—”
“And what?”
“And you can change the world.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Oh really? Me? Little Eve is gonna save the world? Awesome. Save it from what, exactly? The zealots? The bandits that roam the roads? Or am I going to become some vampire hunter, which by the way I don’t believe exist!”