“Hey,” Caitlin whispered.
When she looked down, she was thankful for Mary-Anne’s guidance. Threaded between the trees around the clearing was a fence—waist-high—wrapped with barbed wire, now so rusted and dark that it blended in with the shadows. Caitlin had been only an inch away from piercing her skin on the barbs before she had been pulled back.
“Thanks,” Caitlin said.
“Don’t mention it.”
The voices in the house raised. They could hear the anger in the man’s words, and the woman now cowered in fear. For half a second, Caitlin flashed back to the moment she had hit the governor and he had retaliated.
Whatever was going on in there, it wasn’t good.
“We should help,” Caitlin said, jumping over the wire and tiptoeing towards the building. She took a few steps and stopped, realizing that Mary-Anne hadn’t followed.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“No. This one’s all yours,” Mary-Anne replied.
Caitlin turned to the house, then back to Mary-Anne, noticing then that, once again, the vampire had disappeared from sight.
“Eurgh. I hate it when she does that.”
As she crossed the clearing, she watched the figures with interest. They were animated, clearly caught in a row of sorts. Whatever it was about, the argument was very one-sided. The man appeared to be close to seven-foot, and his companion was no more than five.
They disappeared from her view through the window, and Caitlin heard a slap followed by crying. She began running.
New Leaf, Silver Creek Forest
‘Big Bill’ Tompkins was drunk. Hammered. Plowed. Off his fucking face again. After a long, hard day of chopping wood and repairing the damage on several houses—just a few days ago a horde of Mad had found their way through the fence and attacked their hamlet—he wanted nothing more than to sit on his ass, drink, and relax.
But had he been able to do that?
No-sir-fucking-ree.
Not even another beating would put Alice in her place.
It had been Frank’s wife, Mabel, a pretty young thing with an hour-glass figure and boobs that held her chin up who had told Big Bill what Alice had been up to in the daylight hours while he was away.
“It’s hard not to hear them. Screaming and rolling around like a couple of piggies as they do the nasty business. Can’t believe no one’s told you sooner. Alice and young master Abraham can’t keep their damn hands off each other. It’s unsightly. It’s hard enough to get work done around here without a soundtrack of passion drawing all eyes to your house. Can’t you keep your woman in check?”
Big Bill had grown so red in the face that Mabel clearly thought he might pop. She had pulled Big Bill close to her chest and calmed him down in the only way she knew how—with a nice long kiss to his nether regions as comfort.
When Big Bill came home that night, he had watched Alice with a curious eye. No words were exchanged beyond grunts and mutters. She was red-faced and flushed. He imagined that would be the result of Abe’s prowess replaying in her mind, the ghost of his libido as he pounded Big Bill’s wife again and again.
It was only after dinner had been eaten and Big Bill sat in his favorite chair, a large goblet of murky brown mead at his side, that Alice finally addressed her keeper.
“Long day, sweetie?”
Sweetie… Sure, play nice housewife now. Is that how it’s going to be, huh?
“Sure. Not as good as yours, though, I hear.”
“Huh?” Alice replied, bringing a hand up automatically to cover her face.
“Think I don’t know what goes on in this house when I’m not around?”
And it was from there the argument had spun. For the next hour, they went from room to room, with Alice in tears and Big Bill launching verbal assaults followed by physical assaults. Was he this cruel when he wasn’t drunk? Yes, absolutely. But the alcohol-fueled his rage and Alice could do nothing but try to swim away from the tidal wave. No amount of words would convince him otherwise.
Late into the night, with Alice’s face red with frustration, the final slap had come. Not the kind that covered her arms and legs in bruises, but one that delivered a fresh jolt of hot pain across her face.
For a moment, Alice simply stared at him and held her cheek. It was as if, even after several years of his abuse, she couldn’t believe it.
Big Bill shrugged. “Tell another soul, and you’ll be setting yourself up for more than just a slap. Bitches need to learn to keep their mouth shut, know their place, and keep their legs closed to other men. Got that?”
Alice had been about to reply when—
Boom.
They both turned towards the door that had crashed open to reveal a tall, slender woman in a dark cloak with a determined expression written across her face. Alice stepped back against the wall as if trying to melt into the shadows. Big Bill, however, grew to a level of rage he had never experienced before. He spoke, and spittle flew.
“Stupid bitches. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
The woman took a step forward. “Just your friendly neighborhood keeper of the peace. Now step back and leave this poor woman alone, or things are going to get ugly. And if you want to see just how ugly, then find a mirror and look at your own reflection.” She turned to Alice. “Am I right?”
Alice couldn’t help but laugh.
The giant roared and dove for Caitlin. She had to admit, she wasn’t expecting anything so fast, and she slammed into the wall with a painful expulsion of breath.
They tumbled to the floor, the giant ending up on top of her. His face was a twisted image of red as his anger flooded his features, clearly catalyzed by alcohol.
He punched Caitlin in the face. White stars appeared in her vision. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
As the next punch came, Caitlin used all her energy to push against the wall. She slid under Big Bill’s legs and jumped to her feet. The sound of his fist connecting with the stone floor followed by a loud epithet revealed his pain.
The giant shook his hand in a futile attempt to wave away the agony.
But that didn’t mean he was done.
He glanced sideways to a knife on the worktop as he thrust to his feet. He grabbed the weapon in a second and slashed at Caitlin, who drew and parried with her sword. He was sweating, his eyes unfocused and pupils dilated. If she didn’t do something quickly, it would end badly—for her, that is.
It seemed humans were a lot tougher than mindless zombies.
He licked his lips.
Caitlin poked out her tongue.
That did it for the giant. He seemed to reach boiling point, a volcano about to erupt and spit lava all over the house. He slashed again and caught Caitlin’s arm. A white-hot pain spiked through her as she saw the skin part and blood trickle out.
Without another thought, she smacked the knife out of the giant’s hand, bent to retrieve it, and stabbed forward.
The giant swung for her, and the knife drove into his side. He gasped and groaned, falling to the floor but grabbing at her clothes on the way down.
“You—” The giant’s words cut short on a bellow of pain.
He crashed to the floor but summoned an unexpected burst of energy and chomped at her ankle. Had she not moved a moment earlier, she would have been missing a good chunk of it. He grasped at his side for the knife, withdrew it with a horrible wet sound, and made one last effort to drive the blade into Caitlin’s flesh.
That was enough for her, whose heart now raced with the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She saw the knife coming for her, and in instinctual defense, she attacked. In a single flash of silver, she raised her sword at incredible speed and stabbed it through the giant’s back.
He looked down in dreamlike surprise before the final whisper of air escaped his lungs.
Caitlin took a deep breath, then turned her attention to the woman who still cowered on the other side of the room with her hands over her mouth.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry it ended that way,” she said, though she wasn’t sorry at all.
When the woman removed her hands, Caitlin was surprised to see a beaming smile on her face.
“Who…who are you?” she stuttered.
Caitlin shrugged, twisting the blade. “A new age of hope.” She looked down at the giant. “Just not for scum like him.”
“Thank you,” the woman named Alice said as she sat at her table and drank from the goblet that had formerly belonged to her keeper. “I don’t know what he would’ve done if you hadn’t arrived. He thought I was cheating on him. How stupid would that have been to do in a hamlet as small as this?”
“Men think crazy things when they’ve been drinking. Actually”—Caitlin paused to rephrase her words—“men just do crazy shit, full stop. You should see what the men do where I come from,” Caitlin said, taking a sip herself.
Alice studied her. “Where did you learn to move like that? I’ve never seen anyone move so quickly with a blade. Even our best fighters would struggle to keep up with your speed. It’s almost as if…” She trailed off and fixed her gaze on the table.
“As if what?” Caitlin said, reaching across the table and taking Alice’s hand.
“It’s stupid, really. We keep a stock of ancient books here in a cabin just down the way. While Bill works, I do my chores, but that still leaves me with a lot of the day to fill. So I read. Just a few weeks ago, I stumbled across books that talk as if from a history text about…well…vampires.” Alice bit her lip.
Caitlin pulled back and burst into laughter. “Me? A vampire? I think that slap may have rattled a few pieces around in your head.”
Alice stiffened and pulled away, her face red and openly defensive. “Why not? What else explains your sudden appearance in the middle of the night? Your speed? Your…pale complexion—”
“Clearly, you’ve not read your books properly. If you really want to know what a vampire looks like—”
“Then here it is,” Mary-Anne said, materializing from the shadows. Alice turned around and suddenly recoiled, running to stand behind Caitlin.
Caitlin had to admit, the effect of a person appearing from the shadows with eyes glowing bright red was rather intense. Had she not known Mary-Anne as well as she now did, she might even shit herself too. But instead, she found herself laughing.
“Okay, cut it out now. Alice has been through enough tonight.”
Mary-Anne’s eyes extinguished. “Sorry. Even vampires like to have their fun.”
“So you’re a…you’re a… It’s true?” Alice babbled.
Mary-Anne opened her mouth, and two fangs grew. “As true as anything.”
“But…how? The textbooks say that your kind are extinct. That when the Madness came, it brought with it a degenerative virus which affected vampires and…” She paused and gasped. “Does that mean that Weres are real, too?”
Mary-Anne cast a brief glance at Caitlin as if deciding this was a conversation for later. “One thing at a time, I think.”
“The books say that something in Unknown blood broke down, killing all vampires and forcing Weres into permanent states of either their human form or their animal form. It says there are none left out there anymore, and that the world now belongs to the Mad.” Alice looked saddened at this last part.
“Your textbooks are partly true,” Mary-Anne said, “though there is far more to the story than I have the time or wherewithal to bestow upon you. Truth is, there are still Weres and vampires in the world—of that I’m sure. I think… I hope, at least, though with the Madness there is something at play which has taken its toll on my kind. Forcing them into hiding or even forcing them into taking extreme actions to fight for their own survival. A sickening turn of events from a world where not more than just under a hundred years ago, all species got along.” Mary-Anne looked out the window at the sky now turning to a deep purple, a sign of the rising sun.
“But there will be time for this later. I must find somewhere to sleep away the day. Caitlin, are you ready to run?” Mary-Anne presented her back for Caitlin to hop onto.
“Wait!” Alice said, suddenly alarmed at the idea of their departure. “There’s a cellar below. You can sleep down there. I can’t thank you enough for arriving when you did, and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some difficult conversations tomorrow. If the governor’s men discover that Big Bill is dead, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Caitlin’s ears pricked up. “The governor? As in ‘Governor Trisk?’”
“Yes. They come around once a week to check that the villages and hamlets are providing the resources needed for Trisk’s cause.” She stopped when she saw the look on Caitlin’s face. “Why?”
Caitlin ground her teeth. “Because it was he who forced me out into the woods. It was the governor who threatened my brother and me with death if we didn’t deliver this vampire to him. This same man failed to tell any of us common folk in Silver Creek that the world was bigger than our own walls.” She clenched her fists, her hands shaking by her sides. “To tell you the truth, the more I learn about Trisk, the more reasons I’m finding to rip out his fucking throat.”
Chapter Twelve
New Leaf, Silver Creek Forest
Caitlin stayed up for the best part of the morning, talking with Alice. They moved Big Bill’s body to the bedroom, rolling him under the bed to hide him.
“Another one bites the dust,” Caitlin said, throwing the bed sheet over the edge to shield the body.
Alice laughed at that. If she hadn’t already unloaded all the nasty things Big Bill used to do to her, Caitlin would have been surprised by her humor. She already wanted to forget some of the unspeakable details Alice had shared that night.
As the morning wore on, Caitlin discovered more and more about Alice, her former lover, and New Leaf. It seemed that Caitlin was the first person, aside from Trisk’s men, she had ever come there from an outside village. New Leaf had made its reputation by sticking within the safety of its borders and provided wood and fish for the governor’s use. Once a week, the men would come from Silver Creek—never their leader himself, of course—strip them of the goods they had collected and earned, drink excessive volumes of their locally brewed mead, and rape several of their women.
“There’s normally ten of them on horseback, but not always. They come, they leap the fence, they demand what is rightfully ours,” Alice explained. “There’s little in the way of manners, and the women don’t even resist anymore. There’s a saying here in New Leaf, ‘If you’re born ugly, you’re lucky.’ The guards don’t touch the ugly ones unless they’re excessively drunk because they mostly have their favorites.”
“Why? Why does no one argue or fight? Why don’t the men stand up for their women?” Caitlin asked. Outside the house, she could hear people moving about now. The bright sun offered little cheer as it shone through the window.
“It’s the way of things here. Some of the men admire the guards, want to be like them. Others have seen what happens when they try to resist. It doesn’t help that the guards have better weapons and greater numbers. We think of them like the Hydra.” When Caitlin returned a blank expression, Alice explained. “A beast of myth. The stories tell that for every head that was cut off the beast, three more would grow back in its place. If we took any of the governor’s guards down, we don’t know how many more would come.” Alice sighed.
Caitlin noticed scars lining Alice’s arm and wondered if they were the work of Big Bill or of Trisk’s men. It didn’t matter, she supposed. At the end of the day, they were all capable of the same shit.
Alice continued, “I’m told of a time when our ancestors used to wander free and chose to do whatever they liked. A time when, if you wanted to be a soldier, you signed up and trained. If you wanted to marry and settle down with kids, that was a choice, too.”
Alice glanced at the bedroom.
This was all difficult to process. Caitlin had thought that she had problems at Silver Creek
. That life there had been tough enough having to watch the patriarchy and the men go out and do the dirty work. But here…
Talk turned to Silver Creek and Caitlin’s life there. Alice asked questions and her eyes widened at every mention of how big the town was and the large community within its walls.
“I’d love to see it.”
“Nah. You wouldn’t. To be honest, it’s the same shit show as here, only with more people, and you get to actually see the governor once a week.”
“What’s he like?” Alice asked, eyes in wonder.
“Imagine a newborn pig, only ten times larger.” Caitlin held her arms wide and puffed out her cheeks.
Alice burst into laughter.
A banging sounded on the door.
“Oi! What’s so funny in there?” came a deep voice.
Caitlin studied Alice as she suddenly became alert.
“Shit. Right on time.” Alice flapped her arms and placed a finger over her lips. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”
“The governor’s men?”
Alice nodded.
Caitlin couldn’t believe the fear that suddenly manifested in Alice. All blood drained from her cheeks. She looked panicked, completely uncertain of what to do. She imagined the men outside the door with their grimy faces, licking their lips. Was Alice right? With Big Bill indisposed, would these men try their luck at taking another helpless maiden?
“Hey, we know you’re in there. We don’t like being ignored,” the voice boomed as several more fists pounded on the door. The wood bowed in its frame.
An idea struck Caitlin. The guards didn’t know that she was there. She had the element of surprise…
“Let them in,” Caitlin whispered.
Alice’s mouth dropped. “Are you crazy? Caitlin, the last time a gang of the governor’s men came into my house when Big Bill was gone I—”
She trailed off, a tear gathering in the corner of her eye.
Caitlin took Alice’s shoulders. “Look, I know they hurt you. I know you’re terrified right now. But trust me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
The Caitlin Chronicles Boxed Set Page 11