by Ava Benton
I heard trickling all around me, inside the mountain, running through cracks and crevices.
Water ran in thin lines down the insides of the walls, which even more water had worn smooth over time. There was no visible source of light, and yet I could see the way. Probably because of some form of magic or another.
I didn’t know much about the specifics of witchcraft, even after spending so much of my existence alongside the wretches. Yes, wretches. I couldn’t be accused of being a fan of witches.
She was just another one of them, but right away I knew she was the worst. Whatever her story was, she held her tongue until there was light visible at the end of the tunnel.
It felt as though we had been running for hours. If I hadn’t just awoken from my long sleep and had more time to regain my strength through feeding, I would’ve been much faster.
My new charge had me at a disadvantage.
I stopped short of exiting the tunnel and flying out into the woods, and she stopped running when she noticed.
“Come on! We’re almost out!” Her tone was hectic, her face flushed. Her eyes were too bright, too wide. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she gasped for breath.
Long, reddish light brown hair stuck to her face in sweaty clumps. She looked like a madwoman, and the fact that she wore clothing which looked as though she had stolen it from a man and spent weeks rolling in the dirt while wearing it didn’t help matters.
“I need to dress. I’m nearly naked, remember? I don’t relish the thought of walking through the forest in my bare feet.”
There was no telling what was inside the bag until I opened it. Trousers, an undershirt, socks, shoes with heavy, rubber soles. The trousers were loose, but a leather belt cinched the waist neatly.
“I didn’t know how big you would be, so I tried to guess,” she said, so excited she shifted from one foot to the other and bounced from heel to ball and back again. Her eyes never left the tunnel we had come through.
“I don’t understand any of this. If you’re doing something I’ll end up suffering for…” I pulled on a thin jacket, then looked at the tinted glasses left in the bag.
“To conceal your eyes if we meet any humans,” she explained. “The red rim around the iris unsettles them.”
“I would imagine.” I slid the glasses into the inside jacket pocket.
“Great. Let’s go.” She tugged my sleeve, and I obliged, but I was careful to extend my hand out into the sunshine to be sure the spell worked, and I wouldn’t burn to death.
All I felt was the gentle warmth of the sun’s rays. It was a pleasant sensation. I was glad to feel it instead of having to hunt only at night, hiding for my safety during the day. Though it came at a price: my freedom.
She was already well ahead of me, practically running down the path leading from the entrance to The Fold.
I hurried to keep up. It was getting easier, the longer I was on my feet. My body was waking up.
“I can’t very well protect you if you run out of sight!” I called out.
“That’s not what I’m concerned with, Nightwarden!” she called back over her shoulder. “We have to get as far away from The Fold as possible!”
“Why?” I asked as I plunged through waist-high bushes, following her retreating figure as she left the path and ran deeper into the woods. Her already heavy breathing was starting to become labored, but she didn’t slow down.
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be in there! You haven’t figured that out by now?”
I wanted to stop and let the information sink in, try to make sense of it—even go back, if possible. I didn’t want this half-crazed wild woman to drag me into her world.
But she had already started the imprint, and while our connection wasn’t as strong as it would be after multiple feedings, it was there, and it wouldn’t allow me to desert her.
And she knew it.
“Stop, damn you!” I caught up with her and clapped one hand on her thin shoulder, nearly bare thanks to the sleeveless shirt. Like a man’s undershirt. Had things changed so much in a century?
She was ready to stop, too. Exhausted. She swayed on her feet, breathing in deep, desperate gulps.
“I… I need to get far away. We need… far away…” She leaned against a thick tree, its branches providing a canopy against the sun.
Sweat ran down her face in rivulets, and a perspiration odor had begun to waft from her skin and clothing.
I could see much more of her in the daylight than I had inside, where all was dark even to my vampire eyes. Dirt streaked her face, caked in the fine lines around her eyes.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” I held both of her shoulders and shook her until she looked at me. “Why did you wake me? What do you want?”
“I want your help,” she murmured, still breathing heavy. Her chest heaved up and down.
“Do you have water? You need water.” I looked through the second bag she’d been carrying, which had fallen to the ground when she stopped running.
The canteen was empty.
“I’ve been… I’ve been looking for days…” she whispered, eyes closed, head back against the tree.
“Looking for what?” I touched the back of my hand to her forehead to check for temperature.
She had to be sick. Insane and sick.
“The Fold. I… didn’t know how to find it without the rest of them. The Council. I couldn’t see the way anymore. I couldn’t see the way.” She sank to the ground, legs folding under her.
I looked around, trying to discern the location of the running water I could barely hear.
There had to be a stream somewhere, a brook. “I’ll get water. You stay here. Do not move. Understood?”
She nodded, eyes still closed.
I was starting to get my wits about me. Waking up after being in stasis for so long was never easy, but being forced out of it and wrenched into the present time was a nightmare. And barely having been given enough blood to function and regain my energy simply didn’t cut it.
Having to think on my feet when half of my consciousness was still stuck in a century-long sleep was like moving through molasses.
No matter how hard I’d struggled, I had only gotten myself stuck worse and worse in overlapping thoughts and memories.
But things were clearing up.
I focused on the sound of running water and following it until I caught sight of a babbling brook whose water was crystal clear and inviting.
I almost wished my new witch had come with me so she could take a dip, maybe clean herself off a bit. Her stench was like a cloud which hung around me even when I wasn’t in her presence anymore. I could still smell her, and the scent made my nose wrinkle in distaste.
Bending to fill the canteen, I splashed the icy cold water on my face and enjoyed the way my skin tingled. I was alive again, even if that meant only being half-alive. More monster than man.
I splashed water on the back of my neck and enjoyed the brisk sensation which helped cool my overheated thoughts.
She was waiting for me when I got back to her, just as I had asked, resting with her eyes closed. She would’ve been a beautiful woman if she took care of herself. I had obviously made her acquaintance when she wasn’t feeling her best. When I guided the mouth of the canteen to her lips, she drank with a happy groan until water ran over her chin and down her throat.
Sloppy, like everything else about her.
“Better,” she sighed with a weak smile. “Forgive me. I’ve been looking such a long time. I haven’t been able to truly rest in so long. I still can’t, not until my mission is complete, but having you with me will make things so much easier.”
I sat nearby, facing her, always aware of the sounds around me. The birds, the animals, the rustling of the leaves above our heads.
She was my charge now, and I had to protect her. Even if it meant protecting her from herself.
“What were you looking for? What’s your mission? And how am I supposed to hel
p you?” I spoke slowly, calmly, no matter how much I wanted to yell in her face and ask why she had to make me part of whatever it was she dealt with.
Just like a witch, so self-centered, acting without thinking. Didn’t she know what would happen to me if anybody found out I left ahead of schedule? Without an assignment?
“I need to find him. Ralf.”
“Ralf?” I leaned away from her. That name hadn’t come up for me in hundreds of years, though his presence hung over everything I did. “What do you want with my Sire?”
Her smile was sweet but tired. “I want to live the life we were always supposed to have together. I love him. I need to be with him. And you’re going to help me find him, because I’ve imprinted on you and you must.”
Chapter 2
Alexander
I reeled slightly as her words sank in, and her smile never wavered—though it looked slightly sympathetic.
“I apologize for involving you in this,” she said, as though she were reading my mind, “but there was no other way I could come up with to find him. I need the help of one of the vampires he turned, so many centuries ago. And, of course, I’ll need protection as I travel. I’ve had so many close calls in the time since I set out to find The Fold.”
When I found my voice, I croaked, “How do you know about The Fold? How did you know to look here for vampires at all?”
“Oh, Alexander. It’s me. Claudia. You don’t remember me at all? Do I look so different?” She pushed her hair back with both hands and twisted it into a bun on the back of her head. “When we last met, I wore it this way. That was back in the early Victorian days, the last time you awoke and imprinted.”
I blinked hard and tried to think back.
An entire century and more had passed.
When would I have met her? She was obviously a witch, but why would we have known each other? I had served as Nightwarden to another then, but this wasn’t her.
“I don’t know you,” I finally admitted.
“Understood. I suppose you were too involved with your new charge at the time to notice the presence of the High Council during the ritual.”
“You were part of the High Council?”
Yet she looked as though she lived in the woods and bathed in dirt. From what I remembered of the Council’s witches, they were serene and lovely and lived in what amounted to a castle somewhere in New York State. Perhaps things had changed.
“Was. Past tense.” She took more water, then splashed some of it on her face and rubbed her hand over her skin. All that did was smear the dirt around. “They… released me from service many years ago.”
“Why? I didn’t know such a thing was possible. It seemed to me to be a…”
“Life sentence?” she suggested ruefully. “Sort of like yours.”
“Not my entire life. Only a thousand years.” The thousand years all the vampires Ralf would get credit for that we, his creations, had to serve as nothing more than indentured servants, conscripted guardians.
“Right. Of course.”
She’d piqued my curiosity. “Why did they release you?”
It must have been for a very serious infraction. Or perhaps because she went crazy. Did people go crazy anymore? Evidently so, since she believed she was in love with my Sire, a vampire no one but a chosen few had seen in hundreds of years.
“Because I fell in love. A long, long time ago. I kept it hidden from them, my sisters, and they allowed me to remain Ralf’s guardian because they weren’t aware of how deep my connection with him ran.”
I raised a brow. The story was dubious, but there was a chance it was true. Perhaps. “And Ralf? How did he feel about this?”
How could I believe her? She sounded like a raving lunatic. Falling in love with the vampire she was to guard while he was imprisoned.
“He loved me, too.” She said it so simply, so plainly, that I knew she believed herself.
I felt it, too—even the small bit of blood she had dripped into my mouth gave me insight into her emotions. She did love him, and she did believe her feelings were returned.
Whether they were was not for me to say.
I remembered Ralf well enough to remember how his self-interest came above all. He had created us, his “family,” and it was his selfish hunger which had damned us to a millennium of service to the witches descended from the coven of that original High Sorceress. The one whose daughter Ralf fed on and killed, even though he knew who she was.
“How long did you know him?” I asked. “How many years did you spend with him?”
“One-hundred and seventeen,” she announced with pride. As though it were a badge of honor. “You were in stasis when the others found us out. They banished me from the High Council and forbade me from ever seeing him again. I’ve looked for him all this time, many years. In vain.”
“All that time and you weren’t able to get back to him?”
“You look skeptical,” she murmured. “I cannot blame you for that. You see, they moved him elsewhere—and when the Council banished me, they wiped from my memory the exact location of this place, The Fold. Looking for Ralf on my own is an utter waste of time, though I have wasted more time than I would like to admit on the endeavor. One day, I had an idea. If I could find The Fold and wake one of you, you might be able to help me. Your Sire-bond must be strong enough to enable you to track him.”
The idea was too ludicrous for words.
I stammered, searching for a way to explain how deluded she had allowed herself to become. “I wouldn’t know where to start—besides, the bond doesn’t work that way. I’ve never been able to feel his presence except in the very early days, when our bond was at its strongest. I have spent so many years as a Nightwarden, feeding from witches like yourself, that his presence has faded in my consciousness.”
Her dark, troubled eyes searched my face, hoping to find something that wasn’t there. I was not lying. I hadn’t felt Ralf’s presence in my mind for longer than I could remember.
“I have not come all this way for you to turn me down,” she whispered. “I have not made the sacrifices I have made for you to put an end to my dreams. I must be with him. I must have my love.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek, and I averted my eyes. Physical displays of emotion had never meant much to me, and watching them made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t remember being human, feeling things at such a deep level.
Even so, I knew for certain that she wasn’t insane. Obsession and thwarted love had twisted her.
“What do you expect me to do, even when I’ve explained how things are?”
“I’m going to keep looking for him. I will. If I have to throw myself on the mercy of one of the covens, I’ll do that. If I have to reach out to a sorcerer to ask for information, I’ll do that. It doesn’t matter.”
“A sorcerer?” I winced at the thought. “I think what you’ve done here is dangerous enough without bringing a sorcerer into it.”
She sighed, standing, and brushed dirt off the seat of her trousers. That was a waste of time, since they were already filthy. How long had it been since she last took care of herself?
“Whether you believe this is a wise idea or not, you are part of this now. You’ve imprinted on me, and you’ll have to continue feeding from me if you expect to survive. Or make your presence known by feeding on humans, so that witches can find you and finish you off. Or you can indulge in the blood of forest creatures. I’m sure that will ease your thirst. ”
The thought turned my stomach, and I looked up at her with growing disgust—bordering on hatred, even. “I’ve been a slave to those of your kind for long enough.”
“And you won’t have to be a slave anymore, not once you help me find my love,” she replied almost instantly, as though she had anticipated my argument. “Once I find him and can be with him again, you can go away. Anywhere you want. There is no record of what happened to you. No one need know you’re with me. Once our work is finished, you’ll be free to go.
”
“I won’t be able to feed from you once you disappear with Ralf, so why prolong the inevitable? Why risk myself now when I can go back to The Fold and ask forgiveness when the Council discovers what happened?” I stood, facing her. “What’s stopping me from going now?”
“I am.”
A flutter of movement flashed in the corner of my eye, and I assumed it was a bird or animal—until I caught sight of the rifle’s muzzle pressed against Claudia’s temple.
Claudia’s eyes flew open wide, mirroring my own.
We had been so deep in our argument that we hadn’t noticed that we had company.
“Lower that rifle,” I warned the stranger.
Definitely female from the sound of the voice. Small, compact, wearing men’s clothing the way Claudia did.
So it wasn’t a mistake, her dressing herself that way.
“Or what?” she hissed. She wore a cap with a long, wide brim which cast her face in shadow.
“Or I’ll be forced to disarm you. If not worse.”
She snickered. “You could try, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve. You’ll have to be pretty fast.”
“I think you’d be surprised how fast I can be.” Only I wasn’t as fast as I could be, not without feeding more.
She managed to move quicker than I did, flinging her hand in my direction so fast and with so much force that she slammed me into a tree.
The air left my lungs, and I hit the ground with a gasp.
“Well, well, well,” I heard over the sound of my gasps for air. “You’re a vampire.”
I lifted my head and glared up at her. “And you’re a witch.”
Chapter 3
Daniela
I looked at the witch I had been tracking for days. She could’ve thrown magic at me, but she didn’t. My instincts about her were right. I couldn’t wait to tell Gwyneth I was right. There was a reason I was leader of the group, and that my sister was only the second-in-command.