PART I)
Anne’s heart beat in her ears as she stumbled across the dips and rises of the grassy hill. Her fingers searched and scrabbled through weeds and dirt, and her nails chipped against the hard edges of rock. She cast her gaze around. Dusk was the worst time of day to lose anything of value. She couldn’t leave without finding it though. Matthew, Sam’s son, had given her the bracelet the day before, and the gems in it were real topaz and hematite.
Her stomach sank as she glared at the grass once more: The sky was getting too dark—she wouldn’t find it tonight. Worse, the sheep had scattered with her frantic movements through their midst. She straightened, sucking in a breath as she looked around. The herd had scattered far and wide across the hillside. There would never be enough time to gather them all and herd them home before full dark.
Her chest constricted. It wasn’t fair. They’d finally been able to settle down in one place for longer than a year before it started all over again. It had caught up to them though. No one in the village stayed out after dark anymore. Already, she could hear the strange, wailing cries echoing from far off.
She stood, undecided, hands clenched into fists against the goose bumps which broke out up and down her arms. Nothing was safe outside after dark, not even livestock, and their herd was small enough as it was. Starting over repeatedly was hard and scraping together enough to afford the tiny herd had taken the better part of a year. With just her and her mom, every sheep was necessary for survival.
She bit her lip, cursing herself. She hadn’t wanted to take Matthew’s gift at first. She’d been saving up to purchase the bracelet herself. He was a very nice boy, but there was something about him that made her uneasy—she just couldn’t quite decide what it was.
So she’d scrimped and held back pennies from the sale of sheep’s wool in the market. Guilt had plagued her at the thought of holding back those few pennies. Her mother needed them to buy the herbs she used for potions she sold in the village. The guilt had not been strong enough to stop Anne, but saving up enough had taken so long. By the time Matthew opened his hand and showed her the topaz bracelet, shining with newness, every longing she’d ever had to own something pretty rose up to choke her. She hadn’t been able to push it away.
So she’d taken it with a twinge of guilt at the brightening in his eyes, and placed it around her wrist. She’d loved the feel of it and flaunted it to the other girls in the village, the same girls who’d taunted her for her worn skirts and faded ribbons. It had felt so good to have something new and precious. She hadn’t shown it to her mother in fear she would be made to give it back.
She’d worn it while herding the sheep, toying with it and twisting it around her wrist. Then, she’d fallen asleep, lulled by the warmth of the sun shining down and her fantasies of grandeur. When she woke, startled by the noise of the disturbed herd, she found it gone.
She cursed again. That was bad enough, now the sheep were at risk as well. It was possible some of the sheep would make it through the night, but not all of them—maybe not even most of them. Her mother was going to kill her. She stood a moment longer, aching with indecision, before another cry wafted in the air. She stiffened. She couldn’t stay out any longer: The sounds were moving closer.
She grabbed her skirts with one hand and held the other in front of her to balance herself and guard against the shadows of large boulders and bushes. The sound grew louder and her heart pounded as she picked up her pace. When one of the sheep bleated in alarm off to her right, she picked up her skirts in both hands and broke out into a full run. There was a flurry of alarm behind her, the sound of sheep scattering. She pushed herself to run faster.
Dodging around shadows, she sprinted down the hillside, gathering speed. She didn’t see the rock until too late. Her foot caught and the ground came up at her fast. She lifted her hands in a warding gesture, breaking her fall. Sharp pain scraped up her palms and wrists as she skidded and came to a stop, her skirts tangled around her. Stunned, she sucked in a breath. Sheep were bleating behind her amidst noises so awful she didn’t want to consider what caused them. With difficulty, she pushed herself to her feet, biting her lip against a sudden pain in her ankle. The death of the poor animal behind her had granted her a few moments of reprieve.
Hobbling, she began moving again and the noises faded away as she gained some distance. After a few moments, she crested a small rise. From just a little ways off, the brightened windows of her mother’s cottage beckoned her cheerfully. She let out a breath of relief.
The snap of a twig behind her broke the stillness.
She stiffened. Turning, she faced the creature, wincing at the pain stabbing its way up her leg. Shaggy black hair obscured glowing red eyes and the skin of his face was bone white, whiter than the teeth he bared in a rictus-like grin.
“So, the little witch’s daughter has gotten caught out at night,” he said. His voice was a dry rasp that felt like spiders crawling their way up her spine.
She hunched her shoulders, and took a limping step back. “What do you want?” Her voice quavered. She took another blind, hobbling step backward, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was edging closer to the cottage. The chuckle that wafted through the air sent the hairs of her neck standing on edge.
“What do I want?” He moved a step closer and she halted. She let out a shivering sigh of breath as she froze, terrified he would chase her if she moved again. Swallowing against the sudden dryness of her throat, she let her gaze slide to her left, gauging how far it would be to run the rest of the way to her cottage. There was a sound, a rustle of movement, and she snapped her gaze back to him. He was much closer than before and she tensed, her whole body quivering with the need to run.
“Hmm, what do I want?” he asked again, a sarcastic tone winding its way through the words in a way she couldn’t understand. He was just too close. She sucked in another breath as she moved backwards another step, reaching behind her blindly as she almost stumbled with the pain in her ankle.
“I want what I once had, little one.” He took another step closer and her heart began pounding harder. She stumbled backward again, falling as her ankle twisted underneath her. He advanced on her with a slow, steady gait. All she could do was look up, mute, into his glittering red gaze.
“I want what I once had, witch’s daughter. You are the key to getting it.”
The scream left her lips too late as he swept her into his icy hold. By the time the front door of the cottage opened and her mother called out her name in panic, they were gone.
She struggled against him, fighting to pull away, her scream strangled into silence by her need to get away now. He tightened his grip, his icy fingers pressing into the folds of her cloak.
It was hard. Much harder than he’d expected it would be: the smell of life beating at the dip in her neck and the hard pounding of her heart beating in fright. An acid ache began to burn from his clenched stomach to the back of his throat and he grimaced. He would have to put her down soon. He pushed faster and faster, the wind whipping by in whistles as he sped between trees, seeking the deeper forests.
She shifted against him, her struggles weakened by shock, and his skin went clammy with the rising burn of hunger. He had to get as far from the witch as possible. He had to put her down now. His grip tightened. She went slack in his arms and his throat constricted, but there was no way for him to stop and see if she still lived.
Stopping would be the death of them both.
The burn grew with each minute until it became a red wash of pain consuming him, and still he pushed on. He lost all sense of time as he sped faster; faster than he’d ever pushed himself in the entirety of his half-life. The entire world became filled with the need to consume and the equally conflicting need to preserve his existence.
He sped on through most of the night. The burn became so great, that at last he had almost resolved to consume her and die when the shadowed stone walls of the monastery came into sight.
Tension eased
from his shoulders so suddenly he almost dropped her. He stopped abruptly, swaying with exhaustion and the terrible hunger. He almost laid her down right there, on the shadowed grass, desperate to get away from her before he gave in to the desire which would kill them both. He gritted his teeth and walked, slow and deliberate, through the trees and up to the shadowed, vine-infested entrance. The front gate was ajar as it always was: No one came here since the monks had fled. He carried her inside the gates, passing the homely courtyard, and through the opened doors of the monastery itself.
The holy ground of the monastery burned the soles of his feet as it always did, but he continued on, grim. The holiness of the place instantly banished the curse of his hunger; he could bear the pain of burned soles to be rid of the curse which plagued him. The tension eased from his shoulders, the reprieve from pain lightening her weight in his arms. He glanced down at her and was relieved to see she was still breathing. It wouldn’t do to have the only means to ending the curse die before she had ever proved her usefulness.
He passed through the large hall, stepping around fallen chairs and broken furniture, carrying her to the back rooms where monks had once done their penance. He came to the first door: He had prepared it once he found the witch. He kicked open the door and carried her inside, laying her limp body on the blanket covered cot against the side wall.
He watched her for a moment. Her hair was the color of chocolate and glossy against her pale face. Her eyelids looked bruised with the shadow of fear and exhaustion, and her lips were pressed together tightly even in sleep. He pressed his own lips together in a sudden anger he couldn’t explain.
He turned abruptly and left the cell, locking it behind him with a key the last inhabitants had left behind in fear and haste. He left her there, striding away to find something to ease the hunger which began to burn through even the dubious protection the monastery provided. He could deny it there, for a time, but even that was temporary; he could not deny it forever. But at least he would not die this night.
He exited the monastery and began to hunt.
Anne woke, throwing out her arms and thrashing with such terror she fell off the cot, cracking her elbow against the stone floor. She sucked in a breath as the pain blossomed and spread up her arm, and stilled. The pain seared through the fog of shock and sleep and she lay stunned, sucking in air, desperately trying to calm herself.
The pain receded slowly; once it was gone, she pushed herself up, weakly leaning her back against the cot and looking at her surroundings. The room was small, square in shape, and the walls were cold gray stone. There was one barred window high up on the wall; she had never been tall, but even if she had been, she would not have been able to reach it. A bucket for waste sat in the corner and a small cot with blankets stood at her back and that was all.
She began to feel her chest tightening again and steeled herself against the panic. She was alive, there might be some way to escape. She felt the first stirrings of curiosity. Why was she alive? It was strange that, after each village they had left, fleeing the creature which stalked them, she should so obviously be not dead.
It was what she had feared. It was what her mother had feared.
Each time they left a place, it was at the news of some girl’s disappearance in life, and reappearance as a corpse. And each time, her mother’s face when she had heard the news held a terrible weight of guilt and grief…and a terrible satisfaction. She wondered what look her mother’s face would hold now the worst had finally happened.
She heard the sound of rattling keys and startled. Her heart raced as she snapped her head to stare at the heavy wooden door barring her only escape from the icy stone room. It creaked open slowly, whining on its rusted hinges. Her skin prickled, goose bumps rising up and down her skin. She pressed herself back against the cot, bringing her arms around herself, and stared up at the figure that entered the room.
“You are awake, I see.” His voice was as she remembered it, the strange mix between a rasp and a whisper.
She swallowed hard and spoke. “Yes.”
He tilted his head, unkempt hair obscuring his glittering red eyes. “What is your name?” She stared at him, unable to understand his words. Her name? Why did he want her name?
He spoke again, impatience tinting his voice. “If I’m to call you anything, it must be something other than ‘girl.’ What is your name?”
“Anne,” she said, her voice hoarse.
He nodded. “You may call me, Wraith.”
She stared at him for a moment. Why was he giving his name? Wasn’t he going to kill her?
“What do you want?” She almost didn’t recognize her voice when she spoke; it was high and shaky with fear.
He raised dark eyebrows, mocking her. “What do I want? I told you already. I want what I once had.”
She shook her head, not understanding and not caring what he meant. “I don’t have what you want,” she said, fighting the panic which threatened to seep into her voice. “Whatever it is you’re looking for, I don’t have it in my possession.”
He smiled at her bitterly. She shuddered; corpse white and inset with eyes which glowed red, it was not a smile that belonged on his face. It was not the face of a human, not the face of a live person at all.
“Oh, but you do. The witch promised us an end to this half-life if we could but master ourselves. She swore we could break the curse with a girl willing to grant us what we had not seen fit to grant the first.”
She didn’t understand. Her mother had cursed him?
He was speaking, his red gaze going flat and distant. “Seven times we tried. Once a year for the last seven years, we followed the witch’s footsteps and tried to break the curse,” he stopped, his raspy voice trailing off as a strange emotion crossed his visage.
It shocked her; she would never have expected to see grief on his face.
He continued after a moment, with obvious difficulty. “Each year, for the last seven years, we would try to break the curse. And each year, for the last seven years, one of us would lose control of the hunger. The girl would die. The one who fed from her would die.” Anne felt a jolt of terror and understanding wash through her at his words. The girls that appeared dead, without apparent injury, drained of life without a bruise to show the cause. The look of guilt on her mother’s face and their constant moves from village to village, attempting to stay ahead of the deaths that trailed in their wake: the reason for the constant poverty and fear she had lived in for almost the entirety of her life.
“There were eight of us in the beginning. My two brothers, Liam and Doan, and the rest were our sworn men at arms. Seven times we tried. Seven times we failed. I am the last one left and it is bitter that my men...and my brothers…should have suffered and died for the deed I committed.” His voice trailed off as he bowed his head, staring at the floor in grief.
She dug her fingers into her arms, angry at the pity which rose up in her to mix with the lessening emotions of fear. Seven girls had died because of this monster and some deed he had done. Something terrible enough that her mother had seen fit to curse him to this existence.
“Why me?” she asked, but she thought she knew. How better to exact revenge on the witch than to have her own curse rebound upon her child?
He lifted his gaze to look at her, his eyes flat with an emotion she could not discern. “Why you.” He said it as though musing, considering his response. He shifted forward, going to one knee in front of her and she coiled back, fighting the spike of fear that lanced through her at his nearness. There was anger there in his look…and shame, and a desperation which needed no interpretation.
“I chose you, Anne, because the hunger is getting worse—and I cannot believe the witch would suffer you to die.”
There was no comfort in the warmth of the cottage. The shadows thrown by the blazing fire leaped out in accusation against her. Her daughter was gone. Lena swept her gaze over the cottage, her mouth dry as she catalogued eve
rything she would need to take with her when she left. Tracking him would be hard. Earth magic was not her gift, not since the day she had spun the death curse that would change the course of their lives.
Dampness touched her palms and dried on the bundles of clothed goods as she picked them up. Her stomach ached with terror and fear. What could be happening to Anne right now? Had he given in to the hunger? He was the last, she knew, of the men who had borne the brunt of her terrible anger. He was the last—and the hunger would be at its worst.
She had not made the curse an easy thing to break.
She glanced one more time around the cottage, nodding a silent farewell. She would not return here, whether she found Anne in time or not. She turned and left, shutting the door quietly behind her. All she could do was search for Anne before he gave in to the hunger.
All she could do was hope he still desired life.