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They were safe with the townspeople.
Clouds billowed in the sky from an incoming storm and tossed leaves around me. The vacant road that led toward the town felt lonelier than it usually did.
Little did I know, it would lead me toward the end of my human life.
I hurried down the road with the feeling of someone watching me. The fact my stomach twisted into knots told me something was wrong. I wasn’t one to worry.
And I was worrying.
The feeling of dread began to pour down on top of me, forcing me to run faster without thought. Warm ash began to rain down. I smashed it between my fingers, seeing the black streaks against my flesh. Something was on fire.
With tunnel vision, I raced toward our small town and in between two houses.
The quietness and lack of people stabbed me in my stomach.
Several men were sprawled around our community fire with no sign of life. Some looked peacefully asleep, but I knew better.
They were dead.
The community dog didn’t greet me like usual.
I pulled my sword from my holster and prepared myself for something that could do this to an entire village. My heart pounded in my chest forcing me to take quick, shallow breaths to keep myself level.
The more I walked, the heavier my feet grew.
More bodies were littered around the town.
Our livestock had been slaughtered.
I swallowed the deep ball of fear in my throat, my gaze searching down the lane toward the house I called home. Had my family made it out? Had someone hurt them?
My fingers tightened around the handle of my sword, and each step took me into a deeper part of myself. A dark place that I rarely visited.
A crow swooped above me, landing on the corner of a porch railing. He cawed, most likely signaling to his owner that I was there.
I pointed the tip of my sword at him when I noticed someone hunched down on our neighbor’s porch.
When she stood, my blood ran cold. The edge of her robe touched the ground as she stood, and two elongated horns curled out from her head.
I didn’t know what or who she was, but I knew by the blood on her mouth and her stained clothing that she’d killed our village.
It was the first time in my life that I stared into the face of evil. The brightness in her eyes as she smiled with my neighbor’s blood on her lips like a real-life vampire would forever haunt me.
“Did we miss one?” she asked, stepping down the porch. “I like the look of—”
I slung my sword at her, nipping the side of her face near her eye. She flinched at the impact and turned back to look at me with glowing green eyes.
Her pet cawed relentlessly beside me.
A warning.
A knowledge of what she was. Of what she would do.
Deidamia’s face transformed into something out of my nightmares. Something that haunted my dreams to this day. A real-life demon.
“Wake up!”
I sat up, my forehead coming in contact with something hard, and then someone groaned loudly.
