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A few minutes later, the four of us stood at the gate, looking out into the darkness. I wasn’t the type to spook easily. I had no connection with fear. But I couldn’t shake the niggling sensation that something was wrong.
Silas brought us each a tranquilizer gun and three darts filled with animal blood, just in case.
We tucked the gun and darts into a fanny pack and strapped it around our chest, leaving the pouch part under our armpits.
With our knives in our hands, we made our way through the garlic fields. I thought about Eve and the look on her face when she’d seen that I’d chased her.
We crossed the stream and I remembered the way her tiny body felt when I’d carried her.
We stood at the edge of the forest, staring into the woods, and my dick twitched, remembering how it felt to finally be inside her.
The crisp night air made our wet pants feel like ice as they clung to our legs. I looked back over my shoulder at the quiet community. It seemed so far away, even though it was only about one hundred feet. I clutched the handle of my knife as I turned back around and scanned the tree line.
The body was gone.
There was nothing but darkness in front of us. The moonlight didn’t bleed through the thick branches of the trees. A wolf howled in the distance, making the hair on my arms stand on end.
“I thought you said you left the body,” Isaiah said.
“I did.”
Twigs and dead leaves crunched and crackled somewhere in the blackness.
Silas took in an audible inhale.
Coming here at night was dangerous. We all knew that. We never left the safety of our community once the sun went down. This wastheirtime. We were intheirterritory. There were no fields of garlic or barrels of animal blood to keep the vampires at bay. We only had a blade and a few darts as our protection.
Promise me you’ll be safe. Promise me you’ll come back.
Eve’s sweet voice played in the back of my mind.
I placed my palm on the weapons at my side, making sure they were still secure.I promise, I’ll come back.
Five figures stepped out from the shadows. Five men dressed in all black, just like the guy from before. They stood tall, their spines braced, hands locked together in front of them, legs spread shoulder-width apart. They looked like soldiers ready for battle as they narrowed their eyes and studied us.
The air crackled with violent energy.
“You’re a long way from home.” I nodded back toward the forest. “The city’s that way.” There wasn’t a modernized city for hundreds of miles. It had to have taken them days to get this deep into the middle of nowhere.
“We have a message,” the tallest one said. His hair was lighter, almost gray, a sign that he was older than the others. He was their leader. “There’s a war on the horizon. Corrus is going to crush everyone.” He took a step forward. “Queen Cassie is building an army. It’s not too late to join the winning team.” His face flashed with a smirk.
This wasn’t news. The vampire clans had been at war for years. Let them fight. They were doing us a favor by killing each other off.
I pointed to where I’d left the dead guy’s body. “Did you miss the memo? I’m already on the winning team.”
The man scoffed. “It doesn’t matter how many of us you kill. More will come. We won’t give up.”
“Then, you’ll keep dying.”
The quiet rage in his expression mirrored my own.
A flash of movement caught my gaze. Across the stream, on the outside of our gate, a man held a ball of white cloth at the end of a stick. He shoved it up in the air, waving it like some kind of warning flag, then brought it back down. A flicker of light broke through the darkness—a flame. He brought it to the cloth, setting the fabric on fire.
The older man laughed. “Did you really think we wouldn’t come prepared? We’re going to burn your settlement to the ground.”
As quickly as the fire appeared, it was cast across the sky and thrown into the water. The body holding the flaming ball of cloth fell backwards into the stream. A figure appeared on the bank, shoulders straight, chin lifted high.
Joseph.He’d followed us.
