Thanks everybody!

Hi Readers!

After consulting with a few trusted resources in the publishing-sphere, I've decided that I unfortunately won't be posting any further chapters from The Phantom Forest on this blog. I'm hoping to avoid any future publication conflicts -- it can get sticky with the interwebs, I hear. However! If you're interested in reading further, please feel free to comment or tweet me with your email address and I'd be happy to send you a few more teasers! I'm open to sharing the story with whoever wants to keep up with it, but I've recently discovered that there's a fine line between "publishing" something and just sticking it up on your blog, even if you're still in the editing process. So I figured, better safe than sorry!

Thanks again for all the support. I've gotten a lot of really solid feedback even just from these first two chapters, so the experiment, as short as it was, has definitely been super worthwhile!

Cheers,

Liz

Chapter Two

Haben lay in a heap on a bed of red desert sand, collapsed right beside the portal he’d just barely pulled himself out of. The sun, high and heavy in the violet sky, beat down on his back mercilessly. He feebly glanced over at the portal, barely inches from where he lay. The glossy black puddle on the ground, slick like oil in the sun, was his door to world of the living. He never knew where he found the strength, once the hunger hit, to slip into the mortal world. It was all a dark, dizzying haze. He had no control. His ragged, uneven breath was not his own.

When the starvation overcame him, it was always the same: he would stumble towards the nearest portal and throw himself inside of it. On his way through the darkness, he would become the creature. His black, shredded robe would fuse to him like a second skin. His jaw line would expand to three times its size. Two scaly black wings would sprout from his bony shoulder blades; it was painful, like being stabbed from the inside out. He could almost hear his bones and muscles scrape together whenever he morphed into the monster. There was something about it that he enjoyed, despite the pain of it. He was becoming something fearsome, something deadly, something he could have never imagined becoming during his earthly years. Then he would emerge, always in a body of water, and shoot straight up to the sky like a bullet. He would gnash his enormous, razor-sharp teeth with frenzied abandon and attach himself to the low hanging clouds above the city.

Then, he would send the wind. This was always the most exhausting part. He could scarcely pry his eyes open by the time it was over and he finally released his grasp from the web of fog in the sky. He would crash into the river below. The water would absorb him, recognize him as an intruder, and thrust him back to the Underworld.

He hadn’t moved since his return. He was enveloped in starvation’s iron grip now. These moments before Khronasa signaled him for the sacrifice were nothing short of excruciating. He was all rage, all fire, all hell.

“Caaaaa. Ca. Ca-CAWWWW!” An alarming crow from some kind of animal pierced the vacant silence.

Haben couldn’t help but roll over onto his back and squint up at the sky, looking for the source of the odd sound. A winged creature, silhouetted by the blinding sun, was circling directly above where he lay. His perception was dull and fuzzy, but he was certain that he saw it. He was also certain that he’d never, ever seen it before. Had Dohv sent it? Was he being watched? He’d never been watched before.

Hypnotized, he stared at it as it continued to circle him, over and over, round and round. His worried mind grew hazy and dark as a fresh bolt of hunger electrified him from head to toe. He pulled his knees to his chest with a low moan.

Suddenly, another noise disrupted him, though this time it hadn’t come from the strange figure floating up above. It was a shrill, grating ring that almost seemed to originate from his own ears. It started small at first but grew louder and louder by the second. He flung open his eyes, ravenous. The ringing meant Khronasa was calling him.

He rose to his knees, every inch of him quaking and quivering with anticipation. He could think of nothing but consuming the thing that was waiting for him at the other end of the portal. He’d forgotten what it was. He’d forgotten it was a human being. All he knew was that it would end his suffering.

He gazed down into the glossy blackness of the portal as the thin layer of flesh covering his shoulders began to prickle and twitch. His bones ground against his muscles and he spasmed as his shoulder blades jutted out from his back. They twisted themselves into two black, grotesque looking wings. He heaved a sigh, stretched his emaciated limbs like a stalking bird of prey, and dove headfirst into the portal. The blackness swallowed him whole.

The mysterious winged creature circling overhead released one final, ear-splitting crow before retreating off to the West. Whatever it had come to see, it had seen.

***

The howling wind outside rattled the stained glass windows of General Simeon’s stately mansion upon the hill. The streets of Khronasa below glistened in the lamplight, slick with sleet and rain. General Simeon pulled an ancient looking bottle of liquor from his sturdy oak cabinet and refreshed his drink.  These hours were his most treasured:  the rain, his drink, his moment to revel in his grand deception.

But tonight he was troubled. Today, during the ceremony, he was struck as though he had seen a specter. He caught his warped reflection in the stained glass window and heaved a desolate sigh, pressing his fingertip to the atrophied canyon of flesh carved into his left cheek. Today, he had seen the weapon that had destroyed his face for the first time since the night of the incident. He was sure of it.

A girl had entered the square: a striking, slender, black-haired young woman with filthy clothing and bare feet. She was a pretty thing, though it was neither her fierce gaze nor her young, supple figure that had caught his eye. There had been a scuffle and she’d pulled a weapon from her dress. It was a fang, about the length of her fist. It was white, iridescent, and glistened in the sunlight. He recognized it instantly, as though a memory had come careening out of the past and knocked him to the ground.

The man who wielded the fang the night of the occupation had been shot. He knew this, he’d seen it happen. But the man had two children, a boy and a girl. He had let them go. Why, he couldn’t recall. He might have had a fleeting sadistic plan for them, a plan he quickly lost sight of the moment the battle intensified.

Those children had been in the plaza today and the girl had the weapon that had mutilated him. He wanted her and he wanted it. He gave orders to have her followed after the crowd had dispersed that morning. He wanted her brought forth to him, bathed, groomed and wrapped in satin so he could mangle her the way he had been by her father all those years ago. The longing pumped through his veins like thick venom. He had waited all afternoon for news of her whereabouts, but none had come. Yet.

He listened to the rhythmic march of heavy boots outside as his guards changed shifts. A muffled salute: “Our fate in his hands!” followed as one troop passed another.

Our fate in his hands. Emperor Caius was a man. Yet the slogan, ingrained into the minds of the masses over the years, had finally trumped that fact. He always enjoyed a private chuckle at the phrase’s irony. Their regime had toppled a religion and abolished the notion of gods, of prayer, and of fate. But their proverb promoted the very thing they had destroyed: blind faith.

General Simeon knew it was only human to long for someone who had all the answers. When he first arrived in Khronasa those seven years ago, he knew the transition from worship of gods to worship of a figurehead would be a seamless one if he could maintain just one thing: fear.

He studied the Khronasan religion with relish prior to the occupation. He observed their traditions. They sacrificed their citizens twice a year to a demon none of them had ever seen. They told their children stories of torture in the Underworld to keep them on their best behavior. It would be easy. He would just swap one ethereal force for another.

Yet his greatest tool in this illustrious manipulation, the thing he was the most proud of, was allowing the Khronasans to keep one, and only one, of their old traditions. The Khronasans clung to the practice of the sacrifice, despite what it had become. All the while, Simeon used the occasion to keep the people anxious, to keep them in line. He was the one responsible for selection of the victim. Anyone could be next. The people would do anything he asked to keep their loved ones safe from the pit. It was, in a word, ideal.

There was only one element that was beyond his control: the demon itself. In plain sight, he was just as skeptical of the demon’s existence as the rest of the Federation. His cabinet and bodyguards balked at the Khronasans’ beliefs and he had too, until he led a sacrifice for the first time seven years ago.

It was eerie to begin with that dark clouds gathered the instant their victim was placed in the pit. Yes, that was strange enough. Rain drenched the countryside within hours and the pit completely flooded. The night of the first Federation sacrifice, Simeon and his fleet planned to pull their drowned prisoner from the pit around midnight and burn his remains. But when they arrived, an alarming scene greeted them: swirling green clouds had gathered directly above the pit, backlit by a wavering, sickly yellowish light. It wasn’t the sun. It couldn’t have been, it was the middle of the night. Simeon remembered staring up into the mesmerizing sky, struck by trepidation for the very first time.

Then they looked down into the pit. Their victim was gone, chains and all. They shined a light down towards the murky water. No trace of his body remained. They stood there, dumbstruck, as rain pelted their uniforms and filled their boots. There was no conceivable way the man could have escaped without unlocking the chains with a key. Could he have had help? Perhaps. But then where were the chains themselves? They had been soldered to a pole at the bottom of the pit.

The General looked down into the watery grave and something caught his eye… the final remnants of a whirlpool: perfect, circular currents leading straight down to the bottom of the pit. Where had that come from? Someone had beat them to their victim’s prison. And that someone, in all likelihood, was not human.

General Simeon swore his bodyguards to secrecy. Torture and eventual death was the penalty for revealing what they saw that night to anybody.

It was clear that they had tangled with a society steeped in greater mystery than Simeon could have ever imagined. He was voracious for answers. He read whatever confiscated Khronasan literature they had not yet burned. He studied the remains of the temple they had destroyed months earlier. If there were truly mystical forces governing the society he thought he rightfully governed, he knew he ought to get in good with them, and fast.

He built a shrine to Dohv, Lord of the Underworld, in the basement of his mansion. He locked it down and forged only one key. Emperor Caius would surely have his head for paying tribute to the pantheon they strove to abolish. But he couldn’t be too careful. He needed to keep both the Khronasan spirits and the Emperor placated at once. It was the only way to ensure that the city remained under his control.

The clock struck midnight in the General’s study.  He swallowed the last swig of his drink and placed the glass down with a definitive clink.  It was time for his invocation; time to give thanks to Dohv.

He paused momentarily, making sure he heard no footsteps down the hall. To be safe, he deadbolted the door to his study. He then produced the solitary key to his shrine and made his way towards the door to the basement. It looked like little more than a locked closet to an outsider. He lived in fear of prying eyes, of loose lips. He slid his hand into his pocket and wrapped a finger around his pistol’s trigger. His thoughts were poisoned by paranoia each time he approached that door. He unlocked it, swiftly moved through the entrance, and slammed the door shut right behind him as though he were afraid someone might slip through the crack at the last moment.

He crept down the stairs, barely daring to breathe, and lit a dim oil lamp in the corner. The golden light illuminated the artifacts he had confiscated from the oblivious Khronasans over the years: Amulets. Worry stones. Statues of Dohv of all shapes and sizes. He paused to gaze at one of them, sculpted of glistening white stone.

The Khronasans represented Dohv as a massive reptilian creature with razor sharp fangs, a forked tongue, and flames leaping from his lips. He stood upright on human-like feet. His scaly hands sported opposable thumbs and his eyes were a cat-like golden-green. He was a hybrid of man and reptile, both grotesque and utterly fascinating in the same breath.  He stood with his long fingers clasped together at his waist, staring down the worshipper. He was always watching. His image, though delightfully imaginative, sent shivers down Simeon’s spine when he reminded himself that the creature quite likely existed… somewhere.

He unrolled a carpet onto the cold, concrete ground, then knelt to the floor and produced three animal bones from a crude leather pouch on the shelf. The banned Khronasan literature indicated that there were certain creatures from the Underworld that occasionally wandered into the land of the living. If anyone were lucky enough to gather their remains, they could use them to communicate with Dohv as part of the ritual of prayer.

He had threatened a decrepit old Khronasan witch doctor years ago for her pouch of bones, the ones he now spread out in front of him. The woman assured him that the bones were the ribs of a Creeback, one of Dohv’s favorite pets. Simeon never had a way to be sure, considering he did have a gun to her temple when he demanded the bones of her. But he chose to interpret her tears as proof of their authenticity.

As he kissed the bones one by one and lay them gingerly on the carpet, his thoughts wandered to the haunting girl with the fang. He’d often wondered if the fang had come from a similar, mythical creature. The piercing sting of the puncture wound was unlike any pain he had ever experienced. Worse, he thought, than taking a bullet.

Once the bones were arranged just so, three ends touching so they formed a triangle, he bowed his head and began his incantation.

“Praise be to Dohv, revered Keeper of Life and Lord of the Underworld. Tonight I send you thanks once again for preserving your promises. As I have sworn to bolster your strength, so you have bolstered ours. In return, I shall never tire of cultivating power for you.  Your river will deluge with death.”

The General was nothing if not a shrewd negotiator.  He had read that there was a connection between the calamity on Earth and Dohv’s power, specifically as it related to the mythical River of Past Lives. Times of great calamity on Earth were of immense benefit to Dohv; the more deaths in his river, the more power Dohv was able to generate. Simeon saw an opportunity to strike a deal with the immortal.

He began to ask Dohv for protection against assassinations and uprisings, for both himself and for Emperor Caius. In exchange, he and the Federation would provide him with a constant flow of death.

The most recent attempt on his life was thwarted by little more than sheer luck; a rebel from the forest had broken into the armory and stolen a gun. As he raced up the winding staircase towards the second floor of the mansion, where the General was holding court, he suddenly slipped and tumbled backwards. Eyewitnesses said his neck smacked against the marble stair and he was instantly motionless. Simeon interpreted this fortuitous incident as a sign that Dohv had been listening to his prayers. He worshipped all the more fervently after that day.

He closed his eyes and finished his benediction:  “Send your messenger the Haben to fetch his sacrifice. Build our strength, as we will build yours.”

With that, the lamplight flickered and the floorboards beneath him rattled with the rolling thunder.  A cold breeze from an unseen source swept through the chamber and sent a chill straight through his skin.

He knew the storm outside had intensified, that the magical, inexplicable elements of the weather were about to unfold. As he stood and collected the sacred bones from the floor, he entertained a tantalizing thought: to find the girl with the fang. To torment her and disfigure her pristine young face. To toss her in the pit after all was said and done and never see her walking the earth again.

                                                                           

 ***

“Let me clean him! I want to rip the bones out!” Miko hovered over the silver trout Seicha was preparing to slice open. A rickety slab of wood balanced atop a flat crate, which passed for a kitchen table, stood between them.

“Wash your hands first. The grime under your fingernails doesn’t belong in our food.” she said with a wry smile.

Miko bounded over to a rusty cauldron hanging over the open fireplace. He plunked his hands in and yanked them back out with a howl.

“Owwww! Why didn’t you tell me it was hot?!” he snapped.

“It’s over the fire. Of course it’s hot.”

He sucked on his fingertips sullenly as he traipsed back to the table. He grabbed for Seicha’s fang and pointed it at the belly of the fish.

“Now, just make sure you’re slicing in a flat, sideways motion--”

But he’d already cut a perfectly straight incision. He smiled and wiped the blood off the fang before handing it back to Seicha.

“I know how to do it.”

Seicha made a soup from the rabbit Miko shot earlier that day. She stirred in a few wild mushrooms that grew behind the little log hut they called home. She cooked the fish over the open flame and tossed their two sacks of grain over to the corner of the kitchen.

“I’ll make bread tomorrow,” she said flatly. She hated admitting that they needed the grain.

She and Miko ate and listened to the rain pitter-patter against the walls of their windowless wooden refuge. The two of them were always silent during the rain after a sacrifice, out of respect for the one who was suffering at the foot of the hill. She got up a few times to move a bucket to more accurately catch a leak or two. The dirt floor of their cabin often turned to sludge in bad weather.

Seicha lined Miko’s hammock in the corner with a warm, sheepskin blanket. He undressed and put his dirty clothes in a burlap sack in the corner. Seicha insisted upon a clean home, even if it was a home without a proper floor. They would live with dignity. They would wash their clothes in the river and would store the few possessions they had in their proper places.  

As he climbed into his hammock and buried beneath the blanket, Miko finally piped up: “When I cut the fish up tonight, I thought about something. Do animals’ souls have trees in the Forest of Laida? Or is everything just the same? Like is the soul of that fish the same as the soul of another person, and maybe the soul of that fish will be a little boy one day?”

The Forest of Laida. It was one of the only pillars of their religion she had been taught about. She and Miko rarely spoke about it. The mere mention of it filled her with sadness. It reminded her of her parents and the world that they’d lost.

She settled into her own hammock, right beside his, and pondered his question.

“I don’t think we ever considered the souls of animals. That’s not to say we didn’t respect them, you know? But we never thought their souls returned to trees in the Forest of Laida after death, the way ours do.”

Miko nodded and made himself comfortable in the hammock. Seicha eyed his furrowed brow and knew he wasn’t totally satisfied. She wished she remembered more about their faith. Her father would have been able to answer this question eloquently.

“What does the Forest of Laida look like?  Do you think we ever see it, when we go there?” he asked.

“Well… Mother and Father said that hundreds of people had written about what the forest looked like but every account was a little bit different. Obviously a living human couldn’t write about a place that living humans had never been to.”

She lay back in her hammock and watched a single raindrop on the ceiling swell with water as she tried her best to unearth memories for Miko. She counted the seconds before it surged to its breaking point and tumbled into the bucket on the ground.

Finally, she spoke again: “Father said something like... ‘Imagine the quietest place you possibly can. No breeze, no birds, no voices. Now imagine that place is a forest, and that forest is bigger than anything any human could ever comprehend. You can’t even begin to understand it’s size.’ That’s what he thought it was like.”

“So it’s big and it’s quiet,” Miko summed up.

Seicha shrugged and stood from her hammock. She shuffled over to the cluster of candles in the corner and began snuffing them.

“I wish we knew more. But I suppose that’s part of the adventure of getting to the afterlife. You wouldn’t want someone to spoil that surprise for you.”

Before she extinguished the final candle, she added, “But the forest is important. It’s special to all of us.  It’s the reason I stopped crying about what happened to Mother and Father. It’s probably the reason a lot of people stopped crying. I know someday their souls will come back for another life. Nobody’s ever really gone, you know?”

“Would we know them, if they came back?” Miko asked.

Seicha paused before answering. In her painful younger years, she had wondered about this often.

“I doubt it,” she said. “But just knowing that someday they’ll be on Earth again is a comfort. They may be right now, if their tree sprouted flowers. We have no way of knowing. But it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

Miko nodded, accompanied by a yawn seconds later. Seicha blew out the last candle on the kitchen table. “Get some sleep.”

“Can we work on the boat tomorrow?” Miko asked in the darkness, referring to the little rowboat the two of them had been constructing over the past few months. “It still leaks.”

“Sure, we’ll work on the boat.  Goodnight, Miko,” Seicha cocooned into her hammock but did not close her eyes.

She always stayed awake as long as she possibly could before surrendering to sleep. She tried hard to keep watch, to listen to the woods outside their cabin for any intruding footsteps. This was the time of day, and usually the only time, in which she yearned for a even an hour without responsibility. She wondered what her days might feel like without that constant pang of worry in her chest. She thought about someone else’s story, about a girl who didn’t wear a fang around her neck and who didn’t live in fear of losing the only loved one she had left. But these musings were always silenced by fatigue. She never had time to dwell on them for long.

It was only a few minutes after her body gave in to sleep that the muffled yelp of a dog filled the night.  Seicha woke with a start. Her heart was already thundering. She soundlessly rolled out of her hammock and crept towards the door. She touched a fingertip to the fang around her neck as a tactile reminder that she was carrying protection. She paused before opening the door, glancing over at Miko for a moment. He was sound asleep, snoring with his leg dangling over the edge of the hammock. She would only be a moment. She opened the door and stepped out into the thick blackness of night.

They were far from the city, miles from any streetlights. The fractured moonlight through the trees would be a traveler’s only guide at this hour but the rain clouds had obscured it entirely. Seicha squinted past their front door in vain. She couldn’t see a thing. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened.

She combed through the sounds she heard: An owl. The rain, tapering off. The rush of the river up ahead. She heard no barking. Thinking she must have been dreaming of her father’s old dogs, she turned back towards their hut.

Craaaack! A branch snapped. The sound was deafening. This time she knew she hadn’t imagined it.

She froze for a second, weighing her next move. To wander into the darkness could be fatal. To do nothing could put them in even greater danger. She turned and walked a few paces. One, two, three, four steps. Then she stopped again and listened. Nothing. Five, six, seven eight--

She heard a rustling of leaves, then another snap of a branch. She whirled around and came face to face with a dark pair of eyes glistening in the dim moonlight. Seicha breathed a sigh of relief. The eyes belonged to a tiny fawn. It had probably been separated from its mother and was disoriented.

Then, all at once, a dog snarled, too close for comfort. Seconds later, a dart zoomed through the air out of nowhere. Seicha felt it breeze right past her ear, prickling the hairs on her neck. It lodged itself into a tree trunk. The fawn squealed and bolted away into the night.

Seicha stared at the dart, wondering for a second if it was one of Miko’s, but this one wasn’t handcrafted of wood. It was a long, metal needle, probably full to the brim with some sort of dangerous chemical.

Seicha sprang to action, yanked the fang off her neck, and wielded it like a talon in her first. The dog howled, wherever it was. She couldn’t see an inch in front of her face. She ran towards the sound, fang drawn. She’d be damned if the dog and his master got anywhere near their cabin.

She caught the blurry outline of a male figure a few yards ahead, facing her as she ran. The moonlight reflected off the shiny medals decorating his breast. He was a military man, one of the General’s cohorts. Why would he come all the way up here?

Before she could curse herself for the lapse in security, another dart came flying out of the darkness. It grazed her shoulder and landed right behind her. Someone was aiming at her, but not to kill. If they were they would have been shooting bullets. Though she wasn’t necessarily sure this was better.

She barreled towards the man with her fang thrust in front of her. She would fight him no matter what weapons he had. She was close now and she knew he could see her. He shot one more dart from what she could see now was a heavy, powerful looking black firearm. She dodged the needle by mere inches and flung herself right towards the shrouded spy’s looming figure.

“Arrrrghhh!” She released a guttural scream as she tore through the night and aimed her fang at his throat.

He grabbed her shoulders before she could slash him and kicked her hard at the knees. Her legs buckled and she crumbled. He grabbed her around the middle and whirled her around, holding her from behind. She struggled against him and threw her weight forwards, taking him along for the ride. He careened right over her head and crashed to the ground.

Seicha felt her shoulder dislocate as the soldier flipped over her head. But this was no time to focus on pain. Leaping over the stunned soldier’s limp body, she sprinted towards the cabin. She would need to grab Miko and run. Maybe they’d swim in the river so the dog couldn’t track them.  Maybe--

A piercing sting suddenly spread from the back of her knee towards the very tips of her toes. Her legs gave out within seconds. She’d been hit. She wearily looked behind her and saw the fallen soldier aiming his dart gun right at her.

This was no ordinary venom, not like the kind Miko made from crushed yew and holly berries. This was something toxic, something potent. She tried in vain to pull herself up but it was as if her muscles had liquidated. The light rain falling from the sky resembled tiny diamonds, tumbling in slow motion. She panicked. Was she dying? Why would they kill her so suddenly? The General’s men never killed without dragging out the torture beforehand.

With her final scrap of strength, she hung the fang back over her head and tucked into her shirt.  She silently prayed that she would escape whatever was to come and get home before Miko even woke up. Then her wrist went limp and the world around her capsized into nothingness.

                                                                              

Pink.  Pale, shiny pink was the first thing she saw as her eyes fluttered open.

As her vision cleared, she realized she was staring at her own knees, curled up to her chest, covered by pink satin fabric. She stretched and winced. Her dislocated shoulder had been corrected but she was still covered in bruises. She examined the dress she was wearing with blank curiosity. It was dainty, girlish, taut at the bust line.

She sat up with a start when she saw that her fang was still hanging around her neck. Why hadn’t her captors taken it? Instead they had put it on full display. She turned her weapon over in her fingers, all the more troubled now. She noticed her nails were painted the same pale pink as the dress. She had never even considered the idea that fingernails could be painted. She touched her hair. It was soft and clean and fell in delicate waves across her back.  When had all this happened?

She took in her surroundings. Soft golden light enveloped the room, radiating from two large bronze floor lamps and a dimly lit crystal chandelier hovering above her head. Footsteps resounded from the room above her gilded holding pen and the chandelier jingled ever so slightly.

The sofa she lay on was made of polished leather the color of rust. A thick, patterned carpet spread across the floor, a collage of blue and cream. It was a far cry from the cabin she’d been abducted from. A bookcase lined one of the walls, filled with old leatherbound volumes and ancient looking parchment scrolls. A sword with a bejeweled handle was propped up inside of a glass case beside it.

Several golden plaques were arranged on the wall, all of them bearing the seal of Emperor Caius’ Federation: the black silhouette of a lion roaring with two white rifles crossed in front of it. It was clear she was not among friends. The windows were constructed of priceless stained glass, each boasting a different abstract design in blue, red, purple, and gold. This looked like someone’s study, a quiet place to reflect and indulge in one’s luxuries.

She heard the door creak open and she sat up straight, her arms pinned to her sides. She dug her rosy fingernails into the sofa. The large bookcase obscured the doorway and she was not able to see who had entered right away. Soft footsteps filled the room. She had been expecting thumping boots and the cocking of a rifle. She took solace in this gentle tread until she saw the scar on the face that had just become visible in the lamplight. General Simeon smiled at her. His left cheek dimpled and turned in on itself, creating a gruesome fold of flesh underneath his eye.

“Hello,” he said, still smiling at her. “I’m very glad you’re here.”

She said nothing. What could she possibly say in return? “I’m certainly not glad?”  

She kept silent as a stone and watched as Simeon crossed to his oak liquor cabinet and removed two glasses. She looked at the contents of the cabinet with disbelief. Bottles of every shape, size, and color lined the shelves. He probably drank more wine in a day than she and Miko drank water in a week.

“I’m going to finish off this one if you don’t mind,” he held up a bottle, half full of dark red wine. “Unless you’d prefer something different?”

She stared at him vacantly until she realized he was waiting for a response. She just shook her head.

“I think you’ll like this one. It’s a rather good year. Seven years aged, as a matter of fact,” he poured the wine into the two glasses and put the empty bottle back in the cabinet. “I like to save the bottles when it’s a special occasion.”

He approached her, offering her the glass.  With no other choice, she cautiously took it. He sank down beside her on the sofa and draped his arm across her back, his fingertips far too close to her neck.

“Go ahead, drink. Tannins often calm the nerves, in my experience. And if you’re nervous, don’t be! Nothing unexpected here.”

She stared at the contents of the glass. It hadn’t been freshly uncorked, it could easily be poisoned. She politely took a small sip and released it back into the glass in the same mouthful. She cautiously lifted her gaze to him. He hadn’t noticed.

“Oh my, what is this pretty thing?” he marveled with affected interest, pointing at her fang.

She caught his eye. She tried to focus on anything but his grotesque scar for fear that just a glance would give her away. But his eyes were glimmering as his lips turned upwards into a smirk.  He already knew exactly who she was. She felt as though the floor had dropped from beneath her.

She was motionless as he took the fang into the palm of his hand and twisted its cord between his fingertips playfully. Then, he lifted it off of her head.

He stared right into her eyes as he said, “Just because I gave you a head start didn’t mean I wouldn’t catch up eventually.”

She held a paralyzed expression as he dropped the fang in a glass vase on the table nearby. She heard an echoey ping as her weapon hit the bottom of it. Her gaze darted to all corners of the room, taking stock of her escape options:  Windows: how high up were they? Door: were there guards right outside? Sword: could she break the glass case? Her focus was diverted when she felt his fingers in her hair. His long nails scraped against her scalp. She winced as he stroked her like a house cat.

“You didn’t think I’d forget all about you and your family, did you?” he laughed. “How could I? I think about you every time I look in the mirror!” His tone was alarmingly genial. Seicha’s gut twisted.

“Let’s discuss your future, shall we?” he said, maintaining his counterfeit concern. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I know you and your brother live in squalor and bathe in the river and only eat what you kill. You deserve better, don’t you think?”

She could think of nothing else to say except, “We’re all right.”

She realized she hadn’t spoken until that moment. All her courage had flown from her. She was locked in a room with the nightmare himself. He chuckled and traced a finger from her hairline down her neck. Her skin turned to gooseflesh. She stared at her feet.

“Let’s not play games, you’re far from all right,” he pressed. “I can help you. If you promise not to run. I’ll give you and your brother everything you need to live comfortably for the rest of your days.”

She was noticeably trembling now; Her pink fingertips quivered against her knee. If you promise not to run. And what would he get in return? She didn’t dare imagine. She had to get out. Ice cold fear rose into her throat that would have manifested itself as a scream if her voice wasn’t so utterly crippled.

“You don’t say much, do you? Seicha?” he leaned on her now, forcing her to sink onto her back.

She pressed against his chest, shoving him away as he slid his weight on top of her. She spied a silver medal dangling around his neck, right underneath his shirt. The wheels in her mind spun wildly. She could get out, she could fight him. As long as he wasn’t expecting a fight.

“Y-you...you say--” she began, trying her best to appear timid yet convinced. She stopped pushing him away and let her hands fall to her sides. “You say you’ll help us?”

He grinned at her and slid his hand against the small of her back, drawing her closer. She could smell stale liquor on his breath as he grabbed her chin and pulled her face against his. His scar was a pale crater of deflated, dead skin that looked even more horrendous up close.

“Such a pretty face,” he remarked, stroking her cheek. “Suppose I cut it off?”

She could not afford to wait. She had to act. Now. Now, now, now…

He moved a hand up the side of her leg, then underneath the satin sheath of her dress. She felt as though she were swallowing bile as he touched her there.

He chuckled as he murmured into her neck, “I’ve been looking forward to destroying you.”

He turned slightly, fishing something from his pocket: shiny, silver, sharp. A dagger.

She lunged forward and snagged the medal hanging around his neck. She flicked her wrist and twisted it until it was taut around his throat, then yanked it upwards in one swift motion. Simeon did not have a moment to counterattack. He flailed his fist around, trying in vain to aim the dagger as he struggled to breathe.

He tumbled off the sofa. Seicha sprang to her feet as she heard him choking and gasping for breath on the ground. She kicked over the vase on the table and heard it shatter to bits. She stole back her priceless weapon and hung it back around her neck. Her courage had returned in spades, but Simeon was already regaining composure.

In the split second before she turned to thrust the fang towards his gut, she heard Simeon groan furiously from behind and felt his hand ensnare her ankle. He threw her to the ground. Her shoulders scraped against the crystals of broken glass on the carpet.

He pinned her wrists to the floor as a pointed shard of glass burrowed deep into her skin.  She kicked and thrashed at him to no avail.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t fight,” he snarled.

He dug his teeth into her neck like a wolf shredding a carcass, then smacked her across the face and bruised her eyelid with his heavy ring. Then he relented for the very briefest of seconds, just to unclasp his belt... a second that was about to cost him dearly. She had one free hand…

As he dove back towards her, his face met with the pointy end of Seicha’s fang. She had but to merely hold it up. He impaled himself upon it. He cried out in excruciating agony as Seicha twisted the fang three times around inside his cheek before yanking it out, drenched in blood. She wiped her filthy hands onto the front of the pink satin dress, staining it dark red.

She leaped to her feet and inspected her gruesome handiwork. She had drilled a hole in the right side of his face, a mirror image of the one her father had carved on the left side years ago. She could scarcely believe the gory coincidence but had little time to process it. The General began pathetically crawling across the carpet, a river of red gushing from his wound.

As he clutched his torn face, he sputtered: “You’re fodder for the Haben you filthy bitch. Make no mistake.”

The hell she would be. He began to lose consciousness and curled into a ball on the blood soaked carpet. She stood above him menacingly, holding the fang to his exposed neck.  She ought to slice it wide open, she thought. Just as she began to prepare for a long, deep stab--

“Excellency?!  General Simeon?!” she heard an anxious voice cry out from the hall.

His bodyguards must have heard the scream. She loosened her grip on the fang furiously, knowing to leave him alive was to leave herself, and Miko too, forever in danger. But she’d be shot on the spot if Simeon’s bodyguards caught sight of the horrific scene. She hung the fang back around her neck.

She grabbed a plaque off the wall and glanced wildly at the stained glass windows. They were her only way out. She plunged the plaque through one of the windows with all her strength and it shattered.

She hoisted herself up onto the ledge, peered outside, and sighed with tremendous relief when she saw they were only on the second story. A low, sloping rooftop was just a quick jump from the window.

She climbed through the hole in the glass, tearing the seam of her long skirt. As she stretched her leg as far as she possibly could towards the adjacent roof, she heard the door to the General’s study open.

“There, the window!” she heard a bodyguard shout.

She kicked off the heels on her feet and watched them tumble down into the darkness. She drew in a deep breath and vaulted forwards. She scrambled down the roof in her bare feet as the guards gathered at the window.

“Shoot!”

She had no choice now. She jumped as the loud crack from the guard’s rifle resounded through the night.

A clump of bushes in the garden below softened her fall but she felt her right wrist collapse under the pressure. She cradled it in her left hand. She knew she’d probably just broken it.

Another gunshot rang out. She bolted off through the mansion’s backyard, towards the evergreen forest beyond. She was exposed as she raced across the manicured lawn. Lights inside the mansion’s windows flicked on one by one. Word of the violence in the study was probably spreading through the house like wildfire.

She heard another gunshot, but it was further away now. She sprinted towards the safety of the woods, ignoring the thorns that punctured the soles of her feet.

She ran and ran, never slowing for a second. It was at least an hour before she could see the hilltop, her home, in the distance. The fiery pink of dawn crested the horizon as she finally paused to rest her aching body against a huge oak tree.

She buried her face into its bark and heaved a long-stifled sob. She hid her tears against the sheltering tree, crying as though she were afraid someone might be watching. She wondered what it would be like to run home to her mother and father, to go to a place she felt safe. But she steeled herself within seconds and steadied her breathing. She was the protector now. She couldn’t afford total disintegration.

She pulled herself away from the tree and continued to weave through the woods. She prayed Miko would be exactly where she left him. She couldn’t bear to imagine what could have happened in her absence.