Chapter Text
“Mom, are you sure this is the right, uh, address?”
Alyssa shines a flashlight over the letter in her hand, scanning it with quick eyes. “We’re to meet Miranda at the church.” She flicks the light over the squat, wooden building. “The driver said this is it.”
Grace snorts. Had he? All Grace had heard was the sound of their backpacks hitting the snow as the nervous man had flung them from his trunk before retreating as fast as his snow tires would spin.
Alyssa sighs, trailing the beam of her flashlight, squinting as she tries to take in their surroundings. “The night came on us too fast. We should find somewhere to stay for the night.”
Grace shifts the weight of her backpack. She extends a careful foot, nudging at the church door with the toe of her boot. It creaks inward a fraction and Grace glances at her mother, eyebrows raised.
Shrugging a shoulder, Alyssa pushes the door open and shines her light into the darkness inside. The beam flickers over dusty air and pews, stone walls and a lonesome lectern.
Alyssa tips her head, gesturing to move inside. “Not likely to find an inn or a hotel in a place like this. Let’s get out of this cold.”
Grace doubts it’s much warmer inside, but follows her mother anyway, closing the door behind her.
Neither one of them was a stranger to sleeping rough. Their momentum never seemed to slow, taking them from one oddity to another, from one sleepy, creepy town to something even more bizarre each time. And each time, at the end of it, there was more road and even fewer answers.
This place was the strangest yet, by Grace’s estimation. A small village tucked against the bosom of a massive, looming castle both of which lay cradled in a valley at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Technology hadn’t touched this place beyond the advent of electricity. It was surrounded by ancient forest and the only route to the village was a bumpy, single lane track worn into the ground by repeated travel.
“There is a candle here,” Alyssa murmurs. Metal clicks and a flame jumps, illuminating Alyssa’s sharp jaw as she leans down to light a candle on the lectern.
Grace lets out a sigh and drops her backpack onto a pew. She shrugs her sore shoulders and turns in a circle, looking around with a curious gaze. “I feel like we should have brought garlic and a bible.”
Alyssa smiles. “There are no such things as vampires.”
“I don’t know. A place like this makes me feel like believing.”
Alyssa begins to say something and stops, her eyes going hard as her gaze snaps to Grace. She raises a finger to her lips and Grace nods, freezing still.
The dark little valley village is a silent one, all the inhabitants presumably fast asleep. But a sound trickles into existence, an odd tinkle, a strange shiver of bells.
What the fuck? Grace mouths.
It’s at that moment, everything changes forever.
Wood explodes around them in splinters and dust. Something heavy and stinking slams into Grace and she cries out, falling under the weight of the thing. She hears her mother’s panicked shout but her brain stutters and she can’t quite register it. Something horrifically sharp and toothy sinks into the meat of her tricep and she screams at the sudden agony of it. Her vision tilts as the thing latched onto her drags her, ripping her from inside the church to the snow and darkness outside.
Her back hits jagged rock and she cries out again, curling in on herself as pain explodes up along her back. The thing standing above her throws its head back and howls. She twists to look at it, gasping at the eerie eyeshine of the thing’s eyes.
It is man shaped, but not a man. The face is twisted and distorted from its original shape, the gums black as it snarls, and the jaw is far too long with far too many teeth. It smells rotten and bloody, the stench of it coating the back of Grace’s throat. She gags, pushing herself back in a scramble of feet and hands, frantic to escape the thing’s snapping teeth.
She doesn’t stand a chance. The monster is too fast and too strong and much too hungry. It descends on her in a fury, head rearing back for a moment before striking, biting hard into the join between her neck and shoulder, those infectious teeth burning her as they sink into her flesh and muscle.
Gunshots ring out and the creature slurping at her neck jerks, but it doesn’t release her. It only bites deeper, sealing its mouth against her skin with a greedy growl.
The cold of the ground seeps through her clothes and bleeds through her skin, spreading until she goes numb, losing feeling first in her fingers, then her feet, spreading up her legs. Distantly, as she lays dying, she thinks she may just forget how to breathe. It would be easy - easier than anything she has ever done. Laying under a cold winter sky, her eyes full of stars, she could just…let it all go.
Grace Ashcroft tastes blood as her vision begins to fade.
Alyssa discards her gun and takes off at a dead sprint across the bloodied, trampled snow. She’s down to a flashlight and desperation, Grace the only thought in her mind.
Strangely, she hears the buzz of insects, so loud it breaks through the panic fog in her mind. Something shifts near Grace and the monster, a static black cloud of thousands of tiny wings rippling into the form of a cloaked woman.
The woman moves quickly, almost too fast for Alyssa to follow. One moment she stands above the feeding monster, her silhouette gazing down. The next, she seizes the creature by the back of its neck, wrenching it violently from Grace. It roars, snapping at her face with grey teeth bloodied and foaming pink bubbles. The woman’s head tilts, her face hidden by a dark hood, though the cock of her head indicates a catlike interest. She shakes the creature, rattling it as if an impudent annoyance.
She sniffs its neck. She seems satisfied with what she finds because in the next second, she sinks her teeth into its throat, tossing her head to ensure that the flesh tears and weeps.
The creature thumps to the ground, its open neck steaming in the cold.
Alyssa draws her flashlight back over her shoulder, ready to strike with a quick overhand blow.
“Get away from her, you bitch!” she says. She edges forward, warily, her eyes hot and dry in their sockets as she watches for any movement from the strange woman.
The woman raises her hands, drawing the hood back from her face. Her skin is milk pale, her mouth black with blood. Golden eyes burn in the dark, something scornful and hungry about the twist of her lips.
“Peace, woman,” she says, her voice measured with the melodious tones of a woman taught to speak in dead dialects.
She kneels in the snow, the backs of her fingers briefly brushing over the pulse in Grace’s neck. Her chest rises as she takes a deep breath, her glowing eyes fixed on the dark, sticky puddle slowly spreading out from under Grace’s wounded shoulder.
“We must take her to my mother. She is skilled in the art of healing.”
“Hey, don’t touch her - ” Alyssa begins.
The strange woman ignores her, scooping up Grace’s limp form as if she weighs hardly anything at all. She meets Alyssa’s hard gaze with a lazy smile.
“I am faster and know the way. You are too slow. I will send someone to fetch you and bring you to the castle.”
Alyssa considers for a split second, acutely aware of the urgency of Grace’s condition. She runs her eyes over her daughter’s blanched face and gives a clipped nod. “Who are you?”
That lazy smile, those golden eyes dancing as if deeply amused by the drama of the situation. “I am Bela.”
And then she is gone, and Grace with her.