“Come,” he commanded, and Peter stepped in through the creaking door as it swung open. “What is it?” my brother asked leaning back in his chair.
“A couple of vampires have been spotted around the camp.”
“Strays?”
“I don’t know. They seem to be skirting our perimeter for now.”
My brother glared at me. “You know anything about this?” I shook my head. “Kind of fishy them showing up right after you. Perhaps they’re here to rescue you and the Made?”
“We came alone,” I said.
My brother pulled his boots on and as he sat lacing them up, he said to the vampire, “Winter is drawing near, and we need as large a force as we can muster. Get a couple of others and meet me at the barn.” The vampire nodded and left without a word. As my brother stood to follow him, he looked down at me still sitting with derision. “You can move about our camp for now, but if you try to leave,” he paused. “You put me in a tight place brother. Just don’t leave the camp.” He left the door opened and I could hear his boots receding down the hall and then his voice yelling something. I stood and looked over at his desk wondering what was inside, wondering what I should do. There was a flurry of footsteps in the hallway and a young man burst into the room and then looked at me disappointedly.
“Come on,” he said gruffly. “I can show you where you can sleep.” To my surprise he led me out of the house and into the cool night where the moon cast ample light for us to navigate. The village was quiet except for some shouting at one of the barns. I could make out two vampires running up a hill scattering sheep and then a man on horseback shot out from behind the barn following them at a gallop. The boy watched wistfully and sighed as he led me down a narrow lane of hard packed dirt between the buildings. Some dogs trotted up to us sniffing and he idly scratched them behind their ears as we walked up to a small hut. He pushed back a flap of hides that was covering the doorway and pointed to a cot in one dark corner of the small room. “You can sleep there.” Then he turned and left me looking into the musty cabin. A slight whistling noise emanated from the other corner indicating that the mound there was in fact another cot and its occupant. I lay down on the hard cot shivering wishing for the man’s blanket as I listened to his breathing and the sighing of the camp at night.
The shrill sound of a woman’s screams ripping through the camp awoke me. I rolled into the wooden wall in my confusion cursing and as I sat up her cries descended into hysterical sobbing. All around the small building the camp which had been as still and as silent as a grave when the woman’s screams had awakened me now rustled and boiled as shadows darted by in the dawn light towards the source. My unknown cabin mate was gone his blanket tossed in a careless bundle at one of his cots. I’d never learned anything about him other than his whistling breath. I rushed out of the house joining in the hustle of mostly women and children who rushed down the alleyway, a mass of skirts rustling and small figures darting forward broken here and there by the men who strode along with their tools. I could make out people standing in the edges of fields and pastures shouting in both directions as others descended the hill towards the village, sometimes at a stuttering run, others at the more stolid pace of the aged. As we walked a bell tolled three times from the courtyard that fronted the farmhouse. The woman’s sobbing was now curled around a continuous stream of indecipherable words as we approached the square and mingled with the growing hum of the crowd and grew louder. Every face older than that of a child’s walking alongside me was tense, jaws set, eyes hard and piercing every shadow of the early morning light. Women clutched their skirts and men looped their hands into their belts and belt loops. Several squeezed each other’s hands. A blustery man’s voice rose above the crowd. “He brought him in last night. He allowed this.”
I moved into the quickly filling square and pushed my way to the front of the crowd, many of the people eager to allow me to the front where a small clearing had formed around the weeping woman and three men where grappling with a struggling vampire. The rising sun glared off his waxy skin so that it seemed translucent, like parchment paper stretched across his rippling ribcage. The woman was down on her knees with a child’s body in her arms, one arm clutching the darkly tousled head and pressing its face into her shoulder. Tears streamed down her face as she hugged the boy’s body to her chest and rocked it back and forth. Another woman was at her side rubbing her shoulder and whispering but she cried on oblivious to the other’s kindness. The vampire hissed and flung his body forward but two men pinned his arms behind his back and his body to the ground while another pulled his neck taut with the rod attached to the metal and leather muzzle he wore. His eyes blazed against the pallor of his face as he glared and snarled at the crowd around him and snapped his neck as he attempted to pull the muzzle loose. His limbs jerked here and there as
