Page 33 of Feral Darlings

Current Day

Odette

I’m asleep, but it feels too real. I'm pulled backward, down a tunnel of memories I've tried to bury beneath layers of other sins.

I’m standing in the darkened hallway of Pastor Pembroke’s grand, oppressive house. It looks every bit like it did three decades ago when I visited.

Every creak of the wooden floor beneath my bare feet feels deafening, though no one stirs. They’re all gone. Except for him.

The air reeks of dust and faint incense, clinging to the walls like a sanctimonious ghost. My fingers clutch the knife I brought—a ridiculous, dull thing stolen from the kitchen.

I didn’t plan for it to be this way. I didn’t plan for any of it. But now, as I push open the door to his study, something dark burns in my chest. I keep seeing his face. That awful, self-righteous smirk he wore the last time he spoke to me—the night he killed me.

"You should have accepted my courtship when it was offered, whore."

And there he is, slumped over his desk, his face buried in his arms. Papers are scattered everywhere—sermons, confessions, maybe even a grocery list. The sight almost makes me laugh. The great and terrible Pastor Pembroke, asleep like a child who stayed up too late.

The air reeks of decay and something faintly floral—his wife’s perfume still lingers in the shadows, even though her body is long gone. Her blood was sweeter than I expected, but it clung to my tongue like poison. Just like his sons’. I drained them all, one by one. They were weak, cowardly. Not worth savoring.

His daughters, though... I let them live. Not out of mercy, but out of necessity. They’ll carry my warning, the weight of it heavy in their trembling hands. I made sure they understood before I left them untouched in their rooms, their mother’s blood staining the floor beneath their beds.

"If you follow in his footsteps," I whispered to them, my voice cold, "I’ll return. I’ll be watching. Waiting. Ready to punish."

And now, only he remains.

I move through the room, my steps silent, predatory. The knife in my hand is unnecessary, but it’s symbolic—a memento of the life I used to live, the fragile woman I once was. Before they turned me into this.

The newspaper called it wolves. Feral wolves, stalking the outskirts of town, preying on the guilty and the unlucky alike. Let them believe that. It’s easier to stomach than the truth.

The only feral thing in this town is me.

And I am what they created that night.

I remember their laughter, their jeers as they raped me, the righteous cruelty in their eyes as they tore my world apart.

I don’t remember the moment I died. But I remember the moment I woke up, reborn in darkness, thirst burning through me like fire.

Now, as I stand over him, watching his chest rise and fall, I feel nothing but the cold satisfaction of inevitability.

Pembroke stirs, his head lifting slowly from the desk. His eyes widen when he sees me. Recognition dawns, followed by fear.

“Odette?” he rasps, his voice thick with sleep.

“Yes,” I say simply, my voice low, reverberating with a hunger that’s no longer human.

He tries to stand, but I’m on him before he can move. The knife drops from my hand as I grab him, shoving him back into his chair. My fingers dig into his flesh, and he whimpers, all that bravado from the pulpit evaporating in an instant.

“Did you miss me?” I ask, my lips brushing his ear. His pulse thunders beneath my hand, a drumbeat of fear that makes my fangs ache. “It’s been what…thirty years? Bet you didn’t think you’d see me again.”

“I—”

“Don’t lie.” My voice sharpens, and I feel him shudder. “You remember. You remember what you did. What you let them do.”

I keep talking as his bladder empties in his slacks from fear.

“You had a wife, children, everything you should have needed. Yet you wanted what you couldn’t have…me. Then you threw a tantrum instead of taking my denial in stride, and had me killed.”

His mouth opens to protest, to deny, but I’m tired of hearing his voice. My fangs pierce his throat before he can speak, and his blood floods my mouth, hot and bitter with sin.

I drink deeply, greedily, savoring the taste of his life slipping away. He claws at me, weak and pathetic, but it’s no use. The more he struggles, the faster it ends.

When it’s over, I drop him back into his chair. His head lolls to the side, his glassy eyes staring at nothing. Blood drips from the corner of my mouth, and I wipe it away with the back of my hand.

I glance at the scattered papers on his desk, now stained red. A sermon he’ll never preach. A life he’ll never pretend to save.

His daughters will find him in the morning. They’ll weep, maybe. Or maybe they’ll feel relief. Either way, they’ll know the truth.

The dream ends abruptly, yanking me from the past and shoving me into the present. My eyes snap open, and for a moment, all I feel is the suffocating weight of a cold sweat clinging to my skin. Darkness surrounds me until I push open the heavy lid of my coffin.

Yes, a coffin. Ridiculous and cliché, I know. But I’ve discovered over the centuries that I’m quite the dramatic bitch. It suits me. Honestly, who am I to deny myself a little theatrics? Especially when you’ve lived—or, well, existed—as long as I have.

Almost two hundred years.

Is it living, though? Living but dead, existing but not breathing, a vampire gifted to walk the world while everyone else dies and rots away? Sometimes I think about it for too long, and let the memories settle. But then I remember who I am. What I’ve become.

A vampire. The sword of the devil.

Allowed to roam the world as I want, indulge in its temptations and pleasures, as long as when Tempest calls, I answer.

In all these years, only once has she summoned me, and that was when some poor idiot decided to rob one of her lovers’ descendants. Tempest didn’t take kindly to that, and neither did her blade. It was a quick job. Blood spilled, wrongs righted, life went on. Well, life for me, at least.

Things are so much different now than they were in Valoria. The world has changed in ways that would make Pembroke’s head spin. And me? I’ve changed too.

I’m stronger now. Bolder. More fun. And, let’s not forget, a hell of a lot sluttier.

They called me a demon whore back then, sneering the words like a weapon meant to cut me down. I cried, once. I begged for their mercy.

Not anymore.

I became exactly what they claimed I was. A demon whore, except now I own that shit.

I smirk as I step out of my coffin, stretching out the stiffness that comes from sleeping in a box. The darkness still wraps around me like a shroud, but it doesn’t scare me. It never has.

Because in the end, I’m the thing that haunts it.