Page 17

T he forest held its breath as we approached the cabin.

Shadows stretched like reaching hands across the forest floor, and somewhere, a crow called out a warning.

I followed Silas’s broad back, my footfalls silent where his boots crushed the underbrush.

Three months since my transformation, and still I marveled at the way my body moved—like water, like wind—divorced from the clumsy humanity I’d once known.

The cabin’s rotting beams emerged through the trees, and my nostrils flared at the mingled scents of mildew, wood smoke, and the unmistakable musk of human fear.

“She knows we’re coming,” I whispered.

Silas didn’t turn. “It doesn’t matter.”

The dusk light filtered through pine needles, painting everything in shades of blue and gray.

My eyes—once merely human—now registered every variation of shadow, every subtle movement.

A mouse scurried beneath fallen leaves twenty yards to my left.

The heartbeat of a rabbit pounded from somewhere behind us.

And ahead, in that dilapidated cabin with its sagging porch and broken windows, a human heart fluttered like a trapped bird.

I swallowed hard against the thirst that rose unbidden.

Three months wasn’t long enough to master this new hunger.

Three months of prayers that burned my tongue, of crosses that seared my vision, of holy water that raised welts on my skin.

Three months of Silas’s stern guidance and the Order’s rigid training.

Three months since Mercy Brown had turned me, then vanished into the night.

“Focus,” Silas said, as if reading my thoughts. “Remember your purpose.”

My purpose. To hunt those who wielded dark powers.

To protect humanity from supernatural threats.

To atone for what I had become by destroying others like me.

Not necessarily vampires, but any who traversed the path of darkness.

The Order of the Morning Dawn had found me wild with grief and hunger, offering structure and redemption when I’d lost everything else. My life, my prayers, my father.

The irony wasn’t lost on me—I had gone from praying over the sick and the lost to becoming something that fed on them.

We paused at the edge of the clearing. The cabin stood before us, a black silhouette against the darkening sky.

One window glowed with feeble lamplight.

The roof had partially collapsed on the western side, and the porch listed dangerously to the right.

Nature was reclaiming it inch by inch—moss crept up the walls, and a young birch had sprouted through the steps.

Silas turned to me, his face half-hidden in shadow. The scar along his jaw looked deeper in this light, a permanent reminder of some past violence.

“The witch has been practicing for months,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Six children have fallen ill in the nearby town. Two are already dead.”

I nodded, forcing myself to focus on the mission rather than the way his pulse beat steadily in his throat. Silas was safe from me—he had some kind of talisman, something he refused to show me, that repelled me if I touched him—but the awareness of his blood never quite left me.

“The Order has tracked her movements since winter,” he continued. “She trades with local farmers, offering charms and potions. She’s been seen gathering herbs by moonlight and speaking to animals.”

“Speaking to animals isn’t witchcraft,” I mumbled.

Silas’s eyes hardened. “Don’t start doubting now, Nightwalker. We have testimony from a farmer’s wife who saw her dancing naked in this clearing, surrounded by floating lights. We have a child’s corpse with strange markings carved into its skin.”

I looked away. How was I supposed to know if this evidence was true, or if Silas was making it up on the spot? “What’s our plan?”

“I’ll take the lead. You’ll follow. If she attempts to escape, you’ll intercept her.

” His hand moved to the silver dagger at his belt, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the ornate hilt.

The blade had been blessed by the Order’s chaplain—lethal to both witches and vampires.

“If she begins an incantation, I’ll silence her immediately. ”

“And if she’s innocent?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

Silas’s expression didn’t change. “The Order doesn’t make mistakes, Alice.”

But they did. Of course they did. I’d heard of witch trials elsewhere in Massachusetts, but Silas and the Order didn’t even bother with fake juries and judges. They gathered the evidence and rendered a verdict and a sentence without giving the accused much chance to respond at all.

“Remember,” Silas said, sensing reluctance in my silence, “this is your path to salvation. Each witch we stop, each vampire or witch we destroy—it cleanses you a little more in the eyes of God.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that. Then again, the God I’d worshipped as a human girl was absent.

He hadn’t spared me from this life—if you could call it that—so maybe I’d been wrong about everything.

Then again, Silas was wrong, too. Silas had believed that a girl with faith like mine would be protected from evil, protected from vampires. Mercy Brown begged to differ.

Despite my reservations, I nodded anyway.

“Let’s go,” Silas said, drawing his dagger.

We moved across the clearing, Silas with practiced stealth, me with the unnatural silence of the undead.

The porch steps creaked beneath his weight but held.

I followed, feeling the rotting wood shift beneath my feet.

The door was weathered gray, its paint long since peeled away.

A crude symbol had been carved into the wood—a circle containing a five-pointed star.

“Proof,” Silas whispered, nodding at the mark.

But I’d seen similar symbols in Daddy’s church—decorative stars at Christmas, circles representing God’s eternal nature.

This proved nothing. Besides, it looked freshly carved.

How could I be sure that the accused had carved it herself?

What if Silas or someone else with the Order carved it there to “mark” our target, or to poison the well against the supposed witch?

I wasn’t entirely sure that Silas was beyond manufacturing evidence if it supported his predetermined condemnations.

Before I could speak, Silas kicked the door open with a splintering crash. We surged inside, Silas with his dagger raised, me with nothing but my unnatural strength and speed.

The cabin’s interior was illuminated by a single oil lamp on a rough-hewn table. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with jars of powders and liquids. A fire smoldered in a small stone hearth, filling the single room with smoky warmth.

The supposed witch stood beside the hearth, her gaunt face illuminated by the dying flames. She was younger than I’d expected—perhaps thirty, with dark hair streaked prematurely with gray. Her eyes widened at our intrusion, but they held defiance rather than fear.

“I’ve been expecting the Order’s dogs,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Though I didn’t expect one of them to be dead.”

Silas stepped forward, the silver dagger gleaming in the lamplight. “By the authority of the Order of the Morning Dawn, you are condemned for the practice of witchcraft and the murder of children.”

The woman’s lips curled. “I’ve murdered no one. I’ve healed those I could—those the doctors gave up for dead.”

“Silence!” Silas barked. “Your confession is not required.”

She backed away, her hands moving in strange patterns as she began to whisper words in a language I didn’t recognize. The air in the cabin seemed to thicken, pressure building against my eardrums. The lamp flame bent sideways, though there was no breeze.

Silas lunged forward with practiced grace. The witch tried to dodge, but he anticipated her movement. Instead of plunging the dagger into her heart, however, he deliberately slashed across her forearm.

Blood welled from the cut—bright, vibrant red against her pale skin.

The scent hit me like a physical blow. My body reacted before my mind could intervene—pupils dilating, nostrils flaring, muscles coiling. Hunger roared through me, drowning out the thought, drowning out the prayer that instinctively rose to my lips. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not—

The witch’s heartbeat filled my ears, drowning out everything else. I could see the pulse in her neck, count each precious beat pushing blood through her veins. Blood that smelled of iron and salt and life itself.

“Alice,” Silas said, his voice distant through the roaring in my ears. “Control yourself.”

But he’d stepped back, giving me clear access to the bleeding woman. Her incantation faltered as she registered the change in my stance, the inhuman focus of my gaze. She pressed her wounded arm against her chest, but it was too late. The intoxicating scent of her blood had already filled the air.

“Stay back,” she warned, resuming her strange words with increased urgency.

I took a step forward, then another. Some part of me—the part that had once knelt in prayer at Daddy’s church—screamed in protest. That part recited fragments of scripture like broken shields: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death... Yea, though I walk...

The witch’s back hit the wall. Her chanting grew louder, more desperate. Something invisible pushed against me—her magic attempting to hold me at bay—but my hunger was stronger than her power.

“Please,” she gasped, abandoning her spell. “I’m not what they told you. I heal people. I—“

I crossed the remaining distance in a blur of motion. My hands gripped her shoulders, pinning her against the rough-hewn logs. Up close, I could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the faint freckles across her nose, the chapped skin of her lips as they formed one last, desperate plea.

“Our Father, who art in heaven—“ she began.

My teeth sank into her throat, cutting off the prayer.

Had she truly evoked the Lord’s Prayer after clearly attempting to cast spells at Silas and me?

Could this woman be a witch of a sort, without abandoning her faith?

It seemed absurd—and probably was—but were her deeds actually spells at all?

Were they, perhaps, prayers I’d never been taught to pray, only appearing as magic to my ignorance?

The first rush of blood was a shock—hot and vital and overwhelming.

I drank deeply, feeling her struggling grow weaker as her life poured into me.

Her heartbeat stuttered, tried to recover, then faded.

Memories flashed through my mind—not mine, but hers.

A child with fever, cooling beneath her hands.

A man’s grateful smile. Herbs gathered by moonlight while she sang soft hymns.

I didn’t know if she was a witch or not, but she wasn’t villainous. She wasn’t a murderer, as Silas had insisted. She was a healer. And now I was the murderer…

Horror broke through my bloodlust, but too late. Her heart gave one final, weak flutter, then stilled. I released her, and her body slumped to the floor, pale and empty. Blood—her blood—dripped from my chin onto my white blouse. The same blouse I’d worn to church every Sunday of my human life.

I staggered back, the room spinning around me. “Oh God,” I whispered, though the evocation of God sent jolts like lightning through my skull. “Oh God, what have I done?”

Silas stood watching, his expression a calculated mix of disappointment and something else—something that looked horribly like satisfaction. He slid his dagger back into its sheath with deliberate slowness.

“Control yourself, Nightwalker,” he said, his voice stern but his eyes gleaming. “This is not what we trained for. I thought I forbade you from drinking directly from a human.”

“But you cut her, you meant me to—“

“No excuse!” Silas’ voice boomed, almost rattling the dead woman’s cabin.

“These missions will often involve struggle. You must resist the temptation to feed in the presence of blood! You have enough evil within you to atone for as it is. The more you kill like this , like a vampire and feed, the more you’ll have to atone properly.

The Lord will only accept these sacrifices as whole-burnt offerings. ”

All words. A charade, carefully crafted. He wanted me to believe I’d made an error. I’d added to my guilt, binding me more to the Order and their promise of redemption.

Did he really want me to believe this had been an accident? The careful way he’d cut her arm. The strategic step backward.

He had meant for this to happen.

“You knew,” I whispered, wiping blood from my mouth with a trembling hand. “You knew I would—“

“I knew your nature could overcome your training,” he corrected smoothly. “A regrettable weakness, but one we must work to correct.”

He knelt beside the dead woman, making a show of checking for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. His fingers came away stained with her blood, and I saw him subtly rub them together, testing its consistency.

“The Order will be disappointed,” he continued. “Our mission was to interrogate her about her coven. She could have led us to other witches in exchange for an easy death. Do not mistake my resolve. She needed to die, but we must be judicious about it.”

Lies. All lies. I could see it now in the satisfied set of his shoulders, the careful way he was constructing this narrative.

“She wasn’t what you said,” I managed, my voice barely audible. “She was praying. That was the Lord’s Prayer.”

Silas stood towering over me. “Many witches hide behind false piety, Alice. It was a desperate ruse to deceive us at the last minute. You of all people should know that. Didn’t Mercy Brown attend your father’s church? Didn’t she have a bible at her bedside in the sanitorium?”

The mention of Mercy sent a fresh wave of confusion through me.

Mercy, who had seemed so kind. Clearly, Silas used her name for a purpose.

Mercy was the one I’d tried to save, but couldn’t.

She was the one who bit me, who made me what I was.

He wasn’t wrong—a part of me wanted revenge, even as I still pitied her.

“We must leave,” Silas said, already ushering me to the door.

“You’re not going to burn the body?” I asked.

Silas huffed. “Other members of the order will take care of it. You are in too fragile a condition, too vulnerable.”

I remained frozen, staring at the woman’s lifeless form.

The herbs hanging above her—common plants for healing, just like the ones Mama had used.

The symbol on her door—no different from decorations I’d seen in Christian homes.

The prayer on her dying lips—the same one I’d recited every night of my human life.