Page 10 of Ravaging Red (Monsters of the Hollow Realm #1)

When the Blood Stirs

RED

I woke up with sweat clinging to every inch of my body, the taste of him still thick in my mouth.

In the cold light of morning, I could still feel the pull, guiding me back toward the woods.

It had been non-stop since I left him a month ago.

I knew now that it was a feeling of hunger, and it came from him .

And whatever was happening to me now, I was sure that I wasn’t going to be able to pretend I was still human for much longer.

Because things had changed.

It all happened a few weeks ago when I went to visit my mom.

I stepped into the kitchen and was slicing carrots for my Nana’s soup.

The blade suddenly slipped from my hand and the sharp steel stabbed me.

When I looked down, bright red blood was gushing from the palm of my hand.

I rushed to get a dish towel, but as I glanced back down to look at it, I froze from the sock of what I was seeing.

I watched as the blood beads receded back into the wound, then sealed itself.

I somehow healed. My breath quickened as I checked my hand, but the wound was gone.

No scar, just a faint pink line remained.

As I stood there, listening to my heart beating in my ears, I was suddenly startled by te noise coming from the other room.

As I stepped through, the sound became clearer and soon enough I was listening to the neighbors’ conversation, playing out just outside the front door.

Shocked, I ripped the front door open, but they were nowhere in sight.

Our neighbors lived a mile down the road.

Then I heard the tap of water coming from a sink upstairs, my grandmother’s cough in the other room echoed in my ears.

I took a deep breath, shaking as I tried to concentrate, forcing the sounds out.

Eventually everything went quiet, but as the days went by, I realized my hearing wasn’t the only thing that was affected.

At dusk, I found I could read by moonlight.

Colors sharpened in the dark. I slept less and dreamt more.

I dreamt of teeth sinking into flesh, of fur sweeping across my body.

My thighs ached, my cunt tightened at the memory, and every inch of me begged in wanting.

A want hewn from terror and marked by pleasure.

I wasn’t fully human anymore.

But I couldn’t admit that, especially not to my mother. Instead, I went to the only other person who would understand me, my Nana. The Alzheimer’s was eating away at her memory, but for some reason, she was more lucid at night.

“Nana,” I began, my voice shaking as I knelt beside her, taking her hand in mine.

It took her a moment before she tore her eyes from the window and looked down at me. Her eyes seemed clear for a moment, and she smiled. “Red?”

“Hi, Nana,” I quickly took the opportunity because who knew how long it lasted.

“I need your help, Nana. Something’s wrong with me and I don’t know what to do.”

She slowly blinked at me, then scrunched her brow. “What’s wrong, dear?”

“I don’t know, Nana. I feel different.” I chewed on my bottom lip.

“How different?” She asked, her voice turning serious.

“Nana, I know you know more than you let on. I need you to tell me what happened to the girls who vanished into the Woods?”

She looked up and toward the window, a longing in her eyes. Then she started to hum that same haunting lullaby she’d sung my whole life. I knew I was losing her again. These lucid moments were few and far between now.

“No. Nana?” I pressed, squeezing her hand. “Nana, please answer me. Do they disappear? Are they trapped? Do … Will they come back?”

Her shoulders trembled as she placed a frail hand on mine. Tilting her head, her eyes half-lidded, as the humming melody swelled in the room again, louder than before, echoing off the walls.

“Nana,” I whisper, tightening my grip on her thin fingers. “Please, remember. I need you to remember.”

She doesn’t look at me right away. She just stared at the space between us, then her eyes flickered, like a match sparking, and something inside her sharpened as she stopped singing.

“His teeth are older than the trees,” she said softly, her words slipping from her lips like a dream half-remembered. “And his need… his need is not a gentle thing.”

I stilled. “Who? Rael?”

She smiled as if remembering something in her past.

“You shouldn’t fight the pull, sweet girl. Not when it’s blood deep. Not when it’s been written.”

My breath caught. “Nana, what do you mean by that? Written?”

She was slipping again; I could tell by how her gaze floated off toward the corner of the room.

She began to hum again, rocking softly as she murmured, “The marked ones always go back. They will always belong to the darkness. They think they can run, but the moon knows their names. The Blood Moon always calls them home.”

I lean in, desperate to know more. “What happened to them, Nana? What happened to the girls?”

Her lips twitched, and for one terrifying moment, she laughed, a soft and strange sound I’d never heard before.

“Some were loved too hard. Some never wanted to leave. And those who stayed… oh, they changed, darling. They bloomed.”

“Were you one of those girls, Nana?”

She smiled and closed her eyes, the humming continued before she replied. “Yes.”

“How did you get away?”

“He died,” she whispered.

Tears blurred my vision. “And me? What about me, Nana?”

Finally, her eyes met mine again. “You’ll hurt before you heal. He’ll tear you apart. But don’t hate him for it. He’ll suffer alongside you.”

She leaned forward, close enough that I could smell the lavender and mint on her breath. “He’s not the monster, baby. He’s the lock. And you’re the key. It was always going to be you. It’s in your blood.”

I was shaking now, her words curling around my ribs, pressing down on something ageless that stirred beneath my skin.

And just like that, the clarity drained from her eyes, the spark flickering out like a candle being blown out. She began humming again, slower now, her focus returning to the yarn in her lap, the clicking of her needles resuming their broken rhythm.

I pulled away slowly. “I understand, Nana.”

As I drove home later that night the woods loomed in the distance. That familiar tingle coarse through me and my heart started to pound.

I missed him.

I wasn’t supposed to miss him.

What was left of my human sense told me that this was wrong, but my gut instinct told me he was as much mine as I was his. If my Nana was right, I wasn’t going to be able to fight this much longer.