4. Altair
Altair
The night air was cool on my face, not in the musty, oppressive way the witches’ basement had been, but refreshing.
My world had been muffled for so long that the sounds of insects and night’s creatures were overwhelming. I’d hardly made it out of the basement and onto the porch before I stood frozen, overwhelmed by the cacophony of sensation.
I could hear scurrying. Wanted desperately to sink my fangs into the next creature with the misfortune to wander too close.
But no, my priority couldn’t be hunting. I had a very short window to put distance between myself and the witches. They certainly had enough of my blood to scry me out, and their carriages—I’d heard them from below. They came in faster and faster as the years went by.
Now, seeing them, sleek and black and enormous, I wondered what the hell I’d missed this past century and a half. I’d gleaned some things just from listening, but seeing was a different matter altogether.
If I knew how the hell to drive one of those things, I bet I could put some distance between us, but I wouldn’t know where to start. Thick wheels, no horses, a dense, earthy smell that tickled my nose?
No. No time to learn either.
I took off on foot. While I did not think I factored into their plans in a way those early witches had hoped I would, I had little doubt they’d try to find me eventually.
Would they be the only ones in pursuit? When I had left him, my maker had been afraid to cross the Atlantic.
It was a difficult voyage when you had to avoid the sun, and more difficult still when trying to explain that to humans.
I had been desperate and resigned myself to an uncomfortable voyage folded up in a large barrel, buried into a shipment of grain.
That was not the way that Ivan would travel.
I’d come here, expecting the distance to keep him away, but if the carriages now were sleek and swift, what other improvements had people made? Perhaps there was a ship that could cross the ocean in a day.
Fuck.
I crept through the underbrush, trying to set myself to the single task before me—escape.
One step at a time. There was no reason to worry about problems for a future that might never come.
It only took me a couple hours before I was second-guessing every choice I’d ever made.
I should have hunted. I might have moved faster with a full belly and blood pumping through my veins.
As it was, I’d fled into the woods nearby the coven house, thinking it might provide more cover and that I’d be more in my element than the witches would.
That, and . . . well, I wouldn’t know where to find a city out here after so long trapped away, but the carriage had been disorienting enough.
I didn’t need the distraction of a whole new world.
Thankfully, the trees looked much the same as the first time I’d travelled this way.
I should have taken time to figure the carriages out. I had absolutely no qualms with stealing from those who’d stolen from me.
I should have done anything that wouldn’t have landed me with a pinkening sky to the east, threatening the full burning fury of the sun.
I was going to turn to ash. I couldn’t simply hide behind a tree and hope it wouldn’t get me.
The sun moved. A dense shadow might keep me from dying, but there was no such thing here.
The sunlight would filter through the trees overhead, their leaves already yellow and orange and falling to the forest floor.
I had no choice but to keep moving. Perhaps if I had a spade, I could dig myself a deep enough hole to survive, but—
There. There was a rock, a boulder, really, near a cliff face. The space between that rock and the stones above, it’d be sheltered.
It wasn’t perfect, it might not be enough, but with the first rays of sunlight peeking over treetops, I had no other choice. I scurried across the ground, diving for the wedge between the boulder and the packed earth beneath, curling up pressed as tightly into that nook as I could.
No, the sunlight wouldn’t be comfortable even if I stayed safe in the shadows. I wished I could sink into the ground beneath me, imagined a rumbling as it opened up to swallow me whole, but nothing.
I was pinched, trapped.
But the sun rose, and while I closed my eyes against the burning light, it didn’t catch on my skin or turn me into a pile of ash myself. I was sheltered enough.
Now, I had the entire day ahead of me to fixate on the hunger that ached in my middle, spreading out in a dry heat through my veins.
What a joy.