Falling
Iscramble higher across the chapel’s ancient slate roof, my shoes scraping for purchase as the wind whips my hair and skirts. The ridge rises ahead like a knife’s edge. I don’t look back.
“Run, little pet, run.”
Thomas’s taunt cuts through the morning air, carried on the same wind that lashes the roof.
My fingers claw at the slick tiles. Below, the cemetery sprawls in crooked rows—headstones leaning at drunken angles, weeping willows drooping like mourners.
Pale gold sunlight filters through the mist, painting the world in gold and deep grey.
Long shadows stretch from trees and graves, reaching toward the chapel like grasping fingers.
I reach the peak and press my spine hard against the cold stone cross that crowns the ridge. Nowhere left to climb. Nowhere left to run.
A soft thud behind me. The shift of weight on slate. I turn.
Thomas stands at the edge of the roof, silhouette dark against the rising sun. His hair is wild, eyes blazing with something feral and hungry. He is not breathing hard. He did not break a sweat climbing after me. He moves like a predator.
“Trouble,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “Always trouble. From the moment you arrived, you have been nothing but trouble.”
I press harder against the stone, hands gripping the weathered cross. “Stay away from me.”
He advances along the narrow ridge, savoring the hunt. “Leaving your room. Spying on private matters. Running through my house like a feral thing that needs to be broken.” He inhales deeply, nostrils flaring, and his eyes go dark. “And now this. This heat.”
His tongue traces his lower lip, slow and deliberate. “Do you have any idea what you smell like, little one? Like the ripest fruit. Like honey and fire and something far more intoxicating. It is driving me insane.”
He steps closer. I scramble sideways along the ridge, shoes slipping on the dew-slicked slate. The ground far below swims in my vision—too distant, too unforgiving.
“Your scent is everywhere,” he continues, stalking me.
I glance down at the cemetery. The shadows of the trees stretch longer now, reaching toward the chapel. They seem to ripple, to pulse, as if stirred by some unseen wind.
I look back at Thomas. He hasn’t noticed.
“The others should have been here by now,” he mutters, brow furrowing. “They were right behind me.” He pauses, scanning the grounds below. “Strange. They would not leave me to hunt alone. They would want their share.”
He turns back to me, and a slow, cruel smile spreads across his face. “No matter. Better for me. I won’t have to share.”
He lunges. I twist to flee along the ridge, but his hand closes around my trailing ankle and yanks.
My chest hits the slate hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs.
He is on me in an instant—his weight crushing me flat against the cold tiles, body pinned between my thighs and the roof, his breath hot against my throat.
I’m going to drink every drop of you,” he hisses. “Every single drop. I have wanted to taste you since the moment you arrived. And now you have given me the perfect excuse.”
His fangs sink into my neck.
Pain explodes through me. I scream, the sound tearing from my throat raw and ragged. He drinks deep, greedily, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to bruise bone.
I struggle beneath him, nails raking across his face, legs kicking uselessly against the slate. He doesn’t stop. He won’t stop.
From the corner of my eye, I see the shadows moving Long black tendrils sliding between the tombstones, coiling around the trees, gathering into a dense, pulsing mass. Silently, they slither up the chapel walls.
Thomas doesn’t notice. He is lost in the blood, eyes rolled back, throat working as he swallows. The sound of it is disgusting.
I feel myself weakening. My vision blurs at the edges. The pain is constant, unbearable, a burning river flowing from my neck into his mouth.
Shadows rise over the edge of the roof like a immense black tide. They coil around Thomas’s legs, his waist, his chest.
He jerks, mouth tearing from my throat. “What—”
The shadows constrict. They wrap around him like a serpent, crushing, suffocating. He thrashes, screams muffled by the darkness pressing against his mouth. His hands claw at the tendrils, but they have no substance—they are like smoke, impossible to grip.
I scramble free, pressing my hand to my torn throat. Blood wells between my fingers, hot and slick. The world swims around me.
The shadows lift Thomas into the air. He hangs suspended, legs kicking, face purple. His eyes bulge. His hands claw at nothing.
Then—a massive shadow-claw erupts from his chest.
I watch it happen in slow motion. The black talons, impossibly large, punch through his ribcage from behind. Blood sprays across the rooftop in a dark arc. Thomas’s eyes go wide, mouth opening in a silent scream that never comes.
The claw retracts.
His heart beats in its grip. Still pumping. Still alive.
The shadow-claw turns toward me, the heart suspended between its long black fingers as an offering.
Then the fingers curl. The heart bursts like a ripe fruit, disintegrating into ash between the claws. Long black nails dig in, crushing, grinding, until nothing remains but dark dust that scatters on the wind.
Thomas’s body crumbles. His skin flakes, his bones turn to dust, his clothes collapse into a heap of charred fabric on the slate. Within seconds, nothing remains but a dark smear and the faint scent of smoke.
Gone. Like he never existed.
The shadows dissolve, slithering back toward the cemetery, retreating into the morning mist. The roof is silent again. The wind stirs my hair. The sun continues its climb into the pale sky.
I lie on the cold slate, staring at the space where Thomas was, chest heaving, blood pooling beneath me. My hand presses against my throat, trying to stem the flow. My fingers come away red. The wound is deep—I can feel it in the way my pulse flutters, weak and irregular.
I’m alone on the rooftop.
The shadows are gone. The cemetery below is still. The trees cast their familiar shadows across the graves, unmoving.