Betrayal of the Light

Eleven

“Hunter!” I shout, the echo of which brought him running back to me.

Seeing no sign of Damien around the house, I go and knock on his bedroom door, but no response comes from within. I insist; in vain. Damn, I wanted to ask him for more information regarding the church he told me tales of. The only other place I can imagine him to have gone are the woods, if he was in the mood for hunting first thing in the morning. Would not surprise me.

We follow the thought away from his house, walking among the tall trees until we come across the ashes from the fire set up earlier by the soldiers. I turn around, looking, scrutinizing the shadows and bushes. Occasionally shouting out his name, but the woods remain dead silent.

The night had settled in while we were on our search, and this I have come to realize just now, so we head back where we came from, somewhat disappointed. My shouts, however, did not echo in vain. Before even reaching a path, we can hear rustling among the leaves closest to the ground. Those materialize from the shadows in front of us into a pack of wolves. Hunter growls, they growl back at him viciously.

One of them leaps at me, knocking me over on my back. As I was falling, I saw Hunter going for the other two before they could all pile on top of me. Having the jaws of this one clenched to my forearm, I push through all the pain and throw him off me, putting just enough distance between us for me to make one swift movement: at once taking out two blades, one from each of my sleeves, and throwing them dead on, thrusting through their skulls. Right when the one who knocked me down before lunges back at me, I take out my dagger and stab his neck when that foul breath of the creature was just inches away from me. The whole weight of his bones, flesh and fur crumbled down in my arms before I let it down on the ground and rush for Hunter. He does not move, but I grab his body and run, before more wolves would come for us. I could have sworn to put us on our way back to safety, but there was no path emerging to cross our way; still no damn path.

Did we get lost? We must have circled back to the mountain somehow, but when I wanted to change direction, I heard more of them howling at the moon somewhere in the distance. They sure are thirsting for blood judging by their cries. There was no safe ground around, except… On this side the of the mountain there is a split in the rocks, barely a cave. I let out a foggy breath in relief before swiftly disappearing between the rocks and behind a wall.

Hidden there, I thought us alone, until a flicker of light from the forest scares the shadows away. This is no sun that shines so lively, that moves and gets brighter with every paced movement. I pick Hunter up and back away, groping through the darkness for a crevice that could better shield us from that pace, but I am weakened. Not as agile as I thought myself, the light catches us in its glimmer. It floods the cave with a fiery blaze so bright that I can almost feel the warmth. A burning lamp dangles from an arm, in between the rocks that stand guard at the entrance. Only a moment, then she appears bearing a dress, white under the heavy garments of distressed leather. Her boots root her in place, the paced dangling of the light stops. Do I know…

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” says her familiar voice. “There was a gloomy feeling about me when I saw you venture into the woods, so I followed you.”

I do know her, she has the eyes of the girl I saved from the ocean yesterday, adorned now by creases radiating from a smile.

“You…” I say, pausing a moment to stretch a grin about my face. “I knew you must’ve been an angel.”

Her lips pursed as she raises an eyebrow at my sarcasm. With this only response, she steps closer to me and places the lamp centered on the ground. The fire spreads its soft, radiant light over the ground and up on the walls, with only a slight, but constant flicker despite its shielding chamber of glass.

“Come closer,” she says kneeling on the dusty rocks. “You’re hurt, both of you.”

Now she is in the mood to speak, I observe. Alas, I oblige and sit myself closer to her, captivated by the dancing flame unsettling the shadows on the walls. She gently takes Hunter from my arms, holding him on her lap and checking his wounds. This light shows me the true face of his injuries: deep, bleeding puncture marks there where fangs have bitten into him, over his back and hindleg. His eyes are barely open, blood covers his snout and a chunk of his ear is missing. She takes a flask, bound around her waist and hidden from my sight up until now. With a few splashes of water, she cleans his wounds, then tears a piece of cloth from the end of her skirt and dresses them tightly.

“Don’t worry too much,” she says reaching out the same flask towards me. “He’ll get better in a few days, can’t say the same about that sarcasm of yours though.”

I dash a smile right before that water wipes it off my face in an instant.

“Alcohol,” she notices. “Great for drinking to get your strength back, even better for cleaning wounds.”

She lays Hunter safely tucked under her jacket and against a wall. With a gesture she prompts me to reach out my own wounded arm into her grasp. Gently holding my palm in hers, she pulls up the sleeve with her other hand. The air is so thick, so unlike all thin gusts of night. I gaze up at her eyes fixed below, on my bleeding arm. Now that I look at it myself, pain kicks back in. Those deep fang marks bled enough to soak the tattered cloth, pushed back cold and wet against my skin.

“This will sting,” she says and hastily, before I could react, grabs the flask and argh… that was more than a sting.

She hands it back to me and I take a heavy gulp, numbing it all from the inside. Damn, this takes getting used to. Now that dead cold creeps back up my spine, everything loses its feel. My flesh trembles as her fingers wrap my arm tightly.

Hunter. He seems at peace now, yet weak shrieks escape him at times. I feel them in my own sighs. Heavily sensing my own weight, I drag myself over to him, collapsing against the wall in a swirl of dust.

“Such an adventure, never again, boy,” I whisper foggy, resting close to him.

The last thing I see are the still unsettled particles of dust, swept aside by a gush of wind, bringing a few leaves spiraling down, down… to the ground.

Fanged sunlight forces my eyes open. Head spinning worse than ever, the pain shooting from the bite up my arm. Hunter still sleeps, so I pick him up gently and move us to the back, where he may lay undisturbed by light until he gets his strength back. Slowly, my eyes grow accustomed to the light and in a moment of clarity I notice she has gone, leaving but her jacket behind. Like a ghost she vanquished, leaving no trace of her behind; she has a habit of doing that I see.

When I lean against the wall, I knock back a few stones into a concealed tunnel. Stretched across my new discovery, with clouds of dust rising from around my ribs, I lay astounded. Washing away every thought until that moment, I prop my weight on a single elbow. After shaking my hair, I through a look behind. There, my gaze follows into a dark abyss, spreading so far that there is no end of it in sight. It makes no sense, I know, but I sense a sliver of a memory returning to my searching eyes. Something about this place makes the blood freeze in my veins.

I stand up, reach for my lighter and… damn this cursed flint sparking up every so often. A dying flame illuminates the walls which the sun never would. The memory, still distant, will not unravel itself. I walk deeper into the cavern, surrounded by an impenetrable shroud of darkness which I barely scare away from little sections of each wall in turn.

There, on the grungy surface, appears what looks like scratches. Not the kind claws would make, they had no pattern and ran scrawled instead of parallel. Deeper I walk, until they resemble…text? Yes, messy letters that scarcely form paragraphs, most unintelligible:

I heard……………. screaming “Come!” …

…and something about…a creature?...

…set ablaze in azure flames… to kill…

…the rest is faded beyond recognition…

…the sun blackened, the moon became like blood and the stars fell off the sky…for the great day of their wrath has come…

…passages from a… prophecy? Or book? Unknown to me regardless. I reach out and stroke the walls, causing crumbles to fall to the ground like ordinary dust, erasing even more of what remained. I follow the tunnel further and further, until the walls close in before me and at my feet, a note secured into the ground with a silver dagger... my silver dagger, the missing second blade I remembered in that flashback at the library. The note, written in ink dripping like blood off the parchment reads:

TRUST ME

I take out the diary for handwriting comparison. True as I thought: the note was written by me, yet the passages… They might as well have been, but I can barely make out enough to read some fragments, there is no way I can be sure of that. Alas, what did I so desperately want to end?

Hastily I grab them both, note and dagger, turning around to copy what I could of the text unto my pages and return through full darkness back into the blinding brightness of the shelter. Back to Hunter, who is now moving as if startled by my footsteps.

“Can you walk, boy?” I look him in the eyes. “Didn’t think so.”

I pick him up, throw her jacket over my shoulder and wounded arm. Grown accustomed to the sunlight, it leads our way closer to the town, setting by the time I sense its presence through a peculiar scent of wood, smoke and something sweet.