CHAPTER 12 — BLOOD IN THE RAIN
1045 Words
The storm arrived without warning.
Aria stood at the school entrance, watching the rain hammer against the stone steps. Most students had already fled home before the downpour began. A few stragglers pushed past her, clutching bags over their heads. She let them go. Crowds made her uncomfortable. Better to wait. Better to walk alone.
She pulled her coat tighter and stepped into the rain.
The streets emptied quickly. Shopkeepers pulled down their awnings. Windows shuttered. Within minutes, Aria was the only person moving through the narrow roads behind the school. The rain turned the cobblestones into a river. She kept her head down and walked faster.
The shortcut behind the school was quieter than the main road. No shops. No streetlamps. Just old trees and a crumbling stone wall that had stood longer than anyone remembered. Aria usually avoided the path after dark. But the rain made the main road treacherous, and she wanted to get home before her clothes became completely soaked.
She heard the crash from the woods.
She stopped. Listened. The rain filled her ears, but beneath it, something else moved. Branches breaking. Heavy footsteps. A low growl that vibrated through the ground.
Aria told herself it was an animal. A deer. A boar. Something ordinary. Then she heard the screaming.
A man's voice. Not words. Just terror.
She should have run.
Instead, she moved toward the trees.
The woods behind the school were dense and old. The canopy blocked most of the rain, but the ground was slick with mud. Aria moved carefully, keeping low, using the trees for cover. The screaming stopped. Then came a sound she couldn't identify. Wet tearing. Heavy breathing. Something massive shifting through the undergrowth.
She found a thick oak and pressed herself against it. Peered around the trunk.
The clearing was small, barely wide enough for two carriages to pass. The rain fell through the branches in sheets, turning the earth to mud. In the center of the clearing stood a creature Aria had only ever seen in nightmares.
It was huge. Easily twice the size of a grown man, standing on hind legs like a wolf, with matted fur and old scars crisscrossing its body. Its eyes burned yellow. Its mouth dripped with something dark. The rogue werewolf was not hunting for food. It was hunting for pleasure.
And standing before it, barely visible through the rain, was Silas.
He hadn't moved. His hands hung at his sides. His coat was dark with rain, his hair plastered to his face. He looked like a man caught in a storm, waiting for the thunder to pass.
The werewolf lunged.
The attack was brutal, a clawed strike that would have torn any normal man in half. Silas sidestepped. The movement was so small, so minimal, that Aria nearly missed it. The werewolf's claws tore through empty air.
The creature roared and swung again. Silas ducked. The werewolf's momentum carried it forward. It stumbled, regained its footing, and turned. This time the attack came faster. Three strikes in quick succession. Claws raked across Silas's chest. Aria gasped.
But Silas didn't bleed.
The wounds closed before the creature could strike again. The torn fabric of his coat revealed skin that was already whole. Unmarked. Unchanged.
The werewolf paused. Even in its feral state, it recognized something wrong. Something unnatural.
Silas looked down at his torn coat. Then back at the creature. His expression had not changed. Not fear. Not anger. Not excitement. Just calm.
The werewolf attacked again. And again. Each strike was faster than the last, more desperate, more brutal. Each strike missed, or struck, or did nothing. Silas moved like water around the creature's claws. No wasted motion. No hurry. He was not fighting. He was waiting.
Then he attacked.
Aria did not see the movement. One moment Silas was standing still. The next, his hand was through the werewolf's chest. Not clawing. Not cutting. Simply driven through flesh and bone like they were made of paper.
The creature made a sound that would stay in Aria's nightmares for years. A wet, choking noise that died almost instantly. Silas withdrew his hand. Blood poured from the wound. The werewolf collapsed to its knees. Silas struck again. And again. His hands moved with mechanical precision, tearing, separating, dismantling. The creature stopped screaming. It stopped moving. It stopped being a creature and became something else. Something broken. Something dead.
Silas stood over the body, breathing evenly. His hands were red to the wrists. His face was splattered with blood. The rain washed some of it away, but not enough. He looked down at what remained of the werewolf. There was no satisfaction in his expression. No rage. No relief. Just the quiet exhaustion of someone completing a routine task.
He turned.
Aria couldn't move. Her back was pressed against the oak tree. Her heart hammered so loudly she was certain he could hear it. He was looking directly at her through the rain.
She had seen everything.
He walked toward her. Slowly. His footsteps made almost no sound on the soaked earth.
She tried to run. Her legs refused.
She tried to scream. Nothing came.
He stopped only a few feet away. Rain washed the blood from his face in thin crimson streams.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Silas studied her. Not with hunger. Not with anger. With calculation.
She was terrified.
It changed nothing. She was only another complication.
Without another word, he turned his back on her.
Aria finally found the strength to move.
She ran.
She ran blindly through the rain, branches clawing at her clothes, her lungs burning as panic drowned every thought except one.
He wasn't human.
---
Silas remained in the clearing until her footsteps disappeared.
His eyes drifted to the dead rogue.
Another delay. Another wasted hour. Another day without the key.
He looked at his bloodstained hands as the rain slowly washed them clean.
Margaret would not be pleased.
For the first time since arriving in Ashthorne, a witness had survived.
He turned toward the mansion.
Three days. That was all he had left.
The key had to be found before Margaret removed every obstacle standing between him and his mission.
Silas disappeared into the rain.
- Writer
