Blood Moon Contract

The winters of Silverpine stretched on like a dream that refused to wake. Month after month the snow lay heavy on the pine boughs, and the fog that crept down from the northern slopes never quite lifted, even at noon. The whole town seemed to huddle lower against the cold, its windows glowing amber behind curtained glass, its streets quiet except for the crunch of boots on frozen ground and the distant creak of branches weighed down by ice. The mist came seeping out of the pine forest that bordered the western edge of town, laden with fine snow, pressing the whole settlement low and heavy as though the sky itself had decided to rest upon the rooftops. I pulled my school jacket tighter around my shoulders, its collar turned up against the wind, and walked along the old abandoned track at the forest's edge, heading home. My boots crunched over the snow, each step a small, familiar sound in the vast hush. The streetlamps came on one by one along the main road, and in their dim yellow glow the snowflakes drifted thick and slow, swirling in the light like something alive. I should have done as I always did — quickened my pace and gone back to the old house where I lived alone, the one with the leaking roof and the radiator that clanked all night. But that evening, the wind shifted, and through the rustle of falling snow I caught a sound so faint it was almost swallowed by the white. It was a cry for help. I stopped and listened, my breath clouding in front of my face for a long moment. The sound came from deep within the forest, broken and uneven, like a man frozen past the point of forming whole words. It rose and fell with the wind, as though carried on a thread that might snap at any moment. Everyone in town had been warned since childhood: do not go near those woods. The old folks said the forest was unclean, that things which should not exist lived there, hidden in the mist and the dark. Mothers pulled their children close when the wind came from the west. Fathers nailed iron crosses above their doorways at the first frost. I had never gone in. But that night, that cry hooked me like a fish on a line, and I could not make myself walk away. Reason told me to leave. It told me that the old house was warm, that the soup on the stove was waiting, that I had a final exam to study for and a life that required nothing more dangerous than crossing the main street. And yet, almost against my will, I pushed through the underbrush and stepped into that forbidden ground, sealed off by fog and snow. The branches snatched at my coat. The air grew colder, denser, as though the forest itself were closing around me. The forest was deeper than I had imagined. I walked a long way, until my boots and socks were soaked through, until my fingers went numb inside my gloves and my breath came in sharp, gasping clouds. The trees grew taller and closer, their trunks like pillars in a cathedral of white and shadow. At last, beside a snow-covered boulder half-hidden by fir boughs, I found him. A young man covered in blood. He was curled in the snow, his silver hair falling loose across his face, stained with red and white. His cheeks were hollowed, his lips blue, and his face was pale almost to transparency, so that in the sparse moonlight filtering through the canopy his skin gave off a strange, cold gleam, as though he were carved from marble. His eyes were shut, his brow knitted tight, as though he were bearing some enormous pain that he could not wake from. The blood on his coat was dark, nearly black, soaking into the snow around him in a widening stain that looked almost purple in the moonlight. I knelt down, my knees sinking into the cold, and reached out, touching his shoulder. The fabric was stiff with frost. “Hey—” My voice came out smaller than I intended. “Are you all right?” His eyes flew open. They were impossibly deep, almost black, and in the moonlight I caught a faint trace of dark crimson running through them, like ink dropped into clear water. At the sight of me his pupils contracted sharply, and his voice came out raw and hoarse, as though speaking cost him something physical. “Go... go away...” “You're hurt. I can't leave you here.” I shook my head, trying to sound steadier than I felt. “My name's Isa. I'll help you—” “No—” He tried to sit up, but the movement pulled at his wounds and he let out a muffled groan, his teeth clenching. He stared hard at me, those dark eyes searching my face as though he were looking for something he had lost. “You... you are... the Witness.” The moment he said it, the crimson in his eyes deepened, spreading outward until the irises seemed to glow. His whole body began to shake violently, as though something inside him were surging out of control, fighting to break free. His hands curled into fists in the snow. “Get out of here!” he snarled, forcing the words out with the last of his strength. “I can't... hold it back much longer...” I froze. I stepped back by instinct, my boots scraping against the frozen ground, yet I could not bring myself to truly turn and run. Somewhere between fear and pity, my feet stayed rooted. And in that moment of deadlock, from deep within the forest came a long, low howl — raw with animal hunger, deep and resonant — that sent the snow trembling from the branches overhead. It sounded like a wolf, and yet it was heavier than any wolf I had ever heard, as though something far older and far more dangerous than a dog had opened its throat to the night. The young man's face went white in an instant, whiter than the snow around us. “They're coming...” he whispered. “Go. Take me with you. Now!” I don't know where I found the courage. I seized him by the arm, his coat slick and cold against my palm, and hauled him up out of the snow. He was heavier than he looked, his body limp with exhaustion, and I had to sling one of his arms around my shoulders to support him. Half-carrying him, stumbling, my boots slipping on the frozen ground, I fled toward the town, the forest behind us swallowing the light. Behind us, the howl rose again, closer this time, and I heard the sound of branches breaking under heavy feet. Closer. Closer. I ran faster, the cold burning in my lungs, my breath a ragged pant in the dark. I never once imagined that this snowy night would become the dividing line of my entire life. I thought I was only saving a wounded stranger, a boy who had wandered into the woods and gotten hurt. I did not know that the one I had saved was a vampire — nor that the ones chasing us were werewolves. I did not know that the silver hair and the crimson eyes and the name he had breathed, Witness, were the first threads of a web that would wrap around everything I thought I understood. And I did not know that from that moment on, my fate had already been kindled, quietly, by the Blood Moon — that red, distant star that hung above the pines like a warning I could not yet read.