I stood at the tree line and stared at the spot where she had been. The ground was the same. She had been standing there, and now she wasn't. I couldn't leave her. I wouldn't.
Frantically, I searched for her, but she was gone.
Kira, run!
Her voice was inside my head now. I turned once and looked back at the village, at the fires and what was left and then I turned away from it and ran into the forest.
The ground was uneven and I hit it wrong, caught myself, hit it wrong again. Branches came at my face and I put my arm up without slowing. The pain in my legs existed somewhere at the back of my awareness and I left it there.
There was only forward.
Would I ever see my mother again?
Would anyone from the village survive this attack?
Where the heck was I even running to?!
I didn't realize there was something solid ahead of me until I collided with it and went down, the impact jarring through my palms and knees where they met the ground. I stayed still for a moment. Then I reached forward.
Nothing.
Whatever i had run into was gone. Walls did not belong in forests.
My heart thundered.
I got to my feet, one hand pressed against my aching forehead. The dark out here was total, no firelight, nor moonlight. I stood still and listened. There was no movement or sound either except the distant noise I had run from.
If it were a vampire, it would have acted already. Something was here, but it was waiting.
I snatched my bag from the ground, and kept running.
Then something hit me. Unlike before, I didn't feel the impact, it was a force with no visible source.
It came from the side and threw me hard into a tree. I hit bark and dropped, landing on my hands and knees.
Air elementals could do this, but something screamed at me that whoever my attacker was was no air elemental.
I pushed off the ground and stood.
"Show yourself!" My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Why do you attack me from the shadows?"
Silence.
Then, pain.
Clutching my head, I fell to my knees as a piercing agony twisted through my skull. I screamed. It felt like my very brain was being torn apart. Tears streamed down my face as the world around me darkened.
The pain intensified, and another scream tore from my lips.
Footsteps approached from somewhere behind me. Getting closer at an even, unhurried pace.
I lifted my head. I was going to see it. Whatever this was, I was going to look at it.
But I saw darkness, and then I saw nothing at all.
***
Six years ago...
Blood dripped from the vampire's fangs slowly, each drop hitting the floor like a small clock counting down. A cruel remainder of the fate awaiting us.
My father shoved me behind him, his arm extended back to keep me pressed against the wall, his body the only thing standing between me and the creature at the end of our hallway.
I remember the fabric of his shirt under my fingers. I was gripping it from behind without realizing I had reached for it.
That day, I had woken to screaming, not my mother's warm kisses. There was no transition. One second, blissfully sleeping. The next, fully upright with my heart already skipping beats, my body ahead of my mind in knowing something was wrong.
Vampires had attacked us in the dead of the night.
It wasn't just my family, but every city in the world, all at once, in what turned out to be the most coordinated strike in recorded history.
Nights had always been dangerous. Everyone knew that. Vampires moved freely once the sun went down, and you did not go out after dark unless you had to because even though our city was secure, we knew there were vampires amongst us.
This, however, was different.
They had breached every city at once. The barriers, checkpoints, hunter patrols that had held the worst of it back for years. No one could explain how. These vampires were faster than we were used to, stronger, operating with an intelligence we couldn't keep up with.
They moved like they had nothing to fear from anyone they might encounter. They were right. We were the ones afraid.
My dad was trembling. I could feel it through his arm, through the hand he had pressed flat against my sternum to hold me behind him..
The vampire in our hallway was not moving. It stood at the far end, watching us like it had already decided the outcome of this situation. Its eyes moved between my father and me with mild, almost bored interest.
"Stay away from us," my dad said. His voice came out barely above a whisper. "Or else!"
The vampire tilted its head slowly, amusement glinting in its eyes now. "Humans and their stupidity," It said, and laughed. The sound made my skin crawl.
One moment it was at the far end and the next it was behind my father, one hand closed around his throat, lifting him off the ground without effort. Its claws dug into his skin immediately, blood tracked down the side of my father's neck, soaking into his collar, and spreading into the fabric.
"No!" The word tore out of me.
The vampire's eyes moved to mine over my father's shoulder. It smiled. "Want me to drop your daddy?"
I was thirteen years old and I nodded, because the word it used was drop and I understood drop to mean down.
I had the next sequence already mapped in my head: he falls, I reach for him, we run. I had already calculated the distance to the back door.
"Okay, " The vampire said.
My father's body hit the ground. His eyes were open and so was his chest. His heart was gone.
The vampire had taken it in a fraction of a second I had not been fast enough to follow. I had not even registered the movement until it was already over.
I screamed. It laughed.
My mother rushed in then, attacking and killing the vampire who wasn't fast enough to react. After killing him, she threw me over her shoulder, and ran.
She didn't spare my father's body a second glance, neither did she talk about it for the next couple of months.
That was the night I stopped believing the gods were paying attention to us.
That was the night our world lost structure and its fragile balance.