Dance with the Devil

Chapter One

Music is My Muse Series: Book One

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   ­­­The young were easier to hunt.

   They may be faster and far stronger than those of age, but they were also easier to outwit. Their instincts blinded them, the bloodlust searing in their minds causing them think of nothing but their next catch, their next feed. It consumed them, that all powerful need for blood leaving them unable to deny their thirst when presented with a mortal. That was when I would make my move, when they would lurch forward, teeth bared, in anticipation of the feed. Drawn to me by the sweet smell of blood running hot through my veins they would come to me. But their fight was not focused and they would quickly lose, my blade wounding if not killing them on the first strike.

   Those who have spent a few years as one of the damned were harder to catch. They not only had control of their faculties but wouldn’t falter just because blood had been shed. They were harder to deceive, more effort being put in the fight then the pursuit.  

   This one was somewhere in between.

   I had chased him through the damp alleys, climbed up chimney pipes, even leapt from roof top to roof top behind him as he attempted to elude me. More than once he had turned and hissed his surprise to see me still behind him. But he would not escape, not from me. This is what I lived my life for.

   Killing vampires.

   I was one of the elite hunters of the night, a select group of specially trained killers that had the sense to believe the stories of what truly lurked in the shadows. Together we worked to rid the cities and towns of their malevolence, each of us for our own reasons. Some for righteousness, others to protect those they cared for, a few simply because of the excitement the hunt brought with it. Myself, I fought for vengeance.

   It was one of those filthy bastards who stole my sister not a decade ago.

   Mother and father were late returning from the village, leaving my elder sister to tend to me and our infant brother while they traded and sold our harvest for what were needed to live through the winter. Our parents had heard the stories of the demons lurking in the shadows when we settled on this land, but as God fearing people they did not believe them. They didn’t believe in the beasts that came in the night, killing livestock and stealing the lives of children. So of course they thought nothing of it to leave us alone.

   Nearly a woman herself at sixteen years of age our parents had left us to her care often, and she did well by us, treating us with care and love as a mother would and not a sister. She would have made a wonderful mother herself, but that night that future was stolen from her.

   It was well past dusk and Angie had begun lighting the oil lamps, filling the house with light to make it easier for mother and father to find as it was a moonless night. But then something startled the sheep, the sounds of their mews reverberating through our modest home as they fled in panic. Angie had ordered me to stay in the house as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, telling me to watch after our brother as she walked out into the crisp fall night, one of the lanterns in hand.

   We had been having some trouble with wild dogs and she thought she would shoo them away, keeping them from stealing another of our heard and as such our livelihood. I stood in the doorway, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and covering my sleeping brother as I cradled him in my ten year old arms, watching as Angie made her way to the small shelter built for the sheep.

   I remember cringing seeing one of the dead ewes in the lamplight, its throat was opened but there was no blood save what was already matted in its wool. It seemed wrong to me even then, that whatever attacked the sheep had left it there to rot rather than taking it for its meat. That’s when I saw the man for the first time, a man I had seen more than once about town. He was the inn keeper, the man who saw to the travelers who happened to pass through our village. But that night he didn’t look like the kind man who offered me sweets whenever we crossed paths, that night he was hellish. His clothes were dirty; his white shirt dark with blood. His long hair had escaped its bow and was wild about his face. A face that shone with excitement as blood red eyes fixed on what was in my arms.