Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter One - Burn It All Down

The flames leapt towards the winter sky, licking up the window frames, passed glazing which had cracked and shattered in the intense heat. Smoke billowed from every opening, the noxious plume of smog already forming a heavy cloud over the farmhouse, turning an already stormy dusk sky even stormier still. Ash snowed down, cooling as it drifted towards the frosted earth, landing on Kalyna's hair and lashes, and on the empty fuel cans at her feet.

It was done.

Finally, it was over.

Even the screaming had faded away, leaving only the crackling of the fire, punctuated by the occasional crash as part of the structure gave way. The monsters within hadn't managed to escape, trapped in their nest by their aversion to daylight, and she felt no pity for them. Why would she when they had taken everything from her?

Her hand went to the locket at her throat, to the heart shaped pendant with 'Mama' engraved on the front. She didn't open it. She couldn't bare to look at the faces of her son and daughter, or of the husband who'd died trying to defend them. She had lost everyone who mattered to her, and it had taken years to track down the perpetrators, to discover the truth of their species and find the nest where the murderous beasts cowered during daylight hours. She'd been laughed at by the authorities. She'd been called traumatised by doctors. It didn't matter, though, because she had preferred to serve her own justice when no one else could.

She sunk to her knees on the ice hardened ground, not even attempting to flee as fire engines and police cars raced up behind her, their flashing lights adding to the unsettling flickering glow of the fire, and their sirens wailing in the absence of the screams of the trapped and dying. Let them come. Nothing could save the abhorrent occupants of the farm house now, and her life had already ended too. They could lock her away. She would plead guilty to any charge they levelled at her, and she would die in a cell knowing she had at least avenged her dead.

It didn't take them long to assess what had taken place.

"Hands up!" a police officer yelled as she an her colleagues spilled from their cars. "Put your hands up where I can see them!"

Kalyna lifted her hands, palms open, unthreatening. A strange sort of calm settled over her, a peace she hadn't felt since a police officer arrived at her studio, to tell her there had been a murder, and that she needed to identify the bodies of her husband and children.

"There's a knife on my belt and more strapped to my arms and in my boots," she warned, without going for her weapons, because she knew the police would ask anyway. "There are daggers and stakes in my rucksack too."

"Don't move!" the police woman yelled as she and several others crept closer, while firemen jumped into action, unwinding hoses and all but ignoring both the arsonist and the law
Kalyna had no intention of moving, and she stayed perfectly still at the cops descended on her, tugging her knives from her limbs and belt, and snatching away her bag as though she intended to go for it. Didn't they realise she would have run already if escape had been her plan? An officer grabbed her arms, forcing them behind her, more rough than necessary considering she would've complied with and order, but she didn't complain as they tightened handcuffs around her wrists.

"Right, on your feet!" a male voice hissed just behind her. "Get on your feet!"

Stumbling upright, she did as they asked, her gaze still fixed on the burning building; the hell-scape she had created in the rural seclusion. She hoped the building burned to the ground. She wanted to watch it all, until only cinders remained, but just knowing the vampires would never hurt another person would do.

Fingers wrapped around her elbows, and two officers finally spun her away from the blaze, yanking her towards a waiting police car. They shoved her into the back, not caring that her head hit the roof of the car, or that they sent her sprawling over the back seat. On another day, in another life, she might have protested. She might have pointed out that even criminals had a right to some dignity. Yet the officers could have done anything to her and she wouldn't have cared. They could've beat her up and claimed she had resisted. The only thing she had left to lose no longer mattered to her anyway.