The Price of Blood

Chapter2: The Last of Her Kind

TW: Blood, Gore, Violence, Depictions of Death and Corpses, Injury

Once she'd retrieved Riven from his stall and tipped the stable boy, Victoria steered him down the south road out of town. The sun was already beginning to dip below the horizon. It wouldn't be very long at all now before her prey would be on the move. The sooner she got to this supposed carriage attack, the better.

Barely a few miles down the road, Riven came to a halt, ears up and alert. Victoria patted his flank and nudged him forward, eying the shadowed forest on either side of them. In the last of the sunlight, she saw nothing of interest. It wasn't until she peered further down the trail that something odd caught her eye through the trees. A foul scent tickled her nose.

Rotten flesh—a few days old at least.

As they rounded the next turn, they came upon an overturned wagon. The ox pulling the wagon had been killed with a few arrows to the neck and eyes before its throat had been slashed wide open. The family that had been in the wagon had shared a similar, unfortunate end. Strewn across the side of the road, their mutilated bodies were beginning to bloat. Victoria wrinkled up her nose at the smell of fetid meat and old blood.

"No doubt about it. Vampires," Victoria muttered as she dismounted the saddle to inspect the bodies and the wagon further. Not even wild animals had dared to come near the corpses, seeming to sense that something was off. And not even the little girls had been spared. Victoria clenched her jaw, ready to find the monsters and take their heads before anyone else fell victim to them.

She jumped when Riven stomped his hoof. He had turned to look at the forest behind her, ears flat against his head. A tingle of excitement jolted down her spine. Perhaps the vampires were still nearby, waiting for more prey. She placed her hand on the hilt of her sword, listening and waiting.

There was still some daylight left, and she purposefully stood in the last rays of the sun breaking through the canopy, sensing that there were eyes upon her somewhere out in the woods. She could smell them now—a sickening stench of death more overpowering than the corpses behind her. But they wouldn't dare come near her until the sun had completely left for the night.

Riven stood his ground, staring straight ahead of him. More than once, foolish vampires and other attackers had attempted to spook him before being trampled to death under his massive bulk. It would take far more to spook a warhorse than some feral undead spawn. Victoria couldn't ask for a better partner to have with her; staunch and loyal until his death.

When the last of the sun finally faded away, the laughter started, drunken and maniacal, like hyenas. She saw figures darting around the trees. They thought she was helpless, blind in the dark. But she could still see almost as clear as day. To play along and lure them closer, she summoned a ball of light above Riven's head so he could see better.

"It's awfully dangerous for a lady to be out so late by herself in the woods." A man's voice taunted from the shadows. He laughed, as did his companions. "All alone... no one to help her. No one to hear her scream."

The first vampire launched himself out of the darkness, a woodcutter's ax raised above his head. In his eyes, he had a look of absolute glee as he cackled. Before he could bring it down on her, she drew her sword from its sheath and slashed him wide open from hip to shoulder. His laughter ceased as he gurgled and dropped the ax, a look of surprise and horror replacing his confidence as he realized what her blade was made of—silver alloy. His black, rotten-smelling blood spilled on the ground as he fell forward.

There was silence behind him in the woods now. Victoria kneeled down to pick up his ax. With a couple of heavy swings, she severed his head and held it up by the hair, shaking it tauntingly. "Come on now, you'll have to be better than this. Aren't you still hungry? I am just a woman alone in the woods after dark, after all."