Deathbringer

CHAPTER 1

The day it all happened was bright and sunny, entirely at odds with the season. Beatrix puffed at her fringe as she dodged around the kids littering the playground, scanning for her sister. Normally her Mum would collect Christina from school, but she was busy, so she'd asked Beatrix to do it. Which was all good and well, but the kids that went to school with Christina apparently hadn't seen somebody as pale and sickly as her. Well, not sickly exactly, just not strong and healthy like the rest of the teenagers in Rumelt. The kids pointed at her and whispered and openly stared.

"Bea!" Beatrix didn't even bother to glance up; she recognised Christina's distinctive, screechy voice immediately. Christina raced up to her, dark hair flying. She refused to have it cut, so it constantly streamed behind her, like a dark Rapunzel. "Bea, guess what happened today! Emma's friend—"

"Yeah, that's lovely, Christie." Beatrix interrupted. "Maybe you could tell Mum when she gets home later." Christina gave an exaggerated sigh, as only a ten-year-old could. Beatrix didn't care. She knew Christie would talk nonstop for an indefinite amount of time if she didn't interrupt her.

The trip home was stuffy. It was late November, but the sun didn't seem to know that; it beamed down mercilessly on them. Beatrix stopped off at the corner shop to grab them both a drink. It was only small, being a corner shop, and Anthony Barnes, the man behind the counter, seemed to know everybody that came in.

"Well, well! Beatrix Blake!"

Beatrix grinned. It was impossible to dislike Anthony. He was overly cheerful and—most importantly in Beatrix's opinion—he knew everything there was to know about fortune telling. Beatrix often went in to talk tarot cards and crystals with him. "Hi Anthony." She grabbed a couple of bottles of water and a bag of revels and dumped them on the counter.

"So," He said conversationally as he scanned them through. "You heard the rumours? Everyone's saying the Deathbringer's gonna take the kids tonight."

Beatrix rolled her eyes. "Anthony, you know I don't believe in that crap. The Deathbringer's just a story for kids." She handed over her money and grabbed her purchases off the counter, stuffing the revels in her coat pocket. "Besides, even if he is real, which he's not," She took the change from him, and pocketed it. "He's not going to come for me."

Anthony opened his mouth.

"Or my sister."

Anthony closed his mouth again. Beatrix turned and walked out of the store without another word. But she couldn't shake the feeling that Anthony was right. A kid was going to get taken tonight.

She just hoped it wouldn't be someone she knew.

                                                                                                      ***

That night it was hot and humid—perfect weather for stymphs. Beatrix didn't quite get why, because their plumage seemed made for cold weather, but the stymphs appeared to love the warmth of the seaside town. Probably because it made a change from the cold darkness of the underground, where it was rumoured that they roosted. Beatrix tossed and turned, but she couldn't get to sleep. Every noise made her prick her ears and bolt upright. Was that a stymph cawing outside her window—or just a raven? And was the sound of branches scrapping at her window actually the sound of a stymph clawing at the glass?

After several hours of this torture, Beatrix sat up and kicked the covers off. There was no way she was going to sleep like this—it was much too humid, and the countless thoughts of stymphs were keeping her awake. 

Her hands shaking, she reached for the Tarot deck that resided on her bedside table. It was a habit of hers: whenever she felt uncomfortable or anxious, she reached for the cards, to see what they had to say about the situation. She slipped them from the little black velvet bag and shuffled them. Her hands shook.

A card dropped from the deck. She reached out to pick it up. When a card dropped from the deck, it often meant the cards were trying to send you an important message, something that couldn't wait. She turned it over and stared at it in shock.

Death.

She stared at it with wide eyes. The death card didn't necessarily signify actual death. It signified an important change, the death of one phase of a person's life and the birth of another.

But it was the middle of the night. How was her life about to change?

Beatrix got out of bed and headed to the wardrobe. She slipped into some proper clothes and tip-toed downstairs, making sure to step over the creaky bottom step. She opened the backdoor (Mum always forgot to lock it) and slipped outside. With some luck, the night air would hopefully be grounding enough to allow her to calm down. Hopefully.

That was when she heard the shriek.

Her head snapped up, eyes darting for the source of the sound. It had been close. She pricked her ears, listening for the little girl who'd screamed. What was a child doing out this late at night? What with the rumours that the children were going to be taken tonight, she should have been tucked up tight in bed, preferably with locks on the windows and doors. No child should have been out on a night like this.

There was another shriek, right behind Beatrix. She whipped around...

...and came face-to-face with the stymph. Even as her heart stopped, she managed one thought.

Of course.

Of course. It hadn't been a little girl she'd heard. It had been a stymph. Screeching as it caught the scent of the one it hunted.

As it caught her scent.

There was no time to run. In the time it had taken her to form this one thought, the bird had caught her up in its claws and was rising into the air. She screamed and struggled, trying to break free, but she'd never been strong. What strength she did have had deserted her in the appearance of the stymph.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the wind. She remembered something Anthony once told her: how a human saw a stymph was only a fraction of how terrible they truly were. The birds' appearance was toned down, to a level that the human mind could take. Anything more and you would go mad. Looking up at the ragged black shape, tipped with a razor-sharp beak, she wondered how anyone could have known that. Surely anyone who saw them would believe that the birds had been made more scary, not less. It was impossible to believe that they could be any more terrifying than this.

She drew in a ragged breath. Beatrix had never been strong and her breath was always the first thing to desert her when she was scared. Black spots began to appear at the edge of her vision. The last thing she felt was the bird's claws digging into her shoulders as she blacked out.