Never

Chapter 1: Fire and Stakes

Winter's POV:

My life started and ended with a knife.

All right, it might've been a scalpel but it was still a knife. I was the only one my mom had to have a c-section for. She and my dad would tease me, saying it was because I was stubborn and would only come out on my own time or until I was forced to. I told my dad I got the stubbornness from him, but they weren't wrong. I was stubborn, but being stubborn was what kept me alive. Physically, at least. My heart was still beating, my lungs still functioned, but mentally, emotionally, I'd checked out. The only times I felt alive were when I thought back on the life I had before.

It took a while for me to learn most kids didn't have a house where the interior decorating was a bunch of different weapons mounted on the wall.

I was used to the crossbows, the arrows, the guns that were kept locked up. All of it was out of reach until we were older, and a lot of it was behind casings only dad had the key to. All those fancy weapons were nice and all, but the thing that I loved to look at, that I found beauty in even though it seemed strange to others, were the bullets and the arrows. We had a lot of different kinds of bullets and arrow tips. Silver, iron, wooden, blackthorn. They were different colors, different varieties, and my dad made them himself, taught my older sisters how to, then eventually taught me how to.

It also took a while for me to learn most kids' dads taught them to ride bikes, not make bullets and arrows. Most kids' dads also weren't vampire hunters, but that was something we easily kept a secret while the other things were too out in the open and obvious to hide. We were the odd ones in the neighborhood. What on earth are the Kinsley's up to now? Was a common question tossed around, but we didn't care. What looked strange on the outside was a real home on the inside.

My dad may have been a vampire hunter, eccentric, and on the overprotective side, but he was the best dad in the world. And my sisters, though they were a pain in the ass, were the best sisters in the world.

Walking down the stairs every morning, I got used to seeing things in fours. The first thing I saw coming down the stairs every day were the four pairs of boots. The biggest pair were dark brown leather, worn, and covered in mud. The second biggest pair were pink and went up much higher on the legs, more like cowboy boots, but also worn, also covered in mud. The next biggest pair were tan boots. Practical, nothing fancy, and somewhere between the length of the other two boots, also worn, also covered in mud. The last pair of boots, the smallest, those were mine and they were black combat boots, worn and covered in mud.

Four jackets rested on the coat rack mounted to the wall, next to the front door and above the boots. The biggest and smallest were black leather, the two in the middle were brown leather. Four pairs of working gloves rested on the long shelf under the coat rack, but all those were the same color.

At the kitchen table not too far from the front door, four chairs were pushed in, four dark green cloth placemats with lots of loose threads in front of each chair, and a bowl in the center with four apples, something my oldest sister did to create a homier feel to the worn down, house. It was so old, unless you absolutely knew every floorboard, you couldn't walk anywhere without announcing you were up. The floors creaked everywhere and when my oldest sister asked my dad why we don't get it fixed, his response was, "the floors are my spies, they let me know when someone is up when they're not supposed to be, and when someone is inside when they're not supposed to be".

It might've sounded strange to anyone else, but that was our dad. Our dad who lost his wife, our mother, to a vampire that drained her on the front porch in front of him, knocked him out cold, and left them waiting to be found by us. They always told me I was lucky I was too young to remember, to see our mother like that, but they didn't understand a part of me was sad I didn't, because I was so young when she was killed I didn't even remember her at all. I would've taken a body over nothing. All I had were pictures, and the constant reminder of who was responsible for making us a house of fours instead of a house of fives.