REAPING INNOCENCE ◦ STILINSKI [3]

INTERLUDE: ONE

INTERLUDE: RAE ECHO HALE

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August 2, 1459

    How much can change in a year.

    It's one of those phrases that I've caught in conversation, one that rattles in my mind like a pebble along a road, a vestige of my previous life. Once upon a time, a year was weighty, substantial. It was filled with possibilities: of meeting a new love, of having children, of dying. It was a stepping-stone on the path of life—a path that I no longer walk.

    A year was one thing. Twenty years ago, when my entire world turned upside down, was something else entirely.

    A year ago, I came to England, a land so steeped in history it makes the prospect of eternity seem less overwhelming. And although the setting had changed, I stayed the same. I still looked like I had the day I turned into an immortal monster, and the same thoughts—of Father, who killed me, of Daniel, my soulmate, of the death and destruction that I could never, ever seem to erase—still haunted my dreams. Time had been steadily galloping forward, but I remained as before, a demon desperate for redemption.

    If I were a human, I'd be comfortably in my mid-thirties by now. I'd have a husband, children, perhaps even a few werewolf sons to take over the "family pack."

    Before the Hale family pack became murder.

    It's a legacy I've spent the past twenty years trying to correct, hoping that somehow an eternity of good deeds could make up for the mistakes I have made, the blood I have shed.

    And in some was, it has; England was good for me. Now, I'm an honest woman—or as honest as a woman can be when her past is as wretched as mine.

    I no longer feel guilty for draining the blood of woodland creatures. I am, after all, a Demi-Demon. Diable. But I am not a monster. Not anymore.

    Still, time does not touch me as it does humans, nor does each new year turn over with the breathless anticipation of those who live. All I can hope is that each year will carry me further and further from the destruction of my youth with no fresh pain on my conscience. If I could have that, it would be my salvation.

    But, still, I know that somewhere down the road I will slip...

   — Rae Echo Hale

London, England, 1461

    Rae stormed out of the bar without a second glance and walked into the darkness. Only a few stars peeked through the tattered gray blanket of the London evening. She pulled out her pocket watch, something she had stolen from a man back in New York over twenty-years ago. After all those years, it still worked. It was nearly midnight. The witching hour.

    A sliver of moon hung high in the sky, and a layer of fog, so thick she could feel the dewy condensation on her skin, swirled around the dilapidated buildings surrounding her. She cocked her like a hunting dog. She could hear laughter emanating from around the corner, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't hear the ba-da-bump, ba-da-bump gallop of Victoria's heartbeat.

    She'd lost her.

    She glanced around, trying to get her bearing. Even though the bar had been bustling, the rest of the area seemed desolate. After a few moments, she came to a park. Or rather, she came to a patch of greenery that at one point might have been a park. Now, the grass was yellowed, the trees were sickly, paint was peeling from the wrought-iron benches, and none of the lamps were lit. She shivered. This was the ideal place for a murder.