Katharine Wheel

Chapter 2

There isn't enough time to collect my jacket or my boots. Wearing them as I fly home might have been a good idea, but getting caught while trying to retrieve them would have been fatal. Daylight is streaming into the thick forest, flooding the surroundings, clearing up last night's fog, and displaying the corpses of multiple humans who had been used as food by hungry vampires. It will not be long before the forest is re-taken by the cleaners - vampire cleaners, to clear up the mess created last night and keep it fresh for another night. But cleaners won't be the only ones who crowd this place up, there will also be an unlimited amount of guards to make sure no humans escape the city and hide here.

When the vampires took over the world, all its greenery and plant-life had already been destroyed, there were only barren wastelands and crumbling buildings in their place, which isn't much of a problem to them, if it weren't for the fact that their own food relies on the very greenery that had been destroyed. When too many humans started dying from lack of food, a small place was cleared away to let plants and trees grow, not only as a food source for us, but also as feeding grounds for them. Every time they need to dispose of a dead body, they simply dump it in this forest, which is then buried by the cleaners. A smart, and efficient way of living. But soon enough, they saw a flaw in this plan - too many humans from the city were trying to escape into the forest in the mornings when vampire senses aren't good enough to track humans down efficiently, and they were running deep and hiding well. So well that it became impossible to catch them.

The leeches solved this problem by over-crowding the forest with guards in the morning - when their senses are so diminished that they even a human could put up a fight against them, and letting things take their course in the nights - when their senses are the sharpest, and no human can escape them.

In the mornings, there are as many vampires in the forest as there are trees; in the evenings, vampires come here either to dump bodies or to satisfy their 'desires' and the thrill of hunting and drinking blood right from a human's throat - because, apparently, drinking directly from a human is considered bad manners in their homes. They only drink it out of glasses, letting their servants do the killing discreetly.

The first of the guards will be trickling in any time now, scrutinizing every root and leaf to take back any runaway humans, and being one of them makes me more determined to reach safety as soon as possible.

At night, I can sneak up on most vampires without much effort because although they their senses are at their highest at night, they are so overconfident and ignorant that they don't bother keeping a good eye on their surroundings. But in the day, knowing how much weaker they are than they are at night, they stay alert and paranoid, taking in every detail and missing nothing. Even if I stay as still as a stone, hidden out of their sight, they will catch me.

I run from tree to tree, hopping over small gaps between two branches when they appear, passing through the centre of the forest in my hurry to reach home. Trees and surprised birds pass by me in a flash of green against brown; the temperature is getting warmer by the second, the sun rising higher, songs of the early birds and squeaks of the morning insects filling the forest along with the sunlight. I push my legs faster, careful not to press my feet too hard on the bark of the trees - I can't risk a cut on my foot which could simultaneously slow me down and lead any lingering vampires towards the blood; having a clothes soaking in their blood is enough to demand their attention, the last thing I need is an open wound with dripping blood.

Stopping at a particularly tall tree, I reach up and swing myself higher on it until I'm balanced precariously on its highest branches which are thick enough to hold my weight. Once I'm satisfied that I won't be hurtling to the ground any time soon, I take some time to catch my breath and get a look at the edge of the forest and the beginning of the city.