The Witching Time

Chapter One

Chapter One

        I pull down the blinds and make sure all the doors and windows are locked. I have ten minutes before they come. This house has two floors. On the bottom floor is the kitchen, living room, dining room and one bathroom. There’s the front door and the back door. The upstairs has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The master bedroom, which used to be my parents, has one of the bathrooms and leads to the balcony. The other bathroom is closer to my room then the other room. Recently I've found that going through each room in my head helps calm my nerves. 

        After I’ve checked and double checked and triple checked that everything’s locked I go to my room grab the knife from under my bed, lock the door to my room and go to my closet. I know that locking the doors is pointless, they can get in anyway, but at least it will slow them down. And it makes me feel more secure. I sit in the darkness of my closet with my knife clutched to my chest. I glance at my watch. It’s eight o’clock. They’re coming. Everything is deathly quiet; there is no one in the house but me. Usually my parents and my sister would be here with me. But they’re gone now.

        They died in one of the attacks. For the next nine hours I’ll be sitting in this closet praying to god that they won’t find me. A banging on the front door makes me jump. There’s more banging and then silence. They’ve gotten in, it’s the only explanation. They don’t give up, they never give up. They know we hide in here, quivering in fea. I hear footsteps on the stairs then my door is busted down. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Shakily, I stand up and poise my knife. The closet door flies open. The man in the doorway doesn’t even hesitate before pulling me out of the closet.

        He looks human but he’s not. His eyes flash red. I swing the knife toward him and miss him by only an inch. He laughs and grabs me. The knife is ripped from my hand and I’m thrown across the room. I hit the wall hard. My shoulder hurts like hell and I think I’m bleeding. He walks over to me and pulls me up by my hair which makes me scream.

        “You humans are so weak.” His voice is raspy.

        He grabs my chin and faces me toward him. He looks into my eyes and pain rips through my body. I scream again. This one must feed on essence. I feel my body start to weaken as pain soars through my body. My eyes start to close and then he stiffens. His eyes go completely black and he drops me. We both fall to the floor at the same time. I look up to see Aleister. He holds out a hand to me and I take it.

        “Are you alright?”  He asks me. Aleister is my boyfriend. He showed up in town a few months after all the monsters did.

        “Yeah.” I say, “Let’s get out of here.”

        He takes my hand and leads me down the stairs past the broken remains of the doorways. He’s always had more of a bad boy look. He has gorgeous black hair that is that perfect length between long and short. It’s chaos outside. People are screaming and things are on fire. I’m surprised they can still find things to destroy after all these months. Even more I’m surprised I’m still alive. My whole family were better at fighting than me. 

        “Where are we going?” I ask. There are a couple safe places around town.

        “Somewhere safe.” I had a feeling he was going to say that.

        Most nights I didn’t leave the house. It wasn’t safe. Outside is the land of the monsters. When everything you were told as a child didn’t exist does. We try to stay in the shadows as much as possible and take the back roads. But that doesn’t stop them from finding us. These ones are weaker though, the ones who have to search the small dark places for a little bit of food. With Aleister’s strength and fighting skills we get past them pretty quickly. He’d always known how to fight and kept himself in shape. I, on the other hand, started learning how to fight after the first attack. I wasn’t that strong or skilled but I wasn’t completely useless.

        We make it to our destination within thirty minutes. We enter a steel door that leads down. An underground sanctuary. Aleister leads me down a set of stairs and deep into the safety of the sanctuary. There are about twenty people down here; I don’t really know any of them. We go to the corner of the room and I sit down. I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my forehead against my knees. I close my eyes and slow my breathing.

        And then I’m outside again. I hear a scream and run toward it. I find a girl being harassed by one of them and walk over to them.

        “Tsk, tsk.” I say. “You shouldn’t be mean to others.”

        The man turns to me with blood around his lips. Vampire.

        “Well, well, what do we have here? A lonely little girl trying to stand up to the monsters?” He says.

        I smirk. He couldn’t hurt me; he couldn’t even touch me. I run at him and throw him to the ground. To the side is a pile of wood. Perfect. I reach over and grab a piece of wood and run it straight through the vampire’s chest. He turns to ash beneath me. Finding out about my 'skills' had really helped my fighting, but I'm only good at fighting when I have the upper hand. I get up and go over to the whimpering girl.

        “It’s okay. Just come with me.” She nods and takes my hand.

        I lead her down the street and to the safe house. And the night goes on like that. I find people in need of help and save them. Taking them to different safe houses throughout the night. The monsters can’t hurt me. Every time they try to touch me they just go right through me. Then I feel Aleisters hand on my shoulder and I’m pulled back to the sanctuary. I lift my head to see Aleister sitting right in front of me. His crystal blue eyes stare into my green ones.

        “Ruby. It’s over now, time to go home.” He takes my hands and helps me up.

        Coming back is always disorienting. Everything wobbles and becomes fuzzy for a bit. On our way out I see the girl that I saved and brought here. She looks like she’s about to say something to me but I put my finger to my lip before she has the chance. The life I live, saving all those people, is a secret. Even to Aleister. To him I’m helpless and need to be protected. To everyone else during the Witching Time, I’m a hero.

        I check my watch. Five fifteen. We’re safe. We walk out of the sanctuary to the rising sun. We search the broken remains of our town for any survivors and find all the dead bodies. We start to reach the town border. The road is cracked and broken here. Down the road is a car driving toward the town.

        “No.” I breathe.

        Our entire group fans out along the border. The car stops just before the town line. A women gets out of the car and walks over to us. She has blonde hair and wears nothing but designer clothes.

        “You should leave.” Aleister says from beside me.

        The girl looks at him confused. “Why?” She asks.

        Then she looks at us all, really looks at us. We’re all beaten and battered, our clothes are torn and some of us sport some severe looking injuries.

        “Were you guys in a gang fight or something?” She asks. I snort.

        “Something like that.” I say.

        She can’t see the wreckage of the town from here. All that’s here is forests. The monsters don’t come here.

        “Well I’m coming to town, a group of beaten losers aren’t going to scare me away.” She gets back into her car and drives straight across the border and there’s nothing we can do but watch. She stops near us and rolls down her tinted window to give us a satisfied smirk.

         “You better be planning on staying a while.” I say.

        She just ignores me and walks on into town. She really should listen to us. Especially since now she’s stuck here.