Mixed Blood

Prologue

The woman lashed at them.

The boy screamed.

The woman lashed harder. 

A roaring of a thousand rapids swathed in flames saturated his senses, excruciating pain rippling along the entire length of his skull. Three familiar faces blinked in his direction, shadows devouring them as the woman towered above their helpless, twisted bodies. Though they were blurry behind the screen of his own tears, he could see their eyes still glittering with the same intensity they always did. Except now they were consumed by agony. 

And then by nothing at all.

The woman's blade was in the air one moment and buried in their necks the next. But the boy burst through the nipping thorn bushes before he could see any more, before he could feel any more, before the woman could torture him anymore. Every repulsive move she made corroded his being and chiseled him with a God-awful hammer of suffering that came down harder with every swing. He didn't know where she had taken Momma, and he didn't want to know. It was too late anyway. 

His bare feet had become close friends with the town's winding, cobbled roads, and they traveled the familiar avenues like conversing with an old companion. A river cascaded from bottomless wells in his eyes, tears violently pumped from his lids rather than simply falling. The woman didn't want the boy dead, that much he knew. So much had been stripped from him, but his primal instincts remained flawlessly wired and pulsing through his every vein. You disgust me. You'll never get it from me. Never. 

The boy wasn't worried about dying at the hands of the monster silently slinking behind him. He was worried about the consequences of staying alive. Every breath rattling his chest equaled another opportunity for her to harness the prize she was so desperately seeking within the boy, a prize that would be used for nothing but evil. 

But he wanted to live. A hopeful whimper leaking from whatever was left of his battered soul told him that he could escape the woman's clutches and rearrange his shredded pieces, make use of the heart somehow still beating under his coat. Maybe even skewer her own heart someday. 

Then he saw the girl. He screamed a name nestled somewhere deep in his mind near more pleasant, flowery memories. His lips had grown accustomed to forming the word, but could no longer acutely hear the beautiful melody of the precious name, the silky way it used to slip off his tongue. Only a murmur of it washed through his head. The woman had one of his ears; her scythe had retrieved it for her. 

The worthy owner of the beautiful name was racing in his direction, concern etched into every shadowed crease on her face. Under the streetlight's amber blanket, her creamy hair glowed and her arms unfolded like the cozy wings of a dove. He launched himself towards her with every ounce of might left in his trembling body, shrieking commands for her to flee-- 

But the woman was quick. Crimson blood welled from a fountain in the girl's neck and her severed head tumbled away from him as if trying to flee from his view. A sudden numbness began to spread through the back of his skull, a dull, tranquil brain freeze. It spanned across his entire body in a matter of seconds. He relished the inability to feel. Lanterns appeared one-by-one to decorate the dusky air, but the woman's wicked, tapered teeth glinted brighter than all of them. Killing her would earn him a lifetime of gazing through prison bars, and sparing her would bring wicked circumstances oozing with disaster. 

Unless he ran like hell.