The Highlander's Charm

Prologue

I'm not sure how long I had been walking... Or how long it had been since I had collapsed on the side of this beaten pathway... It had been my very first signs of civilization and my body just does not have the strength to continue having not been fed since the week before I actually managed to slip away... I had walked for weeks on end trying to escape the fate so many of my peers are succumbing to as their lives are cut short by the violence that none of us had wanted to participate in in the first place, my place in the war due to the incoming waves of foreign vampire nests and shifters all intent on taking the already claimed territory for themselves... I had been so tired of watching family after family of the village that had been under my protection grieve over loved ones going out for errands and never returning home and children disappearing from their beds at night... I had stepped up to try and protect the people my King had assigned to my care and I had failed in my venture... My last straw with this endless bloody battle coming in the form of a letter delivered by the son of one of my old kitchen maids, the pipsqueak informing me that the village had been set upon... And that he was the only one left simply because he had hidden until the vampires responsible were too blood drunk to chase after him. 

 Turning my back on the war had been a smart decision when I had made it, the needless bloodshed over territory and feeding grounds enough to have made my stomach churn with all of the unnecessary violence and cruelty, a young warlock who had been forced to serve by my side the one who had made me see sense... He had talked me into walking away even though he would never be able to, being repeatedly sold by his own people as a weapon to be used amongst the rest of us, his declining my offer to buy and free him one that had shown me just how warped and wounded he had already become... And how warped and wounded I would have become if I had stayed... He had helped me escape from the Prince I had taken up arms with asking nothing more of me but to remember his name and carry it with me so that someone might remember him after all of this is over so that word might get back to his family that he fought bravely and followed his orders just as they had expected him to... 

Now that I have time to stare up at the sun from my pathetically shaded place half-hidden in one of the bushes that had cropped up when I had only been able to crawl... Oh, how I wish had held out for a better one...I have time to think about just how foolish I've been in my long lifetime... If I had stayed with the village all of us would still be alive and I wouldn't be dying with no dignity on the side of this dusty endless road with no one but myself and a tiny warlock named Timothy to thank...

I almost do not understand it when the sun that had been so happy in blinding me suddenly disappears... But my eyes do not stay open long enough for me to make sense of the delicate face that appears right above mine... I barely dare to breathe, and the pause is all my body needs to finally give way to the unconsciousness that had been evading me until the precious scent that fills my nose tells me that it is finally safe to relax...

Whether it be my final delusion before death or an angel sent here to deliver me unto whatever afterlife awaits men like me on the other side... It is a blessing to envision what my soulmate might have looked and smelled like as I draw what feels like might be my last breath.