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“Gonna get ya, girlie!”
Dusk falls fast around you, the taunts and jeers of your pursuers as ominous as the howling of wolves, and you sprint harder, the air burning in your lungs. You curse the life choices that led you here, rueing your decision to take up practice in a small, remote town, born of the desire to put as many miles between you and your ex as possible and have some of the substantial loans you took out to fund your education forgiven.
A world away from the busy city you were used to, you had found the isolated settlement charming. Lingering cobblestone interspersed with asphalt, houses of timber and stone scattered amongst more modern dwellings--by all appearances an idyllic town with small shops and a farmer’s market hosting the freshest produce you’d ever encountered. Even the nearest Walmart was an hour’s drive away.
However, it was not untouched by the modern plagues afflicting rural America--drugs and poverty and crime--and you felt like you were making a real difference in people’s lives in a way you hadn’t during training. You were still getting used to the intimidating responsibility of being the sole primary care provider to an entire population, as well as getting paid for your services in monetary alternatives such as milk and eggs. The people were friendly enough, and the office staff--a nurse, a medical assistant, and a secretary which you shared with the dentist using the other half of the small building who was also the only practitioner of her kind for miles--had even welcomed you with a pie. Beneath the surface, however, was a reserve you had yet to break through as an outsider. You’d hoped you’d have the chance to form at least a few close friendships here with time, considering you were due to stay at least two years.
Now, however, you can only pray to a god you aren’t sure exists to get out of this alive. You think of your family; of your parents who’d had their reservations about your new job but been supportive nonetheless, of your brother, his pregnant wife, and the niece you may never have the chance to meet. Your foot catches on something, a root perhaps--and as you lurch forward you feel something snap. When you put weight on it again, you almost collapse from the torturous jolt up your leg, but adrenaline carries you onward, now limping, and you try to ignore it as much as you can.
‘Don’t stray off the paths’ you’d been warned when you first arrived at the quaint village. Every once in a while, a hiker from out of town went missing, their remains found months or years later, a sad testament to how easy it was to get turned around in the backwoods. Older than the municipality itself, the network of paths crisscrossing the valleys and hills of deep red clay had been trodden down to a hard surface by generations of feet and marked in low stone walls built by hands long gone. The forest around the paths and at the edge of town was bright and airy--alive with an abundance of bird song and the rustle of squirrels and other small animals scampering about the sun-dappled mossy floor.
The woods you run through now, however, quickly grow dense and dark, becoming more and more difficult to navigate. You have no idea where you’re going, but you don’t have the luxury of time to reconsider. If you stop, you’ll die. The men with tarnished badges chasing you will ensure that.
You curse your beater of a car which your brother has kept alive far past its natural death only to succumb at the least convenient moment. You’d been driving home late from the clinic you staffed in the next village over--held up helping an elderly patient with a particularly complex medical history who’d had trouble making it to appointments. If you had the breath to spare, you might laugh at how lucky you had felt to spot the trio of cars parked off to the side of the road ahead of you. Your cell phone useless, you had hoped their presence would spare you the miles-long walk to the nearest home. Two of the vehicles were the familiar white and black cruisers of local law enforcement, joined by an old truck with paint so rusted and faded the original color was no longer evident. You thought the lawmen would be your salvation, but how very wrong you were.
The pounding of your blood is loud in your ears, but the crack of gunfire is almost deafening, booming off the trees around you, and something bites your left shoulder, red blossoming over the pale blue of your scrubs. You stagger, and for a moment your arm goes dead and numb before the feeling returns in it as a burning ache. You don’t have time to assess the damage, only able to apply pressure to the wound with your other hand in an attempt to stem the blood and keep running.
When you had approached the cluster of vehicles, you spotted three officers, one of them the avuncular sheriff who’d introduced himself when you first arrived, surrounding a fourth man you didn’t recognize kneeling handcuffed on the ground. Too far away to hear what was being said, you’d hesitated, not wanting to interrupt the police proceedings, only to watch the sheriff suddenly pull the gun from his holster and shoot the handcuffed man in the head. You couldn’t suppress your gasp of shock. The men turned toward you, and the looks on their faces--ugly and low--chilled you to the bone. For a moment, you were frozen in place, but some survival instinct spurred you to flee into the woods away from the road, the men quick at your heels.
The thorns and brambles which have been grabbing at you, obstructing your path, now feel as if they are pulling your forward, deeper into the dense wood. Abruptly, you burst into a clearing, a break in the otherwise solid mass of trees. Disoriented, you miss the sudden drop in terrain. Your momentum carries you crashing to the ground. Your whole body tenses, not even breathing for a moment from the agony. Blinking away tears, you notice the floor of the clearing is covered in concentric circles of onyx and deep blue shale, the shards sticking up like rows and rows of teeth as sharp as broken glass which have shredded the skin of your hands and knees to ribbons. The pattern is too perfect to be natural, but who could’ve made such a thing and to what purpose was beyond your ken.
The havoc of your desperate retreat has subsided to an unnatural stillness, as if the forest itself is holding its breath. You try to stand, pushing off your hands, but your injured left shoulder fails you. You fall once more with a scream through clenched teeth, your vision whiting out, and for a moment you think you see words inscribed on the stone slick with your blood, but dismiss it as a hallucination. You’re steeling yourself for another attempt when a shadow draws over you.
A smooth baritone breaks the silence. “Good evening.”
You look up to see a stranger standing in front of you--and strange is the word for him. Tall and broad, dark hair contrasting with pale skin, a neatly trimmed beard beneath a strong, slightly crooked nose. He’s dressed in a bowler hat, a suit of rich dark cloth, an overcoat trimmed in fur, and sporting a cane, of all things. His eyes appraising you are a brown so dark it’s almost black, glinting with an odd sheen beneath heavy brows. He’s a bit older, but you might call him handsome if you weren’t certain he’s a figment of your imagination, a product of blood loss and pain.
“Maxim Horvath, at your service.” The elegant stranger doffs his hat with a smile, and his manners and posh English accent are much more appropriate to the period dramas your mother is fond of watching than out in the boonies of coal country. Everything about him is so out of sorts with your surroundings, you can’t come up with anything coherent to say and just stare at him dumbfounded.
He offers his hand to you. After a moment’s hesitation, you take it with your uninjured limb, more than half-surprised to find it solid and warm. You’re not sure that’s an improvement; he’s real, but possibly completely mad. The sting of the cuts on your palm aren't as bad as you expect when he pulls you effortlessly to your feet. He doesn’t relinquish your hand, however, instead cradling it in his own, which dwarfs yours. Standing before him, he seems even bigger, towering over you as a wall of black.
At a loss for words, you’re only able to summon a confused; “What--I don’t--”
“You poor thing,” the man—Horvath, apparently—tuts, his thumb sweeping slowly over your wrist. You feel the thrum of your blood beneath it quicken, and your have the odd idea that he’s savoring it. His other hand traces up your arm to your injured shoulder, and you brace yourself for discomfort when it reaches where the bullet tore through you, but to your surprise it doesn't come, only a numbing warmth suffusing the area as his fingers probe the wound. You should pull away, but something about him draws you in, and his touch ignites a heat in your belly which it should not. “Who do I have the honor of addressing?”
You hesitate, reluctant to give him your name, both for practical reasons and a deeper, half-remembered admonishment rooted in bedtime stories and old wives tales--of fairies and goblins, impossible things and fanciful creatures. Shaking off the irrational thought, you mumble it.
He repeats your name with a smile, and an odd tug behind your navel makes you feel as though you’ve made a terrible mistake beyond giving the crazy man you met in the woods information about yourself.
“Thank you, my dear, for waking me,” he murmurs. “I’ve been sleeping for too long.”
You have no idea how to reply to that. He’s clearly insane, but he isn’t actively seeking to harm you, aside from the overfamiliarity you shouldn’t be allowing. Before you can ponder his odd words further, you hear your hunters approach; your reprieve is at an end.
“Those men, they’re gonna kill me,” you stammer.
“Don’t worry,” he soothes, “all will be well.”
The assurance does little to assuage you, however and you turn with dread to watch the lawmen arrive at the edge of the clearing, guns drawn and trained on the pair of you. Barely able to stand, you don’t have the energy to run again, and resign yourself to the death you know is coming. Quicker than you can blink, however, you are swept into Horvath’s embrace, your back against his chest solid and unyielding behind you. He wraps his cloak around you protectively as if the fine cloth would do anything at all to stop the hail of bullets.
“This ain’t none of your concern, buddy.” The sheriff spits on the ground between you, flashing his badge. “Give us the girl and I’ll let you just walk away, forget this ever happened.”
“I’m afraid I must decline your generous offer,” Horvath chuckles, seemingly unbothered by the weapons brandished by your pursuers.
“Suit yourself,” the sheriff shrugs. “You get to die with her. Do it.”
The deputies on either side open fire, and you flinch, waiting for the projectiles to tear through you.
But it never comes. The gunfire hurts your ears yet proves to be all noise and smoke, as if the bullets vanish into thin air. The cops empty their entire clips and stare at the both of you slack jawed when you don’t fall. Immediately after, the sheriff copies them, clearly disbelieving what he is witnessing.
“Is that all?” Horvath merely cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed. His voice deepens to a rumble you feel in your bones, the sapphire of his cane glowing with a light of its own. “My turn.”
Wispy blue smoke rises out of Horvath, sweeping through you with a chill, then coalesces in between you and the dumbfounded police into an ethereal dark figure, the void made flesh with cold fire licking up and down its skin. It steps forward and grows bigger, long-limbed and hulking, spines jutting from its hunched back, bearing hooked claws and wicked teeth.
One of the deputies turns and runs; thorny gnarled roots burst through the stone at the creature’s feet and drag the fleeing man back to the circle. Swearing, the other two men reload in desperation then fire upon it, shooting to as little effect as before. The beast lunges, flaying the men open where it touches, its claws piercing through flesh and bone like they were paper, drawing horrific screams from its victims.
Horvath’s arm around you is a steel band; you couldn’t move if you tried. You glance up at him; the man--you were suddenly doubting the accuracy of that term--who holds you seems to be savoring their torment as the creature toys with them, something ancient and terrible in his face. For an instant it looks like blood clings to his teeth before his tongue sweeps over them, vicious grin contrasting with the fingers gently tracing over your collarbone, hot through the thin cloth of your scrub top.
The deputy trapped by the roots falls first, engulfed in flames and speared through by the beast's long claws, followed swiftly by the other, eviscerated then torn apart by snapping jaws.
The sheriff is the last to die, held aloft by the creature in one paw which crushes him with an inexorable strength, and the terror in his eyes when the light leaves them shakes you, as if he gazed upon the face of evil itself. Within a few moments, there is nothing left of the men but bloodstains and the echoes of their screams in your ears, consumed entirely by the otherworldly blue fire. The creature fades from sight, seeping down into the sharp stone as if it had never been there at all.
Horvath sighs, finally releasing you, but doesn’t let you stray far, caged in by his long arms as you turn to face him. His eyes burn into yours, and you feel as if all of you--down to your very soul--is laid bare before his gaze.
You find your voice once more. “What are you?”
Some sort of demon or elder god, you can only guess, but Horvath doesn’t answer, only grins more broadly, teeth glinting in unearthly light.
“Now, where were we before that rather rude interruption.” He cups your cheek in a massive hand, tender yet possessive. “I’ve waited for you for so long, gràdhach.”
“Let me go, please,” you implore, shrinking back from him.
He shakes his head with a frown, pulling you in closer to himself. “You have nothing to fear from me, sweetheart. Not now, not ever.”
You tremble despite the promise. His lips descend upon yours, tasting of blood and fire and pine. When you open your mouth beneath his--to scream, deepen the kiss, or something else entirely you know not--he takes the breath from your lungs, and your world dissolves in roaring blue flame.