Read Hunt, distrust and faerie bloodlust :: 1: Is that the sound of my own footsteps?

Being surrounded by darkness would have been a perfect advantage for anyone else in my situation, it’s always so much easier to hide in the shadows. The sparks that are beginning to glow through the fabric of my gloves threaten to reveal my location. I can feel the blood escaping from the multiple cuts on my fingers. It screams for me to let it out, and I know that once I do, I won’t be able to continue walking as quietly as I am now.

The sound of falling drops echoes through the alley, my feet splash each time I take a step. And even though I’m usually grateful to have moisture around me in case I need it, the sound throws me off.

And I take a deep breath, because I know there’s no one else next to me and I’m imagining things. There can’t be. I force myself to stay calm, to walk slowly and make sure to hide my hands. Pretending that I’m fine, that everything is okay. The small bag I’m carrying dangles against the fabric of my clothes and I try not to move too much for fear that the contents inside will break. I breathe in and feel my blood filling with oxygen, ready in case I need to use it.

Turning around would be the worst mistake, the end of the lie. The second I make any false move to confirm my own paranoia, it will come true.

“Is that the sound of my own footsteps?”

I keep repeating the same sentence like a mantra: “no one saw me, I’m imagining things.” If I tell myself enough that I’m alone, maybe they’ll go away. As happens in stories about the Watchers or even The Wanderers.

But try as I might to convince myself that this is an exaggeration, my instincts take over and my feet stop moving.

And the footsteps continue with more speed and force than before. As if they were alive.

I give in to the desire to flee and start running with all my might. The icy air sneaks up to my throat and decides to burn my lungs, I try to ignore the feeling of discomfort that the cold gives me, but I feel how my blood claims it. Without realizing it I am biting the inside of my cheeks and feel the taste of rust that I am so used to.

Instead of making the usual turn, I turn left in the stupid effort to make whoever is following me pull away from my house, my roommates, my family.

“Would it have made any difference if I had told them where I was going when I left this morning?”

I can’t hold back any longer and turn around, my toes tingle almost as much as my skin, I feel the magic inside me bubbling and maybe they won’t notice if I use it a little, just a little. I feel the soles of my sneakers begin to lift off the ground and I become lighter, just enough so that my feet don’t have to carry the full weight of my body. And my speed increases.

I’m exhausted and the cuts on my hands are burning, but I think I have enough strength outrun them if I try hard enough. I breathe in and let the oxygen fill me, close my eyes to concentrate and instinctively bite down again, opening the infinite wound inside my mouth once more.

And something cold and hard hits my forehead seconds before I fall to the ground.

I open my eyes and distinguish three blurry silhouettes laughing, a heavy boot presses on my chest and I cough even though I try to avoid it, I know that if at least one drop of blood lands outside my mouth at the wrong moment, it will be the end of me. All the intentions I had of attracting good things or at least ignoring my paranoia have disappeared from my head.

I try to get a closer look at them, it’s still pitch black, but a couple of lamps in the alley help me detail their faces a bit. The peculiar violet-tinged glow that bathes them mocks me, reminding me of my place in the food chain.

The bag has fallen next to me and I see how the eyes of two of them are resting on it. Will they think I am a mere thief? I turn to look at it, stretching out my hand to make sure I have a good grip on it and feel almost in slow motion how my hair slips to the side. It’s the beginning of the end.

“Her ears,” one says and leans toward me. I feel I can pierce his eyes with my gaze, it’s as if he has no soul.

“They’re very well made,” the other one whispers and kneels down in front of me, brushing the pointed shape with his dirty fingers. I guess he’s trying to find stitches or some hint of a modification, I hold my breath.

It’s only a matter of time until they realize my true nature, I’ve never come so close to regretting not cutting off the tips of my ears as I was advised. Even though humans have spent years trying to alter their bodies to look like us or some other creature they deem interesting enough to kill and exploit without remorse. Any idiot could tell the difference.

“If we take them off intact, they could cost a fortune,” the first one replies, his voice sounding increasingly unnatural. I tighten my grip on the bag and feel my teeth tear my skin even more. I gulp down the drops that fall straight down my throat.

“What have you got there?” I try to scream, I struggle on the floor, but the boot presses harder. He reaches out to grab the bag and I manage to throw it away, luckily I get him interested in something else.

The peculiar smile on his face terrifies me, even in the low light it’s obvious how distorted it looks. The tip of his knife flashes with the reflection of the light coming from the magically altered lamps, once again the Fairy Dust being complicit in our end. I move my hand again, but he directs the knife at it and I can see him try to cut my palm. He looks at the glove in confusion, because inside his head a piece of translucent cloth should not serve as armor.

“This is high-end,” he says to his partner who is still running his filthy fingernails through my ear and hair. Do you think he’s from up north?

“What are you doing here?” Asks the other one, running his hand now across my face and trying to pull the fabric of my turtleneck, “What other interesting things do you have inside?”

I bite down even harder and this time I let out a whimper from the pain. I restrain myself, because this time I don’t want to swallow the blood. I feel the power slowly building up inside my mouth and I concentrate as much as I can on remembering the few things I have managed to learn in the last few years.

But the knife this time pierces my palm and not even the highest quality cloth impregnated with the purest grade of Faerie Dust could stop such a deep attack. I lose my concentration and scream, choking on the violet blood that was pooling inside my mouth. I watch as the man’s face lights up with a glow I know all too well, and I know he has just realized what I feared most. I spit at them and the scream now comes from my two attackers, the glowing blood has begun to eat away at their skin.

The third silhouette, shrouded in darkness until this moment, steps forward. With all the calmness in the world it extends an arm and pushes the one that crushed my torso until a few seconds ago. Almost limply I use my free hand to rip the knife from the other and toss the gauntlet aside. The fresh blood shines so brightly on it that it looks like I’m holding a ball of light and I can suddenly notice his features much better.

I take advantage of the shock to breathe in and become lighter again using what little strength I have left, this time I concentrate on getting off the ground at least for a few seconds.

‘This would all be easier if I was as small as the legends say we are.’

My chest rises first and the newfound lightness allows me to stand up, almost as if someone is pulling me up by an invisible thread.

We all stop, trying to catch our breath or make some sense of what is happening. They stare at me for what seems like an eternity, my fight or flight instinct is collapsing and I can do nothing but stare back at them in a daze. I know they know what I am because they can’t unsee my hand, and if I have the terrible luck that some sentry decides to stop by and make his nightly rounds down this specific alley, I know all will be lost for me.

I throw myself at the bag and hang it back up, crossing it across my body. The sound of something breaking inside makes me curse under my breath, but I’ll have time to worry about that later. And as if my actions have awakened the crooks again, the first two attack me. I take advantage of the fact that the knife is full of blood to take control over it and make it fly straight into the eye of one of them. He screams in desperation and throws himself to the ground, writhing.

“Shit,” the third one lets out, and against any logic that might be left in this situation, he lunges at the remaining one.

I jump back and hold my hand in front of my face only because I can’t believe what I’m seeing. He takes a pickaxe the length of my forearm that was dangling from his back and brandishes it at his companion, I hear his ribs crack and then I realize that my attackers are far from the age-eaten thieves I imagined them to be.

The one still squirming on the ground is small and has torn clothes, I can feel how there is still some fresh blood on the knife and I turn to the opposite side with a sigh.

The blood inside me boils and I feel a thin line draw to the drops soaking him, as if it was just another limb. I hold my breath and make it dig in harder. The screams only increase.

I move away, watching as the third attacker thrusts his weapon again and again into the side of the one who had plunged the knife into my hand. I try to run, but my legs don’t respond, the movement hypnotizes me and makes me slow to react. His movements are fast, but his hands tremble, as if he’s not quite sure what he’s doing.

The smile on his face as he mercilessly attacks him sends shivers down my spine. In a few seconds he lies unconscious on the ground and it doesn’t take a fortune teller to know that, if he hasn’t died already, it won’t be long before he does. Then he walks over to the remaining one, still twitching on the ground, the knife barely glistening, most likely because most of my blood has dried up. I can tell though, from the faint glow it still emanates, how the skin on his face has corroded away to show bits of muscle.

At last I can run. I stagger and fall to the ground, but I crawl stumbling to wherever I can be away from this horrible place and the massacre I have just seen. I hear behind me the sound of the pickaxe cutting through the night air, and I turn for a millisecond to make sure he’s not following me. I am then met with the perfect sight of the third thug cracking the skull of the last of his companions.

I feel my eyes fill with tears and I hug the bag as if my life depended on it, my ankles ache and I try to become light again. This time all the oxygen in my blood is not enough and for a second I wish I had wings.

But the darkness at the end of the alley greets me with what I feared most: a brick wall.

I turn around trembling and see him standing on top of the corpses a few meters away from me, his body rising and falling, still breathing heavily for the commotion. What is he up to?

He turns to look at me and begins to walk slowly towards where I am, stepping over one of the bodies lying on the ground. I hold my hand in front of me so I can detail him and he squints his eyes in disgust.

The light emanating from my hand is enough to illuminate him completely. He pulls a vial from his pocket and drops a couple of droplets from it into each of his eyes. I try to stick my back to the wall, as if I could walk through it. I search with my eyes for any possible hole to sneak through, or some way to climb up to the ceilings.

I start to feel cold.

My upper abdomen aches and I am shivering. I’ve never been so regretful that I haven’t eaten anything all day, I should have been prepared for something like this, knowing I was going to be walking around here at night.

‘What if he killed them so he wouldn’t have to split the loot?’

This content is intended for mature audiences for the following reasons.