Chapter 1

A lone figure moved through the Granland forest like a shadow with its edges sharpened. The visibly tall figure moved swiftly through the dark forest, his outline barely distinguishable from the shadows themselves. He wore a black jacket over a round-neck shirt, dark trousers, and heavy boots, a perfect attire for creatures that thrived in darkness. A leather girdle hugged his hips; where a belt would buckle, narrow sheaths hung, dark on the inside with silver dust and the faint sheen of poison that contaminate his weapons whenever they're in them. The weapons slept there, waiting to stain themselves with whatever the night required. He breathed too fast — or at least he thought he did. Vampires, everyone said, had no need for lungs or heart, yet, Daniel felt his heart hammering against his ribs, desperate for escape from the life he could not outrun. The body keeps memories, and Daniel could feel its frantic, useless thud at his ribs like a trapped animal. He had been running for over half a millennium, always in circles, always back to the same fear. Each time he thought he’d found safety, his past found him again. His hand closed on a silver dagger until the knuckles whitened. The taste of metal was already in his mouth — he’d bitten himself again, a jagged, guilty habit that left blood on his tongue. He had been running for longer than half a millennium, centuries folded into a single frantic breath. It was easier to keep moving than to stop and see all the faces he’d left behind. His ear picked up the sound of footsteps, sharp and too close. He flattened himself against a tree, senses stretching: the forest smelled of pine and wet earth and the musk of wild animals. A low howl split the air — the warning note of a pack. He had stumbled into Granland for a reason, and now the reason wanted him dead. He’d fought once already. The memory of the strike — silver piercing fur, the animal yelping and rolling — was still hot. He had thrusted his blade true and yanked it free; the wound in the wolf’s hide had spurted blood under the moonlight. He hadn’t wanted to hurt it. He’d wanted to survive. Another shape lunged from the trees, fangs bared, teeth glinting like knives. Daniel tucked his chin and rolled, the motion born from too many chases. He came up on his feet swiftly, dagger in hand ready to strike; the wolf’s momentum had carried it past him. For a second longer the world seemed to pause— breath, fur, heartbeat slowing — and then the wolf slowed. It shrank in on itself, bones rearranged, fur receding, shoulders shrinking. Where a wolf had been, a woman staggered upright. She stood too close to the moonlight to be anything but striking: tan skin, dark hair that fell around her shoulders, a set of teeth that still flashed predator-bright when she smiled, and an expression that, for a moment, read plain curiosity. Daniel realized he’d been staring. He had been staring at human features after teaching himself not to care for any human face. “Got your speed?” she asked without preamble, voice low but steady. He blinked. “Yeah,” he said. The single word felt blunt in his mouth. “Thirty degrees east from here,” she said, eyes sweeping the treeline like a compass. “When I say go, run. Don’t stop until I tell you to.” He didn’t ask how she could measure degrees in the dark forest. He sheathed the dagger with a practiced motion and, in the same movement, gathered her into his arms. Holding someone was almost foreign — a human gesture he hadn’t allowed himself in so many years — and for a ridiculous second he felt the pull of something almost like longing. Then she put her hands at his neck. “Go!” She said, and immediately, he felt the world narrow to movement as he bolted, and the forest folded around them as he ran. --- Angelina set her mug on the coffee table and tried to follow the sentence, but the page blurred into gray. The house around her was quiet in that way houses are when everyone inside has finished pretending not to be alone. She was in her early twenties by the look of her, dark hair pulled back, skin browned by too much sun and not enough concern. She let the book close and leaned back into the sofa until the leather sighed. As she started to drift into the realm of dreams, the doorbell rang like a crack of weather. She cursed softly, pushed herself up and went to answer it. Angelina's eyes widened slightly as she took in the woman, and Daniel standing behind her, somehow, she was no longer naked. “Hey, Angelina.” The woman said, but Daniel's gaze was fixed on Angelina, his expression unreadable. “Hey Eva.” Angelina replied, as she gave room for Eva to enter, but her gaze was still locked on to Daniel. “You coming?” Eva asked upon noticing Daniel not following her in. “You have to invite me in,” Daniel said quietly. The words had the old-world cadence of someone who’d learned manners the hard way. “I’m a Vampire, I can’t come in without your invitation.” Angelina blinked. “Right. Come in, then.” He stepped across her threshold like a man reentering a life he’d abandoned. The house smelled suddenly important: coffee, old paper, the faint tang of wood polish. He let his eyes sweep the room. Pictures, a television, curtains that hung without a thread out of place — small markers of a safety he had not known for centuries. “Want anything to eat?” the other woman — the wolf who had been a woman, Eva — asked, closing the door. She moved with the easy assurance of someone who’d learned to make a place of any shelter. Daniel sat slowly, the motion deliberate. “I’ll take whatever,” he said. He sounded hollowed out, like an instrument that had been tuned wrong. They fed him shredded meat and rich, hot broth. The smell of it hit him like a memory, and for a moment he forgot the flicker of moonlight and the chase. He had been feeding on animals for a long time now, an attempt at penance and control. Tonight, the food steadied him. “My name is Eva,” the woman said between bites, her accent clipped, precise. “Daniel.” He gave her what passed for a smile. “And I’m Angelina,” the woman who had answered the door added, sitting opposite him. She folded her hands in her lap, watching him as if cataloguing every motion. “Nice name,” Daniel said, because saying anything else would have been a bad idea. “You two are werewolves,” he said before they could put it off. It came out as an observation, not a question. “We are,” Eva replied. “And we’ve known about you for a long time.” The muscles in Daniel’s jaw tightened. He set down his knife with a clink. “Known what?” “That you’re dangerous,” Angelina said. She wasn’t trying to be dramatic. She was giving him a report. “We were taught about you when we were… when we joined the pack.” There was a history in the way she said that, an officialness that had teeth. Daniel had the sudden, sinking clarity of a man hearing an indictment read aloud. “You were taught?” he echoed. “Names, faces. Methods.” Eva’s gaze didn’t waver. “That you—” She swallowed. “That you killed our people.” Daniel felt something in him that was not a heartbeat but felt like it: an ancient, reflexive shame. “I did those things,” he said before he could choose. The admission was as old as his scars. “I won’t lie. I did it. I—was following orders.” “Orders from who?” Angelina asked. The question was small, but it made the room tilt. “A man,” Daniel said. He used the vague word because the rest of it opened too deep and raw a wound. “He taught me power. He promised me freedom. He promised I could be more than the hunger. He lied. When I wouldn’t finish what he asked—kill my family—he stripped me and turned everyone against me.” They listened, and their faces contorted with uncertainty, struggling to decide; how much to believe. “You expect us to forgive you because some man made you do it?” Eva asked, blunt as a blade. “Forgiveness isn’t what I’m after,” Daniel said. “Maybe atonement. Maybe a place to stop running.” He let his hands lie open on the table; they looked small and vulnerable, human hands again. “I’ve been running for… over half a millennium now. I don’t want to keep circling the same nightmare.” “Half a millennium?” Eva quizzed, started. “How old are you?” "Eight hundred, threescore and two dozens years old." He replied, avoiding the gazes of the sisters. Angelina’s eyes widened at the number; Eva’s jaw tightened. “Eight hundred and eighty-four?” she repeated. “You’re older than the country.” “Older than the map that used to be here,” Daniel said. A humorless little laugh escaped him. “I was turned when I was nineteen, I died, only to awaken reborn into the cursed eternity of a vampire. Alone, abandoned, and consumed by a hunger that ate away at my soul, I descended upon a nearby village, leaving half of it drenched in blood. The nearest Vampire clan found me soon after, shackled me in shadows, and buried me in silence for what felt like half a century. Then, as if summoned by fate itself, in my moments of despair, a man appeared through space and offered me something I hadn’t dared dream of: freedom, and power beyond imagining, Don't you ever just imagine how I got so much power to defeat all those people?” He asked but got no reply, but thoughtful faces. “He gave me power, enhanced speed, enhanced strength, he made me smarter, and he thought me sorcery so much that, without being a warlock, I could open the channels of dark magic.” There was a pause. A small, resonant silence. “We were taught that you’re a serial killer,” Eva said finally. “A monster.” “I was,” Daniel said. “I was made into one. I did things I can’t take back. I regret what I did even if that doesn’t heal a single person I hurt.” Angelina’s voice softened. “Did you kill your family?” she asked — the question that had been waiting, like a stone at the bottom of a lake. “He did,” Daniel said. The words came like a fall. “When I ran, he killed them. I came back to ash.” Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. He had not intended them to be there; they were a small betrayal, proof that whatever fragments of humanity remained in him still responded to loss. Eva looked at him then as if seeing a map where the lines were new. “We’ll help you,” she said, but there was steel in it. “We will give you shelter tonight. But if you’re lying — if you’re the monster we were taught about — we will not hesitate.” “And if you do turn on us?” Angelina asked quietly. “Then kill me,” Daniel said. His voice was flat, final. “I’m tired of running. If this is where it ends, let it.” They ate in tense silence after that, the kind of silence that fills the space while people measure the weight of new pages. Later, Eva showed Daniel to a spare room. Angelina walked him down as if escorting a fragile relic. Daniel lay on the bed and, for the first time in a very long time, tried not to think about running. It didn’t mean he had stopped; it only meant that for one small stretch of night he allowed himself to think of something else: warmth, a bowl of meat remembered, and two faces that had not closed closed in on him with hatred. He was still perplexed at how quickly these ladies are giving him sanctuary in their home, despite the threat he posed, being him. Tomorrow, perhaps, the chase would begin again. Tonight, the world had shifted just enough to give him a breath.