Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
It is strangely calm while I am a storm inside.
Under the light of the waning moon, I walk past the chapel and pause by the small graveyard where so many people have been buried. This settlement has seen its fair share of hardships, none related to my appetite. I feel like I am starving half the time, but they are starving too. Most of the settlers are from Andalucía, close to where I grew up. They are used to a Mediterranean climate, of sweet fruit and dry summers and soft, warm breezes. They are not built to withstand the hostility here at the end of the world.
For a moment, a terrible thought crosses my mind. I think of the dried blood of the Syren and wonder if I were to dig up the bodies of anyone who perished recently, would I find some sort of substance in the dead blood of a decaying human corpse?
But before I can even feel guilty over such a vile thought, a scream rings out, clear across the bay.
My head snaps up from the graves, and I look over to see a small speck of light moving back and forth on the dark water, and then a boat being rocked, waves splashing. My ears pick up a growl and snapping sounds, then more screams, like someone is being torn apart.
“Help!” someone from the boat yells. “Help! We are drowning! Lord help us!”
I can move fast when I need to, faster than any creature can. I run to where the rowboat is tied to shore and quickly push it into the water. There is no one around to see me in the darkness, see me moving at unnatural, inhuman speeds, and I’m in the boat in seconds, rowing fast across the calm water.
I reach the sinking boat and see a scene of horror.
There are three men. Two are alive and terrified while the other is dead, sliced down the middle with his entrails pulled out. There is evidence of a fourth person, the bloodied stump of a leg in the corner.
The smell of all the blood makes my mouth water, my vision growing sharp, and I feel my teeth turning into fangs.
I make the sign of the cross and pray I can keep the monster at bay. I need to save these men.
“Father Aragon!” one of them cries out. “Please, help him.”
The villagers here know I can heal others thanks to the help of God. They don’t suspect my witchcraft. But even I can’t heal a man whose heart and liver are missing.
I shake my head, swallowing hard. “What happened here?”
The two men look at each other. Alonso and Jose Carlos, I believe their names are. Honest fishermen.
“What happened?” I repeat, wanting to get away from the blood and gore as quickly as I can.
“You won’t believe us,” Jose Carlos says, voice trembling, eyes wide. “But we were fishing for the toothfish. Then, she appeared in the water. We thought it was a drowning woman, needing help. Caught on our line, maybe. But we were wrong.” He pauses. “It was a Syren.”
Chapter Two
PRIEST
News of the attack on the fishermen spread before the sun rose over the strait. By noon, military troops stationed in Primera Angostura arrived to join the ones here, puzzling over the incident and arming the cannons. They talked to the surviving fisherman to get their accounts, examined what was left of the bodies, and then came to talk to me.
By then, I was in the chapel, tidying with a broom. In the mornings, I like to give myself busywork, a lasting habit from my days at the monastery. Idle work cures idle minds, and idle minds are apt to sin. As a result, the chapel, and my cottage, are always as neat as a pin. At any rate, it gives me something to do.
I never liked the military. There were a few soldiers who came to my church in need of penance for the people they had killed under the order of their country, and I listened to their burdens as I listened to everyone’s, but in general, I find them to be more hypocritical than most believers. They are supposed to protect the people, but where were they when a band of bloodsuckers rode across Spain? Where were they when my village was under siege? They were nowhere to be found—cowards, the lot of them.
The soldiers stationed here don’t seem to like me much either. I know I have a certain way about me—all my kind do. To make matters worse, because I was a witch before I was turned into a blood-drinker, I think they can sense that too. Either way, they don’t see my otherness as being holy as the other villagers do—they see it as a threat they don’t quite understand.