My throat is raw, and when I swallow, it feels like I’m ingesting broken glass. I stumble towards the kitchen, desperate for water, my body protesting every movement. This isn’t just a cold. This feels different. Worse.
The kitchen tiles are freezing under my bare feet as I grab a glass and fill it from the tap. The water is blissfully cool going down, even if it does make my throat scream in protest. I drain the entire glass and refill it, leaning against the counter as another wave of dizziness hits. I fumble in the cupboard for some paracetamol and down two tablets, hoping they kick in before I leave for my patrol. No sick days for the slayer, after all.
I lean my forehead against the cool cupboard door, waiting for the room to stop tilting. I guzzle back some more water and straighten up. I don’t have time for this. I shake it off, telling myself to feel better through sheer force of will.
It works.
Kind of.
Enough to get me back to my bedroom and to pull on an oversized tee and some leggings. I peek out of the window and sigh in relief that it has stopped raining. For now. But still, I pull on a hoodie, hat, and scarf before I grab my waterproof jacket and my hiking boots.
Decked out like it’s mid-winter and not just late autumn, I grab my blade and shove it in the back of my leggings. Knowing I should eat something, but really not wanting to, I turn my nose up at the kitchen and leave through the front door, going from sweating to shivering and back again before I’ve reached the end of the road.
I make it to the cemetery gates before the shakes get so bad that I have to grip the cold iron to steady myself. My vision swims, doubling the familiar path ahead of me into two wavering tracks. I blink hard, trying to force the world back into focus.
“Come on, Vale,” I mutter through chattering teeth. “You’ve fought demons with worse.”
Have I, though? I can’t actually remember feeling this spectacularly shit. My legs feel like they’re made of wet sand, and there’s a strange ringing in my ears that won’t go away.
I push through the gate anyway, because that’s what I do. Rain or shine, healthy or dying, the slayer shows up. It’s the one constant in my life that makes sense.
The graveyard is eerily quiet tonight. No wind rustling through the ancient yews, no distant sounds of traffic from the main road. Just silence, thick and oppressive, pressing in on me from all sides.
“Slayer,” a voice hisses behind me.
I turn with an eyeroll that nearly makes me retch. “Vampire,” I say in the same creepy-arse tone. “Can we just fight without the trash talk or monologues tonight?”
The vampire, a male in his late twenties, like me, I’d say, looks disappointed. Like I ruined his night because I don’t want to chat before I kill him. I just want to decapitate him and go home to bed.
“Fine,” he huffs, clearly put out. “But you look terrible, by the way.”
“Thanks for the observation.” I pull my blade free, hoping no gods are lurking about to witness me fighting a basic vampire while I’m sweating through my clothes. “Let’s get this over with.”
He lunges, fangs bared, and I sidestep on pure muscle memory. My body knows the dance even if my brain is currently swimming in a fog of fever. The blade comes up, a clean arc that should catch him across the neck as he passes.
My timing is off by a fraction of a second, and instead of removing his head, it bounces off his skull. He hisses,spinning faster than I can track in my current state. His fist connects with my jaw, and I go down hard, my arse hitting the wet grass with a bone-jarring thud.
Stars explode across my vision. The world tilts sideways, and for a horrible moment, I think I’m going to pass out right here in the mud.
“You really do look terrible,” the vampire says, looming over me, fangs bared. There’s genuine concern in his voice now, which is just insulting.
“Says you who crawled from the grave,” I spit out and stumble as I get to my feet.
He doesn’t wait for an invitation. He lunges again, moving with that blur of supernatural speed that usually slows down for me, but tonight looks like a smudge of grey against the black. I duck, my knees buckling ungracefully into the mud. My stomach does a somersault that would impress a gymnast, and I have to swallow back a wave of bile.
“Just die already!” I shout, thrusting my blade upward blindly.
It connects. Not with his neck, which would be the clean, professional kill, but right up under his ribcage, piercing the dead heart. He gasps, looking down at the glowing steel protruding from his chest like he’s never seen a knife before.
“That’s… cheating,” he wheezes, before exploding into a cloud of ash.
I cough as the dust coats my face. “There are no rules in love and slaying,” I mutter, swaying on the spot.
I wipe the ash from my eyes, but the world refuses to stop spinning. The tombstones are doing a conga line. My skin feels like it’s two sizes too tight and boiling hot.
“One down,” I slur to the empty air. “Bed. Now.”
I turn to leave, aiming for the path, but my legs decide they’ve had enough of this vertical nonsense. The ground rushes up to meet me, wet and cold against my feverish cheek.
