A murmur stirs, but he does not wait for permission. He moves past Petru and kneels beside the nearest sheep. The grass dampens the knees of his trousers, his gray-threaded hair slipping forward as he crouches. One hand rests on the animal’s flank, gentle, almost reverent, before he parts the wool with practiced fingers.
The crowd leans in as one, and me with them, breath held tight in my chest. Beneath the thick fleece, the skin is pale. Untorn. Unbruised.
Then I see them.
Two small punctures sit close together at the curve of the throat. Neat. Precise. So faint they might have been missed if one did not know to look, if not for the way the flesh around them has darkened, drawn inward.
The world tilts. A rush of heat floods my face, the ground swaying beneath my feet as memory crashes through me—moonlight on bone, the wet sound in the clearing, the shape that bent too carefully over the deer. The way the forest froze. The way two eyes burned red when they lifted to meet mine.
My nails bite into skin as I struggle to stay upright.
No. It cannot be.
The man straightens slowly and turns back to face us. His face has gone solemn, stripped of whatever warmth it carried before. When he speaks this time, it is weighted with certainty.
"Strigoi."
The word falls into the silence like a stone into deep water.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd, as if the sound itself has bitten down on them. And suddenly, no one is speaking at all. No one moves. No one breathes quite right.
The man's gaze travels across the faces before him—over rigid mouths, over wide eyes, over hands clenched tight around rosaries and sleeves and one another.
"You need act," he says. "Now. Before sun goes."
A murmur stirs, uneasy, but he presses on.
"Garlic," he lifts one finger. "Rub it on doors. On windows. Where night comes in." He hesitates, searching for the word, then nods to himself. "Animal blood. Fresh. Mark the wood."
My breath catches, the words pulling at something old in my memory—my father’s hands, drawing a thin red line across a stable door after a fox had been troubling the hens. Blood binds protection, he'd said, almost absently, as if the world obeyed older rules than the ones we spoke aloud.
A woman draws in a quick breath. Someone whispers a prayer.
"Knives," the man continues, undeterred. "Iron. Plant them in ground. Point up." His hand drives downward before it angles to the sky. "It does not like sharp earth."
His eyes flick briefly toward the pasture, toward the shadows beyond it.
"And silver," he finishes. "Most important. Silver blade. On the body. Always." He frowns slightly. "Not story-silver. Real."
Silver. My fingers drift to my belt without thinking, to the small knife tucked there in its worn leather sheath. My father’s dagger. The one he left me to cut herbs, its blade always bright and clean no matter how many plants it slices through.
He had always insisted it remain silver. Not iron, or steel. Silver.
The words seem to thrum in the air, low and ominous, as the man inclines his head slightly.
"We help," he adds. "We have silver. Herbs. Old knowing."
For a heartbeat, no one answers.
Then, the square explodes. Voices pile atop one another, rising fast, fear twisting quickly into something harder.
"They killed the sheep themselves!"
"To frighten us!"
"So we buy their trinkets and charms!"
"Pagan lies!"
