Then it lifts its head.
Blood shines wetly along its chin, dripping in slow, luminous drops back onto the deer’s chest. Its face turns, just enough for the glow to find its eyes.
Red.
Not the dull tone of firelight or reflection, but something deeper, glowing from within, catching the moonlight and throwing it back wrong. They lock onto me with terrible precision, pinning me in place as surely as iron jaws.
My breath catches. I try to hold it, to swallow the sound down, to disappear into bark and shadow and prayer—
But the gasp tears out of me anyway.
Strigoi.[9]
My legs lock. My lungs forget their work. I feel the creature’s attention settle fully now, heavy and intent.
It has heard me.
It has seen me.
Something breaks loose inside me. My body moves before fear can shape itself into prayer or reason. The forest explodes around me—branches clawing at my sleeves, bark tearing at my skin, roots reaching for my ankles like grasping hands. My breath rips out of my chest in burning pulls as I drive forward, harder, faster, blind with terror.
I do not look back—there is no need for it.
I can feel it.
The ground shudders behind me. The thing moves through the undergrowth with a speed and certainty that does not belong to any beast I know. Twigs snap, leaves scatter, the night itself seeming to part for it. Each pounding beat of my heart screams the same truth into my bones—
If it reaches me, I die.
My breath burns my throat. Cold air slices into my lungs, unforgiving. My heart hammers so hard it steals my hearing, my vision narrowing to flashes and black gaps between trees, trunks rushing past like sentinels that refuse to help.
I run and run and run.
Until the moon breaks apart above me, light strobing across the ground as if the world itself is splitting open. Until my pouch slams against my hip and my shawl comes loose and falls somewhere behind me, lost to the dark.
I feel it close.
Not with sound alone—but with the undeniable knowledge of being hunted. The air presses in its wake, pulled toward it. Every instinct in me screamsfaster, even as my legs begin to shake, even as pain blooms bright and merciless in my sides.
The woods spit me out at last.
The village rises before me as I burst from the trees—the low roofs, the pale paths, the familiar shapes of my house. I lunge for the door, my hands shaking so badly I nearly miss the latch. Finally, it opens just enough for me to throw myself inside, and I wrench it shut behind me with more force than I mean to.
My back hits the wood as I slide down, chest heaving, lungs dragging air in broken, gasping pulls. It won’t come fast enough. My hearthammers so violently it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of me, each beat loud and panicked and unforgiving. My ears ring. My hands shake so badly I have to press them into the floor to keep from crying out.
Outside, the night holds. No footsteps. No breath. No sound but my own, ragged and uncontrollable.
Still, I do not move.
One hand stays braced against the door as I force my breath to slow, the world steadying inch by inch. The house creaks, settling back into its bones. Somewhere behind the curtain, Mama shifts in her sleep, a small sound of discomfort leaving her throat before she stills again. She does not wake.
Thank God.
I stay where I am until my pulse eases from a gallop to something almost human. Only then do I notice it—the prickle along my spine, the sense of being watched that does not fade with the dark.
Movement. Outside, near the boarded wall.
My breath catches all over again.
