Of Blood And Snow - Paranormal Romance Serial Ebook

Chapter 7

The humans didn’t seem such a threat when Scarlet saw them like this. She was crouched beside a tree high on a hill above the fort. The spiked wooden walls were nothing like the fortress she lived in. It would be easy to take this place if they were indeed scouting for attack.

In fact, this fort resembled more of a walled village than a barracks.

A few men lined the walls but the rest were milling around, going from house to house. There was the odd woman and child to be seen greeting them at the doors of the little huts. In one corner to her left, there was a pen of horses next to some livestock.

Looking at this fort, she wondered why they hadn’t attacked it long ago. The humans were always attacking them, but they rarely retaliated. She didn’t know the whole story behind the start of the war, she only knew the tale that they told every vampire on their awakening.

The humans and vampires had once prospered, living in harmony together, but the humans had never been able to bring themselves to trust the vampires. They believed that the vampires ate the souls of those they killed, and that they turned people against their will. This had never been true. Her species had always been approached by humans willing to offer blood to them in exchange for goods or something else, and there hadn’t been one recorded turning that hadn’t been by consent.

Her turning had been without consent, but it had happened a long time after the relationship between humans and vampires had turned to bitter enemies.

The humans had overstepped the mark.

They had slaughtered a vampire family centuries ago, believing that they had killed a missing girl.

By the time they found the girl safe in another village with her lover, it was too late for an apology. The vampires massacred the village that had attacked them and others joined them as they swept through the land, taking their vengeance.

The day a vampire lord killed the human girl was the day the humans began to fight back. Now they were locked in battle, eternally fighting for their survival and for the land. But the humans had an advantage. The daylight. It was only recently that they had become brave enough to attack at night.

And now she was a part of the story, and she often wondered what the ending would be and if she would live to see it.

She looked at Corazon as he stared down at the village, black eyes scouring the darkness, focused and intent. His eyebrows were married, knit tightly together into a look that made him appear as grim and evil as the humans had told her vampires were. Now that she was one of them, she saw things differently. The humans had started this war, and the vampires weren’t fighting back. What were they waiting for? Her species could crush the humans, but they made no move to. Was there something she didn’t know, or were they just biding their time? Corazon’s eyes narrowed and she could see the hatred in them as he watched the humans.

She knew the story as well as most did but something whispered that he knew it better.

He had been there.

“Captain Corazon?” she said in a low, quiet voice. He glanced at her briefly.

“What is it, Corporal Scarlet?”

She wondered if he would’ve just called her Scarlet had she not called him captain.

“Tell me about the war.”

He frowned harder. “This is no time for conversation. Watch the humans. Our report could be vital in taking this village.”

She looked at the fort. “Are we planning to attack it then?”

He nodded. “In five nights from now.”

She turned her attention to the village, thinking about what he had said. They were going to attack the humans. She hadn’t heard of such an attack taking place in all the months that she had been at the fort. Would she be involved in this attack? Surely if they were scouting for it, then it was going to be seventh company’s fight.

Something tugged at her insides and she looked across at Corazon to find him watching her.

She held his gaze for a moment. He motioned for her to move. They were leaving. She looked to the horizon in the east. The sun wouldn’t rise for a few hours yet, but it was a long trek back to the fort.

Getting to her feet, she began back in the direction they had come from. Corazon fell in beside her and she subconsciously moved closer to him. Back on the hill, she hadn’t felt as though she was alone with him, but now they were here in the woods again, her feelings rose up inside her and she couldn’t help thinking about him. Her thumb began to trace the marks he had left on her wrist. They were nothing more than prominent bumps now and would soon fade to scars, but ever since that night, she had touched them whenever she was thinking about him.

She surreptitiously looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what he was thinking as they walked together. His focus was probably on their surroundings, as hers should have been, and his intent on getting back to the fort. Did he feel anything when walking alone with her like this? Did it affect him and make him wonder things, as it did her?

No, he was a captain first and foremost. His duty came above everything else and most of the time she was sure that he felt nothing for her.

Sometimes though, she got the impression that she was more than just a soldier to him. She saw the way he acted with the rest of the troops, even with Troy. There was a false comradeship, an air of pretending about his manner with them. With her, he always seemed sincere.

A twig snapped, echoing around the silent trees.

Her eyes darted to Corazon.

He was alert and in his vampire guise. She slid into hers, moving so her back was against his as they turned on the spot searching for what had made the noise.

There was a low laugh in the distance. Another met it. She was by Corazon’s side before he could signal her. The sound was coming from the direction he had been facing.

“Humans,” he whispered.

Her whole body danced with a nervous tremble and then calmed again as she shut it down. This was no time to panic. Corazon was here and, by the sounds of things, it was only a few humans. They could easily defeat them.

She was glad now that he hadn’t sent her with Stanislav.

In her heart, she knew that Corazon would fight with an aim to protect her above everything.

She glanced around for a weapon, but could see nothing that would work. She had never been any good at hand to hand combat. A dreadful feeling settled in her stomach.

This wasn’t going to go well.

Corazon began to move, leading her away from the village and the men. She kept silent the whole time she followed him.

Until they came face to face with three men.

They all drew their swords.

He hadn’t been leading her away. He had led her straight to them. He had known where they were. The forest’s echo must have confused her senses, making her think the men were in another direction.

Before she could get her senses together and spring into action, Corazon had disabled one of the men. She narrowly dodged the short sword of another while Corazon fought the third. The first man got to his feet and she had a hard time focusing on her one opponent as Corazon fought two.

The man swept her feet out from beneath her and she rolled as she tried to dodge his sword. It pierced her cape, pinning it to the ground and trapping her. She kicked the man square in the jaw and he fell backwards, taking the sword with him and freeing her.

She growled as she leapt onto him, punching him hard in the face several times before he managed to retaliate. He slashed across her stomach and the sword left a burning trail. She bit her lip to stop the cry of pain, fearing alerting the human village, and hit the man across the jaw. He blacked out and she leaned over to use the only method of killing him she could think of.

Biting him.

There was a sharp pain in her shoulder blade before she could get her teeth into him. She felt the sword scrape against bone and whimpered.

“Scarlet! No!”

The world was suddenly full of his voice, loud and clear in her ears, pushing her into action. Before she could move though, someone had torn the man off her. She turned to see Corazon holding him off the ground by his throat.

He sneered at the man, eyes blacker than midnight, and tightened his grip. She was shocked to see such a reaction from him, but it paled into nothing when he attacked.

He clenched his fist into a tight quivering ball and slammed it into the man’s chest. It went straight into him and pushed his spine out of his back, sending blood showering onto the snow. Her eyes remained wide as she tried to understand what she had just seen. No vampire had the power to do that. No one was that strong.

Corazon threw the dead man to one side, turned with a growl and attacked the next. She could only lay in the snow and watch, too stunned to move or even finish her own kill. She watched Corazon killing the other man, almost tearing him to pieces with his claws and hands. It frightened her.

She had never seen a vampire do this, had never seen Corazon lose control. She backed away before she even realised what she was doing. When she did, she told herself that Corazon wouldn’t hurt her. He was trying to protect her. She had been hurt and he had lost control.

The mutilated corpse fell to the ground, drenching the snow with blood. She stared at it as it seeped into the snow, crisp white turning black with it.

A cold chill swept through her.

She realised that Corazon was watching her. He had never made her feel like this before—scared, frightened by the power he held and the way he used it. She knew that war was a bloody affair, but to see a man torn limb from limb in front of her eyes was something she didn’t have the stomach for.

The remaining man stirred between them and she looked there, thankful for a reason not to look at Corazon any longer. His hands were soaked with blood, and it was because of her. He had been in control. She had seen that. He’d been fighting with the skill and command that he always did. It was only once she had been injured that he had become different.

“Scarlet,” Corazon whispered and she glanced at his boots, too afraid to do anything else. She couldn’t look him in the eye when she was scared. She didn’t want him to see that her fear was because of him and not the humans.

The man moved again.

She swallowed hard when Corazon placed a boot against the man’s cheek and shoved his foot forward and up, snapping his neck.

Sitting in the snow, she waited.

Either she gathered herself and moved, got up and got past this feeling inside her, or Corazon would realise something was wrong.

She gritted her teeth and tried to get up, but the wound across her stomach burned, and the pain in her shoulder was too intense.

“Scarlet,” Corazon breathed and she closed her eyes as his arms wrapped around her.

He lifted her from the cold wet ground but didn’t settle her on her feet as she had expected. He held onto her, muttering something that she couldn’t quite make out, and when she reached out a little with her senses, she realised that something was wrong.

She could smell vampire blood.

She could smell fear.

And both scents were coming from Corazon.

“Scarlet,” he whispered in the shell of her ear and, on instinct, she held him. She didn’t know what this was, or whether he was in command of his senses, and she didn’t care. She held onto him, cradling his head against her neck and realising that she had nothing to fear from him. “You are bleeding... don’t go away... don’t go.”

There was so much pain in those strangled words that she pulled away from him and looked at his face. His furrowed eyebrows and tear-filled eyes made her heart ache. She touched his cheek and noticed that he wasn’t looking directly at her. He was looking at her shoulder. When she tried to look at it too, he released her and stepped away. He stared at her, his eyes vacant and air distant.

Scarlet gasped when Corazon collapsed to his knees and curled up, leaning over as he held himself.

She dashed to his side and knelt beside him, her hand running in a circle on his back. He was trembling.

“Don’t go away...” His voice was a tortured broken whisper and she wrapped her arms around him, wishing with all her heart that he would feel her and know she was there for him.

Because he wasn’t here with her.

She had heard of this, of soldiers haunted by the past and flashbacks triggered by similar events or location.

“Captain Corazon,” she said, her tone calm so she didn’t upset him further.

She didn’t know what to do. Whatever past event he was reliving, it was hurting him and she had to stop it somehow, but she didn’t know how. When he had held her and told her not to go away, he hadn’t known that it was her. It was someone else. She was someone else in his mind.

But he had said Scarlet. He had said her name.

Was this the trigger? Had he lost someone and seeing her injured had made him believe she was going to suffer a similar fate?

“Captain Corazon, come back to me.” She gritted her teeth against the pain in her shoulder and held him tight.

She shivered with the cold and her wet clothes. The smell of blood was tainting everything and causing her hunger to muddle her senses. There were voices in the distance.

They had to move.

“Corazon,” she whispered into his ear, as quiet as anything. Nerves made her shake. She forced herself to continue, to say what her heart wanted to say without a thought to the repercussions if he remembered this. “I’m right here... with you.”

He stopped trembling and she released him when he showed the first sign of movement. She sat back on her heels and waited for him to look at her. She might be able to see in his eyes what he was thinking and whether he’d heard her.

“Corporal Scarlet, you’re injured.” His eyes went straight to her shoulder and then fell to her stomach.

Neither were deep wounds, but she could feel them bleeding.

“You’re bleeding too,” she said and touched his shoulder. “The fight must have reopened the wound.”

He took hold of her hand and looked at her bloodstained fingers and his for a moment before standing and pulling her up with him.

“We must move. We will make it back as far as we can but we shall have to shelter somewhere. The night is leaving us.”

Scarlet followed him as swiftly as she could while battling against the pain. Her heavy thoughts slowed her down further and no matter what she did, she couldn’t push them away.

Who had Corazon lost?

He didn’t seem to remember anything, not a word that she had said or he had said. He had seemed surprised to see her sitting before him, injured and bleeding. She had seen the spark of shock in his eyes when he’d glanced at the dead people before making her move. He didn’t even remember killing them.

What had happened to him, both in the past and tonight?

She remained a couple of steps behind him and studied his face, watching the subtle changes in his expression that most would’ve missed. She had never heard of him being like this, not in the months that she’d been a part of his company. No one had mentioned anything like it. She knew that Captain Barlow had moments like it, as though something else had taken over him. It was like a black out, but only their consciousness of the situation had slipped away, leaving something else in control.

Her feet were numb by the time Corazon stopped walking and the wet had soaked through most of her clothes. Could vampires die from cold? It had to be possible. If she froze, then surely she would die?

Corazon looked at her, his gaze running over her and a thoughtful look in his eyes as though he was assessing her.

“This way,” he said and led her in a direction away from the fort.

He was taking her towards the rocky hills that she had often stared at from the West Wall. Was there somewhere safe there, somewhere that the sun wouldn’t get them? She could sense it beginning to rise. Sleep called her, but she trudged on, following Corazon and still pondering what had happened.

Had his altered state given him the strength to punch straight through that man? His fist had gone through solid bone and organs. Such strength seemed impossible, even for an old vampire.

She stared at his back, lost in her thoughts, and when she came out of them, they were standing at the mouth of a cave.

“Inside,” Corazon said, nodding towards it.

The ceiling was low and she had to crouch to get in. She changed into her vampire guise so she could see where she was going. The tunnel was long, stretching far into the heart of the hills. Corazon came up beside her and she noticed that he was holding his shoulder as he walked. He was hunched over too, but was having a harder time walking than her because of his height.

She turned a corner and was relieved when they came out into a small chamber that had a higher ceiling.

It was inky black though.

Her eyes widened when something popped into her head.

Corazon had paused for a moment before punching the man. He’d looked in pain—his jaw tensed and eyes dark with it. He had hit the man so hard, with so much force that he would have flown backwards into the trees had Corazon not been holding his neck.

“Wait here, I will get some firewood,” Corazon said and disappeared.

Scarlet sat down with her back against the rocky wall and winced as the cut across her stomach stung.

Corazon had hit the man with his arm that bore the strange markings.

She had heard of witchcraft that involved such markings, but never on the flesh. As far as she knew, it had always been on paper or other objects like stones and trees.

Time passed quickly in the darkness as she thought about what had happened and tried to piece together an answer. Corazon returned and sticks clattered to the cave floor. She stared at them for a few seconds, gathering her thoughts.

She opened her mouth to ask him how he had punched through that man to kill him, but it snapped shut when he bent over the sticks and clicked his fingers.

Fire appeared.

It was a tiny flicker that quickly found the dry spots on the wood and grew into bright flames that stung her eyes.

She looked at Corazon, stunned and unable to speak.