- Ronan Hale:
The night smelled like death, blood, and darkness.
Not just the distant scent of rotting human flesh lingering from corpses long forgotten that are scattered around in the roads, not the sickly-sweet decay that clung to the ruins of abandoned places.
This was fresh. Blood and torn flesh, thick and metallic in the cold night air.
I had been riding for hours, my horse's breath a steady mist in the crisp air, my grip firm on the reins as I followed the path toward the village of Black Hollow.
I hadn't been there before, but I had heard the stories. A place plagued by vampire attacks. Houses set aflame in the dead of night. People vanish without a trace, only for their bodies to be found days later, drained dry and tossed aside like discarded scraps.
Kids, men and women… Pregnant women, old men, sick people, pets… Everything that breaths, everything warm thing that has blood running in their veins.
