Roderick Bain

Roderick Bain

The fog hangs low over the river road, and the night has gone too silent — no wind, no car, no dogs. Three centuries, and hunters are all the same to you. But the footsteps behind you are slow and steady, and too close — one pace, not closing, matching yours exactly. Whoever this is, he has not been fooled. "Don't run." The voice is calm and cutting, like a blade drawn through fog. "You'll only make me chase you, and I don't enjoy the chase." You stop. The fog curls around your ankles and around the old iron fence like smoke. You have not needed to breathe for a long time, so you notice instead how the whole dark has gone still, the way it only does when something in it is not afraid of you. Hunters have always been zealots with silver and holy water, easy to read, easier to lose; you have slipped through their nets in a hundred cities, let them think they had you cornered, and then shown them what three hundred years of practice looks like. He has silver eyes, colder than the moonlight, and a long black coat that does not move when he does — he comes through the dark like a ghost that has already decided where you will fall. "You think I'm another zealot with a stake and a prayer." He is closer now, and still you did not hear him take the step. "I'm not hunting you out of duty. I'm hunting the vampire who left me alive nineteen years ago, and her scent is in your bloodline." His hand rests on the silver at his hip, and he does not draw it. He looks at you the way a man looks at something he has waited a long time to see. "I have been behind you for three nights, and twice I could have ended you and did not." He turns a silver ring once on his left hand, slow. "So you will walk with me until I have the name. And when you give it, I will decide whether you are the message or the messenger."