Work Text:
Little Red knew where she was going, had made the trip many times before. Grandmother’s place was not too far away, only a half-hour’s walk on foot. Ma had visited only two days before, bringing back the news that Grandmother was falling sick, the fall fever settling into her chest. Only, little brother was falling sick as well, so Red was tasked with taking the large pot of fresh stew, all rich broth and fall vegetables, thick with a little flour and seasoned with the freshly slaughtered bull. Red knew exactly how well it would help Grandmother’s chest, and took the task very seriously. She had to get the pot to Grandmother’s house and back before sundown.
Everyone knew that wild things took over the woods after sundown, things that would eat girls like Little Red, just on the cusp of womanhood. Ma had warned her of the impending maturity, what would happen when she finally got her first blood, and that they would celebrate her emergence from childhood then.
She got to Grandmother’s house before the sun was too high in the sky, and spent a few happy hours heating the broth and making sure Grandmother ate some. It was quiet, even if pleasant, and Little Red always took a special comfort from being around her grandmother. She was old, and wise, and told the best stories. Today, though, it wasn’t a story, but a warning, that finally came.
Grandmother had seen the wolves. The impending winter and lean summer had made them bold, and now they were running hunts past grandmother’s house, heading toward the village. Red would have to be careful on her way home, not to fall prey to them, and leave early so she had plenty of light to get home. Red promised, promised she would leave early and head straight home, no stopping or wandering.
Red was almost home when she heard the howls. Deep, bone- shaking howls that chilled her to her stomach and left her heart pounding, trying to break out from her chest. They were close, the wolves, close enough that she could count the different voices in the howl, count how many wolves lurked in the woods. It was only barely dusk, shadows lengthening between the trees but the sun not down yet, she knew, and it wouldn’t be dark until well after she got to the safety of the house. Red ran, using the path she knew would take her fastest to the tiny village, just a few houses clustered together against the threat of the wilderness. She heard her own hard pants, breath heaving a little as fear trickled along her limbs, but soon heard another sound, very different. Deep, heavy sounds, like a horse at a full run, filled with the harsh sounds of low growls. The wolves were on her, caught up and ready, ready to run her down, to catch and tear and kill…
A sharp voice, human, thank God, broke against the sounds driving into her ears, and the meaty sound of a knife hitting flesh nearly made her stumble and cry out with happiness. But the sharp yelp and growl kept her moving, one foot after another, fleeing ahead of the incoming pack. She would have sworn she felt hot breath against her ankles moments before there was another yelp, and a heavy body crashed to the ground, too close, far too close. One of the villagers bolted past her, a young man, a few summers older than her but already tall and muscled. The sharp glint of a wood-cutter’s axe was in his hands, another, she knew, would be at his waist, tucked into the belt. Calan never carried less than two, and often three- she was certain he was responsible for at least one of the wounds inflicted on the pursuing pack. She didn’t stop to thank him, there was no time and she knew it would distract him from defending her, and the village.
Instead she fell against the side of the first house, wheezing a little, before running up and banging on the door. “Wolves!” She cried out, and as that door opened she took off to another, her warning bring out the men, all wielding axes and heavy knives, ready to keep the wolves away. Women shut the doors immediately after, their shushing sounds seeping out as younger children began crying at the disturbance. She hid, finally, in her own house, leaning against the door and forcing herself to try and breathe.
The attack was over quickly, three wolves killed, one man severely injured, most taking a few scratches and bites. Calan, she learned, took a savage bite to the leg that festered for a week before slowly healing up, leaving a curved scar to distort his flesh. She didn’t get to see it, but she knew it was there. The whole village knew he had saved her, and gotten injured because of it. The women whispered that she owed him, life for life, that the least she could do was marry him after she came of age.
She came of age late winter, her monthly blood making an appearance, and she knew the women were planning something for spring. She let them make plans, knowing it was not her place to question those older than her, simply accept her duty to family and the honor of the selfless man they’d deemed her ready for. It never happened.
The village was razed the next dark of the moon, torn apart by terrifying creatures not even Grandmother had spoken of. They fed on the people like wolves at a slaughter, blood splattering everywhere, young and old alike. They left behind the dead, the empty corpses, and took only a select few people when they left. Red went with them, too horrified over the events, of the rending of her mother and brother before her eyes, numb after screaming her throat raw and bloody.
She killed one of the foul creatures when they tried to force her to do abominable things with one of the boys they’d spared. They found her amusing, and instead of again putting her with one of the few villagers, handed her over to one of their own. She learned what she had to, bore out the pain of discovering those things adults never spoke of around children, and shoved a blade into the creature’s heart after the sun rose.
She hadn’t killed that one, she found out later, but it earned her a new name. They called her Belladonna, and she found out what they were. The vampire, the bloodsuckers that hunted humans and beasts alike. They refused to let her escape, kept her human, hungry, and angry for the winter, and she tried to kill any of them that came to her bed.
She stayed an angry, human woman until her body filled out, until the monthly blood occurred regularly, until not even the threats of pain kept the creatures, the vampires, away. Only after her body filled out, when her curves looked more like her mother’s and less like the girl she had been, did she find out what happened to bring about the birth those creatures.
She awoke from riding the edge of death, and she knew she wasn’t a human anymore. She’d been reborn a vampire, and her screams of rage were only out-lasted by her hunger.
She’d fed, once the haze of hunger kept her from caring, and they’d laughed at her expense when they turned her out onto the local village they’d found for just this occasion. It wasn’t familiar, nothing about it was except that it was nearly as small as where she’d grown up. But she hated them for it, hated the sport she had been used for.
As soon as she had control of her hunger and her body, she fled. All the way back toward the are she’d grown up in, back to say goodbye to long- dead bodies that were still hauntingly fresh as memories. The village was still there, such as it could be- broken buildings now falling apart, corpses buried in rows, stones for grave markers.
One house had been built back up, little more than a shanty and looking half as drafty. She could tell someone had been careful with the way they made it- it looked like the way the woodcutters set up houses when they had time. She did not let herself hope that it was Calan. He would have had to survive the attack the the years since, with what was guaranteed to only be himself and maybe the random traveler. It made more sense that someone else had come along and built themselves a temporary place and moved on, not wanting to stay in the shadows of the dead and long gone.
She moved toward it anyway, drawn by the curiosity of who may have come through this area, only to stop short. Two great wolves moved out the half-open door, each half the size of a man, flanking the doorway with the fur raised along their back. She knew what that meant, they were angry and on guard, warning her away. So the house had become a damn wolf- den.
She’d enjoy tearing them apart and drinking them down, slake her hunger and her rage at them being here, of all places to be. Invading what was her home, her village, and the despicable irony of it all had her baring her own fangs at them. Let them try to kill her- at least then she would free of this damnable existence.
She stalked forward and was glaring down the now- snarling wolves, baring her teeth at them and growling back menacingly, just inviting a fight. The door creaked open further, and a man stepped into view- lean, broad through the shoulders, hair unkempt, and scars twisting along his body. He only wore a bit of cloth around his waist, and it would have embarrassed her, years before, but now she could only spare him the same contempt she had for the wolves. Until she saw his eyes, looked into his face and realized she knew him. Calan, with his eerie sky-blue eyes, now edged with gold, the small bump in his nose where it’d been broken when they were both kids. She glanced back down, noting among the scars a brutal, curving bite mark along his leg. He’d survived- but how?
“Lord above, if it’s not Ms Margaret’s girl, all grown up. What happened to you, little Red?” He stepped forward, and she snarled at him, her voice sounding much like the wolves that guarded him. “Oh, no. They turned you. They made you like them, those Lord- forsaken monsters. I’d rather thought you had died, Red.”
“Like you’re any better.” She took a step to the side, circling the wolves slightly, and they didn’t move beyond turning their heads. “Taken up with the creatures you once killed, to save me. How is that any better?”
“It’s not.” He admitted, and his voice was soft, low, a little regretful. “I took my risks, and survived, but I wasn’t able to spare you again when it counted. I’ll always be sorry for that.” He stepped forward again, and she backed up. She didn’t want him near her. How had he survived this long??
“What are you?” She snapped.
She hated the answer. Hated how he moved, body distorting before there was a huge, black-dusted grey wolf standing there, same blue-and-gold eyes, larger than even the wolves that stood next to him. She took a good look before turning around and walking away. There was nothing left for her here.
“Wait!” He called out, but she left him behind. They were both damned, two different abominations that would never be acceptable again.
It was decades before she returned to that house. Decades of fighting a losing battle with her rage, years of coming to terms with what she was. She still hated it, but she was less eager to kill herself, not when she could protect humans against the sadists of her kind. She took out monsters as she found them, the humans that deserved it, vampires, wolves.
She showed up outside his door, alone, in a shamefully short skirt for the time over a pair of soft leather leggings, with a blouse that left her plenty of free motion. She dressed to stand apart, to not be able to mingle, to do the work she’d taken on herself. She had chosen this path, made what she could of the life she’d been forced into.
He gave her a sad smile when he opened the door, still the only person left here. No humans had chosen to stay here and rebuild, not when there were wolves on the doorsteps and freely hunting through the forest. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I had to see.” She did, even if she didn’t understand why. She hated what each of them were, but he was a last figment from a past she’d loved.
“Go home, little Red.” He said wearily. “You don’t want me. You want the past. I can’t bring back the past, not anymore than you can.”
She stared at him, eyes not moving to the wolves around the house. It was a full pack, now, easily ten of the large beasts ranged around the human dwelling. Then she turned, resigned to leaving this behind her.
“Don’t come back, little Red.” He warned. “It’ll just kill you inside.”
It wasn’t the last time she visited him, and every time, he told her the same thing. She visited until the day she came, and he was gone. Wolves, but no Calan, and she spent her anger and grief out on the pack.
She never came back after that. There was no reason to return.