“It’s okay,” she told him. “You be wherever you are. I’ll handle the rest right now.”

“I knew I couldnae trust you.”

As Syn’s father spoke, Syn put his back to the sweet cottage, to the young female and her little brother, to the innocents who ran with abandon and unknowing bliss through the wildflower meadow.

His sire took another step forward, another fallen branch cracking under his horrible weight. “And I knew where you would go. Care you not that I hunger? You were to get something to sustain me, but it looks as though I must find something myself.”

Glittering black eyes shifted to above Syn’s head, and they tracked the fragile prey that had been marked. As his father’s lips parted, the tips of his stained fangs descended, and his body lowered into an attack stance.

Syn moved without thinking. He burst forth and bit the back of his sire’s hand, the one that had previously held his front teeth within its flesh. As his molars found home, his father’s roar was so loud, it rebounded through the trees, and Syn prayed unto the Scribe Virgin that the female and her brother heard it and ran for safety.

There was no waiting round to see if his entreaty unto the higher power was granted.

His sire turned upon him with a vengeance that was madness and aggression combined. And Syn made sure that he stayed within range of the punishing blow that came down with the swiftness of a hawk upon a lemming. At the moment before impact upon his face, he ducked and scampered back. His sire took the bait, lurching forth, swinging again, stumbling, for he was as yet in his mead though he had stopped his imbibing long before.

Syn kicked his father in the shin and went further back. Then he took an off-kilter punch to the side of the head and went another step back.

He knew he had provided a sufficiency of challenge and affront when an unholy red light, emanating from his father’s eyes, bathed him in the color of coming death.

It was then that Syn ran.

And he ran fast, but not too fast.

He had no idea where he was going. He knew only that he had to draw the monster away from that family if it was the last thing he did. And indeed, it would be. He was going to die in this, but hopefully the female and her kin would take heed of his broken body and protect themselves—and mayhap this was the best solution for all. He would be over, and that young female would be, if not safe, then safer, for surely Syn’s sire would be cast out of the village by the elders?

Another thing to pray for, not that he had time to entreat the Virgin Scribe once more.

With the red light of his father’s violence streaming behind him, the forest was lit in a murderous manner, the trees and brush, the trail that Syn found himself upon, the deer that were flushed from their stands, illuminated in the fashion of the blood that would soon be shed.

Syn’s thin legs pumped as fast as they could, and the only thing that allowed him to keep the lead was his father’s prodigious weight. Verily, the hoarse breathing, the huffing and puffing, was like a dragon that labored upon the ground in a canter when it should have taken unto the air. His sire did not have that skyward option, thank Fates.

The clearing arrived without preamble, the forest’s arboreal obstacles of trunk and bramble ending with sharp delineation, and for a moment Syn couldnae fathom where he had taken the chase—except then he recognized the landscape. ’Twas the start of his father’s verdant fields, the ones he rented out to the farmers for their horses, cattle, goats, and sheep to graze and take of the river water.

Up ahead, here was a post-and-beam construction, open on all sides, for the animals to find shelter under, and Syn headed there, hoping for some kind of protection from the attack. As he closed in, he noticed a stand of hay rakes propped up against one of the roof supports, and the strangest thing happened. His palms tingled and his body flushed in a manner not related to exertion or fear. Within his mind, he knew with abrupt clarity what he would do with the potential weapons and the precision of his plan shocked him—although not because of its violence. It was because the images held such certainty that it was as if the actions he would take had in fact already been taken.

Mayhap he could survive this.

Allowing his instincts to guide him, he gave himself up to a deadly purpose, relinquishing control to this unfamiliar underbelly of his consciousness. The effect of submission was otherworldly. Within his mind, he receded until he became separate from his body, an observer witnessing himself from off to the side rather than looking out from behind his own eyes.

It all flowed like water.

Adding speed to his spindly legs, he put some distance between him and his approaching sire, coming upon the meadowing tools with promptness. His small palms found the well-worn, sweat-stained handle of one of the rakes and he set the length vertically against his torso, keeping it out of sight as he waited for his sire to come unto him.

The hulking footfalls slowed as soon as Syn halted, and the breath was so heavy and pronounced, his father sounded as a charging bull.

Syn awaited the approach, the thunderous, earthquaking approach, and he began to breathe as did his sire. When he looked down at his hands gripping the rake’s pole, there was a red wash upon them, and he wondered when he had started bleeding—

No, it was not blood. It was his own eyes glowing as his father’s did.

But he couldnae wonder about this.

As his sire closed the final distance, Syn’s mind worried over when to swing, what angle was required, whether he would be able to lift the weight of the rake that was a feather to his father and a boulder to him. But his body knew the answers and had the power. Even as he wondered the when and how of it all, his arm and torso abruptly coordinated together.

The arc of the swing was too exact for him to believe. And he didn’t know who was more surprised, him or his sire. His father’s jowled face turned and regarded the clawed metal spikes coming at his head as if he didn’t recognize what they were.

Syn had little strength and the rake was heavy. However the teeth and tongs were unforgiving. Before his sire could raise an arm or duck, they scored deeply into his father’s ruddy, angry features, moving across his temple, his cheek, his nose. As the tool came out on the other side, blood flared and spooled in the air.

His father bellowed in pain, his filthy bear paw hands coming up to where he had been scratched so deeply. And then, on the far side, the rake was carried upon its own momentum, swooping down to the ground, landing like a bird of prey, talons gripping the earth as its perch.

Syn yanked against the handle. Pulled with what might he had. Threw his weight back against the abiding hold of the tool.

He looked at his father and froze.

His sire had straightened and dropped his hands. One of his eyes had been pierced and was hanging by some kind of threaded, bloody ligament, the orb upon his cheekbone, the vacated socket dark as a cave. His face was contorted in a mask of horror and vengeance, the mouth with the rotten teeth wide open, the fangs extended fully.

The rake came free from the earth, and as if of its own choosing, flipped in Syn’s grip, the tongs trading places with the blunt end of the handle.

Without thinking of what he was doing, Syn surged forward and thrust the wooden grip’s tip upward into the socket. He put all his strength into the penetration, and was horrified and relieved that the tool’s home was found as if it were an inevitability.

Another howl of pain rippled through the night, and his father blindly reached for Syn, paws swiping at the air, the sleeves of the filthy tunic whistling by Syn’s head and face. Relinquishing the hold upon the rake, Syn ducked between his sire’s legs. As he emerged through to the other side, he spun around, arched back, and caught himself upon the ground with his palms. Kicking upward with the soles of his feet, he punched his father’s backside.

The push was enough to send the weight that was already off-balance into a free fall, and his father landed face-first on the rake, the handle penetrating deeply into his skull, yanking his head to the side, popping out, popping free.

As his sire continued unto the ground as deadweight, Syn’s eyes went to the knife mounted upon his father’s wide leather belt. With the beast as yet stunned by the injury, Syn rushed forth and unsheathed the blade. The hilt was too thick for his palm, so he applied two hands unto the gripping. Raising the dagger over his head, he buried the sharp point in his father’s thick coating. He didn’t know whether it went in enough, however. His father, writhing in slow motion, seemed not to notice the fresh assault.

That was when Syn saw the rock. Flat. Broad. About the size of his chest.

It weighed almost too much for him. But fear and fury combined to strengthen him immeasurably. He waddled the stone over and brought it down upon the top of the hilt, once . . . twice . . . three times.

He hammered the knife in until its guard prevented any further progress.

Stumbling back, he fell upon the hard dirt patch created by a congregation of hooves around the shelter. He was breathing so hard his throat hurt and his eyes were blurry. When he went to clear them of whatever was upon them, he realized he was crying—

With a groan, his father rolled over and sat up, a ghost from a grave, except very real, and very capable of still doing damage. The injury to his eye was horrific and blood flowed freely, covering his features upon that side with a gloss that made Syn’s stomach lurch.

When it appeared as if his sire would stand up and fight anew, it was clear that he was drunk and did not feel the injuries sufficiently. Or mayhap the soul that animated him was just that hardy and evil.

Terror clutched at Syn’s heart and he jumped up to run—

Sometime later, much later, centuries later, Syn’s awareness returned unto him. Which was a strange thing as he was not aware of it having left.

Everything seemed quite blurry, so he rubbed his eyes—

A sting made him frown, and as he blinked . . . he realized he was sitting cross-legged upon the dirt patch in a puddle. Had it rained?

No. It was not water.

It was blood. He was sitting in a congealed puddle of blood.

Syn frowned. Lifting one of his hands, he found that it was covered with more of the same. Indeed, there was blood all upon him, staining his ragged clothes. Was he hurt? Had his father attacked him and—