Elms's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Elms tasted the thief's blood on the wind an hour ago, and it led her here, to a dead field under a greying sky. Someone had carried her clan's heirloom through this place. She could read blood the way other people read faces, and the trail was fresh. But the sky told her a crueler fact. The grey was turning pale at the edges. Dawn was coming, and she had no roof, no cellar, no grave to hide in. If the sun caught her in this open field, she would burn before she ever found the thing that bound her people's wandering spirits to the road. She turned in a circle. Flat grass. A broken fence. Then, far off, a humped shape of old stone. A crypt, sealed and weathered, half-swallowed by weeds. She ran. The door was stone, cracked down the middle, heavier than it looked. Elms dug her fingers into the seam and pulled. It ground open an inch. The pale edge of the sky widened. She pulled again, teeth bared, and the slab shifted enough for a body. A voice came from the dark inside. "It's taken." Elms froze. A man sat against the far wall, knees up, a black fedora tipped low over red eyes. Another vampire. She smelled his blood and read exile in it, a severed line, no clan to protect him. "Then make room," she said. "Or we both cook." He didn't move. "You first, maybe." The light at the door turned gold. Elms felt it reach for her heel. She stopped arguing. She shoved inside and dragged the slab shut behind her. Darkness swallowed the gold. She stood there, breathing she didn't need, listening to her own fear settle. "Smart," the man said. "Shame. I was comfortable." She sank against the cold stone across from him. For now she was alive. For now the trail waited outside, cooling with every hour she hid. "Prince," he said, after a while. He tipped the hat without lifting it. "Don't touch my corner." "Elms." She watched him in the dark. "You've been through here a day, maybe two. You'd have seen someone pass. Someone carrying something old." His jaw tightened, just slightly. That was answer enough. He had seen. "I don't do favors," he said. "I didn't ask for one." They sat in the dead air while the sun crossed the sky above the stone. Elms closed her eyes and held the thief's scent in her memory so it wouldn't fade. She had shelter. She had a witness who knew more than he'd say. And she had a whole day trapped beside a man who owed her nothing, waiting for a night that couldn't come fast enough.