Huckleberry's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Huckleberry stood at the kitchen window with a plate of biscuits, watching the street. He had been protecting this family for two hundred years. The threat coming now was different. He could feel it in the way the other vampires had gone quiet. But tonight, one of them finally broke the silence. Huckleberry found the message tucked between the pepper plants in the garden — a single folded note pinned to a snapdragon stem beside the wooden fence. The handwriting belonged to Vasily, who had wanted him dead for a century and a half. The words were simple: It has no name because speaking it draws its attention. Leave the family now or it will take you first, then all of them. Huckleberry folded the note twice more and slipped it into his coat pocket. If Vasily was warning him instead of celebrating, the threat was worse than anything he had prepared for. He picked up his plate and walked back toward the house, where a light had just turned on in the twelve-year-old's bedroom window.