Vera Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Vera Blackwood counted the marked ones each dusk, and tonight one was missing. She pushed her glasses up and stared at the empty doorway of the miller's cottage. Inside, the miller's brother should be sleeping off his fever. His bed lay cold. On the pillow, a smear of black dahlia petals marked where his head had rested. The demon left that sign on every soul it claimed. Vera had come to Maplecrypt to kill the thing that carved these marks. First she had to stop it from feeding. A boy stood in the yard, gripping a cleaver too big for his hands. His apron was streaked with old blood. Willem, the butcher's apprentice. He worked the shop three doors down, and Vera had bought her salt-cured rations from him twice. "You saw him last," Vera said. Not a question. Willem swallowed. "He came for scraps at dusk. Then he just walked toward the old black house. Wouldn't answer me. His neck had that flower burned into it." The boy's knuckles went white. "I should've stopped him." "How long ago?" "Not an hour." Vera was already moving. The old black house was the Victorian at the town's edge, its tall windows dark, its porch sagging under years of rot. The demon dragged its offerings there. She knew because she had found the drained bodies before, always too late. "Stay here," she told Willem. He followed anyway, cleaver up. She didn't waste breath arguing. The front door hung open. Inside, the air stank of cut flowers and copper. In the parlor stood a monstrous thing shaped like a tree, its branches strung with black blossoms and hooked thorns. The miller's brother hung from those thorns, wrists bound, feet off the floor. A dark shape crouched at the roots, feeding on the light that leaked from his marked skin. Vera drew her blade and struck the ropes above the man's wrists. He dropped. The crouching shape hissed and lunged. She spun and drove her blade through it. It burst into ash and stink. Not the archdemon itself. A servant, sent to gather the meal. "Willem, cut him loose!" The boy hacked at the thorny roots. Together they dragged the miller's brother out to the grass. He breathed. His neck still bore the burned flower, but he lived. Willem shook. "Is it dead?" "That one. Not the master." Vera wiped her blade. The house behind them creaked, and every window filled with faint red light, then went dark. The demon had watched. Now it knew her face. She helped the miller's brother sit up. Then she saw his hand. On his palm, fresh, glowed a second flower. The demon had marked him twice. "That's new," Willem whispered. Vera stared at the double mark. She had saved one man and taught the demon her weakness. It would take the marked faster now, before she could reach them. The hunt had just gotten harder.