Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The lurching and quick movements were disorienting. I covered my mouth as I pushed down the urge to vomit. He held me over his shoulder as he sprinted through the city like I was a sack of useless potatoes. We were moving at a speed I didn’t think was feasible. The reverberating echo of the bells was ringing across the city, and the rest of the Lightbringers were aware of our existence. The entire city was in a panic as people screamed and fled when we passed by. Originally, the Lightbringers were wrong about me, but now, now, I was actually being hauled off by a vampire. There was no denying the allegations. I hated that it made Bazak’s actions seem reasonable.

Dust billowed around us as he skidded to a stop, my weight nearly causing him to fall over. Armed to the teeth, there was a line of Lightbringers waiting for us at the edge of town. My surroundings were familiar, and I realized why. It was the same path I had taken for my own escape the night prior. Only this time, there were actual guards. The vampire seemed to be waiting for something as the men stood there shouting orders at us.

“This is going to terrify you,” he said. “I can’t fight them. I’m strong, but they have weapons that can actually do damage to me.”

The fact he was so blunt with me, and the sharp tone he gave, shook me. I could feel my teeth chatter in fear as more Lightbringers pulled their swords out of their sheaths.

“We are overwhelmed and about to be overrun. I am going to distract them. Run for the wall, you have to run. Once they follow me away, I will loop back and grab you. We will ascend and we will escape. I promise you I’ll save you.”

I gulped. “You promise?”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “The Lightbringers will not harm you. Trust me.”

The man was asking a lot from me. Just the night prior, he drained me and now he gets me into this mess. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have even got the attention of the gilded soldiers. I could have just found my flower, dug it up, and come back home. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go back and change what could have happened. We were stuck in this situation now. There was no going back. Bazak needed an excuse to get rid of me, and now he had it. I sighed and gave him a curt nod.

He did exactly as he said; making a flourish with his body and causing every Lightbringer to draw their attention to him. A blinding light crawled across one of the lead soldier’s swords, writhing from rune to rune until the entire steel glowed brightly in the night. They did have unique weapons; he wasn’t lying. Their name now made a lot more sense to me. I just assumed the shiny suits and incessant yammering about the light were the reason. All this magic, all these creatures, it was all new knowledge to me. Everything was distant and mere fairytales before. I hadn’t bothered paying any mind to it when it was just bedtime stories.

Dodging several attacks as they sliced through the air while leaving glowing trails glittering behind, he got most of them to gather near him. Without hesitation, he took off in the other direction. He was slower than he had just been running with me, but fast enough to stay out of their reach. The men nearly fell over themselves trying to be the one to get the glory of taking a vampire out. The move worked. They all forgot I existed as I stood there alone.

I didn’t wait for a signal before doing as he told me. I bolted for the wall. There were no Lightbringers left to stop me. He pulled them all away. Using all my might, I sprinted down the road toward the wall. The stone was in sight. I just had to get down the alleyway. A shine caught my eye past the buildings, reflecting off the stone wall, but my momentum had control of me. As I passed the last building before the wall, I had the instinct to duck. A glowing sword sliced through the air, nearly taking my head off. I rolled to a stop, my hands colliding into the stone wall itself. As quick as I could, I righted myself and tried to dodge several more incoming blows. I stumbled and skittered away, narrowly missing the attacks.

There was a fully armored man, slicing and chopping the air with no regrets. He was going to kill me and there was not a thing I could do about it. Strong arms seized me around my waist. With a jolt, I was flying through the air again. He had returned, as promised. Time felt as if it stopped while we floated in the sky, over the wall. The ground started coming quicker and quicker. I let out a screech before he hit it with a loud thud.

My body was jerked and bounced as arrows flew around us. We were off and sprinting toward the tree line. The spotlight was pointed right on top of us, and I could hear him groan in pain as his body started to smoke. Throwing my hands over his head, I shielded him as best I could from the searing light, but could only do so much when I was being carried in his arms. We reached the trees and gained the cover of darkness they provided. The labored breathing of his lungs permeated through the air as he ran with me in his arms. I knew I wasn’t a big person, but he did unimaginable feats while hauling my useless self to freedom. I didn’t know how much energy vampires had, but I knew his was running out.

His speed increased when we hit the trees. He no longer had to worry about dodging buildings, people, or enemies. We made it quite a distance before he slowed down. The shouts of the Lightbringers had long faded away. All I could hear was the crunching of brush underneath his feet and the heavy breaths he took. Eventually, he stopped and set me down lightly. Grabbing his knees, he started gasping for air. I didn’t even know that vampires needed air and yet here he was, gasping for it.

“Thank you,” I said.

He looked up at me with a glare and said, “You are going to get me killed.”

“Wouldn’t that be justice?”

“If I go, you go.”

I raised my eyebrow and said, “because we’d both be in a fight?”

“No.” He stood upright and shook his head while regaining his composure. “If they take my life before you go through a ritual, the magic that’s keeping you alive will be severed. You’ll die. You’re not strong enough without me.”

I squinted at him. “I don’t get it. Is it because you claimed me as your hollow?”

“I didn’t claim you as a hollow. I tried to kill you. Somehow you’re a hollow, one that can talk, for that matter.”

“Talk? Do they normally not talk?”

“No, you don’t talk. You’re hollowed. Your whole body, mind, and soul are stuck between life and death. You’re in an empty state, waiting for a new direction.”

“But I’m talking? I’m not stuck anywhere. Well, maybe with you.”

He let out a groan of frustration. “Exactly! It doesn’t make any sense! None of this makes sense! But I know you’re mine, I can feel the damned pull.”

Grabbing my arm, his strength was obvious when he jerked me behind him, leading me further into the forest. I tried to peel his fingers off to no avail. “You need to explain to me what’s happening! How’d this happen?”

“I have no idea,” he said as he threw my hand down. “You’re sentient, you’re talking, and you’re causing trouble but you’re still my responsibility and I’m not losing another that I’m responsible for.”

“Another?”

He went completely silent, but grabbed my hand again and tugged me behind him. I let him lead me wherever we were going. We walked at a brisk pace for quite some time without him uttering another word. Eventually he dropped my hand again once it was clear I was going to continue following him. I tried several times to ask him more questions about being a hollow and how we were tied together, but he wouldn’t answer. Occasionally he would give me a grunt or sigh at me out of frustration. I wasn’t going to get anything more out of him in the immediate future.

The darkness was pushing in, the moon only just coming up on the horizon. It was colder and darker than it had been the night before. My mind wasn’t ready to be out in it again. The black fog parted around him, letting him have a clear pathway through, yet swirled and danced around me. I didn’t know what dark forces were at work here, but there was obviously far more to the world than I could begin to understand. My search for knowledge had doomed me. The Lightbringers were going to be after me forever more. I had no hope of living a normal life even without the vampire. It was truly my only option at the moment.

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

“Altyr.”

“Al-tear? Can I call you Al?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What about Tear?”

He remained silent.

“Do you have a last name?”

“My family name is Wymer.”

“Altyr Wymer. Alright. Nice to meet you. My name is Sylvia Ott.”

“I already know that.” He scoffed and continued on.

I rolled my eyes. “How do you know that?”

“I watched you. I asked about you.”

That time, I had to roll my entire head in frustration. “No wonder they were after me. A ridiculously handsome man starts asking invasive questions about me. You put everyone on an even higher alert. How were you even able to do that? It was the daytime! I thought your kind couldn’t be out in the daytime!”

“It was hardly midday or anything. I recently fed. Do you truly know nothing about my kind? Humans are so stupid.”

“It’s not like I actively hang out with vampires or anything.”

I saw him shake his head in frustration as he walked in front of me. “I do not understand why I am cursed with such a foolish human as a hollow.”

“Hey now, you were the one who bit me!”

He laughed and said, “I was hungry. You were supposed to die.”

“Well, I didn’t, and now you’re stuck with me.”

He stopped abruptly and my body collided with his. Startled and about to say something, his hand snapped over my mouth. Furrowing my brow, I glared at him before noticing his own eyes dart around. He turned his head, listening for something. Had the Lightbringers found us?

“Run,” he said as he ripped my arm nearly off when he grabbed my hand.

I didn’t hesitate. He had proven himself to know when danger was inevitable. Why he wasn’t using his strength and speed now, I didn’t know. We both were in a full sprint through the dark woods, our feet kicking up the brush as we ran. His hand clasped mine tightly, throwing me off balance. I wasn’t about to let go though; I knew he was the only thing out there that could protect me from whatever else went bump in the night.

Behind us I finally heard it; a guttural, wet noise and the thunder of feet. Several creatures were crashing through the forest toward us. My heart nearly pounded out of my chest as my feet barely touched the ground as we ran. Tears streamed down my face as we stumbled through the underbrush. Colliding with him again as he came to a stop, it sucked the breath out of me at the impact. His hands flew to his side, and he unsheathed two daggers. There before us, I saw the ghoulish creatures known as hollows.