Chapter 1: Alexis

Chapter 1: Alexis

Harrowing darkness wove through the forest, shrouding everything in shadow. Where was moonlight when you needed it most? According to the lore of old, the moonlight was a werewolf’s best ally. And yet, here, in the cursed depths of Fiddler’s Forest, the moonlight was merely a myth, never managing to make its way past the thick, suffocating canopy of ancient trees.

In what little luminescence there was, every branch, twig, and protruding root resembled the malignant fingers of an old crone. Between the dreadful imagery and the unnatural cold in the atmosphere, this much was clear to me: This forest bred fear. It thrived on terror.

I could easily shift into a wolf and show the forest my colors. Tell it by baring fang and claw that I was not one to give into fear. But doing so would alert others of my presence. After all, I was not alone in this forest.

Even in my human form, I could make out the outlines of their bloodied leather cloaks flapping soundlessly as they moved swiftly through the trees. There was a reason the werewolves of the Grimm Abode were forbidden from stepping out of their commune after hours. There was a reason why none who had sought to escape the town ever made it out alive.

And now, the reason was staring me dead in the eyes.

“She’s here! I found the cur!” It was a red-eyed, bald, pale-skinned, long-fanged vampire crouching in front of me, claws jutting out of his fingers. He hissed at me menacingly, masking my scream in that abysmal sound issuing from his throat.

I had done so well so far. Crept from thicket to thicket, bush to bush, to make sure that no creature would be able to spot me. What chance did I have against a horde of vampires? A thought flashed through my mind—this is how you die, Alexis Richards—before I could free myself from the paralysis of horror.

Now that the vampires had found their quarry, they weren’t so silent anymore. The air resounded with the flap of dozens of cloaks converging from everywhere in my direction. It created a mental image of thousands of bats fluttering toward me.

It had only been a second since I’d been discovered, a second that had seemingly stretched into an eternity, thanks to the adrenaline rushing through my body. I only had one course of action left, other than to give up, accept defeat, and let that Nosferatu-looking monstrosity tear out my throat.

I took a deep breath and shifted into a wolf in one swift motion. As my feral form towered over the cowering vampire, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of glee upon seeing the dread dawn on that vampire’s face. Immediately, I could see better and make out the shapes of the vampires who were quickly closing in on me.

No more the hunted. Now I was the hunter. It was apex predator against apex predator. But that still did not remove the fact that I was heavily outnumbered.

I used the element of surprise to my advantage and tore out the throat of the vampire who had ratted me out to his comrades. I had granted him a quick death, better than what he and his kind deserved.

As much as I wished to stay and see him clutching his bleeding throat while writhing on the forest floor as his cursed soul left his body, I had to leave. Satisfaction would have to wait. Right now, I had to flee.

Despite my agility, the vampires closed in on me from everywhere, leaping out from the shadows and slashing at me with their clawed hands. Their nails dug into my skin, issuing blood far too many times for me to account for. They jumped from above, pounced from below, reaching out to me with their fangs, their daggers, and their—

Guns!?

A loud bang issued from behind me, and a fraction of a second later, a bullet whizzed by me, grazing my fur. This singular bang, it turned out, was merely the overture, the prelude, to what was to come. Gunfire rained from behind me as I raced behind the covers of rocks, trees, and crevices.

“Draw her out! Search every bit of the forest. She can’t have gone far! I reckon the bitch is bleeding,” a grisly voice roared.

He was right on the count of me not having gone far. As for bleeding, well, I was bruised and scratched, but it takes more than passive slashes and stray bullets to make a werewolf bleed.

This crevice I’d tucked myself in would not provide me cover for much longer. I could hear their footsteps right above me. I was surprised that I had eluded them once after being made out. Truth be told, it was more luck than skill. I had never been this deep in the forest before. I did not know the lay of the land as they did.

Someone was coming toward me. I could not hazard a peek, as it would betray my position. I could see that they had a military-grade flashlight in their hand that they were flashing about, looking for my paw prints on the ground. From the sound of dull metal thudding against clothes, I gathered that they were carrying a firearm. If they turned around at the wrong time, they would see me hidden in this crevice, and then I would have nowhere to run.

“Here, wolfie, wolfie!” Ah. It was a male vampire. “Here, girlie. Come out and play.” Then he started making those dry lip-smacking sounds as if I was some sort of common dog.

In my desperation, I looked around the ground for something. Anything. A rock would do. I closed my jaw around a particularly large piece of tree root and ripped it off the ground. I flung it out of the crevice and watched it fly in a trajectory and land far from me.

The vampire stopped dead in his tracks, pricked his ears, and began walking toward where the root had fallen. He started prodding the place where the root had fallen with the tip of his gun.

He never turned around in time to see me creeping behind him. Before I could attack him, I had to get that long rifle out of his reach. Lucky for me, the vampire was still using it as a prodding stick to investigate the source of the disturbance. I pounced upon him, thrashing away the rifle from his grip using the momentum of my forefeet. Once he was defenseless, I clamped my muzzle shut around his throat, crushing his windpipe, and ripped out his vocal cords, rendering him unable to make a single sound. I shot a look behind me, suspecting the worst. Their flashlights were focused on me, their guns raised in front of them, their red gazes glaring from behind the blinding sheen of their torches.

It was in this moment of being trapped between a rock and a hard place that I reconsidered why I had chosen to escape Fiddler’s Green. Had I stayed put in that sordid town, I would have been miserable, but at least I would have been safe. One only needed to ascertain how miserable my existence was that it prompted me to put my life on the line in an attempt to escape that town.

That awful town was named after old maritime folklore about a heaven for sailors. It couldn’t be further from heaven. At least not for me. I did not know what the other wolves thought, but then again, none of them were orphans like I was. None of them had to raise themselves on their own as I did. None of them saw abject poverty as I had. Oh, and this one takes the cake: None of them were treated like outcasts by the pack as I had been all these years.

It’s not just pain and sadness that have a threshold. My misery had a threshold that it had crossed long ago, making it impossible for me to live there. Between staying at Fiddler’s Green and dying here in this forest at the hands of vampires, just a mile shy from freedom, I’d have rather sacrificed my life for freedom than be subjected to the nightmarish existence that awaited me in that town.

“Nowhere to run now, is there?” A vampire sneered as he broke rank and walked up to me, aiming his rifle at my face.

I growled at him and stepped back till my tail touched a tree trunk. There were trees all around me, and wherever there weren’t trees, there were armed vampires advancing on me from all sides.

The vampires ran the town, despite it looking every bit the idyllic paradise it was named after. This wasn’t news. This wasn’t even some conspiracy that I was solely burdened with. All the wolves of the Grimm pack knew that the vampires used Fiddler’s Green for its strategic seaside position as a port for their smuggling business. And yet, no one did anything about it. And worst of all was our pack’s alpha, Maurice, who feigned ignorance and pretended everything was peachy keen.

The frustration at this last realization was just the incentive I needed to figure out a way out of this trap. It would be a risky maneuver. My focus was fixed on the vampire approaching me, his finger dallying around the trigger dangerously. I lowered my body in preparation for a pounce and howled at him as he got just close enough to me.

This worked, as he was startled and did exactly what I wanted him to do. His finger pulled the trigger, unleashing a flurry of bullets. At that exact moment, I leaped to his side and bit on the gun’s blistering hot barrel, yanking it away from me and in the direction of the vampires behind me.

A mad tirade of bullets whizzed through the air, hitting several of the vampires, creating a cacophonic domino effect where the bullet-grazed vampires began shooting their rifles as well. And now, the whole area was lit with haphazard muzzle flashes. In this chaos, I sought shelter from the bullets by climbing on the tree behind me, leaving the vampires to deal with the mess of their own creation. I could not help but admire my work as I leaped atop the tree. None of them were lethally injured, but they weren’t in shape enough to pursue me anymore. At least for now. They were holding their wounded bodies, looking about dazedly, confused as to where I had disappeared.

“It’s one freaking wolf!” One of them screamed from below. “How hard is it to catch one wolf?”

Except it wasn’t just one freaking wolf. It was a wolf that you bloodsuckers had driven to the point of scorn and desperation.

Atop the tree, my head piercing the canopy of leaves, I could now feel the moonlight serenading my face—sweet, gentle moonlight with its rejuvenating powers. My sore body could already feel the lunar glow tending to my wounds. But I had not peeked my head above the canopy to seek the moon out. I needed to know the direction in which I was to head to escape this cursed forest. From below, there was no way of knowing that.

Here, atop the tree, I could see that I had traveled a few miles away from the town. Its faint neon lights and sodium vapor lamps shone in the distance like faraway fireflies. I had never seen the town and its adjoining areas from such a vantage point. From here, I could make out the sea, the wharf, and Fiddler’s Cove. In the far distance, I could make out the outline of Greyback Mountain. Were it not that my life was in danger, I might have enjoyed this sublime scenery. From here, it made sense that someone would name this place Fiddler’s Green. I calculated my position relative to the forest and charted a direction. I would have to head another mile in the opposite direction to be free of the forest.

With my new bearings in mind, I crept below the canopy and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

Thankfully, the vampires that I had evaded weren’t there anymore. As far as I saw, there was no sign of them. It was too risky to make my way down there and risk getting seen. From ancient oak to ancient fir, I leaped from tree to tree as I traversed the remaining length of the forest. But there came the point when the trees turned convoluted, their branches curling far too snidely for me to perch atop them.

I hopped back on the ground, and once I had scouted my immediate surroundings, I shifted back into human form. My wounds might not have felt painful when I was a wolf, but now that I was back to being me, I could feel each slash that had cut across my skin, each deep bruise swelling purple on my body, and the throbbing issuing from my bones.

I crept along the snaking path, keeping true to my direction. With the vampires no longer in the vicinity, the forest resumed its nocturnal humming. Crickets chirping, owls hooting, leaves shivering. An unnatural fog permeated through every trunk, bush, and rock. The mossy earth was so slippery and wet that the dampness was drenching my sneakers.

That last mile seemed to stretch and stretch into a never-ending labyrinth. I did not mind the distance. I was just glad that I had evaded those who hunted me. It wasn’t just on this night that they were so bold and brash as to be out roaming the forest; they did this every night, ensuring that their smuggling passage out of Fiddler’s Green was secure. That was the reason why I hadn’t opted for the only road heading out of the town. At this time of the night, the only vehicles that traveled that road were trucks carrying smuggled blood, drugs, and God knows what else.

It was only after I had lost count of the minutes and was pretty sure they had turned into hours that I could finally see the signs of a clearing ahead of me. No more trees in that direction. Had I really waded through the entire forest? Was this the end of the road for me? A start of a new life somewhere else? In my excitement, I began running towards the clearing. I had never felt this happy before, or if it had, it was in some distant past that I could no longer recall.

In hindsight, I should not have run. In my excitement, I completely overlooked the fact that the vampires had lain traps for exactly such an occasion. When the exit was merely a few inches away from me, my foot got caught in a bear trap. It clanged shut around my ankle, digging deep into skin, muscle, and tissue, drawing blood.

I yelped aloud in pain and collapsed on my face. As I hurriedly tried to free myself from the trap, I helplessly realized that hot blood was tricking down my foot. The immense pain was blackening my vision, making me go into a state of shock.

This is not how you die, I told myself and strained the last bit of my strength to free myself from the snare. I tried to get up on my feet to estimate how badly I’d been hurt. I could stand and walk, but every movement sent sharp signals of pain running up my leg.

“There she is! I heard her scream!” A ghoulish voice yelled from not far behind. In my agony, I looked around and saw a horde of vampires with torches and guns stampeding through the forest. It strongly called to mind the image of a medieval mob chasing a heretic.

“Follow her blood, boys,” The same voice gnarled. “She’s bleeding like a stuck pig!”

I hobbled along the path, using trees as support, but it was a doomed cause. No matter how fast I’d hop, they would catch up to me. I could shift into my wolf form, but it would only provide the vampires with a bigger target to shoot at. Not to mention that one of my legs would be bleeding and engorged.

I decided to shift. At least when I’d die this way, I would do so while fighting. I would go out in my feral form.

Maybe there’s an afterlife for werewolves who die in battle, such as the one Vikings had for their warriors—a werewolf Valhalla of sorts. Maybe I’d end up dining with the great wolf lords in banquet halls of divine splendor.

This was just my blood loss talking, making me feel lightheaded, numbing the sensations from my extremities. They say if you die of blood loss, you don’t feel the pain of death’s final draw. Maybe I wouldn’t feel it when the vampires riddled my body with bullets and tore away at my skin with their fangs.

As I was about to shift for my final confrontation, the undergrowth of wildflowers started rustling frenziedly. I shot a confused look to my right, where the commotion was coming from, and saw a gaunt figure emerge from the thicket.

It could not be.

The man I was looking at had died more than seventy years ago. I had only ever heard of him in tales and seen him in some blurry, black-and-white pictures. He resembled a skeleton more than he did a person, dark shadows hanging under his eyes, his eyes looking haunted and menaced. He was dressed in tattered rags, and whatever part of his body was visible was covered in bruises. His unkempt beard and long hair were matted with dirt.

It was none other than Will Grimm, the original alpha of the Grimm pack, said to have died long ago. How in the blazes was he still alive? Was this just a hallucination?

First, he shot a look at me, then at the approaching mob of vampires. He walked up to me, his lips quivering.

“Ariana…” He whispered hoarsely.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t Ariana. That Ariana, my grandmother, had been dead for half a century.

But before I could so much as stand steadily on my feet, the vampires caught up to me. Will—or whoever appeared to be Will—saw in horror from across the path as the vampires pinned me to the ground.

I closed my eyes as the vampires surrounded me, prodding at me with the barrels of their rifles, snarling at me, and jeering at me with their faces inches from mine. I could smell the unearthly stench emitting from their mouths and feel their fangs coming nearer.

If this was death, it could have been worse. I could have died of old age, having lived a sorry life in that dreadful town. At least, in this way, I was going out on my own terms.

As much as I told myself this, it did not help lessen the terror pervading through me.

And as the vampires began descending upon me like a swarm of insects, my vision started giving away to a ghastly, suffocating darkness. My body became numb in the wake of fear, my faculties froze out of shock, and I started losing consciousness.