The Last of the Twenty: Broken Pawns

Chapter 3

Ethan raced through the woods, taking care to stay out of sight of the road as he picked his way among the trees, his gut feeling telling him he didn't have much time to get to Nadia's house. What would take a car nearly a half hour took Ethan less than five minutes. His hope was that between himself, Delilah, and the pack Nadia could be protected, at least he hoped, but to try to protect both Nadia and her mother was too much of a task. He had to use the same mental influence he used to get Nadia to go with Delilah on Margret to send her off until this battle was finished. He even had an envelope full of money to give her.

He smelled the smoke long before he saw the flames. Although the sinking feeling in Ethan's gut told him it was too late, he forced himself to run faster, clinging to a small and frail thread of hope. The closer Ethan got to the house, the more the smoke told him. Amongst the smells of burning wood and plastics, another smell began to emerge. Subtle and sweet, the aroma filled Ethan's senses and told all there was to know. The smell brought back memories, horrible and dark images that even as a vampire Ethan wished he could forget. Images of men and women tied to poles, screaming for mercy as fires consumed them from the bottom up, receiving no help from those amongst the jeering crowds of spectators.

Except for the screaming and the crowds, it was exactly the same. Someone was burning inside the house.

As Ethan approached the house the smell became more intense, choking his senses like the hands of some invisible monster, until finally Ethan was able to see the fire's glow amongst the dark masses of trees surrounding the house. He stopped just outside of the fire's glow, knowing for certain that it was too late. Fire is as deadly a threat to vampires as a bullet is to humans, and he would not risk his life to retrieve a corpse.

Somewhere outside of the nightmarish scene the sounds of approaching sirens filled the air. From long experience and practice Ethan knew those sounds were still over a mile away, but he also knew that they would be there soon, and he had no intention of being there when they arrived. If he was going to find out what happened here, Ethan knew he was going to have to move fast to get what few clues remained unclaimed by the fire.   

Slowly and carefully, Ethan walked around the house looking for any sign of who or what could have done this. He wound his way clockwise around the house, picking his way through underbrush searching for answers. A footprint, a claw mark, anything that could tell him what had attacked. Inch by inch, Ethan tightened the circle around the house in search for answers.

About fifteen feet away from the edge of the fire his foot settled into a puddle of mud, thick, cold, and much softer than the hard packed ground he had just been on. Ethan bent down, examining the strange transition between the muddy ground and the hard packed earth when he noticed the plants. They hung limply, the stems on most plants shredded and split, and in some cases, still frozen. It was the same with the larger trees, split trunks bleeding sap that was still frozen in chunks. He stood and walked around the house, finding the same watery and frozen mess in a nearly perfect ring. Everything within that circle had frozen and burst, only now beginning to thaw from the heat of the fire.     

"What the..." Ethan whispered quietly, running his hand along a long gash in the trunk of a thick oak. "How is this even possible?" He asked himself as he made his way to the front of the house, stopping abruptly when he reached the front steps.   

Leading up the wooden steps and into the house were three sets of black footprints, as if whatever had made them had walked through ashes just before taking the steps. Large and threatening, each of the four toe marks ended a deep puncture mark in the wood that could only have been made by a claw. They were the footprints of wolves. Carefully, Ethan walked to the steps, running his finger across one of the prints. The print wasn't a smear of ash, however, but a hot impression in the step, burned deep. The charred wood gave way easily under the weight of his fingertip. Ethan pulled his hand back to examine the ash, the wood had been so thoroughly burned that it was a fine black powder on the tips of his fingers. Ethan smelled the ash, feeling a chill run down his spine as the aromas filled his nose. Besides the burned wood itself, other smells mingled, subtle clues that gave as many questions as answers.   

Sulfur and burned flesh.

Looking back up to the burning building, the frame on the door had been destroyed. Even as the wood around the doorway burned Ethan could make out the damage, something had forced the door into the house, shattering the frame and sending shards of broken wood inward. He stood up, trying to look into the doorway past the smoke and flames but not daring to get any closer. In all the centuries that he had lived he had seen a lot, more in fact than any human could claim to have seen, but this was different. For the first time in almost a hundred years Ethan felt an emotion that he was completely unfamiliar with.

Fear.

"What happened here?" He whispered to himself, starring into the cave of flames.

Suddenly the sounds of sirens and cars tearing into the driveway snapped Ethan out of his thoughts. Ethan glanced over his shoulder in time to see the first of the blue and red flashing lights shining through the trees. Less than a second later the first police cruiser stormed into the drive, spitting gravel as it came to an abrupt stop just outside the house. As the officer jumped out of the car and ran to the house he thought he saw something fleeing into the woods out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he had turned his head to look Ethan was long gone, leaving no sign that he had ever been there.