Sanguine Dynasty: A Study in Blood

Chapter 1

"Captain! We have to move out!"

"They're moving in!"

"They've cut us off!"

"Oh my God... I-Is that? Captain! They have a -"

Effervescent light lingered in the corners of his vision as the words echoed around the too-bright battlefield. Sand covered the ground in a mass desert as the clattering of gunfire seemed almost blissfully distant overhead.

John's eyes flicked across to his human counterpart. Dust fluttered around them as bullets splattered into the sandy ground, as they landed, great beige clouds were thrown into the air and John had to squint so as not to have little granules of the sharp yellow detritus scrape against his eyelids.

He coughed against the grains before he followed to where the man beside him gestured, his arm outstretched and finger pointing forwards. On the horizon and surrounded by overly saturated terrain, a creature stood tall among the men beside him.

Glittering across his body was a thick woollen coat of matted fur, blood clotted and clumped in the fine shiny strands. His limbs were strangely out of proportion to that of a man as he stood almost anthropomorphic there.

What would have been hind legs, bent at odd angles as he stood bipedal, thick muscular arms hung limply by his side and clasped in one oversized taloned hand was a black thing. Its metallic body reflected the light just as magnificently as the creature's fur.

John's nostrils flared then as a scent filled the air. A familiar but equally foreign stench, one that alluded to blood and gore. It was earthy and moist like a grand oak tree stood solitary among a forest of birches.

"They have a lycan!" John heard himself scream and his words were punctuated with a cluster of sounds as the creature before him lifted the barrel of the gun and caressed the trigger oh so gently.

It was too fast, too sudden. The cry escaped John's maw before he had the chance to even register what exactly had happened. He'd been shot before, after living in an active warzone for months, he'd been more than well acquainted with the familiar pungent sting of a bullet.

But this, this was different. While his skin tore and his muscles were ravaged, the familiar warm hum of his flesh knitting itself back together was absent. His teeth clenched as his jaw tightened. He glanced down to the wound and a sweet metallic substance coagulated with his blood as it trickled down his chest.

"Silver bullets!"

The world of wakefulness claimed the man as his eyes flicked open, those two words hung in his mind like a distant buzz of a blue bottle whizzing around his ears. His brows furrowed as his face crumpled.

The dreamscape that had transformed into a nightmare clung to his damp skin as he curled into himself, a whimpering yelp escaped his throat as tears pricked at his eyes. It wasn't the first time that specific nightmare had filled his slumbering mind.

John distantly suspected that it would continue to haunt him forever more, but no matter how often he relived that moment, caught in time like a broken hourglass, he never acclimatised to waking up.

In the hospital, John had screamed, begged for the sweet release of death, for the Grim Reaper to come for him and provide that cool relief of the scythe. But the archangel had never revealed itself.

Instead, scalpels and antibiotics had been relished upon him, each stinging kiss of the blades had slowly disentangled the rotten silver from his flesh as the antibiotics fought off the poisoning effects of the reflective metal.