Vampires & Hunters. Beginning

Prologue

Austria, October 1848

The blackness around was being illuminated with formless fire ghosts, which were flickering on wandering torches like restless souls of the dead. The smell of burning from the recent explosions and conflagration burned through the lungs with each new breath. However, it couldn't quite suppress the stench of dried blood and burnt flesh of the dead in this war. It seemed that the fresh frosty air was just a distant memory of the past.

The sudden silence crushed, oppressed, cruelly reminding that the uprising was over. Everything was over. Anything but her nightmare.

Wet granite stones of a paving sett were pressing against a maiden's back, who was lying on a carriageway. The coldness of the stones slipped through the clothes, causing the desire to pull oneself back from them if only one could find some strength. The viscous mud slush, the nature of which there was no desire to think about, had been softened by the recent rain and was covering her body. The girl was looking up, trying to see through the smoke, the abyss, which unfolded over the world. Her hair, burned in some places, had tangled and matted in long icicles, sticking to her face. The once expensive dress was more like tattered scraps of a greasy cloth with blurry spots of blood; her shoes were lost somewhere in the middle of the hell which had seemed to never end. The frosty wind was piercing to the bone and cooling already stiffen soaked clothing. She covered her face with her numb hands, smearing tears and soil on it.

Painful. It was so painful.

Her face was drooping with bluish bags under her eyes, which were red from crying; her pale skin made her look like a corpse. Wounds and burns on her body, which she received during the battle, were slowly healing, thereby all the physical memories of the happened event were disappearing.

They betrayed him. They betrayed him. They betrayed him!

The helplessness, the hatred squeezed her heart, forcing to recollect the events that should have been a nightmare. It couldn't be otherwise - it had to be just a dream.

The maiden gasped, letting the smell of gunpowder and smoke into her lungs once again. An uncontrollable cough, which tore the throat and squeezed the chest, invaded her, – it was impossible to breathe such air. Clenching her hands into fists, she tried to check the tears, which rolled over her eyes, to suppress a desperate cry, which was just about to break from her chest...

      

It started dawning. The first spiny sunrays appeared in the sky. A new day began. The day, starting which she would be alone.

"Hurry up! The sun is about to rise," someone told her, offering her a hand in order to help her to get up. "Have you wounds already healed? Can you walk?"

The girl continued to lie, looking up at the sky. If only this giant fireball would take her last breath with its rays. Perhaps then a relief would come... But the resounded mournful rumble of her stomach reminded of the existing cruel ordinariness. Her shoulders shook with the bitter silent laughter, which was ready at any moment to turn into a weeping. She squeezed her eyelids hard, clenched her teeth so that the sharp fangs pierced her lower lip. But what did that matter? It couldn't become more painful, after all.

"Get up, fräulein! Otherwise, you will die..." someone began to lift her. Throwing her arm over their shoulders and supporting her by her waist, they dragged the maiden somewhere like a limp rag doll.

The carefree life had come to an end. Naivety, trustfulness, simplicity had disappeared, giving place to despair and disappointment.

There had begun the unbearable existence with the hope, thrown deep into the maze of the subconscious and securely hidden behind the veil of hatred and helplessness.

That was the beginning of her existence without him.