Bathing in Blood

Prologue


My ninth winter in this world was hard on everyone. The snow had completely covered the whole land like a silk slip, killing all the crops and causing the people to starve. My father had commented that there hadn’t been such as horrible a winter as this in almost twenty years. It was one of those things where a person is so cold that you do not want to get out of bed.
This was one of the first bad winters that I remember. My family was well off which was the only reason I was not out there with the servants freezing my bottom off. That winter was the first time I began to learn that no matter what one does there are things that are beyond a person’s control, such as the fact that the servants could not keep warm no matter what they did. That their children were dying in their sleep, their limbs frozen stiff while their parents slept on right beside them. It was the winter that my twin sister became ill, something she never recovered from no matter how many physicians she visited throughout her short life.
I remember going to sleep right beside her, our parents had allowed it, making us happy beyond words. We stayed up late playing, telling ghost stories to see who was the first to break down and cry. We would tell a story and then see who was brave enough to run across the room to the fireplace. I remember that night telling her about the wolves.
I had heard Michael, our doorman, talk about how he had seen a wolf bigger than any normal wolf should be. According to him, the wolf had just stood outside the gate staring inside, almost as if he had some intelligence and knew that if he tried hard enough he could come in and snatch something to eat.
My sister, Raya, had always been terribly afraid of wolves ever since one of the stable boys had told her that they attacked humans if they could not find anything to eat. She kept having nightmares that a wolf would come into her room and snatch her from her bed at night to make a feast out of her. Of course, being that I was a boy, I had to at least pretend that the information had not scared me. There were other things that scared me much more, like ghosts, headless riders, and vampires- but with vampires there was that fact that they only snatched young virgin girls so I was safe, or so I believed at that time.
I am getting ahead of myself, as I was saying that the winter was a brutal one. I had already lost a friend who had been the son of the stable master, a sad affair that. Well, Raya and I shared the bed that night but for some odd reason she contracted pneumonia while I remained healthy. Well, not entirely healthy, I had suffered from a minor cold but in Raya’s case it developed into a terrible case of pneumonia. I had never been more afraid in my life, afraid of even going to sleep since I could hear her in my sleep coughing, taking a difficult breath. My mind supplied me with horrible scenes of waking up and finding her frozen stiff while I had been sleeping. Those were hard monthen hen I kept thinking that my sister would be taken from me. It was as if something was tugging at my soul and I kept trying to make that thing stop, but I couldn’t see from where I was being attacked. I did not know how I could get a hold of her soul to keep her here. I have to give her credit, Raya was always stubborn and I believe till this day that stubbornness is what kept her alive all those months.
My mother kept silent vigil beside my sister while the bittersweet smell of opium permeated the air. It was making me edgy since I kept hearing her suffer and was not allowed in the room because my mother feared that I would get ill. It was during those late winter and early spring months that I kept wandering around my father’s lands trying to find anything that could distract me from the painful realization that even if my sister got better, she would never be the same.
Nonetheless, I rode throughout my father’s lands, noticing for the first time the vastness of the fields, the amount of mystery and danger these lands possessed. It therthere the first time I ever saw him, the man who would forever change my life.
I had been out riding late, something I had started to do of late, which annoyed my parents to no end. It was calming to feel the horse swaying beneath my legs, the occasional snort that broke the tranquillity of the night. I liked the feeling of knowing that there was nothing around me and I liked that sense of danger. Perhaps it was a foolish way of trying to control my life when everything around me was falling apart. As I mentioned before, I had been riding for a while and suddenly noticed that it was dark. My horse beneath me gave a nervous snort and I had to place a calming hand on the side of his neck.
“Shh Kwiten’…let us head back. Nothing but dead silence out here.”
It was at that moment that I felt a cold chill travel down my spine. You know, the feeling that all of us has at least experienced once in our lives, I could feel eyes boring into my back. I could feel my heart speeding up while the only sounds I could hear were those of overly loud crickets, the grasses that swayed with the evening breeze, and the rushing of blood through my ears.
“Hello?” I turned, looking around me to see what had made me feel so uncomfortable but could not find any cause. Picking up the reins I suddenly noticed a dark figure standing right in front of me. Feeling my heart stop, I suddenly remembered my mother’s words every time I arrived after dark. One day you’ll get into more trouble than you realize.
I felt as if my throat had completely dried out, closing shut while I tried to get some air into a chest that had gone surprisingly tight.
“Umm, may I help you?” I asked, trying to sound polite while my eyes kept moving trying to find a means to escape this situation that was spiralling out of my control.
Suddenly the figure moved but it was not a man that moved, it was a wolf that suddenly launched itself at my horse. The last thing I remember seeing was the wolf attach its fangs to my left arm and everything went black.