Albus's usual calm was shadowed by urgency, his golden eyes dimmed slightly beneath the weight of what he had seen.
"When I went down to the market," he began slowly, "I saw them. Dozens of them. Citizens of Wayland Woods… changed." He turned to face Blanchette and Lillian. "The transformations were complete. Skin pale purple, eyes glowing, fangs bared. They were attacking anyone who was not one of them."
Blanchette's face hardened.
"How many?"
"Too many to count," Albus said. "And they turned fast. Callidora. Whatever she traded Cullen's dog for… it gave her more than garlic immunity. It gave her a way to mass-convert humans into vampires in a matter of hours. She is evolving them. Immunity to garlic was only the beginning."
Lillian adjusted her hat with a slow, tense breath, then stood. Her boots thudded against the wooden floor with each step toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Blanchette asked, rising quickly to follow her.
Lillian glanced over her shoulder, her voice steady but tight.
"To save my woods."
Blanchette moved in front of her. "With what, Lillian? Your gun? You saw how Callidora handled everything we threw at her. We do not have a way to kill them yet."
"I do not care," Lillian snapped, spinning around. "Those people out there, they are my people. I swore to protect them. I have lived in Wayland Woods my whole life. I will not let it rot from the inside while I sit on my hands."
"And what?" Blanchette asked, frustration breaking through her calm. "You gonna shoot your way through a town full of monsters with bullets that do not kill them?"
Albus raised a hand gently.
"She is right. Right now, charging in means death, for you and anyone you try to protect."
Lillian's jaw tightened.
"So what do we do? Hide? Sit in here and hope the vampires go away?"
"No," Albus said, activating the bracelet on his wrist.
It shimmered faintly, pulsing with a warm golden light, runes circling its surface.
"I can create a barrier. A dome of pure light. It can make it repel vampires but let in humans. If we use it to protect this house, it can become a safe zone. To make that barrier strong enough to stop vampires from passing, I have to stay here to make that barrier. You and Blanchette will go. Not to fight. To find anyone still human and bring them here. We save who we can, and we do it fast."
Blanchette nodded slowly, eyes serious.
"I assume we avoid any actual fighting?"
"Exactly," Albus said. "Move fast, stay hidden, and do not engage unless you have to. Get them back to this house. I will hold the barrier as long as needed."
The three of them looked at one another, wary, battle-worn, but united. The weight of the task before them settled heavy on their shoulders. Outside, the wind grew stronger. Lillian cocked her head.
"And after that?"
"I do not know," Albus replied.
A few minutes later, Blanchette pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders as she stepped away from Albus's house. She paused at the treeline. Ahead, the once-familiar forest path twisted into shadows. Wayland Woods no longer felt like home. It felt haunted by silence and absence. Blanchette checked the edge of her blade. She whispered to herself, like she often did when nerves tried to creep in.
"You have walked through fire before. You will walk through this too."
She stepped into the forest. The journey began in silence. The air was colder than she remembered, as if the very breath of the woods had changed. Crickets no longer sang. Leaves did not rustle unless she disturbed them. The woods were holding their breath. Each step she took was careful but quick. Every few minutes, she would glance over her shoulder, half-expecting to see shadows flit behind her, but there was nothing, at least, nothing she could see. The woods felt watched.
She made her way toward the old Miller trail first. Families used to travel it down to the river during the warmer months. As she neared a familiar fork in the road, she noticed blood smeared along the bark of a tree, as though someone had leaned heavily against it. Her breath caught. Her steps quickened. She passed a broken cart on the trail, its wheels snapped, crates shattered, and a trail of dried blood smeared along the path. Her grip tightened on her sword. Ten yards further, hidden behind a thicket of brush and fallen limbs, she found them, two children, a boy and a girl, no older than ten. Their clothes were torn and muddy. The boy held a rock in one trembling hand; the girl clutched a broken doll whose head had long since fallen off.
"It is alright," Blanchette said, crouching low and holding out both hands. "I am not a vampire. My name is Blanchette. I am here to help."
The boy squinted at her, hesitant. The girl looked ready to cry. Slowly, carefully, Blanchette reached into her pouch and pulled out a small piece of candy, sticky and slightly crushed from the journey. The boy stared at it for a long moment before shuffling forward to take it.
"Where is your mother?" Blanchette asked gently.
The boy shook his head.
"They… they got her."
Blanchette did not ask more about the incident or about their father.
"Can you walk?" she asked instead.
The boy nodded. The girl tried but stumbled, and Blanchette immediately lifted her up with one arm. She also reached for the boy's hand.
"We are going somewhere safe," she said. "Stay quiet. Stay close."
As they moved through the forest, Blanchette kept her ears sharp for every snap of twig and unnatural hush. Three times, she heard something in the distance, soft footsteps, the rustle of clothing without wind. Vampires. But each time, she veered away, shielding the children with her body, guiding them deeper through secret paths.
The deeper they went, the darker the woods became. Night fell slow and heavy, dripping between branches like oil. Shadows pooled around tree roots. Moonlight speared down in silver slashes that made everything look carved in bone. Along the way, Blanchette found others. A woodcutter and his wife, both bleeding and exhausted, hiding in the hollow trunk of a felled tree. An elderly man curled under a collapsed shed. A group of three farmers armed with pitchforks, pale and shaking, guarding a baby swaddled in flour sacks. The small rescue party grew to thirteen.
Blanchette made sure everyone kept moving. When someone faltered, she lifted them. When someone panicked, she calmed them. When someone wept, she did not offer false comfort, only her presence, steady as the blade strapped across her back. They passed by a vampire once. Just one. Mouth red, moving slow through the trees like a drunk looking for a bed. Blanchette pressed everyone into the dirt, motioning them not to breathe. The creature paused, sniffed the air… then wandered off into the mist. She did not breathe again until the wind returned.
They traveled for what felt like hours. The golden glow of Albus's protective barrier finally shimmered through the trees, far away but visible, a lighthouse in a sea of black.
"We are close," she said. "Almost there."
A low growl stopped them. Blanchette spun, sword drawn, just as a vampire lunged from the dark. It was fast, inhumanly fast. She shouted for the others to run as she brought her blade up to block. The vampire struck with feral precision, claws raking metal. Blanchette barely held her ground. Another survivor, one of the farmers, threw a torch, the flames forcing the vampire to recoil. Blanchette took her chance. With a clean arc, she severed the creature's arm. It hissed and stumbled back, but the wound was healed almost instantly. Blanchette grabbed the torch from the ground, the fire still burning. She burned the vampire's arm. It did not heal, and the vampire vanished into the distance.
"Move!" Blanchette yelled.
She held the girl once more and took the boy's hand. They ran. One by one, the survivors crossed through the golden barrier— gasping, alive. As Blanchette stepped through last, the barrier rippled behind her, sealing them inside. She looked at the group, now nearly twenty strong. Some sobbed. Some prayed. Some simply sat and stared at nothing, too tired to speak. Blanchette wiped her blade on the grass, slid it back into its sheath, and stood.
"This is just the start," she whispered to herself.
Then she turned her eyes to the woods again.
- -
The ground was soft with moss and ash, and the trees loomed like sentinels draped in fog. Lillian moved through the woods with the silent determination of a seasoned ranger. Her long coat swept behind her like a shadow, and her hat cast her face in dark silhouette. A bolt rested in her crossbow, cocked and ready. She crouched behind a fallen birch, eyes narrowed. There were four of them, no, five, moving through the clearing ahead. Once-human silhouettes, pale and wrong. Vampires. Newly turned. They shuffled more than stalked, unpracticed in their new bodies. One dragged a twisted arm behind him, bone exposed. Another still wore a shopkeeper's apron stained with blood and soil.
Lillian gritted her teeth. She had known them. Seen them. Shared jokes with some. Bought wild berries from one during midsummer. Now, they were little more than Callidora's puppets, mouths stained red and minds turned to hunger. She did not fire. A scream echoed faintly through the trees. Lillian turned instantly, rising into a sprint, boots slapping wet leaves as she darted through the woods. The scream came again, closer this time. Female. Desperate.
Lillian crested a ridge and spotted a makeshift cabin collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree. Smoke still hissed from the chimney. There were signs of a struggle, splintered wood, overturned chairs, blood in the dirt. And in the corner of the ruin, three people, two women and a young boy, clutched each other behind an overturned table. A vampire stood over them, snarling, his elongated nails slicing through the air as he reached for them. Lillian did not hesitate. Bang! The bullet struck the vampire cleanly in the side of the head. It screeched, staggered, but healed. It was true that garlic did not work anymore.
The vampire snapped toward her with a snarl, but Lillian had already ducked behind the tree line. She sprinted, knowing it would follow the sound. She looped wide, using the forest's twists and roots to create noise, to confuse it, to pull it away. Then she doubled back. The survivors were still frozen in place, eyes darting in every direction. The boy sobbed into his mother's arms. The second woman clutched a gardening hoe like it was a sword.
"Come with me," Lillian whispered harshly as she reached them. "Now."
The older woman hesitated. "That thing—"
"I led it away. We do not have much time."
The three rose, stumbling as they moved, following Lillian through the trees. She led them through the tightest paths, ones only someone born of this forest would know. Her senses never stopped listening for another growl, another rustle. But for now, they were lucky.
More joined them as they moved, others who had hidden under floorboards, inside sheds, high in tree houses. Lillian gathered them silently, her words few but firm. She guided a young boy down from a barn loft. Helped an old man climb over a rotting fence. Shielded a girl carrying a dog with trembling hands. There were now ten of them. Maybe more. She did not count. Just kept them moving. The youngest was an infant swaddled in someone's coat. The oldest was an eighty-year-old man with one eye and a limp who insisted on carrying a hammer just in case.
They pushed on. The forest turned darker, the trees older. Every rustle of leaves made someone jump. The people whispered her name now, half in fear, half in reverence. She was the only one keeping them alive.
"My people," Lillian murmured to herself, looking over them. "Callidora did this to my people."
The people needed her now, though. Not her fury. They traveled in silence for a time, the group shuffling behind her. She taught them how to walk softly. When to duck. When to freeze. But the vampires had started hunting. Halfway through the journey, Lillian's group was spotted. The creatures came howling from the trees, at least four of them. One tackled a young man from behind, slamming him into the earth. Lillian was on it in a flash, her knife flashing in a storm of motion. She slashed the vampire's back with a clean upward stroke, giving the man enough time to rise to his feet.
"Run!" Lillian shouted to the group.
The woods exploded into chaos. Screams. Heavy footsteps. The breaking of branches and bone. Lillian kept the group together, fending off attacks. She did not try to kill the vampires, just slow them. Distract them long enough for the people to get through. One, a woman carrying her elderly father, stumbled near a ravine. A vampire closed in, but Lillian drew its attention just in time, throwing her knife to lodge in its leg. They moved. And moved. And moved. Until, at last, they saw it. The golden light. Albus's barrier. They passed through. The magic rippled, humming gently as it accepted them. It was like stepping from nightmare into warmth. The vampires were blocked. Their hissing and their claws were not able to break the barrier.
Lillian's shoulders heaved with breath, but her eyes were sharp. Blanchette was there, surrounded by her own group of survivors that she got from two separate trips. The two women met eyes across the clearing. No words passed between them. They did not need them. They had done what needed doing. They had saved the people. Not all but some, and that mattered. Lillian was dejected though, her eyes staring at the moon with sadness. Others were still out there, and she cannot go out to save them anymore because the vampires surrounded the barrier, waiting for even just one prey to exit.