The road to the village wound through low barley fields and hedges thin as ribs. Dust rose in soft puffs around our boots. I kept the pace steady, cloak drawn close against the evening breeze, eyes on the line where the road narrowed and the roofs began. I traveled with two companions and tried not to grind my teeth.
Landon Pierce walked on my left. He moved like he expected the horizon to admire him. The confidence was not an act. He was handsome in a way that made strangers forgive him quickly—blonde hair, clean jaw, bright eyes that lingered exactly as long as a person might hope. He knew all of this and wore it like a seal of office. Part of me envied him in a mean, human way. The other part wanted to pin that pride to a door and leave it there.
On my right, Chloe Reid matched my stride. She was quick to laugh and quicker to aim her charm like a well-balanced knife. The flirting began as soon as the sun dipped—a smile at Landon, a compliment offered as neatly as a coin, a light touch to his sleeve when the road shifted. She knew what she was doing. He knew it too. The worst part was watching how it pleased him.
I let it irritate me. Then I made myself breathe. I could not afford distractions. The Guild had given us a clear directive, and we were very new at enforcing anything at all.
Field Initiate. That was our rank. First rung after the Academy. The Guild liked soft names for sharp jobs. We were demon and beast slayers by training, sworn to cross thresholds other people barred at night. We were new, yet not harmless. The Academy had taught us to fight clean and think quicker than pain, to hold formation under pressure, and keep our hands steady when the dark closed in. We were the toddlers of Slayers, true. Toddlers with needles that burned and reflexes that held.
The village came into view with the last slope of hill. Simple houses, thatch trimmed close. A church with a stub of a spire. A commons ring where a dry well stood like an old tooth. I had never been here. The Guild's brief had called it Wrenfield, a farm place, barley and turnips, a low market on seventh-days, three dozen households at most. Recently, people had vanished in the night and returned to the earth as rumors. The report had used the word we were paid to end.
Vampires.
I adjusted the strap of my pack and set my jaw. We had not come to trade. We had come to make sure doors stayed shut in ways that mattered.
By the time we crossed the boundary stone, daylight had thinned to a pale rind. Villagers moved fast. Shutters closed. Bars dropped. The sound of wood on wood filled the lanes like a hurried prayer. I saw faces in the split between boards, eyes wide, chins set hard against fear. The choice to hide made perfect sense. A barred door is the first defense anyone imagines. It is not enough against a thing that can pry and glide and speak softly through keyholes. I did not blame them. I blamed the night for remembering their names.
We wore no armor. Our leathers sat folded in the System, ready to manifest with a thought and a breath. Same for our weapons. Out here we looked like travelers with decent boots and better posture. The Guild recommends it. A Slayer who clanks through a frightened town turns terror into theater. We needed quiet, not attention.
We picked the inn by its sign—The Plowman's Rest—and the heat spilling from its windows. Landon went first, as if the door might bow. He did his best work under lantern light. The room inside was long and low. Farmers warmed their hands around cups, faces pinched with the kind of tightness that stays after a season of bad luck. Conversation died when we stepped in. Every eye turned to weigh us. Landon smiled as if weighed goods always came up favorably.
He handled the coin. He always did when strangers watched. A small purse from his pocket, not the invisible one the System held for us. Good show. The innkeeper counted out the money with brisk fingers and thanked him twice. Then she told us there was only one room left.
We looked at each other. I raised a brow. Chloe's mouth twitched. Landon shrugged as if this made the night more interesting.
"Only one?" I asked.
"Only one," the innkeeper said. "We don't turn folk out, not now. Three to a bed if you like. Two and one pallet. You want privacy, you'll have to be rich enough to build it."
We were rich enough to pretend, not to reveal. Showing off a System inventory in a place like this would cause whispers and danger we didn't need. We accepted the single room. The innkeeper nodded and fetched keys. A boy in a rough shirt led us up a creaking stair and down a short hall that smelled of yeast and smoke. He opened a door into a space just big enough to stretch in.
Two beds stood beneath a shuttered window. A pallet lay folded beside a small table scarred with knife marks. A candle guttered in a dish. The air held the damp straw scent of many nights catching their breath.
"It will do," Landon said, examining a bed as if expecting it to decline.
"It will do," Chloe echoed, softer.
I stowed my pack beside the pallet and kept my cloak on. The innkeeper's daughter brought bowls of stew and a loaf. We ate at the table with spoons that had seen other mouths. The stew tasted of onion, carrot, a ribbon of fatty meat. It was honest and heavy. I ate enough to keep my hands steady later.
Chloe spoke first when the bowls were empty. "We should decide a watch."
"Agreed," I said.
"I can take the first," Landon offered. He said it smoothly, with the kind of smile that performs generosity while waiting for applause.
I shook my head. "I'll do it."
Chloe glanced at me, then at Landon, then back. A spark of satisfaction flickered in her eyes. She tried to hide it and did not succeed. "If you insist," she said.
"I insist," I answered.
Landon lifted a shoulder. "You sure?"
"Yes."
He set his spoon down. "Then I'll take second, if there is one."
"Let us hope there isn't," Chloe said, though from the way the inn had hushed downstairs, we all knew hope was a thin curtain.
Outside, the village tightened itself for the night. The last of the shutters closed with a decisive clack. Somewhere a mother hushed a child. A dog gave one bark and thought better of a second. The quiet after felt almost clean.
I stood and went to the window. The shutters had a simple latch. I lifted it a hair and pressed the wood outward until the gap granted me a ribbon of cold air. The lane below was narrow, hemmed by a wall of stacked fieldstone and the inn's shadow. Lantern light from the common room bled across half the yard and stopped.
Chloe started folding the pallet. "We'll manage. Two on the beds, one on the floor," she said lightly, though I heard the edge beyond the words. "Unless our gentleman insists on sleeping by the window like a troubadour."
"I've never played a lute in my life," Landon said. "Not well, anyway."
"Your mouth plays enough notes," I said, which earned me a muffled laugh from Chloe and a fake hurt look from him.
We laid out the sleeping places without ceremony. I kept my cloak on to cut the chill from the seam around the shutters. Landon took the bed nearest the wall, Chloe the other. They moved like people aware of their own shadows. I checked the talisman at my throat, then the small leather pouch at my waist. All there. All quiet.
Chloe pulled her boots off and tucked them beneath the bed. "Wake us if anything feels wrong," she said.
"I will," I answered.
Landon rested his back against the headboard for a time, eyes half-lidded like a cat that insisted it was not sleepy. "Don't try to do everything alone," he said after a moment. "There is pride in sharing weight."
"I'll whistle," I said. "One long, three short. You'll know."
He lifted two fingers in acknowledgment. "We'll come."
I believed him. Even arrogant men kept certain promises when fear pressed in.
We doused the candle to a stub and let the room breathe. Shadows settled into the corners. The wood of the table creaked once as if relaxing. I waited until their breaths had evened, then tested the latch again. The gap was enough. I slid onto the sill, turned sideways, and dropped into the alley with my knees soft to catch the fall. I closed the shutter behind me without a knock or scrape.
The cold hit my face like a clean hand. I stood with my back close to the stone, eyes adjusting, ears opening wide. The lane smelled of damp dirt and crushed straw. Farther off, the fields carried the faint, sweet scent of cut barley. The moon was a thin coin high above the rooflines. Clouds were already gathering to smother it.
I moved three paces and paused. Three more and paused again. A habit from the Academy: break the night into measured pieces. The body learns that pattern and fear has fewer places to sit.
Across the lane, the church stood at the end of its short path, dark door shut, iron ring resting like a sleeping snake. A weather-worn carving watched over the threshold—two hands holding a sheaf of wheat. I studied the shadow-pools by the steps, the gap under the eaves, the strip of yard between fence and wall where a slender body might pass.
No movement. No sound beyond the little ones that make a village feel alive even when it is trying to pretend the opposite.