The Godsend Backfire: The Beginning by Harold Straugh (best e reader for academics TXT) 📗

with his wolfen eyes for a minute.  He got ahold of me in my mind, “There’s a hut, four huts over from the right, between it and the hut next to it, are four horses.  Are you any good with them?” his question got me off guard.

“I’m okay with them, why?”

“They can sense the wolf in us, they get scared at first and we have to tame them down quickly.  I need you to get one and bring it to us out here, I fear if I go any further, they will sense us, and then nobody gets a horse.”

I didn’t say anything, just kept myself low and crept slowly along. The closer I got, the more active the place became. I could see the horses he was talking about, all four of them were brown and looked a little under fed, which gave me an idea.

I snuck around one hut that had an opening for where a window could be the rest had shutters that were shut.  I could smell food coming from this hut, so I looked through the window, and remember, there was no glass in these windows back then. I could see that diner was being prepped, the only thing that was in reach though, were four, long, purple vegetables, they almost looked like a mix between and eggplant and a carrot.  I grabbed them as quickly as I could, then headed back towards the horses.

It was too easy getting the first two to come with me, once they tasted the vegetable I had, they followed me instantly and only acted up when I was near Mylicious and Yura. The third one was smarter and didn’t want to follow me at first.  I slowly put my hand on its head and talked to it, “Now, we’re going to go for a little walk horse.”

I rubbed its head a little and that eased the tension between us, it slowly started to come with me.  It wasn’t interested in food, it was interested in kindness. I took to the shadows with the horse, just as I had done the other two.  When I got back to Mylicious and Yura, they already had their horses mounted and were waiting on me. I mounted my horse, which wasn’t easy to do bareback.

We rode off into the night, me taking the lead of course. I remembered the direction to head and used some of the navigation techniques that Mylicious taught me and used the stars to help navigate the way.  When the sun came up, we were where I expected we would be.

It was like that for next two days, it was then we started to come across graves, I shook my head in disgust, “What’s going on brother?” Mylicious broke my train of thought.

“These graves have vampires in them, can you not sense them?” I asked and got off my horse.

“Not in the way you do apparently,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Yura asked.

“I’m digging them up, then letting the sun hit them,” I started digging the grave up with my hands.

“Why keep killing them?” Mylicious inquired.

“They’re a sickness, they change easier than you, all they have to do is drink the from any given vampire and they change. They need to be killed,” I let them hear my point of view.

“Is that what you want to do with your life?” Mylicious’s words stopped my viscous digging.

“Who else is going to keep these vermin under control? You have a wife and kids to worry about, do you want a future full of vampires running around, killing, raping?”

He looked at me for a second, then I started digging again.  My fingers gingerly, grazed the skin of the person buried there.  I shoved my hands down and grasped onto the person’s clothing.  With a quick jerk, I pulled the body out of the grave and into the sunlight.  The reaction was almost immediate, flames and screaming erupted from the body.

Yura raised her eyebrows in disbelief. Mylicious had somewhat of a frown on his face, but sure had smile on mine.  There were two more graves that I dug up and two more vampire, vermin bodies that went aflame. I wiped the dirt off my hands onto my pants, which were covered in ash.  I hopped back on my horse, then looked back the other two, “Shall we?” I suggested, then took off.

“Will they attack after night falls?” Yura yelled from the back.

“More than likely, I’ve never known them not to,” I responded, “Maybe I’ll get to use my bow and arrow, I haven’t in a while.”

“You seem to take pride in killing them,” I could hear the angst in Mylicious’s voice.

“There is pride in killing them,” I laughed a little, which irritated Mylicious more.

“If I had made as many wolves, would you go off and kill them?”

“I will kill anything, wolf, vampire, human, child that attacks me or I find to be a threat, have you forgotten Kallik already?”

I had pushed Mylicious’s button.  He leapt from the horse, tackling me off my mine onto the ground.  I flipped him off me and out of instinct, I jumped up, and spun around, I had an arrow knocked and pulled back before I could even register it.

Mylicious had a look of surprise on his face, but I kept my bow string taut and my arrow pointed right at the chest of Mylicious.

“Please don’t!” I heard Yura say behind me.

“What’s wrong Mylicious? Does it anger you I care not for Derium’s offspring? If you’re thinking I’ll get tired soon of holding this, I won’t. I once kept this position from the morning sun to almost night before taking my shot, so I can keep you here all day. Or maybe I’ll shoot you now, and you’ll never get your precious Derium’s head.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know