Snow fell harder now, thick flakes that clung to Tristan’s coat and muffled the world around him. His boots crunched through ankle-deep drifts, the only sound apart from his laboured breathing.
Twenty feet ahead, Yesa stood, utterly still, staring at the stone circle as if it had offended her.
He turned his head to survey the valley below. Realistically, as the crow flies, they were not far from where he lived. He scanned the rooftops below until he spotted his house. Could he view this field from his kitchen window? Yes. Easily. And yet he’d never seen these stones before... had he?
He turned back. Nine stones—or should have been nine.
Eight stood in a rough circle, about waist-high, frost clinging to their weathered surfaces. The ninth…
She pointed. “It is broken.”
One stone lay on its side, half-buried in snow.
“Yeah…” Tristan said slowly.
“I… it’s…” He rubbed his forehead. “Called The Maidens, I think? The ring of stones I mean.”
Where had he dredged that up from? The memory had slunk into view like a teenager caught behind the bike shed—sullenly giving itself up only because it had been spotted.
“It is broken,” she repeated, edging around the circle toward the stone. Snow crunched beneath her feet. She watched the fallen stone as if it might suddenly move.
“Well, it’s not really broken; just on its side—look, not that important.” He wanted to be inside somewhere warm. More than that, he wanted to stop trying to remember whether he’d seen this place before. The effort made him sick.
“It is important. You cannot hear it?”
“Hear it? Hear what?”
He wandered closer, passing between the rocks to stand inside the circle.
“You do not see.”
“See what? The stones? What about them?” He glanced around, exasperated.
“No snow,” she said, gesturing to the ground.
He looked around at the landscape, blanketed in white, not to mention the additional snowfall now joining the it.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Look!”
Tristan frowned. “It’s snowing! There is snow everyw—”
He stopped.
A shiver ran up his spine and down his legs, as if his body was screaming at him.
Vertigo washed over him.
He looked.
Really looked.
None of the stones—nor the ground at the centre—had any snow on them. Inside the circle, nothing seemed to fall at all.
“Oh...” He turned and looked back at the town rooftops and streets, all white with snow. The hills beyond were white, too. He looked again at the packed earth between the stones. It stuck out like a sore thumb.
How had he not noticed that?
The world tilted. Pain lanced through his skull—white-hot and freezing all at once, like someone had driven a railroad spike made of ice straight through his brain.
His legs gave out.
She was studying him. “You see now?”
“Fuck yes... ow, Christ, what the hell!”
“Pain?”
“Yes! Pain! Feels like my head is in a vice.” He crawled on hands and knees out of the circle. The sensation of snow, cold beneath his hands, was more of a relief than he’d ever known.
Once he was fully out of the circle, he decided the next important move was to fall sideways into the snow and lie for a moment, wheezing.
She crouched beside him. “Strange.”
“Is it? Is it strange that it’s not snowing in the middle of a stone circle?” He gasped for air. “I hadn’t noticed! People go on about localised weather systems around here all the time, but I didn’t realise they were that fucking localised!” he croaked.
“Your reaction.” She tilted her head. “Not seeing.”
She stood and crossed to the fallen stone, tracing a hand across it. “I came from here.”
Tristan lifted his head. “What? From the horrible, weird stone circle? Of course you did.”
“My tracks come out, but do not go in.”
With some effort, Tristan got himself into a sitting position, wincing from the pain still throbbing in his brain.
“You’re telling me you magically appeared from there? Just popped into existence?”
She turned to him, nodded, and then turned her attention back to the snow around the stone circle. “Four sets of tracks.”
Tristan staggered to his feet.
“What sort of tracks?” he said, turning to scan the valley.
“Mine,” she pointed down the hill. “The Sanguivore,” she pointed up the hill. “And… two sets, maybe more of your people,” she said, crouching down to examine them more closely.
“There were people here?”
“Yes. They headed that way.” She gestured towards the village.
“What on earth were people doing here?”
Silence.
When she didn’t answer, he looked back just as another agonising headache hit him.
He bent double, holding his head. “Fuck…” through tears he turned to see where Yesa was.
She’d gone perfectly still. Every line of her body tensed. Ears angled forward, intent on something he couldn’t perceive.
“Yesa?” he managed as his brain throbbed, feeling too large for his skull to contain.
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“Do not move.”
Her hand drifted to her blade.
Then she was running—directly at him, impossibly fast, kicking up snow.
“Wh—” he never got to finish the question.
She slammed into him with a two-footed kick, pitching him off balance and using the momentum as a springboard.
The impact knocked the wind out of him as he tumbled back into the snow.
“Fu-huuuuh,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath as something crashed amidst the frozen landscape where he’d just been standing.
He tried to sit up, scrambling to defend himself. The weird stones had really upset her.
As he blinked the stars out of his eyes, he noticed she was crouched low, facing away from him, blade drawn. She was squaring off against something almost as tall as she was. It was canine-like, but only in the roughest sense—as if a mad scientist had taken a dog, turned it inside out, and then mashed it together with a wasp for good measure.
Its front appeared hunched and muscular when compared to its rear, resembling a tube of toothpaste squeezed at one end. The skin was a strange purple-pink—lumpy, veined, wrong. Large segmented eyes sat above a horrible serrated maw that drooled constantly.
“Jesus Christ!” he finally managed.
His hands were shaking. Cold, adrenaline, terror—he couldn’t tell. His head still throbbed, but the distraction shoved whatever had been affecting him to the back of his mind. For now, at least.
Yesa and the thing circled each other, both watching for an opening.
It lunged ahead, but she dodged, trying to feint to the creature’s right—its maw snapped shut, forcing her to sidestep clear.
It let out a buzzing snarl before barrelling at her.
She leapt backward into the circle, using one boulder as a shield. The creature, seeing this, jinxed to its left, trying to angle around the stone to get at her.
A snowball slapped against its side with a pitiful thud.
It stopped.
The beast roared and warped its repulsive visage in Tristan’s direction. Those segmented eyes—too many of them—locked on.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, he thought.
That was all the opening Yesa needed.
She leaped onto its hindquarters, holding fast as the creature reared. It slammed itself into one of the standing stones, trying to crush her against it. She slid off just in time, boots hitting the snow for a split second before she kicked off hard, launching herself toward the thing as it wobbled, stunned.
She wrapped herself around it with grim determination.
Her face was a mask of cold, calculated rage as she drove her blade into the abomination’s neck.
Again. And again.
Black ichor sprayed across the snow, steaming ?as it spattered the ground.
The creature let out a shrill, buzzing screech as its strength faltered. It staggered, legs trembling, struggling to stay upright.
She didn’t relent. She kept plunging the knife into its throat until it ?collapsed, quivering beneath her in its death throes.
At last, she peeled herself off. Her limbs were slick with gore;
Those scarves would need a long soak to get the stains out. Or a flamethrower.
The smell hit Tristan a second later—rotting meat mixed with ammonia. He turned away and retched.
“You get used to it,” she said, wiping her blade and arms clean in the snow as best she could.
“What the fuck is that thing? Is that a vampire? It doesn’t seem like a vampire! They tend to have more… capes…?” he managed, swallowing hard. “You were running from that thing?
“No. I would not run from that,” she said, the words edged with contempt.
“What is it?”
“An annoyance.”
Tristan stared at the creature in horror. Its mandibles looked sharp enough to snip his head clean off, and the talons on its feet had a razor-edged gleam to them.
“An annoyance is running out of milk!” he said, his voice pitching upward. “That is a horror from the depths of a tortured imagination!”
She stared at him with that blank, unreadable expression that made him feel like an idiot.
He took a few sharp breaths. “Where did it come from?”
Yesa turned her head toward the stone circle.
He followed her gaze and pointed shakily. “From there?”
“Yes.” Her ears twitched.
“How?!”
“It must be a doorway.” She stalked over to the fallen stone. “An open one.”
She turned towards him and frowned. “It saw you.”
“Saw me?”
“You saw there was no snow. Pain. Then it appeared. It saw you. It came for you.”
Tristan shivered, “Oh, good…”
She brushed snow from its surface and tried to get her hands underneath it.
“It must be fixed,” she said. “Before others come.”
He watched her strain against it. “You said a doorway? Doorway to where?”
“My world.”
“You live… in another world? Is this, like, another dimension thing? Or a planet thing? Is this a Stargate?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“You’re not from…” He gestured vaguely at the countryside. “…here?”
“I told you I was not.”
“Yes, but I thought you were from, like… Finland or something. You seem dangerous enough!”
“No. Now. Help me.” She heaved at the stone. It budged, but refused to right itself.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
“You have stone circles in… your world?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it will fix it?”
She let the stone drop back to the ground and looked at him. “You have a magic box that makes things cold. How does it work?”
“Well, I… I don’t know. Exactly,” he conceded.
“But it will work?”
“Well, yes.”
She gestured at the circle. “This is the same. I do not know who built it. I do not know how. But it is a doorway. A doorway that is broken.”
“How?”
“Because I came through it.” She pointed at the fallen stone. “Eight stones. Should be nine. Now help me.”
Tristan found it hard to argue with her, especially since she had just repeatedly stabbed a hideous monster to death and was covered with its blood. That in itself was a compelling point.
Plus, she still had the knife.
Also covered in blood.
Two excellent points. One of them, a literal point, with an edge.
He relented and added his strength. It wasn’t as heavy as he thought it would be.
“But was the doorway here before the stones, or are the stones the doorway?” He asked as they pushed it up.
“I do not know. Your people built them?”
“I think so?”
“Then the ones who knew are long dead, and you have forgotten.” She said as the stone ?slid into place.
As they steadied it, the snow, heavier now, settled in the centre of the circle. Tristan’s sense of unease lifted.
It was strange, but he’d not realised what a palpable sense of doom he’d been under until it was gone.
He stood up straight and rubbed his chest where she’d kicked him. It ached. “Fine. But why’d you kick me?”
“It was going to kill you.”
“Oh… Right, thanks.”
“You promised, honey. You can keep your promise.”
“Yes, right, I see,” he sighed.
He stared at the stone they’d just lifted and gave it a tentative kick. “So, if you came from another world, which is bad. What about other… people, like you I mean? Should we leave it? So they can…”
“My people?” She paused. “No. No need.” Her voice was firm, but her ears drooped—just for a moment.
“Why—” he started.
“We already have another to hunt,” she cut across him, ignoring the question.
“Right… the vampire…”
She gestured. “Tracks. This way.”
He followed her gaze towards the church tower at the top of the hill.
The snow leading up the hill was marked with long, sweeping scuffs, almost flattened, as if something had dragged itself up the hill, away from the stone circle.
Did those look like something a vampire would leave…
She’d already set off, heading towards the church.
Tristan groaned, rubbing his bruised ribcage.
He gazed at the stone circle, then at the creature’s body.
Did he really want to follow her? On the other hand, did he want to be out here alone? He shivered again. It ?wasn’t the cold this time.
“Hey! Wait up!” he called as he stepped hurriedly through the snow after her.
The dead thing lay behind them, already being covered by fresh snow. Within an hour, you wouldn’t even know it had been there.
Except for the blood. The dark streaks would not be hidden so easily.
