Page 53 of A House of Fangs & Deceit

Given the opportunity, it would run. Strigoi were monsters, but they weren’t mindless. They were us at our most lethal level. And like any good predator, they knew when it was better to retreat and find easier prey.

“It must be one of the townsfolk.” Alaric’s words were barely more than a whisper.

I tilted my head up towards him and saw the haunted look in his eyes was still there, but now it was edged with pain. His family, I realized with horror. Some of Alaric’s family had turned Strigoi when we were young. It had been a few years before my parents had been killed.

“Both of you, get out!” Vail growled.

Alaric gave no indication that he’d heard the order and remained frozen in place. I gripped his hand and pulled him after me as I raced towards the door.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vail’s silver blade flash followed seconds later by the sound of bodies crashing into the table I’d stood beside earlier.

I didn’t look back and just kept running until we were halfway down the street. Nyx and Adrienne appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

“Strigoi!” I yelled, thrusting my hand towards the house we’d just fled from.

“Stay with them!” Adrienne ordered and took off down the street.”

“What happened?” Nyx asked, taking a position between us and the house.

“One of the townsfolk must have turned Strigoi during the attack and escaped.” I sucked in a deep breath as I tried to calm down. “Maybe it hid here? Or snuck back in?”

Alaric swallowed. “They like to go back to their original homes if they can. Part of them still remembers.”

Nyx’s eyes flicked back to us and lingered on Alaric for a moment before returning to the end of the street. “That’s right. Our blood wards don’t keep them out because… well…”

“They’re still us,” I said quietly. “We may call them something different. But there is no physical or magical difference between us and them.”

Humanity. That was the only difference.

None of us spoke after that. An unnerving wail came out of the house before being abruptly cut off. A couple minutes later, the rangers stepped out, blood splattered on their clothes, and Emil had a nasty cut down his right arm.

“It’s done,” Vail said gruffly. “Do either of you want to inspect that house any further?”

“No,” I said softly. “We saw all that we needed to.”

“These buildings…”I halted where I’d been walking down the street on the other side of the outpost and spun around in a slow circle. Something about them was different, and it was bothering me. “This was a newer outpost, right?”

“Yes and no,” Nyx said hesitantly. They hadn’t left my side since the Strigoi attack.

Even after a second thorough search of the outpost, we hadn’t found any other creatures, but I was grateful for their comforting presence.

Nyx went on, “It was never a Fae village but rather an oldhuman one. The tavern and a few of the homes were from that settlement. It was the reason this was chosen as an outpost. The old human buildings were in disrepair, but it was easier to fix them up than build everything from scratch.”

“Has that been the case with the other outposts?” I asked with a frown, still not sure why I felt the need to pull on this thread, but any information could prove useful.

Plus, as long as I focused on the problem at hand, I could almost forget the mind-numbing terror I’d felt when the Strigoi had pinned me down. I was lucky its claws had sunk into the floorboards above me instead of into my neck and shoulders. Having been so close to death…

Eventually, I had gone back to the house so I could examine the body. When deceased, the Strigoi looked even younger. Maybe sixteen at most. But in the home, I didn’t find anything useful.

It didn’t feel right, leaving him in his house, but Vail promised they’d bury the body later.

Nyx glanced at Vail before answering, “I’m not sure. The history of the outposts isn’t always clear. Some of them were definitely built on top of old human towns, but the early outposts came about before we started keeping records, so we don’t know as much about them other than that they’re old.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, still staring at one of the houses that was likely originally built by a human.

“Do you think it matters?” Nyx asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But any information about what could be a connection between the attacked settlements might prove important.”

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