Page 2 of Death Comes for Her
After an overly dramatic groan, I forced myself from my brief sanctuary. A swift climb down the creaking ladder and I landed on the damp earth with a soft thud. I tugged my old, worn boots back on while listening to heavy steps approach.
Griselda’s sour face, lined with sixty years of permanent annoyance, scowled directly at me. Her arms remained crossed over her plump chest and her foot tapped impatiently. Her lips parted with a prepared scolding. Likely the same as I’d already heard a hundred times.
“You know, girl, you’re lucky Benjen and I took you in when we did. If not for us, you’d have starved or frozen alone in the woods, bloody and bruised as you were.” As Griselda spoke, Irepeated the same thing in my head perfectly in time with her. “We’d already raised four children by the time we found you. The least you could do is show us some gratitude for saving your miserable life. Your pretty face won’t save you from working for the rest of your days.”
Gray-streaked black hair poked out from under her beige headscarf. Disdain ruddied her rounded cheeks, making her face resemble a tomato. The near permanent frown on her lips only worsened the lines around her mouth. Griselda wasn’t entirely a kind woman. Even when she agreed to save my life, she resented me for it. It hadn’t been her idea to take me in.
“Grizzy, leave the poor girl alone. It’s a frosty morning.” My reason for hiding all morning made his appearance. Griselda’s husband, Benjen, walked past the field on his way to the barn. A stocky, barrel-chested man with an unwavering smile. The bushy mustache over his top lip was reminiscent of an overgrown caterpillar.
Ten years ago, they found me shivering and hungry in the woods. Benjen and Griselda brought me to their farm and fed me. At first, their intentions were to clean up the pretty eighteen-year-old girl they found in the woods as a wife for one of their sons.
They changed their minds as soon as they noticed the healing scars on my back.
In return for a place to sleep and food, I became a housekeeper and farm hand. Griselda had to teach me how to manage a home, and she wasn’t sparing in her punishments when I failed to appease.
After a decade, I’d stopped aging while Griselda’s homely beauty continued to fade. More and more, she resented her husband’s wandering eye—and hands… and cock.
Benjen’s kindness never came without the assumption I’d repay him.
“Winter’s coming early this year. We’d all rather be warm, wouldn’t we?” Benjen stopped in his tracks between me and Griselda. He smiled at his wife. A crooked smile that made his eyes glimmer.
I didn’t believe it, and neither did she. Not anymore.
“It’s no excuse to be lazy,” Griselda snapped at him. Her furrowing brows deepened. She resembled one of the wrinkled hunting hounds that prowled the nearby village.
“Go inside and get warm, Grizzy. The girl and I can feed the pigs.” Benjen grasped her shoulder, squeezing it to reassure her. Griselda exhaled through her nose in an obviously irritated huff. Not that Benjen would care.
My stomach dropped when he turned to me. The lecherous glint in his eyes when he looked at me made my stomach convulse. I didn’t care about supper if I’d have to scrub my skin raw all night.
Not today. Please, not today.
Internally, I begged and pleaded with fate to save me from Benjen’s horrid touch. I hid around the farm to get away from him each time he wanted to rut against me in the barn. Griselda ruined that by hunting for me. The very thing she hated me for brought me into his grasp time and time again.
I glanced between the husband and wife, skin itching from the brittle tension and resentment. At least they aren’t vampires, I reminded myself, resigned to my fate once again. As much as I hated them, Benjen and Griselda kept me fed and housed when others would have turned me in for a reward.
The alternative was death… an increasingly appealing option.
If I accompanied Benjen into the barn under the pretense of feeding the pigs and permitted him his ten minutes of lackluster thrusting, he’d ensure that Griselda fed me supper. He’d have his way soon enough, and I’d bear it if I wanted to eat.
Seething through her teeth, Griselda gave in. She turned away from her husband, relenting to his unfaithful desires. Her worn leather boots crunched on the dying brown grass as she stomped toward the small house nestled in the field.
Benjen turned his lecherous gaze on me. Even through the thick layers of plain woolen clothing, he stared as though I wore nothing at all. When the crimson moon vanished below the horizon and left the world in all-encompassing darkness, I could eat and wash away the evidence he’d leave between my thighs.
Down in the village, the bell tolled, cleaving through the morning silence. The heavy warning sound of clanging metal rang again, carried on the wind over the fog and across the meager human village. Panicked shouting followed, loud and shrill enough to reach us above the hills.
The sounds chilled me to the bone and sent my blood racing under my skin. Goosebumps crawled over my flesh like dozens of tiny spiders on spindly legs.
Griselda stopped short of the front door. Benjen’s head turned slowly to lock eyes with his wife. The corner of her lips twitched as she cut her gaze from him to me. Benjen shook his head. A silent warning, a plea for her not to do whatever he saw flashing in her eyes.
Increasing screams from the village interrupted their unspoken argument. Galloping hooves from dozens of horses trampled through the cobbled streets like distant thunder. Tense seconds passed as those sounds rolled over the base of the hills to the farm.
“Vampires.” Benjen’s face blanched, becoming a sickly shade of gray. “Go hide in the house, Sierra,” he ordered.
“She will not!” Griselda whipped back around to her husband. She prodded his beefy chest with one sausage-thick finger. “It’s been too long, and I’m tired of housing that whore. Bad enough that our sons would still leave their darling wivesfor her. Bad enough you debased yourself with her! I’m done harboring her under my roof!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grizzy. She’s just a poor young woman who needs help. We’re the only ones who can do that for her.” Benjen could plead all day, but Griselda wouldn’t stand for his unfaithful lies any longer.
The trotting hooves and clinking of armor grew closer, and no one moved. The last time vampires came through the village, they’d gotten away with a handful of the village residents. I’d remained hidden in the barn under a stack of hay every other year when the undead came to collect.
