Page 68 of Blood Vows
I froze.
It wasn’t the storm, nor the wind. It was deliberate… Slow.
The handle turned, the hinges sighed, and the door opened just enough to let the corridor’s shadows spill inside. My breath hitched.
“Vas?”I whispered, relief and worry tangling together in my voice. But there was no answer. Only silence, thick andunnatural. My bare feet soundless on the cold floor as I stepped closer. The air felt…wrong.
Heavy. Distorted. As if the house itself was holding its breath.
“Vas?” I said again, a little louder this time.
That was when I saw it. A shape standing in the doorway. Tall, still, with the outline barely distinguishable against the faint light bleeding in from the hall. My heart stuttered painfully.
“Vas is… is that you?”
And then it came.
That laugh.
Low at first, then rising into a shrill, unholy sound that clawed its way down my spine. I knew that voice. I’d heard it before. Once, I thought it belonged to the witch, the one who attacked me in that abandoned hardware store. But now I wasn’t so sure. It echoed through me like a memory older than my own, something buried deep in the corridors of my mind. Memories whispering of a time when I’d escaped her before…Or thought I had.
The witch.
My blood ran cold.
I stumbled back, shaking my head, trying to convince myself I was imagining it. But then I saw it, the glint. A quick flash of silver, catching the faintest sliver of moonlight.
A knife.
A gasp tore from my lips, the sound too loud in the suffocating quiet. My back hit the edge of the bed, my hand clutching at the post as if it could shield me from what was coming.
The figure moved closer, the blade catching the light again. And that laugh… Gods, that laugh, it echoed around the room once more.
Haunting. Familiar.Merciless.
A sound I felt like I had been suppressing all my life, yet how was that possible?
“Welcome home, little homewrecker,” the voice purred.
The words weren’t just heard, they were felt, sliding under my skin like poison, thick and cold. The air shifted, the warmth from the fire snuffed out by a sudden, unnatural chill.
And then I knew.
It wasn’t the witch.
A laugh followed, high, brittle, unhinged, and my blood froze. A glint of silver flickered in the dark, moving closer with each breath I took. My pulse thundered in my ears as I edged toward the wall, keeping the bed between us, my fingers searching blindly for the switch.
“What do you want?!” I snapped, my voice cutting through her laughter for the briefest, blessed moment. Then I finally found it, and flipped it on, flooding the room in a soft glow, which was when I saw who it was. And with it my proof, as, like I thought, it wasn’t the witch.
No…It was something far worse.
Her hair hung in dark, tangled ropes around her face, damp and matted as if she had clawed her way from the grave. Her gown, once white, now clung to her in tatters, streaked with dirt and old blood, the fabric whispering as she moved. But it wasn’t just her appearance that froze me. It was the way she looked at me. Wild. Unblinking. Her eyes shimmered between green and gold, like oil on water, darting around the room as though she were trying to cage me with her stare.
Then her face changed.
It happened so fast, I thought my mind had fractured. One blink and suddenly, it was my mother standing there. Her kind eyes, her trembling mouth, the faint scar on her chin, I’d once kissed goodnight. A gift from my father and one of his violentoutbursts. My throat closed, and I staggered back, my voice breaking.
“Mom?”
