Page 36 of House of Pawns
We both know exactly what we’ve done and what is to come.
THERE’S THE TASTE OF COLD salt in the air.
The day grows dark. The clock ticks down. Twenty minutes until sunset. The temperatures dip into the thirties.
“We’ve never had a winter this cold in Silent Bend,” Samuel says as we all wait on the front porch. “Never.”
“It has been unseasonably cold,” Rath agrees. “Normally we are in the upper forties, lower fifties. I don’t think we’ve hit forty-five in over a month.”
I let my breath out slowly, watching the air create a giant white cloud. I’m used to cold. I lived at the base of the Rocky Mountains where we would get feet of snow in days and not get above freezing for weeks.
But this cold feels different. It’s wet. It coats you and sinks into your bones.
We discuss the weather as we wait for a war to begin.
One I couldn’t have known to start without Samuel.
The night slips darker.
As do my thoughts.
Jasmine Voltera was the daughter of slaves. She was born thirty years after the Civil War ended, but things didn’t change much on the plantation her parents were owned by. She grew up on it, worked it. But then she met a man.
Alexander worked hard, born as a free man. He began making a name for himself as a leather worker. It wasn’t easy, but he persevered. He bought himself a small home.
Jasmine and Alexander met at church. Love at first sight.
Only two months after meeting, they were married.
They were happy. In love.
For three years they tried to have children, yet were unsuccessful.
Then yellow fever swept through the country.
Jasmine Voltera contracted the awful virus. She died.
Only to wake four days later. She crawled her way out of a heap of diseased, dead bodies just moments before they set the mass grave on fire.
She went home, looking for her husband.
She found him.
And her new fangs were in his neck without realizing what she was doing. In just a few minutes, Jasmine drained Alexander. She killed the love of her life.
I sniff as my nose wants to drip in the cold, damp night. I wipe the back of my sleeve against my face.
I understand that it was not Jasmine’s fault, what she did to her husband. She didn’t know what was happening.
But I will fight fire with fire.
“They’re coming,” Anna says.
Every one of us straightens. Hands curl into fists. I tighten my grip on my crossbow. My House flanks me as I stand in the middle of the porch. Anna to my right, Samuel and Rath to my left, Nial and Lillian behind me.
I hear the gate rattle as impossibly fast bodies leap over it. And not four seconds later, a blur of motion races directly for me.
My human instincts are slow. I raise my crossbow, but by that time, Anna has thrown herself in front of me and she and Jasmine collide before crashing to the ground.
