Red as Blood

There are monsters all around us. They do not have horrifying fangs, and claws that will cut through you like butter as the stories say. In fact there is nothing that defines them as different from any of the other villagers. Not even the scent of a killer, the scent of blood, because they cover their sent in that of the forest. You don't even know they are there until it is too late.

And then there is him. The leader of the demons. Our kind calls him Red, because he is as red as blood. His kind call him Red because he wears a red cloak.

That cloak is what marks him as different from them, different from us. He doesn't hide the smell of death, or wear the same greens as browns as the other monsters. He wears red like a badge of pride. But even if he didn't walk around wearing the thick crimson cloak lined with werewolf fur, or the jangling necklace of wolf teeth and claws around his pale neck, I would know him. I can't forget him.

They say he was born during the war, when the wolves ran freely through the lands, gods among mortals. They say that in the midst of the battle his mother, having finally escaped from our hostage camps, was accidentally killed by her lover, and they cut him out of her dead body in the middle of the bloodiest fray of the war. They say that he was raised on the battlefields, taught how to kill from a young age. The perfect weapon. They say he massacred an entire battalion at the end of the war, when he was only a child.No one would believe these stories, except that they have been proven true time and time again.

I saw the Battle of Crystal Woods. The last battle of the Great war. I was there, hidden by the mountain and the mist. I saw the demon, a child no older than I, come onto the field. So innocent. Such sad empty eyes. I wanted nothing more than to run to him, not caring for my own safety, but then it happened.

I saw as one of my kin accidentally drew his claws across the child's face as he fell to the ground, trying to get purchase over his balance. I saw as that despairing angelic face broke into a full mouthed grin, showing all his teeth as the blood poured down his face like a crimson waterfall. And he began to laugh, so loud and hard he shook with glee.

And the fighting stopped, just so they could watch him laugh. So confused. And he drew his hand across his face and lapped the crimson up with his tongue. And then, still grinning like a child who found out every day gets to be yule, he moved.

What happened then I can't even describe, for no words can properly show you what I saw. It was so fast, and yet it felt like I was watching in slow motion. He attacked, wolf and human alike, no care for whether they were friend or foe. It was a bloodbath.

In the end he stood there, surrounded by bodies and drenched in blood, unable to define what was from him or the others. He just stood in the middle of the field, like an angel of death, that terrible smile still painted across his face.

The war ended that day and a treaty was formed. The humans would stick to their villages, and we would stick to the forests and the mountains. Only the treaty was broken by the humans as soon as it was made.

They are known as The Hunters, and they are the monsters stories tell about. Elite killing machines that take pleasure in eradicating whole packs of werewolves. Trapping us and killing us while we are under the sway of the moon, when we are at our strongest and weakest points.

And so the lycans went into hiding. Our great species took to our human forms and started living and working amongst them as though we too were human. No longer gods for fear of a child.

The familiar smell of blood pulls me from my memories, and I look up to see the devil himself walk into the inn. He shakes the rain out of his hair, hanging that horrid cloak by the fire to dry, and takes a seat a few tables from mine with the old mayor.

He greets the innkeeper in quiet Russian, then switches back to English to order some food. She smiles sweetly and goes to fetch him a mug of milk-tea to warm him up. Anyone can tell she's sweet on him. But anyone can see he'd probably rip her apart with his teeth.

I watch him as he speaks, listening to the muted conversation as I admire him. For that's the only way to describe what I'm doing, as much as I wish it wasn't so.

He really is beautiful. Soft snow pale skin, slightly yellowed in the glow of the fire, long inky lashes spiderwebbing shadows across his high cheekbones as the candles flicker. There are three long jagged scars marring his face, diagonal marks of pale pink. He isn't broad-shouldered, but he isn't quite slender. You can see his muscular battle primed shape under his clothes, not buff but entirely lean muscle. His wet auburn hair falls into his face and brushes down his mid back, usually pulled back with a black tie, but for now drying into a mess of sloppy reddend brown waves.

And his eyes. Those empty eyes, so alone, so full of despair. Perfect windows to his soul. They are so very beautiful. Gorgeous silvery hazel orbs rimmed with dark lashes like a girl's.

He has killed so many of my kind, so many of his own, that you almost can't smell anything but the blood. In fact it takes a highly trained lycan hunter to even catch it. The smell of the river, the trees, and the moss. He smells like a wolf, not falsely like the forest to cover his sent to trap us like the other hunter's, but almost as though he is one of us as much as he is one of them.

As much as I wish I could say different, I might be desperately in love with the most fearsome monster of them all.