The Blood Witch (The Blood Reign Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

“It’s alright. Just tell me what you saw,” Jak said, stroking her hair soothingly.

“Dad was on the bed and looked like he was asleep. Dalla was on the floor not moving at all.” There was a long pause while Gin tried to fight back the tears. Finally, she let it burst out. “Brigette was standing over Mom holding her down. Mom was trying to fight her off but she couldn’t. Brigette pushed mom backwards over the chair and grabbed her by the hair and bent her neck back like this.” Gin took a handful of her own hair and pulled her head backwards to demonstrate. “Then she, she, b-bi-bit mother on the neck,” Gin broke down into sobs.

Jak could hardly breathe. It felt like someone had kicked him hard in the stomach.
Was it the woman from the cave who had done this? Had she somehow disguised herself as Brigette?
After all, she had first appeared to Jak as a beautiful woman. Recalling her image still stirred strange feelings inside him.
Had the woman disguised herself just to get close enough to kill everyone? If so, where was Brigette? Had the woman killed Brigette too?
But there were no signs of her body anywhere. It wouldn’t do any good to tell Gin that it wasn’t Brigette that had done all of this. Gin wouldn’t believe him over her own eyes. Besides, Jak wasn’t sure himself who, or what had done this.

“I ran and hid then,” Gin continued after a moment. “I was so scared she would come after me next, so I hid under the bed. I tried not to make any noise, but I think she heard me and was trying to find me. She came and opened the door to our bedroom, but just then I heard a dog barking out back, I think it was Frog.”

Frog was Jak’s dog, and it was the only puppy born in its litter that had survived. That winter had been particularly cold, and none of the other puppies lived except for Frog. The puppy’s mother had given birth to them in one of the barns that was only used for storage. The other three puppies in the same litter died within days of birth, before Jak’s father could find where the mother had hidden them. Jak was nine at the time, and asked his father if he could name the puppy since it had taken a particular liking to Jak. He had picked Frog as the name for the puppy as a joke at first. He was only nine at the time, and it seemed hilarious to him to name a dog Frog. The name however stuck, and everyone started calling the puppy Frog after that.

“All of Frog’s barking must have woke up grandpa, because I heard him hollering outside. He must have heard all the noise so he came over and was yelling to see if everything was alright in here. Brigette must have heard him coming too. I heard her walk to the back and go out the door. I couldn’t hear anything after that, but Grandpa stopped hollering and nobody came back inside. I was too scared to go see. I was afraid she would get me. So I just stayed under the bed. I guess I fell asleep. I heard the door bang when you came in, and it woke me up. At first I was scared that you might be....bad too…..like Brigette.”

Jak hadn’t really thought of how everyone at Elsdon had been killed before now. Everything had happened so quickly, and been too much of a shock to think about much of anything. Now he realized that everyone he had seen dead, except Dalla, had two puncture marks on their neck……… the same as on his own neck.
Then why wasn’t he dead too?
He remembered the words of the woman in the cave, telling him that she was giving him a gift of life for freeing her. He hadn’t known what that meant at the time. He still didn’t really know, except that he was alive and everyone else was dead, except Gin. It was all troubling and confusing to say the least.

“We are alright now Gin. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Jak said to the little girl.

“I know you won’t,” she said, as she looked up at Jak with the trust of a child, but suddenly her brow furrowed, and her expression changed to one of puzzlement. “Your eyes, Jak,” Gin said as she reached her little hand towards his face, “I don’t remember them being purple.”

Jak quickly averted his eyes and pulled away from Gin’s outstretched hand. The change in his eyes troubled him too, but he didn’t want to give Gin anything more to worry about right now.

“It’s probably just your imagination,” Jak lied, “they’re the same as they’ve always been. Lets go see about the others, maybe someone is left alive,” he said with more confidence than he felt.

Jak opened the back door slowly and peered out to see what had transpired. As he feared, his grandpa's body was laying several paces away on the ground, motionless. Frog was lying on the ground next to the body with his head stretched across their grandfather’s stomach, and wearing a forlorn look in his eyes.

When the dog saw Jak he jumped excitedly to his feet and began to trot towards him with tail wagging and tongue lolling. Jak started down the back steps and called to the dog, but suddenly Frog stopped dead in his tracks. A deep-throated growl began to rumble in his throat and his ears pulled back, hackles raised, as he began to back away from Jak.

“What’s the matter Frog?” Jak asked. Frog began to bare his teeth and bark as he backed away in abhorrence. Jak took a few more steps towards the dog, all the while trying to sooth the animal, but the dog would not let him close, and continued to back away.

“What’s the matter with Frog?” Gin asked, coming up behind Jak. “He’s acting really weird.”

“I don’t know,” Jak lied, “maybe he’s just scared like we are.” But Jak was afraid that the dog could somehow sense the …… change…in him. “Let’s just leave him be for now.”

They gave the angry dog a wide birth as they made their way to their grandparent’s house. They found their grandmother dead in her bed, with two small puncture marks on her neck, just like the others. It was the same in all the other houses on the farm. Everyone in Elsdon was dead. The realization began to sink in and Jak suddenly felt utterly alone. Not only was everyone else gone, but he was now responsible to take care of Gin too.
What were they going to do?
There was no way they could take care of the whole farm themselves, and neither of them had ever left Elsdon. Winter would be coming in a couple of months and there was no one to take the livestock to Kragston to trade for supplies.

Despair began to take over from loneliness and sorrow, but Jak had to stay strong for Gin. He took hold of himself the best he could manage and tried to at least act strong, for her sake.

After checking all the houses in Elsdon, the two were making their way back to their own house when Jak realized Frog was barking again. Not at them, or rather at him, but something else had obviously upset the dog.

Jak quickened his pace to get back to the house, and as he approached he thought he was imagining things again. His mother was standing on the back steps of their house and Frog was near their grandpa’s body barking and growling furiously at her.

A flood of relief poured over Jak blinding him to everything else. He sprinted the last hundred paces back to the house to throw his arms around his mother. He had thought his mother was gone forever. His arms closed around her in a tight embrace but oddly there was not the feeling of comforting reassurance he expected. He shrugged it off because it really didn’t matter now, his mother was alive!

Jak had covered the distance back to where their mother stood on the back porch of their house much faster than Gin’s small legs could manage. But he could now hear his little sister coming up behind him, calling for her mother excitedly.

Suddenly he realized and least partially what was so odd. His mother’s arms were not embracing him as he thought they should be. Instead they were extended around him, outstretched towards his approaching sister. At that moment, he glimpsed his mother’s gaze towards Gin. It was not a look of love and relief at finding her daughter safe and unharmed. Instead, it was a ravenous, hungry, deadly gaze.

Panic gripped Jak as he came to the realization that his mother was trying to force her way past him to get to the girl. Even more shockingly, he recognized that he felt a strange familiarity to that hunger that he saw in his mother’s eyes. It was akin to the feeling he experienced when he found the dead sheep, and the blood.

“NO!!” Jak cried in desperation. “STOP GIN! Don’t come any closer”

Gin ignored his warnings and kept running towards her mother; tears of joy and relief streaming down her little face. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” she repeated eagerly.

Jak struggled furiously to hold his mother back from the girl, but she was much stronger than he remembered her ever being.

“Let… me… go,” a strange voice hissed in Jak’s ear. The dreadful sound had come from his mother’s lips but it didn’t sound at all like his mother’s voice. “Let… me… have… her! I need her….. I MUST
have
her.”

The sound emanating from his mother’s lips chilled Jak’s bones to the marrow, as if all the blood in his veins instantly turned to ice. “You can’t have her!” he groaned as he tried desperately to hold the strange crazed woman back from reaching his baby sister.

“You just want her for yourself……. don’t you?” she rasped with a wicked smile, making Jak wish this was all just a nightmare. If it were a nightmare then maybe he had a chance of waking from it.

“What are you talking about,” he grunted in disbelief, as he struggled to hold his mother back. “NO! I would never…”

Jak wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold his mother at bay. Gin, in her exited running had almost reached them, but he knew he had to keep her safe. There seemed to be no way out, since he didn’t think he could hold back his mother much longer. Just then he thought of Frog, the only other living thing anywhere around them. If only Frog would do something, but what? Maybe Frog could stop Gin.

“Frog, stop Gin!!”
Had Jak actually said the words aloud or just thought them? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t remember opening his mouth to say the words. The intense struggle to hold his mother back was too fierce.

Suddenly Frog darted between Jak and his approaching sister, bowling Gin over and bringing them both to a crashing rolling ball. Gin sat up; her little face covered with dust and began to cry, tears leaving muddy tracks down her face, but thankfully, the girl made no effort to get up. The dog then placed itself between her and where Jak grappled with his mother, to stand guard; not allowing the girl to get any closer.

“Good dog,”
Jak thought wordlessly.

Suddenly Jak realized that his mother had stopped struggling against him. When he turned back to her, she looked like herself again. The hunger was gone from her eyes and she peered up at him lovingly and said, “What has happened here Jak?” She sounded like herself now too.

“I – I …. Don’t know. Are you alright Mother?” he asked tentatively.

“I don’t …… think so,” she said, hesitantly putting her hand to her forehead, “I think something is very wrong, but I can’t remember …”

She gazed intently into Jak’s eyes for several moments. “What’s wrong with your eyes Jak? They’ve changed. It …. it has gotten to you too, hasn’t it?”

In a flash, her eyes glazed over with a dark reddish hue and the ravenous hunger was back, this time more intense than before. Jak planted his feet and shoved his mother back towards the house with all his might. It must have been the excitement and desperation of the moment, because she flew back through the air several paces to land hard against the door on the porch. Jak spun around quickly and ran to Gin, grabbing her by the arm and hoisting her to her feet. “RUN!” he cried. “Run Gin. It isn’t mother anymore”.

Gin immediately understood that, since she had seen Brigette turn on everyone, and didn’t need any more incentive to move. They ran as quickly as they could, with Jak partially dragging Gin along since her little legs couldn’t move that fast, towards the barn in back. As they ran they passed a large pile of straw with a pitchfork sticking out…

…Their father would be upset if he saw that. Jak always got lectured on the importance of putting tools away when he finished with them….

Jak glanced back over his shoulder to see his mother chasing after them and she was gaining ground fast. He reached out and grabbed the pitchfork as they passed, and then pushed Gin on ahead, at the same time willing Frog to follow the girl. Amazingly, the dog once again seemed to read Jak’s mind and bounded to follow Gin. Jak turned to face what had once been his mother but there was only a split second to raise the pitchfork before she slammed into him. The force of the impact almost knocked him from his feet.

He looked down to see the tines of the pitchfork sunk deep into his mother’s stomach, but even with the pitchfork immersed in her middle, she continued to struggle to reach him, or rather past him to Gin. Jak was baffled as to why his mother wanted Gin so badly but not him. But then again a part of him…… a strange new splinter secluded deep inside him, did know why.

Like closing a gate, tranquility suddenly swept over his mother. It appeared to be his mother once again, the strange violent hunger gone from her eyes. She glanced down at the pitchfork that was impaling her. When she raised her eyes and met Jak’s gaze, they were filled with shock and sorrow.

“What have you done Jak? Why did you do this to me? What have you become?”

“No,” he cried in anguish, “stop that. You aren’t my mother. You are just some creature that wants to kill Gin”

“Kill Gin?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “But why on earth would I want to hurt my baby?” She said as tears streamed down her face. “What is wrong with you Jak? What is wrong with your eyes? Why are you saying such hurtful things?”