Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 12

I am Death Walker, Grief Bringer, Daughter of Carnage.

I have walked through fields of blood, nimbly stepping over corpses the way a dancer steps onto a stage. I am the Queen of War, knee deep in fallen life, up to elbows in warm failing flesh. The slip of intestine against my fingers, the feel of once strong hands gripping at me, begging me to save them.

War draws Night Walkers the way the sun draws life. In the beginning, desperate and new, I stumbled upon Crimea and preyed upon killers, as if somehow that would right the wrong. It seemed to me that if a man were so willing to take another's life for a god, country, or gold, if he could cut down his brother for some narrow vision of manhood, then why should I not kill to survive, to sustain a species that was our Lord's creation? For if God had sired everything upon the earth, even the vilest creature: the cockroach, the worm, the vampire bat, and if He had assigned them all a part to play in His plan, why should I not live?

Yet it seemed that we Night Walkers existed for no reason other than consuming life. Our contribution to the world was impossible to understand. We did not sustain another species through symbiosis. Nor did we contribute to civilization, so confined were we to the darkness, fearful to show ourselves, fragile despite our unnatural strength. Always poised on the verge of extinction, hiding even from each other, especially the males—our hell-brothers and the greatest Alphas of all. My purpose remained a mystery, but my faith burned brighter in death than it ever had in life; if I walked this earth, then I was a creature of God's and surely my purpose was somewhere to be found. I would trust in my Father and in time He would show me the way.

I was young.

So I thought if to kill a killer were to save my species, if it were to give me more time to learn my purpose, the purpose of our existence, then surely that was a worthy sacrifice to make. A means to an end. Isn't that what those in war always say? It is a means to a better end?

So I fed and fed and fed. And the girl I once was grew smaller and smaller until she was obliterated beneath the weight of corpses, until that fine noble girl was completely obscured, becoming only a concept, a memory existing solely in my mind. And finally it dawned on me; maybe I wasn't a child of God's at all. Maybe, instead, I was Satan's child.

One night I came upon a field hospital where I saw a young doctor, worn and thin, flung across a bed in fitful sleep. Creeping close to study such broken beauty in this rank domain of mud and disease, I gazed upon his face and to my surprise smelled the sharp scent of blood. Curious, I studied him to see from where it came. His pulse beat strong in his throat and he had no wounds.

I brought my face close to his and slowly breathed in his scent. I wouldn't harm him. I chose only killers, not saviors. Searching him, I found the source in his pocket: three test tubes of blood. Dark red. Iridescent in the moonlight seeping through the window. I held one up to the light. It shimmered like scarlet sunshine. Then I opened each one and drank.

A new life was born. And since that moment, I've been struggling, striving to get back that girl who I once was, before she drowned herself in the blood of soldiers.

I became a nurse and followed the wars. They came like waves, one after the other, all over the world. The sun was not yet such a ferocious enemy and I traveled across many seas, gathering languages along the way. There was always a need for strong, enduring hands. Others faltered in the night, yet I thrived in it. I was strong as a man, they said. Never flinched or turned away. I didn't get sick or hungry or attached. I was perfect.

And so I moved from Death Bringer to Death Walker. And I saw that those hardened killers on the edge of death, lying shattered in their cots, were really just boys beneath all their muscles and scars. Hundreds, thousands, cried out for their mothers before death came to carry them away.

I held their hands. I knew when death was coming. I clasped their hands in mine and told them it would be okay. And for those in too much pain, I sunk my teeth into their wrists and drained their pain away.