From Ashes [#?]

??? [ weird. ]

There was something wrong, though. Something she was just only understanding. In the shadows and the brush, the limbs were moving.

Legless torsos with arms outstretched, fingers grabbing like a child's. Lower halves convulsing.

Severed, rotting bodies moved towards her, reaching with pale, clawed hands. She took a step back, checking her pockets for something - anything - she could use to defend herself. Nothing. They were getting closer, gasping and writhing. Red trailed them.

A claw nearly brushing Maddie's ankle cleared her nerves and she jumped back. She turned on her heel and ran.

The howling started once again. The forest was becoming denser.

"Maddie!" A voice rang out through the howling, close and etched with fear.

Her pace quickened to a sprint and her breathing became ragged as she swerved around the trees and over fallen branches. Her neck brushed with something like a needle. A broken branch, maybe? She didn't have time to stop and check.

"MADDIE!" it roared.

Out of her peripheral, she noted the sky was bright. She glanced up, finding the moon had grown larger, gotten closer, bent the tops of the trees.

Her heart raced as she came to an instant and unsteady halt. The howling grew louder, now behind her. She glanced down at her stomach, where an open gash was now gushing with blood but it didn't concern her still.

As her breathing slowed and a downpour grew loud in her ears, her head snapped forward again. The woods were gone. Cleared, in a way. Maybe burned, with new grass growing on new soil. In front of her was an wide open field with stretching as far as the eye could see. That wasn't what caused her breath to catch.

Far from her were two shadows - a larger one holding the other in the air by the neck. The one on the ground had the sickly yellow eyes of something monstrous. Not the glow of a wolf, but something muted - something that reminded her of the suddenness and silence that death brought. The other was skinny and clawed the hand around its neck.

There was something familiar about them as she wondered why it was raining.

Had it been raining the whole time?

She glanced up at the still cloudless sky and prayed to a god she didn't believe in for it to stop.

She wanted to run. She had to run but she couldn't will her limbs to move. She knew, somehow, that she wouldn't make it. No matter how fast she ran, she knew she wouldn't change the outcome. It would happen.

The hanging shadow had no form but she already knew it.

The vampire smiled and broke the shadowed figure's neck.

Maddie screamed, the word 'no' feeling like it had shredded through her throat but came out as a wordless scream.

Her windpipe closed. A large rough hand gripped her neck so tightly that she couldn't suck in a breath. The breeze that wasn't a breeze prickled on her neck again. Suddenly, the noise behind her had turned from howling to something much closer. Breathing - low, heavy breath right next to her ear. There was a growl.

The beast chuckled menacingly in her ear. "Time's up."

The hand tightened.

Maddie's eyes shot open as she took a sharp, gasping breath in. As her gaze adjusted to the dark, she looked around. Her bags were piled in the corner and the clock next to her read 4:17 AM.

The ceiling above her was cast in blocky, dim light, a tint that reminded her a little of vampire irises. Rancid yellow. Seven hours before, she'd been on a bus from San Francisco. Now, she laid on her stiff bed in a Beacon Hills motel room that smelled almost as bad as the cab from earlier.