Crimson Moonset ↠ TWILIGHT

chapter 14: 𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴

There was a deep yowl near her. Potami turned her head and noticed her brother, Leif, had stood upon the corpse of a huge, black lycanthrope whose neck was torn into nothing but mush, blood, and bone. It's long limp tongue hung out onto the frozen earth and its clouded yellow eyes were rolled into the back of its head. Potami felt a rush of pride and admiration for her eldest sibling.

"Vampires!" Leif yowled a warning to the tribe, his grey fur splattered with black lycan blood. His cold, blue gaze then found Potami's when he leaped down from his discarded kill. "Gather the warriors, sister," he growled out as he moved to stand beside her.

Potami gave him a respectful nod before letting out a screech to her tribemates. Obeying the signal, all puma-shifters had leaped away from the lycanthropes and bounded towards the middle of the battlefield, regrouping around Leif and Potami, hissing and spitting at the lycanthrope's that were regaining their composures and slowly approaching them with spiking fur.

The repulsive beasts drooled onto the snow, threatening the felines with sharp, baring teeth and their horrid snarling. However, there was a pained howl behind them, and the huge canines all turned their attention to the other side of the field behind them.

One of the lycans lay dead, its black-and-yellow heart had been torn out from its back and now was held in the hand of a man. Though Potami knew it was no ordinary man, not at all. Even if her brother had not warned her of the scent of vampires in the breeze, she still would have known. No human could take down a lycanthrope with a single hand. This was a vampire. And she was only proven further correctly as more dark cloaks appeared behind him.

Judging by his crimson-and-black robes with faded gold-and-silver embroidery, Potami also knew this was no normal vampire either. The elders often told stories of the vampire race and their ways. These vampires were of the Volturi. A dangerous and powerful vampire coven bound to rule with an iron fist. The elders spoke of their laws, that they didn't have many, but one that stood the most to her was that any lycanthrope alive is to be killed on sight. Potami rather liked that one. She just hoped they would not go after her kind also.

Potami's claws dug deeply into the snow. Her brother had not yet given them a command, as he was watching the vampire drop the lycan heart onto the now bloody snow.

Potami had never come across vampires before. They were pale as the spirits the kahuna visited every crescent moon. Her father always told her they smelt of stone and something sour, but the scent that came across her was not what she had imagined at all. Inhaling it now, Potami smelt something comforting on the light breeze that swept her way. Begrudgingly, she just hoped it was not the vampires she was smelling and perhaps a field of winter flowers near them instead.

The vampire who had killed the lycan effortlessly looked up and studied the situation before him. Potami took this time to look closer at him. His eyes were as the tales told, red as the fresh blood of her kin, almost crimson if it weren't for the blackened hunger within them. His hair was long, wavy, and brown, reaching his shoulders in delicate curls. He was tall and bore a golden pendant with a rectangular crest, a small ruby adorned right in the centre.

Potami bristled when even more cloaked vampires emerged from the woods behind him, it seemed to look like a fair fight now. There were as many numbers as possible on every opposing side. A fair battle? Perhaps it was time to test who were the better species.

On her right, Potami felt Gyda's dark flank pressing against her own. She knew her friend was nervous of what was to come. The tribe's kahuna did not foretell them of vampires in their future. But perhaps Vera could not see every outcome. In the present of this, every puma-shifter in this field were tense and hostile to both species before them.