backward. He fought it, but it was ripping and tearing through his soul. The ber energy fused with his own nature, turning him into the warrior the rest of the realm referred to as berserkers.
He felt his muscle begin to quiver, feeling weak from his loss of blood. But the wounds would heal. He’d be stronger than ever before. Osborn gulped in air and stumbled his way back to the place where he’d parted from his father.
Intense relief passed across his father’s face, and his brown eyes warmed when he saw Osborn approach. Osborn immediately straightened despite the pain. He was a warrior; he’d greet his father that way. But his father hugged him, grabbed him and held him tight to his chest. For a few moments he basked in his father’s pride and love before his father broke away and began packing away their camp supplies.
“It was harder than I thought. I didn’t think I’d feel this way,” Osborn blurted out for no reason he could guess. He regretted his rash words instantly. That was a boy’s sentiments. Not a man’s. Not a warrior’s.
But his father only nodded. “It’s not supposed to be easy. Taking of a life, any life, should never be something done without need and compassion.” He stood, slinging his pack over his shoulder. “Guide me to the bear. We must prepare it.”
They trekked silently together, crossing into the sacred land to where the bear had taken its final breaths. His father taught him to honor the bear in the ancient ways, then they set to work.
“Now you possess the heart of the bear. As a warrior of Ursa, you will carry the bear’s spirit with you. Your ber spirit will always be there, waiting silent within you, ready for your call. The strength of the bear comes to you when you wear your Bärenhaut,” his father told him, lifting up the bear pelt. “Do not don your pelt without thought and careful consideration. You will be able to kill, Osborn, and kill easily. But only with honor.”
“I will, Father,” he vowed with a humble sense of pride. “What do we do now?”
“We take the meat back so our people can eat. The claws we use for our weapons. We don’t waste what the bear has given us. We revere its sacrifice.” His father ran a finger down the bear’s fur. “But the pelt, that belongs to you. You wear it only when you go into battle and must call upon the spirit of the bear.”
As he’d observed with his father, and the dozen of Ursa warriors who guarded their homeland. Now he was joining their elite ranks.
They came at night. But then vampires were strongest at night. Attacking when all would be asleep. While the warriors and their sons were on Bärenjagd. A coward’s choice.
The cries of women filled the night air. The blaze of burned homes and barns and grain silos lit up the sky. Father and son took in the scene below. Osborn’s mother was down there. His sister.
His father shucked his clothing, grabbing for his Bärenhaut and sword, which were never far out of reach. Osborn’s own bear pelt wasn’t ready, not yet dried by the sun, but still he reached for the fur, drawing it about his bare shoulders. Blood and sinew still clung to the pelt, and seeped into Osborn through the wounds on his arm and down his body. A powerful rage took him over. He felt nothing else. No sadness over the bear, no worry or concern for his brothers or sister and mother, no anguish over the loss of the food stores that would keep his people alive through the harsh winter. Osborn felt nothing but the killing rage.
With a war cry, he charged down the hill, to his village, his people. To do battle. Not heeding the warning of his father. A vampire turned at his call, blood dripping from his chin, a chilling smile on his cruel lips.
The anger, the force of his rage, overpowered him. He charged the vamp, grabbing for his throat, tearing at his flesh, ripping at the creature’s body with his bare hands. He didn’t need a stake, only his fist, slamming through skin, bone, to the heart below. The vamp collapsed at his feet.
Osborn turned, ready to kill another. And he did. Again and again. But the Ursa warriors were outnumbered. Armed with clubs, the vampires waited to ambush the father-and-son pairs slowly returning, easy and unaware targets. The creatures knew what they were doing, fighting his people with neither blade nor fire.
The bodies of his neighbors lay among the blood drinkers he’d killed. In the distance, he still saw his father in the fight, easily taking on two vamps, his berserkergang a trusted ally. But then he saw his father fall. Vamps were ready to suck the last of his life force. His spirit.
“No,” he cried, his rage growing, building. He grabbed a sword from one of the fallen vamps as he ran. The blade might not do damage to his flesh, but it would soon find a home in a vampire’s bitter, dark heart.
The blood drinker at his father’s throat lost his head without knowing the threat approaching. The second vampire was able to put up a fight, fueling Osborn’s anger. He laughed into the dawn as the vampire fell at his feet. He turned ready for more, to kill more. His rage only soothed by the death of his enemy. But he was surrounded.
Vampires moved at incredible speeds to join those slowly encircling him. Even with his berserkergang upon him, the spirit of the bear filling him, he knew he could not defeat this many vampires. The vampires had made sure there was no one to help him.
He’d just make sure he took as many as he could with them when he died. He raised his sword, preparing to do battle.
Just as quickly as the vampires had moved to surround him, they stopped. Light began to filter through the leaves of the trees. One by one the vampires left, faster than his eyes could track.
“Come back and fight,” he called to them.
The sound of the wind rustling over the grass was his only answer.
“Fight, cowards.”
But his rage was fading, only anguish left in its place. His pelt began to slip off his shoulders.
Those vampires still left dying on the ground began to sizzle. Smoke rose to the sky from their bodies, and soon they were nothing but ash. The smell was horrific, and he turned away, sinking to the ground by his father’s prone body.
He lifted his father’s hand. It was cold, lifeless. Tears pricked at his eyes, but he blinked them back, in honor of the spirit of the man who’d died to save his people.
The vamp Osborn had relieved of his head left nothing behind but his tunic. Under the cover of the night, he hadn’t realized the attackers had been similarly dressed. His own people did not dress alike when they engaged in battle. But one kingdom of the realm did. The magical vampires of Elden. He recognized the navy and purple colors of Elden’s royal military guard.
It made no sense. Nothing made sense. There’d been peace between his people and Elden for generations. The king only had to ask, and the Ursan warriors would fight at his side.
Only one thing made sense in Osborn’s mind—every last resident of Elden would die by his hand.
The day was filled with hard, gruesome work. He carefully gathered the bodies of his people, trying to remember them as they were—his neighbors, his school buddies, not these lifeless bodies covered in blood and desecrated by bloodthirsty vampires. He found his mother cradling the small, lifeless body of his sister, protecting her even in death. His sister’s favorite bear doll in its frilly pink dress lay nearby. Trampled.
By the time the sun was overhead, his grisly task was nearly complete. Tradition dictated the
