Chapter 1: Sawyer (Welcome to Little Star)

(Art done by @fangsyrup on Insta)

I held the smoke in my lungs for only a few seconds before breathing it out into the crisp night air of the forest. The trees around the border always grew taller but that didn't stop the moon from shining her half-lit light on me. I had started smoking this joint when I started patrols and hopefully, I could finish it before I saw some action. Shay had said that most of the disturbances came from the south road and I had just come from the west. Knowing Shay they would have already slaughtered whatever is trying to get in before I get there so maybe I'll get lucky and not have a fight tonight. Senior year was tomorrow and I didn't feel like going to school sore.

I tossed the roach and took in a deep breath as I stretched my arms. It has to be vampires again. I don't know why but they just keep coming. They aren't stupid enough to try and pass through Shay's chaos wards and yet they circle it like vultures waiting for us to come to kill them or something. What they could be waiting on is all I can think about. What is so important that you throw yourself to the wolves like they are now? Speak of the devil.

Shifts in the wind and trees shivered around me as shaded silhouettes surrounded me. I stared boldly at the approaching self-appointed leader of a swarm of vamps and couldn't help but be amused at how serious he was taking himself. He definitely is just a human who had been turned. He probably met some vamp in a bar and fell for some marketing scheme and now he's turned and thinks he's more important than he actually was. Hell, all he wore was skinny jeans and a black crew neck.  If there is one thing you take away from vampires is that the old ones know how to dress. 

The vamp let out a low chuckle while clapping his hands together gleaming in grandiose. "It's a good night everyone! Looks like we are having an edible for dinner." He said and I couldn't help but laugh. My chuckle was the only thing heard as the forest went quiet. "Something funny?" He says as he looks at me. I couldn't help but grin. 

"I mean, it's funny to think about,"  I say nonchalantly. 

"What is?" He says as he grows increasingly frustrated by my lack of fear. 

"Like to you do this little show every time you kill someone or am I just getting special treatment." It got embarrassingly quiet. "Oh my god, you do!" I yell as I bust out laughing. They're really just turning the biggest posers these days. 

As I bent over laughing I causally pull out my lighter so I have it in my hand. They will pounce any minute now. "You know that's pretty stupid. But I sense these are my quote un-quote finale moments I think that you should know that there is something you did that is much much stupider." I finish. The leader lunges over to get a grip around my throat. It's tight but not the pillar of strength.  "And what would that be?" He said with malice and spite on his tongue. 

My rings slowly became liquid-like as they coated my right hand and made it look like it was painted silver. I reached up with the now-plated palm and slowly crushed the vampire's wrist. He yelped and jumped away before he looked back at me enraged like the wounded animal he was. "You messed with a witch." Just like that his rage becomes terror as they all try to scatter. But It's too late, they spent too much time around me so now I know what their magic feels like. 

I spark up the lighter and pull the ember into my hand and amplify it into a ball of fire the size of a yoga ball. It hovered over me like a small sun and I focused on the magic in each of their DNA. I then tethered them together with a fire above me through my sense of their location and... with a snap of my fingers the small sun bursts and the flames snaked out in all different directions. Then there was an onslaught of quick screams before there was once again silence. 

Steading my breath I listen intently to the silence searching out for stragglers. Mostly all there was to be heard was the sound of the trees dancing to the rhythm of the winds and the ticks tacks of the small creatures of the forest that didn't leave during the squabble. I had to change my searching tactic. Inhaling deeply I focused on my magic. The ocean of power in me that I only had to touch briefly for my previous spell. 

It was a maddening feeling really, the overwhelming sense of power. Smoking helps but it doesn't fully take away the toll it takes on you carrying it around. But in the madness, I can reach out and feel the things my magic resonates with like the light of the moon, the flora, the fauna, and even the earth beneath my feet. It was teaming with life and the natural essence of magic. However I wasn't looking for natural magic, I was looking for the absence of it. Vampires, like most night children, run on night essence which is fueled by draining life. So instead felt out into the weak spots where I could barely sense and there it was. A moving cloud of nothing coming straight for me. 

I pull myself out of it just in time to coat my other hand with the mage's metal of my rings and raised my defenses. Just by the size of the cloud, I could tell that whatever vamp was coming carried a lot of weight. Preparing for my physical disadvantage I use my amplifying ability to strengthen the shine of the moonlight. I wouldn't fully depower them since it isn't direct sunlight but it slows them down. 

Eventually, the highborn vampire broke through the trees and went straight for the kill. It was a woman. Long dark wavy hair that framed her face. Her skin was sheet paperwhite and her body was nothing but bone. Although she looked like she could be taken by the wind she moved ferociously with her long serrated claws. She was a beast pillar. She lunged low and aimed for my sides but I swiftly spin out of her reach. I could tell that she was becoming more and more enraged as she missed. She began to grow bigger and more monster-like as her arms and legs began to grow longer and her jaw started to crack and reshape itself to be bigger. 

The tricky thing with beast pillar highborn's and above is that they are only killable when they are either fully shifted or asleep. The only problem with that is they are a lot stronger when they change. Plus they can fly which is a whole other pain in the ass. I have to buy time until she full turns or Shay gets here, hopefully being this close to the wards has alerted them already. 

Quickly, I act. I drop to the forest floor digging my hands into the ground connecting to the essence of the earth. The ground soon became water-like all around causing the unprepared vampire to sink into the ground. I solidified the earth as she was elbow deep trapping her. She acted like a wild animal as she viciously yanked at her limbs in a feeble attempt to free herself. The half of her body still above land was still shifting and it wasn't long until a pair of dark brown leather wings ripped out of her back. With a mighty gust of wind, she tore herself from the earth and launched to the sky. She was fully formed. 

Before the she-beast had the chance to attack a blade of pale white light formed in the sky. The light from the blade outlined a silhouette of a person that almost flew through the trees before bringing down the pale blade on the highborn from behind. From the right should to the left side of the waste the blade cut through the creature like butter.  The halves of the beast fell to the earth and burned into ashes before they hit the ground.

 The one who dealt the finishing blow stepped into the light and revealed themselves to be the chaos witch Shay Taylor, the last witch of the refinement coven. They had curly dirty blond hair that was tied back in a similar fashion to mine. Their eyes were a greenish-brown and though it was hard to tell in the moonlight their skin was lightly tanned.  They wore a simple light blue jean jacket with a pine green hoodie under it along with a pair of jeans and brown combat boots.  

"Took you long enough," I say. 

"You weren't the only one who was busy. Two more clusters were circling the south road. No sign of highborns there though." They responded. "One highborn wouldn't be ordering three clusters of fledglings so there has to be more." 

"Did you fight any Beast pillar fledglings?" I asked.

"No, I didn't. Which means the highborn we killed didn't turn them." Shay concluded. 

"Multiple clusters with different pillars... what a mess."

Vampires are strange creatures. Over the centuries there have been many tales of vampires and what they can do. Legends of strength, speed, youthfulness, hypnosis, and the ability to turn into monstrous bat-like creatures. In a way that's true just not in the way you think. These five known powers belonged to a powerful vampire queen, who passed her power onto her five pillars, master vampires, who pass their singular ability in a weeker form to their highborn sires, and so on. The power gets weaker the more generations it is passed down but that doesn't mean a fledgling is dangerous, especially to humans. 

Knowing that we have fledglings that aren't from the beast pillar means we are dealing with multiple pillars which could lead to a master vampire. Looking at the situation it seems like they either want to start a war or want something so bad they are willing to start one to get it. Either way, it was a lot of work for a coven of three witches and by the look on Shay's face, I can tell they know that too. 

"This is too much." Shay begins. "It's getting to the point where they are here every other night. I gonna have to do something drastic." 

"Like what? Ask the Magistrate for help?" I ask bluntly.

"Fuck no," Shay said giving the answer I expected. "The Magistrate has been looking for. reason to take my territory out from under me and I'm not going to give him one on a silver platter." They say before looking to the moonlit sky. "Wolves." 

"Um, excuse me?" I already can't believe what they are about to say. 

"Werewolves, a hunt of them. We let them live on the land and they guard the border at night." Shay elaborated.

"You just said you didn't want to give the Magistrate a reason to take the territory. We both no his views on shifters. Plus he will be pissed that you aren't going to witches for help." I counter. 

 "Well, he can die mad about it. Asking him for help would be showing him weakness but using wolves to handle our vampire problem is simply me fulfilling my duty as Guardian of this territory."

"Well second issue, good luck trying to find a hunt that is willing to help witches," I said. Shay hummed. 

"It'll be easy, just gotta find some desperate ones." They say it like it's easy. 

I ended up dropping the conversation since Shay had already had their mind made up on the matter. We headed back home in silence. Me to busy thinking about my first day of senior year and Shay thinking about where to find desperate werewolves. It wasn't until my phone started ringing to the tone of a rock guitar solo that the silence was broken. This specific ringing indicated that my best friend Annya was calling which meant I had to answer it. 

"Hello?" I say into the phone. 

"Motherfucker! Where are you?!" Annya screams into my ear. 

"What do you mean?" I question as I nurse my shattered eardrum. 

"Hello? The bonfire! The senior bonfire! The Senior bonfire that you were supposed to bring the weed for!" She finished. Shit! Was too busy worrying about vampires I must have forgotten. 

"Oh god, I'm on my way! I'm so sorry!" I say as I head home at a breakneck speed leaving Shay in the dust. 

"Just hurry! I'm having to deal with some cranky ass stoners." She says before hanging up. 

I'm basically running on the wind as I get to the house to swing by Rosita's greenhouse where she gracefully grows my stash for me. Luckily I'm allowed to drive Shay's motorcycle so I should make good time. I'm surprisingly not stopped as I burn rubber all the way to Terrie Myer's farm just in time for the bonfire to reach its apex. With kush in hand, I approach Annya who was sitting with some of her bandmates, Farha and Shana, who were probably also waiting on the weed. 

"I bring a bountiful harvest!" I announce as I raise the bag of weed over my head presenting it like it was Simba. Annya turned to me and lit up like a Christmas tree. We had been friends since I moved here and she had given a bloody knows to this one bigot who called me a slur. She was a powerful girl. She dressed how she wanted which right now included a black tank top with a short-cut black jacket paired with leather boots and a red knee-length skirt. She had black hair styled between a mullet and a shag. Annya was a rockstar and she acted like it. 

"Can't believe you were late for this." She says obviously upset. 

"Hey I'm here now, and besides it's not like I almost missed one of your shows." I try to console her. 

"Still, it's the first time we've seen each other all summer and you almost missed it!" She retorts. 

"You're right and I'm sorry. Tiem just got away from me and I didn't mean to forget. I've missed you and-"  She is already not mad at me anymore as she pulls me into a bear hug. 

"I've missed you too." She said genuinely. "Now let's get high." 

"Way ahead of you." Interjected Farha who had already rolled a joint. We sat in a circle and passed around the joint as we all said what we did during the summer. Farha mostly visited family. Shanna went on a road trip up the coast. I simply said I traveled, which was half true. Annya, however, was being particularly quiet about her time at band camp.

"What can I say band camp was boring." She tried to sound uninteresting which usually was never her case. I caught her the moment she glanced behind me and could tell she was hiding something. I take a look behind me to her dismay and I find the object of my dear friend's attention. Maria Vasquez, head cheerleader, and vice president. She has never had a boyfriend and is known to go to cheerleading camp during the summer. The cheerleading camp that sits just on the other side of the lake from the band camp Annya spent the summer at. And just like that, all the pieced fell together. 

"Oh my god. Girl." I said as Annya went wide eye at the realization that I found her out. Like she could keep a secret from me, the king of secrets. 

"Zip it." She said firmly. Shanna and Farha looked at us both with sheer confusion before Annya pulled into the solitude of the woods. 

"You had a summer fling with Maria!" I said when I knew we were no longer in earshot of our senior class. 

"Okay yes, fine, it was a summer fling. Enfaces on the summer and fling, as in it is no longer going on." She clarifies. 

"Shit. I'm guessing she's not coming out of the closet anytime soon." I said. 

"You know her mom, Catholic to the ninth power. She almost kicked her out for going blonde."  It hurts my heart to hear Annya talk about by the tone of her voice that she is upset that they had to end things. It's almost as hard to date someone in the closet then it is to be in it. You don't want to be the reason someone's relationship with their family changes but you also don't want to be a secret or something they're ashamed of. Annya and I are lucky, the people in our lives support us. I wish I could give that to Maria. 

I  let Annya vent out the whole ordeal to me until she finally gets it all out. We walk back to the party and I try my best to avoid looking at Maria as we pass her. We return to the smoke circle and Annya physically looks happier now that she's talked it out. Once the joint gets to me I take a deep inhale but it suddenly doesn't feel right. I began to be swept up in a wave of sleep that quickly overtake me. 

Once I open my eyes everything is different. I am In a wasteland illuminated by a dying violet sun and there is nothing miles around me. When I look to the sky that's when I see it. Three colossal eyes, one with red, one yellow, and one orange. They were bigger than any sun or moon I have seen. I could barely comprehend how large they were as they felt bigger than the earth. Then in the silence of this abyss and an unfathomable voice said:

"It has begun."

Suddenly I was back in the circle of my friends who now all looked at me with worry. "Sawyer, man are you alright you just passed out for a sec," Shanna said as Annya helped straighten me up. 

"Yeah I'm fine I just... I just smoked a little too much." I say trying to explain away. I don't know where I went or what the fuck that was but I will find out. What has begun? Does it have something to do with the vampires or is there something bigger we need to prepare for? As long as the world isn't ending I was going to get high.