by J. R. Rain
I watched my daughter come into her own.
She was growing into a fine young lady, beautiful and full of life. I would like to say much like her mother, but my little one was oh-so-different. Shorter, for one, with raven-black hair compared to her mother’s shiny auburn. My little one was connected, alert and alive. My wife, ah, well, she was content to stay indoors and take care of us, which she did very well, bless her heart. More often than not, my daughter would return home with twigs in her hair, dirt on her cheeks and elbows and knees, skipping and humming a song of her own creation. Or a song she’d heard the spirits sing. I could listen to her sing all day, and often I did, pausing my work to tilt my head and listen to her lilting voice carry over fields and meadows, through woods and dale.
My life was peaceful, perfect. My little princess was straddling worlds and I was okay with that. She was unlike any young girl I’d ever seen. I neither dared to change her nor wanted to. I knew she was different, and I knew she was a witch. A real witch. A trained witch, in fact. Trained by whom, I never could ask. And she was only growing stronger.
Her trifecta of witchy friends never did arrive; at least, not in time.
Instead, someone else—or something else—came for her.
You have to know that in those days, the Inquisition was going strong, but I had believed we were far removed from it. Indeed, we had no neighbors to speak of, living simply and humbly in the deep forests. We grew our own food and ate from the land. I gave up my hunting at the urging of my daughter, which was fine by me. Anything for her. Always, anything for her. She was my guiding light in this world, tapped into a knowing that I was not privy to, but all too willing to learn from. She was my beacon, my angel, and she was wise beyond her years. If she told me that eating meat blocked our connection to the land, then I believed her. Besides, I was pretty sure she was friends with every single animal in the fields and stream, anyway.
Little did I know that the Inquisition didn’t just have eyes and ears everywhere, but they employed the supernatural, which was ironic indeed.
Little did the Church know that their greatest tracker was consumed by dark forces. Perhaps the darkest of forces, for he is pure evil, Samantha Moon, and something that, having seen firsthand, few, if any, can stop. Worse—if there can be anything worse—he is supernaturally drawn to the most powerful of witches. Meaning, there is no escaping him. Indeed, I would go on to discover that this one entity was responsible for the demise of the world’s greatest witches and warlocks.
Including you, Samantha Moon.
***
I immediately dropped my awl and hammer when I’d heard the scream.
When I heard you scream.
Yes, you, Samantha Moon. For my little one was none other than you, born into one of your many reincarnated forms. I was lucky enough to be your father in one of them.
That said, I’d never heard such a scream before, full of bloody murder and terror and furious, spitting anger.
Fast, I ran, tripping once and falling straight to my face. I scrambled to my feet, feeling as if my life was about to be forever changed for the worse, you screamed again, and again, and all the forest seemed to scream with you. Birds erupted and animals scrambled from far and wide. I was only mildly surprised to see your friend the bobcat dash past me, and head in your direction. The wind picked up, too, howling mad as I ran faster and faster, and I just caught sight of you at the back of a horse, a massive arm reaching back and holding you in place, the red-hooded rider bigger than anyone I’d ever seen before, and his black steed clearly not of this world. You thundered off into the woods, reaching your arms back to me, even as you beat against the unmovable arm of your captor.
He rounded a bend as your screams trailed behind. And then, the screams stopped abruptly.
I ran, sobbing and hysterical, until I rounded the same bend... and came across something most unusual indeed. The deep hoofprints of the devil steed had stopped suddenly... and seemed to vanish into thin air. The creature had been there one minute, and gone the next. I searched every direction, certain the horse had made a great leap to throw me off the trail, but there were no prints to be found, anywhere.
And just like that, you were gone.
My angel girl was gone, and I was left alone searching for prints that did not exist, surrounded by the braying and sorrowful sounds of the many animals left behind, but none were more lost and tortured than my own hoarse voice calling out to you.
Calling, calling...
Chapter Ten
He would immediately abandon the home in the woods and all my belongings and set out in search for me—or the young girl he claimed was me.
(I still wasn’t convinced.)
He never returned home. Indeed, he would spend many days and nights traveling and questioning any and all he came across—“had they seen the red-robed man or his raven-haired daughter?” He rarely stopped for rest and only did so when his body demanded it. He only ate when the hunger finally overwhelmed his desperation and rage. And only then, he would eat a few berries or some stolen mutton. After all, he had no money. After a week of searching and questioning, roaming from hillside to hillside, town to town, he had finally come across a man who knew of the red-hooded hunter.
The man was a priest, and a very old one at that, who spoke his mind with nary a care of what others thought of him, let alone the Church itself.
The priest had overheard the desperate father asking any and all who would listen to him, beseeching passersby in the street, if anyone, anywhere, had seen the red-hooded man. None had, or none admitted to having seen him. Just as he’d been about to move on to the next street corner, a strong hand grabbed him about the shoulder and pulled him into a side alley. Weakened with hunger and beside himself with grief, he went stumbling along easily enough.
The old clergyman had veritably held up the stricken father; indeed, he had shaken him, too, perhaps harder than necessary. Once he’d gotten Jeffcock’s attention, the old man had proceeded to tell a tale that had chilled the searching father to the bone, a tale that dropped him to his knees where he could be found for many hours afterward.
The man whom Jeffcock sought was not someone the priest approved of; indeed, the old priest downright protested the man’s involvement, questioning his virtue, and suspecting the motivation was far sinister than the Church was willing to admit. The old priest was but a simple vicar in a backward town on the far edge of nowhere. Who would listen to him? But he’d seen the man in question in action, and the priest had felt the wickedness, the vileness, the evil radiating off him. It had been only a brief glimpse, but it had been enough to convince the priest that the man was not really a man, but something else, something sent by the devil himself.
***
In Jeffcock’s words:
I would go on to hear many such stories of this man who was not a man, this ultimate hunter of witches and warlocks, and, with each story, my blood would boil, and I would continue my own hunt with ever-increasing desperation.
Another priest who was in the know had told me that this red-hooded man operated outside of the Inquisition, that he’d been retained to bring to justice the real witches of the New and Old Worlds. Indeed, I would learn that, in general, that the Inquisitors, as a whole, highly doubted the veracity of real witchcraft—they saw it as merely a superstition and nothing to take too seriously. This, of course, goes against general wisdom. Believe it or not, witches were not a target of the Inquisition, although there had been some famous trials. “Witchcraft as a nuisance” was the general rule of law.
Surprisingly, the Inquisition was rigidly overseen, with witnesses, tribunals, confessions and torture. And, yes, executions, although those were few and far between. Even the torturers, believe it or not, were held to some standard of decency... and were even given time limits. The Inquisition was far tamer than was led to believe, and not all witches were burned at the stake. Many were simply tortured and sent home.
None of that
mattered to the red-hooded rider, who began his career as a torturer, and later, an executioner. There had been many instances when the man had gone rogue, going against the decisions of the tribunals and overseeing mass executions. He’d been punished and imprisoned, but managed to escape, and he’d been on the run ever since.
It is here where his story gets murky. By most accounts, the man seemed... possessed, deranged, and, in the least, obsessed beyond all reason with witches. He’d claimed witches were real—not just a nuisance, which was the Church’s official stance—with real power, who should be hunted and killed without the benefit of trial, without the opportunity of renouncing Satan.
Despite having a price on his own head, he continued his work... somehow managing to find, torture and execute witches, leaving a trail of misery from village to village. By all accounts, he tortured and executed in private. His victims were often found scattered far and wide, most burned at makeshift stakes, others gutted and left to bleed to death. He was truly the judge, jury and executioner, and the death of witches everywhere. Real witches, that is. Those with real power, a real connection to Mother Earth. You were one of them, my child.
So, then, how does this man work? From where did he come from? And where did he go? How had he managed to avoid the price on his own head, find the witches he feared, and then, disappear again? Good questions, and I have spent my life searching for the answers—and searching for him.
To make a long and terrible story short, I did eventually find you. I’d followed clue after clue, whispered rumor after whispered rumor, until I happened upon what could only have been called the hooded rider’s stronghold: a cave on the outskirts of a remote town, a place where some locals had heard the galloping of horses’ hooves in the dead of night, a cave known to have been haunted and terrible, from which screams and foul smells emanated. Only the bravest had ventured in, and none had returned.
Now, months after your abduction, I ventured fearlessly into the cave, armed with sword and knife and crossbow. At this point, one could have called me deranged, so sure was I that I was tracking the devil himself.
He wasn’t there, nor his horse, although I had seen evidence of both. No, I didn’t find him, but what I did find was a nightmare of the worst kind.
Deep within the cave was a pit, and within the pit was a gruesome pile of the dead. Many were burned and charred, others had been gutted and mutilated. The stench was overwhelming and it was unlike anything I’d come across—that is, until I came across another of the hooded rider’s execution chambers. And another. And another.
Horrified and sickened, fighting tears and vomit, I searched the gruesome pit... only to see you there, sweet girl, high atop the pile of the dead, yourself having suffered terrible wounds of which I will not describe here. Needless to say, only part of you was there.
I fished you out and gave you a decent burial in the woods nearby. I picked a spot where I could also see the cave entrance, and there I sat with you, day and night for many weeks, eating off the land, drinking from a nearby stream, and altogether going hungry, waiting for the red-hooded man to return. But I didn’t see him again, not then. Neither him nor his devil horse.
And so it was with great sorrow that I eventually left you there in the woods, by the cave entrance. But I left a changed man. I was no longer the meek and humble farmer I had been prior to your abduction. I was a man filled with rage and a thirst for revenge, a man destroyed by grief, a man with little care in the world other than finding your killer. What he’d done to you... ah, it still brings tears to my eyes, little one.
Yes, the red-hooded man would pay, whoever he was. He would pay with his life, even if it was the last thing I ever did.
Little did I know who I was up against, and who this foul creature was. Or, rather, who he would evolve into. Yes, he’d been human... once. But no more.
What he became, well... I was about to find out.
Chapter Eleven
I will not bore you with the details or the madness of obsession that consumed me in the following years.
But my search for the man who I came to know as the Red Rider, took me far and wide across a plague-infested Europe. How I didn’t succumb to the disease was a miracle in and of itself. I suspect my will alone kept me alive, my hunger for revenge. No way in hell I was going to allow the black death to stop me from finding my daughter’s murderer. And so I searched, following his clues and his trail of destruction.
My problem: the man was a ghost, as I had witnessed upon his abduction of you. He could seemingly appear and disappear at will, and how does one find such a man? I didn’t know, but I was going to figure it out. I had to. I had to find him. I had to avenge your death. Never did you deserve such an assault. Never.
My God, Sam... what he did to you...
As I traveled, I cursed God. I also cursed myself for not keeping a closer eye on you, or finding you in time. Surely, I was only days away from locating you, perhaps even hours, judging by the condition of your partial remains. Ugh, I can’t think about that now. But thinking about it then drove me through filthy streets and back alleys, through snow and rain, through hunger and lack of sleep, through plague and war.
Through, quite frankly, madness.
Never had I known such grief and anger, and never had I wanted to kill someone so much. Killing him, I knew, would not bring you back, but revenge was all I had, and it was my lifeline.
I would soon learn, this was no man I was hunting.
Sure, he had started out as a man. But he had become something else, something beyond imagination. Who else could disappear in such a manner? Who else could have possibly found you, in such remote backcountry? My God, we lived alone in the woods, far removed from anyone.
Again, I will spare you the tediousness of my investigations, but know that I would discover, over time and many inquiries, that he was a warlock himself, and a very powerful one. Perhaps the most powerful. Once, he had been the chief consultant to the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, a man who had seen the works of real witches and feared them, a man who dabbled in the dark arts, too. He was a true example of a man who feared and hated what he most wanted to become. I would learn more about him over time, but most of what I know, is only supposition.
I suspect he had been a natural warlock, much like you had been a natural witch. I suspect his parents and those around him were not as amenable as I had been. I suspect the magic had been beaten out of him to the point he hated, feared and was envious of all who could perform it. Perhaps he hated himself. Perhaps he was making amends for any “evil” he had performed. Perhaps he loathed himself unlike any man had ever loathed himself. Mostly, I think, he feared what he could become, what was waiting for him just beneath the superficial surface.
But something happened to him as he caught and burned the real witches of the world. He would become more and more powerful. With each death, his strength increased. Later, and this is based on the physical evidence found in his wake, he would discover that consuming the witches would give him greater strength still.
Yes, Sam. Feasting upon their flesh like a true ghoul.
As the years progressed, he would discover he did not age, and this was because of the magic flowing through; no, not his own magic, for witches are not immortal. No, it was the accumulated magic of those he killed and consumed. The magic kept him young. It also kept him alive, and so he renewed his killing spree in earnest, killing the best and the brightest of the witches and warlocks, while he himself grew more and more powerful, all while he rid the world of its true protectors: the witches who could watch over the land.
As the years piled on, the bones of his victims were picked clean... and even the bones themselves were consumed. I had seen evidence of all of this and more. Like vampires and blood, he cannot exist without such consumption. And so this thing, this devil, seeks the truly magical among us, consuming all they have become. It is why, dear girl, you would spend the next several lifetimes to reclaim the magic you once
held, for once it’s gone, it needs to be built back up. You were game, and in each subsequent lifetime after your murder, you gained more and more magic. How many lifetimes since your attack? Four, by my estimate, although I was not always successful in locating you. In each, as far as I could tell, you didn’t pursue your witchy calling. After all, the magic was weak... but growing stronger. I do believe in this lifetime you were close to reclaiming your birthright; indeed, the trifecta of witches of whom you had often been a part, were gathering again. But, alas, the trifecta was not meant to be. Your attack six years ago effectively erased the magic within you, snuffed it out as surely as a blast of cold air upon a lighted candle.
As you might know, vampires and magic do not mix. At least, not with the kind of earth-based magic you’d once mastered over many lifetimes, not the kind, loving, benevolent magic you used to heal the earth, to heal the animals, to heal others, and to play with endlessly. Sadly, there is nothing loving about the dark masters who inhabit us, Sam Moon. Sure, there are the rare cases where a dark master and its host have a pleasant-enough relationship. I know of such a case in the state of Washington, although she is not like us, Sam. No, she prefers the sea, a shifter. Last I heard, she is a private investigator, too. Perhaps you should look her up?
How do I know so much, you ask? I have lived nearly 500 years, Sam. I have lived and I have sought answers continuously. I have hidden in shadows and watched. I commanded answers from unwilling humans, and I have read the darkest of books. I have sought the most spiritual among you, too, and I have asked the big questions. But always I searched for two things, and two things only:
I searched for you in your many incarnations.
And I searched for the Red Rider.
But I digress...
The dark masters, as you may or may not know, were practitioners of the dark arts, Sam. I say ‘were’ because they are gone now, Sam. Banished to another realm, The Void, I believe it is called. Again, I digress...
