He’d just killed a bear, but Crooked River was standing in front of me with blood smeared around his mouth and not a care in the world. I felt like my knees had locked up and I couldn’t move. There was no way he was Delta’s monster, and yet-
River wiped some of the blood from his mouth with a hoof and licked it clean, as if it were strawberry jam. “Hard to get bears,” he said casually. “They’re smarter than a lot of ponies give them credit for. Taste is totally worth it, though.” He wiped the rest of the blood away and went at his hoof like he was a foal and it was an eggbeater covered in frosting.
My brain had stalled out. I couldn’t process anything. How had he moved like that? What had he done to the bear? Why the blood? Why was he so sunblasted casual about this? Was he toying with me now or what? I could barely hear him, my heart was beating so loud, and my coat was wet with sweat.
“But then, that’s only since I can’t go after ponies,” he said, not caring a lick about my lack of reaction. “Hot damn are ponies good. Sex doesn’t even come close!” He looked at me and chuckled. “Wow. You really need to see the look on your face.”
“What in Tartarus are you doing?!” I babbled once I’d found my voice again. “You- You can’t just- You’re-”
River’s eyes glinted strangely and his smile had too much teeth. “Right now? I think I’m treating myself. You’re new. You won’t be missed much. I was leaving this place in the next few days, anyway.” He started slowly walking towards me.
I finally regained control of my legs. Without thinking, I turned and ran as fast as I could. In a forest like this, you couldn’t run too fast, but I still managed a slow canter. After a few seconds, I glanced back. I could still barely make out his shadow. Whatever reason he had for not running, I was grateful.
But as I looked ahead again, a shadow flashed into existence before me. River was revealed as I tried to stop. “Surprise!”
When I couldn’t keep myself from sliding, I went back to running and collided with him. It was like hitting a brick wall; I don’t think he moved an inch. Dazed, I blindly swung my front hoof as hard as I could. And as an earth pony, I can swing pretty dang hard. I heard — felt — one of River’s legs snap. But before I could swing again, he’d thrown me off one-hoofed. I slammed into a tree a good twenty feet away.
My head was swimming. I couldn’t tell where the ground was. River was snarling as he limped up to me, one front leg twisted into a sickening angle. Without an ounce of pain in his voice, he snapped, “You have no idea what you’re messing with, do you?” He wrapped his good front leg around his bad one and wrenched it back into position with a nauseating crunch. He put weight on it as if it’d never been broken. “Stupid bitch, ain’tcha? So much for the wildlife expert.”
I tried to stand up, but the world refused to stop spinning. I fell into the loam as River approached me. I scrabbled at the ground, pulling myself forward by inches. By Celestia, if I was going to die, I wasn’t going to roll over and do so, no matter how little a difference it made.
River hissed and I heard a dull thud. The wind started whistling like it was being sliced by dozens of knives. Nothing attacked me; I risked rolling over and taking a look. Just beyond my light, two shadows were moving impossibly fast, twisting around each other so fluidly they resembled water more than ponies. I kept hearing vague snatches of words, but nothing I could understand.
Yet another shadow suddenly fell from a tree and knotted itself into the melee. Everything froze for an instant. River suddenly began to scream, then stopped just as suddenly. Something large and round flew from the mass, rolled into the light, and stopped at my hooves: River’s head, oddly bloodless. The mouth and eyes were still twitching. I retched.
The two shadows separated from each other. I saw brief flashes light, like somepony was trying to light a fire. One of the shadows walked into view before I could move. “What…” asked Homeguard, “in Celestia’s name… were you thinking?! You ought to have run, not-”
“Easy, Homie!” a voice yelled from the shadows. Hailey’s voice? “She didn’t know. Ten bits says she wouldn’t have been here if she did.”
“Get the fire going!” Homeguard snapped back.
“I’m getting!”
Homeguard groaned and turned back to me. “Are you hurt?” he asked. “Did he bite you?”
I blinked and forced myself back to the present. I rolled my shoulders, rotated my limbs. I could feel my injuries, but adrenaline was keeping them from being painful just yet. “Just some bruises,” I said. “No bites.”
“Oh, thank Celestia,” said Homeguard, running a hoof through his mane. “I was wor-”
A fire flared to life behind him. Hailey scooped up River’s head — still twitching, holy shit — and examined. “Woooow,” she said, like a kid finding an especially big candy bar. “You really did a number on him, didn’t you? Never seen you move like that before.”
“He swore an oath,” Homeguard snapped, “and then was perfectly willing to break it and descend again into depravity simply because he found his instincts annoying.”
Hailey shrugged and tossed the head over her shoulder into the fire. The blaze flared; I braced myself for the reek of burning flesh, but what hit me instead was a dense, heady smell, like too much charcoal incense. Hailey skipped back out of the circle of light, went to something on the ground — River’s body? — and methodically ripped it to pieces, throwing each bit into the fire. The smoke curled strangely and looked oily.
“We ought to get you home,” said Homeguard to me. “Climb on my back. I shall carry you.”
Outrage briefly overpowered confusion. “I’m perfectly capable of walking myself home, thanks.”
“I know,” said Homeguard, “but I am significantly faster than you are.”
“And that’s a significant ‘significant’!” said Hailey.
“I imagine you want an explanation,” said Homeguard. “Once you are home, you shall have it.”
What the heck. It was late, and I was too tired and befuddled to argue. I awkwardly climbed onto Homeguard’s back and wrapped my legs around his neck.
“And, hey, Swan? One last thing,” said Hailey, tossing what looked disturbingly like a rib into the fire. “After you brush aside my capability to walk down the street tomorrow, order the first thing you see, they’re great!”
I blinked. Twice. “Uh… what?”
But Hailey just smiled and winked at me. Homeguard dug his hooves into the ground and-
I like the strength and connection to the earth that comes with being an earth pony, but I’d be a dirty liar if I never said Levanta’s and Thunderhead’s wings didn’t make me envious at times. I’ve asked them both what flying was like. I got abstracts at best, but I formed a sort of expectation about it, the feeling I’d have if I flew: overall, smooth. Motion was only really detectable by the wind whipping past you. Close your eyes, and you might as well be sitting in front of a fan.
Riding on Homeguard reminded me of that feeling.
He moved like nothing I’d seen before, but he barely bounced, never put a hoof wrong, never turned sharply. It was like he was walking down a country lane, but less bumpy. I could barely see a thing. That didn’t bother him; ferns, trees, and fallen logs whistled by us, and yet he never tripped, never even got a branch in his face. I reflexively clamped my legs tighter around his neck. He didn’t respond. Somehow, I never felt in danger of falling off.
My house was still over a mile away. We arrived there in less than a minute.
When he came to a stop, I slid off his back, adrenaline making my legs shape. Homeguard wasn’t winded, wasn’t even sweaty. “Are you still unharmed?” he asked. His voice was tinged with genuine concern, not simple space-filling triteness.
“Gimme a moment,” I panted, leaning against the “For Sale” sign. It was more to buy myself time to think. River, Homeguard, Hailey… They were all something inequine. I knew that much. Yet… was that a bad thing? Homeguard and Hailey both seemed to be upstanding members of the community: Clearwater had invited them both to her party and Homeguard was a firepony and amateur preacher, for sweet Sisters’ sakes! And yet the two of them had killed River by ripping his head off. While he was trying to kill me, admittedly. So was murdering a psycho in defense of another good or bad? And what, exactly, were they?
I tried for a moment to process it all, but soon gave up. It was too late, and besides… I stood up straight and looked Homeguard in the eye. “How did you know where I lived?” I asked levelly.
“Ever since I learned of Crooked River’s plans for you,” he said, acting like he hadn’t heard the accusation, “I have been following you in my free time, denying him the opportunity to strike. That includes protecting your house, if need be.”
“Following… me…” Oh, no. “You’ve been stalking me?”
Homeguard opened his mouth to protest, then his eyes widened as he came to a conclusion. “That… was not… my intent-”
“You haven’t breaking into my house to guard me while I sleep, right?” A bit of a leap, but accepting… what I’d just seen was far more than a leap.
“Oh, Celestia, no!” yelled Homeguard. “Even my instincts are not that uncontrollable. You and your daughter have your privacy. I- I believe in the old rules of hospitality, where the lord or lady has supreme control of their home, and would never conceive of undermining that authority!”
“I’m not a lady.”
“I meant in spirit. Regardless of your nobility or lack thereof, your home is yours.”
I gave him a look, but walked inside. It was probably stupid — he’d just admitted to following me around — but I just wanted to sit down. He followed and took a seat at the dining room table, but I went upstairs. I nudged open the door to Levanta’s room; thankfully, she was sprawled on her bed, sound asleep.
Homeguard was playing with a paring knife when I came back down. He stared at me as I sat across from him. When he didn’t say anything, I said, “Okay. Now what the fuck is going on here? What’s up with River? What’s up with you? How did you know where to find me?”
After a second, Homeguard flipped the knife into the air, then grabbed it between his hooves, lengthwise — the end of the handle rested against one frog, the tip of the blade against the other. “There are… more things in this world than most ponies realize. Myths, legends, folklore, tall tales. Hailey and I are two of them.”
“Thank you so much for clarity. I really appreciate it.”
“You may not like what you hear,” he said quietly. “This is your final chance. You can leave this behind. You can pretend you still know how the world works. You can forget me.”
I seriously, honestly considered it for a moment. This was the most fucked-up night of my life, bar none. River’s attack, barely an hour ago, already felt like it had occurred last year. Forgetting it would be a mercy. I “knew” the wilderness and I was proud of “knowing” the wilderness; I didn’t need some new, unknown, pony-shaped monster barging in on the neat little facade of cardboard I’d constructed.
But even if I’d been capable of locking the memories in a little box and tossing that box into a woodchipper, I had a job to do. Find out what was killing Delta’s animals. I knew the who, and I knew he was dead. But I still didn’t know the what. I needed to know the what. I’d never rest if I didn’t.
“Hit me,” I said.
Homeguard stared at me, his eyes glinting like flecks of amber in honey. If he was feeling anything, his face didn’t betray it. Neither did his voice when he said, “Very well.”
Then he forced the knife clean through his hoof.
I pushed away from the table, my eyes wide. My rear hooves scrabbled the floor; they couldn’t find any grip. My stomach heaved like a boat at sea as I felt my throat constrict. I’d seen some grotesque things in my day, but none so close, none so sudden.
His expression hadn’t changed at all. He turned his hoof over, looking at the knife embedded in it like it was a fleck of paint. “There is a slight tingling, to answer your inevitable question,” he said, sounding almost bored. “But it hardly hurts.” He yanked the knife out with his teeth and dropped it on the table between us.
Cautiously, not entirely willing to believe my senses, I prodded at the knife. It was solid. Of course it was. It was one of my knives. A small part of me, the part that didn’t want to go off the deep end, kept babbling, saying that he’d switched knives some time ago, that it was a trick, that he had something up his sleeve. The rest of me thought that part was already far off the deep end.
Then I noticed that the blade was completely bloodless.
“What… What are you?”
Homeguard didn’t smile. He showed his teeth while each side of his mouth elevated. Showing one’s teeth is an act of aggression among animals, particularly predators. Teeth are often some of an animal’s best weapons. If teeth are being shown to you, you’re usually seconds away from a mauling. I felt the same sort of message was being conveyed here. “You cannot guess?”
For a second, I stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. In an instant, all my anxiety and fear was replaced with plain old pissed-offness. “I probably could,” I said flatly. “But I just had a really weird night and I don’t want to stress my brain any more. It could break.”
Homeguard’s not-smile briefly turned into an actual one. Then he hid his teeth again. “A vampire.”
I could practically hear my brain malfunctioning. The word didn’t fully register. “…Vampire? ‘I vant to sahk your blahd’ vampire? No reflections vampire? Hates garlic vampire? That?”
“I do not wish suck anyone’s blood, mirrors reflect me perfectly fine, and my sole repulsion from garlic is due to it holding zero nutritional value for me, but… yes.” Homeguard stared at me unblinkingly with his strange golden eyes, waiting for a response.
I blinked. The information slotted into place in my knowledge banks. However, the signal that I needed to have a reaction never really materialized. Maybe I was too tired to react. Maybe I didn’t believe it quite yet, in spite of the facts. Maybe, somewhere along the line, I’d just stopped caring. “…Well, okay, then.”
We stared at each other. He was as still as a statue. Neither of us said anything until I coughed. “So now what?”
“‘Now what’?” asked Homeguard. “Vampires are revealed to be as real as the air you breathe, and that is your response?”
“Well, you’re a vampire. So what? What does it mean for the two of us?”
For some reason, I only noticed how little Homeguard blinked when he started blinking a lot. “This… is not how I imagined the masquerade breaking would go,” he muttered to himself.
“How did you think it would go? Look, is this going to take a while? Maybe vampires don’t need to sleep, but I’m beat.”
“If… you are to know that… I am a vampire,” he said, sounding like somepony who’d lost his notecards mid-speech, “there are certain… aspects of our world that- that you should be aware of, for your prote-”
“Is it going to take long?”
“Yes, but it is urgent that-”
“Let’s do it tomorrow. I’m tired. G’night.” And I walked right up the staircase without waiting for a response.
He didn’t protest. He didn’t follow me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked back down. I hadn’t heard him get up, but he was standing at the bottom. “Shall we talk tomorrow?” he asked, his voice tense.
I shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. Buy me lunch and I’m yours for an hour.” I needed to indulge myself for once.
“I shall meet you here at one o’clock, then.”
“Sounds good. Night.”
In what was probably a sign of my sleep-deprived state, I had to go back down and lock the door after Homeguard was gone. When I finally dropped into bed, my brain simply shut down. There was so much going on inside it that it gave up trying to process it all, tossed it aside, and quit for the night. In spite of everything I had just seen, I was asleep in moments.