A/N: This was inspired by the first line or so of Devil on the Left, sung by somebody-or-other. (I specify which part becasue the rest has nothing to do with this.) I tried not to make the girl a Mary-Sue- not that I'll be continuing this. It is a single-part product of my disturbed mind, as far as can be told.
Disclaimer: I do not own In the Forest of the Night, its sequels, or anything associated with it. That is Amelia Atwater-Rhodes's right and privilege.
The tall vampire hunter- one of the few humans in the field- slipped quietly through the poor town at dusk. He listened, and it was as it should be. All was silent. Except...
He turned toward the small noise. It was a childish, high voice, softly chanting. He walked to the source, and spotted a little girl with pale blond hair that trailed down her back, and veiled her beautiful, angelic face. She knelt in the shadow of a huge maple tree, gathering acorns and putting them in the pockets of the patched apron covering the front of her ragged, dusty dress. Her family must be in the grips of poverty, for her to dress like this, with rips everywhere that showed her pale, smooth skin.
"Ring around the rosy..." Those words, the beginning of a familiar rhyme, shattered the tension when the child raised her soprano voice- but why did it almost seem mocking? She really seemed to be a sweet thing- he'd better get her home, wherever that was, and inside before full dark fell and she got her pretty little throat ripped out. He moved slowly towards her, calling out to warn the girl of his approach.
"Pocket full of posies..." She didn't respond to his voice, just kept gathering nuts and tucking them into her apron- it must have been white once. He wondered where her parent, or whomever should have been watching her, was, as the blonde child couldn't have lived through more than five or six years. Scarcely old enough to be left all alone at sunset, though he doubted her parents knew of the threat darkness brought with it, with all the creatures who served Satan himself who prowled it.
He tapped the girl's shoulder gently. She jumped slightly, her expression professing her to be startled, as though previously completely unaware of his presence there, watching her, though he had warned her vocally before coming near. The girl couldn't be deaf- then she wouldn't be able to speak.
"Ashes, ashes..." the girl whispered, a touch of bitterness in her voice. He met her eyes- a deep black. It made perfect sense now, and he berated himself mentally as he leapt back and reached for his knife. Too late. The "child's" fangs tore apart the skin at his neck, slashing open the main artery, before she moved her pale pink lips to cover the wound and drink.
The hunter's blood flowed into her mouth, across her tongue, down her throat. It tasted wonderful- it had been far too long since she'd hunted. When finished, the vampire dropped the thickly built man's corpse onto the dirty ground, and let the acorns in her apron pocket spill over it.
"We all fall down." Those last words, spoken by the tiny blonde murderer, echoed in the night long after she'd faded into the lengthening shadows. The townspeople would not discover his body until the dawning, for no one else was foolish enough to leave sturdy wooden walls and locked, barred doors for the darkness.