Chapter One

She was surrounded by darkness. She did not know what she ran towards, but she knew it was something, something important. Suddenly, she felt the ground drop from beneath her, and the sense of falling made her want to scream. She stopped with a jerk, and began to move forward once more, blindly searching in the night for something, anything to grasp on to. A light flickered in the corner of her eye, and she turned towards it, surprised and delighted to find Natha, calling her. She jogged towards him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Ana! Ana!" he called, over and over, and she kept running, but not matter how fast or how long she ran, she never got any closer. His calls began to come faster and faster, and soon they blurred into something inhuman and high pitched, something that sent a shiver down her spine.

Analia slowly opened her eyes, and for a moment she thought herself still in the throes of a dream. The shriek, unearthly and strange, continued to resound inside her head, and only when it stopped did she realize that someone really had screamed, and she hadn't just been dreaming. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she threw off the covers of her small bed and almost ran into her little brother. "What are you doing in here? No, never mind. Who screamed?" Nathan simply stared at her and shrugged, his brown eyes wide with fear. He must have woken at the sound and come running to her, scared to be in the dark, alone with some unknown monster. Ana smiled softly as she pulled the young boy onto her bed and covered him up with the blankets she had previously thrown off. "Stay here. I'll be right back, okay?" Nathan simply nodded in reply, and after smiling once more for the child's benefit, Ana jogged from the room.

When she entered the kitchen, she was not surprised to find her father and siblings already there. "Do you know what that was?" asked Elise, Ana's younger sister. Ana was only a year her senior, and they might as well have been twins. Shaking her head, she turned to the young man leaning against the wall, one hand in the process of raking through his sandy-brown hair, and asked him the same question. Marcus gave a curt negative reply at her enquiry, and it was clear that her father didn't know who had made the bizarre noise.

"Where's Nathan?" Marcus looked around quickly, his gaze brushing every corner and nook in the kitchen.

"In my room. He got scared and I told him to stay there." Ana turned to question her father, not sure what to do. Outside, she could hear others in her village milling about, could hear the confusion in their voices. It seemed that the Sarasi family had not been the only ones to have heard the strange scream.

"Elise, go stay with Nathan." The teenage girl quickly opened her mouth to complain, but was silenced by a glare from her father. "Ana, Marcus, you come with me." With that, their stoic father turned on his heal and strode quickly from the room, the sound of his left leg dragging slightly the only thing that marred his impression of power and strength. Shrugging, Ana followed and could hear her big brother right behind her. It was then that she realized who, or in this case what, had screamed.

"Holy shi…shoot," she corrected herself at her father's warning glare "it was one of the horses! Are any of them due to drop their foal yet?" It was still early spring, and most of the mares would give birth in a few months. If one had gone into labor early, there was a very small chance that the foal and the mother would both survive.

It took her two male companions a moment to process her revelation, and when that moment was up, they both took off without warning towards the village stables. Rolling her eyes in annoyance, Ana followed at a jog, managing to catch up with them before they reached the large wooden doors. Inside, they found a few others who had come to the same conclusion as they had, but the horses themselves were fine. Some were a bit restless and were showing signs of stress, but that could easily be explained by the overly loud human conversations that ensued when nerves made people giddy.

Ana walked around slowly, patting a few curious muzzles and talking in a low voice with her neighbors. When everything was deemed in good order, people starting filing out of the now crowded stable, most yawning in fatigue. Ana stayed behind, still unsettled by the shrill whinny. If it had only been her who had heard it, she would have put it off as a bad dream, but the whole village couldn't have just imagined it. Secure in the peace and quiet that can only be found in a stable, with only the soft sounds of breathing and the shuffling of hay, Ana almost jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. Turning around in alarm, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her brother's worried face staring back at her.

"I'm going back to the house. You coming?"

"I'll follow you in a few minutes. You go ahead."

Nodding his understanding, Marcus strode out of the gently lit barn and into the darkness. If Ana had been paying attention, she would have heard the soft grunt that followed his exit, would have heard the thud of something hitting the ground. But she didn't, and began to walk once more along the aisle-way, trying to reassure herself that nothing was wrong. When she heard a presence creep up behind her, she frowned slightly and turned quickly to berate her brother.

"I said I'd be home in a few minutes! I don't need watch…" she let the end of the word trail off, fear paralyzing her tongue. Before her stood a somewhat handsome man in his middle ages, his mouth curved upward in a sadistic arrogant smile. He was standing close, much to close. The light glinting off something on his chest made her look down, and it was then she knew the keen edge of panic. A Red Jewel hung on a silver chain and was resting over his heart. The man was one of the Blood. He could kill her with barely a thought, could rape her without even touching her. Shuddering, she tried to force a smile on her cold lips, and found it impossible. She tried to tell herself that maybe he was just here to check up on the village; to make sure everything was alright, but somehow she couldn't make herself believe it.

"Wha…what can I do for you?" she stammered out, her dark eyes darting left and right, looking for an escape rout. The man's smile widened, and his perfectly even white teeth scared the shit out of her.

"Look what I've found, gentlemen. Someone willing to help us." The statement was followed by a few cruel chuckles, and it was then that Ana noticed the other five men that had silently skulked in the large stable. "Its too bad I don't want to sully my line with Half-Blood children." Faster than Ana could blink an eye, she found a knife at her throat and the man's face inches from hers. His breath smelt of liquor. "Show us your grain storage, and where your livestock are kept, and maybe I won't let my boys take their pleasure."

Ana finally realized what this was, why the Blood were here. It had been years since the last raid - she was only five when it had happened - but she remembered the deaths and the missing animals and the shortage of food that winter.

When the savior of the Blood, Witch, Ana thought she was called, unleashed her dark power, it destroyed more than those who were tainted. It ravished the land and destroyed cities, laying waste to many established Blood communities. Thirty years later, some areas were still suffering the consequences. So the Blood who had lost everything spied what they wanted in the landen villages, which had escaped somewhat unscathed, and simply took without asking, often times wounding and even killing landens in the process. Her people weren't Blood after all, not of significance and barely worth a second glance.

Rage filled her. How dare these ignorant bastards steal the foodstuff and livestock that her village had worked so hard to procure! She would be damned if she let them sack her village.

"Go to Hell." She replied to the drunken man, not realizing her error. To the Blood, Hell was a tangible thing, a realm where the dead walked. To Ana, however, it was just a curse, and not a very potent one at that. This was why she was slightly confused when the men around her started laughing.

"I suppose I will someday, but for now there are much more…pleasurable…things I could be doing." With that, he took the knife from her neck, where it had made a small incision and had caused a little rivulet of blood to run down her chest and stain her shirt, repositioned it in his hand, and slammed the handle into the top of her head. Slowly, Ana's world dissolved into darkness.

Author's Note:

Thanks soooooooooooo much for the reviews! They were very helpful and encouraging and just all around wonderful. –huggles reviewers- Foxfire, if you'd like to be my beta reader, I would worship you three times a day. If you don't want to, that's fine, as well. Just let me know. Anyway, thanks again to all the reviewers and to everyone who didn't review, please do!