Chapter 11

Amelia was behind Catherine and Van Helsing as they hurried their horses toward the forest atop the slope that they were now climbing. Not because her horse was slow, but because she wanted to keep the vampire away from her companions. As they rode ahead of her, the vampire was closing in from behind. The slope was slowing their progress of a quick getaway, and the vampire was gaining speed as it lowered from the skies into a dive. They were running out of options, except for one.
Without slowing her horse, and without her companions noticing, she tugged on the left rein of her horse and made it turn, now running along the slope of the hill instead of climbing it. The vampire noticed and tilted it's wings to follow the escapee. The plan had worked; Van Helsing and Catherine were out of harm's way for now.
Amelia reached a indentation in the rocky slope and took her chance with it. She raced into it and she was instantly following a path in a valley between the hills, not far away, about 100 yards, she saw the cover of the forest. The sea, and vampire, were now behind her.
She bowed her head to avoid collision with a tree branch, and she hurried on, into the shadows of the looming trees. She couldn't see the vampire, for there was no possible way that the vampire with it's long wingspan could manoeuvre through the forest. Instead she heard it's evil cackling above her. The vampire was searching and waiting for a gap in the dense foliage to appear, so she could swoop in and claim her prize. Amelia continued to ride until she found the trees were thinning and she could see a clearing ahead of her. She halted her horse as she saw the silhouette of a woman drop from the trees at the entrance, and the only way out other than the way she came in. If she turned back then the vampire would follow, until her horse eventually tired of the cat and mouse chase. Amelia was trapped.
The woman approached slowly. The horse's nostrils flared and in fear and it backed away from the woman. Meanwhile Amelia was slowly untying the restraints on her pack. She reached in and found the metal bottle with the cross insignia on it. The Holy Water. She slowly removed the bottle from the pack, making no quick movements in hope that the vampire would not notice anything suspicious. The woman stepped into the shadow of a tree, and never came through the other side. Amelia wondered if she was just standing there, waiting.
A breeze left the hairs on the back of Amelia's neck stand on end. She turned her head around. She was eye to eye with the vampire. The eyes were cold, and very pale. Darks rings surrounded the frosty interior. Amelia caught her breath. This was not what she had expected.
Amelia took her chance and pried the casket of Holy Water free of the pack. Before she could flip the cap off though, the woman, or vampire, grabbed her wrist, squeezed and twisted it until Amelia thought it would break. She let out a gasp of pain as she felt the bone in her wrist pop. This was her good hand, too. She didn't feel the pain at first. But moments later she felt it. First in the flesh surrounding the broken bone, then the pain slowly crawled up her arm into her entire body. The vampire wouldn't let go of the broken wrist. The casket dropped from the useless hand onto the soil forest ground.
The horse wasn't reacting to any of the activity occurring on it's back. It just stood there, as if transfixed. The vampire was smiling through all this, fangs growing past her bottom lip. Hunger lurked in the depths of her cold eyes. The vampire could feel the fresh blood pumping through the veins in her captive's hand. She remembered her orders from the night before. To dispose of any who followed Joseline. But Amelia was to be kept alive, for Dracula.
Amelia didn't have fear in her eyes as one would expect someone to have in her position, instead she had shear hatred. Evil was all this creature was. Evil ran through it's veins. Evil flashed in it's mind. Evil, is what killed innocent people.
"Going somewhere, Amelia? There is someone in dire hopes of seeing you. It wouldn't be kindly to disappoint them of that privilege, now wouldn't it?" she spoke in a thick accent that Amelia had only heard once before, from a man that came to her house one night when she was five, and left, dragging her mother by the arm out the door.
The vampire grabbed Amelia by the throat with her free hand and lifted her off the saddle of the horse. She as uncomfortable, her wrist was broken and she feared the same thing might happen to her neck too if she was not able to turn around, for the torso of her body was still facing forwards, toward the front of the horse.
The nails of the vampire dug into her skin, piercing them and causing blood to stream out of the fresh wounds. The vampire removed her hand from Amelia's wrist, and it fell to her side, all bruised in black and blue. Amelia felt a finger of the vampire's slender hand swipe the blood onto it's smooth surface.
The vampire inspected the fresh red blood on the tip of her finger, and before it streamed off, the vampire placed her finger over her mouth with her head bobbed back, and the blood dripped into her open, awaiting mouth.
As the red drop disappeared into the cavern of teeth, a whizzing sound sliced through the unbearable silence of the forest.
The vampire let out a shriek of pain and horror. The grip on Amelia's neck loosened, and fell away. She fell back on her saddle, and with her free hand, she rubbed her neck. Blood was smeared along her throat. The cloth that was wrapped around her bitten hand received patches of blood. The vampire, still shrieking in pain, fell backwards off the back of the horse onto the forest ground. She withered and thrashed.
The woman's skin came loose of her body, just like the hair of the dead werewolf those two nights before. The body stopped moving, and the dry skeleton deteriorated. Amelia watched all of this in fascination. She had never seen the death of a vampire before. All that was left on the forest ground was a single arrow.
Amelia looked up, from where the arrow had come from to strike the vampire. Below the canopy of the trees, on a branch that stretched across the narrow trail, kneeled an archer. It was a girl. She could only be a few years older than Catherine. She held a long, slender, delicately carved bow in her right hand. Another arrow was already prepared to strike again if the need be. An open bottle of water sat nestled in a tree grove next to her on the branch.
Amelia's rescuer had long dark hair that dropped past her shoulders. She wore leather tunics dyed in the colours of the forest leaves to camouflage her. She had a large leather tube slung across her back, where many arrows jutted out. The details of her face were too hard to distinguish at this distance, but Amelia could see that she had slightly darker skin than the people that she was used to seeing in her village.
The archer loosened her bow and pulled it down on the branch beside her. She then put the cap back on her bottle of water, most likely Holy Water, and tied it to the belt at her waist. With the bow in hand, she jumped the ten feet from the branch to the forest floor without any difficulty.
Amelia turned and dismounted her horse to pick up the fallen casket of holy Water. The horse, with it's load now off it's back, and clearly out of it's trance, turned and bolted down the trail in which it had originally came. Amelia was unable to stop it as it ran past the girl who stepped out of the way for the frightened horse to go by.