October 31, 2024. Seconds later in the Briarwood Manor Estate’s old library. Gloamstead, Alabama. Sometimes violence is an option…

“Daniel!” Cassidy yelled, sliding the bag across the floor to me.

She leaped forward with inhuman speed. There was a wet popping sound—like celery snapping inside a burlap sack.

Soft brown fur pushed out of her skin as a furry snout extended from her face. Delicate fangs reached below her lips, peeking out as they only did when she was so very pissed off. Her eyes turned a deep, onyx-black as wings snapped open under her arms, shredding more rents in her loose cotton shirt.

In the time it took her to reach the bloodleech, Cassidy had changed completely. A moment ago, she’d been entirely human. Now, she was a lean, humanoid-animal shape—a perfect blend of woman and human-sized fruit bat.

One very angry humanoid fruit bat.

The instant she reached Valeria, dark brown claws snicked out the ends of her fingers, slicing deep gashes along the fiend’s mummified face. Valeria screamed as if stabbed by hot needles, stumbling back as Cassidy advanced like a predator going for the kill.

On the floor, I crawled away from the fight dragging the canvas bag and candlestick. The bag was heavy, but my head was too muddled to figure out why. There was something important about the bag, but I felt too much like a battered sack of old potatoes to remember.

I finally found the nearest wall. Putting my back to it, I turned to face the chaos, barking out a dry cough from getting choked. Barely five feet away, the two women slashed, stabbed, and bit each other with savage abandon.

A dim thought in my head screamed to get up and help. Do something—anything useful.

“Up… Get up!” I snarled between clenched teeth and aches.

Pressing a shoulder against the wall, I shoved myself to my knees, then got unsteadily to my feet. I held up the bent candlestick, grimacing.

“This won’t do. All she did was giggle, and probably thought I was flirting or something,” I wheezed, tossing the holder aside. It clanked to the floor like a bad foregone conclusion. I rubbed my throat, thinking through pain. “Need better. Something sharp… pointed.”

I shifted my weight. When I leaned my back against the wall facing the bloody fight, I heard the solid clunk of metal in Cassidy’s dirty canvas bag. I yanked it open, hoping for jars of napalm garlic or something equally impressive.

What I found was so much better.

Inside the bag rested a pair of rusted, iron railroad spikes. A tired smile brushed my lips as I stared at them.

A memory flashed through my mind. One, not long back, where Cassidy had explained over dinner about bloodleeches and iron—they hated raw iron, especially with rust. It burned them like being boiled in acid. Funny enough, she said they called it ‘cold iron’ like in the old myths about faeries.

“Why is it always iron with brain-sucking monsters and faerie tales?” I murmured.

Also, it struck me that Cassidy and I had the strangest dinner conversations.

But, cold, rusted, or not, this was still a spike. Last I knew, everyone was allergic to getting stabbed—especially with a railroad spike. I grabbed one, dropping the bag to the floor.

“Valeria!” I yelled.

She spun around, claws up.

I slammed the spike into her upper chest.

Valeria jerked from the impact, then screamed loud enough to shatter glass two houses away.

Smoke boiled from the wound like an open fire as the acrid stench of burned meat and cooked rot flooded the air. I gritted my teeth and shoved again, pushing the spike deeper. The bloodleech went wild with an insane shriek, her claws leaving light gashes along my forearms.

“You! I’ll… rip you… apart!” she rasped.

I let go and ducked her claws, long enough to grab the second spike.

“Cassie!”

I tossed the spike. Exhausted and bleeding, Cassidy snatched it out of the air. She thrust, but Valeria twisted aside. I lunged and hammered both hands down on the spike—a frantic, staccato rhythm of death. Whose death I wasn’t sure, I just hoped it was hers. More smoke spilled out of the bloodleech like a rancid fog.

Valeria grabbed me by the throat and squeezed hard. My eyes watered, darkness frayed the edges of my vision. Just as I thought she was about to rip open my throat, Valeria jerked hard from behind, mouth open in stunned shock. Fresh fetid smoke burned up from behind Valeria.

Cassidy was suddenly there right behind Valeria.

“I said hands off my husband,” Cassidy hissed into Valeria’s ear. 

Valeria’s scream landed somewhere between rage and agony.

Then it was over.

Suddenly, the room felt enormous and eerily quiet.

The entire nightmare lasted less than a minute as the rusted iron did its gruesome work. With one final, garbled shriek and rattled breath, Valeria Moffet—serial killer, bloodleech, and a literal walking terror—dissolved into a pile of charred dust and cracked bone.

I half-expected the dust to twitch. Reform. Maybe whisper something final and creepy. But no, it was just gray-black dust, bone, and the smell of overcooked evil.

Exhausted, Cassidy and I stared numbly at the smoldering heap with its sour stink of burned rot.

A second or two passed, then I looked over at my wife, giving her a lopsided grin. Then my knees gave way, and I fell like a discarded puppet. My vision blacked out for a second, before I realized that I never hit the floor. That seemed somehow wrong, like I’d broken gravity.

Then I realized Cassidy had caught me as I fell.

Carefully, she lowered me the rest of the way down, leaning me against a wall. Panting hard, she collapsed against me, gently pressing her soft, fox-like muzzle against my cheek. Blood matted the fur in her arms from long, thin slashes that mirrored the cuts I had.

“Good catch,” I murmured painfully.

Darkness dissolved the edges of my vision again and I felt myself starting to go limp. Cassidy clutched at me, as if she could hold me together by force of will. She stroked my hair, and I dimly felt her furry hands trembling.

“Daniel! No! Honey, no! Please. Oh, please, no. Don’t leave me. Blink. Breathe. Please, love… breathe…”

That sounded like a really great idea, so I did.

One breath led to a cough. I blinked, then reached up to run a hand through that wonderfully soft brown fur on her cheek.

“Hey, sunshine.” I rasped. A cough chased the words. “Just a thought. How about if we get married again, we just elope? Justice of the peace, secret honeymoon, and all that? Maybe skip all the blood and murder?”

Cassidy choked back a sob underscored with a soft bat’s twitter. A tear trailed through her fur.

“Deal,” she whispered, then cradled me gently.

I jerked as my pain-addled mind remembered the college kid.

“Couch!” I coughed, pointing at the sofa. “Kid. She grabbed a college kid. Did something to him.”

I tried to get up, but Cassidy sternly shook her head.

“No, and I mean it! I’ll go check on him, then find something to rip into bandages,” she sighed. “You stay here.”

“Good idea,” I said, then coughed.

She gave me a light kiss on the forehead, then hurried off to the couch. I tried to sit with my back against the wall, imagining I was comfortable—mostly, I was just trying to catch my breath.

Once my head cleared a little more, I pushed against the wall to stand up, then searched the room. There had to be a way to call for help. After all, she’d called the shop dozens of times before tonight already.

It turned out there was a way. My phone, along with fifteen more, lay in a bowl on a nearby bookshelf.

“She collected the phones of the people she murdered? Oh no, that’s not unsettling at all…” I muttered, tapping the screen of my phone. Miraculously, it still worked.

Cassidy hurried by with an armload of unexpectedly clean sheets and a pair of scissors. Dropping the bundle next to the couch, she winced a little as her fur receded to skin. Bones adjusted as she pulled on her human disguise again. Then she savaged one of the sheets with enthusiasm, pain blending with worry in her eyes.

“The kid on the sofa is as pale as a ghost, but breathing,” she said, tearing sheets.

“She clawed his scalp, then I think bit him?” I explained between coughs.

Cassidy nodded grimly, eyes stern.

“Yeah. Bloodleeches do that.”

She quickly bandaged the kid, then went to work wrapping my forearms, grimacing at the sight the entire time.

“Love? How are we going to explain any of this to Sheriff Branham?”

I let out another dry cough, trying to remember how phone numbers and thumbs worked.

“Wedding crasher from hell?” I quipped, then winced as far too many cuts and bruises needled me.

Cassidy secured the last bandage, then wrapped her arms around me in a gentle, secure hug. A kiss came right after that.

I dialed. The sheriff’s office answered the phone, and I let out a long sigh.

“Yeah, this is Daniel Hawthorne. My wife, Cassidy, and I are at the old Briarwood Manor estate. Sheriff Branham needs to get over here right away with an ambulance. We, ah, found where the missing tourists went.”

I glanced at the pile of flaky, burnt dust that was once Valeria Moffet, murderous drama queen and bloodleech.

“He also might want to bring a shop vac, and some little baggies, too.”