Prologue
Year 1886
“You listen to me, you run, and don’t you look back. No matter what happens.” Mommy says with her hands clutching my face. She kisses me all over my cheeks and nose. I don’t like it. It’s as if she is telling me goodbye, which makes me scared. “Mommy—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“No, I mean it you run. Mommy and Papa will be right behind you.” She promises. I look into her gray eyes and see the worry in them. I know she’s lying. She bobs her head frantically, causing her coal black hair—that’s pulled into a knot on top of her head—to bounce. Which is another sign that she’s lying. She always does that, knowing it will encourage me to nod with her. Planting a kiss on her cheek, I make my way to the back of our small cabin, knowing I’ll have to escape out the back door. But before I reach it, I hear our front door bust open and the glass of our windows shattering.
I should leave. I should listen to Mommy, but the sound of Mommy and Papa growling has got my hairs standing on end. Stepping back to get a better view, I see what all the commotion is about: it’s the hunters fighting my parents.
One of the hunters gives me pause. It’s like she’s here but isn’t, her body glows like a light and her image is blurred around the edges. I’ve heard of them before. What are they called again? They hunt when they are asleep and are extremely rare—My thought gets interrupted when a man drives a stake through mommy’s heart.
Staring in horror, I watch her turn to stone. Cracks spread over her body before she crumbles into tiny fragments. Then I spot a stake raised to papa as well. “No!” I shout, running out to save him. Everyone stands there stunned, staring at me. But it only lasts a second before chaos breaks out again.
“Go. Run, boy!” Papa screams, with tears streaming down his face.
I’ve never seen Papa that way before. It’s enough to scare me straight. I run as fast as I can out of the house, never looking back. That day, I became an orphan.
My nana and pappy took me in until the Gulbrandsen clan came after them, too. At first, they had me on the run. Until I decided I was done running and found my best friend Huck. We hunted them, bastards, down and almost got them all except the children. They slipped through my grasp, and eventually, Huck died, too.
But I won’t stop until I get my family justice. They think they can bury me like the rest of my family, but something they should know is I won’t go quietly.
