Free The Hollow by Nicole R. Taylor

 
     
    My name is Aya and I am a Witch Hunter.
    I am the bringer of retribution with white-hot flame. I wield the fire that will take your power and render you mortal. I can burn your soul to ash and make you beg for your life. Vampire. Witch. Hybrid. Creature of power. I am all of these things.
    In twelve hundred years, I thought I'd seen everything. That was until I walked into the dark forests of Austria looking for the Devil Who Walks.

     
    Bregenz, Austria, 1230AD
     
    It had been a week since she heard whisperings of a horror that lived in forgotten corners of the dark forests of Austria. A feeling at first, a malice that tickled at her skin and then the stories began spreading. The villages she passed through were alive with tales of a creature that had become known as the Teufel wen laufen. The Devil who walks.
    A monster that stalked the forest at night, tearing apart anyone who lingered and drank their blood. Once the sun rose, bodies would be discovered by huntsmen strung up in the treetops and smeared red. Over the course of a few short weeks, people began disappearing more frequently and the stories had evolved to include the constant scent of blood on the air. No one ventured into the forest anymore and to appease the devil, the bravest of men would go out before twilight and leave offerings of blood and flesh. They believed if the devil was sated, then it wouldn't come into the village and they would be safe.
    Aya knew better than to believe in old superstitions. The villagers didn't need a sacrifice… they needed a stake.
    The forest loomed around her as she walked, searching for signs of the devil, a million thousand year old pines that had lost their needles stretching into infinity. They looked like skeletons reaching their pointy fingers towards the sky, piercing out of the mist like hoards of the dead. But when she looked closer, the trees were in fact laced with bones.
    Old pagan superstitions brought back to life by the stories of the walking devil. Human bones dug from graves, fresh sacrifices stripped and boiled of flesh. Tied into the trees as a ward to keep old powers from invading the village. It had become much worse than she had feared.
    Despite her worry, Aya snorted. Useless baubles. Needless death and desecration. A breeze shifted the mist slightly, bones clicking together in the branches. If she wasn't so devoid of fear, perhaps her spine might have tingled. Should she be afraid of the things that lurked in the darkness? Perhaps, but even she rivaled the worst of them. Her ego told her that they should be afraid of her.
    The sounds of sobbing reached her ears long before she found the source. A young girl of around fourteen years was tied to a tree in the center of a clearing. Her head hung in defeat and her terror washing over Aya in waves of nausea.
    She wasn't particularly pretty; perhaps that was why she was left here. Poor families married off their daughters for the dowry and the prettier they were, the more they were worth. This girl must have been deemed worth sacrificing by her village. It was horrible and barbaric and Aya wouldn't let her die at the hands of the devil. She would use her, but she wouldn't die tonight. The girl would be the bait that trapped the devil.
    As the forest blackened into night, she didn't have to wait long at all. It was a prickling against her skin at first, then a weight on her shoulders pressing into her lungs. The devil was coming.
    As the presence approached, she waited, eyes searching the mist. Soon enough, a form began to appear through the trees, fast at first, but when the devil sensed her lingering, it slowed to a walk. The devil seemed to be a man, or had once been, and he took slow purposeful steps towards the clearing.
    Aya could smell him long before she could make out his features. He stunk of old blood and rot, like he had forgotten how to take care of himself. Before he broke through the tree line, he darted forward, intending to scare