Æ (part 001)

Prologue

Piatra-neamt, Romania.

Æ furrowed his brow, his dark eyes gleaming dangerously as he exited his car. The light of the full moon reflected off the polished surface of his black boots as he shut the car door and breathed deeply of the cool night air. He wore a long, dark trench coat over his designer suit, the collar pulled up as if to ward off the cold. The truth was, he didn’t even notice the cold. Powerfully muscled, and nearly seven feet tall, Æ glanced at the night sky, noting that the edge of the moon had already started to darken. His alabaster skin seemed to almost glow in the baleful moonlight and his long, dark hair covered the edges of his face like the hood of a cloak. He couldn’t help but think how much the world had changed and how much this place hadn’t.

Piatra-neamt had been nothing more than a crude fishing village the last time he had been here. The hike into the mountains had taken days. This time, Piatra-neamt was a small city, and the trip into the mountains had taken just hours. Paved roads had given way to dirt ones about an hour before he reached his destination and he thought how out of place his car and clothing seemed out in the desolation of what had once been the mountains of Transylvania.

The ancient stone building that was his destination jutted out of the ground in front of him, like some giant tomb that had burst from the ground in the unimaginably distant past. Gnarled and long dead trees surrounded the building, the trunks and decaying branches leaning away as if afraid of what lay inside. Æ’s boots crunched along the gravel-strewn path leading toward the building, a sound that seemed abnormally loud in the crisp mountain air. A wolf howled somewhere in the distance, the sound echoing off the black mountainsides. Æ’s head spun around and a low growl escaped his throat. Almost unconsciously, his lips peeled back in a snarl and the whites of his teeth flashed as his fangs started to manifest themselves. He hated this place.

Four hundred years had passed since he had last been obligated to visit the Bone Collector. Twelve hundred years had passed since the visit before that. A full lunar eclipse of a full moon on the Winter Solstice was a rare thing. It was the only thing that could compel him to come here. It was the only event that could tell him if the time for the prophecy was at hand.

Æ approached the shadowed alcove of the building’s entrance. A massive, ironbound oak door sat mounted into the rectangular hole chiseled into the ancient stone. He pushed hard on the door without knocking, throwing it open as he peered cautiously into the darkened interior. A charnel house reek exploded from the open door. It was a sick, rancid smell that spoke of things long dead and things currently dying.