Page 35 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

Though Trasq’s second moon, the small one, hadn’t yet risen, the primary moon was up and nearly full, its silver-blue light glinting off the snow and allowing me to see my first destination. I moved as quickly as I could, knowing that without a fresh cover of snowfall, my tracks would lead any pursuers straight to me.

My best hope was to lose Ivrael’s men amongthe trees, and I could only do that if I was long gone from the manor before anyone noticed my absence.

I hadn’t counted on how dark it would be once I was inside the forest.

And God, so silent.

Back home in the trailer park we’d ended up in after Mama’s death, our place was rural enough that we could hear the sounds of wildlife. An owl hooting at night, grackles calling to one another in the morning from their roosts in the trees, even an occasional coyote in the distance, all of it juxtaposed against the occasional car swishing past on the road.

There was none of that here—not only no cars, but not even the sounds of nocturnal birds hunting. It was pitch black, eerie and still and terrifying.

I tried to weave my way through the tall, prickly, blue-green trees covered with sharp needles, relying on my hands stretched out before me and the occasional gleam of moonlight flickering through the branches above.

It was only a moment before my hands and face were scratched and pricked from running into the trees, and I had to stop to pluck the cactus-like needles from my skin. Even after that, I hit far too many branches before I figured out to keep one hand in front of my face and the other stretched out to ward off the prickly foliage.

My hands, feet, and face quickly grew numb with cold.

So when I stumbled into a clearing, my initial response was relief.

I caught a single glimpse of the open space before me, and then a cloud scuttled over the moon, obscuring my vision for a moment.

I blinked, uncertain of what I’d seen.

The cloud blew past, and I realized my initial impression had been right—this was a cemetery.

Even at night, a graveyard didn’t scare me. I’d been around death, had touched Mama’s cold, still hand as she lay unmoving in the casket, and then pressed my lips against the marble of her overly made-up face as I said my final goodbye.

When we still lived in the house I did not yet know Rolandcouldn't afford on his own, the railroad tracks a few blocks from our home ran straight past the cemetery where she was buried, creating a direct route. During that first year, I often made my way along the tracks to sit by her headstone and tell her everything that had happened since the last time I’d visited.

But on my world, the dead stayed dead and buried.

I didn’t yet know enough about Trasq—or even just the Caix—to be afraid. If I had known then what I know now, I would have plunged back into the dark misery of the woods and kept walking.

I should’ve been terrified because the Caix dead don’t stay dead. Not exactly.

They’re immortal. And not TV-character-immortal, not like they live forever unless they’re killed. Literally immortal.

They liveforever.

Just not always in the form they had when they were alive.

Most of the Caix who are killed are quiet. They lie in their graves, their bodies rotting until they are little more than bones and the ligaments connecting them, as they remain in what the Caix call the Eternal Dream—a sleep so much like death as to be nearly indistinguishable—and eventually crumble away into dust, still dreaming their dreams of sunlight and joy.

But not all of them sleep away eternity.

Some Caix spend their afterlife hunting the living, moving through the dark to capture their quarry, stealing the vitality offered by the blood they feed upon, like leeches.

Or vampires.

The living Caix take extra care to ensure their undead monsters can’t get free. Their cemeteries are surrounded by iron fences keeping the living Caix out and the dead in. And in the worst cases, the bodies of the living dead Caix are staked into their caskets with an iron spike.

Building the fence, creating the spikes, staking the living dead Caix—all of those are jobs for the Caix’s offworlder servants. But I didn’t know any of that yet. If I had, I might have realized that entering a Caix cemetery at night was a bad idea. Leaving the gate open behind mewas an even worse one.

And worst of all, I had entered one of their cemeteries with scratches on my hands and face.

At the time, of course, I had no idea that blood called to the undead Caix. All I saw was an open space where I could rest for a moment and get my bearings. I’d heard no sounds of pursuit, so I assumed I was still safe from discovery and could spare the time to catch my breath.

Brushing a thick layer of snow away from the step of a mausoleum, I sat down and wrapped my cloak around me, tucking my numb hands into my armpits, huddling in on myself and trying to find some warmth.

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