Prologue: On a Dark and Windy Moor

The moors opened up like heather was bleeding from a mother's womb. Mist clung to the steppe as I watched the fog drift over Invermoore Manor, a stark black beacon against the dust gray sky.

The hallowed hall of my ancestors, the MacKays, rose like a granite mass, an alien planet, from the Scottish heath. Amongst the sedge surrounding Invermoore, it was said by the townsfolk that Long Lankin waited in the gorse to strangle babes and prick maidens 'til they bled.

I had not been back to Sedgewood, and Invermoore Manor, in eight years, not since I was seventeen. I had fled all of the atrocities of Invermoore, all the unspeakable things my vagrant family had done - the white-haired, black-eyed MacKays, with skin as pale as milk. When the first girl died after my relatives took over, the locals of Sedgewood whispered a poisoned well had given her a bloody cough.

Soon, the Devil was spotted at Frogtongue Tavern, a pewter ball in his left eye socket, and a cane of bone for his limp chicken foot. Then, mama and papa had been murdered by wicked Uncle Puther and Aunt Redelia... and I was left for dead on a bier, offered to Samael, Angel of the Grave.

Samael had told me to flee and never come back, a seraph of bone and nothing else but a black shroud, smelling of molding meat. He had given me enough coins for Edinburgh by trestle, which I had taken and then sought out work as a seamstress – hunting fiends as a Monster Ranger at night, as was the duty of all righteous MacKays. Old habits die hard, after all.

Mama always said the Lady of Invermoore needed special talents with darning, stitching, and needlework – those talents came in handy for high ladies' dress orders and corpses alike, during my time in Edinburgh. Us Lady MacKays had to mend the tears of so many death shrouds, after all.

Neither my aunts, uncles, nor my cousins – with their wicked sharp teeth – survived the fire. No one knew who set it in the MacKay's summer house in Loch Lomond. A pandemonium of vampires come to feast on new feeding grounds each July and bleed virgins like stuck pigs, were dead.

No, only a lanky, white-haired girl in dirty rags may have lit the flame, her black eyes like obsidian flintstones. It was easy enough, getting the tinder. It was easier still, getting revenge. And now, I was sole Lady of Invermoore. The maids and footmen were all pleased as pudding with me for overthrowing the despots that had haunted these barren hills, especially my dear Annis MacAlasdair.

I did not drink blood. Just opium in my tea to staunch the ever-burning hunger for crimson liquor that flowed in men's and women's veins. There is only one maiden I have ever tasted, and that lass is far from mortal, given willingly, out of love.

No more maids went missing from Sedgewood, no one lost their daughters to my hungry cousins, and no odd charlatans thirsting after souls came to Frogtongue Tavern, where I drank sherry and read Shakespeare each night.

Only Death remained, at the edge of the town, walking with the ghost of a white-haired girl. Whose eyes were black as soot.

Once you die, it is easy enough to come back to life.

It's the living after part, that is hard.