The remaining light of the day began reflecting her hair into a rainbow. It shocked the villagers to see something so different, a frightening surprise coming from the child's head. The villagers gathered around, enclosing Cloette.
She felt constricted, unable to breathe as the surrounding space started closing from the curious onlookers. The villagers didn't care about how it affected Cloette.
They just wanted to touch her hair. Hair that resembled riches of various precious metals and jewels.
But when they attempted to touch the child's hair, the strands fell through like silk. Their curiosity turned into greed, and they took out their knives and began slashing the child's hair away, chopping them haphazardly.
Annette quickly noticed her child was not by her side as she saw the crowd of villagers surrounding her young daughter. She began to cry, declaring pleads for her baby's life.
She struggled to get through the crowd as they hacked her daughter's hair. Some ran away in hysteria, holding pieces of the scalp with strands of hair.
Cloette cried loudly in a blood-curdling scream. The blood that came out from the child's head mixed with the wails, screaming at them to stop.
The meat vendor rolled up his sleeves as he was about to close shop for the night when he heard faint cries for help. As he ran towards the crowd, he saw people cheering and running away from the crowd with lumps of gold and silver threads.
Blood was trailing at the ends of the strings of metal, which gave his body a shiver down his spine about the greediness of humans. He discovered the source of the screams that were drowned by cheers of elations and howling from the ravaged bipedal beasts that took the form of society.
Had the meat vendor given notice at the meat stall on the other end of the market. Would he have saved the child or would he have taken the spoils of the child like a hunter who wants a trophy?
Annette had tried to make a spell to disperse the crowd, but she couldn't concentrate because all she could do was try everything she could to reach her baby. The blood dripping from her scale came to life and encased the child in a shield.
Spikes appeared everywhere as Cloette screamed, and the moon glowed when the sun slept on the horizon. Cloette's eyes glowed pink and yellow and the streets' grounds turned black as nothingness.
Torches were lit up by an unknown entity, and shadows began enclosing a few villagers. Cloette heard a familiar voice.
They yelled, "Get down, mi rosa!!"
As bodies started dropping left to right, they each had fang marks upon various parts of their body. A man wearing a large cape and hair with red and black streaks loomed over the dome of spikes.
Samuel saw the ball of spikes trembling. It relaxed its form and stretched out its gelatinous finger toward him.
The gelatinous blood wiggled into Samuel's hand, and it retracted itself to Cloette. The meat vendor came exhausted, and he yelled in Samuel's direction.
"Are you alright?!! Kid??!! Answer!!" said the vendor.
But the gelatinous blob retracted and made a helmet on Cloette's fainted body. Her tears streaked down her small face, curled in a fetal position to protect her head.
Samuel glared at the vendor, and the dense elastic stopped him. The vampire bared his fangs at the assailants, and they responded with retreat and screams.
Samuel extended his fingers, and claws descended into discolored blades, with the hands becoming black and thin. His blood turned black.
Droplets of a thick liquid fell on the grass, and it would become rotten with the stench of sulfur. The vendor would scramble back and glimpse at Annette with concern.
The crying mother ran through the fearful crowd to her disfigured child. Cloette stopped crying when she held her mother's hand and whimpered into Annette's bosom.
Her mother held her close, whispering words of comfort to what remained of her child's ear. Cloette heard screams being blocked out by her mother, with eyes enshrouded in her robe.
The young dhampir felt the anxiety consume her and push her away from her mother's embrace.
"Don't look mi hija. You are okay. You will be okay. Papi will protect you, okay?" she held Cloette's hands and was in front of her face.
Screams, the thudding from fallen bodies, children screaming, and crimson mixed with embers drowned the grass. The dusk settles on the horizon upon a heaving Samuel, throwing up copious amounts of blood, flesh, and entrails from his body.
His face became disfigured with pupils contracted. When he turned back, Cloette saw a child's body in his mouth.
In between its fangs held a piece of the child's torso and half of their exposed skull. Samuel became an animal, a monster, devouring his enemies to establish dominance and fear among the humans like in the past.
Samuel felt alive after giving into his primal instincts for what seemed to have been so long. Sharp sounds of pulling, stretching, the crackling of the joints and bones.
Had begun their symphony of the transformation that was of a creature of the night. His bestial form has loomed over legends among the eons of its known existence.
Fangs, huge as stalactites, formed of ivory with the tips sharpened to a needlepoint. As the moon peeked from the horizon, a huge black wolf with eyes of amber would be the only silhouette.
That his victims would remember their monster embedded in their last moments. Growls enveloped his vocal cords as he howled and roared at the waxing moon.
His huge lycanthropic stature imposed a sense of dominance and regalia upon the trails of mutilated bodies that encircled his being. Their bodies emitted steam from the fresh blood and entrails that would bring others to think they were all killed by the beasts' claws.
Cloette screamed into her mother's bosom in tears, "Mama!! Help me!"
The beast heard his daughter's cries, though his basic instincts had taken over his intelligence. Hunt, prey, and consumption were the only thoughts passing through his body. He began charging through the market with ease.
Tearing down humans, animals, and stalls like going through water. The meat vendor ran towards the huddled mother and child hastily, as fast as his legs could carry him across the carnage.