Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella by Kristie Cook

over the sound of a raging waterfall across the valley. The air here was much colder and crisper than where they had been just that morning—according to Eris, they’d already traveled much farther in one day than they had in all the weeks past.
    Inside the cave, a mound of furry pelts sat near the wall. Eris sorted them into two piles and Jordan quickly realized they weren’t just flat furs. Some were stitched into the form of heavy cloaks and coverings for their legs.
    “You’ve been here before,” he said, stating the obvious.
    “Another of my homes.” She flicked her fingers and flames burst from the stone floor. She handed Jordan a cloak and leg coverings. “It gets very cold here, especially at night.”
    Although the air itself seemed to freeze after the sun set and Jordan had never felt so cold in all his years and all his travels, Eris still kept him at a distance. They lay on opposite sides of the fire under the heavy furs and she continued her on-going explanation about the creatures that made up the Daemoni. Besides vampyres and mages, the Ancients had created shifters or, as Eris sometimes called them, Weres. A number of Ancients had taken the bodies of every kind of predatory animal that lived on Earth and, using their unearthly powers, created beasts that could transform into human shape and back again.
    “You have encountered one,” she said. “A werewolf. Your sister’s friend almost killed him.”
    “That was a werewolf?” Jordan asked. I was right! It wasn’t a normal wolf.
    “The Daemoni have been living among humans since nearly the beginning of time. People who disappear, seemingly lost in the woods or wilderness...they become food. Or sometimes one of us. A vampyre or shapeshifter, that is. No human can become a mage. We are born.”
    “Vampyres and shifters are not?”
    “Weres can be born, but they can also be created through infection of a human. Vampyres can only reproduce by draining a human’s blood and then replacing it with some of their own. The human nearly dies and nearly comes back to life. But not all the way.”
    “Like those soldiers Cassandra saw,” Jordan muttered, recalling his sister’s story.
    “Hmph. Another problem with vampyres. The Ancients want them to keep creating more and battlefields provide perfect opportunities, but they are usually sloppy at it. They shouldn’t let their children rise all alone like that. It’s too dangerous.”
    “Are you saying you care about the humans they’ll attack?”
    “Of course not. I care for our secrecy. Abandoned newborns can ruin us.”
    The following day, Eris led him again on flashes through the mountains until they appeared on a snow-covered expanse of land bordering a lake so large, Jordan couldn’t see the other side. Perhaps it was a sea. He found the whites and blues of the landscape beautiful in a completely opposite way of how he thought of home as beautiful, but he saw no indication of any kind of life—not human or animal or inhuman. At least, not until Eris waved her hands and an entire village suddenly appeared around them.
    The village was small, made of several tents encircling an open area where people dressed in furs gathered around a large fire pit in the center.
    “Shaman,” Eris said, nodding at them. “That’s what they call themselves, though they are essentially witches and wizards. Follow me.”
    She led him into one of the tents made of animal skins stretched over long logs. The tent was barren inside, showing no signs of being used. Jordan wondered if this was another of Eris’s homes, but before he could ask, she waved her hands over the center of the floor and a hole opened up before them. Crude stairs carved into the earth descended into darkness. She led him downward.
    The stairs became a tunnel that continued down, far below the Earth’s surface. Just when Jordan began to tire of this unending descent, the tunnel flattened and opened wider, into a network of caves. The deeper