The Guardian: Blood

She came home.

A woman crosses the square in a village in the Romanian mountains. She doesn't hide the mark on her jaw. Hiding it would mean acknowledging it and having an opinion. And having an opinion in Treznea will get you worse than a bruise.

Fifty-five years ago, Naya, a vampire, was the guardian of this village who protected these people under a pact she didn't write and rules she didn't choose. She killed her maker and became human. Now she's returned to find out what protection looks like when it's hers.

What she finds is a criminal organisation that has swallowed the village whole. Collectors who arrive on Thursdays. Families who pay in silence. A shopkeeper who has been keeping a notebook for four years, waiting for someone who could use it.

She begins dismantling the operation, the only way she can, alone and human. Each fight costs more than the last and each victory is narrower than she'd like. Now, she' coming closer to a truth she is not prepared for.

She has one weapon: a vial of her own blood and a theory about what it carries. She has no way to test it. If she's wrong, she dies in the dark under the house that was her prison. If she's right, she might just free a village and finish a war that started six centuries ago...

What is she when no one else is defining it?

The Guardian: Blood is a story about what moves into the spaces we leave behind and what it takes to walk back in and claim them as your own.