Blood Vow (Blood Moon Rising) (18 page)

Rafa shook his head, and said, “That’s none of our business, Falon. We have to get that sword tonight or we lose our window of opportunity.”

“They’re going to sacrifice that person!” she insisted. How she knew that she had no clue but she knew it was true.

Lucien began to undress to shift. “Not our business.”

A familiar scent caught Falon’s nose. It was similar to her own, but different. It came from the bag. “Well, I’m making it our business.”

Seventeen

SHAKING HIS HEAD, Lucien looked to his brother for help. Rafe looked as exasperated as Lucien felt. For the first time since Falon had proposed they agree to their . . . unorthodox . . . relationship, he was actually glad for it. It was going to take both of them to manage her.

“Falon,” Rafe said, “you’re sidetracking what we have to do.”

Lucien touched her arm and said softly, “I admire your compassion, angel face, but there is far more at stake here than what happens to one person.”

“I just can’t stand by and do nothing when I know their intention is to harm that person,” she said firmly.

A little help here, Rafe,
Lucien shot his brother.

Falon slipped out of her dress, stuffed it into the leather pouch attached to her scabbard, and slipped it over her shoulders like a backpack. “The three of us can prevent it.”

“Fal—” Rafe started but she shifted, and took off after the retreating group.

“Fuck me!” Lucien cursed and did the same. Rafe was right behind him.

You owe me big-time for this, angel face,
Lucien complained.

Falon swished her tail and nipped at his snout.
It will be my pleasure.

Picking up the scent, they maneuvered into a tight gauntlet and followed the shrouded figures as they hugged the outbuildings of the main thoroughfare.

The muffled cries of the captive wafted back to them and the hair on Lucien’s back rose.
It’s a child.

We have to save her!

Let’s do it then,
Rafe said as they picked up their pace.

As they approached, the group slowed as they came to a halt at the back door of an ancient stone building.

Falon,
Lucien said,
Rafe and I will rush them, you grab the kid and head back to the van. We’ll catch up when we’ve taken care of business.

Be careful.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Too easy. Lucien and Rafe scattered the group with snarls. Falon swooped in and bit off the hand that held the bag. The owner of the hand screamed in outrageous agony as Falon dragged the squirming bag away. When they turned to pursue, Lucien and Rafe closed ranks, snarling their warnings.

The building door slammed open and the stench of Slayer assaulted them.

Lucien grabbed the hilt of his sword from behind him with his powerful jaws and in a wide sweeping motion hacked at the knees as the enemy barreled through the door.

The poison worked quickly, immobilizing each Slayer cut by the blade. But more came at them.

Lucien shifted to human and grabbed his other sword. Double fisted, he cut and hacked his way into the column of Slayers.

Their initial screams were silenced when Rafe severed their heads from their shoulders. It was over as soon as it began.

“That was almost too easy,” Lucien said as he wiped the blood from his sword with the tunic of one of the dead Slayers. His head jerked up and the hair on the back of his neck rose. He looked over at Rafe who stood rigid, nostrils flaring. 

Corbet scent permeated the area.

Falon!
Lucien called. When she did not respond, he sheathed his swords, shifted, then ran with Rafe right beside him.

As they approached the dark still van, they slowed. Corbet’s scent became stronger.

Falon?
Lucien called.

Shhh,
she said as she stepped from behind the back of the van cradling the child in her arms.

Corbet is close, Falon,
Rafe warned.

Her chin snapped up and, even in the darkness, illuminated by the glow of the moon, Lucien could see an eerie dark glint in her eyes he had never seen before. She looked predatorily primordial. Deadly. The look gave him momentary pause. He had seen Falon in hunt mode, he’d witnessed her bloodlust for killing Slayers but he had never seen such a haunted hungry look on her face as he did now. Was it all becoming too much for her?

Corbet is not near,
Falon said, looking down at the child in her arms and smiling softly.

He is, I smell Corbet blood!
Rafe insisted as he shifted and approached Falon.

Lucien smelled it, too. Clan Corbet had a distinct scent, they were easy to discern because of it, that and their physical features. Every one of them tall, athletic, blond-haired and blue-eyed. And evil incarnate. It was why he hadn’t suspected redheaded Mara’s true identity. But little did he realize, she had used magic to change her looks from statuesque blonde to voluptuous redhead. He had been a fool.

Falon continued to shake her head as she crooned to the bundle in her arms.

Perplexed, Lucien looked to Rafael. How could they smell Corbet but Falon could not? Her senses were as sharp as theirs.

As they cautiously approached Falon, hyperaware and ever vigilante of a Corbet, they looked down at the child she held cradled in her arms. Lucien scowled. It was a dark-haired girl not more than three or four years old, and from the look of her fragile bones outlined against her pale skin, undernourished. He sniffed, and raised his surprised eyes to Falon.

“Lycan,” she whispered.

She slid the dirty shirt up from the child’s back, exposing old, yellowed bruises peppered with more recent purple ones.

Lucien’s outraged growls reverberated in the heavy air.

Falon moved to the open side door of the van and gently lay the child down on the bench seat. Or tried to. The kid wailed like a banshee, loud enough to raise the damn dead.

“Jesus, Falon,” Rafe hissed. “Quiet her.”

“Hush, hush, sweetheart, I won’t let you go.” Falon picked her back up and she immediately stopped crying. Snuggling up to Falon’s chest the girl put her thumb in her mouth and drifted off to exhausted sleep.

Despite the anxiety of the moment, warmth filled Lucien as he watched Falon cradle and soothe the child. Instinctively he had known she would be a wonderful loving mother like his own, but seeing it, knowing she carried his child, he felt blessed.

“I can’t leave her,” Falon said to them both. “She’s terrified. Those monsters were going to use her as a sacrifice.”

Lucien swiped his hand across his chin going back to drive mode, and said, “Falon, our window is closing quickly. We need you with us to get that sword.”

“I won’t leave her,” she said adamantly.

“Can’t we give her something to make her sleep?” Rafe offered, smoothing away the girl’s damp tangled hair from her dirty cheek.

“You don’t drug babies, Rafa, so you can go hunt.”

“I didn’t mean that, I meant—”

“Even if I were guaranteed she was going to sleep, I couldn’t leave her alone.” Falon looked down at the angelic child, then to Lucien and Rafe. “But you’re right; I need to go with you.”

“She’s Lycan, Falon, even at this age she will sense we’re her kind,” Lucien said. “And in that she will instinctively know that when there is a hunt in progress her job is to remain silent.”

“What if like me she doesn’t know she is Lycan?”

“Then we’re just going to have to deal with it.” Because like Falon, there was no way Lucien was going to leave that little bit of a Lycan to fend for herself if a Slayer or one of those damn witches came calling.

Lucien emptied the pack on his back of clothing. With his sword, he quickly cut two holes big enough for the child’s spindly legs to fit through. He slipped it back over his shoulders so that it hung flat on his back like a papoose sack. “I’ll carry the child so you’re free to use your power.” He looked to Rafe, and said, “You okay with this?”

Rafe nodded. As if he had a choice. They both knew that when Falon had her mind made up it was a foolish male who tried to argue her out of it.

Falon slipped the sleeping child gently into the backpack and let out a relieved sigh when she didn’t wake screaming her head off.

“Ready?” Rafe asked, extending his hand to Falon.

“I’m ready,” Falon answered, taking each of their hands.

Like shadows they stuck to the outside of the buildings as they worked their way to the northern-most building of the village. It was an old converted abbey that served as town meeting place and rendezvous point. It was aglow with candles and witches and sorcerers. Some who played at it, and some—from the dark magic that swirled around them—who lived it.

“To the roof,” Rafe said.

Hands clasped, they leapt upward and landed noiselessly on the roof. It was simple, slipping down the bell tower shaft to the center of the abbey. The revelers in the front portion away from where they were headed were oblivious to their presence.

Rafe led the way to the triple-bolted wooden door at the very end of a long narrow corridor.

This leads to the dungeons below, which leads to the tunnels that run the length of the village. At the very center is the Cross,
Rafe said.
We need to stick close together and be on alert at all times. There’s going to be a bunch of shit down there.

Rafe unbolted each bolt, slid back the heavy wooden slats, and then hauled back the heavy door.

If the Cross is so coveted,
why aren’t the bolts locked?
Falon asked.

Because no one but us has the balls or the power to face what’s on the other side,
Lucien answered.

The second the door cracked open, iridescent furies screeched toward them, darting and nipping at them. Falon shoved her hands, palms open, at them. They screamed hideously and flew back against the stone walls, liquefying on the spot.

The child stirred on Lucien’s back and he found himself making little bouncy moves to keep her quiet.

Nice job, love,
Rafe said and continued down the dark passageway. They didn’t need flashlights. Not only was their nocturnal vision sharp, but it also had infrared properties. They could pick up on body heat. So when the rats and mice went scurrying underfoot they recognized them for what they were and kept moving.

As Rafe opened another door, the stench that wafted to them made them gag.

My God, what is that?
Falon gasped.

Years of blood and torture gore,
Rafe said.

As they entered the dungeon, Falon gasped again, and stood perfectly still, staring as if she were seeing a ghost.

What is it, Falon?
Lucien asked, squeezing her hand.

She reached out, and he watched her face drain of color. As if an invisible hand grabbed her she was pulled away from them. Rafe grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. “What is it, Falon?” he demanded.

“Ghost walkers,” she whispered. “They want me to go with them.”

Her body was pulled again, this time with more insistence. Lucien tightened his grip on Falon’s hand. “Tell them not now. Tell them to come to you on the eve of the rising.”

Intently, Lucien watched as one emotion after another flickered across Falon’s face. He was relieved to see she wasn’t afraid. There was a calm intensity to her features that was reassuring.

Her body relaxed. She blinked and looked up at Rafe then to Lucien with a lucid look that told them that wherever she had just gone, she was back. Her brows crowded together in confusion. “When I told them I’d call for them on the eve of the rising, they nodded, but said to make sure I didn’t get myself killed before then, because only I could raise them.”

“But Corbet said—” Rafa started.

“I told you he lied,” Falon reminded him.

“Where did those ghost walkers come from, Falon? This dungeon?” Lucien asked, looking around the dreadful place. They stood in the center of a wheel of cells. The old stones were dark, stained from years of bloodbaths. Rusted manacles and twisted bars hung from the low ceiling. In the center of the circle was an open fire pit with a smoke-smudged shaft above it. Human-sized grates still covered it.

“It sickens me,” Lucien said. “What cruelty man is capable of, not only to his fellow man but to creatures as well.” His eyes scanned the torture devices left behind.

“I suspect hundreds, if not thousands, of lives have been mercilessly tortured here, and for what? Believing in a different god? Having a different color skin, or for something as simple as disagreeing with the powers that be?” He shook his head in disgust. He had been persecuted all his life by assholes that hated because they were taught to hate. “I’m sick of the hatred bred between Slayer and Lycan. I’m sick of living every second of every day looking over my shoulder.”

“A month from now, Brother, that will no longer be an issue,” Rafe said. “Every Corbet on this planet will cease to exist. Only then can we rebuild a nation born with the freedom of not being persecuted.”

Falon’s hand trembled in Lucien’s. “What’s wrong, angel face?”

She had paled and her blue eyes looked huge against her face.

“Are they back? The ghost walkers?”

“No,” she hoarsely said, avoiding his gaze. “It’s just that this place exudes misery and I don’t like it.”

“Tell me more about the ghost walkers. Do they normally appear like they just did?”

“No—I don’t know. Usually, when they appear to me, I’m unconscious and they’re not specific. But these were. I got the feeling they were trapped here.”

“They would have had to die here, and that’s not possible,” Rafe said as he moved them forward through the circle of cells to another passageway. “Lycan could not have died here by a Slayer hand.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Until the first rising three hundred years ago,” Rafe explained, “there was no such thing as a Lycan. Since we were created, no Lycan would be suicidal enough to come back here to England where no wolves have lived for over four centuries. We’re still reviled here. But more than that, like wolves, Lycan are social creatures; we need to be part of a pack. A pack here in England no matter how savvy, would not survive long.”