Read Once Upon a Haunted Moon (The Keeper Saga) Online
Authors: K.R. Thompson
Once Upon a Haunted Moon (The Keeper Saga) (21 page)
“I don’t think it makes you look stupid,” Tori spoke up, her eyes sparkled as she grinned at him, “I think it gives you a rugged, dashing look. You watch. You’ll have girls hanging all over you soon. You look dark and dangerous.”
Ed’s face flushed, and he stammered out something unintelligible.
“Sorry! I can’t believe I’m late,” Nikki popped around the other side of the tree.
Adam looked up from his place at the drum the second she appeared and shot her a slow, warm smile that lit up his silver eyes. He had been watching for her.
“Why were you late? Everything okay?” Tori asked.
“Yeah, just busy hiding that book again. Mom has been ripping everything apart trying to find out what smells so bad. She thinks something died in the house,” Nikki groaned, then looked at me, “I owe you an apology for making fun of you with your Tupperware bowl and trash bag. Apparently everyone smells it but me.”
“Apology accepted,” I grinned, “Consider yourself blessed that you seem to have no sense of smell.”
The drum stopped a few moments later, and Adam, Rune and Erik got up to enter a cordoned off area for the dancers. Rune stopped by the tent where a young woman busily rearranged wires to the speakers.
I met her before the powwow began. She was a slight girl with a pixie-like face and a mass of black hair that she normally kept in a ponytail at the back of her neck. Her name was Tearsa and she was one in charge of the sound equipment. I had been extremely happy to meet her when I realized she was Rune’s wife.
The two had just realized they were going to be proud parents, and Rune was stopping by the tent to check on her before he went into the circle to dance. She smiled at him. He reached up and cupped her cheek, and gave her a tender kiss.
I was so happy Rune was in love with his wife. The fact that he and the others had cordially introduced themselves to Tori again after we left the cemetery, had been proof enough that they truly didn’t remember anything that Zue had forced them to do.
Everything was right again between the tribes, and all was forgiven, though Tori, understandably, still kept a respectable distance from all the Lakotas.
“The warriors dance,” Ed said, smiling, as the drum started back up and the drummers began to chant.
“What is the warriors dance?” Tori asked.
“Each dance tells a story,” Ed explained, “The warrior’s dance, or hunting party dance, is the dancer’s way of telling about a great adventure. It may have been about a deer they tracked, or a buffalo they killed, or some other adversary they encountered. You have to watch to see.”
It was an amazing dance of three different stories. I wished that I could watch each one in turn. From what I could tell, Rune, resplendent in colorful feathers and beads, was dancing a story of hunting a deer, as he went down to check the earth every few feet for tracks.
Erik’s and Adam’s stories entwined somewhat. Erik, was telling the story of searching for Adam, as he looked for tracks and footprints in the grass.
Adam’s dance was the most aggressive. It was the one I paid attention to. He was dancing the story of his final fight with the Fire Witch.
Though he told it as human, his body still moved with the fluid grace of his wolf. He defended, feigning attacks as he circled his unseen foe. Then he would jump away, crouching in a low stance. He fought the invisible attacker bravely, dancing a beautiful, yet lethal dance. As the drum went on, he told the story of how he weakened, his movements becoming slower, until the drum stopped, and his body stilled, near the ground.
I heard a sniffle beside me, and turned to see Nikki trying not to cry. “Sorry,” she said, “It’s hard to watch.”
The next dance was even harder to watch. Erik and Rune left the circle, leaving Adam in its center. He paid tribute to his grandfather in the crossing-over dance.
The drum began and with tears shining in his silver eyes, Adam danced, remembering the man who had taught him to fight…the man who died trying to help them.
When the drum ended, tears streamed down Adam’s face. But he wasn’t alone, because drums have heartbeats…and so did everyone who was there.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brian
“I’m going to miss you when I go back next week,” Tori smiled up at me, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. She held my hand tight as we walked back through the parking lot. The Powwow was over and I decided a romantic moonlit walk was in order.
“I’ll miss you, too.” I really would, I realized. I loved being with her. Just the thought of her hundreds of miles away was depressing. We walked a little farther, I smiled, trying to keep upbeat, “We still have a few days left.”
“I wish I hadn’t gotten kidnapped. It took too much time away,” she murmured, stopping on the sidewalk in front of the high school, then smiled, “But it was nice being saved by you.”
“I hadn’t ever been more worried about someone. It felt like everything in my world would end if I didn’t find you. I’ll always come to save you, wherever you are.”
I froze, wondering if what I had been thinking had actually come out of my mouth. She probably thought I was a complete moron. Slowly, I glanced down to see if she had heard me.
She had.
Her smile was warm when she said, “I hope so.”
I reached down, brushing her hair back over her shoulder, then traced the line of her jaw to the point of her chin.
“You’d better be planning on kissing me, Brian Shaw,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“I am,” I whispered back, sealing her lips to mine.
Tiny, electric currents heated our bodies, and all I could think was there was nothing in the world that had ever felt more right than holding this one girl in my arms. If she was the only one I would ever hold again, I’d die happy. And from the way she melted into the kiss, wrapping her arms around my neck, I was sure she was thinking the same thing.
Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by an enormous crash in the building behind us.
Unlike normal teenagers, who would have stayed in the moment, and ignored the world around them, we both jumped, and I instinctively shoved her behind me, away from whatever threat might come.
“What was that?” she asked, peeking around my shoulder.
“I don’t know, it came from inside the school,” I whispered.
“Isn’t Wynter the school librarian? Maybe it’s her. No one has seen her since she left the crypt. Maybe she isn’t well,” Tori was thinking aloud, “What if she needs our help?”
I rolled my eyes, “I doubt a Spriteblood actually needs any help from the likes of us.”
“We need to go make sure,” she said stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You really are going to make me save you all the time, aren’t you,” I said, amazed.
She grinned, “You bet.”
The front door of the school was unlocked, which in itself was strange. Those doors were always secure when school was not in session. We crept down the hallways, peering into the glass of each door we passed.
Another crash erupted with the sounds of splintering wood, pointing us down the hallway to the enormous doors of the library.
“I told you it was her,” Tori hissed.
As quietly as we could, we opened the door and slipped inside.
Books lay everywhere, masses of strewn paper and filing cabinets were flipped over. Bookcases were turned over. But the source of the crashes came from behind the desk, where a single figure of a man stood, enormous double-edged axe poised to strike once again at the remains of a plain, paneled wall.
The axe was three times bigger than the man who wielded it. He struck the wall again, and chunks of insulation and paneling flew through the air. The magic in the library had gone, Wynter had taken it with her. But someone still searched for it.
Tori gasped as a piece of wood landed near her feet.
Hearing her, the man turned. He was short and bald, with eyes that seemed ready to bulge from their sockets. The image of the school principal flickered like a light bulb, and then went out.
“What have you done?” the Woodsburl snarled through his tusk-like teeth, “She was the only one who could keep them away!”
He swung the axe down from his shoulder, burying it in the middle of the desk in fury.
“She’s gone, thanks to you,” he fixed us with an angry glare. “And we’re all doomed.”
K.R. Thompson was raised in the mountains of rural Virginia. She resides in Bland County with her husband, son, two cats and an undeterminable amount of chickens.
When she is not writing, she is an avid reader and a firm believer in magic. She still watches for evidence of Bigfoot in the mud of Wolf Creek.
She can be found on her website —
http://authorkrthompson.wix.com/thekeepersaga
and on Facebook –
http://www.facebook.com/thekeepersaga
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