Burning Blood
Bonds of Blood: Book II
Daniel de Lorne
Copyright © 2020 by Daniel de Lorne
First published 2015.
All rights reserved.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Contents
Prologue
I. Blood is the key to everything
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VI
VII
VIII
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XI
XII
XIII
XIV
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XVI
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XVIII
II. One pebble at a time
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VII
VIII
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XIII
XIV
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XVI
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XVIII
XIX
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XXI
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III. He was an oracle no more
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VIII
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XI
XII
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XVIII
Epilogue
Preview: Binding Blood
Acknowledgments
Also by Daniel de Lorne
About the Author
About Burning Blood
From the author of the romantic horror debut Beckoning Blood comes the gripping sequel that mixes blood, sex, and magic.
No one gets to choose who they spend eternity with.
Aurelia d’Arjou has vampires for brothers, but it is as a witch that she comes into her own power, keeping balance and control, using her strength to mitigate the death and pain that her brothers bring. When she is forced to take on the centuries long task of keeping the world safe from the brutal demon that wore her father’s skin, duty dominates her life. But rare happiness comes in the form of a beguiling, flame-haired oracle who makes the perfect companion…but for one thing.
Hame doesn’t want to be an oracle, but when a demon destroys the closest thing to a father he has, he has little choice but to aid Aurelia with his visions. Unable to love her as she would wish, their centuries-old friendship comes under attack when a handsome Welsh witch enters his life—and his heart.
As treachery and betrayal push Hame to choose between his closest friend and his lover, it becomes clear that when it comes to war, love doesn’t always conquer all, and happy endings are never guaranteed.
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For Alison, my nonna,
For the stories and everything else
Prologue
Xadrak fled, but only Sinara saw him abandon what he’d wrought. Everyone else was too busy slaughtering. The two Ikiri-rai armies clashed in vicious battle and the dirt soaked up their black blood. The clang of blade against blade merged with the angry buzz of sorcery and the screams of the fallen. Her nose wrinkled at the stench of innards and the metallic whiff of life spilled. It would never end unless she dragged Xadrak back—or just his head.
She hacked her way through her enemies, driving her sword into the chest of a demon she’d once known, once called friend, and he collapsed. Her blade, forged of firestone and imbued with powerful incantations, came out bloody and thirsty for more. Combat raged all around her, the Ikiri-rai fighting in the air as well as on soil, weapons and magic used in equal measure. Before she’d been forced to descend because of Xadrak’s retreat, she had hovered high above, watching and directing her army. They were weary from years of war, but still they fought. Even when they’d thought all was lost.
The turning point had come some months prior. She’d used her invisibility to sneak close enough to fire an arrow at Xadrak’s heart, but he’d detected her presence and spun to protect himself. Though it missed its mark, the arrow tore apart a wing joint and damaged the structure so he’d never fly again. She’d nocked another but his followers had surged and forced her retreat. Though the assassination had failed, his grounding had reinvigorated her troops and showed he could be bested.
A spear, shot from above, narrowly missed her wings. Pivoting, she prepared for a second attack, but her assailant was already falling. One of her soldiers rattled his gore-covered axe at her before he winged away to fight another. She continued her hunt.
She reached the edge of the battle as Xadrak scurried into a canyon, scrabbling on foot like the creature he had become. She had never ventured far into the Blighted Lands, this place desolate long before Xadrak had taken them for his stronghold. From here he’d spread out across the nation, drawing the corrupt and the depraved to his cause. They were demons who hadn’t been satisfied with the order that ruled Crion, an order she had benefited from as the daughter of one of its leaders. She had trusted it hadn’t troubled Xadrak, that what they had shared mattered more than power. Lying in his arms, those beautiful black feathered wings wrapped around her, stroked by a tail as velvet as a brindlelock’s pelt, she had believed they were more than enough for each other.
How wrong she had been.
She ascended, soaring high on the hot draughts rising off the desert. Xadrak disappeared into the gorge. He was no longer the demon she had loved. His once sleek and smooth horns were now as twisted and gnarled as his soul. His tail had transformed into a spike that had pierced her brother through the eye, and his fingers were now pointed claws that had ripped open her mother’s breast.
Even smeared in viscera, her white body exposed against the sky provided too much of a target. She turned invisible and waited to see what he would do, to ensure no second army prepared to swarm out of hiding and ravage her forces. A quick look over her shoulder at how their crusade fared revealed a battlefield awash with colors as Ikiri-rai challenged Ikiri-rai. Every now and then one plummeted, breaking their bones on the ungiving ground.
So much carnage, but they were winning. Finally, they were winning.
The chasm opened into a bowl, and Xadrak ran to its center where three large, black stones formed an arch. She flew nearer, beating hard against the wind that signaled a dust storm rising from the west. That arch—she’d heard of something like it before. As the memory of its purpose returned to her, the breath sucked out of her lungs, as surely as if Xadrak choked her. She had wanted to capture him alive so he could stand trial, but instead she had to stop him at all costs.
Standing before the arch, he stabbed his sword into the sand. T
he metal shimmered, cursed with the darkest magic at his command. He raised his arms and summoned the power to open the portal into another realm. The air beneath the arch wavered.
She was too far to disable him with a spell, and if she missed her target and struck the portal, she risked doing much greater damage to this world and the ones beyond. She beat her wings harder, the muscles in her back screaming as she crested the canyon’s lip and dipped down. Without the wind blowing, her descent accelerated. She readied her sword to strike Xadrak between his shoulder blades.
The portal opened. He retrieved his weapon and stepped forward. A crimson mist swirled around the metal blade, charged and ready to conquer.
But he didn’t enter. Instead he spun and searched the sky. She should have known he’d sense her, that old bond that had once comforted them both now costing her the advantage. He brought up his weapon and his lip curled in a ferocious snarl. With the speed of her approach, he’d strike her as she fell on him, but she was willing to sacrifice herself to secure his death.
She dove, the wind howling in her ears, her teeth clenched and bared, preparing for her final attack. He grew larger in her vision, until suddenly she was there, and her sword plunged through his torso with a sickening thud. But she couldn’t stop her momentum and screamed as the acid touch of his blade slid into her abdomen, her strength wavering as it buried up to the hilt. Her invisibility faded.
They were the closest they’d been in a long time, and the shock of seeing his eyes, once beautiful in their darkness but now flaming, severed her from the agony thrashing in her body. Could she have saved him from this? Or was he always this full of hate?
He snapped his razor teeth at her, and as she jerked away from him, they lost their balance and tripped into the portal.
The magic in their weapons exploded and shattered the gateway behind them. Shards peppered her back and a few lodged in his face. They burrowed into her flesh and stung, but then the pain didn’t matter. Death’s talons latched onto them as they tumbled in between the dimensions. Her mind calmed as it began to die, aware only that at least Xadrak would not make it to the other side still breathing.
They were dragged down. The metal of their swords shredded to ribbons and disintegrated, slipping out of their bodies and grasps. With nothing to hold them together, they drifted apart and into the gloom.
In the nothingness, she lost her name. She didn’t know if she still had form, and soon she forgot why she was there or how she came to be wherever this was.
Then she wasn’t falling but floating, floating in a dim world, aware of another.
And before much time passed, or perhaps an eternity had flown by, she was nestled in a warm place, listening to a beat that soothed most of her, but not all. Because with the darkness came the knowledge she wasn’t going to be safe for long.
I
Blood is the key to everything
1390
I
Aurelia jerked with the cart as the wheels rumbled over each bump in the road. Her muscles tensed as she tried to stay upright, but it was difficult with her hands shackled in front of her and chained to the floor through metal loops. She studied them. If she didn’t, she’d be forced to look up and see the faces of the screaming townsfolk of Carcassonne, people who’d once been her kin, as they shrieked for her to burn. If she looked up, they’d be the ones to dance in the flames, and right now she just wanted to get this over with.
An onion punched her in the left breast. Almost as strong as Henri’s fist. It stole her breath and she doubled over. More vegetables pelted her, some as hard as stones. Maybe they were. She couldn’t stand straight any longer. She’d have to take the remaining distance hunched over, protecting herself as much as possible and holding onto her will.
She could have done away with this in an instant. She could have scorched the earth around her, making a pyre of her own that would blaze through the vile villagers gathered here today to watch her go up in smoke.
Keep calm. This will all be over soon.
She focused on the floor of the cart, then on one plank of wood, then tighter on one small section of its worn grain. The sounds and cries around her muffled. She kept her concentration locked on one tiny, curled knot and poured her whole world into it. The vegetables, the rocks, the missiles continued, but they were as gnats on a summer’s night.
The cart lurched to a halt, but she saved herself from tumbling. Calmer than she’d felt in a week, she raised herself upright. With all the majesty she could muster, she regarded the peasants she’d been forced to live among. She fixed her eye on the tanner poised ready to throw a turnip, but it slipped from his hand. The corner of her mouth curled.
She looked at the stake rising out of a pile of dried sticks. They would ignite with the barest of sparks and set her white smock aflame. She swallowed hard. For the first time since her sentencing, she felt uneasy about what was to happen next.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied the two priests in their vestments, moving towards the cart—and her. Their lips mumbled prayers to the Lord, old white-haired Père Laurens with the younger Guillaume beside him, both with their eyes bright and hungry for the spectacle of seeing God’s will be done. It had been weeks since their last burning.
One of the guards who’d led her cart untied her from the floor. He grunted, and pulled roughly on her rope, pitching her forward. Hating him for the loss of grace, she wished she were a more vengeful person. The things she could do to him…
Maybe I will when all this is done.
The pelting began again as she was brought to the pyre and led up the steps to the stake. From this higher point she could see the crowd and how it swelled. The square heaved with people. Children on fathers’ shoulders. Women with their faces twisted. More of those who had once been her people roared for her execution.
Her stomach ached, not from lack of food, for she’d been provided for, as disgusting as it was, but from the hate surrounding her. She had once been among them and now was cast out forever. She found Simone, Violette, and Marie, but she no longer knew them. Just as they no longer knew her.
The Aurelia they had known was gone; the girl with the raven hair and the brightness in her eyes that seemed a blessing from God, considering she lived with those men, her family, and with no mother. Well, maybe that explained it. She’d made a deal with the Devil because her mother had run away and left them behind.
She could hear it all, spoken aloud or not. The gossips down the street who’d whispered about her diminished family, the silent stares as she walked past and the chatter starting again when she wasn’t quite out of earshot. Her family had always been under suspicion. Now it had been proven justified. Especially now after her brothers’ disappearance.
The guard bound her to the stake with her hands behind her back and a rope looped around her neck.
Where were Olivier and Thierry now?
They lived, that she knew, but how did they fare? Drinking the blood of others no doubt suited Olivier, but Thierry wasn’t made for such things. She should have kept him close. While she wouldn’t want Thierry here to witness this, she couldn’t help but long for him.
“Do you repent of your sins?” Laurens asked.
Guillaume waved that ridiculous cross on its long stick in front of her face. She smiled slightly and let Laurens continue with his entreaties.
“Do you repent of your sins, witch, and deny Satan so that God may have mercy on your soul?”
When she gave no answer, Laurens puffed himself up and his words fired at her, foam gathering in the corner of his mouth and spittle shooting from his lips. The man was utterly terrified.
“Witch, you have been tried and convicted under the benevolent will of God. You are a consort of Satan and shall burn at the stake. Repent now and God may have mercy on your soul. Fail to repent and you shall writhe on that stake just as you shall writhe for eternity in the pits of Hell!”
The rough rope grazed her neck as it tightened, read
y to take away her breath and leave nothing but an empty shell to cook in the flames. The cross danced in front of her face, with Christ’s tortured body hanging limply on it, the crown of thorns cutting painfully into his forehead.
“Bring the flames and let that be the end of it,” she said, her voice cutting through the rabble’s clamoring.
Gasps came from those nearest her and then a roar erupted once more, baying for her to burn.
“Witch! So shall it be. You are hereby condemned to Hell. May you feel the full force of God’s vengeance.”
The executioner stepped forward. Henri—master butcher and her father—had volunteered to put his own daughter to the flames. A cynic would have suspected him of doing it to deflect suspicion. She knew he did it to exact his revenge. Yet now the time had come, he didn’t hold the torch as confidently as he would have if he were wielding a knife to slaughter a lamb. Gone were the strength and the certainty, his once defiant and staunch posture replaced with a wimpy frame. She wanted to laugh at him, and then she was.
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Burning Blood: Bonds of Blood: Book 2 Page 1
