Bloodmark

by Aurora Whittet

  When I looked back up, Grey’s hand was on Adomnan’s throat, holding him against the tree. “Get the hell out of here or die,” Grey said. His voice murderous.

  Adomnan replied with a wicked, howling laugh. Adomnan lunged at Grey, knocking them both back onto the branch, breaking it. The two dropped to the ground, landing on their feet. The branch thudded into the snow between Grey and me.

  “Fleshy and stupid,” Adomnan said as he dusted off his coat. “Very well, boy. We can make a game of it.” Grey dropped down into a crouch. He couldn’t fight Adomnan. Adomnan was a skilled killing machine. He had hundreds of years of blood on his hands, innumerable murders of innocents. I couldn’t let this happen, I couldn’t let Grey die for me. I couldn’t bear the idea of his blood spilling in the place of mine.

  Mund and Baran came running around the front of the house. I was scared for their safety. They were all in danger because of me.

  “Mund!” I screamed, but before I finished, Baran and Mund stood between Grey and Adomnan. Menacing growls on both sides. It was indistinguishable whose they were. I needed to shift to heal my leg, but I couldn’t with human eyes possibly on us. I wanted to close my eyes and let it be over. I didn’t dare watch, nor did I dare look away.

  Grey made a mistake the day he met me. He should have seen the signs. He should have known better. I knew he couldn’t live in my world. He would die because he met me. They would all die because of me. I should have left this place when I had the chance.

  “Just give up, Adomnan,” Mund said. His cool confidence calmed my mind.

  “And give up what is rightfully mine?” Adomnan said staring at me.

  Eamon and Bento flanked Adomnan as they emerged from the trees. Bento seemed to be sizing up Baran and Quinn. He must have seen them as his threat and Mund as Adomnan’s. Eamon seemed more concerned with Grey, which seemed odd. Grey was only a human, and yet Eamon’s eyes didn’t leave Grey’s, not even for a moment to blink.

  I wanted to help them fight. I needed to help. They couldn’t always just hold me back and protect me. I was a part of this family, and I needed to fight to protect them too. Prophecy or no prophecy, I couldn’t live with myself if I let them all fight for me. If only I could shift so I could heal quickly. I moved to stand, but fell back to the ground, gasping from pain.

  “So little boy, do you really know what we are?” Adomnan said.

  Grey just smiled defiantly back at him.

  “Your blood isn’t even appealing. But I would make an exception to kill you,” he hissed.

  Grey’s heart was beating slow and steady. He had to be controlling it somehow. He was surrounded by werewolves, growling all around him. Was he really that unaware of what we really were and what we could do to him? Or was he really that confident? I found myself wondering if he hunted with his father and how much he really knew about us. Maybe I had been wrong to assume he understood what we were . . . or maybe I was wrong to assume he didn’t.

  “Leave,” I demanded.

  Adomnan looked at me again; I swore he was seeing me for the first time. Wild hair, barely clothed, with a broken leg in the cold snow and the little boy in my arms. “You dare to tell me what to do?” he hissed at me.

  “I’d happily punish you for your crimes, but there are innocents here,” I replied. My angry venom dripped from my words with hate. “So get the bloody hell away from my family.”

  Adomnan looked at my family around me, all ready to die to protect me. “As you wish, my princess,” Adomnan said. “For now.” His evil smile was still on his lips as he licked the remaining blood off. Bento reached for the boy’s body, and I growled a deadly warning.

  “Leave it,” Adomnan said. “I was done with it anyway.” He locked eyes with me as they disappeared into the trees.

  My heart filled with desperate sadness as I wept for the child’s soul. Grey held me in his arms as we sat in the cold snow. “Call the authorities,” I said.

  “We shouldn’t bring the police here,” Baran said.

  “We could move the body somewhere they will find it,” Mund suggested.

  “No. We will not keep his body from his parents any longer. He wants his mother,” I said, cradling him in my arms. I could feel the reverberating fear from his departed soul, and it clouded me with sadness.

  Baran walked into the house and returned moments later, wrapping a wool blanket around Grey and me. “They are on the way,” he said.

  We waited in the cold snow in silence for the police to come. They asked endless questions. We claimed I saw the boy out the window and that I rushed to try to save him, but it was a lie. He was dead because of me. If I didn’t live here, Adomnan wouldn’t be here killing innocent souls. They took the boy’s body with them, leaving us in the cold in our blood-soaked clothes.

  My leg pulsed with pain. When Grey and Mund had fought in the parking lot at school, I hurt when Grey did. But now that my leg was broken, Grey wasn’t injured. How could that be? Or was he hiding his pain? I reached out my hand and lightly touched his right leg where mine was broken, and he flinched.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. He delicately kissed my cold forehead.

  “You made the right decision for the child,” Baran said. “Thank you for being strong enough to choose it.”

  I would have agreed, but the pain in my leg vibrated through my body again, and I gasped. “I need to shift,” I said.

  Grey scooped me up in his strong arms, carried me into the house, and whispered into my ear, “I’ll take care of you.”

  He sat me down on the sofa and took his seat next to mine. He watched me, expectantly. He wanted to see me as an animal. Was I just some sideshow attraction for him? The beast-girl . . . how positively horrifying. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to see the wolf again.

  Everyone filed back into the living room. Baran shut the door with a solid thud. He looked to me and Grey and back again. Fear and exhaustion were clearly on his face. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t have to. I already knew I had been reckless and had endangered the whole family with my actions. No one had to tell me how stupid and irresponsible I was; I was already ashamed of myself. I had nowhere to look but down at my own feet.

  I heard Mund’s footsteps as he walked over to me and wrapped his big, safe arms around my shoulders. A small whimper escaped from his lips, just barely audible to even me. His deep sadness rolled off him and onto me, nearly crushing my body. That one small sound was enough to break my heart. For so long, Mund had been my only friend, the only one who understood me, but now I knew he was also afraid of losing me.

  “We had a great realization today,” Baran said with the fierceness of a leader. “We aren’t able to protect our humans—we are barely protecting ourselves. Every move we make jeopardizes them more. Ashling, is it still your decision to stay and fight?”

  I looked at my family around me. “It is our duty to protect these people. We endangered them by being here, but even if we leave, it doesn’t mean Adomnan won’t kill them all before he continues hunting us,” I said. “We fight for our family and we fight for these people.”

  “I fear for all our safety,” Baran said. “No one is to leave the house alone. We need to fight them on our terms far from the city. This attack will take time to plan and orchestrate, but I believe we can win.”

  Our quarrel would continue another day. Even if we fled as a family, it would do no good. They would just track us. If I alone ran and they stayed, it would put them off my trail for a while. It would buy me a little time to hide. Somewhere like the Himalayas or Antarctica, though eating penguins didn’t sound too appealing . . . they were too cute.

  Grey held my hand, connecting us, and Mund gestured for Tegan to come to him. She puddled herself and Nia into his lap, and there they embraced each other, but Mund kept one hand on my shoulder. Gwyn and Quinn kneeled in front of us on the floor, and Quinn placed one hand on Grey’s shoulder, creating the web of life. Still, no one yelled at me for my childish behavior.
No one punished me or sent me away. Baran kneeled down with the others, putting one hand on Nia and one on Gwyn completing the connection. Their power flowed through me, and it pulsed with their strength. I had yearned my whole life for this moment, for this connection. Together we silently became one.

  When we all let go, the energy still thrived inside me—it was the energy of a pack. I’d never felt it before, and it was intoxicating. Despite me not having a Bloodmark, we all connected as one pack, one heart. The enchanting feeling of it filled my broken heart with happiness. I finally belonged.

  “Grey, what you did . . .” Mund said.

  “I’m not sorry for what I did,” Grey said.

  “Let me finish. What you did was save her life. We weren’t there in time to protect her—you were. I am indebted to you. Please forgive me.” He quietly bowed his head to Grey. Grey put his free hand on Mund’s shoulder, a silent agreement between men, stronger than any verbal bond.

  “Does your leg hurt much?” Gwyn asked.

  Everyone started to fuss around me again, worried about my leg and my discomfort. “But Grey, what about your leg?” I asked in the midst of all the things they said.

  “Is your leg broken too, Grey?” Baran asked. Our bond was even stronger now; Grey was able to feel my pain just as I was able to feel his. Though when it was happening, when my leg broke, he didn’t react or flinch with pain. Granted, my attention was briefly centered on my discomfort.

  “It’s not bad,” Grey said. He shot me a dirty look. He seemed annoyed I had spilled his secret, but what was I supposed to do? He was in pain. We had to get him to a doctor to have his leg x-rayed and set. I wondered how he was able to carry me to the house with a broken leg—it must have been excruciatingly painful.

  Baran reached down and felt Grey’s leg, feeling for the break. “It’s already healing,” he said. “Is that the wolf in you or the Bloodsucker?” His voice was leery.

  It wasn’t human, and it was definitely not wolf. We had to shift into a wolf to feel the healing power of Old Mother’s love as our body repaired. It had to be his father’s presence in him. Some mutation in the Bloodsuckers, passed from one generation to another. I didn’t know enough about them as a breed to know what to expect, and Grey had never opened up to me about his father. He was still a mystery, even to me.

  The pungent smell of fear filled the room like sour milk. Gwyn leaned slightly away from Grey instinctively. Everyone saw the small change in her body language, but the others remained perfectly still. Bloodsucker meant something so much deeper to our kind, sending chills down our spines. It flooded our memories with all the stories and legends of the inexorably cruel creatures. Yet here one sat, right in front of me, more beautiful than any of our kind, and I trusted him completely. I was inescapably in love with him.

  He looked down at our hands. Was he ashamed of what he was? Still no one moved, but I sensed them all watching him. They wanted to trust him for all his chivalrous deeds, but the truth behind his nature was almost too much for them to understand.

  Mund stood up. “It doesn’t matter how much of you is your father. You are one of us.” He patted Grey on the back, moved over toward the window, and stared out at the falling snow. His back was to us, but I knew he was listening.

  “Thank you,” Grey said.

  I felt somehow betrayed that Grey hadn’t discussed all these things about himself. He knew far more about me than he should, according to our laws. Why didn’t he feel safe to tell me about himself? I wanted to know. I needed to know.

  “Grey,” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “What else can you do, besides heal?”

  He watched my face carefully. I knew everyone was also intently listening, but I didn’t care what they heard or what they thought. I just needed to understand him. I needed to know him.

  He spoke only to me. “I heal in minutes from most injuries, hours for near-death ones. I can run as fast as you. I can hear the sound of breaking skin. I can distinguish scents of familiar creatures for hundreds of miles . . . especially you,” he said with a smile, “and I suspected you weren’t human the moment I saw you.”

  I felt my mouth fall agape as I stared up into his perfect face. He smiled.

  “And I needed to be with you,” Grey said.

  I smiled as he continued.

  “I resisted my father’s training for almost ten years. I should have been taught and inducted into the hunters when I was eight, but something didn’t feel right about it. I knew he killed wolves. But I didn’t realize they were people too.” His voice broke as he spoke. “It wasn’t until the day in the forest when I saw you in the cage. I looked into your golden eyes, and I knew it wasn’t just wolves he hunted.

  “Because I refused to take the oath, he couldn’t tell me about your kind. I thought he was just in some kind of weird hunting club with some very old-world traditions with medieval silver weapons. They drank the blood of the wolves, and he kept all their skulls, but I guess I always knew something else was different about the hunters and me. My eyes glowed in the dark, theirs didn’t. My strength surpassed that of everyone I knew, including my father. I could run faster than a human and most animals I raced. I learned, in time, to hide my imperfections from the world around me and from him. So no one would notice I was different.”

  “How many Bloodsuckers are there?” Quinn asked.

  Grey turned his attention to the others, as though he had forgotten they were in the room with us. “There are never more than eight. One leader, three masters, four offspring. No child can be inducted without the approval of the others.”

  “Did they know what you were?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I didn’t know what I was, but I imagine they did.”

  “Will your father come looking for you?” Tegan asked.

  He shook his head. “Maybe, but I’d be more afraid if he didn’t . . .”

  “Do you think he’d try to attack us?” Quinn asked.

  “It’s possible—he is a murderer,” Grey said. A deep sadness settled on me, and I felt horrible for him. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Why did you suspect I wasn’t human?” I interrupted.

  “You were too wild for a human. It’s plainly in your eyes if you look for it. They are too deep; human eyes are dull. I knew something was truly startling about you, but I couldn’t understand what it was. It drew me to you night after night. I couldn’t leave you. I needed to be with you. I needed to protect you,” he said. “I just didn’t realize I was supposed to be protecting you from myself.”

  The shame of what he said seemed to consume him. I could barely breathe at the sight of his sadness, but I gluttonously breathed him in again. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, and I knew now that I would never hurt him. I looked up at Baran as a shudder of pain shook through my tiny frame. My leg was still pulsing with pain.

  “You need to heal,” Baran said, “and I think everyone needs time to think.” I could hear the sadness in his voice.

  They all left Grey and me alone. I didn’t know what to say to him. I still had so many questions.

  Grey followed me back up to my room. I knew he wanted to carry me, but I was determined to drag my own broken body despite the agonizing pain pulsing through my leg. The cold wind still whipped through the open window, a freezing reminder of what had occurred.

  I closed my eyes and let the animal consume me. I felt it vibrate under my skin as I ripped through my clothes and shifted into a wolf. The pain instantly began to dissipate as Old Mother’s magic wove its way through my body. I blinked my golden eyes as I watched Grey through my true sight. It felt so good to be a wolf again. He knelt down in front of me and rubbed my fur between his fingers. The sensation was exquisite.

  “You are more beautiful than any creature who walked the earth before you,” Grey said. “I knew you weren’t a human that day in the woods, and I loved you then, even if I didn’t know why. And I love you more now that I know who you are.” He wrapped
his strong arms around my neck, pulling me into a hug.

  He thought I was beautiful, even like this. It was more than I could have ever asked for. It made my heart swell with happiness. It felt as though the weight of a thousand worlds was being taken off my back. I needed him to not hate me for what I was. I couldn’t change who I was, nor would I want to. My leg stopped hurting as it finished healing, but how could I shift back with him here? I would be naked. If I had been able, I would have blushed at the thought, but my fur hid my embarrassment.

  Tegan walked in the room with her silent, graceful footsteps. “Grey, dear, I need you to step out on the staircase for a moment, please.”

  He did as she asked, and Tegan shut the door behind them. I could hear them clearly from the other side of the door as she explained that when I shifted back I would be naked. I also heard his heart respond as it raced with excitement. I loved knowing I had such an effect on him. While they talked, I quickly shifted back to my human form and dressed myself.

  We all joined in Baran’s office to discuss the legends of Old Mother’s hunters, the Bloodsuckers. Only Baran had ever encountered one before and I only knew of the fables. Even Grey didn’t know anything about them, and he lived with one. The monster that raised him also killed his mother and wanted me dead. That had to be a heavy burden to carry.

  Baran said, “When Quinn was just a babe, a Bloodsucker attacked the village. He cut the head off a wolf-child with his silver blade and drank its blood. The creature had no remorse. Nessa was running for the safety of the castle with Quinn, but he knocked them down and tried to rip Quinn from her arms. I heard her cries and leapt from the highest peak of the castle to save her. The fall broke both of my legs, but I was able to rip the Bloodsuckers’ throat from his body, killing him instantly. It is unforgivable to kill Old Mother’s humans, but I looked deep into his eyes, and this creature was no longer human. His soul was empty.”

  As I listened to Baran’s story, I tried to find any part of Grey that was like those creatures, but Grey wasn’t a vicious murderer—though, to the Bloodsuckers, vicious murderers was all we were.