And that would be the werewolf.
This creature was not a werewolf. It was a giant fucking wolf. Period.
The most obvious oddity was the crude crown on his head. Where precious gems would have been set on a typical crown, this one was set with authentic wolf skulls. And the crown itself seemed to be made of silver. His fur was burned away beneath its perch, making me frown at the contradiction to my theory. Werewolves were allergic to silver.
But this wasn’t a werewolf.
One of his ears had a noticeable gouge out of it, causing it to flop down as opposed to standing straight up like the other. His reddish-brown fur reflected the pale moonlight, making the tips glow like living embers, and his golden eyes were fixated on mine in an unblinking stare.
His muzzle was littered with numerous deep scars, and I noticed other wounds decorating his chest and legs—all of them ancient. Werewolves had incredible healing abilities—more evidence that this wasn’t Lucian.
“Is it really him?” Stevie asked, sounding doubtful. “Or something else?” Even the only werewolf in our party sensed that something was wrong about the beast. That this creature wasn’t a werewolf. “I’ve never heard of him just standing around for alphas to gawk at,” he added thoughtfully.
I continued to stare at the wild beast, shaking my head in denial. Whoever this was, it wasn’t Lucian. It was something much, much worse.
“He’s the right color,” Nero said hesitantly.
“He’s at least ten times bigger than our brother ever was,” I argued, glancing at Nero.
He nodded absently, licking his lips. “But look at his eyes, Sorin. It’s fucking him. Tell me you don’t see it,” he said, sounding desperate for me to validate his hope.
I stared at the wolf’s golden eyes, suddenly uneasy. Nero was…right. The longer I looked, the more I began to buy into it. This was Lucian. Or had once been Lucian. Except something terrible had happened to him.
“Death really becomes him. It really brings out that murderous twinkle in his eyes,” he said, having to force the words out in an attempt at humor. I could tell by his pulse that he was shaken to the core. “It’s really him, Sorin. Our brother. Lucian is not dead,” he sobbed, falling to his knees. The beast tensed, locking onto Nero and curling his lip in a warning snarl.
And in that moment, I thought I heard a silent, spiritual scream coming from the beast’s very soul—as piercing as a hawk’s screech.
The hair on my arms stood straight up, and I gasped. The sound cut off abruptly, replaced by an irritated growl from the beast himself—and there was nothing spiritual about it. His head shifted slightly, yet the silver crown did not fall, as if it was fused to his skull.
Which had to be the case. Otherwise it would have fallen off long ago.
Despite his obvious displeasure, he didn’t flee and he didn’t attack. And with each passing second, I began to sense more of Lucian deep within those golden eyes—a flicker of recognition. Twice. He wasn’t crying out for help, but he was there. Deep down. Despite how attentively he watched us, I could see that he was profoundly weary and exhausted. Maybe he feared we were a form of madness. A hallucination. That he was waiting for us to fade away just as desperately as we were waiting for him to irrefutably reveal the truth.
“How does no one know about this?” I demanded, turning to Stevie. “Your king lives!”
Stevie looked troubled. “Whatever he is, he is now a lone wolf. I can sense it. He has no concern for any pack. He smells me, recognizes what I am, and he has already categorized me as lesser—potential prey if I annoy him. He wasn’t shy about letting me know it either,” he added.
I arched an eyebrow, stunned. “You’re kidding. Prey?”
He shook his head. “He is no longer a king, despite that mocking crown. He is a wild beast.”
Nero stared up at the wolf with a sad, silent expression. The guilt on his face was impossible to overlook—he felt like he had failed his friend. Even he had thought Lucian was dead.
But…if that was the case, why had he brought me here? What hadn’t he told me?
“He’s obviously waiting for something,” I muttered, turning back to Lucian as I felt my anger rise to the surface—both at Lucian’s current situation and Nero’s shifty deception.
Lucian continued watching the three of us, blinking with his yellow eyes.
“How do you think we get through to him?” Nero asked.
I was sick and tired of waiting for explanations from people—only getting answers after I managed to ask the right questions. I felt restless and agitated. I wanted to hit something beautiful. I stared at the wolf angrily. He cocked his head, staring at me with renewed interest.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” I muttered, rolling my sleeves up.
Then I began striding towards him with bold, confident steps, swallowing all of my fear.
Nero squawked in horror. “No, Sorin! He is not—”
I didn’t slow down as I flung a hand up behind me, silencing him. Lucian watched me approach, his muscles locked rigid. His hackles began to rise and a low, bubbling growl rolled out from his mouth as his lips pulled back to reveal teeth that were long enough to stab entirely through me.
Stevie began murmuring a desperate plea. “Don’t, Sorin. That’s not the same man you once knew. I don’t think he even remembers being a man. His thoughts are all over the place, and they make no sense.”
I ignored them, closing the distance between us. Lucian leapt down from his perch with surprising agility and the ground shook at his massive bulk. He began hesitantly loping towards me, keeping his body at an angle and his head low to protect his throat. He was just as large and deadly as he’d looked from afar. His jaws could gobble me down in only a handful of bites.
But he didn’t attack.
I halted before him, staring into his golden eyes, ignoring the warning growl still bubbling from his throat. This close, I knew for certain that it was my old friend, despite the obvious differences in his body. In those familiar eyes, I saw a once beautiful castle of reflective glass.
But it had been reduced to a castle of broken mirrors, all pointing at unseen darkness and shifting shadows. I heard echoing laughter and crying in equal measure, balanced by the pregnant silence of the moment before an attack—and these sounds somehow happened simultaneously, like thunder and wind and rain.
A storm of madness, sorrow, and chaos.
My brother was hurting.
I took another step, ignoring the rise in volume of his growl. He shook his head violently, his fetid breath blasting over me hard enough to blow my hair back and sprinkle me with drool.
“Stop!” I snapped.
He did, growing eerily still.
“If I wanted a fight, you’d already be whimpering on the ground—just like the old days.”
He coughed, and I caught a brief flicker of dark amusement in those violent, merciless eyes. Perhaps he was just luring me in closer. But there was no way to move forward without trust.
I took another step, slowly lifting my palm before me. He chuffed, sniffing at my hand curiously. His cold nose touched my palm for a heartbeat.
Then he danced back a step, snorting in fear.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I snarled, lunging past his jaws and grabbing him by the broken ear. I capitalized on his surprise, dragging him down to the ground where he wouldn’t be so fucking tall. His snout slammed into the ground and his body whipped over me, slamming into one of the boulders. He yelped loudly and I held on for dear life. “It’s time we had a brotherly chat—claws optional—because I’m not abandoning you, Lucian.”
In response, he whipped his head, snapping his teeth at me. I shifted to blood mist right as his jaws clamped shut where my head had been. He sneezed in surprise, and I solidified in time to punch him in the snout, sending him skidding away.
“Hot damn!” Nero hooted. “Just like the old days!”
“We’re all going to die!” Stevie shouted as Ne
ro cackled with glee.
Lucian regained his footing and bolted after me, his eyes glowing with fury. I called up my cloak of shadow and blood to deflect his force like a brick wall, but he shifted his direction and whipped his head up at the last second, sending me flying instead. I skidded across the grass, using my cloak like clawed anchors to slow my tumble. I jumped to my feet, my cloak cracking and whipping at an unseen wind as I squared off against my brother, grinning maniacally.
“Get him, Lucian!” Nero crowed.
Lucian whipped his head around at the sound and snarled. I cursed as Lucian bolted towards the warlock with anything but playfulness. I zipped between them, making my cloak flare out. Lucian halted in his tracks, glaring at me. Then he hunkered low, his tail wagging ever so slightly. I laughed back at him, feeling my heart grow two sizes larger as flickers of memory struck me—of us wrestling like this back in the old days.
“Here, boy,” I taunted, licking my lips.
He exploded towards me with shocking speed. I shifted to mist, coalescing directly behind him to grab him by the tail and stop him in his tracks. I drew deep on my blood reservoir, using my boost in strength to swing him high over my head and then slam him down to the ground with a surprised yelp. He jumped back to his feet, snapping his teeth, but my cloak deflected the blows. I flung it wide and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying back into one of the boulders. It cracked in half and he fell to the ground with a wheeze, shaking his head woozily.
I grabbed him by the ruff of the neck. “Not this time, brother.”
There was a brief moment when he fought against me, jerking his head back and forth as he snarled in outrage, and then I was falling face-first into his castle of broken mirrors, the only sound the lamenting howl of a wolf.
18
I was no longer on a mountain with Nero and Stevie. I felt myself changing, morphing, disintegrating into nothing but a distant awareness. And then, even that began to fade.
I was no longer Sorin Ambrogio.
The wolf was me. I was the wolf.
And I could do nothing about it. I was stuck in Lucian’s mind. Buried in his memories. Drowning in his sorrows.
Swimming happily in an ocean of blood and madness.
Everything shimmered, and a waterfall of broken mirror shards crashed down around me.
I stood on the warped deck, my balance already well accustomed to the rises and falls of the large ship’s motions. I stared out at the black sky and the stars high overhead, wanting to see anything other than the ocean surrounding us.
The spray of saltwater misted my bearded cheeks. “For the rest of my life, my beard is going to taste like salt,” I complained, only marginally jesting.
Nero grunted from beside me. “At least you have a beard.” Compared to my bulk, he looked small and lanky enough to be my kid brother.
“You have to grow up before you can have a beard,” I said.
He shot me a dark glare. “Without me, you two would die from out-brooding one another.”
Sorin laughed, glancing over at us. It was a pleasant sound, hearing him laugh. It had been a long time since he’d done so. He’d been reclusive ever since convincing us to join him on this new adventure. He seemed to notice our attention and his humor faded. I glanced at the warlock, shooting him a helpless look. He shrugged tiredly.
I gazed back up at the stars, searching for anything that might help bolster Sorin’s rare good cheer. “Look at the three of us, following the stars. Like the Three Wise Men to the Christians,” I murmured.
Sorin chuckled, eyeing me sidelong. “Except we’re heading the wrong direction. They travelled east.”
“And none of us are particularly wise,” Nero murmured. “Well, two of us aren’t.”
I ignored Nero’s cynical remark, eyeing Sorin with distant concern. The breeze made his long hair flare out behind him, but the rare smile on his face was a soothing balm to my heart. Whatever he had seen when he went back to the Oracle of Delphi for a second time had changed him. The first experience had changed him for the worse.
My primary purpose was to make sure that his second talk with the cursed seer didn’t make him even more of a danger—to himself and everyone else.
There was no question that it had impacted him severely. He’d promptly abandoned his castle and his vampires, not seeming even remotely concerned for their future even though he was their master. He’d left them to the care of Dracula, his old friend. Our old friend.
Although Dracula had changed in recent decades as well. We all had, to be fair.
The curse of a long life, perhaps. But Sorin was allegedly immortal, so would have it much worse than the rest of us. Since I was the first of my kind, I wasn’t entirely sure how long I would live—whether I was also immortal or not.
“How much longer until we finally see this mythical world of yours, Sorin?”
Sorin glanced ahead in the direction of our travel. “We’re close. I can feel it.”
I nodded my agreement. “I think I saw a bird earlier.” Sorin grinned at my news, slapping his palm against the ship’s railing. “Are you growing bored of our company, Nero?”
“Neither of you have tits, which makes for poor extended company,” he muttered dryly. He glanced over his shoulder with a deeper frown. “And we’re running out of crew.”
Sorin’s good humor evaporated like fog kissed by sunlight. I glared at Nero over Sorin’s shoulder, and he winced. But he had a good point. Sorin’s appetite had been…impressive. At first, he had been able to keep himself to small sips of blood from the crew, but as the arduous journey stretched on, we had left a fair number of them in the wake of the boat, bloodless bodies strewn behind us like a trail of breadcrumbs.
“They knew what they signed up for,” I growled unsympathetically. “Half of them were criminals anyway. It’s why we chose this ship.”
Nero nodded. “I wasn’t judging. You know that, Sorin.”
Sorin gave the warlock a stiff nod. “I know, Nero. And more than half of them were criminals, Lucian. They all were. Even the captain. I made sure of it before we set sail.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. I hadn’t known that. Such an effort was more considerate than the old Sorin would have bothered to put forth. What in the hell had that cursed Oracle of Delphi said to him?
Whatever it was, it had made Sorin choose to abandon his empire and practically beg us to join him on his adventure to this brave New World that had been on everyone’s tongue. A virgin land across the ocean. His request had come at an ideal time for me. I’d grown bored of the political infighting of my own werewolves. The constant challenges over dominance. It seemed like I spent more time mediating their childish tempers than actually hunting anything—man or beast. And hearing about untouched forests full of unknown creatures…
Sorin had barely finished asking me before I’d agreed.
I would have done anything for my brother, Sorin, and I could tell he was hurting. He was either chasing something or running from something, and I desperately needed to make sure it wouldn’t get him killed.
Nero had been equally simple for Sorin to convince. Then again, all we had to do was tell Nero that there were new things to learn, new exotic women to behold, and undiscovered magic to master.
We had been Nero’s only family—the only people who weren’t terrified to spend time around a man who could wield magic as easily as snapping a finger.
But I often found myself wondering about Sorin’s true motivations. It was another reason I had agreed to come—to keep an eye on my brother and make sure he was okay.
“Well, brothers,” I said, speaking with bold, confident cheer, “we are about to start quite the adventure soon, and I couldn’t think of better friends to be with.”
“That’s because no one else would have you as a friend,” Nero teased, chuckling. But I saw the slight shift in his posture—his shoulders straightening with anticipation.
Sorin smirked, studying the stars absently.
“It’s going to be a grand adventure, brothers. Whatever comes, we will face it together. Surely, it can’t be worse than what we left.”
Nero and I nodded. “Together.”
Shimmer.
I leaned back against the log, crossing my ankles before the campfire, belching into my fist. “That was delicious. You’re getting better with your arrows,” I said, glancing over at Nero.
He nodded. “It became so much easier when I stopped using the bow and started using my magic to hurl them at my target.”
I nodded, suppressing a shudder. It was downright terrifying, as a matter of fact—shooting arrows faster, further, and more accurately than any archer I’d ever met. “Your accuracy is impressive. Don’t show any of the hunters your newfound ability or they will stop hunting with you, as well,” I muttered.
Nero sighed. “You can’t blame them, Lucian. You make them look like children with their first bows and wooden knives.”
I waved a hand. “I know. I just never thought I’d miss other werewolves. I want a good fight. Wrestling with Sorin isn’t the same as a fight for your life.”
“That bear was a fun fight. Well, it sounded like a fun fight. I chose not to get too close.” Then he grinned wolfishly. “The look on your face when that thing charged out of the cave! I thought you were going to weep with joy!”
I grinned, patting the black-furred hide bundled up behind me. I had already stretched and dried it during our long hunting trip. “The bear will make a fine cloak.”
“Not as fine as Sorin’s shadow cloak,” Nero teased.
I grunted, rolling my eyes. He was right, of course. The fire crackled between us and I heard an owl hooting in the distance, deeper into the endless forest. I’d run across many new creatures to hunt on these excursions, but I still felt restless more often than not. “What will you do when we get back?” I asked, listening to the calming sounds of nature surrounding us.
Devil’s Blood: Shade of Devil Book 3 Page 12
