Blood Vow (Blood Moon Rising)

by Tabke, Karin

  She snarled, throwing her wild mane of hair over her shoulder, and yanked him up.

  “Corbet, you’re going to regret that!” she yelled, and with her own power she shoved her hands, palms open toward him. He went flying backward several feet, landing heavily on his back.

  Like an engine, Falon barreled through the witches that stood in her way, dispelling their magic.

  As she came upon Corbet, who had regained his composure and drawn his swords, Falon smacked one out of his hand and snatched it out of the air.

  She turned it on him and pressed the point to his throat.

  “Tonight you join your brothers in hell.”

  Corbet smiled, and shook his head, his blue eyes so much like hers, not blinking once.

  “You will not kill me,” he taunted.

  Falon pressed the sword into his skin, puncturing it. Blood spurted in a small pop then leveled off spreading in a sputtering wave with each heartbeat.

  His eyes glittered excitedly. “You cannot.”

  She pushed the blade deeper. Blood bubbled, thickening around the sword tip.

  “How does it feel Corbet? To know you’re going to die?” she taunted.

  “I’m not dead yet.”

  Falon’s hands shook but she pressed the blade deeper into his throat. Blood gurgled like an overflowing fountain.

  “Say good night, Slayer,” she whispered.

  “You will need my blood to raise your ghost walkers,” he said hoarsely, struggling to speak against the blade in his neck. Grimacing, he looked past her to Rafe and Lucien. Fury and hatred washed off them in hot intense waves. “I have the power to resurrect your parents,” he said, coughing as blood filled this throat. “Kill me and that option goes with me.”

  Rafael snarled, and Lucien grabbed the Slayer by the scruff of his shroud. “You lie.”

  “To raise the ghost walkers the two bloods must unite,” he wheezed. “The blood that slew them and the blood that binds them.” Corbet tried to laugh but he coughed instead, gagging on the blade. “I am the last Corbet directly descended from the original Slayer.” His eyes glittered as he looked at Falon and challenged her to reveal her secret. She swallowed hard, knowing the time was not right to tell Rafa and Luca. She kicked Corbet away, much to Rafe’s and Lucien’s fury.

  Corbet grabbed his neck, blood seeping through his fingers and backed up the embankment.

  As Rafe and Lucien turned to go after him, Falon grabbed each of them by the arm to stay them, and watched Corbet disappear into the field as his coven of thieves noiselessly followed him.

  And just as they had been fifteen minutes before, there were now alone.

  “Why did you let him go, Falon?” Rafe demanded.

  She opened her mouth to answer but the truth lodged in her throat. And she could not lie to Rafael’s face.

  “What was the purpose of that?” Lucien said, looking across the silvery field. “In chains he will be at our beck and call to raise the ghost walkers.”

  Her father was testing her, to see if she would slay him or reveal her truth. She would have slain him, she was so close—but she hadn’t, because if she had, Rafa and Luca would not have forgiven her for taking away what they believed to be the only opportunity to raise their dead parents. Of course they didn’t know that in her alone she possessed the two bloods. Thomas Corbet be damned!

  “He’s messing with us,” Falon said softly. “Making you yearn for something he would not give you even if he could.”

  Lucien grabbed her suddenly trembling arms. “But you have the power, too, Falon. Don’t you?”

  “If I do, I have no clue how to use it.”

  “That’s a question for Sharia. That old woman knows more than she lets on. The sooner we find the Cross, the sooner she can shed light on the secret to the ghost walkers,” Rafe said, moving past them and gathering up their clothes and swords.

  “Rafa!” Falon called, running to him. “Wait.” She suddenly felt shy when he turned those piercing aqua green eyes on her. He was so big and strong and golden, and though she did not fear him, his power could be intimidating sometimes, as it was now.

  She swallowed hard as her blood pounded through her. He had a way of making her feel very much the female to his male. She reached up and touched the gaping wound on his chest. Anger was surpassed only by her concern for him. She didn’t ask for his permission to heal him. She was his chosen one, and not only was it her duty but her pleasure.

  Standing up on her tiptoes, she leaned into him. Placing her hands on his hard chest, starting between his muscular pectorals, she pressed her tongue to the deep cut and slowly and lovingly lapped his wound, inch by inch until there was nothing more than a faint pink scar. When she was done, she leaned harder into him and looked up into his blazing eyes. Love shown with the brightness of a thousand suns in them. He nudged her chin up with his fingers and lowered his lips to hers.

  “Thank you,” he whispered against her.

  Falon steadied herself. Rafael Vulkasin was heady stuff and her blood had warmed with her happy chore.

  Her lids fluttered open, and she looked deep into his soul. She loved this man as fiercely as she loved his brother and it would be her death if he ever stopped looking at her the way he looked at her now.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Lucien cleared his throat behind them. “The moon waits for no one.”

  As they finished dressing and strapping on their leather scabbards, Rafe led the way to the van.

  “We discovered last night that the Cross is concealed in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the village museum. It’s in plain sight but protected by a powerful spell,” Rafe started to explain. “The problem isn’t going to be breaking the spell. I think if we unite, call upon the ring and focus all of our energy on it, we’ll break it. It’s getting to it that’s the problem.”

  “Are the tunnels locked?”

  “And guarded by spells,” Lucien explained.

  “Does Corbet know about the sword?” she asked, thinking he had to. How could he not? And why she wondered, didn’t he use it.

  “The location of the sword isn’t a big secret,” Rafe said. “It’s listed as one of the village’s relics. But what it can do is a secret. I don’t think Corbet knows. If he did, he would have either hidden it a long time ago so no one could destroy Fenrir, or used it as his own.”

  “Why protect Fenrir now? Their magic is beyond him.”

  “So long as Fenrir lives, the original magic he gave them lives. Without that foundation everything that came after it will evaporate into thin air. As it has always been, without that monster, the Slayers are nothing but despicable humans with no power to fuel them except their hatred.”

  Falon understood now. And at midnight they would be their most powerful but for that power to be they had to be in wolf form. “We go in as wolves?”

  “Yes, but with our swords.”

  “We stay together,” Lucien said.

  Several moments later, they pulled up just outside the village. It glowed like a golden orb beneath the glow of the full moon.

  “It looks like a festival of sorcerers, pagan priests, and witches,” Falon said, leaning forward to get a closer look. Even on the outskirts of the village where they were, people ran hither and yon dressed in elaborate medieval costumes, most of them masked in ghoulish animal masks.

  “They’ve gathered here to pay tribute to the Marcher witches.”

  Shivering as if cold worms crawled along her neck, Falon asked, “Just exactly how do they pay tribute?”

  “Back in the day, human sacrifice. But now they burn an effigy,” Lucien answered.

  “How do you two know all of this?”

  Lucien smiled and handed her a pamphlet from the dashboard. “It’s all there, except the loc
ation of the sword. That we sniffed out with the help of the Eye of Fenrir.”

  Falon shook her head and wished she could fast-forward through the next four weeks to the day after the rising when they rose triumphant from the ashes of battle so that she and the two men she loved and the child she carried could live happily ever after.

  She glanced at the multicolored pamphlet but a slight commotion caught her attention. Looking past Lucien through the windshield to a group of masked people who were dragging a large duffel bag out of the trunk of a van parked about thirty feet from where they had parked, her hackles rose. Her night vision was as honed as a wolf’s and— “There.” She pointed to the group that surrounded the bag. “That’s a person in there.”

  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.” Falo
n 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.