Blood Moon (11 page)

Zelda stared blankly, her breath frozen in
her lungs.

Violet hugged herself and ran a hand under
her runny nose. “It’s Logan’s. I can smell him.”

Zelda couldn’t speak. Her throat refused to
swallow. She smelled something too, but it wasn’t Logan’s blood.
She ran her hand along the wall beside the kitchen doors and
flicked off the overhead lights, leaving only the soft glow of the
moon coming in from the front door. Latin script sprawled across
the mirror behind the bar, glowing in the dark.

omne trium perfectum

“
What does it mean?”
Violet asked.

Zelda wrapped her hand around the amethyst
charm on her necklace. “It means they have more than just
Logan.”

“
What are we going to
do?”

“
Can you track Logan’s
scent?” Zelda asked.

Violet sniffled and nodded.

“
Good.” Zelda ran her
hands over her face and tried to gather her thoughts into something
useful. “I have a feeling we have a long night ahead of
us.”

Chapter
Twenty-one

Logan’s head felt like
someone had taken an axe to it. His nose throbbed, and the skin
along his forehead and one cheek felt tight, like something was
crusted there. He licked the corner of his mouth and tasted blood.
It was tacky, drying to his skin, and he wondered if maybe
someone
had
taken
an axe to him.

There were things he was having trouble
remembering. What he ate for lunch. Where he’d left his truck. What
the hell had happened between kissing Zelda goodbye and getting his
face bashed in.

He sat in front of a bonfire, his hands
bound behind him around a rusty barrel that had been weighted down
with something—maybe rocks or concrete. The laces of his boots were
missing, and he vaguely wondered if that’s what was chaffing
against his wrists now. He also wondered if shifting in his
position would free him or put him in a worse bind.

“
Hey,” a soft voice
whispered from the other side of the bonfire. “Aren’t you Selena’s
brother?”

Logan squinted through the flames until he
could make out a person on the other side. Marla’s pregnant belly
hung between her legs and brushed the ground. Her arms had been
bound behind a barrel too, but she was otherwise uninjured.

“
Where are we?” Logan
asked, craning his neck around with a groan.

Marla shivered. “The Raymore plot, just
outside of Kansas City.”

“
Great.” Logan scowled at
her. “Bet you’re sorry you bit the hand that was feeding you just
to run back to this hellhole.”

Marla sobbed. “I don’t know why I did it. I
couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to.”

Logan twisted his hands and strained
forward, grinding his teeth together. A black leather boot dug into
his chest and pushed him back. His eyes shot up to find a blond
woman grinning down at him.

“
Ah ah ah. Wait your
turn,” she said.

She circled the fire and began untying
Marla, who whimpered and struggled against her. As soon as the
girl’s hands were free, she scurried to her feet, looking like an
uncaged animal ready to bolt. She held her round belly and jerked
her head from side to side, her eyes red and panicked. When she
turned away from the fire and tried to run, an invisible barrier
sent her reeling back to the ground, almost into the flames.

Another woman stepped out of thin air and
circled Marla. Her short, dark hair looked wet, like she might have
just taken a shower. “Get her on the altar,” she ordered the blond.
“Then bathe yourself in the river. Our guest of honor should be
arriving shortly.”

Headlights flashed over the woods
surrounding them, and a beat up van, the same one that had dumped
the wolf who had bitten Zelda, stopped a short distance from the
bonfire. A door opened and slammed shut, and Logan heard grass and
leaves crunch as a man joined the dark-haired woman. They traded a
few quiet words that he couldn’t decipher, until Zelda’s name was
mentioned.

“
Stay away from her,”
Logan growled, the full moon nudging his wolf.

The man snorted and knelt down to look at
Logan. His hair was long and greasy, lying in a tangled nest over
both shoulders. This close, Logan could see the Raymore tattoo
stretching over his arm and shoulder, and just under his
collarbone, to the left, a bold letter A had been carved into his
flesh, leaving behind a mangled scar.

A growl slipped from Logan before he could
contain himself. “Devin Raymore.”

Devin put his hand on top of Logan’s head
and shoved it back against the barrel, sending a heavy, echoing
thud out into the night. “You should have kept your bitch in line.
I don’t give a shit about the leftovers I let her keep.” He leaned
in closer. “But nobody keeps my pups from me. Understand,” he
snarled in Logan’s face.

Logan held the alpha’s stare, refusing to
submit. His teeth felt like they might break he was clenching them
so tightly. Devin’s hand wrapped around his throat and squeezed,
until Logan couldn’t breathe. Still, he refused to look away. Just
when he thought he might pass out, the dark-haired woman
intervened.

“
We need him for the
ritual. If you kill him, the deal’s off.” She folded her arms and
glared down at Devin.

He released Logan with a growl, throwing his
head back into the barrel a second time.

Logan sucked in a rasping breath and
swallowed painfully. He pulled at his binding again, but more
quietly this time, trying not to draw attention.

The moon was climbing steadily above. A
shadow had begun to pass over its full face, and Logan felt his
wolf stir anxiously. The fading light shone down on a tall, stone
altar a short distance from the bonfire, where the blond was busy
tying down Marla. The girl’s shirt slipped up her belly, and her
pale, taut skin seemed to glow in the dark.

There was no way this would end well.

Logan struggled harder, pushing his back
into the barrel. But against all of his weight, it barely slid half
an inch. His wolf was growing restless, and he knew he would have
to shift soon.

A series of howls ripped through the
darkness, and Hyde appeared over the edge of the hill, three wolves
and two mutated men behind him. His eyes fell on Logan, and a
vicious grin spread across his face.

“
Thought you had an edge
over us with the witch, eh boy?” he said, nodding to the two
women.

One of the mutated wolves lifted the
beginnings of a snout and sniffed the air. “She’s here.”

The dark-haired woman sighed. “Well, go
fetch her.”

The mutant wolf snarled at her command,
until Devin put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Hyde and the
others took off at a run toward the woods, red hunger blazing in
their eyes.

Logan’s heart dropped into
his stomach.
Zelda.

He’d told her to stay at Orpheus House, but
he should have known better. Dying alone in the woods with only
heathens for company was one thing—but letting Zelda suffer the
same fate was not an option. He pushed at the barrel again,
managing to lift it up on its edge for the briefest of seconds.

On the opposite side of the fire, Marla
whimpered on the altar. The shadow creeping over the moon had
turned red, and it painted everything in shades of blood.

The dark-haired woman smiled at the blond.
“It’s almost time. Prepare the circle.”

Chapter Twenty
-two

Zelda hadn’t driven since the accident, and
her license was expired. So Violet drove Logan’s truck, pausing
every so often to get out and sniff the air and ground. She’d
picked up the scent of a foreign vehicle in the parking lot, and
they’d tracked it back to the outskirts of Kansas City.

Zelda worried that the vehicle in question
was the one that had dumped the naked man on her lawn, and that
maybe they were chasing the wrong trail, especially when they
stopped along a gravel road that Violet identified as the edge of
Raymore territory.

When Violet picked up the scent of Logan’s
blood again, Zelda was both ecstatic and horrified. They were near
Logan, but the fact that he was on Raymore territory meant that
their enemies were more than they realized.

“
I smell others,” Violet
whispered, coming to a stop in the middle of a nest of tall grass
and brush.

Zelda bumped into her and reached for a tree
to catch her fall. A prickly vine bit into her hand, and she pulled
away from it with a hiss. “I expected we would. You don’t have to
come with me. I know this is hard for you, being back on Raymore
land.”

Violet turned to face her, her eyes glowing
yellow in the dark. “You saved my life. I’m by your side to the
very end.”

Zelda’s heart swelled and she touched
Violet’s shoulder.

The red shadow of the eclipse had almost
consumed the moon, peeking through the tree branches above them.
Zelda could feel dark things stirring deep in the woods ahead. She
shuddered as she stepped forward. The soft earth sucked at her
flats, and she wished she had taken the time to change into
boots.

After another ten minutes of navigating
through the brush, Violet stopped again to take a deep breath.
“They have Marla too,” she said with a sharp gasp. “And she’s in
labor.”

Zelda bit her lip. She hadn’t been entirely
sure who else they would find in the woods with Logan, but she had
suspected Marla would be present, considering her hasty and
peculiar departure from Selena’s.

omne trium perfectum

That which comes in threes is
perfection.

There would be one other, Zelda knew. This
was karma catching up to her. The threefold law, coming full
circle. It was time to sacrifice.

She was ready to give her life to right her
path with the goddess—but Logan didn’t deserve this. Marla didn’t
deserve this. And whoever else was trapped in the woods did not
deserve this.

Violet squatted low suddenly. Her voice came
out like gravel, as if her wolf was trying to find a way out.
“They’re coming. I can lead us out of here better if I shift.”

Zelda shook her head. “I’ll never be able to
keep up, and they’ll take us both.”

She strained to hear through the trees, but
the wind swooped in on them, rustling leaves and creaking branches.
Violet knelt lower, touching her hands to the earth. Her back
bowed, and Zelda knew it wouldn’t be long before her wolf took
over.

“
Go ahead, Vi,” she said.
“Shift and find Logan and Marla. That’s where they’ll take me if
I’m caught anyway.”

Violet bowed her head and nodded, as if she
were too far gone to speak now. She pulled her shirt over her head,
and her short blond hair spread in a sudden wave down her spine. It
spilled over her ribcage and wrapped around her underside, shooting
out into a thick tail as she rose on canine legs. She turned a
quick circle, shaking off the rest of her human features with a
whip of her head.

Zelda took a careful step back. The only
time she’d seen a wolf shift had been with the help of a
tranquilizer on her table. She had never seen or dealt with a
healthy wolf in shifted form.

Violet looked up at her, giving a soft
whimper before she lowered her body to the ground in submission.
Her fur was a pale blond, with touches of gold at her ears, paws,
and the tip of her tail, curled between her legs.

Zelda squatted down and reached out slowly
to brush her fingers between Violet’s flattened ears. The wind
tapered off, and a twig snapped somewhere in the distance.

“
Go,” Zelda
whispered.

The wolf leapt up and over the brush and was
soundlessly out of sight in an instant.

Zelda forged ahead, thrashing through the
woods carelessly. She hoped her noises would help mask Violet’s.
She dug the sooty remains of the asafetida bundle she’d used during
the severance ritual out of her pocket, along with a book of
matches. She lit the herbs, snuffed them out, then tore them in
half and chucked the pieces as far as she could in opposite
directions.

The sulfuric fumes drifted through the trees
and brush, and she heard a wolf sneeze. A more human voice grunted
a disgusted complaint.

Zelda tried to circle around them from the
opposite way Violet had gone. Her breath grew ragged as her path
curled upward, over a rocky hill. The sound of rushing water called
out over the wind, and Zelda’s chest ached as she recognized the
symmetry with her past.

The hill cut off steeply, but she noticed
too late and tumbled down the side a muddy gorge. Icy water
devoured one leg, ripping her shoe off. She gasped and recoiled
from the river.

The full, red moon shone more brightly,
gaping at her from the swath of clear sky over the river. Zelda
stood gingerly, brushing the mud and rocks from her body as she
felt for injuries. Her hip ached where she had landed on it, the
beginnings of a nasty bruise, she guessed.

A howl from above sent her heart racing, and
she took off down the riverbank, looking for a shallow place to
cross. Her toes squished through mud and sand, and soon her other
shoe was lost to the elements too. She moved more quickly, hissing
as she stepped over sharp rocks.

When a splash sounded behind her, she took
her chances and stepped into the river, not daring to look back.
The freezing water reached her mid-thigh as she waded across, and
when she climbed up the opposite side, a chill shook her body. She
crouched beneath the canopy of the woods to catch her breath and
glanced back over the blood-red river churning below.

Three dark figures were making their way up
the riverbank, and snuffling, panting noises came from the woods on
the opposite side of the river. The brush parted, and a black wolf
poked its head through, spotting her across the way. It lifted its
muzzle and let loose a howl followed by a bark. The figures along
the riverbank quickened their steps.