Blood Vow (Blood Moon Rising) (19 page)

“I think they follow you, Falon,” Lucien said thoughtfully. “They recognize you as their conduit back to the life that was taken from them.”

Falon’s hand iced in his big warm one. “When we leave here we’re going directly to Sharia to find out how the hell this works.” He squeezed her hand. “I would give anything to see my mother’s smile again.” Emotion swelled in his chest. For so long guilt and anger shrouded his feeling of loss. He quelled the spark of hope in his heart that one day he might see her again. Alive.

“I would give anything to hear Father reprimand us again for our unalpha hijinks,” Rafe said wistfully.

Lucien smiled. Their sire had been a taskmaster but a loving one. It would be a day of all days to clasp hands with him again. He had loved their mother as fiercely as Lucien and Rafe loved Falon. He’d held Falon in his arms twice when she was at death’s door. He could not imagine a life without her in it. The heartache would be unbearable; he would be reduced to nothing more than a shell of a man. Worthless.

Lucien shoved the feelings away refusing to think about loss when they were in the position of so much to gain.

As they came to another bolted door, the hair on Lucien’s neck stood up.
There’s something on the other side waiting for us,
he cautioned.

I’ll go through first,
Rafe said as he struck the locks with his sword. They rattled to the floor. With his sword tip he slowly pushed open the door.

The squeaking sound of scurrying rats disrupted the tense silence. As they moved through the door, the beady red eyes of hundreds of rodents flickered along the high walls and ceiling. But something else more sinister lurked.

Slowly they moved down the musty stone and timber passageway until they came to another door. This one was wrought iron and through it, Lucien could see moonlight streaming through a low window highlighting the cluttered room beyond its threshold. The child on his back stirred and cried in her sleep. Foreboding traced icy fingers down his spine. They had no choice but to go forward. Fenrir’s death was paramount to triumph over the Slayers. They had to go through the door.

Once again, Rafe used his sword to demolish the locks. As he pulled the rusty chains wound around the door to the wall, they turned to a jumble of hissing rising cobras.

Falon screamed out in warning, pulling Rafe back just as Lucien grabbed his shoulder, but not before something struck Rafe’s right sword hand.

Eighteen

WITHOUT THINKING TWICE, Falon tore the snake off Rafa’s hand, and immediately covered the bite with her mouth even as she drew him away from the swarm of vipers. In her peripheral vision, she saw Luca hack the snakes to fish-bait size. She sucked the venom from Rafa as quickly and as deeply as she could, vehemently spitting the venom out each time she drew it into her mouth.

“I can’t breathe,” Rafa’s voice choked out before he went down.

Falon’s blood pressure shot sky-high.

“Lucien! Rafe’s down,” she screamed. She followed him down to the damp stone floor. His big body began to spasm and shake. “Rafa,” she cried, taking his face between her hands. “Look at me! Stay with me, baby.” When his body continued to convulse, she grabbed his bitten hand and continued to draw the poison from him. His body stilled some but his tan skin paled to an ashen shade of gray.

“Lucien!” she cried. “Help me!”

The little girl’s cries added tension to the situation. When Falon looked up at Lucien, she saw three of him. Reaching out to him, her unsteady hand shook.

“Falon,” Lucien said, dropping to his knees. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I think—I ingested some of the poison,” she said, swaying on her knees. “I’m okay.” She turned back to Rafe, and caught her breath. He had turned a deeper shade of gray. “He can’t breathe!”

Lucien gently set her aside, and opened his brother’s mouth and breathed into him. Frantically, Falon pressed her healing hands to the bite on Rafa’s hand, calling upon all of her power to rid his body of the poison.

The little girl strapped to Lucien’s back cried louder, struggling to free herself.

“No, baby girl, you have to stay there,” Falon tried to soothe as she attempted to heal Rafa.

But the little girl shrieked louder and for one so small and undernourished, she tore herself out of the papoose pack in quick fashion and crawled down Lucien’s back to Falon.

She grabbed the child to her chest to keep her immobile and when she did, the baby put her hands on the one Falon used to grasp Rafe’s bitten hand. Heat surged from the little girl into Falon, and then into Rafa. Like an electrical infusion the four of them hummed with power.

Falon’s eyes widened in shock. Luca wore the same astounded expression.

What the hell?

The girl lay down against Rafael’s chest as if she were snuggling up to sleep. Dismayed by the behavior but not questioning it, Falon and Lucien watched in awe as Rafa’s body stopped spasming and a twinge of his color returned.

Rafa,
Falon said, bending over his lips and kissing him.
Open your eyes.

He didn’t.

“Rafe,” Lucien said harshly, “open your eyes damn it. We need to get the hell out of here. We don’t have much time left.”

He was unresponsive.

“He won’t wake up without the antidote,” a deep unwelcome voice said from the threshold of the wrought-iron door.

Falon’s blood stilled in her veins as she looked up to see the last person on earth she expected to see.

Thomas Corbet.

“If you have it, give it to me.” She stood, her stance slightly unsteady but strode toward him despite her weakness.

Lucien grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “Don’t go near him, Falon, he’s vicious. He’ll kill you.”

Shaking off Lucien’s hand, she strode closer. “He doesn’t have the balls to kill me.” She raised her hands. And with the force of the energy that she was able to summon and control, as well as the energy that was as much a part of her as her eyes and lips, the energy that she never questioned, Falon shoved him so hard into the stone wall across the room that his head hit with a sickening thud. It only served to daze him. Falon continued her mad stride toward him. She shoved him again, this time pinning him to the wall. She raised her hands and his body rose with them.

“Give me the goddamn antidote, or I’m going to tear you apart one piece at a time.”

His blue eyes blazed in fury but, she thought ironically, there was paternal pride lurking behind the anger. A smile twisted his full lips that, she realized, were the twin to hers. God, with the exception of her coloring, she was a carbon copy of this man. Did Lucien see it? She inhaled sharply and knew she would do anything; even reveal her secret, if it would save Rafael.

“I’ll trade you,” Corbet offered.

“I don’t trust you to honor a trade.” With her left hand raised she kept him pinned to the wall and with her right hand she unsheathed her poison sword. She pressed the tip to his throat. “There’s poison on the tip of this blade. One prick by it and you become immobile, much like my Rafa is. In such an incapacitated state, all I need to do is cut off your head and you die the true death.”

“But if you do that, you lose your precious alpha. I ask only a simple life-for-a-life trade.”

“Give me the antidote!” she screamed. “Give it to me now, damn you!”

“Give me the child.”

Falon gasped. “So that you can sacrifice her? Never!”

“I give you my word she will not be harmed.”

“Then why do you want her?” Lucien demanded.

“She is my daughter,” Corbet said simply.

Falon gasped.
She had a sister?

“That’s impossible!” Lucien bellowed.

Corbet sneered. “Improbable but not impossible. There are others like her. But she is mine. She was taken from me over a month ago by a group of ignorant Slayers who mistook her for full Lycan. I want her back.”

Falon’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Why did he want this half Lycan daughter but not her at the same age?

“What Lycan would lay with you, Corbet the most despised of all Slayers?” Lucien demanded.

Falon’s skin frosted as she took a good hard look at the child.
Oh, my God!
It was—her
full
sister. How could her mother bear Corbet a second child? She had lied to Falon! About everything.

“Give me the child, and I will give you the antidote to break the spell.”

“Wh-what is her name?”

“Alana.”

Falon turned to Lucien, who stood furiously rigid behind her. She could see the bloodlust in his eyes. He wanted to destroy Corbet as much as she wanted to save Rafa. And because Corbet was Rafa’s only lifeline, Lucien would not strike him down. And neither, she realized, did he have any designs on harming the child.

It became inexplicably warm in the room when only moments before it had been cool.

Falon’s raised arms began to quiver and her knees shook. She blinked at the two Corbets.

“I—” The sword slipped from her hand as her knees buckled.

Lucien caught her, as she crumbled helplessly to the ground.

Corbet dropped to the floor from where she had pinned him to the wall and pointed to her belly. “The toxins are spreading in your body. While you will survive, the child will die inside you if you do not take the antidote soon.” He looked past her to Rafa, whose breathing had shallowed. “Even the Eye of Fenrir cannot help him once the poison settles in.”

Falon swallowed hard and nodded. For all things Corbet was, she knew in her heart he would not harm his daughter. And because she knew him for who he was, she allowed Lucien to take the sleeping child from Rafa’s chest and hand her over to her father, Master Slayer Thomas Corbet.

He didn’t look at the girl, but the way he made sure she was secure and comfortable in his arms spoke volumes. A twinge of longing for the father she never had was fleeting, but she felt it. It was what it was, and she was glad he had not raised her even if he had loved her enough to stick around. Thomas Corbet was the scourge of the earth and, father or not, she would kill him the first opportunity she got.

He reached into his tunic and withdrew a small leather pouch and tossed it to her. “Just a pinch for yourself, and several for your wolf. It works quickly.” He strode past them and turned before he completely exited. “Where did you find Alana?”

“The witches . . .”

His blue eyes turned onyx. He nodded and disappeared down the corridor with her sleeping sister in his arms. An emptiness Falon could not identify, momentarily struck her numb.

“Here, angel face,” Lucien said, having already opened the pouch. He pinched a small bit of the pale powder between his thumb and forefinger and, just as he was about to put it in her mouth, he hesitated. “What if it’s poison?”

For the third time in the last ten minutes, Falon’s blood pressure shot sky-high. What if it
were
poison? Did her father hate her that much to trick her into killing herself? Her gut told her no, and her brain told her even if he had lied about the antidote, she was going to lose her baby and Rafe if she didn’t take it, so she might as well try.

“It’s not,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his hand. As his fingertips brushed against her lips Falon closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds as she tasted the bitter powder. Once it dissolved, she pushed Luca’s hand away and said, “Tend Rafa, there’s nothing more you can do for me.”

Luca moved quickly to his brother. With tears in her eyes, she watched as Lucien tenderly lifted Rafa’s head, opened his mouth, and then gently put several pinches of the powder onto his tongue, closing his lips and telling him to swallow.

“Damn it, Rafe,” Lucien cursed, shaking his brother by the shoulders. “Swallow it!”

Falon rolled over and tried to stand but her legs were still too weak so she crawled to Rafa. Grasping his ring hand with one hand, with her other she grabbed Lucien’s hand to her chest. She crawled over to lay her head on Rafa’s chest, pressing her lips to his heart. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Rafa,” she softly begged. “Don’t leave me. Not when we have found each other again.” She rubbed her wet eyes on his neck. “I love you, Luca loves you.
Please
, come back to us.”

Lucien sat down, his back to the wall, and pulled Falon into the crook of his left arm and Rafa into the crook of his right arm. That was how they woke hours later when the village clock signaled the approaching midnight hour.

Nineteen

BEFORE RAFAEL OPENED his eyes he knew something had changed within him. Or maybe something hadn’t changed but had become enhanced. His senses were as honed as ever. Instinctively, he knew Lucien and Falon were beside him. In addition, he could smell the lingering scent of the girl and—his blood boiled—Corbet! Then he remembered being bitten by a snake, but that was all.

His hearing, however, was crystal clear. Wherever he was, the scampering of rodents down the hall and the crisp wind as it rustled leaves outside was as distinct as if those things were under his nose. He opened his eyes and smiled. Fissures of energy snapped and crackled around him, showing him portals to smaller more intricate forms of energy. If he didn’t know any better, he would say he was tripping. Had the venom done this?

He raised his head from Lucien’s shoulder and looked across his chest to Falon’s beautiful face. His blood warmed at the sight of her and his cock— Jesus, even half dead and nearly delirious, he couldn’t control his primal reaction to her. She was so damn gorgeous. He loved her spunk and sarcasm and the way she surrendered everything to him as if he were the only man in the world she would ever love.

He scowled when he thought of the third person in their relationship. Unwanted jealousy snuck up on him. He wanted Falon all to himself. He didn’t want to share her on any level with anyone. Not even Lucien who he loved second only to Falon.

He frowned thinking he had gotten past the jealousy. His frown deepened when he thought about everything they had been through, how could he deny his brother the right to love the woman Lucien loved above all others? How could he deny Lucien the same thing Rafe wanted,
needed
more than the air he breathed?