“How is it that Mulberry can speak with a human tongue?” Callan asked.
“No idea. I imagine there’s a lot about this world we don’t understand.” The stones. The berserkers. Traveling alone with a deadly vampire. As far as I was concerned, my whole reality was being called into question.
“You really think he’ll be able to shift back?” Callan asked.
“If my theory is correct, yes.”
“Your theory being that a stone like the two in our possession can influence shapeshifters?”
I nodded.
“Will you be disappointed if you’re wrong?”
My gaze flicked to him. “What do you mean?”
“I feel like part of you wants to point to some external reason for bad behavior so you can absolve them of wrongdoing. Maybe there are simply crazed wolves in the world who act like primitive animals and sometimes those animals attack people.”
“Like there are vampires who prey on the weak and vulnerable instead of going through the proper channels?”
He frowned. “Why do I get the sense there’s a story there?”
I told him about the vampire den in Mayfair and what happened to Judd’s family.
Callan was silent for a prolonged moment. “I’ll look into it for you when we return to the city.”
I looked at him askance. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re right. Like many things, it shouldn’t have happened. I’ll do my part to set matters right.”
This vampire seemed very different from the Prince Callan who strutted around the city. I took a chance and raised an uncomfortable subject.
“Is this because of what happened in Birmingham?”
His fingers tightened on the wheel. “No one has ever spoken to me about that day. Not even the king himself.”
“Want to talk about it?” The moment felt strangely intimate.
“I don’t remember much, to be honest, although I wish I could remember every detail.”
A sharp intake of breath followed his admission and he shot a quick glance at me.
“Oh, no. Not to relish it. To own it. I owe it to those people to remember what happened. What I did.”
“Did you know what you were doing?”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Of course. I was twelve. Old enough to know.” He stopped before he added ‘better.’
“It’s not unusual for a boy to strive to please his father, especially a father who’s also his king.” I was treading on dangerous ground but something spurred me on.
“I knew what I was doing. I was a powerful vampire even at that age and I was eager to prove it. I would have left a trail of corpses all the way to the city if the war hadn’t ended first. I was angry when I was made part of the treaty and I was even angrier when Dale died.”
“That was your cousin’s name?”
He nodded. “I didn’t have any siblings. Dale was the closest thing I had until House Lewis took me in.”
“I can understand why you were angry.” His father treated him like property to be discarded at will. I had to wonder about the first twelve years of his life.
“Doesn’t make it right, but I can’t undo it.”
After that exchange, a wall dropped down between us. I felt the change in the air and noticed the tension in his body. Pushing the Demon of House Duncan too far seemed like a very bad idea.
“See any ponies yet?” I asked, eager to change the subject.
He peered through the windshield. “Not yet. You’re sure this is the right direction?”
I shrugged. “I asked Rochester where the ponies gather on the moors and this is the way he sent us.” I lowered my window and hung my head outside. “There’s nowhere to hide livestock and a carriage out here.”
“What do you mean? You could hide them two meters from us in this fog and we wouldn’t spot them.” Callan’s nostrils flared. “Do you smell that?”
I lowered my window further and sniffed the air. A metallic scent wafted past us as the air stirred. Blood.
“No. What is it?” I couldn’t let him know that my ability to scent blood rivaled his own. That fact would raise questions I couldn’t answer without risking my life.
“It isn’t human.”
He pulled off the road and slowed the jeep to a stop. “We should travel on foot from here.”
“Feel free to stay here and wait. Your brother isn’t interested in whether a Devonshire village gets its livestock back.”
His face registered mild surprise. “You’d go alone? You have no idea what you’re walking into.”
I strapped my axe to my back and adjusted my daggers. “I never do. Such is the life of a knight.”
He locked the doors and stuffed the keys in his pocket. “I’m coming with you.”
“Suit yourself.” Was it possible to feel both pleased and terrified? Callan had a way of pressing both of those buttons.
We traipsed across the moors bathed in fog and darkness. I heard the grunts of pigs in the distance. We were on the right track.
We emerged from the fog and I spotted a cow as well as the carriage on the horizon. The animal was attached to the carriage. It seemed like any moment Cinderella and her fairy godmother would appear to turn it into a stallion and a golden carriage. It was then I noticed the people.
“What’s going on?” Callan whispered.
We crouched low to the ground.
“Some kind of ritual.” Who knew which gods the Mierce worshipped? Maybe this was their annual prayer for a bountiful harvest.
A young woman moved through the small crowd to stand in the center of a ring of rocks. Even in the darkness, I could see the tattoo of the eye on her forehead. A human skull rested on her head like a crown of bones.
“Our thief?” Callan asked in a low voice.
I nodded. What was she doing? Her dress was surprisingly fancy for a woman in the middle of nowhere surrounded by stolen pigs.
But where was the blood we smelled? They’d likely slaughtered one of the pigs to kick off the ritual.
A flicker of reddish-orange light caught my eye. A man in a golden cloak walked toward the circle carrying a flaming torch. The crowd parted as he made his way to the young woman in the center. He said a few words, but I couldn’t decipher them. The people bowed their heads in response.
The cloaked man lowered the torch to the skull on her head so that it was wreathed in flames and stepped away. For a shining moment I was transfixed by the striking vision—until I realized the flames weren’t stopping at the skull. They quickly spread to her hair and clothes.
This wasn’t just a ritual.
This was a sacrifice.
“Holy hellfire,” Callan breathed.
I turned myself invisible and tore across the empty space between us. I cut straight through the throng of bodies and tackled the young woman to the ground, rolling her back and forth on the earth to smother the flames. Her skin and dress were black with smoke and ash, but she was alive. I returned to my visible form and drew a deep, cleansing breath.
Glaring at me, she slapped both hands on my chest and shoved me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
I climbed to my feet. “It’s called saving you. You’re welcome.”