Blood Moon (11 page)

She stared up at him, holding her
breath, fearful that any moment he would go for her throat and rip
her to shreds. Instead, after several long, agonizing moments of
fright, the fox stepped off of her. Watching him warily, Aslyn lay
still for several moments, hoping that he would be satisfied with
having felled her and flee into the woods once more. Instead, he
sat, still watching her.

She frowned, wondering at his curious
behavior. It was almost as if he was tame. Slowly, she sat up. When
the fox made no attempt to pounce upon her again, she began
struggling to her feet. As she placed her palm against the ground
to push herself up, however, the fox darted forward, nipping her
hand with his sharp teeth. She wasn’t even aware of the branch
she’d clutched when she’d fallen until the fox darted at her, but
the moment he did, she swung, catching him on the shoulder. What he
might have done had she not struck him, she was never to know, but
the branch was sufficient to dissuade his attack. He broke off with
a yelp and loped off, disappearing against the background of the
snow long before he could have reached the trees.

Aslyn stared after him, trying to spot
him against the mounds of snow, but she caught no more than a
glimpse of him before he vanished completely. The throb in her hand
finally caught her attention and she lifted it to examine it.
Despite the blood, she discovered it was little more than a
scratch. Undoubtedly, he had only caught it with the edge of his
teeth. If he’d had time to bite, he would have inflicted a good
deal more damage.

A sense of uneasiness filled her, and
she glanced back in the direction that the fox had disappeared,
wondering if it had been mad after all. As bizarre as its behavior,
however, she knew it could not have been mad. If it had been,
nothing short of killing it would have stopped its
attack.

Finally, she was forced by her
stomach’s demands to dismiss it. Reaching down, she grasped a
handful of snow and rubbed it across the back of her hand until the
bleeding slowed. Returning to the cottage, she cleaned the wound
thoroughly, then soaked it in a dish of steeped herbs and salt to
promote healing and prevent the wound from putrefying. When she was
satisfied, she collected her cook pot and walked down to the well
to fill it.

She had just filled the pot and turned
to start back when a woman’s screams rent the air. The sound tore
through Aslyn like the slash of a knife. She dropped the pot from
suddenly nerveless fingers. Her head whipped around from side to
side as she searched for the source of the horrible sounds. Around
her, she saw the villagers pouring from their cottages as they,
too, were drawn by the cries. Almost as one, they began to move,
slowly, but quickly gaining speed. Many grasped broomsticks, axes …
anything they came across as they rushed toward the shattering
cries.

As one, they halted abruptly as they
reached the next street and saw a man and woman on their knees in
the middle of the muddy road. The man was covered in blood. The
woman was holding a wad of bloodied rags, rocking back and forth.
With an effort, Aslyn forced her feet forward, moving almost like a
sleepwalker until she was near enough to recognize the
woman.

It was Ana Halard, little John’s
mother.

A terrible dread seized Aslyn as she
stared at the distraught woman, studied the torn rags the woman was
clutching. Even as one of the nearer bystanders gagged, turned and
threw up, she knew what it was.

The man kneeling before Ana looked up
at Aslyn, tears streaming down his cheeks and Aslyn finally
recognized him as John’s father. “I tried to fight ‘em off. I did.
But it was no use. No use a’tall. Them vicious bastards ‘ad already
torn ‘im to shreds.”

Aslyn felt the strength leave her
knees. She sank onto her knees beside them. “John?”

Ana Halard turned to look at her. “I
told ‘im not to take me baby to the woods. I told ‘im. He said I
was pamperin’ ‘im. Said he’d never be a man if I kept ‘im tied to
me apron strings.”

Aslyn touched the woman’s shoulder.
“Hush. Don’t say these things.”

“It’s true!”

Aslyn turned to Halard. It was
impossible to tell, however, if the blood spattering his face and
covering his chest and arms was his or the child’s. “Are you
hurt?”

He ignored the question, climbed
awkwardly to his feet. Swaying slightly, he looked down at his
wife, blubbering now like a hurt child himself. “I only did what I
thought was right.”

“You got ‘im killed!” she screamed at
him. “He was too small to be out gathering wood. You should’ve
taken one of the older boys.”

“Stop it!” Aslyn cried angrily, but she
knew that both the boy’s parents were too hurt and shocked to
really know what they were saying. She glanced around at the
villagers. “Someone help Mr. Halard to my cottage so I can see to
his wounds.”

The crowd around her simply stared at
her blankly, too shocked and horrified themselves for anything to
filter through to them.

“I don’t need no tending. I’m for
finding those damned wolves and killing them, ever last one of
them! Who’s with me? Who’ll help me hunt them down and slaughter
them? Before they pick us off one by one!”

A low rumble began amongst the
villagers. Like the growl of an animal, it built into an enraged
howl. They surged forward, following Halard as he lurched toward
the woods he’d so lately exited. Stunned, Aslyn watched them race
into the woods, most of them completely unarmed, those few who were
armed carrying little more than a stick. A very little thought told
her, however, that they were mad with fear and fury and nothing
short of a hail of cannon fire would halt them. They could not be
reasoned with and might well turn upon her if she tried to stop
them.

In any case, Ana needed her. She turned
her attention to the boy’s mother. She was still clutching John’s
torn and battered remains to her, rocking him back and forth. She
touched the grieving woman on the shoulder. “Mrs. Halard, please,
let me help you. Give him to me. I’ll take care of him.”

It wasn’t until the woman turned to
look at her that she realized there were tears streaming down her
own cheeks.

“There ain’t nothin’ nobody can do fer
me baby anymore.”

Aslyn swallowed against the lump in her
throat. “We have to … prepare him.”

The woman began to wail aloud. “No! No,
no, no! He’s scared of the dark. My baby’s scared of the dark. You
can’t put ‘im in a dark hole.”

Aslyn glanced around helplessly. To her
surprise she discovered a half a dozen women standing around the
two of them, their faces filled with pity and horror. As if they
read her mind, they surged forward, grasping the woman and pulling
her to her feet and then half carried her to her cottage. Aslyn
remained where she was, watching them, slowly becoming aware of her
own wrenching sobs.

She could not force the image of the
battered child from her mind. Image after horrible image clicked
before her mind’s eye, each one banished by one more horrible than
the last.

He had been a weak, sickly child. She
had known in her heart that he would never grow up, but she had
thought he would die in his bed, not in terror and pain. She
couldn’t bear the thought of the torment he’d suffered before he’d
found peace. What must his mother be going through? Small wonder
the woman was out of her mind with grief, to lose a child under
such terrible circumstances.

It made it worse that he had been doing
so well when last she’d seen him, his face smiling up at her,
glowing with growing good health. Had it been only the day before
that Ana had brought him to show her how much better he was
doing?

It dawned on her then and coldness
crept through her that had nothing to do with the icy
ground.

John had been to see her only the day
before…. The last victim of the wolves had been Will the Red, and
she’d seen him the very morning of the day he was
attacked.

Chapter Eight

Was it only a coincidence that the last
two victims of wolf attacks had been with her only hours before
their attack? It seemed too absurd to believe, and yet the attacks
that had begun months ago had always been close by, where ever she
was. She had assumed that she was responsible for at least some of
the attacks, but had also known she could not possibly have been
responsible for the majority of them. She had also assumed the
attacks were wide spread, not concentrated to her vicinity. But,
what if she was wrong in that line of thinking? What if she was
somehow drawing the wolves?

She had been told that the soldiers had
decided to camp in the area because the last several attacks had
been nearby. They were tracking the pack, had been tracking the
pack for months … and they had been led virtually to her
door.

Shaking her head, she mopped the tears
from her cheeks and slowly got to her feet and looked around. She
was alone.

It had grown dark. She lifted her head
to stare up at the sky. The moon had risen, but it was no more than
a pale sliver in the sky. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, it
would not appear at all and the dark of the moon would lie upon the
land. For how many days, she wondered? Did it matter? Soon the full
moon would rise and her time would be upon her.

It seemed impossible that she could
have lingered so long, impossible that she could have so completely
lost track of passing time.

A sudden urgency filled her to leave
Krackensled, at once--that very night.

She was running by the time she reached
her cottage.

Flinging the door open, she did no more
than push it toward closed, only vaguely aware that she had not
shut the door completely, nor bolted it, as was her habit. It
nagged at her, but she dismissed it. It could take no more than a
few minutes to gather her things and she would be on her way
anyway.

In truth, she had brought very little
with her. Deciding to take the ragged quilt, she rolled it and
bound the ends with string, then spread a cloth on the bare
mattress and retrieved her spare shift and gown from the pegs on
the wall, bundling them quickly and placing them in the middle of
the cloth. Her healing herbs were always kept in their own pouch
and she merely grabbed it up and set it beside the bundle. Looking
quickly around, she saw that she had gathered all she had brought
with her, but her stomach was rumbling once more, reminding her
she’d not eaten. Taking her knife, she cut a large wedge of cheese,
meat, and a chunk of bread to bundle in her pack and then cut some
thin slices to stack together so that she could eat it as she
walked.

She had just slung the blanket over her
shoulder when she heard a sound behind her. It froze the blood in
her veins.

“Going somewhere?”

Slowly, she turned and stared at the
man filling the doorway.

She did not recognize him. It was the
first time she’d seen him without his armor. Instead, he was
dressed in leather, as Kale usually dressed, a dark cloak slung
about his shoulders.

But it was not the way he was dressed
that made him unrecognizable. It was the wildness in his gleaming,
golden eyes, in his windswept hair … the blood smeared on his
jerkin and breeches.

Aslyn’s heart slammed into her chest so
hard all the strength went out of her body and it was only by force
of will that she kept from wilting into a puddle of terror on the
floor. “What are you doing here, Algar?” she whispered through
parched lips.

Instead of answering at once, he lifted
his head, sniffing the air. His eyes were gleaming with malice, and
lust, when he looked at her once more. A savage grin curled his
lips. “How could I resist the scent of a female in
heat?”

Aslyn felt her jaw go slack as the
words sank slowly into her fear numbed mind. Insulting as the
comment would have been under other circumstances, she was no
longer human … but she-beast. Why had it not occurred to her
before? Even when she had speculated the possibility that the pack
was trailing her, that she was leading them, it had not dawned on
her to wonder why they might be drawn to her.

It made so much sense now of things
that had seemed to make no sense at all before.

Small wonder Kale had needed only to
brush against her, to leave his scent on her skin and her mind had
clouded with the need to mate with him.

“Good God!”

His grin widened. “I doubt there would
be many who would be willing to agree HE has anything to do with
us.”

Sluggishly, her mind worked its way
around the comment. “You knew!”

He chuckled, stepped inside, and pushed
the door closed behind him. “The moment I saw you
again.”

“How? How could you possibly
know--again? What do you mean, again?”

He cocked his head to one side,
studying her. “I’m hurt. You don’t remember?”

She stared at him, cast her mind back,
but no matter how hard she jogged her memory, she was certain she
had never met him before she had come to Krackensled.

“You bore the mark. It distressed me no
end that I had not been the one to give it to you, but I knew you
were meant to be mine. Unfortunately, your father had seen fit to
bestow you upon another. I had to … dispose of my rival. But when I
looked around again, you’d vanished.”