Radiance (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #3) (3 page)

“
Damn, Corbin, you have a way with words.”

“
I read a lot of books. You should try it sometime.” He shook the snow from his russet hair. “I just don’t want them to exist in the world anymore. At all.”

“
Except Samantha Moon,” I said.

“
Yes, except Samantha. She has a profound sense of right and wrong. As a werewolf, I have my own moments of unshakable desire for fresh-killed meat, but I don’t take such an evil path as the vampires. What they have done to humans is a crime against nature. By comparison, vampires make werewolves look like the angels of the supernatural world.”

I nodded, my throat closed up with anxiety. I was so defeated by Delilah’s last words that I was close to losing it and just throwing myself to…well, to the wolves.

“Come on, old werewolf,” I choked out. “Let’s get you home before you lose your human feet to frostbite or before your wolf friends come back and eat me.”

“
I wouldn’t let them. Don’t worry. You are safe from them when I’m near.”

“
Good to know. How do you deal with this anyway? I mean, your transformation and ending up naked in the forest, in the snow? It’s worse than a woman’s time of month.”

He chuckled. “It’s only about 12 hours each time. Just before the moon sets, I usually run home to the gatehouse and go in through the biggest doggie door you ever saw and then I turn back into a human in front of my own snug fireplace.”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” I said. “Here.” I gave him my mittens for his feet.

“
Bless you,” he said and clumsily put them on.

I carried him on my back toward the gatehouse where he lived, my eyes and nose throbbing the whole way and tears streaming from my eyes and freezing on my skin.

“Why did you even come back for me, Rand?”

“
I can’t talk right now. I need my breath to carry your ass.”

“
Don’t dodge my question. Why did you come back to get me after you wounded me and left me to die of exposure?”

“
I came back because I forgive you,” I said, huffing and puffing.

“
Why?”

“
Because, if I was a werewolf, I’d want Ambra to be with me forever, too.”

“
If you were a werewolf, you would turn her?” he asked, incredulous.

“
I would try to talk her into it, every day for the rest of her mortal life,” I said. “I wouldn’t do it without her permission, like you were going to, but yeah, I wouldn’t want to go into eternity without Ambra. It would destroy me to be without her.”

“
She’s something, all right,” Corbin said.

“
Look, I lost my wife to vampires. I don’t want to lose Ambra to vampires, too, or to a werewolf either. In fact, I don’t want to fight with you over Ambra ever again,” I said.

“
Nor do I,” Corbin said. “What are we going to do about it?”

“
I think she made her choice clear,” I said firmly.

“
Aye, she has.” Corbin paused. “You severely weakened me by stabbing me with silver. Otherwise, I could have taken down that vampire. It’ll now take me several days to heal up that shoulder and the frostbite on my feet and get back my strength.”

“
I did what I had to do to protect Ambra from you.”

“
I know. I’m still not happy about being stabbed with silver. It burns like fire! Even still. And you could have killed me.”

“
I’m not going to apologize. Your behavior as a family member of Blackstone Castle was reprehensible.”

“
It was. Would you believe me if I told you I deeply regret my temporary insanity? It was the moon, you know. And her in the moonlight with that poignant, suffering look on her face. The violet shadows under her eyes, her trembling cherry-red lips.”

“
Shut up about her beauty. You don’t even know her.”

“
Longer than you have.”

“
Not the way I know her.” I swallowed hard. “I’ll carry you all the way to the gatehouse so you don’t lose your feet. Please respect my relationship with Ambra and never try anything like that again. If you can manage that—” I took a deep breath and let it out.

“
What will you do, Rand?”

“
I’ll do what I can to find…someone like you.”

“
You mean it?”

“
Yeah. I’ll make inquiries.”

“
That would make me happy, to find one of my own kind, so I don’t have to turn anyone. Ambra has been a particular temptation and I’m truly sorry.”

“
You’re a good werewolf,” I said. “You have compassion and morals when you’re not being a dirty dog.”

“
Hey, no dog jokes. I try to do good things. Sure I wanted her. If you hadn’t come on the scene, maybe Ambra and I would have stayed friends for life. Her lifetime, lad. But it was making me crazy to know you two were…”

“
Sleeping together?”

“
Yes. Werewolves are territorial and well…as I said, she makes me crazy.”

“
If it’s any consolation, Corbin, she totally makes me crazy, too. I think it comes with the territory of loving a bad-ass, mysterious woman, one who makes it her job to turn you inside out just about every other day.”

“
So true. Let’s change the subject. Ambra is Ambra. You won her, fair and square.” He laughed a little bitterly.

“
You have something else on your mind?”

“
Yes. I can hear and smell for miles. I’ve been thinking about this, even before tonight. I can help you.”

“
On our vampire hunts?”

“
Yes. Well, not the ones on the full moon, obviously. Wait…I just heard Ambra say inside the castle, ‘Where the hell is he?’”

“
You made that up,” I said.

“
I swear, it’s true. She must be standing by a window, looking for a glimpse of you.”

“
She’ll get more than a glimpse pretty soon. My busted nose hurts like hell. She’s gonna to give me so much
merde
for almost getting killed by a vampire when I went to rescue you.”

“
Shhh!” Corbin said. “I heard something.”

“
What?”

“
Quiet! Stop crunching through the snow.”

I halted and held my breath.

“Rand, I thought I heard a vampire heartbeat, but it’s gone now. I was trying to filter the sounds of the forest through our conversation.”

“
Maybe there’s another vampire lurking in our woods.”

“
Oh, thank you for that,” Corbin said. “But I doubt it. Or wouldn’t it have jumped out at us?”

“
Neither of us are in any shape to fight any more vampires tonight. We gotta get out of these woods,” I said.

“
Giddy up!” Corbin joked as he held on tight to my shoulders.

“
Don’t even go there,” I said, trudging through the snow with him on my back, my broken nose throbbing and my groin sore from the vampire kicking me where it counts.

“
Remember, you’re getting me a werewolf lover!”

“
I said I would make
inquiries
and look for one of your
kind!
”

“
Same thing!” Corbin said.

Werewolves! What a pain in the butt!

Chapter Three

The next evening, Ambra was late for our first official ski lesson, which we had scheduled the week before.

In a world where not showing up on time sometimes meant that you were dead, I nervously waited for her outside the castle grounds, at the summit of the second-biggest mountain.

A few curious wolves had followed me at a distance until it got too steep for them—they gave up their surveillance of my arduous climb, slid down the mountain and trotted away. The few ravens that had also followed me gave way to a pair of large vultures that shadowed me and finally gave up and flew off.

The second-highest summit view was both spectacular and dizzying in the fading afternoon light. The mountains rose like cathedral spires out of the snow. The rivers and streams were so blue against the snow that the color almost hurt my eyes. The wind was so blustery that the clouds passed fast overhead like a time-lapse video. The wind blew the snow from the ground up and the coldness of it bit my face like little knives. I couldn’t pull down my balaclava over my face because of my broken nose. I was supposed to apply ice several times a day. I guessed this wild chill factor qualified as applying ice.

Looking at the view, I sat down to put on the skis and catch my breath. It suddenly occurred to me that I should have put on the skis before I climbed the hill sideways, as I had seen people do, but now I was up here, so that was moot.

Ambra had almost made it to our meeting place. I was decked out in skiwear that she had loaned me weeks ago, as I didn’t know whether I should invest in the gear or not until I’d had my first official lesson.

I saw her coming downhill in her favorite skiwear, a red and black outfit that looked more like a James Bond villain than a sexy ski bunny. My eyes followed her leaps and flips. She was poetry on the slopes. Sometimes it looked like her poles weren’t even being used.

As she skied close to me, I looked away from her face. “What took you so long?” I called out.

“I unexpectedly got my period, not that it’s any of your—”

I looked directly at her with my taped-up nose, my black eyes and stitches in my eyebrow.

She gasped when she saw me. “Rand! Did Corbin do that to your face?” she asked, her cute nose scrunched up in horror. My whole face was a cringe-worthy tableau of black, purple, red and blue—I was truly a terrifying sight.

“
No, not Corbin. Last night, when I went back outside to save him, I killed a vampire.”

“
What! Which vampire?”

“
I’ll tell you at tonight’s meeting when we are all together. I am only going to tell the story once.”

“
Does the werewolf yet live?”

“
Don’t be so dramatic. Corbin got spanked, that’s all. He’ll be fine in a few days. How’s your arm?”

“
It hurts a lot, but I ski anyway. Tell me about the vampire who broke your face and changed you into Owen Wilson.”

“
Mon Dieu
, she cracks a joke! Finally.”

Ambra’s mouth twitched. “I’m usually funny.”

“No, you’re not. You’re usually Swiss. If anything, you’re my straight man.” I paused. “Let’s just ski, Ambra. We came here to ski, so let’s get ‘er done.”

“
Très bien
. Let me take you to the trail that leads to a bunny hill. Follow me, and don’t fall on your face.”

“
No bunny hills. I water ski very well. How different could this be?” I took off down the slopes of the Alps without any semblance of a ski lesson.

I slid down the mountain, faster and faster, sometimes skidding. My heart was thumping like crazy as the landscape blurred past.

Ambra, a former Olympic skier, soon caught up to me. “You maniac! You don’t even know what you’re doing. Do you have a death wish?”

“
Sometimes I do,” I admitted. “But not today.”

“
Did you even watch the ski videos I sent?”

“
Yes. Pole planting. Lean forward into my shins. Stay aligned. Use all four surfaces. I am supposed to channel the techniques of Bode Miller and Silvan Zurbriggen. Got it.”

“
All right. Don’t lean back. Forward, forward, forward.”

I nodded and waggled my eyebrows at her, which was a mistake since my face hurt a lot. “I’m taking to it like a duck to water. It’s more like surfing than water skiing, actually.”

“Quit showing off! This is not how you learn to ski the Alps. If you get too confident, you’ll end up going off the side of the mountain.”

“
Does the trail go off the edge?”

“
In places, it does. There are no flags up here telling you which way to go, only me. So, stay right with me. Not too close. We don’t want to collide.”

“
Jumping right in is how I learned to swim and water ski at the same time,” I said, and skied a little past her.

“
On the same day? How did you not drown?” she called behind me.

“
I almost did, but ‘almost’ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”