Blood Moon (Skye Morrison Vampire Series, #5.5) (22 page)
Read Blood Moon (Skye Morrison Vampire Series, #5.5) Online
Authors: J.L. McCoy
Chapter One
Tainted Blood
January 1
st
, 1702
The past is a jealous warrior. It pokes and prods for undivided attention when it is the present which needs the most nourishment.
~Brendan
I don’t know exactly why it mattered to me so much. I wasn’t done with things in Faerie, but it was also not done with me. Things had turned out so differently for me than for Shade, but I didn’t envy her, not one bit. I loved her to death, of course. She was my sister and always had my back no matter what, and I had hers. It was the fact that we were left orphans because of Faerie that bothered me so much. Mom dying in the battle against the Unseelie in the lands surrounding the Scren had left us hollow and fractured. Shade had tried to keep us safe, even Mom, but fate had a way of taking away everything that we held dear.
Now, what did that leave us? Shade was preoccupied with the Seelie Scren Palace, and now, the Unseelie Kingdom. I preferred to be left on my own and went along my own way to rally some Seelie warriors to fight the breaches on the boundaries of Faerie. An impossible task, if you asked me, but no one asked, and I just did it. I’d turned myself into an unforgiving killing machine, ready at a moment’s notice to take down any Unseelie who made the unfortunate error of crossing my path. Nothing gave me more pleasure than charring an unauthorized Unseelie creature wreaking havoc in the human world.
I didn’t know how many were out there or how many still roamed the streets even after I’d worked to hack at their numbers, but there were thousands who’d escaped the boundaries of Faerie. I traveled all across the western borders, down to the south, and was now roaming the east to clear out the Sluagh and Unseelie alike who were plaguing the streets. It was overwhelming, and I was accumulating an unsightly amount of scars to prove my efforts. Some were nothing but superficial scratches. Other injuries were more concerning.
Still, there was never a greater thrill than battling the Unseelie, whooping their asses, breaking their bodies and leaving them charred and bloody. Recently I’d managed to run right into a trio of Sluagh hanging around in a smoky underground club, closed in the early morning hours but still reeking of sweat, cigarettes and trash.
I’d gotten a tip I might find such a group of escapee Unseelie filth on the edges of that seedy town. I had a lot of better ideas for spending my day than traversing the desolate streets of Detroit. The amount of abandoned houses, factories and boarded-up buildings was astounding. Still more shocking was the piles of garbage overflowing every gutter.
This place was forgotten, left to rot by the humans who had once called it home sweet home. And it was a perfect place to hang out for Unseelie Sluagh creatures.
I’d discovered the nest of Unseelie, downing their mixed spirits and laughing as they passed the time trying out new card games and staring at the news on the hoisted TV in the corner of the nightclub bar. I knew the moment I stood outside the door that this was the place. My Fire elemental senses flared up in warning and did what they could to make me turn around. But I wasn’t one to let fear bury me. In fact, I thrived on it and made every effort to get into as much trouble as I possibly could.
Good thing Mom wasn’t around anymore to witness my destructive personal preferences. She’d probably bind me to our house near Portland, leash me to the grounds forever for such behavior.
Well, she wasn’t around anymore. I was all alone in this desolation.
Standing before the double doors of the exterior of the run-down bar, I pulled out my Empyrean blade, willing it to life. Flames ignited along its smooth metallic surface, licking the blade and encasing it in wicked orange-yellow light. The heat of it never bothered me, nor did it even burn. I was impervious to the heat, and the element had been coursing through my veins from the moment I was born. The tangerine glow lit up my face as I grinned wickedly, stretching my neck from side to side before stepping back and kicking the doors off their hinges.
“Good morning!” I hollered out as I rushed in, finding a stunned bartender who was most definitely Unseelie, but not a warrior of any kind. He stood frozen with a glass in one hand and a filthy towel in the other, wiping water spots away. The moment he willed himself to move again, he dove under the counter to hide as I crashed through the array of tables and shoved at the first seated creature.
I swiped the legs out from under his chair, and the Draelik went crashing backward. Before he could recover, his friends were already pouncing on me. One was much taller than the other and a bit farther away. I sliced the short one straight through the gut and managed to spin on my feet and whack the tall one on the back before he could reach me.
He went stumbling forward, crushing a table with the weight of his body. He jumped to his feet in a blur of motion, producing a long staff with a triple pointed jab at the end. I lifted my eyebrows and smirked.
“Nice toothpick you got there,” I said.
The guy didn’t appreciate my humor.
He bolted toward me, and I might’ve dodged him enough to trick him into going the opposite way, except his partner, the one I’d initially swiped the chair out from under, decided to join in at that very moment. I felt a hard jab on my back, launching me forward, nearly missing the three pronged staff, but not quite clearing it enough.
Dammit!
The staff sank into my side just as I was able to half turn and slice the offender’s neck wide open. Black, putrid blood poured out of the cut as the Draelik dropped to his knees, grasping the wound before he began to jerk wildly, convulsing and rolling his eyes back into his head before his body sprawled across the gritty bar-room floor.
I yanked out the staff and thwacked it over its owner’s head, sending him over a chair. This gave me enough time to jump over him to stab him right through the chest.
He reached up, touching the long, talon-like fingertips of his black hands on the fiery flames of my sword as though he didn’t even notice the fire charring his skin. With a haggard sigh, he breathed out his last and dropped his head back onto the floor with a thud, falling perfectly still.
I grasped my side, feeling the sear of the deep gouges the Draelik’s weapon had made. I’d been fortunate to avoid being touched by their talons, which were highly poisonous and could assimilate anything they touch. Still, the injury was deep and already gushing blood.
Another lovely scar to add to my ever-expanding collection. Whoopty freakin’ doo.
The bartender peered over the top of the bar now that silence had fallen. I waved at him and sat at one of the undisturbed stools in front of him.
“Got any vodka and a clean towel?”
He nodded, fear filling him up until I could’ve sworn he had probably wet his pants.
“Make it snappy.”
He tossed what I needed and scurried into the backroom like his life depended on it. Watching him go, I shook my head before unscrewing the bottle, dumping it on my wound and hissing out into the empty room.
“Mother… freakin’ eggs…” I hissed between my teeth and breathed slowly through the amplified pain. “Ahh.” I sighed as it ebbed away into a dull throb. I’d had worse injuries, yes, but damn, this one was downright excruciating.
I folded the clean towel up and pressed it to the ragged edges of the wound, sucking in another agonizing breath.
“Crap!” I felt on the verge of blacking out.
I took out a knife from my pack then proceeded to ease my hoodie off and yank my T-shirt over my head. I cut the shirt into a rough strip then tied it sloppily around my middle, holding the towel into place. Once satisfied with the makeshift bandage, I grabbed the Vodka bottle and downed a few swallows before slamming it back onto the bar.
The fluid felt good burning down my throat. It was a slow burn, one that distracted me from the horrible mess of pain on my side.
“Thanks for the drink, dude!” I hollered out. I felt bad not leaving a tip, but I thought leaving the bartender alive was tip enough.
Heading out, I walked through the cooling air around me. I didn’t know if it was spring or fall anymore. The seasons were beginning to blur, especially since I was in and out of the Land of Faerie all the time, which seemed to have a different season every single day. I suppose it didn’t really matter.
Walking didn’t do me any favors. The bandage on my side wasn’t working that well. It had already started seeping through, and this continued activity, let alone just breathing, was excruciating.
There’d been no other hunters with me on my trip into Detroit. On occasion, we teamed up when a scout found a large faction of Unseelie held up in some pit in the drudgery of the cities. Otherwise, we hunted alone. Sometimes I hunted with Rylan, a changeling Teleen warrior who could glamour himself to look human, hiding his fiery blue skin. At the moment, I was alone, hence my dire predicament.
I stumbled on my feet but caught myself in time before the ground met my face. The pull on my side surely reopened the blasted wound. Had I known I’d be taking on three Draeliks at once, I might’ve thought this through better. All three were disguised as men in long trench coats and dark fedoras to hide their grotesque, pitted skin and the dark, greenish-black tint of their hides. I’d been near this city before, for who knows what reason, maybe a summer camp? Hell, I couldn’t remember, but I wasn’t that familiar with it, and I had made a rookie mistake. I’d been left scathed and critically wounded, alone in a deserted town. I hated this part of the United States; it was so different from the West Coast. It felt less alive and much less crowded. A ghost of what it once was.
The approaching night didn’t seem any different than the day, which was fortunate, as the blood drenched the top of my jeans and was seeping through my black hoodie as I limped forward. It was unfortunate, too, because I needed a doctor ASAP. The world spun for a moment, making me suck in a breath and close my eyes to steady myself. Damn, those Draeliks had some fierce strength. At least, they weren’t poisonous unless they cut you with their damn talons. Even so, if I didn’t get to a healer soon, it wouldn’t matter either way.
I huffed out a breath and paused to lean against the stone exterior of a dilapidated building before wincing as I got back to walking. The sweat dripped down my temples, and I could feel my blood draining lower than it ever had before. I reached out with my magical powers to my sisters, hoping Shade’s faery powers would detect me this far away. Maybe even Anna would sense my distress. We were forever connected by blood, which we’d discovered quite by accident. I rarely used this emergency call since I liked the solitary life, but I was desperate.
“Shade,” I muttered. I found a doorway in a dirt-streaked alley full of garbage. It had two steps leading up to it, and I slid down onto them, leaning against the cold metallic door as the world began to spin. “Come on, Sis… need some help here….”
A flash blinded me, forcing my eyelids shut. No matter how hard I strained to reopen my eyes, they stuck with the weight of a thousand anchors holding them down. As the world sank away, a streak of vivid, red-tinted light flashed on the other side of my eyelids, followed by a shadow.
“Hold on, Benton. We got you.”
