Blood Law (5 page)

No
food in more than a day, coupled with what was going on behind her and the
continued blood loss had taken its toll. If she didn’t find a trash can to
crawl into soon, she’d die on the street.

At
least in a trash can she’d have some privacy. The shattering of glass and the
subsequent pelting of needle-sharp shards into her skin forced Falon to roll
into a fetal position with her hands over her head. She prayed once more that
the two demonic warriors would just go the hell away. Didn’t happen. One of
them—she didn’t dare uncurl her body to see which one—slammed to the ground
beside her with a hard thud. A harsh whoosh of air expelled from the body’s
lungs, and she heard the crunch of broken glass beneath the feet of the other.
“Please, please, just leave me alone,” she begged.

A
large, powerful hand grabbed her, its thick uncompromising fingers wrapped
around her biceps. Falon gasped, opened her eyes, and froze. Deep
turquoise-colored eyes blazed down at her. Her skin chilled, then heated before
he yanked her up as if she didn’t weigh more than a small sack of potatoes.

“Get
your damn hands off me!” she shrieked, kicking at Vulkasin.

Instead
of obeying her, he shook his head as if she were naught but an annoying child
begging for a piece of candy. He had sheathed one sword but held the other high
in his right hand. With his left hand, he pulled her up to him and held her
firmly against his chest. He turned easily and pointed his sword at Conan, who
glared from where he lay broken and bloodied on the sidewalk. Malevolent heat
radiated off his body. Falon cringed into the hardness of the man holding her.
He laughed and pressed the tip of his sword into Conan’s jugular. “I’d planned
on killing you, Viktor. Do you think I’m here by accident? I’ve been tracking
you for days.” Vulkasin sighed as if bored. “Your death will be my pleasure.”
As he pushed the tip into Viktor’s skin, a small fountain of blood sprayed onto
the blade. “But I may spare you, for a few minutes.”

Conan
sneered and spit at Vulkasin’s sword. Vulkasin jabbed the sword deeper into
Conan’s throat. More blood spurted. Falon cringed at the gory sight.

“Tell
me where Balor has gone and why, and I will give you a ten-minute head start.”

Conan’s
black eyes snapped in fury. “I do not know. I broke with my clan years ago, as
you know.”

Vulkasin
tsked tsked and shook his head. His blade sliced deeper into Conan’s throat.
Blood squirted in short thick pumps from the artery. Falon was going to be
sick.

“Back
East! The clans converge for the rising!” Conan screamed, pushing as far back
into the asphalt as he could.

“The
rising you will never see,” Vulkasin sneered, but retracted his blade. “You
just bought yourself ten minutes.”

With
her still clutched to his chest, Vulkasin whipped around and strode toward a
shiny, sleek motorcycle surrounded by more choppers. Behind the sleek cycles
stood dark, hooded figures, all the more menacing for their silence. “You will
not see the rising of the Blood Moon, Vulkasin!” Conan shouted.

Falon
trembled with her desire to flee, but she didn’t dare move a muscle. She was
too afraid that if she struggled, the demon who held her so tightly against him
that she could scarcely breathe would drop her and leave her for Conan.
Unfortunately, she was just as terrified of where she would end up if this
whatever-the-hell-he-was took her away. The thought had her suddenly finding
her voice as well as her courage.

“Let
go of me!” She kicked with her good leg against the ironhard thigh of her captor.
He readjusted her weight in his arm and turned toward Conan. Just as they
turned, a blazing force of energy slashed across her waist up to the bottom
swell of her breast. Falon screamed in anguish. The initial pain from the
attack had been bad enough, but instantaneously the wound burned as if someone
had poured a bottle of alcohol into it. She hissed and writhed, unable to find
a way to deal with the ungodly burn. She was going to die.

“You
push me too far, Slayer.” The man holding her tightened his grip, and with a
mighty hurl he let his blade fly. In the white-hot haze of her pain, Falon
heard the sickening thunk of steel penetrating flesh and bone, the harsh scream
of a man in agony, then the slow hiss of air as it escaped his lungs.

Unable
not to, she turned. The steel blade had impaled Conan straight through the
heart, passing through him and into the concrete as easily as if he were
butter.

“He
won’t be pissing me off again,” Vulkasin said in a deadly whisper.

Fear
and unholy agony pushed Falon’s heart into overdrive, the force of its beating
jamming her throat. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. She
prayed for sweet, blissful death.

Vulkasin
turned a scorching grin on her. Then, thankfully, the world went dark.

RAFAEL
SIGNALED FOR his men to mount up. Harleys revved around him. His sergeant at
arms, Anton, inclined his head toward the crumpled body hanging in Rafe’s arms.

“What
do you want me to do with her?” Anton asked.

Rafael
looked down at the ashen face. The girl—woman, he amended, as he felt the lush
weight of her breasts against his arm—weighed much less than half his two
hundred and forty pounds. Her height was a good hand and a half less than his
own six foot three. Except for her breasts, she was nothing but a bag of skin
and bones. Her state of health didn’t concern him, however. That she’d seen and
heard too much, did.

He
looked around and noted no other strange faces around him. Had his men not been
circled around the corner grocery scaring those off who might have rubbernecked
the fray, he would have had to do some serious cleanup. As it was, there was
merely this sole slip of a woman to deal with.

For a
moment, he studied her, remembering the fire and courage she’d shown as she’d
fought the Slayer and tried to flee them both. A grudging admiration swept
through him, and he hesitated. But only for a second. She could only bring
trouble. He didn’t need the attention, and he sure as hell didn’t want it.

He
turned, nodded, and made to hand her over to Anton. Her eyes flickered open,
and deep murky pools of what he thought might be blue eyes beneath all of her
suffering stopped him. Once again, he hesitated, but as Anton grabbed her arms,
her ripped sweatshirt fell open, exposing full, creamy breasts. Blood shot to
his cock. Rafe growled but released her to his sergeant at arms.

His
desire sealed her fate. He wanted no woman clouding his resolve. No woman for
his brother to use against him.

As he
looked down at her, Anton licked his lips.

“Make
her end painless,” Rafe softly said.

Anton
nodded, but his eyes sparked in undisguised lust.

“No,
Anton. Leave her some dignity.”

Anton
scowled but again nodded. As he turned toward an adjacent alley, Rafael strode
to Salene, pulled his sword from his chest, and deftly decapitated him. Seconds
later he watched the Slayer turn to dust. He wiped the sword blade across his
right thigh, cleaning any vestige of the Slayer from it. As he sheathed it with
its twin behind his back, he caught the twinkle of something under the
sputtering streetlight.

He
reached down and picked up a chunky gold ring from the gray dust that was once
Viktor Salene. It warmed in his hand. Awestruck by its simple beauty and the
fact that it was of a howling wolf similar to the wolf emblazoned on the back
of his black leather duster, Rafael held it up to the dim light.

The
ruby eye blazed. A harsh wave of frigid air moved through Rafael as he realized
what he held in his hand. The Eye of Fenrir. The savage wolf of doom. A traitor
to his own kind. The talisman of the wolf Slayers. Enemy of the Lycan nation.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. The ring, lore told, held the captured spirit of Fenrir.
Fenrir had been lured into the ring by Singarti, the great spirit woman of the
Inuit, during the great battle of the North more than three centuries ago. And
there, buried deep in the frozen tundra, it was supposed to stay, keeping the
spirit within frozen for all eternity. It possessed great power and if in the
wrong hands could unleash Fenrir to his terrible physical form. However, if kept
secured, the ring bearer had the potential to wield greater power. Rafael
smiled. Was this a sign? His smile faded. Or a precursor to their doom?

How
did Viktor get his hands on it? No word had leaked that it had been unearthed.

Did
Balor, master of the Slayers, know of Viktor’s possession of it? Rafe doubted
it. The ring was too powerful, doubly so with the coming of the Blood Moon.
Balor would never stand for anyone other than himself to possess it. Was that
why Salene had gone off on his own?

Rafael
folded his fingers around the ring. Heat lasered painfully into his hand. He
clutched it tighter, unwilling to give in to the savagery of Fenrir. He was
alpha, leader of the great Vulkasin pack. Only death by a Slayer could take his
power. Many had died trying over the last three decades of his life, and many
more would meet the same fate. Heat flared in his hand, as if to say he was a
fool to think he could survive the coming of the final battle, a modern-day
Ragnarok. He smiled grimly and opened his hands. The ruby eye dimmed. He slid
it onto the third finger of his right hand. “You have been delivered to me for
a reason, Fenrir. But rest assured, you will not be the death of my pack.”

He
looked over his shoulder to see that Anton had faded into the black jaws of the
alley. As more questions swirled in his mind, an uneasiness overcame Rafael.
What did Viktor, a rogue wolf Slayer with an inflated ego, want with a homeless
girl? He had been close to marking her, something the Slayers did only when the
person being marked held value to the clan. Though Viktor was known as a
mercenary rogue, one who did not limit his kills to Rafael’s people, he had
blood ties to the direct descendants of the original Slayers. If the girl held
value to a Slayer, she would hold value to Rafael.

“Anton!”
Rafael strode toward the alley just as his sergeant at arms emerged
empty-handed. “The girl?”

Anton’s
dark brows crowded together, forming a thick mono-brow across his deep-set pale
eyes. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I took care of her as you
commanded.”

Rafael
sprinted past his man in a blur. He did not need his keen sense of smell to
locate her because his eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness. He found her
lying in a crumpled heap next to an overflowing Dumpster, buried beneath
several stacks of cardboard. He swooped upon the lifeless form.

Shoving
the debris aside, Rafe grabbed her to him, grateful that Anton had not snapped
her neck. His powers were not so great that he could fuse bone and nerves. Not
yet anyway. Thankfully, Anton had only smothered her. Rafael sank to his knees
and carefully pulled her into the cradle of his arms. Pushing her head back and
her jet black hair from her ashen cheeks, he opened her cooling lips, pressed
his own warm lips to hers, and gently blew.

AS
THEY HEADED out of the city, Rafael could not fight the feeling that the human
draped across his gas tank was going to create an uproar with his pack. They
were no more accepting of humans than he. While he did business with humans
because he needed their money, Rafael was staunchly opposed to any human for
any reason breaching his tightly controlled world. He went to them; they were
not permitted to come to him.

He
could barely stand the stench of humans. Prejudice, hate, and greed clung to
them like stink on shit. Were it not for humans, his race would not be dying
out, and they would still thrive in Europe.

There
was little solace in the fact that if his kind were not able to take human form
and walk among them as equals, Rafael would not have been born. And while that
may be true, it was the human ancestors of the original wolf Slayers who were
as hell-bent on eradicating his kind as the day Peter Corbet accepted the
charter to eradicate wolves from the British Isles by his king, Edward I.

Since
the violent split of the pack fourteen years ago, the necessity for humans to
survive had increased tenfold. Rafael resented it. He resented his brother more
for making it so. By refusing to see that Rafael had saved him from a death
sentence for lying with a Slayer, Lucien insisted Rafael had intentionally
slain his chosen one, then hammered home a deep wedge between what had been a
healthy, thriving pack. Once, pack Vulkasin was the undisputed alpha pack among
all the packs in the world, leader in commerce, military, and in government.
But his brother ruined it all in one furious act of selfishness. And now, Rafe
needed humans to support his pack.

Rafael
sighed, weary of his brother’s continued acts of vengeance. The time was at
hand. Rafael knew what he had been in denial about for years. For the greater
good of his pack and the Lycan nation at large, he must eliminate his brother.
He cringed as he always did when the realization hit him. He loved his brother,
Great Spirit Mother, help him, but he did. And there were times like now when
he despised him. So much at stake, so much to lose, so much pain and suffering,
for what? Lucien’s refusal to see that he was duped by a woman? A Slayer?