Page 24 of Blood Sacrifice

My sensitive ears were still ringing after the blast, but I stopped the car about a mile from the property, and pulled the SIM card from my phone. Luna watched me and reluctantly handed me her phone when I held my hand out. I put them both into a Faraday container I kept in the compartment under the seat.

“Does that mean I’m doubly dead?” Luna asked, her face pale and her eyes wide.

“Looks like we both are until I figure out what the fuck is going on,” I snapped, beyond pissed off that I hadn’t been able to keep her safe for any more than two days in that house.

She wiggled her nose. “It was a little bright in there anyway.” She settled back in the seat. “There was no magic involved, I would have felt it.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” I pointed out, slamming my car into first and hitting the accelerator.

“Technically, it does,” Luna replied, fumbling in her bag at her feet until she found her sunglasses. “If it was witches, an explosion of elements would have killed us, and lycans would have surrounded us and ripped our throats out, so that leaves humans and their explosives.”

I eyeballed her while driving. “Lycans can set explosives as well.”

“True, but you prefer to look your prey in the eyes,” she replied. “Lycans also prefer to ensure their enemy is dead.”

She was right on both accounts. “So, what do you suggest?” I asked.

“That someone is using humans to do their dirty work.” She turned her head to stare out the window, a soft sigh sounding. “It’s something I have been aware of for a while. Humans or creatures with some magical trait being used by the stronger supernatural creatures with the promise of turning them or helping them increase their powers.”

“Probably Balor,” I muttered, my knuckles whitening with the grip I had on the steering wheel.

She moved in her seat until she faced me. “Have you seen Balor in recent years? Physically, I mean, not rumours or secondary accounts. Have you actually seen him?”

I cast my mind back to the last time I had seen my old master, but it was around two hundred years ago in Lima. Sincethen, it had always been one of his generals that acted on his behalf.

“No,” I conceded. “It’s been a long time since anyone has actually seen him. My belief is that he is holed up somewhere, hiding where no one can rip his head off.”

“Hmmm.” Luna pouted slightly and chewed the corner of her mouth. “None of our clairvoyants have spoken of him in forever, and he ceased being in my visions a few hundred years ago.”

“Someone is running his organisation,” I replied, finally thinking the situation through differently. We had spent so long in this war with Balor, I never stopped to think who was in charge. I had assumed it was him.

“It’s just a thought,” Luna said. “I haven’t sensed any priestesses dying in recent years, but then I believed it was because they were in hiding. Now I’m not so sure.”

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. This was the woman I had spent hours watching over when she was in the temple, I had spent every moment we would steal away with her, and in that time I had studied her every reaction. There was something she wasn’t telling me.

“What is it?” I asked. “What are you hiding?”

She returned to looking out the window. “Not hiding,” she replied in a soft voice. “Something that I can’t decipher from my vision.”

I had overheard the mother priestess talking about Luna back when we were all slaves to an empire. She had been a powerful witch with the gift of sight. I couldn’t remember a time when her visions weren’t correct—it was the reason I had acted immediately earlier.

I didn’t push her any further, letting her work through her vision to interpret it in her own time.

“Do you have many dire wolves in your pack?” Luna asked about an hour later.

“We have a few hundred. Dire wolves are rare, the mutation that creates us only showing up occasionally, even in families that carries the gene.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “Balor is still collecting young dire wolves from packs when they first shift and reveal who they are.”

“There are other dire wolves being born from different families,” Luna replied, still looking out the window.

“I thought they were unique to our area of the world,” I said, once again realising I didn’t know as much as I thought, my brow furrowing. “How do you know all this?”

“I walked a long way,” she replied cryptically. “A young vampire was being stalked by a hellspawn about fifteen years ago, so I bound her powers. She would only receive her powers again when she found her fated mate. He was a black wolf.”

“A dire,” I confirmed.

“My understanding is that his family births a dire wolf every generation. When I studied the genealogy of other families, it seems about right.”

I hit the brakes of the car and spun to face Luna. “Did you say hellspawn?” I asked, my mind finally catching up with what she said.

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