Page 12 of Blood Sacrifice

Now, all I needed to do was determine what had happened to her, and how I was going to claim what was mine.

Chapter Five

Luna

There was something special about standing in Sacred Valley since it was where my village had been when I was younger. My parents had walked this land, farmed this land, and added their energy into the very soil I now stood on.

The past collided with the present, and I swear I could almost hear Father’s voice on the wind that moved the trees. I had spent countless nights standing here watching the moon, and now I could only visit it as a guest.

A market had vendors selling keepsakes for people to take home with them, but none of that interested me. The two wolves who had been following us had disappeared two days ago, and their absence added to the mystery of what was happening here.

I only allowed myself to visit this place once every hundred years on the anniversary of my leaving, and this was the first time I had felt such a difference in the energy, as if something was draining the very life from the land.

“It’s such a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Sylvia asked, stopping beside me as her husband Frank negotiated with one of the vendors.

“Almost untouched by the passage of time,” I replied.

Sylvia linked her arm through mine, leading me back into the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. “We’re going to a traditional café for lunch and empanadas,” she said, making mesmile since everything in her life revolved around food. Other people in the group wanted to experience Peru through the landscape, but Sylvia wanted to create her memories through food.

The little café had an open oven, and a guinea pig enclosure that looked like a terracotta castle at the back. Sylvia thought they were pets to entertain the children, and I wasn’t going to upset her with the truth.

“Did you buy anything nice?” I asked Frank, nodding at his bag.

“Some carved wooden figures to put in our travel room back home.” He pulled out a wooden llama to show me, followed by a hummingbird. Their love of life and the simple things associated with it appealed to me. There were times when I envied humans and the one lifetime allotted to them, and because their time was limited, they packed so much into their eighty years.

I left them to finish their lunch since they were taking photographs of everything before they ate it, and wandered outside to pretend to look at the stalls. A prickling at the back of my neck told me someone was watching me, and I touched the pendant at my neck to ensure the null shield was in place around me. Anyone searching for magical abilities would see only a human when they looked at me.

I randomly picked up items in the pretence of being interested, but I was trying to ascertain who was taking an interest in me. A few moments later, someone brushed against my arm, and the flash of a vision manifested in my head, the image of a man falling to his knees with his arms wrapped around his head as he screamed in emotional agony.

I jolted back, directly into a hard chest. Strong hands gripped my arms to prevent me from tumbling over.

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered, trying to free myself but entangling myself further.

“Maybe stop moving,” a deep male voice said from behind me. “Then we can free ourselves.”

I froze, my teeth catching my bottom lip as my cheeks warmed.

He expertly managed to separate us, and I found myself staring at a black T-shirt that was stretched across a muscular chest. My gaze slowly moved up his chest to a firm jaw with a short beard. His eyes were covered with dark sunglasses, and his messy black hair fell forward toward his eyes.

“Sorry again,” I mumbled. “I seem to be a little skittery today.”

He stared down at me, and I couldn’t explain it but it felt as if he saw through the enchantment surrounding me and into my soul. The man nodded once, and turned on his heel to stalk away from me. A memory from so long ago returned to my mind, the moment that Salvator walked away from me.

My hand lifted unconsciously as if to try and stop the stranger.

I was brought back into the present when Sylvia and Frank appeared, chattering away about the lunch. She handed me a cool bottle of water.

“Who was that tall, dark, and handsome stranger you were talking to?” Sylvia nudged me, bouncing her eyebrows.

“I have no idea, but do you ever get the feeling you’ve met someone before?” I asked, trying to place where I knew the stranger from. The problem was that I seemed to constantly be searching for Salvator in every person I met, trying to piece the fragments of what I remembered about him onto strangers. The main memory of him was the way he made me feel, the safety he brought to my life, and how my heart responded to his energy.

The tour guide took that moment to call us all back to the bus. Even as I stepped up onto the bus, I stopped for a moment to look back to where I watched the stranger walk away. This place was filled with too many ghosts of the past that were haunting me everywhere I visited.

Salvator had promised that he would find me if he survived the war, and I believed him. He was the reason I survived that first night, paying the trader to smuggle me out of the territory. The kindness of his wife had helped me survive the fever that consumed me for days as the cuts on my body became infected. She had cared for me, and I ended up spending several weeks with them, helping them to make their lotions for ailments.

A feeling of unrest settled in the bottom of my stomach, making me nervous and jumpy. I couldn’t shake the sensation that events were developing around me and there was nothing I could do but watch it unfold.

That night, I fell into a deep dream vision, the barriers of the past falling away to leave me vulnerable to memories that tormented me. In my vision, I visited the last day I spent with my sister in the temple, the night Balor seized power. I was as helpless tonight as I was back then, forced to relive the moment my life was ripped from me by men seeking power.

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