Page 34 of Blood Sacrifice

Every time I think of those youths being executed, it made nausea crawl up the back of my throat. That entire era had been dark and harrowing.

“Mother priestess had always been wary of him,” Luna replied. “She believed him to be a soul eater. I remember hearing her and another priestess discussing it when they thought they were alone, but the only secrets we have are those that stay inside our heads.”

“What’s a soul eater?” I asked, since I didn’t want to talk about the war and the devastation it caused.

“Someone who can absorb the power of another at the moment of their death,” Luna said, and I heard a soft sigh. “He was deliberately seeking people with specific abilities. Some of our priestesses mysteriously went missing when he sent them on missions for him, and he tended to breed the priestesses with specific priests and then the babies were taken. He said they were being raised away from the temples, but none of them wereever found. The same as that baby born from a priestess and dire wolf…” Her voice trailed off.

I had long believed that the baby had been killed, but I had believed it was included in the murder of its parents. This version was more sinister than I ever wanted to believe.

“It was why mother priestess gathered herbs to help prevent pregnancy,” Luna concluded, looking out the window. “If we had conceived a child, he would have killed us to steal the magical gifts of the baby.”

A low growl rumbled in my chest at the thought of Balor anywhere near Luna or any child we may have created.

“I don’t even know what to say to all this,” I finally replied. “I knew he was an evil bastard who liked to torment those around him, but sucking magical gifts from people by killing them is a new low—even for him.”

“Evil exists alongside good, disguised and lurking in the darkness,” Luna said. “Just waiting for the opportunity to strike. It’s the reason why, after all these years, very few people know where I live or how to contact me directly.”

“I thought I was the only one who tended to keep myself isolated,” I muttered.

Her lips turned up in a sad smile. “Nope. We both saw the face of evil back then, and were touched by its actions.” She shivered slightly, wrapping her arms around herself.

In my mind, I could almost imagine Balor reaching out toward us, summoned by us speaking about him. “Let’s change the topic for a while. Why don’t you tell me about your journey around the globe, and how you changed the way you perform magic.”

Luna leaned back and stared out the window for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to speak. “My life has been lonely. I stayed in South America for nearly a hundred years, wandering and waiting, thinking you may have been imprisonedand searching for news.” She paused, and I felt the ocean of time stretching between us. “Then I moved east toward Europe. The majority of the witch trials had ended, and the witches who remained were forging new lives for themselves, taking on new roles in the community to allow them to hide in plain sight.”

“I remember those days,” I replied. “Lycans were eradicated, wolves hunted into near extinction. Balor had been killing other magic users so he could control most of the Americas. They had been dark days and the rebellion was living in caves with nothing but our instincts to survive.”

“It’s a miracle any of us survived,” Luna said. “The world seemed to turn its back on mysticism and magic and want scientific explanations. We had to learn to blend in.”

I barked out a laugh at her disgusted expression. The last thing a dire wolf wanted to do was pretend to be a normal human, living a life of civility. Luna rolled her eyes, and started to laugh. Something happened in that moment, and it felt as if a barrier that existed between us evaporated.

I relaxed back in my seat as the car ate the miles away as we chatted about the adventures we had both been on over the years. What struck me was how similar our paths had been, almost as if we had been mirroring each other. We had been half a world away from each other, and yet we were still two halves of the one whole.

My wolf soothed at being so close to our mate. Luna hadn’t dismissed the idea of being mated, just that she needed time for us to get to know each other. I didn’t care if I had to abduct her and make her my prisoner until she realised she belonged in my life, I intended to keep her forever.

Chapter Eleven

Luna

The world had changed from the last time I walked the path up to this village. It had been lost since it was so high up in the mountains, the Intihuatana stone was placed here by the magical priests of a bygone era, the sundial accurately indicating summer and winter solstice. These stones had been destroyed by the conquistadors when they rampaged across the Americas stealing wealth and slaughtering the indigenous people.

I stood on the terraces of Machu Picchu and watched the people moving like tiny ants up the winding trail of Huayna Picchu opposite us. The twin sister peaks had stood proudly for thousands of years, recording the history of the people who had lived on this land.

Machu Picchu had initially been created as an astronomical observatory, a place for the priests and priestesses to study the stars and predict the future. Over time, more people settled there until it became a functioning village with livestock, the terraces used to grow crops.

The village stretched across the top of the mountain, each temple and living area accessed by stone steps that created a network of activity. It was an Incan citadel hidden in the Andes Mountains. The Urubamba River coursed in the valley below, feeding life and allowing the village to flourish in this environment. The agricultural terraces to the east had originallybeen created to allow sacred herbs to grow under moonlight, but as the old ways vanished, crops had taken their place.

I ran my fingers over the wall, my memories taking me back in time. The masons in our empire had been before their time. They used an ashlar technique that allowed structures to be built without mortar since they were carefully cut to fit together. These rocks could tell stories of a bygone era if the correct spell was used.

Tourists moved around the complex, taking pictures with the remains or llamas behind their selfies. They were so busy seeing this place through the eye of a lens, they missed the true beauty here. It had been built from stones carried here, and the complex built long before architects and engineers would have created massive problems about constructing these structures on the top of a mountain.

I sat down and lost myself in the unique energy of this place, ignoring the chatter of people around me. It was a while later that my attention was drawn back when two women who were standing close to me started to discuss some male they were admiring.

“Go down and ask him to take a picture of you with the mountain behind you,” the redhead encouraged her friend. “Holiday flings don’t count as infidelity, and honestly a night with that man would be worth any repercussions.”

Curiosity made me look in the direction of their gazes. I recognised the tall figure immediately, Salvator standing watching over the village, his sunglasses hiding his eyes and transforming him into a handsome stranger who was gaining a lot of attention.

He had been taken by the empire when I was younger. The next time I saw him, he was no longer all gangly limbs and laughing at silly jokes. He had become a dark and dangerous assassin who killed without remorse. Standing herein the sunlight, he made an arresting figure, untouchable and unapproachable.

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