Page 9 of Moon Guardian
If I’d come across Charlie’s murderer, then this was going to be the best shot I’d get before the bastard returned to the city. My goal now wasn’t revenge, but it would be icing on the cake.
Movement caught my eye.
I took the opportunity and let my arrow fly, praying to the gods that had abandoned us long ago that I could avenge Charlie before the murderer escaped.
The arrow’s hollow echo confirmed I had struck the trunk of a tree, not flesh. Frowning, I ventured past the bushes and grappled against my footing when I tripped over an obstacle.
I stared at it, numbly realizing I’d come across another body.
Not human, I decided, surveying the male twisted at a wrong angle, his back clearly broken. He stared up into the sky, as if praying for his Goddess to save him. He hadn’t shifted, although his eyes held the tell-tale golden band that wound around his iris, marking him as a shifter. Not all of them had that, only those with fresh Goddess magic in their veins. Long slashes decorated his corpse, spilling his enchanted blood into the soil.
Perhaps this was what had brought on the storms so early, and in the wolves’ territory.
While the stench of blood and his eerie stare unnerved me, it meant I was on the right track. I didn’t know who killed this shifter. I didn’t care.
Their ceremony was what called the storms. If I stopped them, it would end this madness and death.
My sister would be safe. She wouldn’t end up like Charlie.
Charlie.
His name was nothing more than a memory now and it stuck in my throat, forcing me to swallow it down. Grief twisted in my gut and finally came out as a scream.
I should be quiet.
I should be silent as death.
Rage ripped through me in ways that I couldn’t absolve. I drew an arrow and stabbed the shifter in the chest, his blood the only thing that seemed to satisfy the raw emotion that boiled in my veins.
Slashing again, then again, I took out my rage on the dead shifter, screaming vengeance for Charlie, for all that had happened to me, for a life spent living in fear and waiting for my next loved one to be taken away.
No more.
This was going to end, now.
My chest heaving, I stood, sensing eyes on me.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, spinning in a circle.
The leaves shifted.
The shadows moved.
But no one answered me.
I wielded my bloody arrow and bared my teeth. “Show yourself, you coward!”
Something watched me.
Or someone.
I felt the interest of a monster out there, perhaps Charlie’s murderer who now wanted to toy with me.
Let the beast try to take me down.
Power and rage fueled my limbs, giving me strength unlike any I had ever felt before. Perhaps the Goddess magic was affecting me after my recent bout with the storms.
I winced when an icy droplet landed on my cheek, burning its way down to my neck.
