Wounds that marred the soul cannot be healed by blood, Zane learns this quickly. The woman lies dead in the courtyard and for what? He still feels sick. Hell is still trying to crawl from his abdomen and swallow him whole. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and his vision is somewhat blurred. If Biron notices at all, he’s polite enough not to say.
Instead, the orc grabs the girls lifeless body and drags her away. Her body cuts a swathe through the long grass, flattening it as Biron tugs her along by the ankles, heading towards the butchers. Her meat will be used to feed the werewolves. A mercy really, Zane thought. The wolves usually tear open their prey while it still struggles and cries. Better to go by his venom than by the inch long fangs of a slobbering beast. At least he could tell his victims not to feel pain.
He realised with ire that he’d been staring as if he cared for the girls passing, and so left the courtyard in a huff, heading for the cellar entrance. Voices wafted down through the floor boards. He heard Cora’s first, sweet as honey. But the words were bitterly spoken and hushed. Like a dirty secret. He narrowed his eyes up at the ceiling. He could have sworn the raven had retired for the night; clearly upset by his kill. The conversation was hard to make out. It was as though three records played at once at different volumes and at different paces. He could only pull brief words out of the cacophony.
The vampire staggered forward and caught himself on the table, sending chairs and pottery skidding to the floor. That wench! He growled low in his chest. He should have known not to trust an outsider. All long she had been playing her games, planning to betray him, to hurt his boy and Rose. He would gut her slowly, belly up to the chin and eat her heart.
When he reached the kitchen where the voices had come from, Cora smiled at him, sweetly. Avarian eyes watching him with far too much patronisation. “You should rest,” she squawked, half way through transforming into her bird-like visage. In a second she had turned on her forked feet and run into the other room, Zane followed suite. He pushed the faceless woman she had been conspiring with, out of the way and snarled for Cora to come back. He caught up quickly, but when he reached out to grab a handful of feathers, the raven turned to smoke in his hands. Zane looked at them dumbly, at the place where Cora’s neck should be, then through his fingers to the rest of the room.
Why was he in the lounge? He was supposed to be in his room. Ready for bed and so, so tired. Sweat dripped from his brow, and he wiped at it. The back of his hand came away bloodied. But Zane took no notice. He looked to the fire where someone sat bundled in a blanket, their head bowed in a book. He was about to shout a warning, but stopped himself at the last second. How stupid of him. This was his son. “Thomas.” He said softly, chiding almost. “You know how your mother feels about these late nights. Just like your father she’ll say and then we’ll both be for it. Come on, off to bed with you.”
He frowned when the boy didn’t answer him. Thomas was not rude, nor was he prone to tantrums.
Zane moved closer. Maybe the boy had fallen to sleep. Zane crouched down and smiled softly. Of all the evil he’d done in his three hundred years, most could be forgiven by this one act of good. To have fathered such a handsome, bright young lad. He picked the boy up. But something was wrong. His boy was rigid, woodlike in his arms and suddenly the smell of rotting flesh broke Zane’s dream.
Out went the fire and its cosy light and the room was cast into darkness. What he held was a corpse, rotted and emaciated beyond recognition. He remembered now. Dead. All of them dead. Zane cried. He held the bundle to his chest hard enough to break bones should there have been a body inside it. But there was no body. And Cora was in her room. And he was alone in the dark, crying into a blanket he had torn from the couch in his fever..
2087
stormborns
yousharknotpass
