Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Eight

M orrigan’s eyes blazed through the night, fervent red, still raging. Her scream had quieted, harsh, shallow breaths misting in front of her. But I felt it as if it continued to echo along my bones, the scream renting the darkness, shattering it like glass. She swayed where she stood.

“Morrigan?”

She only held up her palm, staying my concern without a word spoken. My feet longed to move, my body craving the proximity of hers, if only to help keep her steady. Morrigan dropped into a tremulous crouch, fingertips braced against the mess of brick and stone. She pulled something from her coat pocket and, using a tiny coil of her sorcery—the same way she’d disappeared the bloodstains—gathered the vampire’s blood into it. A shadow lay in the middle of the wet pool, perhaps a fragment left behind, but I had no curiosity in me to seek it out.