The Bloody Moon #4
“Yes, and he told me at the end what he intended to do to you. Worst of all, he wore my face. He’d taken power from me, power from what I had become in those final moments as rage and grief consumed me.
” His head shakes harshly. “The first time I ever became something other than a man, and he stole the ability. No training I had done had brought it forward, but witnessing what I had did so, and he used it to create a monster out of me when he came for you.”
The truth, as he knows it, is written across his face. No lie rests there. Only regret and grief.
He studies me. “All this time… you thought it was me.” Not a question. A statement.
I don’t deny it. In truth, I can’t speak.
Until the words finally tear free. “It was him?”
“I shapeshifted there at the end.” A humorless grin tugs down his lips.
“When I attacked him, I became what we never thought me capable of. A wolf. It must have lain dormant until then.” His gaze darkens.
“Until my blood ignited with the wrath of vengeance from what I’d witnessed upon opening that door—him mutilating Father's chest in death. Like that story Father had told us of our great-great-grandfather.”
I dip my chin. “I remember. The dire wolf of old, reborn of rage. The one Father’s men used to tell in the war camps.
A man from a small village who slaughtered his own clan with just cause.
I forget the name, but he turned when men he trusted broke into his home and took his wife, believing her a witch. ”
He nods. “Yes. That’s the one.”
Silence settles between us as the past reshapes itself in my mind.
“Do you trust me? Believe I speak only the truth?”
I don’t give my answer just yet as I’m still coming to grips with what he’s revealed.
He takes cautious steps toward me. “Besides that day, have I ever once given you any reason to doubt me? To doubt the bond we share? To doubt the love I have for our kin—for you?”
No. Not once. He may have been resigned and upset by his inability to wield the same power I had, but he’d never taken his frustration or disappointment in himself out on me.
And like me, Pollock loved our clan, our home, our family.
He held them above all things. Protected them at all costs.
In the wars that had raged there at the end, he’d followed Father around not as a puppy, but as a shield—protecting him because Mother had asked it of him.
Multiple times, he’d been injured in his stead.
I close the distance and palm his shoulder.
Then cup the back of his neck, grip it like Father had done many times to us both when he needed us to hear and feel the words that he spoke.
“I doubted you before, but I won’t make that mistake again.
” It’s a vow. A promise and one I’ll take to my unearthly grave into the afterlife.
He nods and mirrors me. “You’ve always been the better of us. I’ll keep placing my faith in you because, as it turns out, I need you just as much as I ever did. And we’re going to need to work together to figure out what God has in store for us.”
“That we will.”
We soon left the cellar and took the book with us.
On the way to the house, I offer up my own confession. I stop him just before the threshold by grabbing his elbow, though he seems damn intent on getting inside.
“There’s something you should know. Well, many things, actually.”
Brows pinched, he asks, “What is it?”
“The god who fell here was Dagda.”
He sits with that for a moment, then comes to the same conclusion I have. “Fate or coincidence?”
“I was thinking it was the latter, and now I’m quite confident it’s the other.”
“God always finds a way to make the impossible possible. If things have shifted, he’s lending help in the only way he’s allowed to, based on the terms. He wouldn’t risk breaking them, but he will work around them.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“So that’s why the forest is alive with magic.”
“Yes.” I take a moment to formulate my words and remember the events of that night.
“He was more powerful than you can imagine. I almost lost Eridessa. She was dying, and I didn’t see any other way to stop it until I did, and well...
I drew from him instead of fighting back.
I took it all and left him with only the dregs of his power.
Once I had a hold of it, I blasted it back at him and fed it back to this place, to her.
Remade this part of her world and then some, while killing Dagda in the process. ”
“To her? You gave her some of his, not just your own?”
“Yes, I shared that power with her. I had to in order to heal her. So whatever power lived in her blood before, whatever the sigil is doing to her now, there’s a good chance it’s more potent than it was before. It’s rioting inside her and trying to stabilize.”
“In other words, you have no idea how this will go.”
“Not a clue. But I’m ready to face it all the same.”
Concern bleeds into the air around us.
“I’ll calm her mind if I can. You use your powers to sway the fire raging inside her body. Together, we’ll help her through this by whatever means necessary.”