4. Isolde
CHAPTER FOUR
ISOLDE
I solde made quick work of finding the copper-haired man and dragging him off to an empty barn to feed. He gave his permission, and she rode him until he came and her hunger was satiated.
Much to her annoyance, the encounter didn’t satisfy the ache low in her belly—not even close.
She couldn’t believe she’d kissed a Wolf . Not only had she kissed him, the bastard had enticed her into his shop with nothing more than a sultry glance. She’d practically begged him to let her feed, and allowed him lay her out on that workbench like some maiden to be ravished.
Isolde would never behave that way with a human man, but with a Wolf?
The whole encounter had left her shaken. She felt unsteady on her feet, rattled in a way she hadn’t been since she was still human.
Isolde lingered at the Burning Night festival just long enough to listen for the village gossip about Sam Hallin’s death—which amounted to nothing more than general unease that he hadn’t been seen for a few days, since apparently the blood at the wood pile wasn’t general knowledge—before stalking back to the cabin.
She was in a thoroughly foul mood, and had no further interest in reveling with the rest of Bloodhaven.
Despite her complaints about the frivolity of the festival, Selene wasn’t back yet when dawn approached.
That was just as well for Isolde, since the last thing she planned to do was tell her Sire about her encounter with Bastian.
Selene would have her head if she knew Isolde had been careless enough to let a Wolf hold a knife to her throat.
Isolde kept to herself the next day, and several days after that, too. Every day at dusk, she crept out into Bloodhaven to listen to the gossip, and every night, she patrolled the edges of the village, watching for the beast.
Isolde couldn’t shake her suspicion that it was a Wolf, and after her encounter with Bastian…
He claimed Wolves could only turn on the full moon, but he’d obviously be the last person to admit it if that weren’t true.
Selene didn’t seem to know anything, but that meant nothing.
This was the sort of secret the Wolves would guard with their lives, saving it until the time was ripe to use it against the Vampires.
Which meant Bastian Thessarian was Isolde’s number one suspect.
Three nights of her watch over Bloodhaven passed without incident. She kept a sharp eye on the blacksmith’s shop, and saw neither hide nor tail of Bastian or the beast. There hadn’t been another attack.
Then, partway through the fourth night of patrol, Isolde heard the terrified bleating of goats.
She was far on the north side of the village, chilled to her bones and on her way back to the cabin.
The instant the sound reached her ears, she turned on her heel and took off at a sprint, instincts on high alert.
The sound grew in volume as she ran, both from her increasing proximity and the terror of the animals.
On the south side of the village, Isolde vaulted a fence into a snowy pasture. Just as her boots crunched back onto the ground?—
Something—no, some one —tackled her out of the air.
Isolde rolled into the snow in a tangle of her cloak and someone else’s limbs.
Fear and rage and the freshness of the blood she’d drunk on Burning Night quickened her reflexes.
Her fangs slid free, and a snarl tore from her throat as she flipped her attacker, pinning him with the heel of her hand against his throat.
“What— you ,” she hissed, fangs still bared. “ Again. ”
Bastian. It was Bastian .
“ Me? What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. He bucked beneath her, trying to throw her off. A sharp jab of her palm against his windpipe stilled him.
“The same damn thing I was doing last time the beast of Bloodhaven attacked.” Isolde had half a mind to jam her knee into his groin, which was conveniently within reach from the way she knelt. “What did you do to those goats?”
“I didn’t do anything to the fucking goats.”
The sound of squealing animals floated over from the other side of the pasture, mingling with the raggedness of their breathing.
“Stay out of my way,” Isolde warned.
She gave one last rough shove to Bastian’s jaw, pushing his face into the deep snow as she shot to her feet.
She took off again, bolting toward the shadow of the barn and the cries of the goats.
A moment later, she heard Bastian’s footsteps thundering along behind her.
They skidded around the corner of the barn and found?—
Carnage.
Six goats remained, huddled together against the wall of the barn. Around them, staining the snow a crimson so deep it was nearly black, were the remains of at least a dozen more.
The beast was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, hell,” Bastian murmured, standing a pace behind Isolde.
She was already moving again. “Whatever it was, it probably heard you tackle me to the ground like the bloody oaf you are and ran off.”
“How was I supposed to know you weren’t the one disemboweling those poor goats?” To his credit, Bastian kept running alongside Isolde, and even in his human form, he managed to keep up. “I thought you’d heard me coming and made a break for it.”
“Do you think anything through before you act? Why would I be running toward the goats if that was the case?” Isolde didn’t wait for him to reply. “I’ll go southwest, see if I can track whatever it was. You go northwest, and meet me back at the pasture if you don’t find anything.”
“Which is it, then?” Bastian snipped. “Stay out of your way, or take your orders like some obedient soldier?”
“Both,” Isolde fired back.
She didn’t wait to see if he listened to her. She veered off to the southwest, darting into the trees, scanning the snow with her darksight and scenting for goat’s blood with every breath.
She didn’t see or smell a single thing. Not a drop of blood or a track in the snow, or even so much as a broken pine branch.
Long after it became clear that there was no trail for her to follow, Isolde finally gave up and turned around. By the time she made it back to the village, her legs ached from running and the frigid wind had numbed her cheeks to the point of pain.
Bastian was waiting in the pasture when she returned, having coaxed the remaining goats away from their slaughtered herd-mates and somehow quieted their bleating.
“Anything?” Isolde asked, hopping the fence and striding up to him.
He shot her a glare, but shook his head. “Not even any tracks in the snow. You?”
“No,” Isolde answered. She peered down at the ground, searching for prints, but it was no use. The snow was all trampled, churned halfway to mud by the goats and whoever owned the land. “Do you believe it wasn’t me who killed Sam Hallin yet?”
“Depends.” Bastian patted one of the goats between his curled horns and rose to his feet. “Do you still think it could have been me?”
Isolde regarded Bastian, not bothering to keep the scowl off her face.
She supposed it was possible that Bastian had slaughtered the goats, heard her coming, and run around the pasture to catch her before she neared the barn, but…
that seemed unlikely. He would have had to shift back to his human form, redress in his shirt, pants, and boots, and still have time to intercept her in the minutes—if that—it had taken her to reach the pasture.
“I suppose, given the circumstances, I can admit it wasn’t you,” Isolde said. At the spark of triumph that lit Bastian’s eyes, she added, “Tonight, at least.”
The smirk melted right off his face. “Oh, but there’s still some doubt about the other nights? You know, when the moon wasn’t full? ”
“You say you can only shift on the full moon,” Isolde replied, crossing her arms, “but how do I know that’s true? I imagine a Vampire would be the last person you’d inform if you could shift whenever you wanted.”
“True,” Bastian allowed. “But I’m telling you, we can’t.”
Isolde glared at him, unconvinced. The fact that he didn’t seem to have slaughtered the goats didn’t absolve him of anything else.
She peered down at the bloodied snow, at the gruesome bits of flesh and hair that remained of the animals. “You know, I might have been able to catch whoever’s doing this if you hadn’t gotten in my way.”
“I could say the same, if you hadn’t come barreling in here and distracted me.”
“You can hardly blame me for that when the true culprit is clearly your lack of common sense.”
Bastian’s mouth flattened into an irritated line, but he said nothing.
He just regarded Isolde with distaste, his legs braced wide and his arms folded across his muscular chest. Despite the frigidness of the air, he wore no coat—only a dark shirt, which was just as damp as Isolde’s cloak from their tumble through the snow.
“Well, I doubt the beast is coming back tonight,” Isolde said. “I’m going?—”
Bastian interrupted her. “ Who ever.”
“What?”
“You said whoever’s doing this . Not what ever. Who ever.”
“So?”
“ So, I gather you don’t think it’s an animal that’s been killing people.”
“Obviously,” Isolde snapped, annoyance flaring in her gut. “I accused you, didn’t I? Though, I suppose you are an animal. You certainly act like one.”
Bastian’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t take her bait. “If not an animal, what do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” Isolde said shortly. She was cold, damp, and frustrated, and Bastian’s presence was grating on her last nerve.
Oddly, she didn’t feel afraid of him this time—he hadn’t made any attempt to hurt her after she’d flipped him into the snow, though she knew from experience that he was strong enough to have done so—but just being near him made her skin crawl.
“All I know is that animals leave remains. They don’t eat their prey whole. ”
Bastian arched a brow at the bloody mess around them. “There are plenty of remains here.”
“But not at the woodpile where Sam Hallin was killed,” Isolde pointed out. “You were there, if you recall. Stalking me from the trees while I tried to sniff out the killer.”
“Yes, because your sniffing yielded much better results than my strategy. Unless you discovered something important in that cabin where you and your bloodsucking… whatever she is” —Isolde gathered he was referring to Selene— “live when you gave up and went home that night?”
“I didn’t give up ,” Isolde hissed. “I’ve been out here every night since, watching for the beast, which is more than I can say for you. People are dying ?—”
“Why do you even care?” Bastian’s eyes flashed with anger, his barked words echoing across the pasture. “You’re a fucking Vampire. Aren’t humans just food to you?”
“ No .” Isolde’s temper snapped. The corners of her vision turned red.
She stalked toward him, jabbing her finger into his chest as she spat, “I was a human once, not that long ago. I remember what it’s like to be weak and helpless, for my life to be at the mercy of someone stronger than me.
So don’t you ever suggest that I don’t care about human lives, or that they’re nothing but food to me. ”
Isolde’s chest heaved, the rage coursing through her so strongly that her fangs slid free.
She bared them at Bastian, snarling, wishing more than anything that she didn’t have to crane her neck all the way back to look at him.
She wished she’d kept that knife from the other night, too, so she could jab it into his ribs. Or possibly his balls.
Bastian held his ground, staring right back at her, his expression unreadable. The anger had melted out of his eyes, but Isolde couldn’t make any sense of what replaced it.
And then he said, with startling softness, “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you,” Isolde spat.
She shoved him—hard.
And he only rocked back one single step.
“Do you think the beast is coming back to finish off these last six, or can I go home to bed?” he said mildly. “It’s a bit cold out here.”
Isolde balled her hands into fists at her sides, squeezing until she felt her nails slice into her palms. “I hate you.”
“Well, then,” Bastian said, thrusting his hands into his pockets as he turned to amble off toward the north end of the pasture, “At least the feeling is mutual.”