6. Isolde
CHAPTER SIX
ISOLDE
S elene was burning another pillowcase when Isolde slipped back into the cabin.
Isolde opted to keep her mouth shut about it this time, though it seemed a little odd for Selene to be feeding again so soon. Most Vampires went weeks between feedings—even Isolde, who was much younger than Selene and needed to feed more often.
But Isolde didn’t feel like arguing, and she had more important things to discuss with Selene.
“The beast attacked again tonight,” she said instead. “Slaughtered almost an entire herd of goats.”
“Is that so?” Selene replied, prodding at the lump of cotton with a poker as the fire consumed it.
“Yes, down at the southern end of the village.” Isolde discarded her cloak, and then her boots and snow-damp socks. “I heard the goats bleating and went to see, but whatever it is was gone by the time I got there.”
At that, Selene turned to look at her. “You tracked it?”
“I tried,” Isolde said. “I couldn’t catch its trail, no matter how hard I looked.”
“Hmm,” was Selene’s only reply.
Isolde set to unraveling the pale end of her braid, wrinkling her nose at the tangled dampness from when Bastian had tackled her.
Yet another reason to hate him. “It’s odd, don’t you think?
Both tonight, and the night with the blood on the wood pile, there was no sign of the beast. No paw prints or anything. ”
“I don’t see why you’re so concerned about it,” Selene said, her tone dismissive. “A few humans here and there, some dead livestock… that’s inconsequential to us.”
Isolde flinched. Fortunately, Selene had turned back to the fire, so she didn’t see.
Selene had always been flippant about the affairs of humans, but she’d never said anything so outwardly unfeeling.
With age, Isolde supposed, she could see how human lives would become inconsequential to a Vampire beyond their necessity as a source of food.
Selene had seen generations upon generations of humans age and die, while she remained unchanging.
But Bastian’s words were still fresh in Isolde’s mind.
Why do you even care? You’re a fucking Vampire. Aren’t humans just food to you?
Maybe someday, after she’d been a Vampire for hundreds of years, she’d feel the same as Selene. Now, though…
Isolde was still too close to her humanity.
What she’d said to Bastian in that pasture had been true—every word.
She remembered exactly how it felt to be human and helpless, with no one to protect her.
Now she had the power to protect not only herself, but those helpless humans, too, and she couldn’t stand not to use it.
But sentimental appeals clearly weren’t going to work on Selene.
“I just worry about our food supply, is all,” she lied, forcing the nonchalance through her teeth as she picked at a knot in her hair.
“If the attacks become more frequent, there won’t be any villagers left for us to feed on before long. ”
The attacks already were becoming more frequent. Weeks had gone by between the previous killings, but it had only been one week since Sam Hallin’s death, and already the beast had returned.
“Don’t be dramatic,” Selene chided. “There are hundreds of villagers, and they repopulate like rats. We have nothing to be concerned about.”
Isolde chewed on her bottom lip, her mind churning. Bringing up the Wolves was a recipe for disaster with Selene, but she knew more about the Wolves than anyone else—except maybe Bastian, who was clearly going to be no help at all.
Keeping her eyes trained on her tangled hair, Isolde said, “What if the Wolves are behind it?”
Silence.
From the corner of her eye, Isolde saw Selene turn, ever so slowly, to face her.
“Why would you say that?” Selene’s voice was flat and cold in a way Isolde didn’t expect. Usually when the Wolves came up, Selene was all spitting, fiery rage.
“Because they’ve killed humans before, hoping to drive us to extinction.” Isolde shifted in her seat, careful to keep her own voice even. “They could be doing it again, using the same strategy to finish what they started two hundred years ago.”
“By killing one human every few weeks?” Selene scoffed, the sound derisive. “Wolves don’t have the foresight to execute a plan like that, and even if they did, they’re far too brash. If they wanted to starve us out, they’d just slaughter the humans in their beds and burn Bloodhaven to the ground.”
Isolde had already thought of this, and based on her encounters with Bastian, she certainly agreed about the brashness.
In any event, if the Wolves were going to violate the Pact, it seemed foolish to do it in small acts which might lead to discovery over time, rather than starting a war with one, decisive action.
But she couldn’t shake her suspicion that a Wolf was behind the killings, even if she’d decided it wasn’t Bastian.
“I just don’t believe a wild animal is behind the deaths, is all,” Isolde said. “The killings are too savage for a human to be behind them, but I still don’t buy that any wild animal is eating humans whole. The only other creature that leaves is a Wolf.”
“So you’re suggesting… what, exactly? That Wolves have somehow developed the ability to shift whenever they please?”
Isolde finally drug her gaze up to meet Selene’s. “Do you think that’s possible?”
For a long moment, Selene only stared at Isolde. Her face was hard, her jaw working.
“I have made it my business,” she said, that iciness back in her voice, “for more than two centuries, to protect Bloodhaven from those vile, flea-ridden creatures. If they were shifting when the moon isn’t full and slaughtering humans, I would know.
And I’d already have ripped Anselm Thessarian’s head from his fucking shoulders. ”
Thessarian. That’s why Bastian’s name had sounded so familiar.
Anselm Thessarian was the leader of the Wolves, and Selene hated him more than anyone in the world. They’d met at some point before Isolde had come along, and though Selene had never shared the details, the encounter had apparently been deeply unpleasant.
Bastian Thessarian had to be Anselm’s son.
Isolde filed that piece of information away to investigate later. She cleared her throat, turning back to Selene. “But don’t you think?—”
“The sun is almost up, and I’m weary of this speculation,” Selene snapped.
She rose from her spot before the hearth, uncoiling to her full height as she rounded on Isolde.
“If the villagers identify the beast that plagues them, I won’t stop you from joining them on their hunt.
But until then, I don’t wish to hear of it. ”
Isolde blinked, frowning up at Selene. Wolves had always been a touchy subject, but there was something more than the ire Isolde had come to expect in Selene’s eyes now.
That look… Isolde had seen it leveled at human men with wandering hands, at Selene’s Vampire kin when they spoke out of line, but never at her.
“Alright,” Isolde said quietly, shrinking back into her chair. “I’ll leave it alone.”
“Good,” Selene said. “Goodnight, Isolde.”
Isolde did not leave it alone.
There were still a few hours left until dawn, and sitting around with one of Selene’s dusty old history books was the last thing she felt like doing. Slinging her cloak around her shoulders and stuffing her feet back into her boots, Isolde stalked out into the night.
She’d been extremely thorough in her search for signs of the beast in the southwestern woods, but with this new knowledge of Bastian’s identity, she found she didn’t particularly trust his report that the northwestern forest was similarly untouched.
So that’s where she went. She trekked back to the pasture, where the six remaining goats were still trembling with fear. From there, she veered north, following Bastian’s tracks into the trees.
She walked and walked, hunting for any sign of the beast—blood, tracks, anything —and found…
Nothing. Not so much as a tuft of hair clinging in the brush. Isolde could follow Bastian’s footprints well enough, but the snow had already been so thoroughly churned by deer and squirrels and the village huntsmen, there was no point trying to identify anything else.
At least Bastian hadn’t been lying about what he’d found. He hadn’t lied about who he was, either. He’d offered up his surname readily the night they’d met, and it was Isolde’s own fault that she hadn’t recognized it.
But what was the son of the Wolves’ pack leader doing in Bloodhaven? Alone, for that matter? As far as Isolde knew, Wolves weren’t solitary creatures. They lived closely in their packs—even had some rule that shamed them for living alone.
Suspicious as this all seemed, Bastian was the only other person in Bloodhaven who seemed to care that humans were dying. Isolde just didn’t know if she had it in her to ask for his help.
When Isolde reached the place where Bastian’s tracks ended, she knew she ought to turn around. But frustration bubbled up in her gut, and despite the fact that dawn approached, she couldn’t bear to go home empty handed.
She kept walking, scanning the snow and sniffing for goat’s blood. A steep hill rose up before her, the side of it windswept into smooth, deep drifts of snow that rose to her thighs as she hiked up it. If there was nothing to be seen on the other side, she decided, she’d turn around.
Isolde made it to the top, and froze.
On the other side of the hill stood a thick row of trees, their branches gnarled and tangled into one big mass.
The line of trunks curved in either direction, forming what looked to be a perfect circle.
Between those thick branches, shining in the moonlight, Isolde could see the glint of polished marble.
Isolde hurried down the slope, eyes glued to that glimpse of ivory stone. The snow thinned beneath her boots as she crept between the trunks of the trees, the branches above so tightly woven that the ground beneath was dry.
She emerged into a circular marble courtyard, surrounded by towering pillars that disappeared into the branches of those gnarled trees.
The tangled branches stretched across the space, shielding it from the sky but for a small circle at the very center, where a beam of silver moonlight shone through.
Two stone altars stood on opposite sides of the circle, each longer than Isolde was tall.
The tops of both altars were stained a familiar shade of reddish brown.
Those stains spilled down the altars’ sides, pouring like rivers toward a deep divot carved into the center of the courtyard.
Similar stains marred the other two sides of the circle, though those didn’t reach the center.
Instead, they stopped at a shallow, curved lip on either side.
A shiver skated down Isolde’s spine as she crept toward the center of the courtyard. Those stains—there was no mistaking what had left them.
Blood.
Isolde stepped carefully over the stain leading from one of the altars, edging closer. She leaned in, holding the ends of her still-tangled hair out of the way as she sniffed at the blood.
She smelled apple, and jasmine, and sugar. The scent was so, so faint, the blood so old that the essence was barely more than a trace. Beneath it, there were more scents—tobacco, lavender, sandalwood, rosemary. Each layer was fainter than the last.
Isolde moved to the next point in the circle, where the blood gathered against the shallow lip.
Then she scented the second altar, and the fourth bloodstain after that.
It was the same at each point—layers and layers of scents, the essence of each completely unique.
As if dozens—maybe hundreds—of people had bled there.
And not a single one of them had been human. All those different essences in the blood… human blood didn’t smell like that. This was Vampire blood, or Wolf blood, or both. It was too old for Isolde to be certain.
Whatever this place was, it was ancient. Isolde couldn’t begin to guess its purpose, but she knew with absolute certainty that she didn’t want to linger there a second longer.
She turned on her heel and hurried toward the trees, her skin crawling. She fought the urge to run, to race back to the safety of the cabin as quick as her legs would carry her.
As she crossed over the very edge of the courtyard, though, she paused. Peered down at her feet.
There, in the fine dusting of snow that had blown beneath the cover of the trees, were footprints. Not hers.
One set was smaller, and booted. A woman’s, most likely. The second set was large and male—barefoot.
And the third…
The third were the massive, clawed prints of a Wolf.