9. Isolde
CHAPTER NINE
ISOLDE
T he first several nights of Isolde and Bastian’s shared patrol were uneventful.
As agreed, they remained in the southern half of the village, with Isolde watching the western half and Bastian in the east. Shortly before the sun began to rise, they met back at the forge and reported on their findings—which were nonexistent.
Bastian was, if not civil, not blatantly hostile, either.
By the fourth night, Isolde was thoroughly bored of her little sector of the village, and beyond sick of traipsing through the snow for hours on end.
So when she encountered Bastian on her third pass along the shared line of their agreed upon territories, she called out to him, “I have a more efficient strategy. Come on.”
To her great surprise, Bastian didn’t argue. He followed her in silence, his boots crunching in the fresh layer of snow as they picked their way toward the center of the village.
When Isolde reached the town hall, which was the tallest building in Bloodhaven, she flipped her cloak back over her shoulders and began to climb.
Somewhere beneath her, she heard a grumbled curse, followed by the sound of groaning wood as Bastian dug in his fingers and the tips of his boots to follow her.
When he finally joined her on the roof—it took him a fair amount longer to make it up than it took Isolde—and settled beside her on its snowy peak, he said, “What, exactly, are we doing up here?”
Isolde gestured at the village around them—the clear view of everything within the ring of towering pines that surrounded Bloodhaven.
The houses were dark, their windows shuttered, nothing but the gentle puffs of smoke from nighttime fires and flurries of snow moving in the air.
“We can see the whole village from up here,” she explained.
“No need to stomp around and get our boots all filled with snow when we can see if the beast shows itself from here.”
“But it’s dark,” Bastian said. “Whatever it is could be prowling around in the shadows, and we’d never know.”
“You mean…” Isolde gaped at him. “Do Wolves not have darksight?”
“Darksight?” His brows furrowed. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s… well, it’s what it sounds like. The colors of everything sort of… invert, I guess? So dark things look bright. I imagine its like what other nighttime predators see.”
“Oh.” Bastian folded his arms around his knees.
For once, he was wearing a cloak over his customary white shirt, the hood drawn up against the falling snow.
“I see like that when I shift, but not so much in my human form. Maybe… maybe a little better than before I was turned, but not anything like you just described.”
“Huh.” Isolde didn’t know what to make of this sudden amicableness. She thought that might have been the most words he’d ever said to her in one go. “So, for Wolves, do you all turn when you reach a certain age? Or does it just happen whenever some other Wolf decides to bite you?”
Bastian shifted beside her on the roof, pulling his knees closer and tucking his cloak more securely around himself. Isolde suspected the move didn’t really have much to do with the cold.
“Both, in a way,” he told her. “Most Wolves get to choose when to be turned. Some do it as soon as they come of age, others wait longer. When the time comes, there’s a ritual, which does involve biting.”
“I see. And how old were you when you turned?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Isolde blinked, looking more closely at him. Twenty-seven? He didn’t look much older than that now. Bastian caught her looking and sent her a glare, reaching up to tug his hood further over his face.
“Does the leader of your pack turn everyone, or do you get to choose who does it?” she asked.
“You really don’t know much about Wolves, do you?” Bastian’s tone was harsh, back to his usual standoffishness, and yet… Isolde could have sworn it sounded just a little bit forced.
“It’s the same with you and Vampires,” Isolde fired back, letting the strangeness of the moment slide. “It’s no surprise, though, really. Selene hates Wolves so much, she can barely talk about them for more than a few minutes without going half feral with rage.”
The little huff of air Bastian blew out through his nose was almost a laugh. “Anselm is the same.”
“Your pack still hates Vampires as much as we hate Wolves? Even though none of you would have been around for the war?” Unlike Vampires, Wolves had human lifespans.
All the Wolves Selene had fought against in the Bleeding War would be dead by now, though Isolde supposed plenty of their children and grandchildren were members of the current pack.
“Oh, yes,” Bastian answered. “Wolves are raised to hate your kind from childhood. We’re not allowed to hunt you anymore, but I suspect we would if the Pact didn’t forbid it.”
“And here you are, a Wolf, breathing the same air as a Vampire without snapping your teeth or trying to tear my head off.”
Isolde couldn’t see the look on his face with his hood covering it, but she felt quite certain he still glared at her. “Believe it or not, I am capable of forming my own opinions of people.”
“Yet you still seem to hate me.”
“My feelings towards you have very little to do with the fact that you’re a Vampire, moonbeam.”
“Moonbeam?” Isolde’s brows shot up. “Is that some kind of Wolf insult I don’t understand?”
“It’s not an insult.”
Bastian reached toward Isolde, the movement unexpected enough that she jerked away from him. He ignored her pointed glare at his outstretched hand and plucked up the tail of her braid.
“Your hair,” he explained, rubbing the silvery strands between his fingers. “It looks like moonlight.”
Isolde did not like the way her stomach flipped as he said those words, his voice low and his eyes trained on her hair with something that looked a hell of a lot like awe .
“Well, don’t call me that,” she blurted, yanking her braid out of his grasp. “You don’t know me well enough for nicknames. Or to hate me for my personality, if my being a Vampire isn’t the reason.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Whatever you say?—”
Bastian threw out a hand, cutting Isolde’s words short. His posture had gone suddenly rigid, his head canted to the side. “Did you hear that?” he breathed.
“Hear what?” Isolde whispered back.
Bastian didn’t reply. He stayed silent for a minute, listening, while Isolde scanned the darkness of the village with frantic eyes. Another moment passed, and then Bastian shot to his feet.
“It’s here.”
“How do you know?” Isolde demanded, scrambling down from the roof after Bastian. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Wolves might not have your darksight,” he said, as his boots hit the snow, “but we do have excellent hearing.”
Isolde joined him on the ground a moment later, and then they were sprinting to the south. Bastian ran a pace ahead of Isolde, leading the way, but she kept up easily.
“What did you hear, exactly?” Isolde kept her voice low, only speaking loud enough to be heard over the thudding of their boots.
Bastian sent her a grim look. “Screaming,” he said.
Isolde picked up her pace.
Through the village streets, cutting through alleys and dooryards, they ran. Soon the cobblestones gave way to dirt, and the buildings fell away to farm land. Isolde could hear the screaming now, but it was growing fainter, more garbled by the second.
“We have to hurry,” Isolde said.
“Almost there,” Bastian panted.
They vaulted over a fence and bolted across a snowy field, past a pair of frightened horses. Isolde didn’t need Bastian’s guidance anymore. The screaming had reduced to nothing but feeble groans, barely louder than the gruesome sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone.
Isolde’s boots skidded in the snow as they rounded the corner of a barn?—
Just as the pale silhouette of something disappeared into the nearby tree line.
“Fuck,” Bastian gasped, darting past Isolde and sliding to his knees beside the bloody remains of a human man.
“Is he still alive?” Isolde asked, marking the spot in the trees where the creature had disappeared. It had been moving too quickly to make out what it was, but it was definitely an animal. Big. Four legged.
“Barely,” Bastian murmured, leaning over the man.
Isolde drug her gaze downward, tracking over the blood and gore until she found…
a torso, or what remained of it. The man had been torn in half, his legs reduced to a pair of boots and the pale glint of bone.
Evidently there was something left of his lungs, because Isolde could hear the wet rasp of his breath, but the rest of the man…
Isolde drank blood, thirsted for it, but this was enough to turn even her stomach.
“Did you see what did this to you?” Bastian was asking the man, his voice gentle as he smoothed the bloodied hair from the man’s forehead.
His mouth moved, but no sound came out. His eyes were wide, terrified. Tears welled and spilled down his temples, streaking through the crimson.
“Bastian,” Isolde whispered, hovering at his shoulder.
“Can you tell me what did this?” Bastian tried again. “Was it a bear?”
“Bastian, this is cruel,” Isolde said.
The man tried again to speak, and blood bubbled up from his lips.
“It’s alright.” Bastian shifted, one hand disappearing beneath his cloak. To his left side, where the man couldn’t see it, he freed a dagger Isolde hadn’t know he was carrying. “You’re going to be alright,” he said to the man. Then, over his shoulder to Isolde, “Go after the beast.”
Isolde hesitated for a moment. It didn’t feel right to go, to walk away in this man’s dying moments, but… there was nothing she could do for him. If they’d gotten there sooner, she might have been able to turn him. Now, though, there wasn’t enough of him left to become a Vampire.
At least if she caught up to the beast, she could stop this from happening to anyone else.
Isolde ran.
She flew between the trees in the exact place where she’d seen the beast disappear.
The snow was too deep to make out the shape of the prints, but she could see the path it had taken, the deep holes where its paws had landed as it ran.
Along the edges of its path was a trail of blood—human.
No doubt it was spilling from the beast’s maw.
The crimson stains in the snow dried up before long, but the tracks didn’t. They curved to the east, and then steadily northward. Isolde couldn’t see Bloodhaven through the trees, but she was fairly sure she was running parallel to the village now.
The beast had a head start, but it couldn’t be that far ahead of her. Isolde knew from experience that she was swifter than most animals. The trail before her was still clear, still heading north.
There. Through the trees ahead, she saw a streak of white fur, nearly invisible against the snow. It moved too swiftly for her to make out what it was, but she quickened her pace, darting like a bird between the trees, her gaze locked on that ghostly blur.
She veered to the left as she gained on the beast. If she could come at it from an angle, she might be able to?—
Searing pain erupted in her chest.
The world tilted, the trees turning on their sides as Isolde’s feet went out from under her. She hit the snow, and all the breath rushed from her lungs on impact. Her head spun as she blinked up at the sky, fighting for air.
A scream built in Isolde’s lungs, but she had no breath to expel it. The pain in her chest mounted with every second that passed. Her skin burned, seared with an agony unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
And then, between one blink and the next, her vision went black.