“I’d rather you didn’t—”
There was a soft shuffle from the kitchen, and Fiona’s voice drifted from the doorway. “Anthony?”
The reverend paused, clearly torn. Then he shook his head. “Be home by ten.”
Dayna drove aimlessly. Down the highway and onto the back roads. She had no idea where she was going, but it felt good to be heading…away. Out of the village and into the green plains of the countryside. The wind blew her hair back and filled her lungs, and she breathed in, the turmoil of her emotions starting to dissolve bit by bit, her hands becoming steadier on the wheel. A bend in the road revealed the open skyline, and just above the rolling fields was the quarter moon.
Dayna frowned. Seeing the moon during the day wasn’t that unusual, but it seemed so much larger than it should have been, as if it had moved closer to the earth in the last few hours. And it was red, a deep crimson that, Dayna noted uneasily, was precisely the color of blood.
She pulled up to a stop sign, letting the car idle.
She couldn’t help remembering what Bronagh and Grandma King had both said: Something dark is coming.
She wanted to keep driving, to pretend it was nothing. It was campfires and smoke in the air, or a season thing…a blood moon. You could google it and pull up charts about when the moon waned and waxed, what was a wolf moon and what was a blood moon.
But she knew what a bad omen looked like. Ravens, dead cows, blood moons. Serious juju, wasn’t that what Reagan called it?
Her concentration was broken a second later by movement in her rearview mirror, and Dayna jumped. There was a sleek black car behind her, waiting to turn at the stop sign. She’d been sitting there staring at the sky like an idiot. She jammed the gearshift, and the hatchback jerked forward with a wheezy cough.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DUBH
“Do you see this?” The car in front of him, a red hatchback with black doors, lurched forward. Dubh kept his gaze fixed on it, waiting while the car turned and began to head back into Carman.
There was no way he was about to lose her gawking at the moon.
“Yeah.” His brother’s voice on the phone was a low growl. “We knew that was coming. Just get here already. Where are you?”
He tapped the gas, jetting through the stop sign before slowing. The witch seemed to be driving aimlessly, even recklessly. “This witch is on the list—”
“I told you,” Calma said sternly. “The book first. We need to confirm she’s one. We can’t keep going on animal instinct, as much as that might appeal to you.”
There was a distant cackle in the background, and a muscle in Dubh’s jaw twitched as Olc said, “Tell him he’s not the Butcher of Manchester, scourge of the countryside, any longer.”
Anger flashed through him. He’d told them not to call him that. It conjured images of savagery, when he was in fact, precise. Not surgical exactly, but he was getting better.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Just get here,” Calma said. “And, Dubh, don’t touch her until I give you the go-ahead.”
The call cut out, and Dubh ripped the phone away from his ear, slinging it onto the passenger side, where it cracked into the door.
How like his brothers to come into town and take over the whole operation. To take what was rightfully his. This was his mission, and his witch to kill. One of his brothers would inevitably try to take her away from him, like they always did. But this time he wasn’t going to let it happen.
The girl in the beat-up car was something special, and he was going to have her.
His tongue slipped over his tooth, the jagged canine on the left side. That had been a good fight. He needed another one, soon. He could feel the need burning his insides, slowly creeping into his head. When it happened, his vision began to turn, a slight blur at first, crimson around the edges.
Again he glanced up at the skyline, at the low-hanging moon. This was not his vision. It was the cycle kicking into gear, as it always had. As it always would until his goal was accomplished.
The judge had been boring. Easy to lure in and overcome. There had been no joy in it, but it was a catalyst. Things were finally starting.
That afternoon, Dubh found himself standing in the center of a crumbling stone castle, watching the sun sink past the horizon. Pinpricks of orange light stabbed his eyes through the cracks in the stones.
“There’s nothing.” He glared around at the worn castle walls. “This is too open; she’d never leave the book here.”
Calma, who’d been examining the moss-stained stones around them as if he expected the book to magically appear, gave Dubh a narrow look. “Have you remembered anything else?”
The question only enhanced his bad mood. Dubh’s fingers curled into fists at his sides. “No,” he hissed. “But I know we’re wasting time.”
“You’re the one who said we should look at sacred sites.” Calma lowered his voice as a group of tourists was led past by a round-faced tour guide in a bulky vest. “And now you’ve better things to do?”
He darted a sideways look at Olc, who appeared to be taking out his foul temper on the castle, chipping away at the wall with the blade of a rusted hunting knife. For a moment there was silence, punctuated by the patter of rain striking the stones. He looked down at the gaudy plastic flyer crumpled in his fist. Another crumbling castle full of tourists.
That’s what this entire place was about, standing around staring at a great heap of bloody rocks.
He could be hunting right now.
Dubh longed for the days he did his work alone. When he’d hunted things that screamed and bled and pleaded with him. He’d hurtled through the underbrush, boughs breaking in his path, his hot breaths falling into rhythm to match his feet, Witchkiller clutched in his hand. He remembered long, wild hair in his fists and terrible screams, how they’d thrilled through his blood.
He’d always hunted the women. The witches.
For days he would be driven to track each of them, six at a time, always six. Sometimes one brother would be with him, sometimes both. But the best hunts were the ones he spent on his own.
Once it was done there was the period of rest, of blackness, of void. Of this he remembered nothing. And each time he awoke, the cycle would begin again.
This time, though, it was different. This time it was…complicated. The feeling that led him was strange, more urgent than ever before.
And still, all he wanted to do was hunt.
Instead, he was looking for a half-dreamed book in a crumbling tourist trap.
“Let’s go.” Olc jammed his knife back into his jacket, glancing up at the gray sky in disgust. “It’s pissing down rain again. Even the damn humans have enough sense to clear out.”
Dubh glanced around the ruins, surprised to see Olc was right. They were the only ones left. There was only the patter of rain and the distant sound of muffled voices as people made their way back to the parking lot.
“We sweep the place once more,” Calma said.
The pure confidence in his voice—as if he expected, no, he knew he would be obeyed—grated on Dubh.
“We’re wasting time. We should just go kill the witches,” Dubh said.
“Why is murder always your answer to everything?” Olc sneered. Then he shrugged and turned to Calma. “But he’s right. This is fucking useless. Let’s go get food.”