Dragon Moon (2 page)

And this time he would send an attractive woman because she would seem weak and vulnerable, yet her pretty face, sexy figure, and psychic powers would give her an advantage over the men she met.

Satisfied with the plan, he circled back and landed in the ceremonial site fifty yards from the mouth of his cave. Lifting his head to the skies, he roared out four notes. Two long and two short. A signal to the people who did his bidding.

Three hundred slaves instantly dropped what they were doing and hurried to answer his call.

One by one and in groups, they stepped outside the cave, blinking in the morning sunshine.

He watched their stiff postures, their wary eyes as they stood in their color-coded tunics. White for adepts. Gray for house servants. Brown for those who did the dirtiest jobs like washing the floors and mucking out the toilets. And burgundy for his troops.

They knew what was coming, and they cringed, even as they came toward him with hesitant steps.

Standing before them, he began to change form. His wings folded inward. His claws and his great tail retracted back into his body. The shape of his torso shrunk and transmuted into the incarnation he used when he walked among his minions.

He was vulnerable when he changed, but they didn’t know that, and they trembled as he transformed from silver-scaled monster to a tall, dark-haired man. He stood before them naked for several moments, letting them take in his well-muscled body with its impressive male equipment.

Satisfied that they had had enough time to contemplate his magnificence, he snapped his fingers. Two blond-haired women clad in white came forward and walked to the carved wooden chest where he kept a set of clothing. From its depths, one of them removed a long black tunic of fine linen, edged with gold braid. As he held out his arms, one of them slipped the garment over his head and the other knelt and strapped a pair of supple leather sandals onto his feet.

When he was dressed and they’d stepped back into the crowd, he turned and smiled at the waiting throng, feeling the waves of tension rolling toward him.

They knew he would feed now. On one of them. He could have done that in his dragon form, of course. But this was so much more intimate, and it impressed upon them that, even when he looked like a man, he was as far above them as an eagle was above an ant.

Long moments passed as he let them sweat. Let them wonder which of them he would select. And why.

A man or a woman?

They didn’t know he had already made that decision. In his mind, he kept a running assessment of his slaves’ deeds—of the times they pleased him and of their transgressions. One man above all the others had earned the privilege of participating in this ceremony.

Finally, he raised his voice. “Bendel, come forward.”

The man gasped. Everyone else breathed out a sigh of relief.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Bendel broke and ran.

Vandar was ready for the slave’s futile bid for freedom. His tongue flicked out, lengthening like a whip, catching the man and pulling him back.

Bendel’s face turned white. His eyes were wide and pleading.

“Were you foolish enough to think you could outrun me?” Vandar murmured, his voice silky. “And foolish enough to steal food from the larder?”

The slave’s jaw worked, but no words came out of his mouth.

Vandar spread his lips, baring his teeth as he sent out his fangs, his gaze never leaving the man’s terrified eyes. Grabbing his victim’s hair, he arched his neck before sinking his fangs into the pale flesh.

The first draft of blood sent a burst of warmth through him. He felt the life-giving liquid flow into his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach.

The nourishment brought him a satisfying glow of energy. In his childhood, he hadn’t known what kind of creature he really was, and he had subsisted on a human diet. He could still eat small amounts of food and drink if he wanted. He had tried wine made from grapes and other fruit, and to his taste buds, the wine had a tang that was similar to blood.

He could have spared his victim’s life. Draining the life-blood from any one individual wasn’t necessary to quench his thirst. He didn’t even need to drink human blood. An animal would do. But an animal could not fear him with the intellect of a man, and that was part of the pleasure for him. He loved feeling a victim’s terror swell, then the inevitable acceptance as his life force slipped away.

When he had drained the last drop of sweet-tasting nectar, he cast the husk of the body onto the ground and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic before raising his head to stare at the other slaves.

As he searched their faces, he let the moment stretch, prolonging the little ceremony and impressing the gravity of the occasion on the group of terrified watchers. Then he snapped his fingers, calling on the two men who would take out the garbage.

FEELING an unaccustomed restlessness, Talon Marshall exited the former hunting lodge where he lived in the woods of rural Pennsylvania and walked to a stand of pines that he’d planted years ago. In maturity, they formed a tight circle, shielding him from view. But there was one place where he had trimmed some lower branches so it was easy to push through.

Once inside, he pulled off his clothes and stowed them in the wooden storage box he’d built. Standing naked among the pines, he enjoyed the feel of the humid air on his well-muscled body.

Did normal men chafe at the confinement of clothing? Did they long for the freedom that he had claimed for himself?

In a clear voice, he began to say the ancient words that had turned the men of the Marshall family into werewolves since Druid times.

“Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen
,
”
he chanted, repeating the phrase and going on to another.

“Ga. Feart. Cleas. Duais. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdai is dtreorai na deithe thu.”

The human part of his mind screamed in protest as bones crunched, muscles jerked, and cells transformed from one shape to another.

No matter how many times he changed form, it was never easy to feel his jaw elongate, his teeth sharpen, his body contort as muscles and limbs transformed themselves.

The first time, he’d been terrified that the pain would kill him—the way it had killed his older brother.

But he’d willed himself to steadiness, and once he’d understood what to expect, he’d learned to rise above the terrifying physical sensations.

Thick gray hair formed along his flanks, covering his body in a silver-tipped pelt. The color—the very structure—of his eyes changed as he dropped to all fours. A magnificent beast of the forest. Unrecognizable as a member of the human race.

With the transformation completed, everything changed. In animal awareness, he lifted his head and dragged in the familiar smells of the forest: leafy vegetation, rotting leaves, and the creatures that made their homes here.

Racing past a stand of oaks, he caught the scent of a fox and automatically corrected his course to follow the trail. The animal gave a good chase, taking him to a patch of wilderness that he hadn’t visited in months.

As he stopped for a moment, breathing hard, a scent came to him. Not a familiar odor. Something that didn’t belong in this wilderness environment.

A threat?

Slowly, he walked around the area, sniffing, until he came to a place where the forest floor had been disturbed. As he pawed the earth, he found it was soft, with leaves brushed over the top to hide freshly disturbed dirt.

The wolf dug down several inches, sure there was something buried here that didn’t belong in the woods. A body? Or something that might leach into the soil, spreading poison?

He dragged in more of the scent and decided it wasn’t anything that had been alive. But that was as far as he could go as a wolf. He needed hands to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Turning, he raced back the way he’d come, to the circle of pine trees where he pushed through the change. As soon as he had morphed back to his human form, he pulled on his clothing, then strode to the five-door garage where he kept his outdoor equipment: some of it for his business—leading wilderness expeditions—and some of it for maintaining the property around the lodge.

With a short-handled shovel slung easily over his shoulder, he strode back to the place where he’d pawed the earth.

His human senses were no longer as keen. But he dragged in a draft of the forest air and looked around carefully before beginning to dig in earnest, scooping out the dirt and piling it to the right of the hole where he could easily replace it when he was finished.

When the shovel scraped against something hard, he widened the hole around the object. Then, using the shovel as a lever, he pried up a metal box, which he hauled out and set on the ground.

Obviously, the box was private property, but it was buried on public land. With the shovel blade, he whacked at the padlock securing the top until the hasp broke. Then he knelt and lifted the lid.

What he saw inside made his breath catch.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHE HURRIED toward her workstation in Vandar’s cave, Kenna slid her eyes left and right. When she was sure nobody was looking at her, she said a silent little prayer to the Great Mother that she would get through this day without incident.

Prayer was forbidden in this place of horror, and she knew that if anyone realized what she was doing, they would report her to their master. Then she might be the next victim of his bloodlust.

Great Mother, what had she come to? A slave quaking in her sandals.

She hated herself. Hated her existence. Yet she saw no way to escape.

A few months ago, she’d had choices for the future. Marriage—to the right man. Or not, if that suited her better.

Until she’d been carried away to this nightmare place, she’d been a free citizen of Breezewood. Her father owned a shop that sold well-made sandals and boots to nobles and common people alike. After finishing her education at the city’s school for adepts, she had worked for two years, using her talent to cure leather for the merchants who had paid for her schooling. With her obligation fulfilled, she’d become a tutor in the house of a powerful man named Cardon—one of the leaders of Breezewood.

His children had shown signs of early psychic talent, and he and his wife, Donda, had wanted to give them a head start in the school for adepts.

So they had asked the teachers who would be a good tutor, then hired Kenna. She’d only been in the household a few months, but she had already met a number of highborn men who were attracted to her—men who might want a pretty young wife with powers, a wife who would improve the chances of advancement for their own children.

She pressed her hand against her mouth, wondering if she was remembering her old life accurately. Or was she just trying to distract herself from the horrors of the present?

She’d been on a visit to her parents when Vandar’s warriors had burst through the city gate and swarmed up the cobblestone street. They’d grabbed Kenna and taken her away with twenty other unfortunates.

Now she was afraid that death at Vandar’s hands was the only way she would leave this outpost of Carfolian hell. That might be a relief, because life as one of his slaves was no life at all.

Around her, others hurried down the corridors of the huge cave, each of them alone in the crowd.

When they’d arrived, Vandar had tested each of them in a horrible ceremony where he probed their minds as he drank their blood. If they had no psychic powers, their lives would be hard, because they were only good for manual labor. They would likely be slaughtered quickly, or work themselves to death at an early age.

But if they had powers, then the evaluation was trickier. He wanted to use the talents of his slaves, but if he discovered an adept was strong enough to challenge his authority, that person might be killed on the spot.

Kenna had almost met that fate. During the selection ceremony, she had sensed his mental jaws clamping onto her mind, and she had instinctively tried to pull away. But he’d been stronger than she was. And he’d held her fast.

Maybe that had saved her life, but now she was a slave in the most basic sense of the word.

At first, alone in her narrow bed at night, she’d thought about trying to escape under cover of darkness and flee across the black plains that surrounded the cave. Beyond were the badlands, full of lawless men who belonged to no city.

She longed to risk that route, but she couldn’t make herself leave the vicinity of the cave. No one could, and she was sure it was because Vandar had put some silent orders into their heads that kept them chained to this place.

As she passed the dormitory where she slept with twenty other women, she repressed a sigh.

She couldn’t go there now. Unless she was too sick to work, and that was risky, because a sick slave might easily become a dead slave.

Her job was in the library, a large room by cave standards, with desks and wooden tables and shelves of books lining the walls.

The volumes were on many subjects, and most of them came from the old times. Today books were copied by scribes, but these volumes had been made by another process that she didn’t understand.