Blood Moon Read online

  Blood Moon

  by

  Sylvia Kincaid

  ©copyright by Sylvia Kincaid

  ISBN 1-58608-326-0

  Cover Art by Jenny Dixon

  New Concepts Publishing

  5202 Humphreys Rd.

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  Prologue

  The persistent, escalating commotion in the courtyard finally roused Aslyn from sleep. Alarm should have jolted her awake, should have galvanized her into instant action. At any other time, her mind would instantly have responded to the sounds that could mean nothing but danger. Instead, a heaviness pervaded her senses, as if she’d drank too much wine or mead.

  Her sluggish mind connected with that thought, meandering along it until she recalled the celebration the night before. Her father had announced her betrothal to Wilhem of Leitsey Marr.

  She had been reasonably satisfied with her father’s choice of husband. He was an older man, nearing thirty, but not so old that she felt repelled by his age, and he had attained some note as a warrior. He was not hard on the eyes, either, for which she was grateful.

  Twenty six did seem a little old to a fifteen year old girl, particularly since she’d hoped to make a match nearer her own age, but she was certain she had not imbibed more than she should have, either from excessive delight, or anxiety.

  The direction of her thoughts finally roused her sufficiently that she pushed herself upright and looked around. The tower room was dark still, barely lighter than it had been when she’d doused the candles and climbed into her bed the night before. The sun could not have risen.

  Why then did it seem the entire keep was aroused and moving about as if they were well into the new day’s activities?

  As she was striving to puzzle through it, she realized she was covered in a chilled, sticky wetness. She looked down at herself then and a new wave of confusion swept over her.

  She was nude. What had happened to her gown? More importantly, what was the substance she was coated with?

  Her hands, her entire body was splotched with the sticky residue. She held out her hands, peering at them in the dim light. Slowly, her eyes focused. Slowly the dark patches attained a rusty hue.

  Blood.

  Her heart lurched painfully in her chest. Stumbling from the bed, she staggered toward the reflecting glass that was perched upon her dressing table.

  Streaks of the same sticky substance smeared her forehead and cheeks. It was concentrated, however, around her mouth and throat. Instinctively, her hand went to her throat.

  It wasn’t hers. She had no injury.

  She stared at her hands, her arms, looked down at her body in dawning horror, trying to grapple with possibilities.

  How could she be soaked in blood when she was not injured?

  Some nameless fear seized her and she stumbled to the wash stand. Dashing water from the ewer into the basin, she began scrubbing herself frantically. She had to get rid of it. She had to remove the evidence….

  She broke off the thought, paused in her task. The evidence of what?

  She couldn’t grasp it. She couldn’t seem to move beyond the need to bathe. Dismissing it, she concentrated on cleansing herself. When she’d finished, she stared down at the filmy water in revulsion, realizing she could not leave it for the maids to find. Lifting the basin, she stumbled awkwardly with her heavy burden to the window, then set it down on the floor to unfasten the scraped hide that covered the opening.

  Below, chaos reined. People were dashing hither and yon; women screamed; horses reared as her father’s guard fought to bring them under control; the dogs from the kennel bayed as if they had the scent of death in their nostrils.

  Aslyn grasped the bowl and tossed the contents from the window.

  She’d barely done so when her door exploded inward with a force that slammed the wooden portal back against the stone wall with a sharp crack of splintering wood.

  “Lady Aslyn! Oh! Thank the saints you are here and unharmed!”

  Aslyn stared at her nurse wide eyed. “Where else would I be at this hour?”

  The nurse burst into wails. “My lady! My lady! I don’t know how to tell you this terrible thing!”

  A wave of dizziness washed over Aslyn. “My father?”

  “No, no! My poor child! I did not mean to frighten you for your father! And your mother gone these many years, I know how dear he is to you. I should have thought! I should have realized….”

  Aslyn strode toward the woman, grasped her shoulders, and gave her a shake. “Cease your babbling and tell me! You are frightening me to death! What has happened?”

  “Your betrothed! Lord Wilhem, my lady! He has been found….” The nurse broke off, clutching her chest, gasping.

  “For mercy’s sake, tell me. Do not leave me to wonder what ill has befallen us. I shall go mad! Has he attacked us? Has he fallen ill? What?”

  The nurse clutched her, her fingers curled like claws, digging in to Aslyn’s flesh painfully. “It’s horrible. I shall carry the image to my grave. Some beast fell upon him last eve and … and it must have been a wild beast, or some evil thing. No man could have done to him what was done. I would not have recognized him but for the ring he wears. His face was torn away, his body ripped apart, his entrails scattered, as if wild dogs had fallen upon him and fought over his remains.”

  Aslyn felt the strength leave her knees. She wilted to the floor, her thoughts chaotic.

  One thought pounded through her mind over and over, however. The blood--She had been covered in blood and she had no idea how she had come to be covered in blood.

  She very much feared, however, that she might remember.

  Chapter One

  The dream was the same as it had always been, so far back into her memory that she could not remember when it had first crept into her sleeping mind to frighten her. She was a young child. She knew this somehow, though she had no idea of how old she was … small enough to hide under the benches in the great hall and creep away unnoticed … less than five, she was certain. She was afraid and triumphant at the same time. She’d escaped nurse’s watchful eye. She’d managed to slip through the garden and out the postern gate.

  Someone had left the gate ajar and the outside world beckoned. Her sense of happy adventure had lasted until she realized she was lost. When had the meadow given way to wooded lands? She couldn’t seem to remember anything except that she had chased a rabbit, round and round, enjoying the pursuit and far more interested in running that in actually catching the poor creature.

  She heard voices calling to her. They were fearful, angry. There were many voices, as if everyone from the keep had come to look for her. The idea frightened her almost as much as the fact that she was lost. She didn’t want to be punished. Instead of answering them, she ran and hid. As she crouched beneath the tangle of brush, however, darkness began creeping through the leaves of the trees, closing around her.

  Finally, her fear of the dark woods had overcome her fear of punishment. She’d crawled from hiding, begun to run toward the voices that still called her name, though anger had given way to their own fears. Even as she ran, however, heard the voices become louder, closer—she realized that something was running behind her, giving chase as she had pursued the rabbit before. Quite suddenly, it had bounded from the brush and pounced upon her, knocking her to the ground, its sharp teeth bared in a snarl, its golden eyes gleaming in the light of the full moon.

  She threw up her hand in an effort to protect herself. Pain flooded through her as she felt its teeth sink into her flesh. She screamed in terror and kept on screaming as the pain filled her shocked mind.

  Aslyn woke, still caught in the grips of her nightmare, still struggling to scream.

  As it slowly faded, s
he realized she was cold, so cold her teeth were chattering. Dazed, her mind still sluggish, it took her some moments to assimilate where she was.

  With the dread of recognition, her gaze finally focused upon her hands, curled inward toward her palm, almost like claws. They were bloody. She needed no mirror to tell her that her face and neck were covered with it, as well. She’d shifted in the night, fed upon … some hapless prey. The time of the moon was upon her.

  Shuddering, she rolled over, sat up abruptly and looked around. She was naked, lying in the snow. Small wonder she felt as if she would freeze to death.

  There was no escaping the nightmare world she had descended into in her fifteenth year, although, in the beginning, she had lied to herself that she would find a way.

  Fearful that she would harm someone she cared for, or that those who loved her would discover her affliction and be forced to destroy her, she’d fled her home after the death of her betrothed. But she had told herself that she would discover a cure. She would find a way to lift the curse, or affliction—she wasn’t even certain of which it was. Over the past three years since her quest had begun, she had acquired a good deal of knowledge in the healing arts, and even discovered others on her own, but she had never come close to curing her own malady.

  Each time the moon waxed full, the madness seized her. She wasn’t certain whether it was a blessing or a curse that she could never remember what she’d done. She remembered feeling a darkness churning to life within her as she gazed up at the full moon, a throbbing to life of something primal—and then she remembered nothing more, awaking each time naked and bloody and certain only that she had savagely killed again.

  In truth, she supposed it was both blessing and curse. It was hard enough to deal with the knowledge that she had killed without having to bear the weight of the memory of the kill. And yet, how was she to find a cure when she didn’t know with any degree of certainty what was happening? Somewhere in the knowledge that eluded her lay a piece of the puzzle. She was as certain of that as she was certain that the nightmares that had plagued her these many years were not nightmares at all, but memories.

  Whatever had happened to the child she had been was at the root of her curse.

  Forced from her contemplation finally by physical distress, Aslyn focused on scrubbing the blood from herself with snow. There was no water and in any case she was half frozen already. Using snow would not make her any colder. She had to rid herself of the blood before the stench made her ill.

  It was far from ideal, however, in the sense that it was impossible to cleanse herself thoroughly with the icy crystals. Finally, satisfied that she’d removed as much of the drying blood as she would be able to until she found running water, she stumbled to her feet and looked around.

  Scraggly, winter bare trees dotted the area around her. Here and there a craggy knob of rock poked through the white blanket, however. She frowned. She’d sought shelter in a cave when the snow had begun to fall. Turning in a slow circle, she finally spied a dark crevice some little distance from where she now stood. Relief flooded her. She’d returned to her burrow.

  She had learned that she could, generally, count upon that, at the very least. Whatever madness seized her in the night and sent her scouting for a kill, she usually returned to whatever shelter she’d sought for herself when morning chased the night shadows away.

  With an effort, she stumbled toward the narrow opening, tripping in the shifting, almost knee deep snow drifts. Her clothing littered the entrance of the tiny cave. Shivering, she lifted the coarse gown that lay closest to examine it.

  There had been a time when the lowest scullery maid in her father’s castle had worn more comely gowns that the one she now held, when nothing had touched her own skin save the finest of silks and satins. She had learned in the time since to be grateful only to cover herself.

  However thankful the poor were for her services in healing their sick, they had little to give. Beyond that, she could not bring herself to accept more than what it took to survive. The work she did in healing others was a form of penitence for the evil she did when seized by the madness. She knew that it was her only hope of salvation for her soul.

  Not surprisingly, she saw that the gown was ripped into tatters. It had been repaired many times, until it was a crisscross of stitches, but only a part of the repairs were from the normal wear and tear one could expect in so old an article of clothing. Her first act upon assuming her other form was to rend the clothes from her back. She had learned only to wear loose clothing. The more restrictive the gown, the less usable afterward. As if being trapped in clothing was sufficient to send her into a mad frenzy in and of itself, anything that could not be discarded with relative ease was shredded to ribbons by either razor sharp teeth, or claws, or perhaps both.

  Sighing, she moved to the bundle that lay near the back of the cave, untied it and unrolled her ‘second best’ shift and gown. She could repair the other later. The moon had begun to wane. She was reasonably certain she was safe from her curse for a few weeks. Right now, she needed to dress herself and move on. She had made it a practice to move as far away from an area as possible after she’d killed.

  Bundling her belongings, she wrapped her worn cloak tightly about her shoulders, pulled her hood close around her face and left the cave. To her relief, she discovered her boots within a few yards of the cave. One had somehow landed upright when she’d ‘lost’ it. It was filled with snow. She upended it, struck the sole to loosen the ice crystals. When she’d emptied it, she brushed the snow from one stocking, stood on one leg and tugged the boot on, then repeated the process with her other foot.

  Her feet felt like blocks of ice.

  If she were still human, frozen feet would mean more than discomfort.

  But she had ceased to be human years ago.

  * * * *

  Aslyn had not traveled more than a mile when the distant wails of a distraught mother reached her. She froze, lifting her head to listen, turning slowly until she could distinguish the direction.

  Her heart seemed to drop to her frozen feet and freeze itself into a hard, suffocating knot.

  She hesitated. It would be wiser, she knew, to run the other way. Some instinct told her that she had more to do with the woman’s grief than she ever wanted to know, that her evil deeds would catch up to her, at last, if she didn’t flee while she had the chance.

  She found that she couldn’t.

  She could not know that she was responsible. If she fled, without offering her services as a healer, then she would most assuredly be guilty.

  Hurrying toward the sound now with a sense of urgency, she came upon a small rise. When she’d struggled up it and reached the summit, she saw that she was looking down upon a narrow road. Debris littered the rutted track behind a cart that lay drunkenly upon its side. An ox, struggling to right itself, added its own mournful bellows in counterpoint to the woman’s wails. The woman, Aslyn saw, was sitting on a bank of snow nearby, a child clutched to her breast, rocking back and forth.

  Relief flooded Aslyn. It was an accident then, not some horror of her own making.

  She stumbled as she hurried down the slope, nearly falling flat, but managed to catch herself. “Madam,” she called a little breathlessly as she neared the woman. “What has befallen? Is the child ill?”

  The wails ceased as abruptly as if they’d been choked from the woman by a tight fist. Her head whipped around, stark terror in her eyes. It faded slowly as she focused upon Aslyn. “She’s dying. She’s wounded unto death. My poor babe. My sweet angel.”

  Aslyn reached the woman, grasped her shoulder. “Let me see her. I’m a healer. Perhaps I can help.”

  The woman sniffed, studied her suspiciously. “You are young to be a healer. You are scarcely more than a child yourself.”

  Aslyn’s lips tightened. “Nevertheless, I know my craft. I have been practicing for several years now, learned the secrets of the herbs when I was but a child in truth. What ha
ve you to lose by allowing me to see to the child’s hurts?”

  Reluctantly, the woman loosened her grip on the infant. Aslyn whipped her cloak from her shoulders, folded it and laid it upon the snow, then took the baby and lay it carefully on her cloak. “What happened?” she asked as she checked the child’s injuries, noting with a great deal of concern that, while the child still breathed, its heartbeat was faint.

  A sob tore from the woman’s throat. “A beast attacked us. It was not good day … still too dark to see clearly. I scarcely caught a glimpse of it, but I think it was a wolf.”

  Fear clutched Aslyn’s heart. She felt the blood drain from her face in a dizzying rush. “A wolf, you say? The child’s not been bitten. I can see no signs.”

  The woman shook her head. “Nay! It attacked the ox. The poor thing was terrorized and bolted, crashing the cart. I tried to shield the baby, but she was ripped from my arms when we struck the boulder and flew from the cart.”

  Aslyn nodded, checking the child’s head carefully with her fingers. A knot the size of a goose egg had risen on the baby’s forehead, but she could not detect any other injuries to the head. She carefully rolled the baby onto its side and ran her fingertips along its spine, checking each tiny vertebrae. They seemed intact. She could not detect any notable breaks, at any rate. Until, or unless, the baby awoke, she could not be sure the child had not injured her spine or neck.

  She sat back and glanced around. She hated to expose the child to the elements, even to check her injuries, but she saw no hope for it. There was no shelter. She looked at the woman, who seemed more in possession of herself now. “Gather close and spread your cloak so as to block the wind as much as possible. I must undress the baby to examine her and I don’t want her to catch a chill.”

  The girl child woke as Aslyn unwrapped its swaddling and removed its gown. The child’s mother made an abortive movement to gather it into her arms once more, but Aslyn forestalled her. “No. It will cause her no harm to cry. She should not be moved again, however, until I have determined if she has broken any bones. The crying is a good sign. Such strong, lusty wails could mean she is not so badly injured as you thought.”