"You know you can't harm us, Bane," Aine reminded me, looking up at me with her big, round eyes. The glitter she wore around them sparkled in the light of the setting sun like diamond dust.
There was lust in her eyes. I could smell her desire for me emanating from her pores, and it smelled like rotting, old meat. It was because of this desire, though, that made me certain she would acquiring a particular piece of information for me.
"If you harm any of us, your chances of ever being free from our bonds decreases to about 0%. Minus zero, even. Not to mention the fiery lashes you will receive by my grandmother's hand."
"Do not threaten me," I growled at her, impatiently. The little, pixie-like girl smiled up at me. She took the collar of my leather trench coat and flattened it down with her palms. I had to turn my nose away from her offensive, lascivious odor. "I only asked that you tell me what I wish to know," I said, my patience were wearing thin.
"And why would I do that? What would I get out of it?" Aine batted her eyelashes at me. She wanted beneath me. This is what she wanted to get out of it. But there was only one woman whom I wanted to lie beneath me. Only one who would satisfy my sadistic ways.
"You would do this because you are the only Daughter in The Coven who beholds a portion of compassion."
"You know I have no idea how you and your brothers can break through the wards, Bane. It's a highly guarded secret amongst the higher-ups. I'm just a pee-on. They don't tell me the important stuff like that. Especially since we are not technically even a coven yet!"
"But you can find out," I said. "Demeter is your grandmother. Persephone is your mother."
Aine looked at me for a long moment then finally said, "I'll try. Maybe I can ask Isabel Gordon. She seems to know more about The Hallows Coven than the Daughters do themselves. Or maybe I can talk to that crazy Sarah Jenkins. Since dead people talk to her and tell her things, maybe she can ask one of my family's ancestors or something."
"That would please me, Aine."
"I would like to please you, Bane." Aine slipped her hand inside the trench coat and pressed her palm to my chest. Her lascivious odor flared. "In any way I can."
I snatched her up by the wrist and jerked her little body into mine, setting her face below mine. "I have no interest in being pleased in any other way than what I am asking now, so keep your hands to yourself, lest I chew them off at the wrist. I am carnivorous, do not forget." I tossed her away. She was useless. Her fear was too tainted by lust. I would spit out her meat, if I had to hold true to my promise.
"You might want to clean up after yourself. Divine will be awful upset if she finds this mess you made," Aine said, pride wounded. "And you better have hunted only tourists, or you know how Aradia will get." Then she walked off, heading back into the woods toward The Coven's lair.
My gaze swept across the grassy clearing. Tangles of bloody, dismembered bodies were all that was left of my frenzied hunger. What lie before me now was the aftermath of my carnage, a failed attempt at placating my fury. It was unlike me to make such a mess, to leave even a drop of precious blood behind, but I hadn't felt like myself for quite some time.
My Lady Moon was an anomaly. She wielded a magic powerful enough to change me into something I was not, something far more pernicious.
Yet, softer, at the very same time.
Yes, softer. The cold, stone organ that beat beneath my ribs was growing softer. For her. Only for her.
My gaze rose to the rippling surface of Snow Melt Lake.
Perhaps I should pay Sarah Jenkins a visit myself.
I rose from the rock outcropping and shrugged out of my coat. The smell of Aine's desire was far more potent when I did not cover my body in her presence. The sight of my prodigious body and the grand display of my wings deeply aroused Aine.
Before the coat could hit the ground, I was momentarily side-tracked from my mission by the gapping, bloody hole in the neck of a woman who no longer had a body. I scooped it up and suctioned my lips to the now cold skin, sucking up what was left of the blood. There was the brain. Yes, I knew this. When ever there wasn't enough, cracking the skull open and sucking out what little there was left in the brain was always an option. But not this time.
Later, I would clean up this mess. But right now, Sarah Jenkins was far more important to me than even all the terror-saturated blood in this world. But only if she could tell me what I desired to know.
I had to get to My Lady Moon. I simply had to. Or My Lady Moon had to come to me. One way or another, I needed to protect her from my brother. And until I found a way, I would not rest.
****
Chapter Sixteen
Luna