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The deer Draven had brought me was already cooling. I had sent Ash to the storage rooms, and he’d retrieved what I’d requested.
Gleaming iron knives lay before me. I selected the one with the ivory handle, turning it in my grasp.
Then I slashed the deer’s throat, letting the blood flow. I reached down and put my hands in the blood, and raised them to draw long crimson streaks down my face.
“It is time, sisters. For them, it is a season of blood and torment.”
I stood, the blood dripping down my cheeks. I would not wear their sacred blue ever again; only red.
“But we are what they are afraid of. For us, it is the season of witches and their wolves.” I took another knife, and held it to Freya. “Sacrifice your fear.”
She knelt, and rose with a red, bloody handprint across her face. Her blue eyes gleamed fiercely from her new mask, and she took the knife.
I held the next one to Aldis, then to Mercy. They covered themselves with scarlet warpaint, taking their knives.
“We end this tonight.” I turned to the Beasts. “We will not harm women and children. If the men beg for mercy, it will be for us to decide who lives and dies.” I gestured to myself and my new coven. “Our choice.”
The Beasts nodded, but they were already growling low in their throats.
I climbed up on Ash’s back, and my sisters mounted their own werewolves. The monsters loped into the Wood, and this time, when I called on the monster within myself, she came easily.
My fangs pushed outwards, my claws lengthening.
I had only ever needed to accept her for what she was for her to come to me willingly. Yana’s senseless death had made me truly understand that I was no monster at all.
Theywere, and they would pay for it.
The moon rose as the Beasts silently flooded through the trees. When the lights of Vostok came into view, they began to snarl in earnest.
I heard rustling from up ahead, several shouts.
Lanterns flared to life, and we saw the archers patrolling the barriers. One of them was fumbling his arrows, hands shaking as he took in the multitude of Beasts.
I jumped down on Ash’s back, but Freya and her Beast were ahead of us. The bloody woman lunged, burying her knife in his guts. Her Beast took off his head.
I hacked away the barrier ropes, and a swarm of Beasts tipped over the runestones. We were past the village’s line.
More men were coming, carrying spears. One Beast took a spear to the shoulder and shook it free, leaping ten feet and knocking a man to his back. I heard the shattering crunch of his rib cage under the Beast's weight.
I wanted Borodin and the Augur. I strode into Vostok, chaos unfurling around us, the sounds of screaming filling the night.
Beasts ripped doors off hinges, and my sisters were merciless and vicious. If a man stood against them, he went down.
One man I recognized from Father Borodin’s personal cadre saw me, a sword raised over his head. He took in my claws and fangs, his expression stuttering through fear and determination.
He turned to run, and I leaped, the strength in my muscles carrying me the distance between us. I brought the knife down between his shoulder blades, digging it in as warmth gushed over my hands.
He had beaten Freya’s Gran once for moving too slowly. He did not deserve mercy.
The church’s doors were locked up tight when I finally reached them, dripping gore.
“Come out, Father,” I called.
A candle flame flickered in one of the windows, and went out. I smiled, a grim, humorless smile, and flexed my claws.
It was easy to scale the wooden church, clinging like a spider with my knife clasped between my teeth. I reached the second story and punched through the glass, spraying prismatic shards on the darkened floor within.
I climbed over the windowsill, heedless of the broken glass.
