The bodies of his neighbors lay among the blood drinkers he’d killed. In the distance, he still saw his father in the fight, easily taking on two vamps, his berserkergang a trusted ally. But then he saw his father fall. Vamps were ready to suck the last of his life force. His spirit.
“No,” he cried, his rage growing, building. He grabbed a sword from one of the fallen vamps as he ran. The blade might not do damage to his flesh, but it would soon find a home in a vampire’s bitter, dark heart.
The blood drinker at his father’s throat lost his head without knowing the threat approaching. The second vampire was able to put up a fight, fueling Osborn’s anger. He laughed into the dawn as the vampire fell at his feet. He turned ready for more, to kill more. His rage only soothed by the death of his enemy. But he was surrounded.
Vampires moved at incredible speeds to join those slowly encircling him. Even with his berserkergang upon him, the spirit of the bear filling him, he knew he could not defeat this many vampires. The vampires had made sure there was no one to help him.
He’d just make sure he took as many as he could with them when he died. He raised his sword, preparing to do battle.
Just as quickly as the vampires had moved to surround him, they stopped. Light began to filter through the leaves of the trees. One by one the vampires left, faster than his eyes could track.
“Come back and fight,” he called to them.
The sound of the wind rustling over the grass was his only answer.
“Fight, cowards.”
But his rage was fading, only anguish left in its place. His pelt began to slip off his shoulders.
Those vampires still left dying on the ground began to sizzle. Smoke rose to the sky from their bodies, and soon they were nothing but ash. The smell was horrific, and he turned away, sinking to the ground by his father’s prone body.
He lifted his father’s hand. It was cold, lifeless. Tears pricked at his eyes, but he blinked them back, in honor of the spirit of the man who’d died to save his people.
The vamp Osborn had relieved of his head left nothing behind but his tunic. Under the cover of the night, he hadn’t realized the attackers had been similarly dressed. His own people did not dress alike when they engaged in battle. But one kingdom of the realm did. The magical vampires of Elden. He recognized the navy and purple colors of Elden’s royal military guard.
It made no sense. Nothing made sense. There’d been peace between his people and Elden for generations. The king only had to ask, and the Ursan warriors would fight at his side.
Only one thing made sense in Osborn’s mind—every last resident of Elden would die by his hand.
The day was filled with hard, gruesome work. He carefully gathered the bodies of his people, trying to remember them as they were—his neighbors, his school buddies, not these lifeless bodies covered in blood and desecrated by bloodthirsty vampires. He found his mother cradling the small, lifeless body of his sister, protecting her even in death. His sister’s favorite bear doll in its frilly pink dress lay nearby. Trampled.
By the time the sun was overhead, his grisly task was nearly complete. Tradition dictated the funeral pyre should be set at dusk, burning into the night. But he suspected his family would forgive him for not making himself an easy target for vampires waiting to rip out his throat. Except there were two members of his family unaccounted for. His two younger brothers, Bernt and Torben.
For the first time since his berserkergang left him, and he was free to see the carnage left in Elden’s wake, did Osborn feel a small twinge of hope. His younger brothers played marathon games of hide-and-seek, but this time their skill at not being found might have saved their lives. And their older brother knew their favorite place. Picking up his steel and pelt, Osborn took off at a sprint.
The earthen smells of the cave was a welcome relief from the smoky ash and blood and death where he’d been working. He whistled into the cave. He heard no returning sound, but he sensed they were in there. Wanted them to be. Needed it. Osborn had never understood his younger siblings’ fascination for this place. He hated the enclosed, dark hole that was the cave, but after chores, his brothers would spend hours in the shelter of the rock. He hoped it held true this time. Osborn took a step inside. “Bernt, are you here? Torben? Come out, brothers,” he urged quietly.
He heard the quick intake of breath, and a relief like no other made his throat tighten.
“It’s Osborn. Take my hand,” he suggested as he forced his fingers deeper into the cave with dread and hope.
He was rewarded by small fingers encircling his hand. Two sets of hands. Thank the gods.
He gently drew them outside the cave, their dirty faces blinking in the harsh sunlight so welcome.
“Mom told us to hide,” Bernt said, guilt already hardening his young face.
“We wanted to fight,” Torben defended. “But she made us promise.”
He gave a quick squeeze to each of their shoulders. The way his father would. “You did the right thing. Now you will live to fight another day.” As he had lived. As he would fight.
After gathering what stores they could find and carry, his brothers helped Osborn light the pyre, saying a prayer for the spirits of their people.
The three of them traveled far away from Ursa, crossing through the various kingdoms of their world. Osborn spent his days hustling for food, trying to keep his brothers safe and work on their training. But he soon learned the only marketable skills a warrior of Ursa possessed was for that of killing. Hired out as a mercenary. An assassin.
The boy who’d once mourned the death of a fearless animal now enjoyed the killing. The smell of death. The pleas of his prey.
Osborn thrived under the threat of his imminent death. Not even the pleasure found between a woman’s legs could quell the blood fury. Only when he faced the steel of another’s blade did his senses awake. Only when the sting of pain lashed through him did he feel … anything.
Only when he witnessed his life’s blood pumping from his body with each beat of his heart did he hear the echoing pulse of his ancestors'. Now gone. All dead. Except him. He always survived.
But the royals of the various kingdoms of their realm grew worried and fearful of this man they’d once hired. A man who took jobs without question was not a man to be trusted.
Now he was the hunted.
And once again, eight years since fleeing his homeland, Osborn gathered his younger brothers and fled, this time deep into the woody plains of the sacred bear, a place where no one but an Ursa warrior would dare to tread. And those warriors were all gone.
Chapter 2
Breena stumbled through the tall grass and bramble. Large thorns tore at the delicate skin of her bare legs, but she no longer cried out in pain. If she were at home in Elden, she could blunt the pain with her magic, force it through some door in her mind and slam it shut. But that power eluded her in this unfamiliar place. Here, wherever she was, she had to endure it. Push through the throbbing of her tired muscles and the sting from the cuts and abrasions running up and down her arms and legs.
The voluminous folds of her once-ornate skirt, her protection from the harsh wilderness, was now gone, ripped and torn away as she’d traveled. Blood ran down her legs from the scratches, joining the dried layer already caked to her calves. Her knees were skinned, and still she drove herself to put one foot in front of another. She pushed forward as she’d been doing since she’d been ripped from her own realm and thrown … somewhere.
She stepped on a rock, its sharp edge digging into the tender arch of her foot; the dainty slippers she’d been wearing when