The tracks bypassed his father’s study, and Andri felt the fear he had been fighting back take an iron hold on his heart as he realized where the killer was headed. His mother’s rooms.
Chardice Aeyliros was a powerful priestess of the Flame, and normally Andri would have confidence in her ability to hold her own against any would-be murderer, but she had been ill for some time now, and neither the Jorasco healers nor her fellow clerics had been able to determine why. She spent most of her time in bed, rising only to attend evening Mass, walking slowly and leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, or Andri’s when he was free from his studies. She was in no condition to fend off a chattering maid, let alone a feral creature that had already left three corpses in its wake.
The door to his mother’s rooms was ajar, and Andri pushed it open slowly, tightening his grip on the hilt of his father’s sword. The sitting room was empty, but a fire burned low in the hearth, destroying Andri’s one hope that his mother might somehow not be home.
He heard a sound from her bedroom-not a scream. His mother was too well-trained for that. More like an exclamation of surprise.
The need for stealth had passed. There was no other exit from his mother’s rooms. He had her assailant trapped.
Andri rushed across the sitting room and into his mother’s bedroom, where a nightmare awaited him.
His mother lay disheveled on her bed in a long, silvery nightgown, her heavy brocaded quilts tossed haphazardly on the floor. Leaning over her in some obscene parody of intimacy was a creature covered in dark blood-spattered fur, bushy tail wagging like a dog’s, its long canine snout hovering mere inches from his mother’s open mouth.
For a split second, Andri thought it was a shifter-her friend, Renato? But wasn’t he in the Reaches, visiting family?
Then, as the pale lavender light from Dravago’s newly-full face streamed in through the window, Andri realized the awful truth.
The thing bending over his mother, looking for all the world as if it wanted simply to lick her face like a happy puppy, was not one of the weretouched.
It was one of the moontouched.
A werewolf.
A startled gasp escaped him, and the werewolf and his mother turned their heads to look at him. The lycanthrope’s tongue lolled out, and it seemed to smile. Then it turned back to his mother and, head darting forward with blinding speed, locked its powerful jaws around her throat and began to tear.
Chardice’s eyes never left those of her son. Her gaze captivated him, held him rooted to the spot, even as the werewolf tore bloody chunks of flesh from her neck.
The priestess did not look horrified, or even frightened, just … sad. Resigned. And perhaps even … expectant?
Andri shook off his trance with an inarticulate cry and threw himself across the room, certain even as he did so that he was too late. His brief moment of inaction had cost his mother her life.
The werewolf turned at the last instant, just as Andri reached the bedside and was preparing to bring his father’s blade down in a powerful arc. With a nonchalance bordering on arrogance, the creature stepped past his guard and backhanded him across the face so hard that Andri felt his jawbone break. The force of the blow sent Andri stumbling backward. His feet tangled in his mother’s cast-off blankets, and he went down.
Surprisingly, the lycanthrope did not take the opportunity to attack, instead turning its bloody muzzle back toward Chardice, who raised her arms up, as if in welcome.
But that was insane. She was so ill, so weak from blood loss, she must be trying to defend herself, and just didn’t have the strength to do more than gesture feebly.
Surely she wasn’t, couldn’t be … encouraging the foul beast?
Andri clambered back to his feet, kicking the quilts aside as he approached the werewolf again, more cautiously this time.
“Get off my mother, you Flame-cursed abomination!”
That seemed to get the creature’s attention. It snarled at him and stepped away from the bed, shaking scarlet drops of Chardice’s blood from its snout as it did so. The werewolf set itself in a ready stance, knees bent slightly as it prepared for Andri’s next charge. It raised its clawed hands up in what Andri at first assumed was a defensive gesture, but he soon realized that it was the beginning of an arcane pass, one that seemed strangely familiar.
The werewolf was trying to cast a spell on him!
As it thrust one palm out toward him, Andri dove to one side, rolling and coming up on his heels a few feet away. He expected to feel the tingle of magic passing over him as he tumbled out of the way, but there was nothing. Standing, he saw that the werewolf was staring at his hand with an oddly canine expression of frustration and disbelief.
The lycanthrope began the pass again, and Andri recognized the motions this time. It was one of his father’s own favorites, a ball of fire tinged with silver and imbued with holy power. But the werewolf’s magic didn’t seem to be working.
Whatever the reason, Andri took the lapse for the boon it was and pressed his own attack. As the lycanthrope tried again and again to call the fire into being, Andri moved in. He feinted toward the werewolf’s hands. As the creature drew away to protect them, Andri crouched low, reversing his stroke and slicing at the lycanthrope’s knees, which had been his true target all along. Only the beast’s preternatural speed allowed it to avoid the blow, as it danced back just out of reach of the silver blade.
Andri had been prepared for that, though. Uncoiling, he sprang forward, bringing the tip of his father’s sword up and scoring a long gash along the werewolf’s abdomen. The creature whirled away, clutching at the wound with one hand, while Andri positioned himself so that he stood between it and the bed.
The werewolf brought its hand up, staring at its own blood curiously. It looked at Andri and grinned again, then thrust its tongue out between its fangs and lapped up the scarlet liquid as if it were water. Andri could not suppress a shiver of revulsion.
There was a hissing noise behind him and Andri risked a glance over his shoulder. Miraculously, his mother, awash in her own blood, was still alive. She was trying to speak, but all that came out of her ruined throat were breathy gasps.
When she saw she had attracted his attention, she tried to lift her too-pale hand and beckon to him. Andri half-turned toward her in spite of himself, unable to deny his mother’s call.
It was a mistake.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but before he could react, the werewolf hit him square in the midsection, sending the young man hurtling over his mother’s bed where he landed facedown with a sickening splat on the eviscerated body of Inulda, his mother’s halfling nurse.
Gagging, Andri scrambled away, swiping at his face with both hands to get the woman’s blood and bits of her masticated flesh off his skin.
His back against the far wall of the bedroom, Andri looked about wildly for his father’s sword, knowing he was doomed without it. It lay where it had fallen, near the foot of his mother’s bed. The werewolf ignored both the sword and him as it turned back to the priestess.
The creature reached out one claw, stroking her cheek in a lover’s caress. It trailed its claws down across the shredded flesh of her throat to her sternum. Its hand hovered there, over the hollow between her breasts.
Andri crawled slowly toward the foot of the bed, each measured movement a torment as he prayed that the creature would disregard him, while every fiber of his being screamed at him to hurry! But he knew his only chance lay in a surprise attack from behind-a blow that would destroy any hope he had of becoming a paladin. Followers of the Silver Flame did not stab their enemies in the back, no matter how abhorrent those enemies were, or how vile their crimes.