Blood Magic by Eileen Wilks Read Free Book Online

cheerfully, “The Chosen’s back here. She needs to be up there.”
    Sure enough, the crowd parted, people turning with a smile, shifting to let her pass. Jason pulled her forward.
    “My sister,” Lily said. “I’d like her to see—”
    “Your . . . oh, my.” Jason paused, his eyes traveling over Beth as a smile spread. “I can’t believe I overlooked this one. Yum.”
    Beth dimpled at him. “My name’s Beth. I’m the nice sister.”
    “Very nice,” he assured her, his eyes making it clear which elements he considered especially worthy. “And yet I can’t help hoping . . . not too nice?”
    Lily resisted the urge to roll her eyes, settling for retrieving her hand from Jason’s grip. She didn’t think he noticed. “Jason, this is Beth. Beth, Jason Chance. Can you hit on each other later? I really don’t want to miss this.”
    Beth didn’t resist. She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m nicer than that .”
    “No doubt. I’m going to find Rule. You coming?”
    Beth slid a sideways smile at Jason. “I’ll catch up with you.”
    Lily suspected her sister was going to miss the training dance. Oh, well. Jason wouldn’t show Beth any more of a good time than she wanted to have, and at twenty-three, Beth was technically a grown-up. Lily went to find Rule.
    The violins had started by the time she reached the front of the crowd, passed there by people she knew and those she didn’t. Someone had brought a drum, which he was beating slowly. The dancers had assembled into a circle of about a dozen half-naked men, arms locked together. None of them moved. They seemed hardly to breathe.
    Rule wasn’t watching the dancers. He was with them.
    Lily’s breath caught in surprise. Like the others, he wore only ragged cutoffs that hung low on his hips. He was magnificently male, achingly human . . . yet in that moment she almost glimpsed his wolf hidden in the human architecture—a powerful, intense presence illumining the taut muscles and hooded eyes of the man. Friendly, perhaps, that wolf, but not tame. Not at all tame.
    Someone had started a small bonfire in the center of the circle. The ruddy dance of the firelight turned the blades of Rule’s cheekbones hard, gathering shadows to make mysteries of his eyes. Then he looked up, caught her gaze on him, and grinned.
    In delight, she grinned back. After a moment, she thought to look at the others in the circle—and was startled to see Rule’s brother, Benedict. He looked like the statue of some Aztec god turned flesh, his expression as calm and unrevealing as stone, his skin gleaming in the firelight.
    She’d never seen Benedict join the dance before. He probably taught it—he trained young Nokolai in fighting—but she’d never seen him dance it. Why was he in the circle tonight?
    Opposite Rule stood Cullen. He was the most overtly beautiful of them all, his face almost too perfect in its coined symmetry. His eyes glittered with excitement—a merry Pan or Loki about to launch some cosmic mischief.
    Benedict gave a short nod to the drummer, who suddenly kicked up his tempo. The fiddles joined in with a wild opening flourish, the singers launched into the old Russian song—and the dancers erupted from stillness to fury.
    The steps were simple enough. The speed and vigor of those steps flung the men into a rapid clockwise swirl that spun itself from fast to faster before snapping out into a line—and the line dipped in a wave as each man sank to his heels, kicked out with each leg, and rose again.
    After three undulations of the line, those on the ends spun forward. First two men, then four, then more, flung themselves into the air as if they could take flight—and they nearly did, over-leaping one another in a dizzy pattern.
    Then they began hurling one another into the air—a pair of lupi using their hands as a catapult to send a third flying, somersaulting through space, landing with a bounce to leap again or join hands with another to send someone else up.