Blood Moon by Alyxandra Harvey Read Free Book Online

breath of the cold mountain air if I still breathed. The weight of the past few months and the memory of Kieran’s blood on my lips made me shudder.
    “Are you sick?” Nicholas asked, coming out of the shadows. “You look weird.”
    “I’m fine.” I eyed him warningly. “I wish people would stop asking me that.”
    “Okay.” He shrugged. “So long as you don’t throw up on my shoes.”
    “Deal.” I half smiled. “I have to go to town.”
    “Does Mom know?”
    “Shut up.”
    “Cranky.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “A little. Will you come with me?”
    “Sure.”
    We stepped out into the bustle of the fields, the stars so crisp overhead you could see the Milky Way. There was a path already worn through the grass, torches flickering where it branched out. Guards stood at the front and back of every tent. The ones with royal crests on their shirts dipped their heads when they saw us.
    “That’s still weird,” Nicholas muttered.
    The one I’d lulled to sleep last week with my pheromones watched me warily. I tried an apologetic smile. Heads turned curiously when my extra fangs caught the light. I let my hair screen myface. “Damn it.” Constantine would’ve told me to flash them proudly. I couldn’t see him anywhere. Whispers rolled in our wake, like ripples behind a boat on a clear pond.
    “It’s just a couple of teeth.” I hunched my shoulders. “What’s the big damn deal?” I asked, even though those same teeth had me in a panic a few days ago. The extra fangs weren’t normal; neither was the keen bloodlust or the fact that my pheromones worked on other vampires. We were still trying to keep that last part a secret.
    “It’s not that,” Nicholas replied grimly.
    “What then?” He was suddenly so close to my side, I stumbled when his elbow knocked me off balance. “What are you doing?”
    “It’s the Furies.”
    I blinked. “Who?”
    “Sebastian told me about them. They used to serve Lady Natasha.”
    I went cold at the mention of her name. She might be dead, on the tip of my mother’s stake to be exact, but she’d also tried to kill me and eat my heart. It wasn’t something you forgot.
    And apparently I wasn’t the only one who remembered.
    There were seven Furies: three vampires and four human bloodslaves, all women. They had dyed their hair the same white as Lady Natasha. They even wore it in the exact same style, bone straight with severe bangs. They wore elaborate white dresses, just like she had the night she tried to kill me. They looked exactly like her except that they each had the mark of her house tattooed on their faces: three black raven feathers. The feathers they wore in their hair were bleached white.
    It was creepy.
    “London’s not with them, is she?” We hadn’t seen our cousin since before my birthday. Even her parents couldn’t find her. She’d sent them an e-mail to let them know she was okay, but she’d essentially run away after I turned.
    “No, she’s not.” Nicholas angled himself between me and the Furies when they began to hiss.
    “Usurper,” one of them spat. “Murderer.”
    Technically, Mom was the usurper, but I didn’t say it out loud. I had a feeling semantics weren’t exactly important right now. I was a figurehead to them, a scapegoat. That damn prophecy again.
    The Furies approached, like the spores of a poisonous white mushroom drifting dangerously close. My neck prickled. Nicholas tensed, about to reach for a weapon. I grabbed his arm, remembering the Joiik woman weeping over the ashes of her loved one at her feet and the red-tipped arrows of the Chandramaa.
    “Don’t,” I told him. “Just back up and keep your hands visible.” I held mine up as if we were at gunpoint.
    “I don’t trust them.”
    “Then trust the Chandramaa.” He hadn’t seen them in action yet, hadn’t seen Constantine’s cheeks go so pale they looked like bone knives. And I was sure he didn’t frighten easily. My fangs elongated, making my gums feel raw