Page 6 of A Dawn Of Blood

In the blink of an eye, they kick the three faes to their knees and rip their shirts off.

One of the prisoners lets out a panicked wail that makes my blood curdle. He quickly swallows the sound, but now I see another guard bring out something that looks a lot like hot irons.

“Hey,” I mutter as soon as the realization hits me. Unable to contain myself, I start moving forward, the people in front of me throwing me angry glances over their shoulders.

“Shhh,” I hear someone hiss just as I feel the tight grip of a bony hand on my upper arm.

My eyes snap to my left, where I see an older male fae stare at me with a plea in his eyes.

“They’re hurting them,” I grit out just as my stomach churns with the smell of burned flesh.

“Please,” the man whispers, tears in his eyes, “you’ll get us all in trouble. Be quiet, I beg of you.”

He lets go of my arm. When I turn my eyes back ahead, the prisoners have already been branded — not a single sound to be heard from their mouths — and are being taken away, their heads hung low.

In shocked silence, I follow them with my eyes until they’re gone.

“Beloved brothers and sisters,” the priest’s voice snaps me out of it, “you have done us all a great service tonight.”

My jaw clenching, I throw daggers at him while I listen to people cheer all around me.

“You have helped banish evil from our hearts and our community,” he continues, then steps to the side with a golden chalice in his hands. The vampires in the pews start getting upand forming a line even before he says, “You may come forward and drink of his blood, so the Empire may grow until the Empire is all there is.”

“Fidelis sanguini,” the first vampire says after he takes a sip.

“Fidelis sanguini.”

“Fidelis sanguini.”

For a while, I just keep standing there, watching the ceremony come to an end with equal parts fascination and disgust.

Still, it’s finding Lorcan and Raven that’s my priority right now. Figuring out what the hell is going on with this town, that needs to come second.

So when I hear the guards open the door behind my back and see people start leaving, I rush out and address the first fae I see move to walk past me — this old, sweet-looking lady. “Excuse me?”

“Yes, dear?” she asks as she stops to blink up at me.

“I’m looking for an older, heavier man with a crew cut, in company of a delicate-looking girl with long, black hair.”

Taking a moment to think, she shakes her head. Then she motions in the direction of the church. “Were they sitting in the front?” she inquires, probably wanting to say they might not have gotten out yet.

“They weren’t. The girl is wearing a hoodie and the man is in traditional shifter robes.”

I watch her blanch. “Shifters?”

Frowning, I nod.

It’s a look of disgust she throws me next. Her voice is clipped and ice-cold when she says, “The work camp is to the left of the north entrance.”

The work camp? “Um, excuse me—”

But she’s already walking away, throwing another disgusted look at me over her shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.

Slowly, I connect the dots — the fact I didn’t see a single shifter in there and the fact Baldur always thought shifters to be vermin. They’re all being sent to work camps.

Fear floods me.

That’swhere they took Lorcan and Raven.

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