Page 143 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Cirri looked up at me, her jaw set.What is this ritual?

“I don’t—”

Describe it. Now, please.

“Come back inside.” I managed to lead her back into the tent, out of sight of the burning barn, and resettled her on the chair. Wyn had set the pup in a supplies basket, and offered Cirri a beaten tin cup of tea.

“It’ll settle your stomach,” she said. “Drink up. Not one of us hasn’t turned our guts inside out after finding something like this. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Wyn’s no-nonsense nature seemed to help more than my apologies. Cirri drank, but she gave me an iron-hard stare over the rim of the cup.

“The ritual, then.” I swiveled an ear at a distant shout from Visca, but she was calling for more fuel. “Well.”

“It’s terrible,” Wyn said, scowling grimly as she prepared another cup.

“First, understand that none of us have seen it happen with the wargs.”

Cirri nodded, still drinking. The pup had ambled out of the basket, all wagging tail and bright eyes, and she scooped it into her lap one-handed.

“It… requires death, obviously.” I shifted uncomfortably, the heat of shame and guilt rising in me. The ritual… it was the last thing I wanted to speak of, something far too close to my own past. “A bad death. As much suffering as can be inflicted at once. Blood shed with hatred, tears shed in pain.”

Some of the empty shock had faded from her eyes, and she listened carefully.

“Those are requirements. Without the two, there can be no rebirth. The murder must be committed in a frenzy of rage, with no clear thought. I’ve heard the candidates starve themselves for weeks beforehand, so they’re hungry when the time comes.”

Cirri licked her lips, closed her eyes, and took a deep swallow of tea. She nodded for me to continue when she opened her eyes again.

“Then they must eat. When the blood and tears have been shed, they feed, and if Wargyr has deemed their offering of rage appropriate, they shed their own human skins.”

I knew her thinking look, that distant stare with her brow lightly furrowed.

“Is there something familiar in that?” Please, let her say no… but she had the book in her possession. It was only a matter oftime before she translated enough runes to read about the fine details of my kind.

Cirri tilted her head, still petting the pup, and finally shook her head.Nothing definite, she said, her hands halting.But… perhaps something. I’ll dig deeper in the translations.

“See?” I forced myself to smile and squeezed her hand, warmed from the mug. Better by far than the icy, limp feeling she’d had earlier. “You can’t call yourself useless.”

She didn’t smile; she was still staring through the crack left by the door flap, still thinking.But is it going to help?she asked.What does it matter how they’re born, if we can’t stop them?

There was a question there was no answer to.

“It’ll help,” I told her firmly, and then the door opened. Visca poked her head in, soot added to the smears of blood on her face.

“We could use you, Bane,” she said grimly.

I nodded, and touched my wife one last time. Then left her here, on the outskirts of a defeated battlefield, to go bury the misery I’d caused.

Chapter 35

Cirri

With my stomach empty, my throat sore and raw, and the chill creeping through my cloak, I slunk out of Wyn’s tent, the basket with the laika under one arm, my journal in the other.

The vampire legions had already brought down the terrible pillar of limbs. They’d dragged the bodies from the snow, leaving nothing but dirty crimson and brown smears behind. In the distance, the barn was collapsing in on itself, its blackened, skeletal frame illuminated against the hungry flames.

Most of the town square was quiet. They had dug pits in the wide field around the barn, my husband among them, doing their best to arrange the dead with respect.

I exhaled, my stomach clenching again, and settled on a large rock fallen from the wall, with a view of the square before me. I put the basket by my feet, giving the pup a scratch behind its pointed ears.

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