Table of Contents
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
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Huntress Moon
Bones and Bounties Book 2
Bilinda Sheehan
Copyright © 2017 by Bilinda Sheehan
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Want to know when the next book is coming?
Also by Bilinda Sheehan
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgments
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Also by Bilinda Sheehan
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Also by Bilinda Sheehan
The Shadow Sorceress Series
A Grave Magic
Blood Craft
Grim Rites
Wild Hunt
Touch of Shadow
Embrace of Darkness - Coming Soon
Bones and Bounties
Banshee Blues
Huntress Moon
Bond of Blood and Shadow Series
Violet Line - Book One
Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
William Blake
Chapter One
Three tiny drops of rainwater beaded on my skin, rolling down my forehead and into my eyes, causing them to sting as my vision blurred. Fire burned in the back of my parched throat, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My body was so dehydrated I couldn’t even moisten my lips, and they split as I struggled to open my mouth in response to the tiny drips of life-saving liquid.
Tilt back, goddammit, my brain commanded my utterly exhausted body. Moving my head back would allow the water to stand some chance of reaching my mouth, but instead I hung limply from the iron-studded leather straps that kept me in place against the wall.
A key turned in the lock of my cell door, and the familiar crunch of my jailer’s boots crossing the floor filled me with hope.
Would today be the day they killed me?
“Repent,” he said, his voice gruff.
Despair flooded my veins, and the grating sound that came from my throat was practically unrecognisable to my ears.
I couldn’t raise my face to stare into his, but I didn’t need to see his frustration because I could feel it pouring from his body like steam.
How much more could I stand?
A second set of footsteps echoed in my cell, and fear crept up along my spine. I jerked internally as a cold hand touched my face, tilting it up. I blinked back the tears crowding my vision. I knew what was coming. The pain had become my intimate friend.
“She still shows no sign of remorse,” Lunn said, addressing the fae whose fingers pinched my chin.
I let my eyes wander over to Lunn and sucked in a deep breath through my teeth. His expression was one of pity as his gaze met mine. My jailer would not save me.
“Look at me,” the fae who held me said, but the voice was wrong.
I knew the woman who tortured me day in and day out. The way her blade carved at my skin, the feel of her sharpened teeth as she feasted on my flesh, hour after hour, restoring my body only to start the torment over again. But this was not her voice, not her hands on my face.
“Look at me, Darcey,” he said, calling to me in ways only he could. My insides tightened, and my heart constricted in my chest.
My god.
My heart.
My Mannan.
My gaze swivelled to his face, his beautiful face. He smiled, and it lit his dark eyes. I strained toward him, my fingers itching to trace the face I hadn’t touched in an age, but the straps around my wrists halted my movement.
Straps…
Mannan had never come to me when the fae held me prisoner. He was the reason they tortured me, the reason they carved flesh from my bones day after day. The reason my power felt sluggish in my veins. Because of him, I was only a shade of my former self.
“You’re not here. This isn’t real,” I whispered, my lips cracking. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth.
Mannan’s smile faded, the loving expression in his eyes melting away to be replaced by something bitter and twisted. I blinked, mostly in an attempt to protect myself from the vitriol in his gaze, but it served another purpose—when I looked at him once more, I saw him for what he truly was.
One side of his formerly beautiful face had split open, the pus-filled remains of his eye socket writhing with maggots. He hissed, his thin, blackened lips stripping back from his rotted teeth as he jerked away from the shimmering bars of the cage I had trapped him inside.
His gnarled hand fell away from me, and I was no longer pinned to the dungeon wall in Faerie.
“Come back to me, Darcey,” he said, reaching toward me with his twisted, bird-like hands.
“This isn’t real. You’re not really here, Mannan—I made sure of it when I created the cage.” I took a small step bac
kwards.
It couldn’t be real, and yet it felt real. I could practically feel him inside my head, just like he had been before.
“Of course I’m here, my love. Did you really believe I would stay gone?”
His words sent a spurt of terror through my stomach, and I clenched my hands into fists to keep my face from betraying my emotion.
“This is a nightmare.”
“I miss you…” he said, his words tugging at my mind.
“No.” I spoke firmly and took another step back.
“Come home, Darcey, I forgive you.” The edge of excitement to his words was all I needed to realise I was missing something.
Snapping my attention to the space just behind him, I watched the darkness expand as the smoky, dark tentacles spread toward the roof of the cage. I could remember a time when they had been real, pulsing and slick. What was he doing?
“I need you, sweetheart. Look at me,” he said, attempting to draw my attention away from the horror unfolding before me.
The tentacles moved around him, unrestrained by the cage, pushing through the bars, reaching, searching for something only they understood.
A branch beneath my feet cracked, and the tentacles of darkness pulsed once before turning their eyeless forms in my direction. When they surged forward, a scream bubbled up through me, erupting from my mouth as they grabbed my body and lifted me from the forest floor.
“Come home to me, Darcey. I need you.” Mannan reached for me once more.
“Go to Hell,” I said, fighting against his creature’s grip on me.
“Already there, sweetheart. Now it’s your turn.” His tone was twisted in cruelty, and the tentacles tightened like hundreds of iron bands wrapping around my body, crushing me beneath their weight.
“Time to share,” he said, and the tentacles’ tips were suddenly covered in hundreds of tiny mouths, each filled with razor-sharp teeth that, at his command, struck my skin and bit deep into my flesh.
Pain tore at me, and what little power I had left flowed toward the creature that was attempting to drain me.
Something heavy hit my chest, and a large yowl cut through the sounds of slurping coming from Mannan’s creature.
My eyes sprang open, and I found myself staring up into the large, green eyes of the ginger terrorist, as she was still known. Sweat clung to my body, drenching my T-shirt. Picking up the kitten, I cradled her against my chest, stroking her soft fur in an attempt to slow the frantic beating of my heart.
I felt a burning sensation in the crooks of my elbows that intensified as the moments ticked by and my heart rate returned to normal. Reaching out to the bedside table, I flicked on the lamp. The kitten in my lap gave another pitiful meow as we both stared down at the perfectly round bites from hundreds of tiny puncture marks that slowly oozed blood down my arms. Seeing them on my skin stirred memories I had thought were long buried.
The kitten pawed at my chest, and I stroked her head gently.
“Thank you,” I said, staring down into her green eyes. The fae weren’t supposed to use those words, but when we did they meant something. She meowed again, and something intelligent and utterly unkitten-like crossed through her gaze. It was gone in a flash, but I had seen it—and it wasn’t the first time.
Smiling, I tickled her beneath the chin. “Wherever you came from—and don’t tell Samira I said this, we don’t want her thinking I’ve gone soft—I’m sure glad you found your way here…”
The kitten purred her satisfaction and started making biscuits through my thin cotton T-shirt. It was comforting to both of us, but it didn’t shake the gnawing fear lurking at the edges of my mind. It had been a dream, and at the same time it had felt real. Not just that, but I also had the marks of Mannan’s beast on my arms. That alone should have been impossible.
Cradling the kitten a little closer, I fought against the exhaustion that washed through me. But fighting was futile, and I eventually lost, my eyes fluttering shut as my fears over Mannan’s incarceration closed in.
Chapter Two
"We are not calling her Fuzzikins,” I said, wrinkling my nose in disgust.
The last thing the kitten needed was a chip on her shoulder. She already had a serious attitude problem, and I wasn't going to be responsible for adding to that by calling her something ridiculous. Names were a serious business—they held power. I dreaded to think what kind of power ‘Fuzzikins’ could possibly hold.
As I hefted the ancient book in my hands and drew my legs underneath myself in a cross-legged position, dust fluttered down between my fingers and onto the floor.
The books scattered around me were older than I was, passed down through the hands of the banshees. The oldest of the books, their spines cracked with use, were made from the skin of my ancestors. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought, but it didn’t change the fact that these books were some of the most powerful in existence.
Some of them were just a mere recording of our history; others spoke of magic long-since lost. It was the lost magic that I was most interested in.
The power that lay within Samira’s collar wasn't something to be trifled with. I'd already attempted to open it with the Bone Blade, and that had been a failure of epic proportions. I could still remember the smell as the collar burned into the delicate skin on Samira’s neck.
Gently gripping the next page between my gloved index finger and thumb, I turned it and the paper crackled in protest. The books wanted to be read; I could feel their need beating against my skin like thousands of tiny wings. It was the reason I’d insisted Samira stay upstairs while the books were out. I was careful to keep them inside the safe and away from prying eyes and fingers, the locks spelled so that only I could open them. Allowing them to fall into the wrong hands would be devastating in more ways than one.
The knowledge contained inside the pages was far too powerful for the mortal world. Of course, locking them away didn't stop the books themselves from ageing.
A day would come when the pages became impossible to turn; what I would do then, if I was alive to see it, was a bridge I would have to cross when I came to it. Perhaps there was a spell to prevent the ageing process?
"Why not?" Samira said, making her way down the steps into the basement. The wet rag she was using to clean the fingerprint dust left behind by the cops was gripped tightly in her hand. "She likes the name Fuzzikins, don't you, sweetheart?" She directed her comment at the orange terrorist curled into a ball in the corner of the basement.
At the sound of Samira’s voice, the kitten raised her head and meowed plaintively before lowering it again. “Oh, you don't like being woken up?” I said grumpily. “Now you know how I felt last night when you couldn’t make up your mind if you wanted to go in or out of the room…Next time, I’ll sing you the song of my people and see how you like it."
The kitten glared at me, her brilliant green eyes glinting in the half-light of the basement. At times when I looked at her, I swore she knew exactly what I was saying. And not just in the cutesy animal way—sometimes the intelligence in her gaze was more than it should be for a ball of orange fluff.
The moment the thought popped into my head, I remembered the look she’d given me last night when she’d woken me from the nightmare that was more than just a nightmare. The bite marks itched against the sleeves of my shirt, and it took all of my willpower not to drag the fabric out of the way and tear at them. But doing that would only raise questions I couldn’t answer.
“Hell no,” I said again to Samira. "My word is final. We are not calling her something ridiculous. And the books are still out, so you can’t be down here.”
Samira’s laughter trailed away as she moved back up the stairs, leaving me once more with the books and the kitten.
As I stared down at the page, my eyes refused to focus and the words seemed to swim across the yellowed parchment. My stomach chose that moment to growl its protest at my lack of breakfast.
"Nope," I said, closing the book softly
and replacing it on top of the precarious pile next to me. “I don't suppose anything is going to get done on an empty stomach."
The kitten’s gaze had gone from one of irritation to interest, and I couldn't stop the smile that curled my lips. There was definitely more going on inside her little fluffy orange head than I'd first believed possible.
I pushed onto my feet and stretched, pressing my hands above my head as I lifted up onto my toes. My bones finally cracked and popped into place, and I let out a sigh of relief. I caught sight of the iron blades left atop my desk and quickly squashed the feeling of guilt that flooded me. Training was something I had done every day since my banishment from Faerie. But after everything that had happened with MacNa, I just couldn't bring myself to use my knives.
I could still remember the look of surprise on MacNa’s face, the way the light had died in his eyes. It haunted my dreams, making sleep almost impossible. We might not have been friends anymore, but he hadn’t deserved to die that way. The Mother of the Hunt had put him down as though he were nothing more than a rabid dog…
Shaking my head, I pushed aside the thoughts, which weren't going to help me solve the issue of removing Samira’s collar. And dwelling on my own feelings of guilt surrounding his death definitely wasn't going to get me food any faster.
I darted to the stairs and paused, staring down at the orange fluff ball. She had somehow beaten me to it and sat waiting for me on the steps, almost as though she knew exactly what I had planned on doing. Moving toward her, I let my hand brush against the top of her head, and she purred contentedly. "Don't worry, you’ll get fed too,” I said.
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