Luna's Redemption: Bonded by the Blood

As Lysandra bent beneath the twisted oak, the air smelled like burnt sage and iron, a sickening mix that hung on her throat. She dared not move, her small fingertips probing the bark and splinters pricking her palms. Not when the hollow chanting of the coven slithered across the mist, not when the pyre's flames hissed like snakes behind her mother's chained form.

"Traitor," the High Priestess growled, her voice cutting through the still moonless night. Elara, Lysandra's mother, was tall even though the ropes were stinging her wrists. Her silver-streaked hair, the mark of a witch touched by the moon, gleamed even in the faint firelight.

"You loved a beast," the Priestess spat, whirling around the pyre. "A wolf here." You damaged our blood. You burn for that as well.

Elara's eyes turned to the shadows Lysandra hid in. Before she spoke words too faint for the coven to hear, a flutter of a smile-soft and sad. Her chest constricted. She recognized that spell, the one her mother had sung to send her to sleep, the one that now coiled like a secret in the air.

The lamp dropped.

Flames ate the dry wood, raging to life. Lysandra's scream stuck in her throat as smoke distorted her eyes. But later on-

a split.

The pyre split, timbers falling inward as though driven by an invisible fist. The coven staggered back, their yells breaking apart. Lysandra's hands shone, a weak silver light throbbing beneath her flesh. She didn't get it; this heat ripping up her veins, this *power* twisted into one from her father's roar and her mother's lullaby.

Elara's voice piercing and definitive sliced through the tumult. *run, Lysandra!*

The demand jolted her legs forward. Her bare feet stomping against the ground, the curses of the coven followed her like wolves. She left. But two sentences tore across her consciousness as she disappeared into the forest:

Next is you.

Running till her lungs burned and her legs shook, Lysandra dashed across the woodland totally consumed. She continued even though Brambles ripped at her nightgown and the cold burned her cheeks. Not until a low, agonized scream stopped her dead.

Her father lay slung against a mossy boulder, his wolf form flickering between fur and flesh. A jagged cut divided his side-result of the silver swords of the coven. Like her own, his golden eyes fixed on her. "Lysa...," he rasped, human once more, blood discoloring his teeth.

She fell next him, pressing her hands to the incision. She choked, not sure about healing spells. Her fingers tingle from the silver poison leaking from the cut, a terrible reminder of her mother's destiny.

He grabbed her wrist and spoke quickly. "Listen." Your magic; it's erratic. Wolf and witch is the answer. He started to cough, red flecking his lips. "The coven will look for you. The wolves will frighten you. You really have to disguise it. " bury it.

"How?" she asked in a whisper.

A twig caught before he could reply.

From the shadows three individuals came, their cloaks ink-black against the snow. Monsters. The tallest one front had a young face pale like moonlight, red eyes shining with predatory calm. Lysandra stopped cold. She had never seen a vampire this close; their type hardly ever crossed over coven territory.

Well, the vampire drawled, grinning at her father's limp body. A dying mutt and a small witch. What fortune?

Her father hissed, forcing himself straight. Run, Lysa,!

Still, the vampire went more quickly. A blade pressed to his throat, he pinned her father to the ground in a blur. Ah-ah, he said, looking at Lysandra. "Stay; I'll cut him out of a rug."

Tears clouded her eyes. " Let him go!"

The vampire slanted his head to inspect her. You are the hybrid, not me. The one the coven is shrieking about. His grin got wider. "I'll negotiate with you, little mongrel. Let me spare you for your father; you will owe me a favor. One Day.

Her father cried, "Don't-!"

The dagger bit right through his neck. A drip of blood.

Yes, Lysandra said in a whisper.

Sheathed his weapon, the vampire laughed-a sound like breaking glass. "Beautiful girl," He threw her a copper coin picturing a serpent wrapped around a rose. Silver. When the time comes, I will gather.

Her father gasped, "That was Darius Voss... heir to the Nightrose Court," as he disappeared into the trees. You've doomed yourself, Lysa.

She supported him in his forward stumble, his weight dragging against her. But his breaths got shorter with every stride. By morning, he had left.

Alone, Lysandra buried him under the moon of a wolf, hands raw from excavation. She held the silver coin, its sharp edges against her hand, and murmured her mother's lullaby to the breeze.

She promised me I would survive. Of them.

But the coin's serpent seemed to writhe as she turned toward the horizon, its ruby eye glittering like a promise-or a curse.

Though Lysandra's hands bled as though she had chiseled into stone, the burial was shallow. Her father's body covered in his frayed robe below, she pushed her forehead on the cool ground. The low moon of the wolf hung teasing her with its silver glow. hybrid; the coven had phoned her mother. They had snarled at her, abomination. They now would term her prey.

She grabbed the silver coin Darius had thrown her while standing and wiped tears and dirt off her face. The ruby eye of the serpent pointed back, frigid and unbroken. A gift. Her throat grew constricted. From a twelve-year-old girl with magic that crackled beneath her skin like a live wire, what might a vampire lord want?

She murmured to herself, "You'll learn to hide it," repeating her father's last admonition. Store it buried. Stay alive.

But survival tasted more like ash.

Silence was broken by a rustle of leaves. Lysandra whirled, her hands glowed faintly-a combination of witchlight and wolf-instinct intensifying her eyesight. Darius reclined against a birch tree, arms folded, his smile like a black knife.

"Sentimental," he said, nodding toward the tomb. "A tear waste of a waste." The dead don't give a damn.

She became stiff. "What do you desire?"

He pushed off the tree, gliding with liquid elegance until he hung over her. His red eyes stared into hers, and she swore she felt sympathy there for a heartbeat. Possibly also hunger. " Little mongrel, you owe me. I am not here to collect yet, though. He brushed a strand of her hair with silver streaks. "Get more strong." Repress your power. And avoid disappointing me when I come for you.

He disappeared before she could respond, leaving just the taste of blood and frost.

By herself once more, Lysandra gazed at the coin. The serpent's coils tightened around the rose, its fangs cutting the petals. A deal negotiated in the shadows. She slid it into her boot, the metal burning her skin like a mark.

Years later she would recall this night-the night she promised to bury her wolf, to extinguish her witchlight, to become nothing but a ghost. But the wind conveyed her mother's feeble, tattered voice as she hobbled toward the human settlement on horizon:

Magic cannot be contained, Lysandra. It pours. It breaks here. It ignites.

The coin warmed in her boot like the whisper of a serpent.