Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

to grab. “Call your dogs off and you might yet survive this night.”
    “You’re on our land, Sinclair bitch, and I’m sure the MacLeod will be very interested to find out why.”
    “He won’t hear it from me.”
    The other wolf shifted and approached the ugly-mouthed warrior. “Give me a hand up, Ualraig, and I’ll get her down quick enough.”
    Ualraig didn’t have the opportunity to answer because Lais skewered him with his broadsword, pulling it back in a manner that destroyed any chances the other Chrechte had of surviving the wound. “That was for Mairi, you vicious bastard.”
    “That slut?” Ualraig scowled, the scent of blood and other body fluids so strong Ciara wanted to vomit. “She deserved what she got.”
    “So did you, it looks like to me,” Ciara spat down at the unrepentant Chrechte.
    Lais bent over the dying man. “Aye, our princess is right. You’ll burn in hell knowing an Éan sent you there, too.”
    She didn’t know what role Ualraig had played in Mairi’sbeating, but if Lais found the man a personal affront, it hadn’t been minor.
    Having shifted back to his animal, the smaller wolf attacked Lais from the side, going straight for his throat. Ciara screamed her warning and Lais spun just in time. The wolf’s jaws grazed his shoulder, but Lais punched up with a strong fist and sent the beast flying from him.
    It was a Chrechte though, not a normal wolf and it was back in moments, fighting Lais while another tried to scale the brae and get to her.
    Eirik raked his opponent’s body with his dragon’s claws, drawing a spray of blood, before spinning away and rushing to take a position below Ciara.
    Can I talk to the wolves the way you talk to your Éan? she asked him across their mate-link.
    No surprise at her knowledge came through their connection. Perhaps. With the stone.
    And perhaps she’d go into a vision if she touched it with her bare hands again, but the flash of the coming trouble the first time had been brief. And while touching the stone had left her body weak with strange sensations, it had not knocked her out like her vision with the sword had done.
    She’d have to risk it regardless. Artair was limping from a terrible wound to his thigh, Everett had a gash on his shoulder, Vegar bled down his torso and Lais was in mortal hand-to-hand combat with a wolf. There were several dead already among the MacLeod, but a few more well-connected strikes and her friends were in serious danger of losing one, or more, of their own.
    She pulled the Faolchú Chridhe from her purse and held on to it, concentrating on her connection to all Chrechte through it. She was prepared for the buzzing sensation below her skin and the heat the stone generated in her hands, but she nearly fell off her perch when her mind connected to Artair, Everett and his brother. She could not read their thoughts any more than she could read Eirik’s, but she felt their emotions and knew instinctively their minds were open to hearing her.
    Withdraw from combat, she ordered them. Eirik can’t shift to his full dragon and cast fire with you in the way.
    She said the same thing to her mate via their link. She could not read one emotion in the maelstrom coming from him, but his soldiers withdrew and the Sinclair and Balmoral wolves followed.
    He must have done as she suggested and ordered them back.
    They all looked like they were running, only to double back and herd the MacLeod soldiers into a tighter formation. It wasn’t a bad formation for doing battle, but as fodder for dragon fire? It made them twice as vulnerable.
    Eirik stripped and shifted with a speed that astonished her and then cast his fire in wave after wave after wave.
    When it was over, not even the smell of charred flesh remained because nothing was left but a fine powder of dust.
    “This time it will be the Fearghall wondering what has happened to their brethren in the forest,” Vegar said, his gravelly voice laced with dour satisfaction.
    Put the stone back in your satchel and climb on my back, Eirik ordered inside Ciara’s mind.
    “But I need to close the cave entrance, so the MacLeod doesn’t find it.”
    Drop the small stone to Artair. He can do it. There was something in Eirik’s voice inside her mind that made Ciara want to comply without arguing.
    A few moments later, Artair had closed the entrance to the cave and he and the other warriors were doing what was necessary to remove evidence of their presence on MacLeod