The Queen of Wolves Read Online Free PDF

night when this scar had been new. She was insistent in her questions, and I told her that much of the Veil had touched me over the centuries, and I had seen many wars, and much peace; I had fought hunters who came to my tombs to destroy me, and had guarded those who were preyed upon by the world’s wolves.
    “I would love to see the Veil,” she said.
    “Perhaps, one night, I will cross it with you,” I said.
    “But not yet?” She looked down at her finger, then at the petals in my hand, and finally up to my face again. “How long does the poison take?”
    “To kill a man? I have seen one die before dawn, having ingested the flower at dusk. Others may die swiftly. It depends on the dose.”
    “Is there an antidote?”
    “None,” I said. “Do not worry. No poison flows through your bloodstream.”
    She turned her attention to the many statues of the gods of death and of rebirth that had lain for centuries along the outer walls of the city. “It is still hard to believe that these treasures have been buried for so long.”
    “Mortals have only recently found harbors and cities of the ancient world in the past several years that have been there for all to see for centuries. Sunken cities of Kah and Rohendris, the scrolls of Canuris, and the temples at Aztlanteum, with the bones of that prehistoric dinosaur that can be none other than Ixtar herself, extinct these many centuries. Yet no one looked before. The tribe brought our protectors here. Yet, if they were abandoned by us two hundred miles in the distance, they could not find their way here again. Only you found your path here. Myrryd has yet to be rediscovered.”
    “It still exists?”
    “A vast red city.”
    “Where is it?” Natalia asked. I saw her eyes flash with desire, as if knowledge were a pleasure kept just out of reach.
    “You must wait, for there is much to show you. I will tell you before dawn. The following night, again I will tell you more of those times. Each night until the telling is done.”
    “You must tell me more of this now. I want to see the forbidden room. I want to know what has been waiting for me all these nights, Aleric. Tell me of the city of Myrryd. The battles. What happened to Pythia? Where did you go when you escaped Aztlanteum? She stole Ixtar’s orb, didn’t she?” Natalia shot the questions at me like the excited scholar that she had become. “There was someone—some stranger—following you in flight from that burning kingdom?”
    Could I have told her that I had waited centuries for her to come to me—for the man or woman from this bloodline to find these secrets of the medieval age in which my fate was determined? For there was no scroll for this, no leathered pages. I had left the last tale of my first century as a secret, which only she and I would know.
    The wolf key itself would unlock the final secret.
    “The orb was known to me as the Serpent’s Eye, although it had a far older name that I would learn much later. Some called it the Lamp of Death. It was the size of Pythia’s fist.” I made a fist, remembering how Pythia’s hand had fit into mine. “Pythia clung to it as if it was the greatest of prizes, yet even she could not unlock its power.”
    “She was pregnant,” Natalia said, recalling the events we had not long ago spoken of. “A mortal vampyre, because of the mask. Who pursued you from Aztlanteum? What of Calyx and the Akkadites, and Taranis-Hir?”
    “You must wait for this,” I said. “Come with me to those ancient days of my first century when war descended like a storm of dark angels across many lands, and my path was illuminated by the Dark Madonna herself, the Queen of Wolves and Plagues and Shadows...when the fires of Nezahual’s city burned bright, and I followed Pythia through the billowing smoke.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    BOOK ONE
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    THE PATH OF SERPENTS

 
     
     
     
     
     
    PART 1: THE FOLLOWER

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
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