Free Master of Wolves by Angela Knight Page A

waves. To Celestine, the scent was as intoxicating as it was nauseating.
    â€œJesus,” Reynolds breathed in her ear. “There must be two thousand people in here. I hope to hell you don’t want to take them all on.”
    â€œNot likely. Listen!”
    At the other end of the cathedral, Korbal stood on an elevated stage. He was a tall man, graying and handsome, with blue eyes that blazed with fanatical charisma. Behind him, a massive carving depicted Geirolf presiding over ranks of cultists lined up to drink from the three grails.
    â€œWe face a great threat, my children,” he said, his voice rising and falling in the hypnotic cadences she knew so well, “one we must band together to defeat—”
    â€œUnder your leadership, I assume?” a man sneered from the crowd.
    â€œDoes it matter who leads,” Korbal told him, “as long as we deal with the threat?”
    Celestine suppressed a snort. No matter what kind of game the priest played, his ultimate goal was power.
    â€œWhat threat?” a female voice demanded.
    The priest drew himself up in in his embroidered black robes. “Three weeks ago, on March tenth, precisely at 11:34 P.M ., half my army was wiped out in the blink of an eye.”
    Celestine’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t sure what was less likely—the possibility that it would happen, or that he would admit it if it had.
    On the other hand, Korbal was entirely capable of inventing a crisis to stampede the gullible into following him.
    A babble of voices rose. “What the hell are you talking about?” one demanded.
    Korbal lifted his graying head in an angry gesture. “Somehow Arthur destroyed them all, while leaving the rest of us untouched.”
    Mutters of protest and disbelief. “What? Why? ”
    Celestine frowned. He was suckering them, he had to be. And yet…perhaps he wasn’t.
    â€œA sneak attack, then?”
    â€œA spell?”
    â€œHe lies! Korbal always lies.”
    â€œGo then,” the priest snapped. “Go and die when Arthur’s witches work their magic again. Die unable to defend yourself, between one breath and the next, while you are murdered from a dimension away.”
    The shouts subsided to a sullen murmur until another man spoke. “If you know something, priest, spit it out.”
    â€œWe determined that all those who died had drunk from the second grail,” Korbal announced in that beautiful, deceptive voice. “Those who drank from my grail lived, and so did those turned by the third grail. But the children of the second grail have been wiped from the face of the earth.”
    â€œHe’s lying!”
    â€œNo.” Now a woman spoke. “We ran with Harry Kent’s group. The same thing happened to us. Exactly at 11:32 P.M . on March tenth, Harry and sixty of our cult mates burst into magical flame and disappeared.”
    â€œOh, bullshit!”
    â€œKorbal’s subverted her.”
    â€œNo,” a man shouted over the murmurs of disbelief. “She speaks the truth. I can sense it.”
    There was another wave of sound. Korbal gestured, and his voice thundered, magically amplified. “I believe that one of Arthur’s witches has created a spell to destroy the grails—along with all the vampires who were created by them.”
    â€œBut if that’s the case…”
    â€œâ€¦We have no defense,” Korbal finished. “You’d be dead before you knew what hit you. Our only chance is to band together to defend our grail.”
    â€œI knew it—he wants to gain control of us all!”
    The priest shrugged his black-robed shoulders. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Can you run the risk either way?”
    â€œAnd perhaps we’ll tell you to go to hell!”
    â€œYou certainly have that option,” he said. “But consider—I have the grail. My forces have been greatly depleted by the spell. If I can’t defend the