A Whisper to the North

Chapter XL ✠ Pure Offerings

The circle spread far back to the edge of rocks surrounding the altar stone. It was time to take Una's heart and to feed the child that will bring down Wessex. Wilona stood there calling forth the spirits to enter her and then into Una.

"I endeavor to seek the dark lord's help!" She called out to the circle, and they began to repeat her.

Suddenly Wilona felt consumed with energy, and she began to speak in an unknown tongue of the living world. While she said in dark languages, Alaric prayed.

"May God guide you. Please join our father and mother in heaven. May the Lord bless your tortured and broken soul. I pray that you find peace now. I commend you for your willingness to save Una, but in the end, she couldn't be." Alaric cried as he prayed, holding her in his arms.

Alaric wept as he cut the bindings from Ingrid's hands and legs. He could not save her. She had been gone for too long. It was like his mother when she died from an illness. Alaric began to heal so he would know what to do. And in the end, he could not save his sister. He was as helpless as when they took his father's head.

Wilona began to fall into a deep trance with the blood of Una in her veins and the darkness of Samhain approaching its peak. Wilona took off her black cloak, revealing the bump of her child in her womb. The torches around them began to dim, and the air from the sea stopped. It frightened everyone, including Alaric, who looked up and watched as everything paused. The wind, the birds, the chirpings of insects. It was a silence he had heard like no other. He wondered what kind of demon Wilona had conjured up. He knelt his sister down and ran as fast as he could to Wilona, breaking through the circle.

"Una!" Alaric cried out to her.

At this very moment, Wilona held her dagger high in the air and, as hard as she could, hurdled it down towards Una.

"What!" Wilona screamed as Una grabbed her hands before the blade could pierce her.

"Ahh!" Wilona let out a blood-curdling scream as Una crushed the bones in her wrists.

Alaric stared as the blade fell across the rock and making a high pitch ding as it hit. The torches blew with a fury of fire, and the circle screamed in fright. They had never conjured something of this power.

"Una!?" Alaric said breathlessly as Wilona sunk to her knees, crying out in pain.

"You bitch!" She cried as Una slowly rose with angry wolf eyes and a grin on her face.

Suddenly one of the men jumped to the dagger and tried to attack Una. Una pulled it out of his hand as quickly as stealing out of a child's hand. He trembled in fear at her strength. Before he could beg for his life, Una slashed his throat. He gargled and choked on his own blood and fell as his life left him. Alaric could not move. He was frozen at Una's might. How did she wake up after she had been drugged?

Another man tried to come and choke Una. Even with her slashed wrists, she grabbed his neck and broke his windpipe. He fell to the cold earth and was strangled to death.

"Wilona," Una spoke, but it was unlike anything Alaric had ever heard come out of Una.

She slid herself off of the rock and gazed at the frightened group.

"I see you all," Una said with a laugh.

"Each one of you shall die within a fortnight if you leave this circle." Una seethed.

She gazed down at the man choking to death.

"That was for my daughter Ingrid."

Alaric's eyes shot open as wide as they could. How did she know of Ingrid? Then Una looked at the man she slashed open.