Red Rider RIsing: Book 2 of the Red Rider Saga by D.A. Randall (best books to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

grew louder and clearly human, almost musical in its unison. I crept to the front door and searched for a discreet way to enter.

Up above, beams of light broke through the wall, revealing the loading entrance for stockpiling hay. I withdrew Pierre’s grappling hook and slid back the lever, letting its prongs spring out. I squinted, spotting a small triangular hole above the loading door where the wood had worn through. I swung the steel hook in circles, then let it fly. It caught the hole above the door and I tugged on it, feeling it embed itself in the wood. I paused, listening for any sudden movement, then started up the wall. Thankfully, I only had a few steps to climb to the loft. I righted myself and stepped carefully along the slim ledge as the strange rhythm grew louder within. I tugged the prongs free to return the hook to my belt and cracked the door open.

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Hay and dust trickled down from the pile that had been shoved against it. I wrinkled my nose at the moldy straw that had been pushed to the outer edges by fresh hay. I spread the hay apart with cautious fingers, as if wading through weeds in a pond. The noise beyond the hay pile grew louder and stronger, the chant drumming through my entire body as I pushed deeper inside.

Something reeked of sulfur, permeating the inside of the barn.

Finally, I broke through part of the hay to peer through a giant square hole in the center of the loft. A large throng of men stood in formation on the floor below, dressed in black hooded robes and chanting in a strange language that sounded like Latin. Towering torches burned at either end of the ceremony. One robed man stood on a platform between two short pedestals, his arms raised to the assembly. Each hood depicted a grinning wolf, making them all look like black wolves with the robed bodies of men. Behind the leader, a large vat bubbled up something foul, the offensive sulfur odor I had detected.

The hypnotic chant continued as two men each brought an animal carcass toward the leader.

They laid both corpses on a pedestal, bowed to the leader, and backed away to resume their positions.

They were two dead wolves.

I shuddered. I had found the Lycanthru.

Something shuffled nearby. I noticed four robed men standing on either side of me, looking down on the ceremony from separate corners of the loft. I steadied my breathing and didn’t move.

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The leader produced a curved dagger and cut away a section of one wolf’s back. He held up the small rectangular pelt, showing it to the crowd as the chanting slowed. Then he wrapped it around the back of his neck, wearing it like a priest’s collar. As he did so, the other men produced similar wolf pelts and placed them around the backs of their own necks. Then the leader pointed straight up.

Was he pointing at me? I held my breath.

No one reacted to my presence. Instead, they craned their necks toward a skylight cut into the roof, which shed moonlight on each of them.

The leader lifted his arms, welcoming the moon’s rays the way someone might welcome the sun’s warmth after a rainstorm. The others followed suit, raising their hands to the moon as if praising it.

Then they produced small flasks from within their robes. The leader took his to the bubbling vat behind him. He lifted a large iron ladle from the vat, filled it with the foul goldenrod liquid, and poured it into his vial with a doctor’s precision. It bubbled a little more as he stirred the vat with his ladle, refreshing the sulfur stench in the air. He extended his arm to the other hooded figures. They stepped forward, one by one, to have him fill their own flasks.

When everyone had taken from the vat, they returned to their positions to face the man on the platform. Then each one drew back his hood.

I