Blood Moon (19 page)

Chapter 18

Rachel called Sally, letting it ring a few times.
 

“Hey, Sally. Just checking in with you, wondering how things are going?”

“Good, pretty much as planned.
 
I’ve got my class schedule to coincide with the young one.
 
When I got there, she wasn’t there yet, so I grabbed a seat near the door making a seat available right next to me for when she walked in late.
 
Worked like a charm.”
 

“Did she know you?”

“Nope.
 
What about your end?”
 

“That’s not going well.
 
Apparently, her vampire boyfriend came in after I cast the sleeping spell and so he caught me in the house.
 
He also must have broken my necklace because I can’t find it anywhere.”
 

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, the vamp was no match against my magic. He couldn’t see, smell, or hear me when I got done with him.
 
He walked right past me twice. But I suspect they’ve put some wards up to prevent such a thing from happening again. I’ll try again tonight, but I have my doubts.”

“What are we going to do?
 
We’ve got to get that incantation or all this work was for nothing.”

“I have some ideas I’m working through.”

“Well, let me know if you need my help.”
 

“Thanks, I will. Keep me posted.”

“Talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

During lunch, Darby came up to the front of the store where there was a small love seat and a couple of chairs so people could read.
 
She sat with Allison and they chit chatted about this and that while they ate.

Darby asked.
 
“So how are things with you and Dean? He seems so happy when you are around.”

Allison answered, “Oh, great.
 
He’s nice.”

“That’s it? He’s nice? I thought you guys really hit it off.”

“Don’t get me wrong.
 
I really like him, but come on, he’s a werewolf. What kind a future can I have with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if I want to have wolf babies and live with the whole werewolf thing for the rest of my life.
 
I mean, with your sister being one and all, I guess I should keep my mouth shut, but you did ask.”

“Yes, I did.
 
And I would like to know how you feel about it.”
 

“I feel scared of getting too attached.
 
I could fall for him easily, if I haven’t already, but it’s a lot to take in.
 
I’ll always be worrying about him getting shot when he’s in the woods.
 
I want kids; lets face it, am I dooming them to being werewolves? My parents and my brother, how are they going to feel about all of it? There are about a gazillion things that worry me about the whole situation. I go back and forth on the fence about whether that’s something I want to be worrying about for the rest of my life or if it would be better to just nip this in the bud and let him go.”

“Wow. I had no idea it bothered you so much.”
 

“It does and it doesn’t.
 
Short term it doesn’t bother me at all, but when I think of my life in twenty years with him, that’s when things get cloudy and confusing.”

“Why don’t you talk to him about this?
 
His parents must have gone through some of this.”
 

“Both his parents were werewolves. It’s not the same. When you are both werewolves, well, you deal with it.
 
Yes, you will have werewolf kids and you just accept it because there are no choices, but I have choices. I’m not a werewolf. Will I be an outsider with my own kids if we do this? I don’t know, Darby. It’s all so confusing.”

“So you are considering letting him go?”

“I have thought about it.”
 

“Still, I think you should talk to him.
 
I’m sure other werewolves have fallen in love with humans and dealt with these issues.
 
Maybe he knows of someone.
 
Maybe it would be worth a visit to see their lives together and see if there are other issues or benefits you’ve not thought of.”

“I’ve thought about asking him, but I just don’t know how.”
 

“Well, think of it this way. If you don’t ask and you decide to let him go, you may be making assumptions you shouldn’t. Maybe some of your concerns are easily answered or dealt with. If you don’t ask, you may just be giving up the most wonderful thing you could ever have.”

“You do have a way with words, Darby.”
 

“I really think you are selling Dean short.
 
He has a lot to offer you. Under his stern stares and intimidating looks, he’s a sweet man with a heart of gold.
 
It’s not his fault he’s a werewolf.
 
He didn’t have a choice in the matter, but it certainly doesn’t make him any less of a person with desires to love and share a life and a family with someone.”
 

“It’s those very things that keep me fighting with myself.
 
If I let myself, I could fall hard for him. I just don’t want to hurt him later on.”

“That’s why you have to talk to him. You just have to, Allison. He deserves that, and he may have answers that you don’t know about. Trust me, if he thought this would hurt you or put you in danger in any way, he would have never come this far. Talk to him before you make any rash decisions.”
 

Despite Blake’s grumblings and protests, Rowan went to school without him. Both her Monday – Wednesday classes and her Tuesday – Thursday classes had Allys, aka Sally, in them.
 
Rowan played dumb as had been suggested to her.
 
If they didn’t think she knew anything, she was safer.
 

Over the course of the next few days she had many friendly conversations with the Keaton witch; they even had lunch a couple of times just to keep up the friendly appearance.
 
Rowan’s biggest problem in the façade was remembering to use Allys as her name.
 
One slip in calling her Sally would surely end all the friendliness.
 

She wondered if, given different circumstances, the two witches would have been friends with her and her sister, given their commonalities. Too bad that had never been a choice they were offered. Aside from Allys’ lying and sleeping with Rowan’s boyfriend, she thought she could see herself liking this pretty woman, however, those two obstacles would be pretty big to get over.

As Rowan drove home from school, she thought about the meeting Darby had set up with all of them to discuss a plan of action.
 
Darby had said this was probably going to come down to a fight and Rowan was sure she was right. Better to have some kind of plan in place then going into it blindly.
 

Dean was the last to show up for the meeting and once he sat down, Darby started talking.
 

“Okay, guys, what I am hoping to accomplish tonight is to make a list of our weakness so we can try and reduce them. So let’s start with vampires – Devon and Blake, what are your weaknesses in a fight?”

Blake said, “Fire is a biggie!”

“Beheading, that’s pretty final, and wood is paralyzing unless in the heart, where it would kill us,” Devon interjected.

Darby wrote these down in her notebook.
 

“Good. Okay, fire, wood, beheading. So beheading, that would have to be something pretty big and very sharp to do that. So axes, hatchets, swords, machetes, these are all metal objects.
 
Maybe Rowan and I could come up with some kind of Magnetism potion or spell that would make things such as these stick to the floor, making them unusable.
 
That would alleviate that weakness.”
 

“You can do that?” Dean said.

Devon chuckled and replied to Dean, “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“I’m not sure, but it’s worth looking into. I don’t think we have time to make a giant electromagnet to cover the chapel and the graveyard.
 
Okay, fire, that I think we can work with since it is an element.
 
The opposite of fire is water, right? I’ll just bet there is a potion we can come up with that will put out a fire if you are attacked with it.
 
Wood, I think, is going to be the hardest thing to deal with. A Teflon vest would keep your heart from being hit, but being immobilized by wood on the rest of your body is a tough one.
 
I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

“Let’s move on to werewolves. Dean, what are battle weaknesses to a werewolf?”
 

“Well, pretty much the same as a vampire, I’m amazed to say, except trade out the wood for silver.”
 

“Silver, darn, that doesn’t have any magnetic properties. That one is going to be tough too.
 
The only good thing about it is that it relates to the moon and I can definitely make a potion to help deter the effects, but the tricky thing about silver is it comes in different forms.
 
Liquid, powder, metal, so it can be ingested or inhaled.
 
That could get nasty.
 
I’ll have to do some reading on that.”

Blake said, “I believe there was some info on silver in that old book we got from Paine.”

Rowan commented, “That’s right, I think I saw something in there about that.
 
I will take on that task, since I’m a werewolf, better know all I can.”

“Great,” Darby said. “The other problem with the werewolf is that you can’t really wear a Teflon vest, since you are at your strongest as a wolf; that’s just not going to work for you guys, so we’ll have to come up with something else, maybe some kind of talisman, powered by the moon and or Hecate.
 
Can you look into that too, Rowan?”

“Definitely.”

“As for me, I guess I’m the most vulnerable being a human. We know that Rachel can do the force field thing. We learned that from Devon. We also know that she can cloak herself, including her scent and sound. This I’ve been thinking about since Devon mentioned it.
 
I was thinking that a potion of herbs and crushed crystals thrown to the ground when she cloaks herself would show her like dumping a bucket of paint on her.
 
It would at least make her slightly more visible.
 
Of course, this would only work if she was in a close proximity, but if we are at battle with her, we don’t want her going invisible on us.
 
I will make up something that I will give to each of you.
 

“The only advantages we have right now are strength, speed, and the fact we outnumber them by two. Dean, I’m not counting you because you don’t have to be involved in this showdown. I don’t want you getting hurt for some family feud you’re not even related to. You are here strictly to advise us and maybe help train Rowan in a fight as a werewolf.
 
Being threatened, she will automatically change, right?
 
She doesn’t yet have the control to stay human – at least that is what I have read.”