Blood Moon (14 page)

I
climbed the narrow, live-wood stairs. My hands shook as I opened the door to my room, either from tiredness at the emotional overload of the last night and day, or from shock.

Why hadn’t someone warned me? Surely everyone at Black Stump wasn’t so used to Len that they’d assume a newcomer wouldn’t be taken aback?

Len was…What was Len really? Surely not just throwback to a distant wolf ancestor? He was something more. He had to be. Something that had made me shiver and think, no, this isn’t right. This shouldn’t be.

I tried to steady my breathing. I was being ridiculous—almost as prejudiced as Sister Karen. The outside appearance had nothing to do with the person inside.

Except, of course, it did—see a sheep and you expect a sheep’s grass-eater brain. See a horse and you wonder when it will neigh and skitter sideways. See a wolf and you wonder whether it hunts alone or in a pack.

But this family were not just wolves. Wolves hunt only for their food. This family were human too, and that, I realised, is why the idea of werewolves is so terrifying…the strength of the wolf, the savagery of humankind…See a wolf with human eyes and you wonder when it will come sniffing after your blood.

I had to think calmly and rationally. Think it through. I needed to ask some questions; questions I’d never bothered to ask before.

Why had I been so sure the wolves were innocent? Because I liked them? Because sometimes I’d been tempted to scratch behind Dusty’s ear?

It had taken Len to shake me from my complacency.

Emerald had spoken of those hunts long ago with Dusty and Rusty. But neither Eleanor nor Emerald had answered when I’d asked if any of the clan had jaws strong enough to kill.

Did Len hunt alone, in the moonlight? Faster than the others and more savage…?

The afternoon breeze was cold. That was why I’d been shivering. I was cold, I told myself, I wasn’t having some hysterical and visceral reaction to a creature of the night. I crossed over to shut the window.

Someone was down below. His back was to me, but I recognised the square solid shape—Rusty. At first I thought he was examining something on the trunk of the Tree, then I realised he was relieving himself.

Well, it was no business of mine if he preferred the outdoors to the lavatory. At home even Neil seemed to feel that it was discreet enough just to face a tree. It was a male Outlander thing. When you’d grown up with trees, why go indoors if you happened to be outside?

Rusty shook himself then walked six paces to another part of the massive trunk. He had half turned to me this time and I saw the yellow stream. Rusty moved again, this time to my floater. A few drops on each wheel and then around to the front of the Tree.

I moved away from the window. I had seen all I needed to see. Rusty had come home again and he was marking out his territory.

I
didn’t have a plan. I simply needed answers to the questions roaring through my brain and I was going to ask the first person I met. That person turned out to be Emerald, who was padding along the hall with a set of sheets.

‘Emerald?’ She didn’t turn. She must have known I was in the doorway behind her. My scent would have told her everything—that and the more-than-human hearing of her pointed ears.

‘Yes?’

‘I wonder…Could you spare me a few minutes?’

She turned at that. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to speak to Eleanor?’

‘No. Why should I?’

Again the not-at-all-human shrug. ‘I can smell uncertainty on you. You want to ask questions. Eleanor is the leader here. You should question her.’

‘You object to answering me?’

Emerald looked surprised. ‘No, of course not. It’s just that Eleanor would answer them better.’

‘Please,’ I said.

Emerald nodded. She followed me into my bedroom. I shut the door as she sat down on the edge of the bed. She gestured to the sheets in her lap. ‘Bonnie. She chews them in her sleep. I try tucking them down firmly but it’s no use. She needs new ones every second day.’

‘Emerald,’ I said slowly.

‘Just come out with it. Whatever it is I won’t mind.’

‘I…’ I stopped. I couldn’t just come out with it, couldn’t just say, is your nephew a murderer? Does he like his meat dripping fresh?

Wolves killed for food. Wolves killed only for food. But maybe to a teenage werewolf with hormones running wild, a neighbour was food as well.

Only humans murdered each other. But did a wolf consider killing humans murder?

So I asked the first thing that came into my mind instead. ‘How did you hurt your leg?’

I thought she’d say something like, I fell when I was a child. But she answered quite placidly, ‘When Eleanor became leader.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The leadership fight. When Eleanor challenged me.’

‘What? I thought it was the other way around. That Eleanor challenged her mother and then you, well later on, you challenged her and lost.’

‘No. I was the leader for three weeks, two days, five hours. Eleanor planned it that way, right from the start.

‘Rusty challenged his father and won. The scent of a new leader…it wound us all up, you see. All but Eleanor. She knew she couldn’t challenge Mother and win. Mother was canny. A good fighter. Not in the prime of youth, but clever. Eleanor’s like her that way, I suppose.

‘I was always bigger. I challenged Mother and I won. But Eleanor knew she could outsmart me.’

‘You lost?’

‘I lost. I nearly lost my leg as well.’

‘What!’

‘Eleanor is stronger than she looks. But mostly she’d
learnt fighting, studied it, in Virtual. She’d learnt tricks I’d never heard of. I’d never even bothered with any of that stuff. You’re big, you’re strong—I never thought I might need more. So Eleanor won.’

Emerald smiled at me, and there was only a little bitterness in her expression. ‘Don’t look like that. I did a bit of damage too. Why do you think Eleanor always wears long dresses and long sleeves?’ She gave a smile that was mostly wolf. ‘I left my mark on her too.’

‘But your leg?’

‘No doctors out this way and, of course, sending me to the City for regeneration was impossible. Rusty sent for the Meditech from Out to Sea—that’s about half an hour from here in the floater. She saved my leg, stitched Eleanor up. Luckily human antibiotics work on werewolves too, even if rejuvenation doesn’t.’

‘I see. I didn’t realise. What would have happened if you’d won?’

‘Then Eleanor would have been bringing the sheets. They’d have been my cubs, not hers.’

‘By Rusty?’

‘Of course. We always knew Rusty would be leader. Dusty never even bothered to challenge him. It’s always been obvious,’ said Emerald affectionately, ‘that Dusty was born to be an uncle.’

‘Rusty, did he mind? I mean, he was your…your mate. Then Eleanor…’

‘Rusty is proud to be mated to the best of us. If I’d won, I would have been the best. But I didn’t and I wasn’t.’ There seemed no enmity in her tone. It was as though she were discussing ancient history, with no relevance to her all. I suddenly remembered Sister Karen telling me that only the lead female went on heat. Did
that mean it was only possible for Rusty to feel sexual desire for the winner? Were werewolf relationships really as simple as that?

Emerald stood with the sheets in front of me. ‘Is that what you called me in here to ask me?’

I took a deep breath, then wished I hadn’t. I smelt dog, wolf, warm fur, and the smell reminded me of all that was alien in this house. ‘Emerald, how often does Rusty deliver the meat?’

‘Once a fortnight. The City takes most of it. It’s a regular order. He drops off other orders on the way.’ A grim smile. ‘They don’t let us in to the City, of course. There’s a delivery Terminal in the ‘burbs.’

‘Does he always take the young ones with him?’

‘Mostly. It’s good for the cubs to see how other places are organised. Our kids don’t go Wandering and they need to see something of the world.’

‘It’s always the older children he takes?’

‘Mostly. After all,’ she shrugged the family shrug, ‘two of them will probably be the ones who take over from him and Eleanor one day. They’re the ones who will need the most training in how to deal with…well, outsiders.’

‘So Rusty, Len, Jennie and Ben are away from home once a fortnight?’

‘Mostly. Yes.’

‘Were they away when the Patriarch was killed?’

Emerald concentrated for a moment. ‘Yes. Remember, I told you.’

‘And Brother Perry?’

‘Rusty and Ben and Jen were away when Brother Perry was killed. They were going to a Utopia down the south coast, Prosper or Perish. They’re a bit…well, let’s
just say they can’t really cope with how Len looks. So when they go down that way, Len mostly stays behind.’

‘So Len was here.’

‘Yes,’ said Emerald patiently. ‘Len was here.’

‘But he wasn’t here last night,’ I said slowly, ‘but he did have a floater. And he had a floater when the Patriach was killed…’

There was an expression on Emerald’s face I didn’t like.

‘I was here for all of the murders too.’ Her voice was lower now, almost a growl. ‘And so were Dusty and Lexie and Eleanor…’

‘But you limp. You couldn’t have run the distance between here and Nearer to Heaven and been back to cook breakfast. Dusty and Rex have arthritis. Lexie is bedridden. And Eleanor never leaves the house and, besides, as we established earlier she doesn’t have the jaws to rip out someone’s throat.’

‘But Len does,’ said Emerald slowly. ‘You take one look at Len and you think, aha, a wolf, he must be the murderer. An animal who kills in the darkness!’ The voice was definitely a snarl now.

‘Emerald, I’m just trying to…to work things out.’ I stopped.

The sheets had dropped to the ground. Emerald crouched low beside the bed, her ears flat. The hair on the back of my neck began to rise.

‘Our Len is not a murderer!’

‘I didn’t say he was. I just…’

The hands left the bed. Why had I never noticed Emerald’s hands before? Five fingers, yes, but claws as well and the fingers were bent now as though she’d scratch my eyes out if I…

‘Danielle there’s another call for…oh, Emerald, I didn’t know you were here.’

But you must have, I thought, as my heart slowly stopped trying to pound its way out of my chest. You must have heard her. Smelt her fury…

‘The caller said they’d stay on the line, Danielle.’ Eleanor’s voice was deliberately calm, as though she found her sister about to gouge out a guest’s eyes every day. ‘Emerald, don’t worry about the sheets now. The cubs—the big ones too—are clamouring for food! Do feed them before Johnnie starts gnawing the table leg.’

Literally? I thought. My hands still shook. It’s true, I thought, your mouth does dry up with terror.

Emerald cast me one final glance. But her ears were upright again now. Her lips had closed over her teeth. I waited till I heard her footsteps limp down the stairs then followed her. Eleanor came behind me. I felt her hand touch me lightly—reassuringly—on the back.

‘Who is the call from?’ I asked, wondering if it were Michael come to bludgeon me again with protestations of his innocence. Or Neil, checking to see that my throat was still as he’d left it, and my affections were too.

‘A Water Sprite,’ said Eleanor. ‘What an interesting life you have, darling—Water Sprites and everything.’ Suddenly she was once again the competent professional, ever so slightly patronising towards the trivial artist. Another soft pat on the back—almost a caress—and she disappeared into the kitchen.

I shut my eyes. Just what I needed. A Water Sprite. Of all the trivial interruptions, surely a Water Sprite was the most trivial of all.

Wolves, murders and a Water Sprite—maybe when I opened my eyes it’d all be gone. I’d be back in my
garden, with Neil inspecting the roses for scale or black spot.

I opened my eyes.

The Tree corridor was still there; the live-wood floor with its uneven grain and two bones by the stairwell as though the owners had gnawed them a while then been distracted. The round moon lights on the uneven ceiling were dull now in the last of the daylight.

I went down the curving stairs and into Eleanor’s study to speak to the Water Sprite.

T
he Water Sprite looked damp, but otherwise Truenorm, apart from her skin, which was silver, and her hair, which was a greenish shade of blonde, and as plentiful as I’d imagined. (Whoever had ordered her ancestor’s creation had obviously had a firm vision of a Water Sprite’s hair floating out around her.) Her eyes were green, not blue, but definitely wide and large.

‘Hello,’ she said, fluttering eyelashes as furry as a carpet.

‘Hi.’ I sat down by the Terminal.

‘I hope you don’t mind my calling. I’m not, kind of, interrupting anything am I?’ The silver breasts squashed against the transparent gauze dress as she leant forward earnestly.

Only a murder investigation. Only my future life and partnership. Only the fate of a clan of werewolves and a small farming community. ‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘Theo told me to call…I mean, he’s kind of a sweetie, isn’t he? He’s kind of understanding. It’s about the beach at Faith Hope and Charity.’

I shut my eyes. This was all I needed. My beach plans were diverting her watercourse or worse.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tell me the worst.’

‘I wondered if you’d mind…I mean if you’d really mind, well you know, if it was all right if we lived in it?’ she finished in a rush.

I opened my eyes. ‘You want to live in my beach?’

‘If you say it’s all right. Theo says it’s okay with the rest of the ‘topia, but you’re kind of the one who’s designed it and everything, so he said you had to agree too.’

‘You want to live in my beach?’ It had definitely been too long a day…

‘We won’t hurt it or anything,’ she said anxiously. ‘You won’t even, you know, know we’re there.’

‘How many of you are there?’

‘Just me and the other two girls, just three of us, that’s all.’ The large green eyes gazed at me wistfully. I imagined that even an elderly vampire would be touched by the appeal in those eyes.

‘It’s a very small beach,’ I said, trying to think clearly. ‘What if three male Water Sprites decide to…’ I wondered how to say tactfully that the beach was for kids and that ‘adults only’ displays wouldn’t be welcome.

She looked shocked. ‘There aren’t male Water Sprites! That would be, you know, yucky!’

Yucky, I thought. Not unpleasant. Not disgusting. I wondered if the misguided surgeon who had created Water Sprites had somehow spliced in a gene for baby talk too.

‘Sorry,’ I said, unrepentantly. No, I thought, I was not going to ask how Water Sprites reproduced. Or in what combinations or positions. Besides, if Theo thought it was all right…’Where do you live now?’

‘Up in the top dam. I mean it’s kind of nice and everything,’ she added hurriedly, as though she didn’t want to insult the ‘topia’s hospitality. ‘It’s just, it’s just kind of boring. And a beach with waves…’ The green eyes shut in ecstasy.

How dare she interrupt me for something as trivial
as this, I thought. The beach wasn’t even started yet.

But at least my beach was going to be appreciated, though the moonlit frolics with Neil I had fantasised about would have to be relocated, unless we planned on being watched—or joined—by a trio of Water Sprites.

‘Of course you can live there,’ I said.

‘Oh! Oh how wonderful! Wait till I tell the other girls! Oh thank you!’ The green eyes looked rapturous, the silver breasts jiggled.

Our midnight swims would definitely be relocated, I thought.

The screen blanked out.