Blue Moon (27 page)

I drew away from him, eyes closed. I opened my eyes and looked at the man. Jason moved to my stomach, licking along the top of my jeans. They were soaked in blood, and wouldn't really dry while I was still wearing them. Zane curved around to my back, licking along my spine. There was no blood there, and he had to stop at the spine sheath, but it looked good for our captive audience.

“Talk to me, Terry. Once I start fucking one of them, I really don't want to be interrupted.” I leaned towards him just a little, and he flinched. I drew away from Jason and Zane and crawled towards Terry. I made the movement everything it was supposed to be: fluid, dangerous, sexual. Even now, his eyes kept flicking to my breasts so white against the blackness of the lingerie.
Even now, he was still a man. I felt Raina's utter disdain of men. All that sex, and it was mostly hate. How terribly odd.

She was enjoying terrorizing the man. His wide eyes, the quick breath, the pounding of his heart. I could hear it. Hell, I could almost taste his skin on my tongue. Food, he smelled like food.

“Who sent you, Terry?” I made it a whisper, intimate, for his ears only. I reached out to him, and when I trailed my finger down his cheek, he whimpered. I leaned forward and licked a quick line the length of his face. “You taste like food, Terry.”

I could feel the others at our back. Verne's pack responding to Raina's call. To my call. Through Richard, I was more lupa than I wanted to be. But now, tonight, it had possibilities. They came from every side, moving like shadows. Creeping closer, nearer, drawn by my desire and the man's terror.

He stared at them, watched them coming closer with wide eyes. He turned his head to watch them moving in. I kissed his cheek while he wasn't looking, and he screamed.

“Oh, God, please don't.”

Raina's laugh fell from my lips. “Names, Terry, names.”

“Niley, Franklin Niley. He paid us to run you off, said the cops wouldn't be a problem. Then he said kill you. You especially. He said kill that bitch before she queers my deal.”

“What deal?” I whispered. Frank Niley was the employer of the muscleman Milo Hart. I hadn't seen him since. He was here for land speculation. Was he the buyer for Greene's land?

Terry's eyes flicked around to the waiting werewolves. “I don't know, honest to God. I don't know. He paid us five hundred apiece to hurt you. He made it five thousand for Chuck and me to kill you.”

“Five thousand apiece?” I asked.

He nodded.

“It wasn't enough,” I said.

“We didn't know you was a werewolf. We didn't know what you were.” One of the shadowy throng was sniffing his leg. Terry's voice rose a little higher with every word. His next “I didn't know” was almost a scream.

Raina's munin was like a warm pulse behind my eyes. I leaned into the man, as if I'd kiss him. He backed away but bumped into the good doctor. My mouth hovered over the man's, but it wasn't a kiss I wanted. I stayed there, hovering over his
mouth, frozen, fighting not to lower my mouth to his neck. Fighting not to sink teeth into his throat and tear. Fighting not to draw first blood and let the pack feed.

I started crawling back from him, as if I were the one that was afraid. “Take him to the hospital.”

“You can't let him live,” Zane said.

“I promised him if he talked, we'd take him.” I caressed Zane's face. We stayed kneeling in the leaves, close enough to embrace when I didn't remember moving that close. “Take him, take the arm. And Terry,” I said.

The man wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the waiting wolves.

“Terry,” I said again. I was still caressing Zane, one hand buried in his short, white hair.

The man looked at me, eyes flicking back and forth madly as if he were trying to keep all of us in sight at once. “What? What do you want? You said I could go to the hospital.”

“If you tell Niley about tonight, about what I am and what happened, I'll kill you.” I lowered Zane's face until I planted a gentle kiss on his forehead.

“I won't tell. I won't tell anyone. Niley'd kill me if he knew I gave him up. He'd fucking kill me.”

“Good,” I said. I cradled Zane against me. He began to lick down my neck. He passed over my shoulder, licking a small line down my collarbone. He went lower, and I pushed him away, rough enough that he fell on his wounded shoulder. The world was narrowing down. I was losing the fight with Raina.

“Get him out of here—now!” I felt like I was going blind. I could see, but it was all different. I was fighting her and she didn't like it. She'd asked for violence, and I'd refused. She'd asked for sex, and I'd refused. Even dead, she was a hard lady to say no to.

I covered my eyes with my hands. I heard someone moving towards me. “Don't touch me.”

“It's Marianne, child. Tell me what's happening.”

I lowered my hands until I could see Marianne. She was still in the white dress with her long, pale hair. “You never met Raina, did you?”

“No, child.”

I reached for her hand, and it was just a hand. There was no
memory attached to it. No horror that the munin could share. “Help me.”

She gripped my hand with both of hers. “It's too late to force the munin out. It must be made to want to leave.”

I shook my head. “She won't leave.”

“She's left you before.”

I shook my head harder until my hair slapped my face. “You don't know what she wants. You don't understand what she wants. I can't. I won't.”

Richard was there. He started to touch my shoulder, and I fell back into the leaves. One hand raised as if to ward off a blow. I did not want to know what Raina had done with him or to him. That was one image I did not need.

“What's wrong?”

“The munin will not leave until Anita does something it wants.”

“You knew Raina,” I said. “Tell her the kind of thing Raina enjoyed.” It was rising inside me. I couldn't stop it. It rose higher and higher until the power spilled out of my mouth in a shriek.

He started to touch me and I crawled away from him. “No, no, no, no.”

Marianne caught me, held me against her. She smelled like Ivory soap and lilacs. I knew I could have broken her hold, but I didn't want to. I wanted to be held. I wanted help. I needed help.

She smoothed my hair, rocking me like I was a child. “Anita, you must give in to the munin in part. You've done it before. Richard has discussed past events with me. When the munin leaves you this time, we will work together to make sure this does not happen again.”

I raised up enough to see her face. “Can you really stop this?”

“I can teach you how to stop it.”

I stared into her pale eyes for a space of heartbeats. I could hear the strange click of her artificial heart valve. The munin was hinting that food would do as well as sex. Not as well, but it would do.

I pushed gently away from Marianne. “You're just food to her.” I crawled back from her, slowly.

Marianne just watched me, kneeling in the leaves in her white
dress. She was the only one in the clearing that was more than a shadow. All that whiteness caught the moonlight and glimmered. She looked like a target.

I stood, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I could taste my heart in my throat like a ball that I could have touched and played with. I looked around the clearing, desperate for a way out. Something that Raina would be content with and I could live with.

Zane was staring at me. Raina wanted him. But what she wanted had very little to do with sex. I went to him. He knelt in the leaves, staring up at me with large eyes gone silver with moonlight.

I fell to my knees in front of him and ripped the sling off his shoulder. He made a small grunt of pain, and Raina liked it. The problem with doing something to get the munin out was that the munin had to be in control enough for me to be willing to do what it wanted. Giving her more control seemed like a bad idea. But what she wanted was to plant our mouth over the wound in his shoulder, and I couldn't do it sober. There wasn't enough Raina in me yet to put my tongue in an open wound.

I crawled away from Zane and found Jason. I stared at him. He was almost a safety zone for me when the munin had me. The munin liked him, and I wasn't afraid of him.

I went to him, kneeling on all fours in the leaves, but knew if I touched him and I was still fighting the munin, we'd get another rush of horror. If I went to him, it had to be for real. I had to be willing to give in, at least a little.

His mouth was almost completely healed. The swelling in his eye was better. The blood or the munin—it really was working. He was healing. I knew the munin could be used for healing on lycanthropes. I'd done it once before, but not like this. That was back when Raina first made an appearance, and I hadn't realized how much trouble I was in. Now I knew, and I was scared and hated it. Raina thought that was hilarious, that dead, she scared me more than she had when she was alive.

I could feel her pleasure like a line of warmth through my body. The echo of her laughter chased through my mind and made gooseflesh on my arms. Being possessed by anyone would have scared me. Being possessed by a sociopathic nymphomaniac sadomasochist that I had killed personally was too frightening and too ironic for words.

Jason lay back in the leaves. I was very careful not to touch him as I crawled over his body on all fours. I knelt there on hands and knees and stared down at him, legs and arms wide so that we didn't accidentally touch.

His voice came hoarse, rough, as if something in his throat were still hurting. “You have a plan?”

“If I don't fight the munin, Marianne says no memories, just power.”

He stared up at me. “You going to kiss it and make it all better?”

I nodded, my hair sliding over his face. “All better.” I leaned my face towards his in a sort of push-up motion. Our lips brushed in a trembling line, and what not an hour before had been chaste and a little uncomfortable was suddenly changed. I broke the kiss and held my body off of his with fingertips and toes, my body above his. I could feel the trembling energy of his aura underneath me, pushing against the power of my aura, the power that was munin. I stayed above him, not touching, staring into his face. When we kissed again, the power poured from my mouth into his in a warm breath that burned through our bodies.

I let my body drop against his in an abrupt, violent movement that brought a cry of pain from him. The sound fell into my mouth and was swallowed in a wave of heat and power. I poured the munin into Jason. I poured me into him. I poured in through his mouth, down through my pores. Everywhere that skin touched skin, I seeped into him. I felt as if I were draining away into his body.

He behaved himself at first, hands at his sides, but the power rode us both. His arms locked behind my back. His mouth searched mine as if he were climbing inside. I straddled his body and felt him hard and ready even through our jeans.

He rolled me over suddenly so that he was on top. My body did nothing to protect itself. I locked my legs around his waist, and felt him pumping against me. Each thrust made things low in my abdomen jerk and tighten.

I swam upward through the power and started pushing at his chest. We were not doing this again. I was not doing this. “Off. Get off.” My voice was strangled, hoarse. I swallowed the munin back enough to struggle inside and out.

Jason froze over me, then collapsed on top of me. His heart
beat frantically against my chest. His breathing was rushed. He swallowed and managed to say, “If I said it was too late to stop, would you believe me?”

I started crawling out from under him. “No,” I said.

He rolled onto his back, freeing me to stand. The bruises were gone. His face stared up at me as clean and innocent as it started. If I could only get this shit to work without the sex.

“My turn?” Zane asked. I turned, and he was kneeling in the leaves. He'd stripped off the remains of his shirt. I never really thought of Zane as a guy, not like that. But now he was kneeling in a splash of moonlight so that the shadows and light showed the muscles in his chest and stomach. His arms were lost in darkness. His face was a pattern of strong, clean flesh, gleaming pale, one half caught in shadows, like pieces of darkness. His nipple ring glinted silver, like a wink of an eye, an invitation. And that was all it took.

I stood in front of him, staring down, and did what the munin wanted. I grabbed his wounded arm and jerked it upward, forcing the shoulder to its fullest extension. He cried out in pain. The skin had closed over the wound, but it was there below the surface. I pressed my mouth to the wound and felt the muscles torn. The bone, already knitting, broken. I bit him, sinking teeth in enough to leave a mark and blew power into his skin. I healed it and fought Raina. She wanted to take a chunk out of his skin. A sort of joke, heal him and hurt him at the same time.

I pushed away from him before I could give in. I stumbled to my feet and realized that each time I used it, the power was growing. It was filling me like another person, something growing inside of me, pushing at my skin.

I staggered to Jamil and fell beside him to my knees. He'd changed back to human form, which meant he had been very hurt. I stared down at his nude body and fought with Raina not to touch him. Not to do what she wanted. Or not to do everything she wanted.

I ran my hands over Jamil's chest until I touched the wound. The skin was closed, but soft. I knew I could force my fingers inside him. I knew I could reach in and snatch his heart. Instead, I lowered my face to his chest and kissed the wound, gently, softly. I closed my eyes and took in the scent of him, the feel of his soft skin. Healing skin was always so soft, like a baby's flesh, tender and smooth. I put my hands over the wound and
thrust that warm building power into him like a sword.

Jamil's eyes flew wide, and his spine bowed. He tried to scream, and I stole it with a kiss. I rode his body, straddling not his groin but the second, lower wound. I drew back from his lips and forced my hands low on his body. I healed him. I felt it leave my body in a warm rush. My hands slid lower. I brushed him and he was beginning to grow hard. I threw myself off of him. She'd healed him. Raina felt somebody owed her something for the healing.