Marked by the Moon (13 page)

“Even if I didn't know the way, I could follow my nose,” she said. An appendage that was becoming increasingly useful with each passing day.

During the return trip, which took her along one street, through the square, and halfway down the avenue on the
opposite side of town, no less than a dozen villagers greeted Alex.

The place was a hodgepodge of accents and nationalities, races and ages. But one thing she didn't see were any children.

“Guess that makes sense,” she murmured, considering the conversation she and Barlow'd had earlier.

They all seemed damn glad to see her. Ecstatic almost. Like she was the best thing to happen to Barlowsville in years.

But they wouldn't be happy, or welcoming, or even civil if they discovered who she was, why she was here—be it Barlow's reason…or Edward's.

That knowledge, combined with the town's excessive friendliness, made Alex feel like the lowest of lying scum. She had to remind herself that this was a town of
werewolves,
the lowest, lying scum on the planet.

And she was one, too.

Yet she still didn't want to eviscerate small children. She wasn't consumed by the urge to rip off the faces of everyone she met—except Barlow. She didn't feel evil. She felt like…herself. Which went against everything she'd ever believed about werewolves. Sure, Cassandra had said she'd removed “the demon,” but maybe there hadn't been one there to remove.

Alex reached Ella's house, climbed the steps, then hesitated. Should she knock? She wasn't sure. If the door was locked she'd have to.

It wasn't. Did anyone lock their doors in Barlowsville? Knowing Barlow, the punishment for theft was the removal of a paw with a silver axe. Which should be enough to deter any werewolf with kleptomaniac tendencies.

“Hello?” she called, thrilled when no one answered. Alex had done all the talking she could stand for one day.

She searched through the armoire for pajamas, sweatpants, scrubs, anything to wear to bed that wasn't the gorgeous cream silk peignoir she found.

No such luck. Since Alex would rather sleep in nothing than that, she did.

The bedroom came equipped with custom shades that blocked the sunlight, or what there was of it, no doubt very handy for those mornings after an all-night run through the woods as a wolf.

Alex planned to sleep away what remained of the day and maybe even the night. What she hadn't planned on was the dream.

She hadn't had it for a very long time. She'd begun to hope it was gone. Then she'd begun to fear that it was.

Though the dream always ended badly—because it was a memory as well as a dream—it began with Alex and her father together as they could never be again. And for the short time before the werewolf came, Alex could exist in a world where he was still alive.

Wasn't that what dreams were for?

They're having breakfast in a small mountain town in Tennessee when the call comes. The previous night had been busy, and they hadn't yet gone to bed.

A rash of drownings in the area, combined with tales of a really big snake and a mysterious, decrepit old woman, had precipitated their visit. Sure enough they'd found, then dispatched, a nasnas.

Every culture has a shape-shifter legend. What the common folk don't know is that those legends are true. For a
Jäger-Sucher,
legends are the stock of their trade.

A nasnas is an Arabian shifter, which takes the form of an old man or woman and begs for help crossing bodies of water. Once in the water, the nasnas changes into a sea serpent and drags its victim beneath the surface to feed.

To kill one, the victim must yank the head of the nasnas below the water first, then hold it there. Which had proved damn difficult despite the old lady weighing about eighty pounds soaking wet and possessing the bony fingers of a baby bird.

Still, Alex managed. They celebrated with pancakes.

“Full moon tonight,” her father observes, pouring half the syrup in the pitcher atop his Paul Bunyan–size stack.

Alex, being fifteen, widens her eyes. “You think?” She counts the nights between full moons, and so does he.

Charlie doesn't tell her to behave, be respectful, watch her mouth, or anything of the sort. Charlie pretty much lets her be. He knows the only thing that might save Alex in the long run is being tough, smart, and really, really bitchy.

“Where to?” she asks, carefully pouring syrup on only a portion of her cakes. She doesn't like them soggy.

“Haven't heard.” Her father speaks around a mouthful of food, and as he does, his cell phone rings. He pulls it out, glances at the display, lifts it like a toast, and greets the caller with, “Elise.”

Elise Hanover is Edward's right hand. Alex has never met her, never spoken to her, doesn't know all that much about her. Elise lives at the
Jäger-Sucher
headquarters, wherever that is, and spends what time she has that isn't taken up coordinating the agents and their assignments trying to discover a cure for lycanthropy. Alex has always figured the best cure is to wipe every werewolf from the face of the earth. If there aren't any left, they can't make any more.

Of course that hadn't stopped Hitler.

“Will do.” Charlie shuts his phone and goes back to eating pancakes.

“We'll do what?” Alex asks.

“Not we'll,” he corrects. “Will.”

Alex doesn't think Elise knows that she's been hunting with her father for two years. Although maybe Edward's told her. According to her father, Edward knows everything.

“What
will
we do?”

Charlie smiles, though since the day he went looking for Alex's mother and came back alone, that smile no longer reaches his eyes. Alex knows he feels guilty, that he believes her mother would be alive today if he'd never been a
Jäger-Sucher.

But the monsters are out there, and without people like Alex and her father, every person on the earth will eventually be a victim. Charlie's mistake wasn't made when he
became
a
Jäger-Sucher.
His mistake was in believing he could ever
not
be one.

“Rogue black bear a few hours from here,” Charlie answers. “Northern Alabama.”

“Is it really a bear?” Alex lays down her fork. Her father is already pulling out his wallet to pay the bill. When Elise calls, they move, because if they don't, people die.

Charlie merely lifts a brow. Elise wouldn't have called if it were really a bear.

“I meant, is it a bear
shifter
or code for werewolf?”

“Guess we'll find out.” Charlie tosses some money onto the table.

Ten hours later, they do. The hard way.

They perform their recon same as always. Head into town and split up, Charlie to the police station, followed by the hospital and the newspaper office, where he learns all he can with a little help from his
Jäger-Sucher
–supplied fake IDs.
His favorites, which label him a warden for various Departments of Natural Resources, usually get him access to just about everything.

Alex works the locals, hanging out in the coffee shop, the diner, the pharmacy, the gas station—anyplace where people might discuss what's going on in their town. They're often more willing to talk to a kid than the hunting and fishing police.

Go figure.

When each has discovered all he or she needs to know, they meet at the local ball field, where they play catch and share info. It's what they do, what they've always done, the single connection they've kept to the life that died with Janet.

By the time Alex and Charlie head into the hills that night, they believe they are on the trail of a standard werewolf. Stronger, faster, better than the average wolf, with human-level intelligence, but nothing unexpected. Nothing that will prevent them from killing it with the silver bullets they keep in their guns.

In her sleep, Alex stirred, hoping to wake up before the bad thing happened. She even heard herself whimpering, the way she'd whimpered when the night had gone still, and she'd realized she was alone and would be for the rest of her life.

It happens so fast. One minute they are moving through the trees, confident, sure, their rifles ready, their pistols, too, the next a figure steps out of the trees. That it
steps,
as in on two feet, causes her father, causes Alex, to hesitate, and that is their fatal mistake.

The werewolf takes Charlie down with one swipe of its massive paw. The claws, razorsharp, slice through his jugular with the ease of a sword through whipped cream. The
spray of blood arches like a glistening black fountain across the silver moonlight, plopping against last year's leaves like rain.

The monster shoves Charlie Trevalyn aside as if he is nothing more than a gnat in the way of a windshield wiper, before falling onto all fours and moving toward Alex with the flash of speed common to the breed.

Julian had plenty of work to catch up on, but the moon called, and he was helpless to resist.

Not that he wanted to. The instant he stepped beneath the cool, silvery glow, he felt calmer. Since Alex had left, he'd felt anything but.

Hell. Since Alex had become like him, he'd been feeling a lot of things and calm wasn't one of them. He was starting to believe that his plan for her might not have been one of his brighter ideas.

Gee, ya think?

Considering he continued to hear her mocking commentary in his head even when she wasn't around…yeah, he thought.

Julian drew off his shirt, shucked his pants and everything beneath. Shadows flitted through the streets—woman-shaped, manshaped, wolf-shaped; his people had been marked by the moon just like him.

He jogged toward the tundra, the change rippling along his skin, warming him, soothing him. Often, when he had a seemingly unsolvable problem, clearing his mind and giving in to the wolf helped. By the time he came back from an all-
night romp across this icy land with nothing in his head but the concerns of an animal, the answers to his all-too-human problems would be clear.

He raced through town; the buildings on either side of him became a blur as he gained superhuman speed. He would leap from the streets of Barlowsville as a man and land in the wilderness as a wolf.

Julian gathered his power, pushing off with his feet, reaching for his beast, and he heard a soft, heart-wrenching whimper.

He came down hard but not on his paws; he ignored the burn of ice across his bare skin as he turned toward the sound. His gaze zeroed in on Ella's house—dark, seemingly deserted, yet he knew it had been her.

The thought of what might make Alexandra Trevalyn whimper had Julian heading with equal speed back in the direction he'd come. Dozens of figures, in various stages of shape-shifting, brushed past him—a bizarre Wild Hunt beneath the Arctic night.

He was halfway up the front steps when he paused, tilted his head, and listened. Alex had come out the rear door, and from the sound of things, she was running for her life.

Julian leaped off the porch and sprinted for the back of the house, everything around him blurring in a pulse of panicked speed. They came around the corner at the exact same time and slammed into each other. Julian snatched Alex before she could fly backward and smash into the ground.

She fought, cursing and kicking, and he shook her. “It's me, Alex.”

“I know,” she said, and slugged him.

He should have dropped her right then—on her head—but he couldn't. Something was wrong.

She'd left the house unclothed, and it wasn't because she
wanted to join the village wolves for a nice, long lope. Her skin beneath his hands was like ice, not the usual fiery temperature that preceded the change. Instead she'd dashed out in a panic, forgetting her bra and pan ties, let alone a pair of shoes.

She continued to fight him, even though she couldn't win. But naked, sweating despite the chill of the air and her skin, she was slippery. He lost his grip, and she tried to dart around him. He snatched her back and pressed her body between his and the house.

“What happened?” he asked. When one of her arms slithered free, and she raked her nails down his side, he took both wrists and yanked them above her head, pinning them to the wall along with the rest of her.

She stilled then, thank God. All that wriggling and squirming and struggling was exhausting.

“What happened?” he repeated, more gently than before.

Her chest heaved; her breasts rubbed against him in a manner that would have been provocative if she hadn't been so obviously distressed.

“He's dead.” Her hair hung over her face in damp hanks that had begun to freeze into extremely messy dreads.

Ah, hell,
Julian thought. Who had she killed now?

He used his free hand to cup her chin, to tilt her face so that her hair slid out of the way. “Who's dead?”

Her eyes wide and unfocused, she murmured “Charlie” in a voice that, despite his attempts to steel himself against it, tore at his heart.

Julian let his forehead meet hers, and his hair cast over her cheeks, creating a golden curtain between them and the night. “Who's Charlie?” he asked.

He knew, but he wanted her to talk, to come back from
the dream, the memory, whatever had caught her in a grip so deep she seemed frozen by it.

A bank of clouds slid over the moon, painting them in darkness. He could smell her, that scent of sun-ripened lemons that was completely hers. For the rest of his very long life he would be able to pick her out of a crowd by that scent alone.

“Alex?” he murmured. “What's wrong?”

She moved beneath him, and her nipples, hard and cold as marbles left out in the snow, rolled along his chest. He grit his teeth and waited for an answer. But he didn't get the one that he expected.

Instead she arched her neck and let her scalding tongue—startling amid so much cold—lick the line of his mouth.

He gasped, jerked back, and she nipped, catching his lip between her teeth and holding on.

The damnable cloud stayed over the moon. He could only see the outline of her face, which served to make every other sense he possessed stronger.

Her scent mixed with the ice and the snow and the smell of the moon—sweet like blue snow cones. The bones of her wrists beneath his palm shifted like sticks trapped in a bag of the most delicate material ever made. Her skin, so cold, refreshed his, which felt like a blistering fever had broken free when he'd viciously put a stop to his change. Her mouth, soft as rain in the precious spring, opened and welcomed him within.

He shouldn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

He did.

That taste—both familiar yet still so new—called. The sex they'd already had, forbidden, dangerous, half remembered with the mind, was fully remembered by the body.

With her wrists trapped above her head, she lay open to him, like the sacrificial maidens of long ago. She could do nothing but accept—his kiss, his touch, him—and the idea made him so hard he wondered momentarily if his dick had frozen solid.

Except his dick wasn't cold but fiery hot, and she was rubbing her chilled belly against it as if the friction alone would warm her, the murmurs in her throat rolling along her lips and his like a low-level earthquake across the land.

His free hand cupped her hip, his thumb sliding across the bone, his fingernail scraping just a little because when he did that she arched, pressing her breasts with those fantastic marble nipples into his chest and shifting—back and forth, back and forth—until the rasp nearly made him insane.

He waited as long as he could to touch, palm itching, fingers twitching, and when he could wait no longer he swept his hand up, from hip to breast, sliding along the still-cool length of her waist until he could cup the glorious weight and roll that nipple beneath his thumb.

She cried out, and he drank the sound with his mouth, desperate to remain undetected, uninterrupted. Except…

Beneath the moon, they were the only souls left in town.

God.
He thought he might explode before he even buried himself inside her.

Then he tasted her tears, salt and heat amid the cool and sweet, reminding him of the first blood he'd ever known.

It had been so damn good.

Julian released her and backed away. She was right. There would always be a beast inside him, one step from escaping and crushing everything.

The moon sprang free, cascading from the sky like a waterfall of ice, turning the tracks of her tears molten silver.
Julian lifted a hand—shaking, he saw—and ran a thumb across her cheek.

Her eyes snapped open, seeped of color in the night, their brilliant green now a shade identical to the moon. She looked like a painting, an ice goddess, sparkling white and pewter, her hair tumbling like tousled midnight across her pearly breasts. He ached to lick those tears from her face as he plunged into her over and over again.

“Faet,”
he muttered, and began to withdraw his hand.

Her fingers closed around his wrist. “No,” she said, the rumble of her beast rippling near, calling wildly to his own.

“Sorry.” He tugged on his hand, trying again to get away. “I—”

She growled, low, vicious, and his skin rippled. She let go of his hand, then reached forward with blurring speed to tangle her fingers in his hair. He had no choice but to come where she led, or lose big chunks from his scalp.

She pulled him back where he'd been, hip-to-hip, chest-to-chest, holding him still inches from her face; then she leaned her forehead against his, her silvery green eyes so close, the sheen of the tear tracks nearly blinding him.

“When you touch me,” she whispered, “I forget. I need,
Julian
”—her fingers clenched on his name, drawing him ever closer, giving him just a hint of pleasurable pain—“to forget.”

Had she ever called him Julian? He couldn't recall, but considering the way his name sounded in that voice—part woman, part wolf—the way it made him harden and pulse, he didn't think so.

Yet still he hesitated. The first time had been a dream, or so they'd thought, easily passed off as a mistake. This would be a choice, and there would be no denying it.

For either one of them.

She closed her eyes, perhaps to get herself under control, or let him do the same, and as she did a single, silver droplet fell.

Time slowed. Julian could see the tear plummeting, could hear the whoosh of it through the air; he caught the scent of the sea, could almost taste again the flavorful brine.

The tear splashed against his chest, and he hissed in a breath. How could it be so cold?

The sound caused Alex's eyes to flare open, and they traced the track of the tear across his nipple, then she leaned forward and did the same with her tongue.

How could he have been so wrong? Choice had nothing to do with it.

She suckled him hard and he cursed—Norwegian. English. A little Inuit thrown in—but when she would have lifted her head, he cupped his hand around her neck and pulled her back.

Her lips curved against his skin; then her tongue curled around his nipple, laving, tickling before her teeth grazed the flat disk until he pearled as hard as she had.

She slid downward, mouth busy on his ribs, his belly, his—

“Whoa!” He tried to lift her—if she got busy there, this would be over before it began—but she grabbed his penis in her ice-cold hand and he jerked. Maybe he
could
last a while longer.

Her breath was warm, her mouth even warmer. It had been so damn long. He'd had sex, sure, but this to him had always been the height of intimacy. You had to trust someone to put your “jewels” in a place where they kept all those teeth.

Julian stiffened. He had a lot of feelings about Alex, but trust wasn't one of them.

Struggling for control, at first Julian didn't realize that
Alex had gone to her knees. He looked down just as she leaned forward and licked him, quick as a cat, along his tip.

He cursed, reaching for her, but she struck away his hands, then with agonizing slowness she rose.

Her breath drifted over his belly, and the muscles beneath the skin fluttered. Moist heat curled across his chest, his neck and mouth. She lifted her gaze to his, tilting her chin just enough so their lips brushed.

“What kind of man
are
you?” she asked.

“Not a man,” he said, and pushed her once more against the wall.

He could only take so much and he'd already taken it. Hell, he'd refused a blow job. He deserved a fucking medal. Instead, he'd take this.

He cupped her buttocks, sliding his fingers across the soft, virgin skin where thighs became ass. His biceps flexed to lift her, but she already had her arms around his neck, using the house to brace herself so she could hook her knees over his hips, cross her ankles at the small of his back, and pull him home.

He thrust, sliding within, relishing her heat—that soft, tight, moist heat. He'd meant to finish quick—he didn't have much finesse left—but instead, the instant she surrounded him, he stilled, then lowered his forehead to hers.

She wanted to forget; he could understand that. Some nights he would have given the soul she didn't think he had for just an hour's sweet peace.

“Barlow,” she muttered, and wriggled, trying to arch but he had her pinned too tightly.

“Don't move,” he managed. If she moved right now, if he did, this would be over far too soon; then they would both remember all that they wished to forget. He wanted to avoid that for as long as he could.

She said something that sound a lot like
Knull mæ i øret,
but in English, and he smiled, closing his eyes, reaching for the strength on which he prided himself.

“Be still,” he murmured, and placed his palm on her belly, letting his thumb slide lower, delving into her tight curls. She was slick, swollen, perhaps as close now as he. He began to move just a little, in and out, flicking his thumb up and down.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes.”

And that single word, uttered in a voice he could only describe as
woman,
made him remember instead of forget.

His hand on another woman's stomach as they lay in their bed, all tangled in the sheets and each other. Her dreams, his hopes, the argument that had torn them apart, then sent her away.

To her death.

Julian yanked his hand back, and the chill night air burned across his fingers. Yet he could still feel her skin against his palm, and her body drawing from him his seed.

“I can't,” he croaked.

“You are,” she responded, “and so—” She thrust against him, hard and sure. “—am I.”

Fury flashed, like lightning through the sky above, and in the distance he thought there was thunder. Why wouldn't the earth shake; why wouldn't the skies open up and rain down fire? He was fucking another woman, and not just any woman, but
the
woman.