Marked by the Moon (24 page)

Alex waited until Julian slept; then she crept from his arms, his bed, his house.

What had she done?

Sex was one thing…This—

She glanced up at the window of his room. This had been another.

He'd touched her with such gentleness. He'd gazed into her eyes with—

“Faet!”
she muttered, clattering down the steps and striding around the side of the house.

He'd gazed at her with love. And what had she done?

Loved him right back.

Alex stepped into Julian's yard and had a little talk with herself.

She did
not
love Barlow; he did not love her. They barely knew each other, and what they knew they did not like.

Just because their blood couldn't stay in separate petri dishes, and their hands couldn't keep to themselves, didn't mean they were meant for each other.

Then again, maybe it did.

She'd thought him a monster; he'd thought her one. Had
they learned differently, or merely come to accept that beneath the surface, everyone had a little monster inside?

“No one's perfect,” she whispered. Especially Alexandra Trevalyn.

Julian had never lied about who he was, about what he was, about what he planned to do.

Unlike her.

She was a spy; she'd come here to kill—both him and one of his wolves. While she might not kill Julian—

“Won't,” Alex said to the night, and sighed. “I won't.”

She
would
kill the werewolf that had killed her father. As soon as she found it.

Once she did that, she would not be able to stay. However, when she left this place, Edward would find her, and he'd insist she reveal the location of Barlowsville.

Could she really bring the most feared
Jäger-Sucher
of them all down on these people's—and they
were
people, she knew that now—heads?

He'd kill them. Killing was what Edward did best. It had once been what Alex did best, too. It had once been what Alex lived for. But here, she'd found so much more to live for than death.

If she didn't tell Edward what he wanted to know, he'd either kill her or stick her in a cage for the rest of her very long and furry life.

What the hell was she going to do?

She could solve her problems by staying. Alex let her gaze wander over Barlowsville. She liked it here. She thought she could grow to love it.

Once the thought of being a werewolf had horrified her. She'd have eaten the last bullet in her gun to avoid losing her humanity. Now she understood—

She hadn't really been using it anyway.

A door opened. Alex's breath caught as she turned toward Julian's house. But the place remained silent, and her heart fluttered and stilled.

“Psst! Alex!” Cade hung out the back entrance of the lab. “You want to run with me tonight?”

Alex glanced once more at Julian's. They needed to talk, but it didn't have to be right now. Besides…

She turned toward Cade and waved. She could use a little cheering up.

 

Julian awoke to a pounding on the door. He reached for Alex, confused at first that she was there, then equally confused when she was not.

The moon poured into his bedroom, making him yearn. He'd find her, and they'd run together, just the two of them. But first he had to force whoever was at his door to shut up.

He found his pants in the corner with his shirt, but Alex's clothes were gone. He checked in the bathroom on the way past, the kitchen too, but she wasn't there. Considering he wasn't clasping his stomach and writhing in agony, she hadn't gone far.

Julian yanked open the front door. The man on the other side nearly knocked on his nose.

“Knut.” Julian jerked his head back just in time to avoid the huge, hamlike fist.

“Neil,” the man corrected with a scowl, lowering an arm the size of the logs in Julian's cabin walls.

Neil did not appreciate being called Knut, and Julian couldn't say that he blamed him. But it was difficult sometimes for Julian to remember. They'd grown up together, fought together, lived as werewolves together. He'd known Knut as long as he'd known Cade.

“Joe said you were searching for me.”

Not actively. Not yet. But he would have. If he could keep his mind on the issue at hand and his hands out of Alex's pants.

“Where have you been?” Julian asked.

“Fishing.”

“For two weeks?”

“I like fish.” Neil drew himself up to his impressive height of six-five. It
did
take a lot of fish to fill up Neil. “Since when do you care what I do?”

“Since Inuit have been dying daily.”

Neil's wind-burned face creased. “Why would that have anything to do with me?”

“Perhaps I should have said dying nightly.”

Neil caught the innuendo right away. “One of us is doing it.”

“Unless you've caught a whiff of an unknown werewolf in your travels.”

“None.” Neil's pale blue eyes narrowed. “You thought it was me.”

Many had made the mistake of believing that Neil's calm demeanor and large stature meant he was slow, in both body and mind. They had died badly at the end of his sword.

“You
were
gone,” Julian said, “and they
did
die.”

Neil drew in a breath, glanced to the side, then back at Julian. “Who died first? Was it the wise woman?”

Julian blinked. “How did you know that?”

Neil's lips tightened, and he rubbed a big hand through his shorn dirty blond hair. No matter how many centuries he lived, no matter how short he cut his hair, or how many flannel shirts he collected, Neil would never look like anything but a Norse raider.

“I thought he'd gotten over that.”

“Who got over what?”

“I'd have told you if he'd eaten a wise woman in the past two centuries.” Neil's eyes met Julian's. “I swear.”

“Who—” Julian began, then he knew.

He shoved Neil out of the way and raced barefoot and bare-chested across the snow.

 

Alex chased Cade through the moonlight. She wasn't enjoying this run at all. She'd thought when werewolves shared the moon, they bonded. That it was the equivalent of coffee with the girls, poker with the boys, maybe a couples' potluck.

Instead, she kept getting ice and snow kicked in her face as she followed his light brown tail on and on. No gamboling, no rolling and wrestling, no playing. No fun.

They weren't
too
far away from town at least. She didn't feel sick. But she did miss Julian. She wished she'd stayed home and run with him.

First she and Cade had loped around and around Barlowsville in larger and larger circles. Alex was a new wolf. She didn't know the procedure. It had seemed a little foolish to her, but Cade appeared to enjoy it. Every time she glanced at him, he was grinning.

Eventually they'd headed away from town, and the terrain had become rougher if that were possible. Even on wolf feet, Alex had stumbled, fallen, then slid all the way down a hill and into a hollow of water so cold she couldn't understand how it wasn't frozen.

Once she'd extricated herself, she looked around for Cade and huffed a surprised bit of air through her nose to discover that he'd disappeared into a fairly large grove of trees. She plunged in, too, managing to keep sight of his tail, even though the thickness of the branches nearly obscured the moon.

Eventually she popped out of the cover and into a clearing where a house stood, surrounded on all sides by trees and tall piles of snow—an oasis in a desert of ice.

Unlit, the building was but a shadow, not a wisp of smoke from the fireplace, no hint of a generator. Cade trotted past the huge monster truck parked to the side. How had that gotten there? She didn't see a road anywhere.

Alex made an anxious sound as Cade approached the door. What was he doing?

That became apparent an instant later when Cade straightened to his full height, naked skin gleaming silver. Then he reached out and opened the door.

Alex cocked her head, afraid she'd hear screams, shots, but there was nothing. Perhaps this was a place Cade kept apart from the lab where he could relax away from his weird science. She wouldn't blame him.

The thought of going inside, finding warmth, a towel, even clothes, appealed more and more as the water on her fur turned to ice, then began to crackle and break and rain around her paws like sleet.

The natural reticence of a wolf for a human abode made her hang back, paw the snow, pace. She wasn't going to be able to go in until she—

Alex closed her eyes and reached for human form. The shift took longer than Cade's had. Of course Cade was nearly as old, and therefore as powerful, as Julian.

Once she had two legs instead of four, Alex hurried inside.

“Close the door.”

Cade's voice came from somewhere to her right. With the door closed and human eyes, she couldn't see much. The windows were covered. The moon could not spill in.

“This is yours?” she asked.

“It is now.”

A light flared, so brilliant she was left blinking against the glare. When the black spots went away, she saw that Cade had set a portable lantern on the mantel. The room was so small and the lantern so bright, everything was illuminated.

The blood splotches on the floor, the basket of toys in the corner, and the hundreds of pictures of Alana Barlow that had been tacked over every inch of the walls.

Alex slowly tugged her gaze from the pictures to Cade, but before she even saw his face, she knew she was in trouble.

 

Julian managed to slow down long enough to avoid crashing through the door of the lab; he managed to calm down enough to keep from shouting his brother's name. Until he discovered the place was empty. Then he shouted a lot.

However when he found Alex's clothes, he couldn't speak at all.

A shadow fell over Julian where he knelt next to the neatly folded black slacks and white blouse. He had one of her ugly boots cradled in his arms like a baby.

“You've got it bad,” Neil murmured.

Julian couldn't argue. He did have it bad. What he didn't have was her.

Apparently, his brother—the murdering, rogue werewolf—did.

“We have to find them,” he said.

“Mmm,” Neil agreed, moving around the room, glancing into drawers, closets, and the refrigerator. “They obviously went running together by choice.” Neil gazed pointedly at the perfectly folded shirt. “He didn't tear her clothes from her body and force her to do anything. There'd be blood somewhere other than the refrigerator.”

Julian growled.

“Calm down.”

“How can I when I've just discovered my brother's been killing Inuit?” Julian set Alex's boot on the floor and got to his feet. “And why is that?”

Neil began to sort through a pile of papers on the desk. “I only know why he killed the wise women.”

Neil calmly opened a folder and peered inside. When he didn't continue, Julian snapped, “Why?”

“I thought you knew.”

“If I knew,
Neil
”—Julian drew out the name—“I wouldn't be asking you.”

Neil frowned and glanced up. “Cade told me you knew, and that you were all right with it.”

“With what?” Julian ground between clenched teeth. Several empty beakers rattled, one of them burst into shards.

“Don't get excited.” Though Julian could incinerate him if he was of a mind to, Neil's voice and manner were nothing but calm. “You remember how Cade always had to talk to the local wise woman, shaman, whatever?”

“Yes. He wanted to know what they did.”

Neil nodded. “Which is why he ate them. That way all their knowledge became his.”

“That's nuts.”

“That's Cade.”

“And you thought I was okay with this?”

“Back in those days things were different.
We
were different. Besides, you never did anything about it.”

“I didn't know!”

“That was probably why.”

“What the hell was I doing when this was going on?”

“Leading a boatload of Vikings. You had a lot on your mind.”

Julian ran a hand over his face.

“It wasn't as if people weren't dying, Julian. Back then, that was kind of what we did.”

“I don't understand why he'd suddenly decide that killing someone, then eating them, gave him their knowledge. He was always talking to the local witch doctor types.”

“And he was
always
killing and eating them. He didn't start when he became a werewolf.”

Julian opened his mouth, then shut it again as he remembered Alex telling him her theory of the rogue.

A psychotic murderer in both forms.

How could Julian have been so blind?

“I have to find him.”

“He has no reason to hurt her.” Neil picked up another folder. “She's just some girl.” He opened the cover. “Or not. What the hell, Julian?”

He slid the folder across the desk, and the contents spilled out. Photos of Alex. News clippings. Printouts of Internet searches. It all looked very familiar.

Because it was his.

Somehow Cade had gotten hold of the file Julian had made about Alexandra Trevalyn.

Werewolf hunter.

“I loved her.”

Alex pulled her gaze from that of Alana Barlow—on a merry-go-round, riding a horse, in the sandbox—all ages, all sizes, all Alana, all the time. There was even a collection of snow globes on the only table in the room, each one surrounding a different reflection of the beautiful, dead blonde.

Cade had pulled on a pair of sweatpants he no doubt kept in the house for the times he came here and…what? Beat off in the middle of her shrine?

“This is sick,” Alex murmured.

A terry-cloth robe hit her in the face.
“You're
sick. You disgusting, filthy
Jäger-Sucher.”

Since the room was cold and her goose bumps had goose bumps, Alex put on the robe. “I guess all the cats are out of their respective bags,” she said.

Cade knew who she was—or close enough—and she had a pretty good idea who he was.

“Bet you were pissed when Julian took that bullet instead of me.”

“Pissed isn't the word.” With the speed she still hadn't quite gotten used to, he reached over and backhanded her
so hard she not only flew off her feet but smashed into the wall.

Several of Alana's pictures tore free and skated through the air to join her on the floor.

“Bitch,” he muttered. “See what you've done?”

A blow like that would have killed Alex if she'd been human. As it was, he'd merely knocked out a few of her teeth. She spat them on the floor and wondered if she'd live long enough to grow them back.

Alex gathered the photos and stood. “Where'd you get these?”

She was half afraid he'd say the place was Julian's; then she'd really be creeped out.

Instead he snatched the pictures from her hands. “Don't touch her,” he said. “Never touch her.”

Alex had to bite down on her lip to keep from saying that Alana was ashes, and they were a little hard to touch. She figured a comment like that would be the quickest way to lose another couple of teeth.

“I thought werewolves didn't show up on film?” she said instead.

Another great reason to become one. No more pictures. Alex had never been a fan. Smile for the camera. Look pretty. Be
on
.

Alana didn't appear to have any problem. From the number of photos, and the visible joy on her face in every one, she'd adored the camera as much as it had adored her.

“I asked for old photos from her Gramma, then made copies. Told her I was going to give them to Julian as a gift. Once he was ready.” Cade tacked the fallen pictures in the exact places they'd fallen out of. “I never thought he would be.”

“He isn't,” she said. “Don't worry.”

He rounded on her with a snarl. “He made you like
her.
Like us. Then brought you
here
. Why would he do that? He's lost his mind. He's lost his balls. He isn't fit to lead.”

Alex didn't like the sound of that.
Not fit to lead
usually led to some kind of coup. And in werewolf land, that meant a challenge. Although why worry? She didn't think Cade could kill Julian.

Then again, she hadn't thought Cade could kill anyone.

There was a lot more to Cade than any of them had been aware of. She needed to discourage a coup—along with hatred of Julian. If she had a snowball's chance, she'd even have tried to convince him she wasn't evil incarnate—but she knew better.

“He wanted me to suffer,” she blurted. “Killing me was too easy.” His eyes narrowed, and she hurried to add, “Not that he won't eventually.”

“I don't see you suffering. In fact, you fit right in with no trouble at all. And now you're his mate. He'll never kill you.” He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “So I have to.”

Cade had planned this well. She was naked—or near enough. She didn't have a gun, a knife, a silver anything. And she'd returned to human form, where she was only a slightly faster, stronger woman, and from the speed with which he'd smacked her, not as fast or as strong as him. Shifting into a wolf would take too long, especially when he could do so in an instant.

Alex glanced at the windows; she couldn't help it. But they were shuttered and—

“No one knows where we are.”

Her gaze met his, and she caught a trace of the madness he'd kept so well hidden lurking behind the eyes of a man she'd begun to think of as her friend.

“If they come to my place they'll think we went running
together. They'll wait until tomorrow to worry.” He smiled, and the madness blossomed. “By then it'll be too late.”

“Julian will know. He'll figure it out.”

“He hasn't figured anything out so far. I have my brother as convinced of my peaceful nature as anyone.”

“Love is blind,” she said.

“And pretty damn dumb.”

She had to keep him talking. If he was talking to her he wasn't killing her.

“You murdered my father.”

Alex hadn't meant to say that. Bringing up death at all was probably a bad idea. But she'd opened her mouth, and out it had come.

Cade had been staring at a montage of Alana in a sky-blue dress, hair piled on top of her head and messily hanging about her ears. Kind of like Cade's.

She'd never gotten a look at his ears in this form but—

Alex frowned. She had seen his wolf ears, and they'd been as intact as hers.

“Charlie?” Cade turned away from the wall. “Never met the man.”

Could Cade have found a way to heal silver? Who the hell knew?

“Why would you think that I'd killed Charlie?” he mused.

“If you didn't kill him, then how do you know who he is?”

“Julian has a dossier on you.” His head cocked. “From your lack of surprise, you knew that.” He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, tapped his finger against his lip. “You're searching for your father's killer. You think that he's here. Why would you think that?”

His head lowered, his eyes falsely wide, his mouth in a sarcastic
o
. “This has Edward written all over it.”

Alex didn't comment, because it did.

“The old man pulled a fast one. He's been trying to find us for years. He never would have been able to.” He clapped his hands. “But then Julian became obsessed with you and his revenge. So Edward lay in wait. He used Julian's pain to his advantage, let you become the perfect little spy.” Cade began to grin. “I wouldn't put it past him to have leaked your identity to Julian in the first place.”

Alex's eyes narrowed. She wouldn't put it past him, either.

“Then he tells you your father's killer is here, and the next thing you know you're volunteering.”

Close enough.

“This is fantastic.” He laughed. “I won't even have to deny killing you. You're a spy. They'll give me a goddamn medal.”

“Julian won't.”

Cade's laughter died, and he shrugged. “He's a fool. Lets Alana run off and be killed by you. Then tries to get cutesy, to punish you, and he ends up
mated
to you. Everything he touches turns to shit.”

“He saved your life.”

“And I thanked him. Am I supposed to be his slave until the end of time?”

“I think, yeah.”

“I think not. He doesn't want to rule the world, well I do.”

Uh-oh,
Alex thought.

“I've been waiting and watching for a weakness.” His gaze met hers, and he smiled. “Now he's got one. Once I kill you, he'll be writhing. I should be able to challenge him and win.”

Alex blinked. Hell. The coup really was on.

She had to do something. She didn't want the village under
Cade's thumb. He was nuts. And what about the Inuits? They'd be nothing but a smorgasbord.

She needed to get outside, then to the trees where she could perhaps hide long enough to shape-shift, make her way back to Barlowsville, and blow the whistle on the wolf in their midst.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was all she had. And it started with knocking Cade senseless enough for her to have a head start.

Before she could think too hard and too long about what she was about to do, Alex snatched up one of the glass globes full of water and snow and Alana, then she pitched it right at Cade's head.

It was a good throw—a great one, in fact. She put everything she'd ever learned from Charlie into it. All those years of instruction, of practice, combined with her increased strength, and she just knew that pitch was going to cause some damage.

Until Cade reached up with that surprising speed, snatching the thing out of the air an instant before it would have broken his nose.

 

Julian strode toward the back door, the change trickling over him like a winter wind. His jeans split at the seams, bursting open to allow his haunches free.

His fury at his brother for wrecking everything, combined with his fury at himself for not realizing it, allowing him to open the back door with hands on the end of paws before he shouted from a snout that should not have been able to form words, “Bring the others.”

Then he hit the ground loping, following the scent of Cade and Alex down the street, out of town, then around and around
and around. He knew she couldn't be far, but he also couldn't figure out in what direction they'd gone.

The scents overlapped; they went one way, then curled back the other. He was so angry, so upset, so—yes, he admitted it—scared his focus was shot to shit. He felt as if his brain would explode, so he plopped onto his haunches and lifted his nose to the moon.

“Oooo www-exxxxx!” he called, and the moon answered.

Julian,
it whispered in a voice that rumbled through his blood.
Julian.

His head whipped to the right.
There
.

He pulled on his power and the next instant…

He saw her.

 

Alex went for the door. Of course he'd had her close it. Not that its being wide open would have helped. Not when he was ancient, and she was so brand new. His speed was legend, and hers…Well, hers was not.

Her fingers had no more than brushed the doorknob, and he was there, slamming her head against it, making her as dazed as she'd wanted him to be.

She recovered quickly enough, which made her realize that her plan had been crappier than she'd thought. Cade would have recuperated from glass to the noggin before she'd run fifty yards from the house.

“Nice try,” he said. “But I was kind of waiting for that. I read the dossier, remember? And there was that one article about you competing in a softball tournament.”

Her neck burned; she hissed in a breath that smelled of scalded flesh, ashes, and silver. The knife glittered next to her face.

“Everyone was so amazed at your talent. How fast you
could pitch. How accurate and so darn hard. Where had you been? What had you been doing?” He chuckled. “I bet Edward loved that.”

“Not so much,” she managed through the pain. Was he going to hold that silver knife against her neck until she caught fire? And how could he hold silver anyway?

He lifted the blade from her skin, where he'd merely been resting it, though it had felt as if he'd plunged the weapon straight home, and she noted the thick iron hilt that kept the silver from touching him.

Edward had seen the article, too. Edward saw everything. Boy, had he let her have it.

Jäger-Suchers
did not waste time; they did not play games.
Jäger-Suchers
did not allow their pictures to be taken; they definitely did not allow them to be printed in the paper.
Jäger-Suchers
did
not
draw attention.

Alex had never played in a softball tournament again.

“There was a follow-up article,” Cade said. “About how you disappeared. How your name was false. How you paid in cash. They even tried to match your fingerprints, but huh—the entire hotel room had been wiped down. And your van had fake plates.”

“Welcome to my world,” Alex muttered.

Cade slammed her head against the door again, then leaned in close and whispered, “Welcome to mine.”

In the distance the howl of a wolf lifted into the night. Alex realized how hard Cade had hit her when the howl began to sound like her name.

“Julian,” she whispered, and Cade smacked her again. Strangely
he
didn't appear to hear that howl, or if he did he wasn't worried. Which scared her more than the knife had. He should be more afraid of Julian.

“You ruined him,” Cade continued. “All he can think
about is you. He let the most beautiful woman in the world walk away. You
killed
her, and yet he trails after you panting.” He yanked her upright. “Open the door.”

Still a little woozy, Alex said, “Wha—? Why?”

“I'm not going to defile her place with your blood.”

“Ashes.” Alex managed to get her hand on the handle, but it wasn't easy. “Not blood.”

“You think I'm going to kill you fast?” Cade asked, then he picked her up by the back of the neck and tossed her into the night.

Alex skidded across the ice, the robe riding up to her hips, the uneven surface dragging furrows in her skin. She scrambled to her feet, and Cade landed on her back, driving her face into the snow.

“You
killed
her,” he said again, as if she didn't already know. “You're gonna pay in blood. Every last drop of it before you die.” He stood, hauling her along, too. “I'd like to study it anyway.” He turned the knife this way and that, considering the spark of moonlight across the blade. “For that I'll need the blood outside and not in.”

He was stronger than she'd thought, quicker than he'd ever appeared as he dragged her to the rear of the monster truck and strapped her to the tailgate. The truck was so hopped up on its oversize tires that her feet barely touched the ground.