Once Upon a Haunted Moon (The Keeper Saga) (8 page)

“Werewolf, huh?”

Ed rolled his eyes and dropped his arms to shove his hands in his pockets as he gave up on his attempt to impress her.

“She’s moving him, but I don’t know where. I just keep seeing crows everywhere,” Nikki said, then snapped out of her trance, “Where are the others?”

“They went to the Deadland Adam had been going through, but they didn’t find anything. They’re headed to see if Wynter knows anything else.”

“That’s a waste of time,” Nikki shook her head.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got a weird feeling that she’s gone, too.”

***

Zue

It had been easier than she thought — this strange, wonderful game of conquering her enemies. It still felt odd to consider Wynter an enemy. But then again, she had made her own choice. She could not be allowed to help her precious humans any further.

She thought, surely, her dear sister would have fought harder. True, she was weak, but with the exception of a show of magic in which Wynter pelted her with a whirlwind of thousands of books as she entered the spelled house, there hadn’t been much of a show of resistance. It was more a show of resignation. Zue had more strength than Wynter, even though she had been the one trapped for the last few centuries. Of course, the magic she had taken from the three boys, who just happened to be in the Deadland when she escaped, had been an immense help. But in simple truth, she had been the one who fed — her sister had not, and they both knew it.

The boy with the golden eyes, however, had been a most worthy adversary. He fought valiantly even though he knew the odds lay not in his favor. Still, it took quite a bit of effort on her part, and had the other wolf people been present, she may very well have lost her war for revenge.

The boy’s eyes were as gold as the sun. Mirror images of the eyes of the one so long ago who had trapped her and kept her prisoner…

No matter now, she reminded herself as she took a deep breath. The strongest of the wolf people had been no match for her. The others would soon follow and she would take them even more easily. There was only one who might still have the magic to stop her…

She stood over the boy’s body, watching as he slowly stirred, and his golden eyes partly opened.

“I shall kill you soon. How your death is dealt, either slow with pain, or quick, shall depend on your answer, so think of yourself and tell me now…

Where is the White Wolf?”

***

I decided I didn’t like Tori’s combat boots. Or at least, my wolf didn’t.

At least not when the huge, hard leather things jammed into my ribs.

Somehow we ended up in unanimous consent that we should meet the others at Wynter’s house…just in case they needed our help convincing her to talk to them. I’m not sure what kind of help we were going to offer. As far as reinforcements go, ours weren’t exactly stellar — we had one wolf who hadn’t even been on an official hunt, one wolf who had been acting really weird ever since he stepped on the briar in the Deadland, one girl who was trying to hold it together over her boyfriend’s disappearance and tended to space out and see stuff no one else could see, and another who wore clunky leather boots and just happened to show up and didn’t know squat about the magic world.

We should have thought our plan through better than we had. Nikki suggested Ed and I switch to wolves and go through the woods, letting her and Tori ride piggyback. In theory, we’d get there faster that way.

We agreed, and I started to hope that I’d have Nikki on my back. But I guess that’s the thing about hope, normally you don’t get what you’re hoping for. Somehow, I ended up with the girl with hard boots who was clinging to the fur between my shoulders so hard I thought it would soon be tearing out by the roots.

Nikki, of course, accustomed to riding Adam’s wolf all over the forest, sat up easily on Ed’s cream-colored back as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I whined, hoping Tori would take the hint to watch how Nikki was doing it.

Apparently, my point came across loud and clear, because she snapped, “Quit complaining, I can’t help it. I feel like I’m getting ready to fall off!”

I wriggled, causing her left boot to bounce against my ribs, then I yelped for emphasis.

“Fine, I’ll take my boots off, but you have to promise we’ll come back and get them. Just stop for a minute…”

Ed turned, and waited for us as Tori hopped off my back, and pulled the boots off, setting them under a tree to get on the way back, “I hope I don’t need shoes wherever it is we’re going.”

It ended up that we all needed more than just shoes when we showed up to the old shack by the railroad tracks. Fire-retardant suits would have been handy, actually.

The spelled house was fully engulfed in flames.

Ed and I switched back from our wolves as we watched the fire department pull the hoses around the shack in an effort to contain the fire.

I saw the others standing by the tracks. Apparently, the fire had started before they had arrived, too, because Erik and the cousins had matching strange expressions on their faces that seemed to translate into, “Well, now what are we supposed to do?”

As we walked out of the woods, we heard one fireman say to another, “It was a matter of time before the old thing fell in or caught fire. Kinda surprised it hadn’t happened before now, really.”

His partner nodded to us as we passed, “Keep back, kids. We don’t need anyone getting hurt.”

“Was there anyone in there?” Nikki asked him.

“No, it’s been vacant for years. No one was crazy enough to go in there,” he said, then turned back to the truck to adjust the flow of water to the hoses as the flames licked higher, mumbling to himself, “…can’t figure out what’s feeding it…it’s not
that
big a house…”

I didn’t figure it would do any good to tell him it was bigger than he thought, and that the tons of books it held would probably feed that fire for a really long time.

“Well, has anybody got any suggestions?” Erik asked as we approached, then he saw Tori, and froze, “Who are you?”

“My name’s Tori,” she grinned at him, “You guys werewolves, too?”

“Who’s been breaking the rules?” Erik demanded loudly, glaring at both Ed and me.

I pointed to Ed, making sure blame would be laid on the right person, “He showed up and changed right in front of her, so she knows everything now.”

“So much for the first rule,” Tommy sighed, “Adam’s going to have to make up some new ones when we find him.”

“
If
we find him,” Michael said, “We can’t find any trace of him past where he fought her. There was some blood, and we saw where he fell, but then…nothing. It’s like they both just disappeared.”

“We’ll find him,” I said, as much for their sake as for Nikki, who had paled at the news and looked ready to cry, “I suggest going back into the woods, there’s too many people here. Once we get where we aren’t being watched, we can figure out what to do next.”

Three tall, muscular Indian boys met us at the edge of the forest. They were all bare-chested, in spite of the chill in the air. “Why does it seem like we always are missing the action around here?”

They were the Lakotas, a tribe of the Sioux, and they were here to help out with the powwow that was taking place at the end of the month. The powwow was a pretty big event for the county as a whole. Adam and the others had worked on it for months, and most of the work was finished when the Lakotas arrived. The three boys arrived early, leaving someone else to bring up the van with the sound equipment later on. They had been here a few weeks with very little gear, which I thought was sort of weird as they basically lived in the woods as cats. I said something to Adam about it, but he just shrugged, and said they didn’t get the chance to roam the forest much, their reservation was small with no national forest close by, so they considered coming early more a vacation to connect with their inner spirit. I translated his explanation into “mountain lions have extra time to run around the woods wild and free, hunting whatever and whenever they want.”

Rune, the one who spoke, was the oldest. While all three of the boys had different tribal tattoos and piercing, Rune wore an enormous tattoo of a mountain lion on his chest. It was so lifelike it seemed to come running from inside of him, ready to jump from his body and out into life. What really set it off was the way his muscles rippled, making the cat shimmer and move as if it had come from deep within his spirit, and was ready to pounce on us from its position on his chest.

“Nice tattoo,” Tori remarked, supposedly looking at the muscles in his upper body solely for the purpose of inspecting the mountain lion.

“Thanks, he is my na-gi, the spirit of my mountain lion,” the boy, named Rune, smiled politely at her inspection of his torso. Some of the muscles bunched up and flexed. I didn’t think it was coincidence. I rolled my eyes.

“I guess you’re going to tell me you have magic, too, and that you’re a were-lion,” Tori finally stopped looking at the muscles and grinned up at him. The cat on his chest shifted, seeming to come alive a bit more as its eyes narrowed.

“Of course,” Rune grinned back. His eyes sparkled as black as obsidian. “Don’t you know that everyone has magic? It may be different than what you are used to seeing, but it’s just a matter of recognizing it. What’s your magic?”

I rolled my eyes again and hoped the big goon with the Mohawk hair and the rows of hoop earrings would go away. We had things to do and people to find.

One of the other boys, named Garrett, elbowed him, whispering, “Hey, man, quit hitting on the hot chick. You’ve got at least one wolf who isn’t liking it. I think she belongs to him. You don’t want to tick him off. I’ve seen him kill one of his own, you know…”

Well, the “one of my own” had it coming, even though I still had nightmares about it nearly every night. But at least it had given me a reputation among the cats.

I smirked. Let them think I was their worst enemy. That would be fun.

“We’ll see,” Rune said, ignoring us both as his black eyes stared into Tori’s. The two of them were hypnotized by each other. Neither of them moved.

“Have you guys seen Adam anywhere? We need to see what he wants us to do with some of the stuff at the fairgrounds. If this weather doesn’t change around soon, I don’t think we’ll be able to keep going with the powwow,” the last boy, Chase, spoke up, ignoring Rune and Tori, as he pushed Rune out of the way to come around him, “Tearsa called and is freaking out. She says she’s not coming up with the rest of the gear if the weather doesn’t change. She says her sound equipment doesn’t like rain so it really won’t do well with snow. Not to mention not many people are going to show up if another snowstorm hits…”

“We don’t know where Adam is,” Erik said, “That’s what we’re doing, actually — looking for him. He’s missing.”

Chase’s black eyes narrowed. “Do you think the blue one had something to do with it?” he nodded toward the remains of Wynter’s house.

“We don’t know. Looks like she’s missing, too.” The edges of Erik’s mouth turned down, pinching his round face into a sharp frown.

“She has strong magic. It still looks like a shack, even though it’s on fire.” Garrett noted.

“Can you help us look for Adam or not?” Nikki asked impatiently, crossing her arms over her chest. It was fairly obvious she was tired of standing around watching a house burn as she listened to idle chit-chat. She was ready to go. She wanted Adam.

“We’ll help you search for him. We’ll head north through the woods, and circle around. If there’s a trail, we’ll find him,” Chase said.

Nikki gave him a small, tight smile, “Thank you.”

“Sure,” he smiled back, and then looked over at Rune, “Hey! Come on, we’re leaving, Rune. Unless you’re planning on proposing, snap out of it!” he turned his back as he and Garrett started through the woods. Rune finally shook his head as if to clear it, and then followed behind the others.

“Tori!” Nikki pulled her hand, “Let’s go!”

“Huh?” Tori came out of her trance, looking shaken, “What did you say?”

“I said ‘let’s go!’ Get his number or something if you have to, but we can’t stay here all day,” Nikki said crossly, still jerking Tori’s hand as we started through the forest in the opposite direction of the cats.

We walked on foot for a few moments, and when it was clear we were out of hearing range, Erik stopped, and motioned us around him, “Okay, now that we’re alone. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

“I thought we were supposed to search the opposite way, and meet the Lakota guys as they came back around?” Michael asked, confused.

“Something’s not right with them. I don’t know what it is, it’s just a gut feeling,” Erik shook his head, “Rune is always in charge. If he’s their alpha, there is no way Chase and Garrett would have spoke to him that way or pushed him around. Plus, there was that weird trance thing he was doing with Tori. How are you doing, by the way?” he asked Tori, who was finally starting to act more normally.

“Ok, I guess. It was just something about those black eyes, they just seemed to suck me in,” Tori pulled the edges of her leather jacket around her tighter, as if the thought of it had chilled her.

I fought the urge to smile. At least it hadn’t been the kind of attraction I thought it had been.

“His eyes are green,” Nikki corrected Tori, who stared at her as if she were nuts. “They’re green, not black. I know,” she insisted. “Rune was there when I escaped out of the pit that Reuben had thrown me in. He’s got some kind of magic that can calm you when you’re feeling upset if you look in his eyes. He has very bright, vibrant green eyes…like springtime or a rain forest. That kind of green.”

“No, I’m quite sure they’re black.” Tori insisted, and then added dryly, “Like a coal mine or an endless pit. That kind of black.”

“Come to think of it, I thought Chase looked different when he came around to talk to us,” Ed spoke up for the first time since we had left Nikki’s house, “It’s their eyes. His were black, too. Something has happened to them.”

“Do you think they did something to Adam?” Tori asked.