Marked by the Moon

13

A few moments ago, Julian had felt sorry for her. A few moments after that he’d touched her, and it had felt so…perfect, he’d kept his hand right where it was.

Now he wanted to take that hand and wrap it around her throat until her smirk died, and she did, too.

Of course she wouldn’t stay dead—and he had only himself to blame for that.

“Why don’t you finish telling me why, if you can’t make baby Barlows, there are all sorts of people with your eyes running around calling you Daddy.”

“Grandfather,” he corrected.

“Whatever.” She tilted her head. “George called you Ataniq. Sounds a little like asshole, but I doubt he’d have the balls.”

“Unlike you,” Julian returned.

Alex spread her hands and shrugged.

“Ataniq means—” He paused, realizing that once he told her she’d only smirk again.

“You may as well spill it. I can borrow the Internet as well as the next werewolf.”

“Boss, president, king, master,” he blurted.

She stared at him for several seconds, while he discovered he’d been wrong. The smirk didn’t come back; instead a look of incredulity spread over her face. “You raped and pillaged your way through that village and now they call you grandfather and master?”

“No.”

“You just said—”

“We didn’t. I mean I didn’t—”

“You were a Viking, Jorund. You didn’t sail here to teach the natives about Jesus.”

No, they’d come here at Julian’s insistence. He’d had a sudden urge to sail west, though very few ships did. Such a trip had been a danger at the time considering the belief in sea monsters and a flat, flat world. The waters were uncharted, the land beyond the horizon a mystery. Naturally, he couldn’t resist.

Julian had always remembered the beauty of the place they had found. The ice, the snow, the freedom that swirled in the air. He’d wanted badly to come back. About a hundred years ago, he had.

“There weren’t any sea monsters,” he said. Alex blinked, then frowned. “They said there’d be sea monsters, and I wanted to find one.”

“Were you twelve?” she asked.

“Twenty.” And in command of his own vessel. “I think the sea monsters they spoke of were actually whales. Great beasts that rose up from the ocean, blowing huge gusts of water out of their heads.”

She was beginning to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind. “The sea monsters were whales. Check. And you sailed past them, landed…” She wiggled her fingers in the general direction of the ocean. “Then marched into Awanitok and took whatever the hell, and whoever the hell, you wanted.”

“No.”

She sighed impatiently. “Barlow, your eyes don’t lie. Well, your eyes do. But all the eyes, in all the faces, all over that village don’t.”

“I led a raiding party,” he began, then went silent, remembering.

It had been summer. If it hadn’t they’d never have been able to sail near the land since the water in the Arctic froze solid.

The Inuit village had been small at the time, perhaps sixty people. They’d lived in homes dug into the ground, the earth providing natural insulation. Anything aboveground was fashioned with sod over wood or whalebone frames. Julian had thought the method ingenious.

He’d had ten men with him. Plenty to pillage the natives. Unfortunately they’d been too poor to pillage.

“They offered a sacrifice if we left them alone.”

Alex lifted a brow. “Indian maidens?”

Julian shrugged. “They didn’t have anything else.”

“You took them. In more ways than one.”

“As you pointed out, we were Vikings, and we’d been on that ship for a very long time.”

Alex glanced out the floor-length sliding glass door to her right. “Then all the blue eyes aren’t descended from you.”

“Most of my men were related to me in some way.” It made for less hassle on the high seas. If everyone was related, there was a slimmer chance of not only mutiny, but wholesale slaughter as well.

“Go on,” Alex said.

“I just told you everything.”

“Not everything. Why does an entire Inuit village in the twenty-first century call one man master? Not very PC.”

“PC,” he repeated, his mind churning to find a meaning.

“Yeah, you really fit in,” she muttered. “Politically correct. We did away with master in this country about a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“I didn’t tell them to call me that.”

“You didn’t stop them, either.”

“It’s a courtesy title. It doesn’t have the connotations you’re giving it.”

“They still consider you the boss of them, and I want to know why.”

Julian took a deep breath and continued. “I returned a century ago.”

“Scene of the crime,” she murmured, but he ignored her.

“I brought my wolves. We wanted to live at peace.”

“Alaska is huge. You had to build in their backyard?”

At first Julian had come merely to see the place he’d idealized in his mind, one he’d visited while he was still human. But then he’d caught a glimpse of all the blue-eyed Inuit…

“Family is important.” Especially since he’d thought the only family he had left was Cade. Especially since he’d never have any children, any descendants but the ones he’d found here.

Something flickered in Alex’s eyes. Sadness? Anger? Guilt? He couldn’t say. The expression was there and gone so fast, and he didn’t really know her that well at all.

Not that he wanted to. Not that he would. Once they finished this discussion, he’d leave her to Ella and interact with her as little as possible. Because every time he saw Alex, he remembered Alana.

Eventually.

“I protect them,” he said.

“From what?”

“Everything. Anything.”

“Wow! How did they survive a thousand years without you, Jorund?”

Pretty well. Until he’d set up a werewolf village right next door.

“You’re protecting them from you,” Alex said slowly. Could she read his face, or just his mind? “From the city of monsters you plopped down right next to them. Talk about extortion!”

“I do more for them than just ascertain none of my people…” He waved his hand in the general direction of Awanitok.

“Snack?” she supplied.

He ignored her. “They live in the way that they wish. No interference from the government.”

“How do you manage that?” she asked, but before she even finished the last word, her face lit with understanding. “Magic.”

He shrugged. “How else do you deal with the government?”

She tilted her head. “Go on.”

“My Inuit have no trouble hunting. Their crafts are the most coveted in tourist centers everywhere.”

“You bribe them.”

“An ancient method,” he agreed. “But it works.”

“And in return they give you…” He watched comprehension dawn in her eyes, quickly followed by condemnation. “Oh, you suck!”

“I’m sorry?”

“They give you a sacrifice, but this time it isn’t boinking the Indian maiden. This time it’s blood.”

“A fair exchange.”

Fury suffused her face. She pushed back from the table and stood over him, fists clenched. “I should know better.” Her jaw was tight; he could practically hear her back teeth grinding together. “You say you’re different, but you aren’t. You’re just like every other werewolf in the world; you have no respect for human life.”

“I have more respect than you do.”

“She wasn’t human.”

And they were back to that again. Julian had hoped Alex would begin to understand once she was here, once she could see. But it had only been a day and—

“Wait a second.” He grabbed one arm, and she took a swing at him with the other. He caught her wrist before it smashed into his face, then he shook her just once. “What’s human life got to do with anything?”

Her eyes widened, and the angry color drained from her cheeks. “They’re your family, yet you chase them through the woods beneath the full moon, and you tear them into pieces.”

“What?” he shouted, releasing her as he straightened to his full height. Barlow towered over her, and for an instant Alex was reminded of the polar bear, roaring and posturing. She half expected him to shape-shift into one. She’d studied berserkers, and in the legends many could turn into both a wolf and a bear. She wouldn’t put it past Barlow to have left that part out.

But he didn’t shift, not even his paws. Instead, he closed his eyes, and his lips moved silently, as if in prayer.

“How do you pray and not burst into flames?” she wondered aloud.

He opened one eye, which was all he needed to give her a very impressive glare before he snarled, “Explain why you think I’m accepting human sacrifices.”

The rumble beneath the surface revealed just how close the beast within him had come. Oddly, Alex wasn’t scared. Considering what she’d just learned, she wasn’t sure why.

“Werewolves must kill, then consume fresh human blood on the night of the full moon,” Alex said. “I knew that even before I became one.”

“We require blood, yes.” He opened both eyes, and though the blue had hardened to the color of ice beneath a clear, summer sky, they still bored into hers with such heat she was surprised her corneas didn’t explode. “But blood and death are two very different things.”

“How would you—? Can you—?” She leaned back. “Wait. What?”

“I have told you over and over that my wolves are different. Our full moon craving can be satisfied with blood. No death involved.”

“The Inuit give you blood,” Alex clarified. “Like some full moon communion?”

“If you like.” His lips tightened. “You really thought I’d let my wolves kill one person a month?”

“You let me kill someone,” Alex said softly.

He looked away. “That was different.”

“Oh, right. I needed to understand.” Alex allowed the full weight of her sarcasm to fall on the last word.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But I didn’t have much choice once I’d made you.”

“You could have not made me,” Alex muttered.

Barlow ignored her. “Every new wolf must kill the first time or embrace madness. Even my wolves, if that initial kill isn’t accomplished, become killing machines ever after.”

“You think that’s what happened to the wolf that’s stalking the Inuit?”

“No. All of the wolves here were made by me and brought into this life with their consent.”

“Not all,” she said.

“All the ones that count.”

Well, she’d asked for that. “Were every one of your wolves given a very bad man as their first meal?”

“Not every one.”

“When did you grow a conscience?”

His eyes narrowed. “I became a werewolf in the ninth century. Conscience was a little different back then.”

“I suppose you just tossed them a conquered captive and called it a day.”

When he didn’t answer, she knew she was right. She also knew that living for eons meant that a lot of things had changed, including how people viewed right and wrong. Judging a Viking with the mores of the twenty-first century was as backward as he had once been.

She didn’t like cutting Barlow any slack, but to be fair she had to.

“You’re certain none of your wolves might have made another and let him or her run wild, so to speak?”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

Alex snorted. She couldn’t help it. “Not everyone is as beta as you think.”

She could tell by the way he went silent and still that she’d gotten him thinking. She decided to leave him to it.

“I’m going back to Ella’s,” Alex said. If she didn’t sleep soon, she just might fall on her face.

Julian glanced up. “Don’t tell anyone who you are.”

She’d been headed for the door but turned at his arrogant command. “I think that ship has sailed.”

His eyes flared. “Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t. You introduced me the instant we got into town.”

“Oh.” He let out a quick, sharp breath that blew a stray strand of golden hair away from his face. “Your name. That’s all right. But don’t tell anyone why you’re here.”

“You think your people would mutiny if they discovered you hadn’t followed your own rules? That you made someone against their will?” Alex’s lips curved. “That might be fun to watch.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Do not tell anyone you’re a hunter. Do not tell anyone you know Edward. Specifically do not tell anyone you murdered my wife.” He dropped his hand and looked into her face. “Werewolves can die, Alex, and mine will kill you.”

“They can’t. There’s a fail-safe in the lycanthropy virus that keeps werewolves from killing one another.”

“Not around here.”

Alex stilled. “What?”

“Because I’m different, my virus is different, and so are my wolves. No demon. Also no fail-safe.”

Her eyes widened. “Then how can there be any of you left at all? Why haven’t you torn one another to shreds? Why isn’t there only one wolf left standing?”

“Because we don’t kill for sport. We don’t enjoy it. And while we can kill one another, we don’t want to.”

“But sometimes,” she murmured, staring into his face as she heard what he’d left unsaid, “you have to.”

“It’s the only thing werewolves understand.” Barlow offered to take her back to Ella’s, but Alex refused.

“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.