Marked by the Moon

19

Alex was ankle-deep in the lunch rush when Ella walked by the front window. She opened her mouth to call out, then shut it again when Ella backtracked, peered in through the glass, then made use of the door.

Alex had one seat left at the counter, and Ella took it. “You’re here,” she said.

“Where did you think I was?”

Ella glanced around, then lowered her voice. “Halfway to Juneau.”

Alex had leaned in so she could catch the words and in doing so caught a whiff of—

“Julian,” she murmured.

Ella’s gaze lifted, and for an instant guilt flickered in her eyes. But guilt for what? Did Ella and Julian have a thing going on? Did she think Alex would care?

Strangely, Alex did. The thought of Julian in bed with this gorgeously exotic Frenchwoman, touching her the way he’d touched Alex, made her so angry she thought she might actually shift in the daylight, too.

The thick plastic glass Alex had been holding in preparation for filling it with Pepsi for the young, Hispanic man on the other end of the counter erupted into several dozen shards. Everyone in the restaurant glanced her way.

“Alex?” Ella murmured. “Are you all right?”

“Uh—yeah.” Alex dumped the pieces into the trash. Her palm appeared no worse for the explosion, so she filled another glass and set it carefully in front of her customer before returning to Ella.

By then, she was calmer, though she wouldn’t say exactly calm. The scent of Julian that wafted her way every time the door opened and sent a gust of air across Ella made Alex both furious and nostalgic. She missed him.

And wasn’t that just the most pathetic thing ever?

“Why would I be halfway to Juneau?” she asked.

“If he’d done to me what he did to you, I would be.”

“He told you?” This, after he’d insisted Alex keep who she was a secret, that if anyone in Barlowsville discovered the truth, they’d want her dead. Was Ella an exception to the rule? Or did Barlow just want Ella to have first crack at her head?

Alex glanced around the restaurant to make sure no one was listening. However, considering they were all werewolves, a private conversation…just wasn’t happening.

“What the hell?” Alex whispered.

“He’s searching for you.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. “And now I’m searching for him, too.”

She had to wait until the wave of customers receded. She couldn’t just up and leave Cyn and Rose snowed under, and it wasn’t as though Barlow was going anywhere. According to Ella, he’d already been to Awanitok and was headed to see Cade. He’d probably still be there when she got through.

As she stepped out of the café, Ella zoomed by on a snowmobile, disappearing into the steadily descending gloom in the direction of the Inuit village.

Alex went to the house to change clothes. The ones she wore now smelled like bacon grease and bleach. While there, she took a shower to get the scent out of her hair.

Alex had never minded working as a waitress, but she’d never cared for how she smelled afterward. Now that her nose was ultra-sensitive, she cared for it even less.

She set the cash she’d made that day on top of the nightstand. Tomorrow she’d buy some jeans and T-shirts for work. Ella was never going to get the scent of hash browns out of those wool slacks.

Alex strolled from her end of the village in the direction of Barlow’s place. People continued to greet her as if she was one of them. No one looked at her like she was a serial killer. Although, now that she thought about it, Ella hadn’t looked at her that way, either. Ella had looked at her as if she wanted to pat Alex on the hand and give her a hug.

Alex opened the rear door of the laboratory. She heard their voices right away.

“I can’t get more than a few miles from her and I become physically ill.”

Alex crept closer, frowning. That was Barlow.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing before.” Cade.

“Find out why. Make it stop. She can’t stay here forever.”

“Why not?” Cade sounded very confused.

“Yeah.” Alex stepped into the room. “Why not?”

It was a testament to how engrossed they’d been in whatever they were discussing that they hadn’t heard her come in. Both men started, then spun—Julian snarling, Cade wide-eyed.

“Where have you been?” Julian demanded.

“Halfway to Juneau.”

“Huh?” Cade glanced at Julian. “I thought you couldn’t be separated.”

Julian’s gaze held hers as he answered his brother. “She wasn’t halfway to Juneau.”

“What’s going on?” Alex asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Julian said, at the same time Cade answered, “He gets sick if you’re too far away from him.”

Julian glared at Cade, who spread his hands. “How could she not know this?”

“She doesn’t get sick,” Julian said between clenched teeth. “I do.”

“You sure?” Cade asked, turning to Alex. “Any desire to throw up? Headaches, dizziness?”

Alex shook her head. “I thought that being a werewolf cured all ills.”

“For him,” Cade grabbed a pencil and scribbled on a yellow pad. “Apparently not.”

Julian crossed to Alex. “Where were you?”

“Didn’t Cade tell you? He sent me to Rose for a job.”

“You’re working?”

“I can’t wear Ella’s clothes forever.”

“Of course you can.” He waved his hand regally, dismissing Ella’s charity as only a man could. “There’s no reason for you to get a job. You’re not—”

“Staying? From what I heard, you’d better hope that I am. Unless you’re a big fan of puking.” Alex squinted. “Is that steam coming out of your ears?”

He glanced over his shoulder at his brother, who was busy talking to himself and making notes on his yellow pad, then grabbed her elbow and half dragged, half led her down the hall and out the back door.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“Two reasons.” Alex yanked her arm from his grasp. “Why did you tell Ella about me?”

“I didn’t.” Alex raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged. “She figured it out. The way you behave, as if you hate me—”

“I do,” she said, but there was no heat behind the words.

“She figured that I’d made you against your will; then she added the fact that I’d gone to LA to look for Alana’s killer, and come back with you and—” He shrugged. “She’s pretty damn mad about it.”

“Why didn’t she kill me before I knew that she knew? I’m going to be ready for it now.”

“Ready for what?” Julian asked, even as understanding spread across his face. “She isn’t going to kill you. She was mad at me. She called you ‘poor thing.’” He made a face that revealed what he thought of that statement.

Alex had to agree. She did not much care for being called “poor thing.”

“You said two.” Alex glanced up. Barlow leaned against the building watching her. “You came here for two reasons.”

“Oh.” For an instant Alex couldn’t remember what the other one had been. Discovering her secret revealed, yet still being alive to worry about it despite Barlow’s threats to the contrary, had thrown her off her game. “We are what we were when we were made, right?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s what this—” He waved a hand at her, then himself. “—is all about. You’re still you, despite being marked by the moon.”

“Marked by you,” she muttered.

“Same thing.”

“There’s a rogue wolf.” He seemed startled by the change in subject, but he nodded. “If I’m the same at heart when woman and wolf, then so’s this rogue.”

“I’m not following.”

“A psychotic killer in both forms.”

Julian straightened so abruptly, Alex had to force herself not to back away. “I don’t make wolves lightly, Alex.”

“Except for me.”

His teeth ground together, the sound reminiscent of a bulldozer rolling over gravel. “That was hardly done lightly. And I knew all about you before I did it.”

Not all, Alex thought.

“Who’s the most likely candidate for psychotic killer of the week?” she asked.

“You,” he muttered.

Alex didn’t bother to comment. She could claim she didn’t kill people. He’d swear she did. They’d start to argue and blah, blah, blah.

“Think back on who you’ve made,” she said. “Did you know all of them as well as you knew me?” Or thought you did.

“None of my wolves were killers when I made them,” he insisted. “Why do you care? It’s my Indian village that’s being targeted, my people who are being accused.”

She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she believed his rogue and her father’s killer were one and the same— so she told him a different truth instead.

“I’m good at finding murderous werewolves. It’s kind of what I do.”

“Did,” he muttered.

“Just because you made me one, too, doesn’t mean I lost the ability to track them. You should let me help.”

“Help?” he echoed as if he didn’t know the word.

“I’ll find the rogue for you, Barlow. You can count on it.”

She sounded sincere, and for an instant Julian felt something like hope. She was one of the best hunters Edward had ever had, second only to the man himself now that Leigh Tyler had gotten pregnant and retired. Although that rumor was so bizarre Julian had a hard time believing it. Still, there’d been no whispers lately of Leigh blasting her way through more than her share of werewolves. So something strange had definitely happened.

Julian had never understood why Edward allowed Alex to leave his agency and run rogue. He thought the old man was up to something there; he just couldn’t figure out what.

“You never answered my question,” Julian said. “Why do you care?”

“I live here now. Sounds like I could be living here for the foreseeable future.”

Julian stifled a growl. Not if he could help it.

“I don’t want to find myself in the middle of a Barlow family civil war.”

Might it come to that? Would his Inuit relatives begin to hunt his werewolf offspring? Could the peace he’d found here deteriorate into another war?

Julian sighed. Yeah.

Despite her obvious skill at the job, and his need for it, Julian just couldn’t set Alex loose on his people. There was no telling what she might do to get her answers.

“We’ll search together,” he said.

“What?” The slight smile on her lips froze. “No. I work alone.”

“Not anymore.”

Julian nearly laughed as Alex sputtered and stomped. She couldn’t seem to find her words, and that suited him just fine. He liked her best when she wasn’t talking.

An image of what she was usually doing when she wasn’t talking—him—flitted through his mind, and for the first time that he could remember, it didn’t make him angry and horny. It just made him horny.

The woman was the best lay he’d ever had.

Julian’s heart seemed to stop as he heard his own thoughts. What was the matter with him?

He took several deep gulps of the clear, icy air. Unfortunately, the air didn’t smell clear—it smelled like her.

“He’s really your brother, right?” Alex murmured.

Julian, whose face had been tilted to the graying sky, now glared down at her. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“You don’t look that much alike.” She lifted a brow. “You certainly don’t share a personality.”

“What’s your point?”

“When you call him your brother do you mean brother in arms, blood brother—” She made a strange gesture with her hands that reminded him of something done by an LA gang member on the only episode of Cops he’d ever seen, and muttered, “Bro!” in a voice that was very LA. “My brotha from anotha motha.”

At his continuing blank expression she sighed, dropped her arms and continued, “Did you have the same mother, the same father? Did you grow up together? Is he really your brother or is it some kind of honorary title?”

“He’s my brother,” Julian said. They had not had the same mother, but back in the days of the Vikings, that wasn’t uncommon. Life was hard, and women did not live long, which meant Vikings often had more than one wife.

“You still think he’s the rogue?” Julian laughed. “All Cade ever cared about was healing. He wouldn’t hurt anyone—then or now. He definitely couldn’t kill them.”

Alex’s gaze went to the door that separated them from Cade. “I’ll have to take your word for it since I wasn’t around when he was completely human.”

“You weren’t around when any of us were completely human,” Julian pointed out.

Which was going to make it damn difficult for her to discover who’d enjoyed spilling human blood even before he’d grown fangs.

“If someone were a crazed killer,” Barlow continued, “wouldn’t he have killed before now?”

“You’d think,” Alex agreed. “Maybe he went somewhere else to do his dirty deeds. Anyone leave the village periodically?”

“Everyone leaves now and then. They aren’t prisoners.”

“They aren’t,” she muttered.

Julian sighed. “If that were the case, why start killing the Inuit when they were doing just fine somewhere else?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re the expert.”

“I don’t deal in theories, I deal in…” Alex’s voice trailed off and she frowned, seeming to search for a word.

Julian supplied one. “Death?”

Her eyes narrowed; then she shrugged. “Okay. I deal in death. I find them; then I kill them.”

“Find us,” he corrected. “Kill us.”

“Whatever. Do you want me to help you or not?”

Julian was very tempted to say not. But he wasn’t stupid. The quicker they discovered, then eliminated, the rogue, the fewer people would die. If it meant sleeping with the enemy, literally and figuratively, then…

“So be it.”