In the Light of the Moon, page 16
I was very close to ending his little probation early, though. Especially if it involved him whisking me away from the pepperoni-scented purgatory. Based on his last text an hour ago, though, I knew that he was powering through his last class’s papers.
“I’m going outside to take my fifteen,” I hollered toward the kitchen. It was met with sounds of acknowledgement from the guys, and I took my styrofoam cup of water out back to stand in the fresh air. It was nearly six, and if business was going to pick up, it would be soon.
I heaved a sigh of relief when the autumn air kissed my skin. The days were rapidly growing shorter, and the sun was already nearly set. I leaned against the brick, not too far from where I discovered Orion crumpled in pain all those weeks ago. He still hadn’t explained what happened, and I’d been too hesitant to ask.
The forest in front of me was a calming force, and instead of remembering how worried and confused I was that night, I just remarked on how far we’d come. What did it look like around his house? Orion tried to describe it to me, but all the photos of his cabin on his phone were reference images he’d snapped when needing to run to the hardware store for supplies.
My to-go cup squeaked, the straw shifting against the lid in a squeal of plastic-on-plastic, and I breathed deeply through my nose. There it was, that warm glow at the base of my chest. The pull, Granna called it. She said she felt that way every time she cared for her houseplants or garden outside. It’d made her decades of being a florist not just worth it, but a joy. A contentment and energizing she never felt with other forms of magic.
That was how I felt as a child when I plucked ripened wild strawberries and sat with the sweet tang while listening to the whispers of the vibrant chicken of the woods. Granna used to sit out there with me, never letting me wander too far but allowing me to explore while she basked in the dapples of sunlight or read.
A rustling of leaves, shuddering more fervently than they had before, drew my attention. My eyes searched the direction it came from, to the right and deeper into the wood than I’d been staring unseeingly.
My water slipped from my hand, bouncing, toppling, and lid bursting from the impact. Ice-cold water splashed on my boots, but I barely noticed it.
Kara was stumbling into the forest, eyes wide and looking over her shoulder as if something was chasing her.
I pushed off of the brick and began walking toward where she was retreating into the dark. “Kara?” I shouted, confused when I saw that no one else was out here. Downtown was still bustling, but the noise quickly retreated the further I went.
There was no clear path here, no beaten earth that’d regularly been tread, and I had to climb over and through thickets, pulling back branches to make my way after her. The further I went, I kept my eyes on her red hair that was pulled back in a messy bun. She was wearing a cropped tank top and shorts, and I couldn’t help worrying that she must be freezing. It was cool outside but even colder out here. Even with my jeans and boots, my bare arms were almost threatening to break out in goosebumps. And I tended to run hotter than most.
“Kara! Stop—do you need help?” Her family must’ve been losing hope by now, but at least she was safe.
If she’d just stop for a second, then I’ll be able to take her inside where we could call someone for her. But she wouldn’t slow down, and I picked up to a jog that overtook her pace.
That blooming in my chest was growing, pushing and pulsing against the heaving of my lungs, and when she stumbled over nothing but a clear patch of leaves, I yelped in surprise. I fell to my knees, immediately feeling the damp earth begin to seep into my jeans.
The acrid smell of her fear wasn’t in my nostrils but clear in my mind, and I wanted to draw her into me. She just looked so afraid, lips trembling and tears falling from her eyes, when I felt nothing but frantic concern for her.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.” I’d had more than my fair share of panic attacks before, and I could see that this was what was plaguing her, clouding her rational mind until she was a shivering mess.
She wasn’t looking at me, cowering from something that wasn’t here, and I reached out to comfort her, despite how badly the action had turned out when I did the same to Orion when he’d been panicking.
Instead of her lashing out at me, though, my fingers just met with chilled air. I nearly fell on top of her, the action taking me physically and mentally off balance.
“What…” I whispered, astonished but with knowing creeping up the back of my neck. I pulled my hand back and… through her shoulder.
Kara shivered, and it was only then that I noticed the slight shimmering on the edges of her skin. Her whole body, really.
“Oh, honey,” my voice was raw, tears springing and collecting on the edges of my lids. She looked at me then, really looked at me, and her expression shifted from the frenzied panic to one of quiet despair. Kara sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. I tried again to touch her, but it was just as fruitless.
“Can you talk to me? Hear me?” I whispered.
She nodded into her knees, and when our eyes met, I saw echoes of pain and anguish in what used to be vibrant amber. “I can,” she whispered even more softly than I had. Her voice sounded no different aside from the utter lack of hope that was never there before.
“What happened, Kara? How can I help you?” I sat on the ground beside her. Our feet would’ve been touching had she been alive, and the lack of contact made me want to give her a hug that could never be. She’d never be embraced again.
“I don’t know,” she said with thick melancholy. “I can’t remember.”
“Did—” I took a deep breath “—did someone hurt you?” Because it felt insensitive to ask if she’d been murdered.
Her lips crumpled, and she rubbed at her nose. She seemed to be working through her thoughts, gaze darting on the ground beside us until finally looking up at me and nodding again.
“Okay. Are you hurting any more? Now? Or has it stopped?”
“It’s stopped. I’m just… I feel stuck.”
My teeth gnawed at my bottom lip, debating on asking, but ultimately deciding I had to, “Did it happen out here? Them hurting you?”
Her chest started rising and falling more rapidly, her nod stiff, and then she turned her body to where she’d been heading. There was just more trees, more brush, but I had a clear idea of what she was trying to convey to me.
“All right,” I managed to keep my own voice steady. “Okay. Would you mind taking me there, Kara? Or telling me how much further to go so that I can take a look?”
She gasped a few times, like the surprising tremors that came after a good, long cry, before rising to stand. She dusted off her butt and the back of her legs, as if dirt and debris clung to her body. They didn’t, of course, which made my heart crack for her even more. It was too dark to see very clearly, but I noticed then the little cuts and bruises on the illusion of her arms and legs. I sucked my lips into my mouth, trying to stay as calm as possible for her while we continued toward where I expected to find her body.
When she finally came to a stop, though, I found nothing but a hair clip. Though I vaguely remembered her wearing it to class sometimes, it was hardly a corpse. She wrapped her arms around herself, and I stared down at the crunch of dead leaves and branches that covered part of the clearing we stood in. Was she buried here?
Before I could ask the question, Kara pointed to a cluster of detritus a few steps to the left of us. She kept her finger directed at that spot until I crept over, chest pounding at the knowledge that whatever I was going to find wouldn’t be good. And there was definitely no bringing her back.
I crouched down, but I didn’t need to pull out my phone’s flashlight to see the peek of white underneath the browns and black.
The bone was large and thick, though not as big as a femur. I reached out to pick it up but held myself back at the last moment. Curiosity and pull had to be ignored now. This was a crime scene.
My knee creaked when I stood, “Okay, Kara. Thank you for showing me. I’m going to call the police now. And then they’ll probably let your family know. I’ll stay out here to help them find you. Okay?”
She held herself again, looking so out of place and dressed for a warm, summer hike. She was looking down at the bone that I was fairly certain had scrapes of teeth from whatever scavenging animals had cleaned her flesh from it. “I want to see my sister.” I could hear the watery tears in her voice, and it made my own fall in sympathy. I didn’t have any sisters, no close family alive besides Granna, but I knew that darkness of grief I heard in her tone.
“I’m sorry, Kara,” I said instead of holding her. I called the police station, informing them that I knew where the body of Kara Stanton was located. There was a stilted pause from the 911 operator, then they asked me a series of questions to determine where I was and what I saw. Knowing that I couldn’t explain that I was standing here with Kara’s ghost who’d led me to where she’d been killed, I explained that I recognized the blue hair clip as one she wore to class, and though I wasn’t certain, I believed that the accessory and bone were evidence enough to call.
While I waited for officers to arrive, I decided not to accost Kara with any more questions, and she didn’t offer anything else. Hopefully it was enough for me to bear witness to this for her. I’d want someone else to do the same for me.
Soon, the whoop of sirens sounded far in the distance, and I found myself running a nervous hand on the bark of a fallen tree. There was a cluster of oyster mushrooms thriving on the dying oak, and I ran the pad of my finger on an area of rippling gills. The pull in my chest tugged again, and I leaned my ear toward the fungus. What I didn’t expect, though, was to actually, finally, hear the whispers.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Orion
When I picked up the phone, happy to have a call from Sylvie distract me from the disastrous paper that I was reading, my heart dropped all the way into my stomach. Police sirens were blaring in the background, footsteps and frantic voices warring with the soft sound of hers. She found a dead body, she said. Could I let her grandmother know and then come pick her up at that the police station, she asked.
I wasn’t even sure I’d locked my front door when I raced out of my house. I burned through two cigarettes on the way, though everything in me wanted to get to Sylvie now. Her grandmother didn’t have a cell phone, and no one was answering the house phone, so I promised to stop by to see if her grandmother was home.
My knocking was met with a grimace that would have put my tail between my legs if I weren’t already vibrating with the agitating need to find and protect my Sylvie.
When I’d gritted an explanation to the witch, she shoved me back out of the door while grabbing her purse.
So, that’s how I found myself bursting into the police station with Sylvie’s grandmother. I was struggling to gather my words, animalistic needs and instincts crashing through my thoughts like turbulent waves. The bright lights and chatter and ringing phones were like clacking marbles in my brain and were only making me more agitated. It was almost all I could muster to not shift in front of all of these humans. Though, with the way Sylvie’s grandmother was doling cold commands and indignation at her granddaughter being driven to the station in the back of a cruiser like a criminal, I wasn’t the main one they should’ve feared.
“… when she’s done nothing but help you useless pigs,” she somehow looked down upon everyone from her truly tiny stature. After enough people tried to placate us, they soon realized that we wouldn’t just sit in the lobby and wait a moment. I was all but snapping my teeth at any who approached us, and I felt the itch of my fangs and claws wanting to descend so that I could tear down all who separated me from my mate.
We were left to stand and pace under the harsh fluorescent lights, officers and staff watching us with wary eyes. I felt like the snapping wolf at the feet of a battle queen with how Sylvie’s grandmother’s glare made even the biggest and most heavily armed shrink and dart away from us.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” she muttered and looked up at me, “can’t you just rip them all apart?”
Her encouragement was not helping when I was trying to halt my fantasies about doing just that. I probably could do what she asked, but I would end up riddled with bullets before we even made it out of here. “Yes, but that wouldn’t help.” I had enough of my rational mind about me to know that, at least.
She huffed, “No, but it would make me feel better. When are you going to tell her, anyway?”
I looked away, trying to calm down. Did Sylvie even know about shifters? Would she see me any differently because of what I was? No, my heart said, she wouldn’t. But I had no good model for what our relationship would look like if she knew I wasn’t human. Sean still didn’t know about my mother, and they had been married for nearly twenty years. And Da didn’t seriously date any humans as far as I knew. Juno never revealed themself a Wolf to any of their trysts, but maybe I’d revisit the topic with them just to be sure.
“Orion.” My hackles raised, and I lunged forward. Sylvie’s grandmother’s hand was surprisingly strong when she held me back, and, for good measure, she gave me a zap that made me back down. Wasn’t she the one who was just asking me to kill everybody?
“You two are making quite the scene,” he mocked us, and I launched forward again. I grabbed the front of his shirt, bringing our faces just an inch from each other. The repellent on his scent was strong, and it made my territorial instinct surge even higher.
“You hold my mate here a minute longer, and I will fucking end you,” the growl was evident in my threat, and Graham growled back. If I hadn’t been caught in the riptide of my own rage, I would have startled at the admission that’d just slipped out.
Mate. When had I begun to think of her as my mate? Before the night in my office, but when I closed my teeth around her throat, it felt like a confirmation. Usually, my days shifted into wolf form left me more clearheaded, but seeing Sylvie laugh and smile at that boy left me wild with the need to claim what was mine. I’d retained enough sense to not pierce her skin, but it’d been enough. My mark and scent were on her, and they’d only need to take one sniff or one glance to know that she was mine.
Graham didn’t back down or begin to submit like the other one had. He shoved back on my chest, but I didn’t let go. “I’m not holding the witch for anything. Back down.” The air around us began to tingle and warm, but I couldn’t give a single fuck at this point. My anger was egging on his defensiveness, and the shifts were ramping up to tear through us. His eyes were yellowing, starting to deepen in color, and I felt my fingernails start to give way to my claws.
“… acting like a pair of rabid dogs,” a larger zap shocked my side, and my hands dropped from Graham’s shirt. There were little holes where my claws pierced through the fabric. His chest was heaving like mine, fists clenching and unclenching while he tried to keep from half-shifting.
“Now, what is going on here?” the deeper voice of Chief Thompson boomed across the lobby, but that was all it did. He may have had authority with this town and the humans, but his scent told of who between him and Graham was the Pack Leader.
Graham lifted his chin, seemingly more in control of his Wolf now, “The White One and this witch say you’ve got his mate here unjustly.” Graham looked to his father, who lowered his eyes in deference. His back was turned to the rest of the room, and his shoulders stayed straight, but his scent was laced with submission.
I knew what it felt like to battle for Leader and be beaten. But at least I was given the decency to be exiled and leave the territory. Graham won and kept his father in the pack. So that he could be reminded every day of how he welcomed his estranged son, only for him to take over a few years later. If I weren’t so angry, I would have felt bad for the male.
But to the eyes around us, Chief Thompson was the authority figure, here. “We aren’t holding her unjustly. She’s being questioned as a witness at this point. She is free to go at any time.”
“Then release Sylvie at this moment. I don’t want to hear anything else from you. She helped you find that girl when even your heightened senses couldn’t do the job. You should be thanking her and nothing more,” Sylvie’s grandmother cut her hand through the air to emphasize her point, and the two Other Pack Wolves flinched. She was certainly powerful—I was still feeling the tingling from her chastising blow—and these two knew it.
How powerful would Sylvie be in a few years’ time?
“Now, Ms. Johnson, I understand that you’re upset. And our officers should be finishing up with her soon, but this is a delicate matter—”
“Unless you want to watch my granddaughter’s mate exact his rightful retribution, you will let her go. Unless you want me to blast you and your wretched son and singe off every stitch of fur you have and may ever hope to grow, you will release her. Now.”
Chief Thompson looked aghast and afraid at the same time, while his son’s eyes started shifting again. I held them, absolutely unmoved by his growing posture of dominance. I’d already made it clear that he would never be my leader.
Graham wasn’t backing down, and his father seemed resigned to the chaos that was going to break out. He wouldn’t go against his pack leader, after all.
“Orion? Granna?” Her melodic voice was scratchy, but her scent was still that cool cherry. With it, too, were hints of my own. The other Wolves took a step back from her, detecting that she belonged to me and me to her.
Her grandmother and I ran forward, and I crushed Sylvie into my chest. I scented at her neck, filling my nose with her and snuffling in her hair while her grandmother ran a hand in circles on her back. Though it was already there, I planted more of my scent onto her with my face running up and down her throat and my hands doing the same on her spine.
She began to squirm a little, so I pulled back, now satisfied that she was physically unharmed and covered in my scent. The mark on her neck was just peeking over the collar of her work t-shirt, and my chest rumbled in satisfaction.
