03 Long Night Moon - Seasons of the Moon (15 page)

Seth stretched out on the bench seat and pulled his jacket around his face. A tangled mess of emotions knotted in his chest. The fear that his brother might have lost his fight to stay human was the worst, but the jealousy was a close second.

He didn’t mean to sleep. He wanted to wait until the hunters were gone, and then check to see if Abel had changed.

But his eyes were so heavy. He relaxed into the seat.

The truck warmed with his body heat. Engine sounds made him drift. It was a little like Rylie’s angry growl, which he thought was kind of cute—not that he ever would have told her that.

He hoped she was okay in the cellar…

A bang made him startle.

Seth sat upright. His body was slow. A glance at the dash clock told him he had fallen asleep—and worse, he had slept through most of the night. It was already four in the morning.

A second bang reminded him why he woke up. He rubbed his hand over the foggy window to see the cellar door shudder.

The door burst open, and a dark shape exploded from the depths of the cellar.

No—two shapes.

Seth’s stomach pitched. He seized his rifle, leaped out of the truck, and almost slipped in the snow. A few extra inches had accumulated in the hours he was unconscious.

“Wait! Stop!”

One was clearly Rylie. He had seen her golden fur and sleek body enough times to recognize her.

The second figure was unfamiliar. It was a huge, black-furred wolf bigger than a horse. He knew who it had to be. There had only been two people locked in the cellar.

“Abel!”

They chased each other into the darkness.

Seth couldn’t run fast enough to keep up with a werewolf, and the truck couldn’t go the kind of places they could. He couldn’t catch them. He had to outsmart them.

Where would a pair of werewolves go?

No—wait. He wasn’t dealing with two of them. There were four. And they wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to fight.

He shouldered his rifle and jumped back in the truck. He drove at an angle to Rylie and Abel’s path, heart pounding out a bass rhythm in his chest.

Seth took shortcuts through the hills. He didn’t see any killer coyotes, hunters, or werewolves by the time he came upon the first houses. He went straight for the Riese house at top speed and jumped out on the driveway. He didn’t care if anyone saw him with his gun. There was no time to be discreet.

The entire neighborhood was dark. He prayed nobody would be home.

He didn’t feel the itching in the back of his neck that would mean Bekah and Levi were nearby. But the house smelled of them. He was sure they would go there first.

Tires whispered at the end of the street. A white luxury sedan sliced through the snow and stopped in front of the Riese house. Scott Whyte stepped out into the cold morning with a frown.

“What are you doing here, Seth?” he asked, elbows resting on the open door.

“Get back in the car,” he said. “Turn around and go back wherever you came from.”

The psychologist sized up the situation—Seth covered in snow with a gun over his shoulder—and seemed to realize what was happening. “They escaped, didn’t they?”

“You know where they’ll hunt first,” Seth said. Scott took a heavy jacket and earmuffs out of the car before slamming the door shut. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to help you find them.”

“What about Bekah and Levi?”

“They’re in a safe house,” Scott said. “We need to—”

A distant thunderclap echoed over the silent night. Seth’s head whipped around. Dark shapes with flashlights—more hunters—ran through the snow in the fields beyond the house.

One of them had fired a gun.

He broke into a run. Scott followed him, huffing and puffing as he fought to keep up.

“Hey!” he yelled when he drew close.

There were two people near the trees: a man in a plaid jacket and a sheriff’s deputy. Both of them had their guns drawn. Even in the darkness, Seth could see they were pale.

“Who are you?” asked the deputy.

“He’s with me,” Scott panted, coming up behind Seth. He leaned on his knees and wheezed. “What happened?”

The deputy seemed to recognize him. Her eyes flicked to Seth’s rifle, then back to Scott. Guns were common enough in the country that she didn’t seem surprised by it. “You need to get inside, sir.”

“Coyotes?” Scott asked.

The hunter in plaid and the deputy exchanged looks. They didn’t have to say anything. Their expressions spoke volumes.

They hadn’t been shooting coyotes.

“It’s not safe out here,” said the deputy. “Get in your house and stay there, Mr. Whyte. We’re going to follow the trail.”

Trail?

Seth realized there was blood in the snow. The world spun around him. Did that belong to Abel, Rylie, or both? Either way, someone had been shot, and not with silver bullets. That was almost worse.

Now there weren’t just two werewolves on the loose. There were two
angry
werewolves.

“Thank you,” Scott said. “We’ll do just that.”

The hunters moved for the line of trees, following the dribbles of blood. They had already forgotten about Seth and Scott in their pursuit. The deputy barked into the walkie-talkie on her shoulder.

Seth’s scalp tingled. They were close.

“I’ll get the restraints,” Scott muttered as soon as they were out of earshot.

Seth nodded. He could feel a werewolf to the north, not far from the direction the hunters were headed.

He looped around the trees to avoid the deputy, fingers freezing where they gripped his rifle. The darkness of morning grew lighter. The air turned deep violet as snow showered around him. It was thick and fluffy by the trees.

Soon Seth was up to his knees and breathing hard. It was like running through quicksand. But adrenaline pushed him on.

Gunfire cracked a few feet away, making his ears ring.

In the trees.

Seth dove behind a snow drift and braced his rifle on a boulder, aiming it at a dark form.

The plaid-jacketed hunter was on the ground, his shotgun a few inches from his fingers. His head was bloody where it had hit a rock. The deputy was nowhere in sight.

And a huge black wolf crouched over his body.

Abel looked up. The ruff of fur at his neck was matted with snow, and his gold eyes glinted when he turned them on Seth. There was no mistaking his brother—even as a wolf.

“Oh man,” Seth groaned.

His finger trembled on the trigger.

Shoot him
, whispered his mother’s voice in the back of his head.

Scott crashed through the trees behind him. “Blessed goddess,” he breathed when he saw Abel. There were thick black ropes in his arms with locks shaped like silver pentacles.

The sound of his approach started Abel into motion. He lunged.

Seth reacted on instinct. Jumping up, he swung the butt of the rifle with all his strength.

It connected with Abel’s face.

He crumpled.

Seth stood over his brother, shoulders heaving as he sucked in huge breaths of cold air. It burned his throat and lungs. His eyes were stinging.

Seth flung the rifle to the ground. He couldn’t shoot. He wouldn’t.

Even if his brother was a murderer.

“Don’t just stand there,” Scott said, dropping beside Abel. He expertly wound the ropes around his body and locked them with the silver pentacles, taking care to keep the metal from touching his flesh directly.

Seth edged around him to inspect the body of the hunter, feeling numb inside and out. It looked like Abel had bitten a chunk out of his upper arm, but that wasn’t what killed him—that was the head injury.

“Did Abel get shot?” Seth asked.

Scott lifted a bloody hand. There was a bullet between two fingers. “Yes. In the leg.”

So Rylie wasn’t nearby. He couldn’t find it in himself to be glad about that. The grief of finding his brother as a werewolf—a beast that had been killing people—was too powerful.

He sank to his brother’s side.

“You screwed up, man,” he whispered.

He had to have known he was changing. Why hadn’t he asked for help? Maybe Seth couldn’t have fixed him, but he could have kept him from killing people.

But now there were eight dead bodies. Abel had ruined his life—both of their lives.

Scott clapped a hand on Seth’s back. “You know what you have to do.”

Unfortunately, he did.

Rylie awoke naked on her own doorstep.

She sat up, brushing snow off her shoulders. The ranch was silent in the early morning hours. All the animals were in the barn or their pens, the fields were empty, and there wasn’t a car in sight.

Where was Seth?

She stood on trembling legs and took a sniff of the air. There was no hint of the perfume she sprayed on her clothing, so she couldn’t have changed nearby.

Shutting her eyes, she wracked her brain for answers. There had been a dance, hadn’t there? She danced with Seth—and Abel, she recalled with some embarrassment—and spoke to Bekah. But everything was a blur after that. She had no idea when or where she changed.

So why was she at home?

She went inside. The floor was so warm on her icy feet that it burned. She held the phone between her ear and shoulder as she called Seth, trying to rub circulation into her extremities.

He didn’t pick up. “This is Seth. Leave me a message.”

“Call me back,” she said, blowing on her fingers. “Or even better, come here. I don’t have my truck. What happened? Where are you?” She hesitated. She wasn’t sure if they were at that place in their relationship where she could say she loved him at the end of messages yet. “So… yeah. Bye.”

She hung up.

After that, she didn’t know what else to do but shower, dress, and do her chores.

But Seth never called her back.

Christmas in the hospital was a muted event. Holiday lights presented a fire hazard and weren’t allowed in the ward, but Rylie had brought some dusty old garland from home to hang around Gwyn’s bed. She put a couple stuffed Santas and nutcrackers on the windowsill, too. By the time she finished decorating, the room almost looked cheery.

The floor was quiet other than the occasional visit from a nurse. Nobody bothered Rylie as she made a second trip to her truck to retrieve presents, although a few people did stop to open doors for her.

She dropped the presents and stockings at the foot of Gwyn’s bed. “Looks great, babe,” she said with a weak smile. She was propped up with a saline drip and very pale. “You should be spending Christmas with the boys, though.”

Rylie bit her bottom lip. Seth still hadn’t called her. The only sign he was still around was that her truck had reappeared at the ranch the night before—but he didn’t come in to say hi. “They aren’t much for the holidays.”

Gwyn touched her hand. “Why so sad?”

“I’m not sad. Here, look in your stocking.” She passed it to her aunt and took her own, which Gwyn had filled before her collapse. “I didn’t do much with yours. I kind of ran out of time. Sorry.”

They didn’t speak while they picked through their stockings. Rylie’s had a little candy and a lot of lip gloss, which made her smile even though she didn’t feel up for it.

She set everything by her feet under the chair.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Gwyn said as she studied the earrings Rylie gave her. “I’m supposed to be the one giving you a nice Christmas.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t like Rylie was short on money. She was actually kind of rich, if she considered the value of everything her dad left when he died, but she wouldn’t have access to most of it until she was eighteen.

Rylie would have given it all away to cure her aunt.

You could try biting her…

She pushed the thought back. It was way too dark for Christmas morning.

“Did you find all the presents in my closet?” Gwyn asked. She nodded. “Good. Open the big one first.”

The big one turned out to be a fancy tablet computer. Rylie gasped. Her aunt hated technology and refused to have gadgets in the house. The thought of Gwyn going into an electronics store was as shocking as the present itself.

“Oh, wow! Thank you!”

“It’ll be helpful for school. Don’t know if it’s any good. That’s what the guy at the store told me to get.”

“It’s perfect. I love it.” Rylie leaned over to hug Gwyn. She was even frailer than she had been before going into the hospital, like days without work were making her muscles melt away. The smell of sickness hovered around her.

All it takes is a bite
.

Rylie opened her other presents. Gwyn was nothing if not practical, so the theme seemed to be supporting her education. She even threw in a book about preparing for college. Could she really expect to go to college when she could barely control herself in high school? The thought of a werewolf in the dorms was laughable.

But if she stayed home, and Gwyn became a werewolf, she wouldn’t need college. It would be even better. She could have a pack.

“What if there was a cure for your disease, but it was really horrible?” Rylie asked. “Like, if there was something we could do to make you better—a lot better, and a lot stronger, too—but it meant hurting sometimes?”