BrightBlueMoon (2 page)

Jack had assigned him and Kimberly a search territory that was relatively easy – not as deep into the mountains as some of the others, the terrain navigable for a human. It would be doable for Kimberly, and it might even be where the lost hiker had wound up – after all, it wasn’t as if the hiker had the ability to shift into a wild animal.

She nodded.

Clothing was set unceremoniously aside as the pack stripped, shifted and disappeared two by two into the woods, lupine bodies blending with the darkness that defined the tree line. Michael abandoned his jeans and t-shirt before assuming the form he’d spent most of his time in over the past couple of decades. When he was on all fours, Kimberly buried a hand in the ruff of fur above his shoulders.

Her touch felt good no matter what form he was in.

He stood as high as her hip, so it was easy to move along as she let her hand linger, fingers curled in his dark brown fur.

They hiked in silence for a solid hour, the only sounds the crunching of fallen leaves and snapping of twigs beneath Kimberly’s boots. He kept his ears pricked forward, straining for any other noise – a voice, a shuffling of leaves. Maybe even a call for help. Most importantly of all, he drew regular, steady drafts of night air into his lungs. If they got anywhere near the hiker, he’d probably smell him before he heard him.

“I wonder if he could really be this close to Jack’s cabin,” Kimberly murmured after a while. “He’d have to have hiked nearly six miles from his campsite to reach this neck of the woods.”

Surprise skittered over the surface of Michael’s mind. She’d obviously looked at a map and done the math. Mere weeks ago, he’d spent so much time lurking in Half Moon Pack territory that he’d grown familiar with the land, but she’d only been on a few hikes in the woods near the cabins. He hadn’t expected her to want to come along, let alone be so invested in the search.

He shrugged, knowing she’d feel the motion in his shoulder muscles.

After a few seconds of silence, she nodded. “I guess people can lose their sense of direction and wander pretty far when they’re lost.” Her hand grew tense against his body, her fingers curling until they pulled lightly at his fur. “He could be anywhere by now.”

He couldn’t speak in his wolf form, so he settled for nudging his muzzle against her hip in what was hopefully a reassuring gesture. If the hiker was in their territory, they’d find him. He might be injured, but October in Tennessee was warm enough that exposure wouldn’t be a real threat – not over a mere span of 24 hours.

Another hour bled by in a blur of shadows and night breezes, all carrying typical woodland scents – dying leaves and fresh evergreen needles, along with the occasional whiff of deer or raccoon, sometimes elk. Not a single out of the ordinary sound echoed through the mountains – no voice, no howl from another pack member. Not even a single distant footstep.

Michael shifted back into his human form. “What do you say we take a break? You’ve gotta be getting tired.” Though she still moved at a clip, Kimberly was breathing harder than she had been when they’d started out, and two hours of non-stop, off-trail hiking was a lot to ask of any human.

Her hand slipped away from his bare shoulder and sparks of heat flared beneath the surface of his sensitive human skin, burning where she’d touched him. He was as bare as the day he’d been born, and although that felt natural to him, her eyes were wide as she held his gaze.

For a couple brief seconds, she said nothing, then she looked away abruptly, lowering the backpack from her shoulder and rummaging through it. “Are you thirsty?”

“I could use a drink,” he said, mostly because she was already thrusting a bottle of water at him.

He drank as she unscrewed the cap from a bottle of her own.

“I have extra water for the hiker, in case we find him.” She focused on her water bottle, her gaze darting toward him for the briefest of moments, locking him in a heartbeat’s worth of eye contact.

Instant electricity sizzled and snapped through his veins, lighting up his nerve endings. And she hadn’t even touched him. She – his mate – didn’t have to.

Did she feel the same way when their gazes locked? She was so caught up in the search, he couldn’t be sure, but over the course of the past week he’d certainly felt something mutual – something far too strong to be one-sided.

Before he could say anything, she tucked her half-empty water bottle back into her pack and started forward, kicking up a spray of fallen leaves with her boots.

“Hey, wait a minute – I thought we were taking a break.”

She turned with wide eyes. “We just did.”

“Figured we’d rest for a few minutes. How about those snacks?”

A hint of reproach entered her gaze. “Are you really hungry, or do you just think I’m too fragile to keep going?”

He shrugged. “I could eat – but yeah, I’m thinking of you, too.”

She frowned. “I’m fine. We should keep going – that hiker is out there somewhere.”

“Don’t want you to over-exert yourself.”

She flipped a stray lock of hair over her shoulder. It glowed, even in the faint moonlight drifting through the forest canopy. “Someone is out here, lost and maybe hurt – so what if my calves will burn a little in the morning? That’s no reason to slow down.”

“We’ve gotta take a break at some point. We’ll cover more ground overall if we move at a sane pace. Come on.”

She hesitated, but eventually reached into the backpack again. “I, uh, brought you a spare change of clothes.”

“Thanks.” He accepted the jeans and long-sleeved shirt she held out, slipping into them quickly, feeling the gap between them more acutely than he had mere minutes ago, when her hand had been buried in his fur.

She knelt and laid out a small buffet of trail snacks, dried fruit and nuts, spreading them over the green nylon backpack – even a little jerky. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“What?” She looked up at him, assessing.

Her thoroughly human night vision was better than he’d thought.

“I was just thinking – remember when you used to bring me home dinner from the bar on work nights?”

“Yes.” Her voice was softer than her gaze.

“They had that amazing pecan pie…” He scooped up a handful of trail mix, and sure enough, there were pecans.

“It was the only amazing thing they had,” she said, her voice hardening a little. “That place was a dive.”

“It wasn’t so bad.” Twenty-nine years later, he could still feel the heat of stage lights on the back of his neck, the bite of guitar strings beneath his fingertips and sweat trickling down his spine, dampening his shirt. The scent of strawberries and cream had drifted to him from across the building, just like it drifted to him now.

For a few silent moments, the past hung between them, hazy-sweet and almost tangible. Then a sound broke the quiet, clear and crisp – a snapping twig.

Kimberly whipped her head around, her cloud of strawberry-blonde waves spilling over her shoulders. “Did you hear that?”

Michael barely managed to peel off the spare change of clothing she’d brought him before shifting, straining eyes, ears and lungs for more information, any hint of danger. Blood blossomed hot and ready beneath the surface of his skin, tinged with a hint of adrenaline. The missing hiker was an afterthought.

“Deer,” he said seconds later, back in his human form. “It’s just a deer.” The scent had drifted to him, down from a ridge – a lone doe wandering the forest.

“Oh.” Kimberly frowned, disappointment etching fine lines around her mouth. “I thought…”

“We’ll keep looking,” he assured her, his gaze lingering on her expression of dissatisfaction. “We’ve got all night.”

“Right.” She reloaded the backpack quickly, tidying away the little buffet she’d reluctantly laid out.

He bit his tongue for half a second before shifting back into his wolf form.

With her hand buried in the crest of fur behind his neck, they continued in near-silence, barely making it a dozen paces before graceful but panicked noises lit up the night – crunching leaves and breaking twigs, the sound of an animal on the run.

The doe bounded toward them, down the ridge’s slope. Michael smelled her alarm before he saw her, a shadow flying on four slender legs. Her eyes and nostrils flared when she caught sight of him and Kimberly, and she veered to the right, adjusting her course to avoid them, disappearing with her white tail held high.

Something had frightened her – something at the top of the ridge, or maybe on the other side.

Michael tensed, alert for any sign of danger – any sign of
anything
.

No scent came to him on the light night breeze. Whatever had scared the doe wasn’t at the top of the ridge, then – he would’ve scented anything upwind and so close.

Eventually they made it to the top, where a drop-off ended the brief plateau of leaf-covered earth and mossy trees. It was only a few yards, but it was enough of a fall that a person might break bones, or even their neck. He placed his body between Kimberly and the edge, inhaling deeply.

The smell hit him before he looked down. Thick and pungent, obscenely rich – the odor of early decay was distinct. A sense of dread slipped over him as he caught fainter traces of scent: bacon grease and DEET-laced insect repellant spray.

The lifeless body lying somewhere at the bottom of the drop-off was human, and as he strained to see through the shadows cast by trees and rock, he made out the dark shape of a still, masculine form.

He shifted and found that when he was back in his human body, his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“What is it?” Kimberly asked, gripping his hand tight, almost wringing his fingers, as if she sensed it too.

As a human, he couldn’t smell the body.
 
It was below, and the process of decay had only recently begun, abated a little by the chill in the autumn air. One silent second ticked by, then another. He savored them, even as dread built in his gut, a dam that blocked off the truth.

Kimberly squeezed his hand more tightly.

“There’s someone down there.” His muscles tensed involuntarily. “They’re not alive.”

He felt the knowledge of the truth go through her like an electric shock, stiffening her muscles, too. “You stay here – I’ll go down and look.”

“No!” She clung fiercely to his hand as he prepared to shift. “No. Let’s go down together.”

“No need. I’ll look and we’ll hurry back, notify the authorities. No reason you gotta see what’s down there.”

“I want to go with you.” Her tone was as firm as her grip. “I can handle it.”

CHAPTER 2

Against his better judgment, they went down together. He paused to dress first, then remained in his human form – it’d be better if there wasn’t a gap between them during this. He’d be able to touch her … hold her. Being a wolf had its advantages, but common sense told him there were times when being human was best.

They walked a short distance and picked their way down one side, where it wasn’t too steep. He was ever-ready to steady her, but she didn’t need it. By the time they reached the bottom, he could smell the wrongness in the air, even without his lupine senses.

“You sure?” he asked, eyeing the area he’d identified from above.

She nodded, her handkerchief bobbing dark against her hair in the moonlight as she turned on her flashlight and swept the beam across the forest floor.

Khaki cargo pants splashed with the dark crimson of dried blood, a flannel shirt that hung open over a white t-shirt – the body was dressed as the missing hiker had been described, right down to the thick-soled boots. A backpack lay a few feet away, torn open like a piñata, its contents scattered across the dark dirt at the foot of the ledge the man had obviously fallen over.

Whatever had torn into the backpack hadn’t left the hiker untouched. Lacerations showed dark against his lifeless skin, marks visible on his arms, just below the pushed-up sleeves of his shirt. “Looks like some kind of animal got here before we did,” Michael said, his spine prickling. “Something canine.” He recognized the tears in the flesh, the bloody punctures and lacerations that marred dirt-smeared skin.

“Coyotes,” Kimberly said, her voice hard. “Must’ve been coyotes.”

An elongated semi-circle of red dots stood out in high contrast against one of the man’s shoulders, staining his t-shirt and marking where something had gripped him and dragged him – only a few feet, by the looks of the shallow trenches the heels of his boots had carved in the dirt.

“Big coyotes,” Michael said, his spine still prickling. “Strong coyotes. Hold on – I’m gonna shift and look more closely.”

He stripped quickly, drawing a deep breath as he assumed his wolf form. The forest came alive around him, brimming with scents and sounds he’d been oblivious to as a man. The odor of death was pervading, but other smells were detectable too, and the faint moonlight was enough for him to see sharply by.

A canine smell hung in the air, and though it had faded over the course of several hours, he thought he detected three unique animals. It didn’t take him long to spot tracks, four-toed indentations in the dirt that belonged to something larger than the average coyote.