Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon (12 page)

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said the man when she finished changing.

He moved for her. Rylie held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t come near me! I could have killed you.”

“I wasn’t going to attack again.” He laughed with disbelief. He was a lot calmer now that he had a couple big chunks bitten out of his arm, though they had grown back completely. “I’m not stupid. Do you want a hand up?”

“I bit you.”

He shrugged. “I attacked first. Are we good?”

“I guess so,” Rylie said.

“Need help up?”

She took his hand. She picked up the tangled scraps of her clothes, but they were too destroyed to put back on. Good thing she had taken a lot of clothes out of the lost and found.

The others waited in awkward silence as she dressed.

“Sorry about the arm,” she said when she finished. “I don’t meet new werewolves very often, and I kind of have… control problems.”

“I think we all do,” he said.

Toshiko didn’t seem to be listening. She picked through Rylie’s laundry bag, found a bag of trail mix, and tore it open. She dug into it like it was a turkey dinner instead of stale almonds and cranberries.

“When is the last time you guys ate?” Rylie asked.

He had to think too hard about it. “When was the last change? We’ve been eating a couple of deer we killed.”

So that explained all the blood. “Have you seen others?”

“Yeah. I’ve come across three other groups, but they’re all out there somewhere now.” He nodded toward the trees. “Been picking a lot of fights, to tell you the truth. Can’t seem to help it—I lose my brain for a few minutes when I smell someone new. That’s the first time I didn’t win.” He rubbed his arm. “You’re not like me.”

Rylie laughed shakily. “Yeah. And no. I can explain, but not here. There are hunters on the mountain, and they’re probably going to search the camps.”

He frowned. “For what?”

“For us.”

“What?” His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He spun around to stare at the forest, like he expected an army of hunters to march through right that second. “But… why?”

“Because they’re werewolf hunters, and we’re werewolves, and they want us all dead. They think we’re monsters.”

“I’m not a monster. I’m just Irish.”

Rylie didn’t really know what to say to that. She was “just” some high school girl who had been bitten at summer camp, too, but she was also a monster. The first thing didn’t seem to matter much when the second thing came into play.

Changing the subject seemed a lot easier than trying to explain the hunters. “I have clothes that should probably fit you in the bag, too,” she said. “Hang on.” Rylie dug out the baggiest shorts. He looked skeptical, but put them on. They didn’t even reach halfway down his hairy thighs. “My friend will bring more clothes with him. You can borrow something better.”

“A friend, eh? Where’s this ‘friend’?”

“He’s looking for our car. But we’re camping in caves by the lake. I think you and Toshiko should come with me.”

“Toshiko?”

The Asian woman looked up from shaking the bag of trail mix into her mouth. Rylie’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t that her name?”

“I don’t understand a bleeding thing she says. She started following me around when I got here and I can’t shake her,” he said. When Rylie opened her mouth to ask Toshiko to leave with them, he shook his head. “Don’t bother. She talks nonsense.”

“I think it’s Chinese, actually,” she said.

But it turned out he was right. They didn’t have to talk to Toshiko to get her to follow. Rylie picked up her bag and started walking for the beach, and the other werewolf followed.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked as they shuffled along.

Rylie’s eyebrows lifted. “Why are you asking me?”

“I dunno. You’ve got the cave and the clothes and the news about the hunters. I expected you to have a plan, too.”

She grimaced at the peak of Gray Mountain. The sun was creeping toward it. She hadn’t given it any thought to what she would do once she got there. She had kind of hoped she would run into someone else with a plan. Or even better—someone with answers. But it was becoming more and more obvious that everyone was as clueless as she was.

“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t help with that.”

F
OURTEEN

The Ruined Church

Seth thought it would be
hard to get away from the Union once he was entrenched in their compound, but with Eleanor gone, they pretty much ignored him. Nobody even looked at him twice when he went wandering around the ruined settlement the next day.

The Union must have had a ton of money. Yasir said they had only been there since the new moon, but they had built themselves a small city. They had a tented mess hall, exercise equipment, and all kinds of monitoring devices.

The trackers in the SUVs were only the beginning of their technology. He peered through the open door of an RV to study their huge monitors, and saw they had an enlarged map of the forest with an overlay of patchwork colors. A woman in uniform sat in front of the monitors. Judging by her silver jewelry, she must have been one of the witches assigned to the team.

“What’s everything in the RV for?” Seth asked Stripes, who was seated on the grass nearby to eat a can of beans for dinner.

“Motion detectors.” He waved his fork in the air. “They’ve been putting them in the trees. See that number? That’s an estimate of the number of animals in the forest. The lower number is how many of those the computer thinks are werewolves.” The number of animals was in the thousands; the second number was fifty-six.

“It looks for unusual human movement patterns. We’ve tagged a couple of werewolves, too, so we can follow the groups that way. Union uniforms have trackers, so we don’t count.”

A knot of worry grew in Seth’s stomach as he watched the blinking lights travel across the screens. “How many werewolves are here, in the compound?”

“There are four in the church we haven’t confirmed yet. I think we killed twelve others, but you’d have to check the teeth hanging in the supply tent to be sure.”

The idea was nauseating. “So you guys are picking off wolves while they’re human after all?”

“Only if we’ve seen them shift, or if we have a recording of them healing a major wound. We’ll do a sweep tomorrow to pick up a few more, but we’ll wait until the next moon to finish them off.” Stripes looked bored by the conversation. He scraped his fork at the bottom of the can, knocked the remaining beans into his mouth, and belched. “I’m going back for seconds.”

The witch glanced back at Seth in the doorway when Stripes left. “Move on,” she snapped.

Seth jumped down, but he didn’t know where to go. It would be too easy to track him. He squinted at the branches in the falling light of evening. He didn’t
see
any sensors, but he wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t monitor camp, or because they were too well hidden.

Could he use the monitors to find Eleanor? Or even better—could he find Rylie?

He wandered across the field, watching the men forge silver from a distance. The stone church’s crumbling walls caught his gaze. If there were four werewolves in the church, and one of them was Bekah, then who were the other three?

Seth intercepted a young man in Union black who was going to the church. He looked way too young to be with an army, no older than thirteen or fourteen, and he was carrying a tray of food.

“Is that for the werewolves?” Seth asked.

The boy straightened his back, lifted his chin, and gave a stiff nod. “Yes, sir.” His voice hadn’t even dropped yet.

“Give it to me.”

He took the tray and mounted the stairs to the ruined church. The door was barred from the outside. Seth balanced the tray on his shoulder and went inside.

Not much had changed in the church since he was last there with Rylie. The benches had been pushed aside, the holes in the walls had been patched, and a few sleeping bags had been left for the captives. There was a bucket by the door that smelled of human effluence.

“Bekah?” he called, setting the tray on a pew.

Shapes moved in the shadows by the back wall, where there used to be a priest’s apartment. Bekah emerged from the doorway. She looked tired and dirty, but uninjured. “Is it feeding time already? I’m having so much fun being imprisoned that the time just flies.”

He laughed and offered her a plate. The Union didn’t seem to care about the dietary preferences of potential werewolves. They had sent along cornbread, potatoes, and canned beans instead of meat. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m criminally bored, but they haven’t hurt us. Look who I found. Hey! Stephanie!”

Another woman emerged. She was tall, slender, strawberry blond, and looked much angrier than Bekah. “What’s going on? Who is this?”

“This is Rylie’s boyfriend,” Bekah said. “I told you about him. Seth, this is Scott’s daughter. Um, biological daughter. Not adopted, like me and Levi. Stephanie is a doctor and a witch and super cool. She came here to search for me, but the Union grabbed her on the highway up the mountain.”

Seth compulsively held out a hand to shake hers, but she stayed back and gave him a cold look that did not seem “super cool” to him.

“I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I’m not feeling polite today. Being locked in this church and forced to relieve myself in a bucket for two days has destroyed my sense of courtesy,” Stephanie said.

He shrugged. “It could be worse. I brought food.” He offered Stephanie a second plate.

“No, thank you. I’ve seen what the Union considers food.” She scanned him with a critical eye, and it gave him the distinct feeling of being trapped under a microscope. “Don’t tell me you listened to their moronic propaganda and enlisted. Bekah didn’t say you’re stupid.”

“I’m not enlisted,” Seth said. “Do you know the Union?”

“I’ve come across them before. Not this unit, but others.” She glared around at the church and twisted her mouth. “I can’t believe they think I’m a werewolf. For Pete’s sake. As if I would ever get myself that dirty.”

He rolled his eyes and faced Bekah again. “Who else is here?”

“There are these two Mexicans back in the priest’s room. Stephanie knows Spanish, so they’ve been talking a little.” Bekah sat on a pew to eat. “They haven’t seen Rylie or Abel. Sorry.”

“No. That’s good. It’s better that way.”

Stephanie folded her arms. “I can’t stand this place for another day. I’m breaking out—tonight, if I can. What will you do to help us?”

“He doesn’t have to do anything,” Bekah said before he could respond. “It’s dangerous.”

“No, I was going to escape too, actually.” Seth quickly explained what had happened with his mother to Stephanie, and then described their surveillance in the forest. “They’re going to do a sweep and pick up all the humans they can find and put them in the church, too. Everyone dies on the next moon. None of us can be here when that happens.”

Bekah picked at the beans, seemingly unable to stomach the cornbread. “What about the mountain? We were called here for a reason, Seth. I can’t leave until I know why.”

“They’ll kill you,” he said. “They’re going to kill
everyone
.”

She grinned. It was less like a smile and more like she bared her teeth in wolfish fear. “They’ll have to catch us first. Don’t worry about it. We’ll sneak out when they leave for that sweep, and there’s no reason you should put yourself at risk, too.”

“I agree,” Stephanie said with a sigh. “Good Lord, I hate these people. You damn kopides are completely incapable of staying out of trouble.” She eyeballed Seth. “Are you certain you know what team you’re on?”

“I know,” he said firmly. He glanced at his watch. He had already been in the church too long to only be dropping off food. “Do you know where the girls’ camp is? I want you to meet me there tomorrow, after the sweep. We can figure out what to do from there.”

“Okay,” Bekah said. “Be careful.”

He nodded. “You too.”

Leaving the tray of food, Seth stepped outside the church again. The sun had dipped below the trees, but it was still ten times brighter than it was inside the murky ruins.

Yasir stood at the bottom of the stairs with a shotgun.

“What were you doing in there?” he asked.

Seth gave a casual shrug. “I was dropping off food.”

“You weren’t assigned to do that.”

“I wasn’t assigned to do anything. I’m not a member of your team. I wanted to see how Bekah’s doing.”

It didn’t look like the answer satisfied him, but Yasir only nodded. “Follow me.”

They walked through the camp together. In the time that he’d been inside the church, the units had jumped into motion. The men who had been eating were gearing up. Those who had been training were assembled by the main tent.

“What’s going on?” Seth asked when Yasir stopped to let a line of men march past.

“The team’s mobilizing.”

“For the sweep?”

He nodded. “It will be dangerous, you know. Sometimes, a werewolf that feels threatened will spontaneously shift. They’re wild between moons. Men could get hurt.” Yasir cast a sideways look at him. “The Union always needs good doctors.”

Seth blinked. “What are you saying?”

“If you wanted enlist, the Union could send you to medical school. Full ride scholarship to any university you want, and an apprenticeship on the front lines of our war against evil. Nobody else could give you that.”

He gaped, unable to find words.

The line of men passed them, and Yasir continued to the supply tent.

“Listen to me, kid. The Union’s a good team to be on. A good guy like you deserves a good team. The
right
team.” It was like he had heard Seth’s conversation with Bekah inside the church.

He struggled not to react. “Is that an invitation?”

“Definitely. I don’t need an answer now. Just… mull on it.”

Half of the camp was lined up to get their guns, including Stripes and Jakob. Yasir marched Seth straight past them.

The number of weapons inside the tent was staggering. Seth missed his rifle, which had been lost with the Chevelle, but the one that Yasir handed to him was a Lamborghini in comparison. His excitement waned when he saw that it was loaded with silver bullets.