Moon of the Terrible (Seasons of the Moon) (3 page)

After a moment, she threw her bag in, too.

“Sounds like my kind of party,” she said, just a little less brightly than before. “Let’s go!”

F
OUR

Pagan Poetry

Being held captive was pretty
boring, so Seth was glad that Rylie reached consciousness shortly after Eleanor left. She groaned and winced as she sat up, but as soon as she heard the rattle of chains, her eyes flew open.

“Pagan!” she cried, as if suddenly remembering what had happened to her. She pulled against her bindings hard enough to jerk Seth to the side.

“Whoa, hang on!”

Her eyes traveled up the chain to where it connected with him. “Seth? What’s going on? Where are we?”

He sighed, tugging on his shackle to give him a little slack. “We’re in a basement or something. I don’t know. We’ve been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped? Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

She bumped her head back against the wall and stared at the dirt ceiling. She looked exasperated more than worried. “How long have we been down here? Scott’s going to notice when we don’t check in and send someone to find us, right?”

“Actually… they forced me to call Scott and tell him that we were eloping.”

“Like, marriage elopement?” Rylie smothered her face with a hand. “Oh God. Abel.” She wiped her hand down her face. There was still no worry in her eyes, and it made Seth love her just a little bit more. “You know, I bet none of my friends from high school have ever been kidnapped. But this is, like, the third time you’ve been taken.”

“I know.” Seth grinned. “At least I have really attractive company this time.”

She rolled her eyes, but crawled along the wall to his side. “I don’t feel well. I think I’m going to barf.”

Seth rubbed a hand over her shoulders. “They must have hit you pretty hard. I’m sorry. It takes a lot to knock out an Alpha werewolf.”

Rylie wiggled under his arm and pressed herself to his side. He squeezed her tight.

“Who is ‘they,’ anyway?” she asked. She started twisting the links between her hands, muscles straining as she fought to break them. The metal was too thick, even for a werewolf.

“Cain and all of his… I guess you’d call them followers,” Seth said. “I only know about two of them—Pagan and Stripes, who’s dead now—but I think there are probably more.”

“Wait a second. You met Cain? Who is it? What does he look like?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said. “I haven’t
met
Cain yet. But I know who he is.” Rylie gazed up at him, and her big, golden eyes were so imploring. He sighed. “I guess I have another brother. A half-brother. My mom dated a werewolf before she married my dad.”

“So Cain is a werewolf,” Rylie said.

“Yeah. I guess so. But it’s not just that—it seems like Cain is some kind of… a necromancer?”

Her brow knitted. “What’s that?”

Here it comes.
He took a deep breath. “It’s a kind of witch. A really rare kind of witch. They can bring people back from the dead.”

Seth didn’t have to say anything else. Rylie’s face darkened like a storm blocking the sun. The worry that had been absent earlier appeared, along with fear—and anger.

“Eleanor,” she said. The words rippled out of her, already sounding inhuman and guttural.

“Wait! Don’t shift!”

She peeled back her lips to bare her teeth. Her gums were dotted with crimson. Rylie grunted, and squeezed her eyes shut. “But I can break these chains if I change—and we can get out of here.”

“That’s what they want you to do. They want to sacrifice a werewolf. You have to stay human,” Seth said.

Her eyes popped open. “Sacrifice?”

“Eleanor’s a zombie or something. She thinks that sacrificing a werewolf will give her life again.”

Rylie’s lip dropped over her teeth again. “But I’m helpless if I can’t change,” she said.

“Not helpless,” Seth said, taking her hand. She gripped it so hard that his bones creaked. “I’m here. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”

She smiled weakly, licking away the blood that had emerged from her loosening gums. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re chained together. If I can’t break these shackles, then neither can you. You’re as helpless against Eleanor, Cain, and Pagan as I am.”

The door at the top of the stairs squealed open, and Pagan stepped in. Her arm was still bandaged from Rylie’s attack, but she looked otherwise unharmed.

“Did I hear the dulcet tones of my name being taken in vain?” she asked, shutting the door behind her. She wore a black bustier and boots that had six inch heels and laces all the way up to her knees. “Please, tell me what you’re discussing. I love girl talk.”

“I was just talking about how we’re going to break free and escape in a few minutes,” Seth said. He lifted his wrist. “Want to help me by opening the shackle?”

Pagan grinned. “Just like how you helped me escape your cellar by having a couple of Union guys torture me with a car battery?”

“You shot my brother.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but he didn’t die or anything.”

“And neither did you,” Seth said.

“That was your mistake.” Pagan drew a silver knife from behind her back. “So here we are! Eleanor wants to torture you two, but she’s not feeling her best. So she asked me to see what I could do about getting our wolfy friend here to Hulk out. Cain’s busy, so we have a few days before he gets back. We can take our time. Fun, right?”

“I could just kill you,” Rylie suggested, her voice gravelly.

“No, no, don’t change yet. I haven’t even gotten started yet.”

Pagan drew a few more silver weapons from various places on her body—knives out of her boots, a stiletto from her bustier, silver pins from her hair. Seth was impressed that she could hide that much in such a tight outfit.

“Don’t get angry,” he whispered to Rylie. “She feeds on anger and aggression. It’ll only make her stronger. Just… stay calm.”

It was like telling a tornado to chill out. Rylie was a ball of tension and fury under his arm.

Pagan hummed happily as she laid everything out. She had a dozen silver objects—enough to poison an entire pack of werewolves.

She cooed over each of the knives, like they were something cute. “Oh my, this will do nicely. I bet I could get you to transform if I forced this one down your throat.”

“What do I do?” Rylie asked Seth, barely moving her lips.

“Nothing. We can’t do anything.”

“That’s the spirit,” Pagan said.

But just because they couldn’t fight didn’t mean that Seth had to wait for the demon to torture them, either. He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. “What do you know about Eleanor and Cain?”

She crouched just out of Rylie’s reach, resting her elbows on her knees. “I know that they pay my bills and keep me well-fed. Plus, they’re going to let me torture you guys, which is—you know, total Christmas bonus here.” Pagan shrugged. “Money and blood. What else can a girl ask for?”

“Love,” Rylie said.

Pagan rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“Okay. If we can’t appeal to your human side, maybe I can try your common sense,” Seth said. “Eleanor used to be married to a kopis. A hunter. He specialized in werewolves, but they killed a couple of demons, too. If Eleanor comes back, she’ll probably go back to her old ways.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, kid, but I’m kind of hard to kill,” Pagan said.

“So you want to ally yourself with someone who doesn’t care about you? At all?”

“I’m a demon. It’s how we roll. But please, do keep trying to talk me out of doing terrible things with your adorable hero talk—it’s sweet. And while you do that, I’m going to get busy encouraging the wolf to come out and play with me.”

Pagan trailed her fingers over the pins and knives, like she was trying to decide which one she wanted to use first.

Rylie growled, eyes blazing with anger as her nostrils flared. “Touch me, and I’ll bite you. I don’t need a wolf’s mouth to rip your face off.”

“No… we aren’t going to use those on you yet, blondie,” Pagan said. “I think I have a funner idea of how to get you to change.”

She grabbed Seth’s hand, clenched one of his fingers in her fist, and snapped the bone.

F
IVE

Rest Stop

Abel hadn’t bothered to spend
time getting to know the other werewolves at the sanctuary. Going on an impromptu road trip with three of them changed that—but not in a good way.

Crystal insisted on taking a break at every rest stop they passed so that she could use the bathroom. Trevin liked to sing along with the radio—and not very well. And Vanthe always
drove like he was trying to escape the law. Which they would be soon, if Abel let him continue driving about twenty over the speed limit.

It was the perfect storm of annoying behavior. If he had to listen to Trevin’s off-key rendition of one more pop song, Abel was going to dig his eardrums out with a spork.

By the time they stopped at a gas station in Utah, Abel started entertaining fantasies of abandoning the other werewolves. How fast could he load up the tank, jump behind the wheel, and drive away? He eyeballed the rising numbers on the pump.

Unfortunately, Crystal came out before he had even finished filling the tank. It had started to snow, but like most werewolves, she didn’t seem to care. She was wearing cutoff shorts, a midriff shirt, and drinking from a soda cup that rattled with ice.

“You drinking another one of those?” he asked. It was already her third one that day. No wonder they kept having to stop for the bathroom.

“I can’t sleep in the van, and I’m tired,” she said. “The caffeine helps.”

Abel grunted. The pump clicked—tank full. He jiggled the nozzle and returned it to the hook.

“Where are the guys?” he asked.

Crystal shrugged. “Buying nachos or something. So what’s with you and the Alpha?”

The speedy change in subjects almost gave him whiplash. “What?”

“Rylie,” Crystal said. “You’ve got to be pretty good friends, if you’re willing to drop everything and drive cross-country to find her.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

Friends? Did friends slam each other into walls and share the hottest kiss Abel had ever experienced? Did friends lay awake at night, thinking about what Rylie was doing in the room beside his, and wondering how she would react if he knocked on her door? Did it hurt like hell when
friends
were running off to marry other people—like his brother?

Resisting the urge to tell Crystal where she could shove her questions, Abel stuck to saying, “Yeah. We’re friends.”

He threw open the driver’s side door and got inside. Crystal got in the passenger’s seat.

“Alpha,” she said. “That’s pretty epic.”

He turned on the van and pulled it into a parking space beside the station. And then he turned up the radio to try to drown out Crystal.

She didn’t seem to notice or care. “So… are you dating her?”

Abel’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. There were a lot of ways he could describe their relationship.
Weird. Frustrating. Complicated.
But dating? “No.”

She sighed. “Good.”

The satisfaction in her voice made him give her a second look. Crystal was angled in the seat so that she could face him, long legs extended under the dashboard as she twirled a lock of short hair around her pinkie finger.

“What did you say?” he asked.

She giggled. “Sorry. That’s weird, isn’t it? That’s definitely weird. Can I try again?”

His brow dropped low over his eyes. “Try what?”

“I was just wondering if you’re single. That’s all.” And then she giggled again, and he realized that it was a nervous sound.

Abel’s eyes skimmed up her legs to her flat stomach, the low neckline of her shirt, and the mounds of her breasts. It had been a
long
time since he had been acquainted with those parts of a woman.

When he finally reached her eyes, he knew that she had seen him looking. She didn’t look like she minded. Not at all.

“To be honest, I didn’t really come on the trip because Vanthe mentioned that something was wrong with our Alpha,” Crystal said.

Yeah. He was starting to get that impression.

For a minute, he was tempted by the offer she made by jutting her chest forward and leaning on his armrest—
really
tempted. All those mornings waking up naked beside Rylie weren’t easy on a man. And he had been on edge ever since that last night at the Gresham ranch.

Crystal was hot. No denying that.

But the longer he gazed at the swell of her hip and her fingers tracing a circle on her thigh, the more he thought about a girl with pale skin, and skinny legs, and a smile that was as unique and beautiful as an eclipse.

Abel didn’t have enough time to formulate a response. The back door slid open, and Trevin climbed inside.

“Burrito?” he asked, shoving a wad of aluminum foil that smelled like beans and eggs between the seats by Abel’s face.

Abel curled his lip. “No.”

Vanthe got in behind Trevin and closed the door. “How much further?” he asked.

After more than a day on the road, Abel hadn’t thought even once about what was waiting for him on the end of it: his childhood home. But they were drawing close enough that he couldn’t avoid it anymore.

He reluctantly opened the map and took a look. “I think we’ll be there in about four hours. Depends on how many times we stop after this.”

“Great,” Crystal said, sliding back to sit in her chair properly and buckling her seatbelt. She never took her eyes off of Abel. “I can’t wait.”

He didn’t think she was talking about reaching the end of the line.

S
IX

Bite of the Wolf

Rylie and Seth had been
dating for three years, and she thought she knew everything about her boyfriend by that point.

She knew that he talked in his sleep. She knew that he liked chocolate ice cream better than vanilla, especially when mixed with nuts. She even knew the name of the second grade teacher he had for two weeks before Eleanor moved him out of town again.