Marked by the Moon

2

When Alex came around, she was no longer a wolf but a woman. Naked, she lay beneath a blanket on the cot where she’d so recently been tied. The trussed man was gone. Unfortunately, Edward wasn’t.

Tall, thin, pale, Edward Mandenauer, the leader of the Jäger-Suchers, didn’t appear concerned to be in a small room with a woman able to sprout fangs and a tail. Probably because such things had been happening to him for more than sixty years.

With the rifle slung over his back, a pistol in hand, and a bandolier of bullets across his cadaverous chest, Edward was, as usual, ready for Armageddon.

“It has been a long time,” he murmured.

You’d think that after residing in the United States for better than half a century, his heavy German accent would have faded. Everything else about him had. His once-blond hair was now white, his eyes pale blue, his skin paper-fine. It never ceased to amaze Alex that the man’s kill count was twice her own. Or at least it had been when she’d still been required to count.

She sat up, uncaring when the blanket pooled at her waist. A few hours ago she would have been mortified, which only proved she’d changed in more ways than one.

She felt damn good. Any minor aches and pains were gone. Energy pulsed within her, the buzz reminiscent of the one time she’d tried to unplug a cheap motel hair dryer while still sopping wet from the shower. Zap! She’d never done that again.

The world seemed so much more there. Alex could feel the air on her skin, hear every breath Edward took; if she listened she could probably distinguish the dull thud of his ancient heart and the slow flow of blood through his veins. She bet she could smell it.

Lifting her nose, Alex sniffed, then licked her lips. Edward lifted his gun.

So it was going to be like that.

“Let’s get this over with.” Alex repeated the same words to Edward that she’d so recently used with the wolf man, even as her gaze slid to the left, the right, searching for a way out. Though her mind had accepted the inevitability of her death, her body quivered with the possibility of escape.

“Get what over with?” Edward asked.

“My unavoidable demise. I suppose you want me to grow pointy ears and a snout again so you have less to explain after you shoot me in the head.” Although Edward never had much of a problem explaining anything—one of his many talents.

“I’m not going to shoot you in the head, Alex.”

“Chest then. Whatever.”

“If I was going to shoot you with silver, I wouldn’t have bothered with the tranquilizer dart.”

Then why had he?

For that matter, why had she shape-shifted again? A werewolf must ingest human blood under the full moon before morphing back into a person, and after the initial change only a kill would do. Otherwise madness was the result.

Alex ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She probably had a raging case of halitosis but no blood breath. She was also way too calm for a just-made wolf, and while she did feel different, she didn’t feel crazy or evil. Sure, if she had a chance to get away, she’d take it, and if that meant going through Edward, she wouldn’t cry about it. But that was simply survival.

Alex studied the old man, who lifted his bushy white brows as if waiting for her to catch up. Eventually, she did. “What did you do to me?”

He held up an empty syringe.

Ah-ha!

Edward had his very own Dr. Frankenstein on the payroll—a virologist who’d spent a lot of time trying to cure lycanthropy. The main reason Alex had left the Jäger-Suchers was their edict that agents give werewolves a choice of being cured or being killed. In her book they didn’t deserve a second chance. Her father hadn’t gotten one. Hell, her mother hadn’t, either.

“You cured me?” she asked. Alex didn’t feel cured; she felt a little wolfy.

Edward shook his head. “I gave you a serum that removes the bloodlust, at least for a little while.”

“Handy. Why don’t I feel possessed?”

“It takes time for the demon to awaken. At first a new werewolf is confused, crazed. Most do not have access to this.” He lifted the syringe again. “The more you kill, the better you will like it. Soon there is no going back, and you do not want to.”

He pocketed the syringe, then removed a sheet of paper from another pocket and laid it on the table. “You will look at this.”

Though Edward giving her orders made Alex’s teeth ache—or maybe that was just because she was grinding them together with so much more force than she used to have—nevertheless she stood and crossed the tiny room, leaving the blanket behind. She didn’t like how it felt against her humming skin.

The sound that rumbled out of Alex’s throat at the sight of the drawing wasn’t even close to human. The man portrayed in the sketch wasn’t, either. He’d been a werewolf when he bit her.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Julian Barlow.” Edward’s thin lips tightened. “One of the oldest I’ve ever known.”

Which explained why Edward had brought a drawing instead of a photograph. Werewolves didn’t show up on film. Any photos would have to have been taken before the people became werewolves, which made Alex wonder about Alana.

“Barlow isn’t one of Mengele’s wolves,” Alex concluded.

“No.”

According to Edward, whom she was inclined to believe since he’d been a double agent during The Big One, Hitler had demanded a werewolf army. His equally psychotic pal, Mengele, gave him one.

When the Allies landed and began to sweep across France toward Germany, the evil doctor panicked and released everything he’d concocted in his secret laboratory deep in the Black Forest. Edward had been trying to rid the world of them ever since.

What Edward hadn’t known then, but found out fairly quickly, was that there had been werewolves long before Mengele. A lot of them.

“What is he?” Alex asked. “From where? When?”

“No one knows.”

“You don’t? How can that be?” Edward knew everything, or at least pretended to.

“Barlow has more powers than any werewolf I’ve ever encountered. He can change in an instant. He can run so fast he seems to disappear. He can make things happen just by thinking of them.”

“He’s more than a werewolf.”

“I want you to find out what.”

“I don’t work for you anymore. And besides, I’ve got a little problem with my tail.” Alex wiggled her ass. It was still naked, and she still didn’t care.

“He could have killed you,” Edward murmured, “but he didn’t.”

“Dying would be too easy. He wanted me to suffer.”

Actually, he’d wanted her to understand, and she was starting to. She was still Alex but better—and that she believed she was better, not doomed, scared her.

“I know you can fix me,” she blurted. She just wasn’t sure how.

“Barlow has been following you,” Edward continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “He’s had this planned for a while.”

As the words sank in, fury rolled through her, a wave of ice just beneath the surface of her overheated skin. It felt…glorious. She wanted to leap across the table, grab Edward by the throat, and—

Alex rubbed a thumb between her eyes, where her pulse still throbbed. Allowing the anger in was letting the beast out. She had to take several deep breaths before she could speak again.

“You let him bite me.”

He didn’t deny it; she hadn’t expected him to. Edward could be depended upon for one thing, and one thing only. He’d do whatever he had to do to defeat the monsters.

“We need someone on the inside of Barlow’s pack,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s up to something, Alex.”

“Werewolves always are.”

Edward’s face tightened, the expression stretching pale skin over sharp bones, making him appear almost skeletal. “There are rumors of another army amassing, with Barlow at the helm.”

“A werewolf army?” Alex clarified.

Edward dipped his chin. “Can you imagine one with him in the lead? They will march over the earth, leaving blood and death and fire behind.”

For an instant Alex saw the world in flames, an army of werewolves on the rampage, and she ached to be one of them. She’d never be alone again. She’d never be afraid. No one could ever harm her. Then the image vanished, and she was left blinking in confusion, stunned at the duality raging within her.

“I don’t want to stay like this,” Alex said urgently. “Cure me. Then tell me where they are, and I’ll turn them to ashes.”

“We don’t know where they are. Anyone who’s ever followed Barlow hasn’t come back.”

She lifted her brows. If the British SAS were considered by many to be the best Special Forces in the world, and the US Special Forces were easily the best equipped, the Jäger-Suchers were both. Not only did Edward recruit those who were willing to give their lives, but he had them trained by agents who had seen everything, fought it all, and won. Like her father.

Edward also had a secret ops budget that would make Delta Force envious, if they knew about it, and an in with whatever weapons and technology experts were considered the boy and girl geniuses of the moment. Edward volunteered his elite group to test new toys, and if they lived, they got to keep them.

So if every J-S agent he’d sent after Barlow had failed to come back, Alex had to wonder what the wolf man was packing. The only thing more powerful than American weaponry was magic.

“We’ve never had a chance like this before,” Edward continued. “You’re one of his now. He’ll take you with him.”

“He hates my guts.”

“Nevertheless, he has made you. If you’re in danger, he cannot abandon you. He will teach you things. It is their way.”

Huh, their way didn’t sound half bad.

Alex smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. She had to stop thinking like that.

“What if he takes one whiff of me and smells you?”

Edward narrowed his eyes, sensing an insult in there somewhere but not quite sure what it was. “You’ll have to take that chance.”

“Why should I?”

“Because someone in that pack killed your father.”

Alex froze. “What?”

“You think I allow the monsters who murder my agents to run free? It may take time, Alex, but eventually I find them; then I make them pay.”

She didn’t need to ask how he’d discovered the information when she couldn’t. She’d been traversing the country hunting on her own, taking odd jobs wherever she could find them just to have enough money to keep herself in ham sandwiches and silver bullets. Edward had access to resources she did not, and still it had taken him eight years.

“Are you in,” Edward asked, “or are you out?”

“In,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.

Julian’s plan had been to infect Alexandra Trevalyn with the lycanthropy virus, gift her with a man who deserved very much to die, then leave. She would shift; she would kill; she would have no choice. Then, when she changed back, maybe she would understand a little better what she had done when she had murdered his wife.

That was the part he would miss seeing. The ecstasy followed by the agony. The unbearable hunger, then the quenching of it. The inevitable realization of what had happened beneath the moon and the horror that would result from it.

Most werewolves were evil, but some were not, and all the wolves in Julian’s pack were of the latter variety. He’d heard of others as well, though he’d never met them.

Julian was different, and because of that, those he made were different, too. Instead of being consumed by a demon that urged them to kill at every opportunity, Julian’s wolves retained their humanity. They valued their lives and the lives of others. Certainly human blood was required beneath the full moon. But blood and death were two very different things.

Unfortunately a kill was still inevitable after the initial change. It was the only way to come back from the edge of insanity. After that, however, Julian’s wolves were loath to kill again. The core of evil that characterized other werewolves did not exist in his.

Once upon a time Julian had attempted to prevent his wolves from making that original kill—supplying them with fresh human blood instead as he did on all of the full moons that followed. But it didn’t work. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, not killing that first time turned them into killing machines ever after.

A fate he didn’t want for Alexandra. No, he wanted her to regain her humanity and experience the anguish of being unable to stop herself from killing, then live with it as they all did. He wanted her to understand that once the initial change and kill were behind them, some werewolves were just like everyone else. When she’d shot Alana, she had murdered a person; she had not rid the world of a monster.

He could have stayed and watched but he hadn’t survived for more than a thousand years by remaining at the scene of any one of his crimes. He did not plan to be at this one when all hell—now known as Alexandra Trevalyn—broke loose.

Julian had no doubt that a Jäger-Sucher would show up eventually and put her out of her misery. And while he’d love to see how she liked it, he had no desire to run into any of Edward Mandenauer’s superior hunters again. He’d already had to dispose of far too many, and Edward was not a man who forgot such things. The old warrior would do his best to exact vengeance, but Julian did not plan to give him the opportunity.

After exiting the abandoned apartment building, Julian drew on his ability to move faster than the human eye could track—with age came many advantages, and this was one of them. He was several miles away when a strange, cold, somewhat sick feeling invaded his consciousness. He slowed and nearly knocked over a kid running in the other direction.

“Jeez, dude,” the young man said.

“Pardon me,” Julian muttered.

“Pardon?” The boy laughed. “Man, where you from?”

Julian didn’t bother to answer. He was both history and legend, from a time and place so far away there was no one left of it but him.

And one other.

The kid eyed Julian’s new clothes, clean hands, and expensive shoes. A spark of avarice lit his eyes, and his grubby paw disappeared into his pocket.

“You don’t want to do that,” Julian said.

The young man glanced up, and Julian let him see what lay beneath his smooth human veneer. Next thing he knew, the boy was scurrying back in the direction he’d just come, leaving Julian alone to examine what had caused him to stop running in the first place.

The sick sensation still lodged deep in his belly, and the breeze, which he knew to be hot, slid across his skin like an ice cube. He’d think he had a fever, the flu, except he didn’t get sick. Not since he’d become a werewolf.

He’d learned to listen to his feelings. In wolf form they would be called instincts, and they were as reliable as the sun at dawn.

Julian continued to walk in the direction he’d been headed. Immediately he began to shiver, and his stomach cramped.

“Knull mæ i øret,” he muttered. The only time his native language came naturally anymore was when he cursed.

Slowly he turned in the other direction and retraced his steps. As he did, the pain lessened. He was unable to move very quickly, but the closer he got to where he’d left Alexandra Trevalyn, the better he felt.

Which made no damn sense at all.

Julian sat on a crumbling cement stoop in front of a half-burned ware house. He breathed in and out, ignoring the scent of soot as he calmed his roiling belly. He managed to get past the nausea, but he couldn’t make himself stand up and go. Eventually he faced the truth.

He couldn’t leave her here. She was pack now.

“Knull mæ i øret,” he said again, then he laughed.

He’d made other wolves in his lifetime. But he’d never tried to leave any behind as soon as he’d made them. That would have been a recipe for disaster.

New wolves were…a problem. Until they became accustomed to the changes, Julian always remained close. Because of that, it had never occurred to him that he would be physically unable to let Alexandra fend for herself.

Julian sat on the stoop and tried to enjoy what he knew would probably be his last peaceful moments for a good long while. He was going to bring one of his most hated enemies into the heart of his existence.

Whose vengeance was this anyway?

Edward snapped his fingers, and a woman walked through the door.

“What is this, Grand Central?” Alex asked.

Edward, who’d always had a problem with sarcasm —probably because of his English-as-a-second-language issues—frowned. “This is Los Angeles. Grand Central is in New York, is it not?”

Alex rolled her eyes and caught the ghost of a smile on the newcomer’s face.

The woman was tiny, and that wasn’t just because Alex stood five-nine barefoot. She was petite, too, in a way Alex could never be, her youthful face framed by dark hair with a slash of white at the temple. Her eyes were clear blue, and held an honest, earnest expression Alex wanted very much to trust.

“I’m Cassandra,” the woman said. “Your friendly New Orleans voodoo priestess.”

Alex’s desire to trust evaporated. “Sure you are.”

Cassandra’s only answer was a widening of her smile, which convinced Alex more than any bones in the nose would have.

“Voodoo?” Alex glanced at Edward. “You finally lost that last marble, didn’t you?”

Cassandra choked.

The lines in Edward’s forehead deepened. “I do not understand why everyone is always discussing my marbles, or lack of them. I have not had any marbles since I was a boy.”

“Got that right,” Alex muttered, and Cassandra began to cough.

Edward pounded her on the back, more in irritation than to be helpful. “Move along,” he ordered. “Alex has been holding off the demon thus far, but I worry it will overtake her soon.”

Alex worried about that, too. She could practically hear their human hearts beating; she sensed the swoosh of blood through their veins. The scent of warm flesh made her stomach cramp and her mouth water.

On top of that, her own skin felt too small, her teeth too big. She kept hearing howls and growls, but they weren’t real; they were in her head. Every once in a while she flashed on a forest, on prey, and her pulse accelerated in anticipation of the kill.

And there would be a kill. There had to be.

“Do something,” she managed.

Cassandra got down to business, pulling bottles and vials and bags of what appeared to be grass out of her backpack; then she removed a clay bowl and set it on the table.

Tossing in a little of this and a little of that, she sang a song Alex had never heard before in what seemed to be a combination of French and something else. As she did, the sounds in Alex’s head faded.

“Come here,” Cassandra said.

Alex cast a quick glance at Edward. He had his gun pointed at her head. “Touch her and I will shoot you.”

“You’re under the delusion that I care if I live or die.” Alex strode closer to Cassandra.

“You might not care,” Edward said, “but the demon does. It wants to kill. It will fight what we mean to do.”

“Just say no,” Cassandra quipped, then she lifted a dagger.

Alex took a quick step back, the scent of the silver burning her nostrils. But Cassandra slashed her own palm before grabbing Alex’s. A jolt, reminiscent of the stun gun, went all the way through her.

Cassandra released Alex, and she fell to the ground, dizzy with the crackle, the scent, of flames that weren’t, the raging of a battle that was going on inside. She felt like a cartoon, as if her skull should be shaping and reshaping while the demon within poked and kicked and battered to be free.

Edward was right. It wanted her to kill. Them. Now.

The change threatened. Her teeth itched; so did her skin. She stared at her fingernails, waiting for them to grow. Once she shifted, she would be unable to control herself. She’d listen to the urges within her, urges that were no longer voices but instincts; they would be impossible to ignore. She would kill whoever was the closest, and she would enjoy it.

“No,” she said. “No.”

Everything stilled.

Cassandra knelt on the floor next to her, gaze intent on Alex’s face. “You okay?”

“Saying no actually worked.”

Cassandra shrugged. “Figured it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Is she clean?” Edward asked.

“She’s right here,” Alex muttered. “And I wasn’t dirty.”

He sniffed. “That is a matter of opinion.”

“She’s cursed.” Cassandra got to her feet. “Just like you wanted.”

“You cursed me?”

Cassandra flushed. “Yes and no. I took away all evil desires—what we refer to as the demon—but not the necessity of shifting under the full moon.”

“Gee, thanks,” Alex muttered.

“You cannot be too different,” Edward said, “or he will know. You must fake the demon somehow.”

She could probably do that.

Alex glanced at Cassandra. “I still don’t understand how this is a curse. More like a blessing.”

“Yes and no,” Cassandra repeated. “Once the demon is removed you remember what you’ve done; you understand how wrong it is. The spell gives those without conscience a conscience.”

“Which, if I’d actually been eating people, would drive me kind of mad.”

“Exactly.” Cassandra dusted off her hands. “Well, my work here is done. Nice to meet you, but I really need to get back to New Orleans.”

She tossed all the voodoo paraphernalia into her backpack and headed for the door. New Orleans was definitely the place for her.

“Use the exit we devised,” Edward said.

Cassandra glanced over her shoulder. “I know better than to waltz out the front.” She held up her hand before he could speak. “Or the back.”

“Go,” Edward ordered, and with a roll of her eyes, Cassandra did.

When she was gone, Alex asked, “What exit?”

“We came in through a hidden connection with the building next door,” Edward said. “We don’t want Barlow to realize you’ve been in contact with me.”

“Does he know I once worked for you?”

Edward shrugged. “If he does, he also knows you don’t anymore. And he’ll have heard that I don’t suffer rogues gladly.”

“How do you suffer them?”

He lifted his brow. “If they step too far out of line, they do not step out again.”

“You kill them?” she asked, not surprised, not really.

“Why would I do that?”

Edward had always had the annoying habit of answering questions with questions, which weren’t really answers at all.

“You will report back to me in a month,” the old man said. “With detailed directions to his lair.”

Alex bristled. She couldn’t help it. “And if I don’t?”

“Until you give me what I want, I will not give you what you want.” He shrugged. “Remain furry as long as you like.”

He had her and he knew it. She would do his bidding as quickly as she could, if only to get rid of her tendency to grow a tail.

“How am I going to find this guy,” Alex murmured, “if the great and powerful Mandenauer couldn’t?”

Instead of responding, Edward shot her with the damn dart gun again. Alex wanted to grab the thing and shoot him, see how he liked it. But whatever was in those darts worked fast. Everything shimmied.

As she slid to the floor, Edward’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Don’t worry, Alex. He will find you.”