Marked by the Moon

3

“Alexandra.”

Something wailed in her ears, so shrill, so loud, she’d never be able to go back to sleep. But she couldn’t seem to stay awake, either.

“Alexandra!” Shake, shake. “The police are coming.”

Whoever was doing the shaking stopped and slapped her across the face. Alex’s eyes snapped opened; Julian Barlow hovered over her.

“Wha—?”

She was confused, dopey, but things started to come back. The gun, the dart, Edward’s words.

He will find you.

The old man had been right again.

She sat up, then clutched her head. What the hell had he shot her with that time? If she ever saw Edward again, she was going to—

Alex wasn’t sure what. But something painful.

She glanced down and a low moan escaped. Not because she was still naked, but because she was still naked and covered in blood.

Her head cleared at the sight, and she peered around the room, which appeared to have been prepped for a scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Return.

The trussed man lay on the floor. From the amount of blood on the guy, he was dead. From the amount on Alex, she’d killed him.

Or at least that was what Barlow was supposed to believe. Alex didn’t remember doing it, and there was one thing that made her almost certain she hadn’t—the voodoo curse that had removed the desire to commit evil acts.

But was killing a very bad man an evil act? Hard to say.

Someone had killed the guy. The situation smelled to high heaven of Edward—king of the setup. Except—

Would Edward murder a man just to cement Alex’s cover? That she wasn’t quite sure disturbed her. She was starting to wonder just who was possessed by a demon around here.

“Put this on.” Barlow shoved a pair of sweats and a T-shirt into Alex’s hands as she stood. Both read UCLA and looked much worse for someone else’s wear. They didn’t smell too bad, yet she hesitated. The thought of putting clothes over all the blood nauseated her, and besides—

There was another way to escape.

The change rippled beneath her skin, calling to her, tempting her with the promise of speed and power. She took a deep breath and caught the scent of trees; her eyes drifted closed and—

“We don’t have time to shift,” Barlow snapped. “Or at least you don’t.”

Her eyes opened. He was right. Damn him.

“Why do you care if I’m caught?” Stifling her disgust, Alex pulled on the clothes.

“I don’t care if you die screaming in the electric chair. But if they keep you behind bars until the next full moon —” He glanced at the dead man. “—and I’m pretty sure they will, there’ll be too many questions once they see what happens then.”

“Again, what do you care?”

“I hate questions.” His fingers dug into her arm as he dragged her toward the door.

“I hate you,” she muttered.

“Aw, and here I was hoping you’d fall madly in love with me, just so I could spit in your face.”

Oh, boy, this mission was going to be so much fun. Especially when she nailed him.

Suddenly Barlow stopped, tilted his head, listened. Footsteps clattered closer. The police had arrived.

Alex tensed. What if Barlow decided to kill the cops so the two of them could go on their merry way? What would she do?

An evil, satanic wolf bitch would jump right in and help.

Decisions, decisions.

Luckily she didn’t have to make one. Barlow tugged Alex into the corner, then closed his eyes. His face became intent, as if he was trying very hard to imagine unimaginable things. A rumble came from deep in his throat; a flush darkened his skin. She could have sworn she caught the scent of…anger. And that she could smell anger distracted her for all of an instant before something else captured her attention entirely.

A weird, shimmery glow drifted downward; crystal waves cascaded between them and the rest of the world. A pair of officers thundered down the hall and into the room without a glance in their direction.

“Shit!” said one.

The other gagged. He must be a rookie.

“Who called this in?” the first demanded, probably more to get his partner’s mind off the mess than anything else.

“Dispatch said—” Cough. Cough. “Some old guy from the neighborhood.”

Edward. Asshole. He’d meant for Alex to get caught, or nearly so, to draw Barlow out.

As she and Barlow waited for the officers to leave, they remained crushed together in a cocoon created by Barlow’s magic, her nose pressed to his neck, his chin brushing the top of her head.

He smelled wild, but not in a feral, unpleasant way. Instead Alex caught the scent of evergreens, snow, and fresh air. The great outdoors.

She leaned in and caught again the drift of anger, like jalapeño peppers preserved in ice. How strange. That scent seemed to swirl both around, then through her. Her entire body tingled, nerves dancing, the hairs on her arms, her neck, everywhere, alight with sensation.

He pulled her closer. The movement caused her lips to brush his collarbone. The texture both smooth and hard, she was compelled to taste.

Her tongue darted out, and she relished the flavor of man. His blood sang, just below the surface, and she wanted it; she wanted him. Her moan was protest, or maybe arousal.

“What was that?”

Vaguely she heard one cop speak, another murmur; then the two of them stepped into the hall. Alex didn’t care. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own, or perhaps no mind at all.

Her hands crept under Barlow’s shirt, touching his skin, the hills and valleys of his rib cage, his abdomen; her teeth scraped the vein in his neck as her thumb traced below the waistband of his trousers and over the hard, smooth head of his shaft.

His breath caught; she glanced up. Fury suffused his face, flushing his skin, honing the fine bones beneath. He glanced over her shoulder as the two men came out of the room, then grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so hard her neck cracked. She figured he was going to kill her, or at least try. Instead he crushed his mouth to hers.

Their teeth clashed; she grunted. He caught her lip between his teeth and bit down. A warning. Keep quiet.

However, this time the officers did not hear them. She opened one eye. The shimmering glow that encapsulated them appeared to have thickened.

Barlow let go of her lip, hovering over her, hesitant, uncertain. Then, almost as if he couldn’t help himself— hell, she couldn’t—his tongue flicked out, laving the tiny hurt. The gentling of his mouth was followed by a roughening of his hands. He ran them over her, as if memorizing the length of her body, testing the shape of her backside; then he skimmed them up her ribs beneath the borrowed T-shirt, cupping and lifting her unbound breasts.

Both his palms and his fingertips were callused. They scraped her skin, made her shiver. She arched into his touch, spellbound by his kiss.

How could he make her wet with just the taste of his mouth? There was something here, something she craved more than blood. She wanted to wallow in the sensations, the stroke of his tongue, the nip of his teeth, the all-encompassing pleasure promised by his touch.

She didn’t realize she was fondling him still, sliding her curved fingers along his length, rubbing her thumb over his tip. Stroking, squeezing, making him come.

Almost.

He swelled in her palm. She increased the speed, the pressure, skated her teeth over his jaw, down his neck, contemplated sucking on the throbbing vein there, or maybe sliding to her knees and sucking on something else.

Then he grabbed her wrist, yanked it out of his pants, tightening his grip to the point of pain when she struggled. “They’re gone.”

He shoved Alex away, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. He might as well have slapped her.

What had she been doing? Had she lost her mind as well as her humanity? She’d never behaved like that with any man, let alone with one who wasn’t even a man.

But she wasn’t a woman anymore, either.

“What the fuck was that?” she muttered.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She didn’t blame him. She’d just had her hand down his pants. Alex dropped her gaze. Not that he’d minded. If he hated her as much as he said, and she was certain he did, then why did the front of his pants still bulge? Why had it ever bulged at all?

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “A—a typical reaction to danger when in close proximity to your maker.”

She blinked. “That’s going to happen again?”

“Not if I can help it.”

What the fuck was that? Julian thought to himself.

He’d come up with a quick excuse of danger combined with a common reaction to one’s maker, but it was BS. Their reaction to each other was far from common.

At the moment, Alexandra seemed to believe his explanation. However, if that happened again—and considering he had no idea why it had happened in the first place, maybe it would—she’d know he was lying.

More sirens wailed in the distance, pulling his attention from the problem of his hands on her breasts, hers on his—

“We have to go.” Julian reached for her, and she took a step back. He didn’t blame her.

“This is nuts,” she murmured. “Werewolves can’t touch in human form. We should both have big fat migraines.”

Ordinary werewolves—how was that for a misnomer —had a little tic. If skin met skin while in human form, mind-numbing agony was the result.

“I’ve always been able to touch the wolves that I’ve made.”

Being able to touch her didn’t bother him. That he wanted to so badly did.

Alex stared at him, green eyes wide in her triangular face. With her blond-brown hair, he found himself wondering what she looked like in wolf form. Right now she resembled a startled Siamese cat.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Julian Barlow.” He glanced down the corridor where the cops had disappeared.

“No, I mean what are you?”

He didn’t have time to explain. They’d be back.

“Later,” he said shortly.

This time when he reached for her he didn’t allow her to step away. He grabbed her by the biceps and dragged her into the next room. A tepid breeze trickled through the open window.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Julian climbed over the splintered wood sill. He was so old that the scrapes and scratches he received on his palms healed before he’d dropped the few feet to the ground. Unless a wound was very deep, or made by silver, it might as well not exist.

Julian turned as Alex leaned out, her gaze tilted upward. Shadows flickered across her face, making her eyes appear silver instead of lime green. She was really quite pretty, if he could get past her being a murderer.

He couldn’t, but it appeared his penis could. Just the sight of her caused it to stir, and he made himself count to ten in Norwegian in an attempt to distract himself.

Alexandra’s attention remained on the full moon as if she was fascinated by it. He understood. The moon called to them, its waxing and waning marking time until the one night they all ran beneath it as one.

At times like this, when the moon was round and high and white, it seemed to whisper, to pull at them like a past lover who is gone but never quite forgotten. On every eve of every full moon, Julian always missed Alana so badly that each howl he uttered resembled her name.

He’d spent centuries without a wife. He hadn’t been interested; he’d never once been tempted. Why have one woman when you could have a dozen?

Then one of Julian’s people, Margaret Jones, had begged him to save her granddaughter. A young preschool teacher who had an incredible gift with children, Alana had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, and she was very near the end.

Julian had gone to the hospice, and he’d asked Alana —as he’d asked every one of his wolves—if she wanted to live or to die. He’d shown her what he was, and she’d agreed to become like him.

When he brought her home, Alana’s gentle, sweet nature had captivated him. She’d been so damn young, and Julian—though he appeared exactly her age—had been so damn old. She’d made him remember things he’d long ago forgotten; she’d made him see the world as brand new. She’d looked at him as though he could do anything, probably because, at first, she’d believed that he could.

Tonight he felt Alana’s loss as an unhealed wound. Or what he remembered an unhealed wound might feel like. So why had he been unable to keep himself from touching Alexandra?

Certainly he hadn’t had sex for a good long while. He tried to recall how long and couldn’t. He remembered the woman, her face but not her name. The interlude had meant nothing but a release. Every interlude had been nothing more than that since he’d gone searching for his wife and found nothing but ashes.

“Get down here,” he ordered. “Now.”

Alexandra lowered her gaze. He was her maker, the alpha, and she had little choice but to obey him. Once she realized that, she wouldn’t like it. Not that there was anything she could do about it.

Julian’s lips curved. He’d been wrong to leave her behind to fend for herself. He could exact a much better revenge by taking her with him. A woman like her, forced to do anything he wanted—

Torture.

Which was what he’d had in mind all along.

She blinked as if she’d just come out of a trance. Moon madness. Happened to the new ones. Sometimes they stared at the bright, shiny, exquisite moon until a Jäger-Sucher walked up and blew their brains out. Which was why new wolves were not supposed to be left alone. At least in his pack. Most werewolves couldn’t have cared less.

“Why are you taking me with you?” she asked.

Julian growled, a deep rumble that made her eyes narrow. If she’d been in wolf form, he thought she’d have growled right back. He felt a twinge of interest. He hadn’t had anyone rebel in centuries.

“Why are you coming?” he countered.

She glanced over her shoulder, then quickly climbed over the ledge, landing barefoot at his side. The street person who’d sold Julian the sweats and T-shirt had been wearing canvas sneakers so filthy, so full of holes, and so huge he’d refused them. It didn’t really matter. Despite the area being littered with broken glass and sharp bits of metal, any injuries she might attain by running over them would heal.

Julian heard the police milling about inside. They’d be occupied for a few minutes dealing with the scene, but soon they’d start looking around.

He took her hand, and she let him. Then they ran until they were far enough away for their presence not to matter. When he slowed, he immediately dropped all contact. Together they wiped their palms against their pants.

“Why are you coming with me?” he repeated.

“I—” Her gaze dropped to her feet. “I don’t know how to live like this.”

“And you think I’ll teach you?”

She met his eyes. “Won’t you?”

Of course.

The words whispered through his brain. The combination of fear and hope in her eyes pulled at him. The scent of her enticed him.

“I should leave you here,” he ground out. “Let you run wild until the cops lock you up. If you’re lucky, Mandenauer will arrive before the next full moon.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“I’m not a moron,” Julian snapped. “I checked you out.” Though he hadn’t come up with much. “You were born. You lived for a while in Nebraska, even started kindergarten. Then your mother disappeared—”

He lifted a brow, waiting for her to explain, but she didn’t. He figured disappeared meant “death by monster,” especially considering what happened next.

“You and your father fell off the grid. Since only Edward has the connections to make someone disappear like that, either one or both of you was a Jäger-Sucher once upon a time.”

She shrugged, giving up the pretense. “I don’t work for him anymore.”

“I know.”

The Jäger-Suchers had rules, and Alexandra Trevalyn did not follow them. One of those rules was: Wait until they shift to shoot them.

As Alex had proved with Jorge, she didn’t believe in rules.

“What else do you know?” she asked. “About me? About them?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” he murmured. He and his kind stayed isolated from the world. It was the only way to live the way that they wanted to. Which meant information was hard to come by. Not that he didn’t come by it. It was just hard. And expensive.

“The Jäger-Suchers are in disarray,” he continued. “There was a—” Julian paused, searching for the word. “A purge. Many of them died; the rest are in hiding.”

Her brow creased. “When did this happen?”

“Nearly a year ago. The werewolves banded together and began hunting the hunters.”

“They never cared before.”

Most werewolves only cared about themselves, which was how the Jäger-Suchers had so much success.

“There were whispers of a cure,” Julian continued. “But werewolves don’t want to be cured. They like what they are.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She appeared to think about that for a minute, then nodded. “So the werewolves went on the offensive.”

“In more ways than one,” Julian agreed. “Not only have they gone after the Jäger-Suchers instead of waiting for the Jäger-Suchers to come to them, but they’ve made a concerted effort to replace what’s been lost and purposely increase the number fighting on their side.”

“A werewolf army,” Alex said faintly.

“It’s happened before.”

Barlow knew about the werewolf army. However, according to him, he wasn’t the one behind it.

Except he was a werewolf. Killing? Lying? Both came as easily to him as eating.

Why hadn’t Edward told her he’d been losing agents? That he was on the defensive rather than the offensive for the first time in more than half a century?

He was a big believer in imparting info on a need-to- know basis, and he’d no doubt say if questioned that Alex hadn’t needed to know. She was no longer one of them.

Maybe Edward thought Barlow was behind the whole thing. Although if that was the case, it was something she definitely needed to know.

However, she’d learned in the few years she’d worked for the old man that he had his own way of doing things, and he was usually right.

As they walked along the deserted street, her shoulder brushed Barlow’s and memories rushed in— the kiss, his scent, the bizarre fact that they could even touch.

He skittered as far away from her as he could get and still remain on the cracked, broken remnant of the sidewalk. The expression on his face brought back the image of him wiping her taste from his mouth, her touch from his hand, and fury sparked.

Which was stupid. She’d felt exactly the same way once she’d come to her senses. Disgust for her lack of control, nausea over the flash of lust, horror at what she’d already done and what she’d been willing to do with the slightest hint of encouragement.

Just thinking about the interlude brought back Alex’s thirst for vengeance. She wanted to kill Barlow not only for what he’d done to her but for the way he’d made her feel.

If Edward had not said the werewolf that had killed her father was a member of Barlow’s pack, she would have put a silver bullet through the guy’s brain and disappeared into the sunset, the fate of humanity at the mercy of a new werewolf army be damned.

But Edward had said, and since the only thing that had kept Alex going for the past eight years was the possibility of revenge, she bit her tongue and kept going, silently assuring herself that once she got wherever Barlow was taking her, she’d blast her father’s killer to hell, along with anyone else who got in her way. Right before she left, she’d give Julian Barlow a parting gift.

Kaboom.

The promise soothed her as little else could.

Not that she didn’t understand the man’s need for payback—even sympathize with it. Alex shook her head.

He wasn’t a man. Alana hadn’t been a woman. They were murdering beasts. They didn’t feel love, or pain, or remorse.

Except Barlow did. The agony in his eyes, the gruffness in his voice told the tale. He mourned his wife with an intensity that matched Alex’s own.

Unease flickered. She was a werewolf now, and yet she still missed her father, ached with his loss and her love for him.

But there was a reason for that. She been injected with Edward’s serum and cursed by a voodoo priestess. She was as close to human as a werewolf could get. That was the only reason she still felt any emotions at all.

So what was Julian Barlow’s excuse?

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

Alex glanced around. They’d run a long way, then walked some more. She wasn’t familiar with the area, but she recognized a few of the buildings ahead as some of those she’d passed while trailing Jorge.

She pointed to the west. “About a mile.”

Barlow began to jog and she did the same, just a young couple out for a little exercise. Except it was the middle of the night, they were white, and—with Alex’s oversize, worn clothes, bloody arms and neck, and lack of shoes—she looked like a bag lady in a Dawn of the Dead remake.

“Now you understand how it is for most werewolves,” he said.

“How what is?”

“You were changed against your will.”

“So?”

He sighed as if she were incredibly dense and continued. “New wolves are like babies. They can’t be blamed for what they do. Would you punish an infant for banging a toy against a wall and breaking it?”

“I hardly think the man you left behind for me to kill was a toy.”

“No, he was a habitual child molester.”

Alex’s lips pulled into a grimace.

“Kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, doesn’t he?”

Thanks to Edward’s serum and Cassandra’s spell, she hadn’t killed her toy. Right now, Alex was kind of sorry about that.

“I told you he was a very bad man,” Barlow continued. “He deserved to die.”

Alex had to agree, but—“Who made you judge and jury?”

“Me.”

Huh. He sounded just like Edward.

“You felt the madness as soon as you awoke, didn’t you?” he pressed.

Alex glanced at him and told the truth. “Yes.”

He continued to stare straight ahead as they ran much faster than she ever had with much less huffing and puffing.

Certainly Alex had kept up with her training. If she wanted to best supernatural beings daily she didn’t have much choice. She could run ten miles without collapsing, sprint one hundred meters in thirteen seconds; she’d had instruction in Judo, and she could fight with every kind of weapon. Her father had been very thorough.

However, she hadn’t kept up this well. No human being could. The virus in her blood was obviously good for more than a full moon fur coat.

“Would you execute an insane person for listening to the voices in his head?” Barlow continued.

Alex didn’t answer, because her answer would give her away. Despite her new abilities, her conflicting feelings, she still didn’t consider a werewolf a person.

They came around the corner of yet another empty building and stopped. Five guys stood between them and Alex’s cargo van.

Yesterday Alex would have run the other way. She was interested only in killing werewolves, not stupid kids trying to be tough. Today she wanted to fight, even before she saw that they’d managed to get inside and were using their switchblades on what few clothes she owned.

A growl rumbled from Alex’s throat. Barlow cast her a quick glance. “No,” he said.

“That’s all I’ve got in the world.”

“You don’t need it anymore.”

“That isn’t the point,” she snapped.

“Don’t shift.”

Alex had been inching forward, longing to plant her fist in the face of a guy who was shredding her underwear. She paused though she wasn’t sure why. Something in Barlow’s voice, in the tone of his command, made it difficult for her to disobey.

“You’re too new,” Barlow explained. “I can hold them off while you change, but once they’ve seen us do that, we’ll have no choice but to kill them all.”

Alex frowned. Since when did a werewolf care if he had to kill people?

“What do you suggest?” she asked.

Barlow cracked his knuckles, and his smile gave Alex a shiver. He might wear a veneer of humanity. He might play at being calm, reasonable, in control. But that smile and the flash in his eyes revealed the truth.

He liked violence as much as the next werewolf.

“Let’s kick their ass,” he said.