Blood Moon Harvest (Seasons of the Moon) (3 page)

He gave a stiff shrug. He looked pale and tired. “Werewolves aren’t the only dangerous thing out there. Some hunters kill other monsters.” He cast a glare at the cellar door. “Like demons.”

Rylie shivered and crossed herself. She hadn’t been to church in a long time. She wasn’t even sure she could walk on holy ground now that she had become one of the scary things that lurked in the night. But the gesture made her feel better.

“You mean we have a demon in my cellar?”

“Maybe.” Seth glanced at the bright blue sky. “I guess we’ll be able to tell in three days. If she doesn’t transform on the new moon, she’s definitely not human.” He sighed and started unloading his rifle. “We need help on this, Rylie. I’m going to make some phone calls.”

He dropped the rounds into his pocket and headed for the house.

Rylie bit her bottom lip, watching his retreating back.

“Seth?”

He paused in the doorway. “What?”

“Last night… when you proposed…”

Seth seemed to know what she was thinking. He gave her a lopsided grin that lacked its usual brilliance. “The timing was bad for that. I don’t need an answer now. Just… think about it. Okay?”

She wanted to tell him that she didn’t need time. That she was totally ready to marry him, even though she was only eighteen, and they hadn’t seen each other much lately.

But that wouldn’t have been true, would it?

Remembering Abel’s stricken expression when he saw Seth’s proposal made her feel sick.

She took a deep breath to brace herself. “Have you ever heard of something about… mating? In relation to Alphas?” It was hard to make the words come out. She wanted to crawl into the cellar with Pagan and die.

Seth’s eyebrows drew together. He stepped away from the door. “The only Alphas I’ve ever seen were in small family packs. One was married, and one was some guy with two kids. Mating wasn’t an issue. But I didn’t spend a lot of time studying the werewolves before killing them.”

“Oh,” she said.

He dropped the rifle to his side. “Why are you asking?”

“Levi mentioned it,” Rylie said, her pulse speeding. Before she could think better of it, she went on to add, “And I’ve been feeling weird about Abel lately.”

“Weird?” Seth echoed.

“Yeah. Like… drawn to him. Levi suggested it might be an Alpha thing.”

Seth stared at her for a long time. She had no idea what his expression meant, but it made her feel about three inches tall.

“That would actually explain a lot,” he said, and there was no anger in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not blind, Rylie. I noticed you guys are acting… weird. Like you said.” He shrugged one shoulder. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about werewolves. Nobody studied them other than my dad.”

“How do we get more information?” she asked.

He smiled again. It was a little brighter than before—almost encouraging. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

Seth went inside, and the screen door groaned shut behind him.

F
OUR

Reinforcements

A black SUV with government
license plates arrived the next day. It had a bumper sticker that said “Union of Kopides and Aspides,” and long antennas drooping over the hood. Both of those were normal for a Union transport. They were terrible at subtlety. The government markings, however, were new.

Seth was waiting for them at the gate to the ranch. The SUV stopped, and a man with shoulders nearly as wide as he was tall jumped out.

Yasir strode toward Seth. “Hey, kid,” he greeted. They clasped hands. He had pleasantly rough palms, and his knuckles made it look like he punched brick walls for fun. Maybe he did. The Union had some pretty intense training regimens.

“Long time,” Seth said, studying the commander. He had a few new scars and a gold tooth replacing one canine.

Yasir snorted. “Not long enough.”

The last time they had seen each other, it had been in the aftermath of the Union hunters fighting against the werewolves on Gray Mountain. Yasir had made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to have anything to do with werewolves anymore, regardless of what the Union’s command center said.

“Thanks for coming to help us,” Seth said.

Yasir crossed his arms. “Officially, Stripes and I are on leave. This isn’t Union business. Understand?”

“Stripes came with you?”

“Yeah. He was bored. But we don’t have any other support. Got it?”

“Got it,” Seth said. He preferred not to have the rest of the Union getting involved anyway.

Yasir’s eyes skimmed the ranch. “How many do you have?”

“Over twenty right now.” Seth jerked his thumb at the barn. “Most of them are sleeping out there.”

“And the demon?”

“In the cellar.”

Yasir waved to the SUV, and Stripes jumped out. He had a black duffel bag slung over one shoulder that bulged at the seams. Jumper cables hung out of the open zipper. “I’ll see what we can find out,” Yasir said, pointing Stripes toward the house.

Seth grabbed his arm, stopping him before he could leave. “One more thing. You guys use my dad’s research on werewolves all the time. Did you know there were chapters he didn’t publish in his book?”

Yasir nodded. “There were missing chapters on Eleanor’s body when we recovered it from Gray Mountain.”

“Is there anything about werewolf mating habits in there?”

“There might be.” Yasir looked wary. “Why? We don’t have to worry about the pack breeding, do we?”

“We promised that the werewolves would die out, and we meant it.”

The commander nodded. “I don’t know what the extra research said, but I can put in a request to get a copy. It’ll take a few days to pull it out of the archives, though. Would that help?”

It was even better than Seth had hoped for. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Can we go now?” Stripes asked from a few yards up the hill, shaking his duffel bag. “I want to talk with the demon.”

Seth nodded.

The men went up the hill and disappeared into the cellar with Pagan.

Rylie steered clear of Yasir
and Stripes and kept her pack patrolling the sanctuary’s perimeter to watch for attack. But there was no sign of any other hunters, much less anyone trying to save the captive in her cellar.

If nobody came for Pagan when she screamed like that, Rylie seriously doubted anyone was going to come for her at all.

Three days passed in a blink. The moon dwindled in the sky. It turned into the barest sliver, and then vanished on the last night.

Rylie sat with Abel as the sun set on the evening of the new moon. He had been sleeping for almost three days straight.

The room smelled like sweat and sickness—the odor of a silver-poisoned wolf. Seth had done two more passes in the wound and still hadn’t found everything. No wonder Abel looked so miserable.

She touched his cheek. The skin was scorching. “Wake up, Abel.” His eyes opened to slits, and she smiled. “Hey, lazy bones.”

He grimaced. “Don’t bother me. I feel like shit.”

“Yeah, I bet you do. But it’s the new moon tonight. Seth thinks that you have a shot at healing once you transform.”

“Can I do it in bed?”

“Gwyn says that you have to buy new furniture and repaint the room if you do,” Rylie said. “Let’s save a few hundred dollars and go outside, okay? I’ll help you.”

He pushed her away and tried to get up on his own. He staggered.

“Floor’s tilted,” he said when she stepped in to grab his arm.

“No, you just suck at walking.”

Rylie half-carried him outside to the waiting pack. Bekah was at the door, and she took his other arm as soon as they emerged. The rest of the pack was waiting in the field behind the barn.

“Where’s Seth?” Abel asked.

“He and Gwyn are keeping an eye on Pagan in the cellar tonight,” Rylie said. “Just in case.”

He shot her a look. “In case of what, exactly?”

In case she started to transform
.

Yasir and Stripes were in the cellar, too, and they had rifles loaded with silver bullets. Rylie had promised that there was no way the werewolf species was going to grow.

If Pagan began to change, they would shoot her.

She laid Abel on the grass, and everyone circled around them.

“Silver,” Vanthe said, closing his eyes to taste the air. “There’s silver in his blood.”

A murmur spread through the pack. Pyper and Analizia actually drew back, like the silver might be contagious.

Rylie raised her voice so everyone could hear her. “Abel’s been poisoned. When he changes, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to be wild. Whatever happens, we have to keep him in the sanctuary. But don’t get in a fight with Abel. Let me handle him.”

“I can do that,” someone piped up from behind her. She craned around to see who had spoken. It was Eldon, with his nervous laughter and habit of disappearing whenever chores needed to get done. Of
course
it was Eldon.

Rylie opened her mouth to snap at him, but the energy of the moon rippled over her before she could.

It was getting dark quickly. There was a patch over the hills where stars weren’t emerging—blocked by the new moon. Her muscles warmed.

“Five minutes,” she said. The pack spread out, but Rylie stayed on her knees beside Abel. She lowered her voice so only he could hear her speak. “There’s one more thing you need to know. The Union is here.”

“
What
?”

She shushed him, glancing around to make sure nobody was listening. The closest people were Bekah and Levi, and they were deep in conversation.

“Pagan said that Cain would come for her. Seth thought we needed help—and I agreed. When would be a better time to attack than when everyone in the sanctuary is a mindless animal?”

“When they don’t have teeth and claws that can turn a hunter into French fries?” Abel groaned and pressed a hand to his injured side. “The bandages…”

His skin rippled, like something was moving under the surface.

It was time.

“Hang in there,” she murmured, removing the gauze as his body began to distort.

The wound looked worse than it had on the night he received it. Parts of it had healed, but what remained looked like it was rotting. Even tiny bits of silver had a way of festering in a wolf’s blood.

Abel caught her hand at his side. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“What?”

“It’s going to be bad tonight. I can feel it.” And, as if on cue, he gritted his teeth, his back bowed, and his grip tightened until her bones ached. He took several deep breaths before speaking again. “If I’m going to be bad—don’t come near me. Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You would never hurt me,” she said, trying to focus her energy to calm his transformation. But it couldn’t touch him. Not a silver-poisoned wolf.

There was a pop deep inside his body, muffled by muscle. Abel’s cry split the night.

“I can’t make it easier on you.” Her eyes burned. “I’m so sorry.”

Abel’s body twisted with the transformation. It was hard to see what was happening to him in the dark, moonless night, but Rylie had been through it enough times to know what he was going through.

His teeth would loosen and fall out. His fingernails would follow. Then his hair.

His spine would grind against itself as new vertebrae grew, extending into a tail. And judging by the quiet popcorn sounds and Abel’s piercing shriek, it was happening fast.

His knees would break—she could already hear the cracking—and switch sides.

Rylie tried to focus on sending her energy out to the pack at large, controlling the transformations of the twenty other wolves she
could
help, but it was hard when Abel was in so much pain and spraying blood on the grass.

He flipped onto his side, curled into a ball of half-human, half-wolf flesh that writhed and rolled.

His eyes caught hers. There was no man in them—only beast.

And it was hungry.

“Run,” he whispered.

“No, Abel…”

His shoulders popped and slid into place as he climbed to his paws. Glistening claws dug into the soil.

Abel’s scream shattered the night.

“Run!”

F
IVE

Rescued

Seth sat on a box
in the cellar with his rifle across his knees. The howling of the pack was muffled by several feet of earth and a heavy door, and he wondered which of them was Abel.

“They’ll be all right,” Gwyn said, patting his shoulder. “The pack’s got Rylie. She’s tougher than you think.”

He found a smile somewhere inside of him, but it was weak and brief. “I think she’s pretty damn strong, so that says a lot.”

They were positioned at the front of the room, watching the door in case someone—or something—tried to enter. Yasir and Stripes sat in the back with Pagan, a battery, and jumper cables. There were marks on her papery skin where the Union men had shocked her.

She wasn’t laughing anymore.

Pagan stared at her captors with fury in her black eyes, but her mouth was shut. She didn’t talk back to them the way she talked back to Rylie.

Stripes stared at the ceiling, knuckles white on his gun. “Those noises.” He shivered. “It’s like that night on the mountain again.”

Yasir checked his rifle’s safety, and checked it again, like something could have possibly happened to it in the three seconds since his last inspection. “Don’t think about it.” He glanced at Pagan. “How do you feel?”

She sneered. “Like a car with a dead battery. What do you
think
I feel like?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“I already told you, I can’t turn into a werewolf!” On the last word, her skin flickered like a dying light bulb. For an instant, her bones were visible underneath.

“Megaira,” the commander said.

Seth blinked. “What?”

“I think she’s a megaira. Maybe half-megaira, half-human. It’s a demon that feeds on human aggression. That’s why you can lock her in a cellar for three days without food and she doesn’t die. But electrical current…” Yasir nudged the battery with the toe of his shoe. “It interrupts infernal energy.”