Moon Shadows (4 page)

She took his glass, carried it to the sink. “Do you have a dog?”

“Actually I have dibs on a puppy from a patient's litter. Mom's a mixed breed I'll spay in trade for the pup. I lost my dog, Kirk, to cancer about six months ago.”

“I'm sorry.” She turned back, had to check the urge to touch him. “It's very hard.”

“He used to sing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sing, along with the radio, especially if it was something soulful. “Dock of the Bay” being one of his favorites. I miss that. He was sixteen, had a good life. It's never long enough, though.”

“No, it's not. Kirk? Are you a
Star Trek
addict as well as
Simpson
-obsessed?”

“I claim the right to teenage geekdom when I named him.”

“You were never a geek. Guys who look like you may flirt around the edges of the geek universe, but they never get to its core. Too busy gathering up girls with names like Ursella.”

His smile was easy, and appealingly sly. “She was brainy and beautiful, what could I do? I'm a sucker for brains and beauty and it seems for girls with exotic names.”

“My grandfather's name was Simon. It's not such a stretch.”

And that, he thought with some pleasure, was the first personal thing he'd wheedled out of her. “Simone.” He took a long breath. “It just sings. Simone, with the beautiful green eyes, have dinner with me. Don't make me beg.”

Instinct was what she knew—its dangers. But she followed it, moving around the counter, facing him when he swiveled toward her on the stool.

She moved quickly, before rational thought could overcome primal need. Taking his face in her hands, she swooped in, and crushed her mouth to his.

I
T
was like being pitched headfirst off a cliff, then discovering you'd sprouted wings.

The shock slammed into him first, then the speed, then the soaring thrill. He wasn't aware he'd moved until he was standing, until his hands were tangled in her hair and his heart was pumping its life away against hers.

The heat of her poured into him until his blood smoked and smoldered, until his senses were stunned by it. So that he stood, reeling, when she nudged him away and stepped back.

“The dinner invitation was just another prop. You want to sleep with me.”

“What?” He heard the words, but with the majority of blood drained out of his head, he was having a hard time comprehending them. Had there been that much gold in her eyes before? So much gold the green was like a haze under it? “Ah . . . I'm just going to sit here another minute, if it's all the same to you. Feel a little punchy.”

He looked down at the dog who sat as he had since they'd entered. Like a soldier on guard duty.

“No. Yes.”

It was her turn to look confused. “What does that mean?”

“No, the dinner invitation wasn't a prop.” His eyes, so rich and brown, fixed on hers. “I'd like to spend some time with you, get to know you. And yes, I want to sleep with you. Did you take a course to learn to kiss like that, or is it just innate? And if it's the former, where can I sign up?”

“You're funny,” she decided.

“Feeling pretty funny at the moment. I also feel, with some embarrassment, that my pupils have turned into little hearts. Due to that, I'm now prepared to beg.”

The taste of him, virile and passionate, with that charming hint of cinnamon, was still on his lips, on her tongue. She wanted to snuggle up against him and sniff his neck. “I don't do well with people.”

“You're doing fine with me. Top marks down the line.”

She shook her head. “You asked about me, didn't you? Around town. So, what's the deal with this Simone? What's the scoop on her? And you'd have heard she keeps to herself, doesn't mix much. Nice enough, but a little strange.”

“Close enough. And if you asked about me, you'd have heard that Dr. Kirby, he plays his music or TV too loud most nights. He's almost always late for his first appointment. Just a few minutes, but time's time. And he's no Doc Greene, if you ask me.”

“A couple of years, you'll be Doc Kirby, and I'll still be the weird herb lady who lives in the woods outside of town.”

“A woman of mystery.” He lifted his hand, played his fingers over the ends of her hair. “Did I mention I like mysteries?”

“You wouldn't like mine. But I'll have dinner with you. Here, tomorrow night. I'll cook.”

He blinked at her, then the corners of his mouth quirked. “Really?”

“Yes, but now I have to get to work. So go away.”

“Okay.”

He got up immediately. Smart, she decided. Smart enough not to press his luck or give her a chance to change her mind.

“What time tomorrow?”

“Seven.”

“I'll be here. Any chance of you telling Amico to stand down so I can kiss you again.”

“No. Maybe tomorrow.” She walked to the door, opened it. “Good-bye.”

He walked to the dog first, held out a hand. He saw Amico's eyes slide toward his mistress before he lifted his paw to shake. “See you, pal.” He crossed to the door, stood for a moment studying her face. “ 'Bye, Simone.”

She locked the door behind him, then moved through the house to the front windows to wait for him to drive away.

A test, she told herself. That's what it would be, a kind of test. To see how she would handle the evening, being with him. Just an experiment.

And what a lie that was.

Still, it didn't have to be a mistake, she assured herself. If she was as close as she hoped to a cure, it wasn't such a risk.

Besides, she'd taken risks before. She'd taken lovers before.

But not a mate, she reminded herself.

She'd wanted him, wanted the taste and feel of him. That most basic and natural of human needs. But what was inside her had wanted him, too. What was in her had wanted to sink fangs into flesh, taste his blood.

Not to feed, that instinct she understood. But to transform. To turn him into what she was, so she was no longer alone.

That she would never allow.

Hurrying now, she went to the basement door, and took the key she wore along with the cross around her neck. She unlocked the door, turned on the lights, then with Amico beside her, locked the door behind her.

Besides its location, the kitchen, the woods, one of the biggest selling points of the house had been its large basement.

She'd bricked up the windows, had installed fluorescent lighting. She used the old shelves, where preserves and cans had once been stored, for supplies.

She'd installed a television, a VCR, a computer, and a work
counter to add to the long workbench left there by the previous tenants.

There was a sofa and a cot though she rarely used them. And a large refrigerator used primarily to preserve samples. The freezer was stocked with meat.

A security alarm system warned her when anyone approached the house while she was burrowed in the lab. It rarely happened, but the reassurance was worth the cost.

The floors were concrete, the walls stone, and thick. An old cast iron washtub stood in one corner. A small, efficient laboratory ranged under one of the bricked-in windows.

At the far wall was a cell, eight feet long, six feet wide.

Released, Amico went to his cushy dog bed, circled three times, then settled in for an afternoon nap.

Simone booted up her computer and sat to make some notes. It was important, she told herself, to detail her reaction to Gabe. It was different, and that made it an anomaly. Any change in her condition—physical, emotional, mental—was religiously recorded.

I'm in love!
she wanted to write.
His name is Gabriel Kirby, and he has beautiful hands and makes jokes. When I kissed him I felt so
alive,
so human. He has beautiful brown eyes and when they look at me something lights up in my heart.

But she didn't. Instead she noted down his name, his age, and occupation, added salient details from both their meetings, and termed her feelings for him a strong physical and emotional reaction.

She noted down what she'd eaten that day, and added the time she'd taken her last dose of pills.

She used the washtub and soap of her own making to scrub her hands. All the while she tried to keep her mind a blank, to keep hope in check.

Moving to the counter, she pricked her finger, then smeared two drops of blood on a slide.

She studied it through the microscope and felt a little bump of that restrained hope. There
was
a change. After nearly a decade of studying her own blood, she couldn't mistake a change.

She shifted the slide to her computer and began an analysis.

The infection was still present. She didn't need technology to tell her what she
felt
, but there was a slight increase of healthy, normal cells.

She brought last week's sample on screen for a side-to-side study. Yes, yes, there was change, but so little. Not nearly enough after three full months on this formula.

There should be more. She
needed
more. Maybe increase the dose again. Or adjust the formula itself, increasing the amount of skullcap, or the sarsaparilla. Or both.

She let her head fall back, closed her eyes. Eleven years, and she'd barely begun. Herbs and drugs, experimental serums obtained illegally, and at great cost.

Prayers and charms, medicines and purges. From witchcraft to science, she'd tried everything. And still the change in her blood was so slight it would make no difference when the moon rose full.

It was she who would change, in pain and misery. Locked by her own hand in the cell to hold the monster she'd become. Guarded by the only thing in the world she could trust without reservation.

The dog who loved her.

For three nights she would pace that cell. It would pace—snarling and craving the hunt. A fresh kill. Hot blood.

All the other nights she was a woman, just as caged.

She longed for love, to be touched and held. She craved the connection, craved knowing when she reached out a hand would be there to take hers.

But she had no right, she reminded herself, to long or to crave. No right to love.

She should never have let him into her home. She'd breathed him in, she thought, and had breathed in the vision of what could be if not for that one moment that had ripped her life to pieces.

And now that she had, she was ready to weep and wail because her progress wasn't enough. She should be rejoicing that there was progress at all.

And she should get to work on making more.

She worked late into the night, stopping only to feed
Amico and let him out to run. Locked in her lab, she adjusted her formula. When the pills were ready, she noted the time. Swallowed them.

She shut down her lab, locking the basement door behind her before going out to whistle for Amico.

But first she stood in the dark, under that three-quarter moon.

She could feel its pull, its light, teasing fingers that reached out for her in these last nights before the change.

In the quiet, she could hear the sea throwing itself against the cliffs, and knew if she walked there this close to the change, she would need no light to guide her. Her night vision, always sharp since the attack, grew stronger yet as the moon waxed.

The perfume of the water came to her, salty and cool. She ached, everything about her that was human ached that there was no one beside her, no one to share the quiet and beauty of the night.

She stood alone, whether it was here on the porch, on the cliffs, deep in the woods, she was in a cage. And she had searched for the key for eleven long years.

Why shouldn't she be allowed to feel love when it came like an arrow in the heart? Why must she be denied the pain and burn and joy of it?

Whatever she was thirty-six days a year, all the other days, all the other nights, she was a woman.

Standing alone, she heard the flight of wings—the hunter—deep in the woods. And the sudden scream—the hunted—as talons pierced flesh.

And on the simple porch of her quiet house, she scented the blood. Fresh and warm.

Could all but taste it.

“Y
OU
'
LL
still be a guy,” Gabe assured the cocker-terrier mix as he prepared for surgery. “Balls don't make the man.”

He imagined if his current patient could talk, the response would be:
Yeah? Hand me that scalpel, doc, and let's try that theory out on you.

“Might seem a little barbaric from your standpoint, but believe me, it's all for the best.”

He used warm water blankets to offset any chance of hypothermia. The pup was young, barely eight weeks, and there were risks and benefits of neutering this early. Pediatric tissues were friable and needed to be handled very carefully, but the youth of the patient made precise hemostasis easy.

After he'd prepared the field, he made his midline incision.

He worked precisely, his hands deft and practiced. He had Michelle Grant on his surgery CD player, figuring it would soothe the puppy, unconscious or not. He kept an eye on the puppy's respiration as he operated, then began to close.

“Not so bad, right?” he murmured. “Didn't take long, and you won't miss them.”

When he was done, he made notes on his chart and had his surgical assistant prep for the next patient. While a fresh drape and pads were being put into place, and instruments laid out, Gabe stayed with the pup in recovery.

The patient woke quickly, with a little tail wag when he saw Gabe.

“Eileen?” He poked his head out into the waiting room. “Call Frankie's mom and tell her he came through fine. We'll keep him here until about noon, then he's good to go.”

Barring emergencies, Gabe scheduled surgeries from seven to eleven one morning a week. Most of his patients would be ambulatory and able to go home to their family before the end of office hours. Some might need to be monitored.

It wasn't unusual for him to spend the night after surgery in his office.

At noon, he scarfed up some of the sweet and sour chicken Eileen had ordered for him, eating at his desk while he went over charts and made follow-up calls about patients.

And thought, when he had two minutes to spare, about Simone.

What was there about her? She had a fascinating look. Not really beautiful, certainly not in the classic sense, not with so many angles. At the same time all those points and planes gave her face a sharp and vital look.

He liked the way she looked in jeans and boots and the way her shirt had been frayed at the collar and cuffs. How she smelled like her kitchen, like some strange, secret garden.

Then there was that smile, slow and reluctant to bloom. It made him want to tease it out of her as often as possible.

Whatever it was, when he was around her, he couldn't take his eyes off her.

She was a little cool, or shy. He hadn't decided which. Or she had been until she'd planted that blood-thumping kiss on him in her kitchen.

And where had that come from? He pushed back in his chair now, propping the bottom of one foot on the edge, rocking back and forth as he stared up at the ceiling and relived the moment.

One minute it seemed she was on the brink of shooing him out her door, and the next she's kissing him brainless.

And brainless was exactly the term. His mind had snapped right off, so it had been all heat and sensation, all taste and texture.

She was a loner, a woman—according to his sources—who didn't make close friends. Did her business, caused no trouble, and kept to herself, with her terrific dog. She owned a business, provided the stock, but she didn't run the operation. She never, or almost never, mixed with the customers. Details were vague. Where she'd come from no one could say for sure.

She was a mystery tucked into an enigma and surrounded by a puzzle. And that, Gabe admitted, might be some of the attraction on his part. He loved to find things out.

Maybe she was only interested in sex, and would use him, ride him at a gallop until he was quivering with exhaustion.

He thought he could probably live with that.

Grinning, he went out to take his afternoon appointments. And underlined his mental note to buy wine and flowers before heading out of town.

 

S
HE
wasn't thinking about him. Her mind was too occupied to make room for dinner plans with a man. Her latest blood analysis showed no improvement. The virus was still viable, still thriving in fact. It simply mutated to adjust to the invasion of the serum.

She'd succeeded in stimulating the B cell, and she knew from previous tests the cell divisions had begun. But they hadn't continued, not long enough for the plasma cells to secrete sufficient antibodies to bind to the bacteria.

The infection was still there, raging.

She'd seen this before. Too many times before. But this time she'd been so hopeful. This time she'd been so sure she'd been on the edge of a breakthrough.

She'd done another DNA test and was even now carefully studying the results. It made her head ache. Lab work
depressed her, though it was almost second nature to her now. She considered, as she had before, selling her business, relocating yet again. And taking a job as a lab tech. She'd have access to more sophisticated equipment that way, more resources, more current information.

The reconditioned electron microscope had cost her thousands. A top-level lab would have new equipment. Better equipment.

But there would be questions she couldn't answer, physical exams she couldn't take. Day-to-day contact with others she wasn't sure she could stand. She'd been through all that before, too, and it was much, much worse than being alone.

To be with people, watching them go about the blessed normality of their lives and not be a part of who and what they were was the most damning aspect of her condition.

She could handle the pain, she could handle the violence that ripped through her three nights every month. But she couldn't stand the lonely unless she was alone.

She'd promised herself years before, when she'd understood and accepted what had happened to her that she'd find a way to a cure. That she'd be normal again before her thirtieth birthday.

Thirty, she thought with a tired sigh, seemed a lifetime away at eighteen.

Now she was nearly there, and the infection still brewed inside her.

And she was still alone.

No point in whining, she reminded herself. She'd only just begun to try the new formula. There was still time before the full moon. Still time for the serum to work.

“Put it aside, Simone,” she told herself. “Put it aside for a few hours and think normal. Without some normal, you'll go crazy.”

Think about dinner, she decided as she went upstairs again. Spaghetti, hold the meatballs. Red meat wasn't a good idea this close to the cycle. At least not with company around.

She was having company, not voices reading a book, or faces on television. Human company. It had been a long, long
time since she'd allowed herself to have dinner with a man. Much less in her own territory.

But it was good. It was normal. She had to continue to do normal things, every day, or when she was well, she wouldn't know how.

So she started the sauce, using her own herbs, letting their scent fill the air of her home.

And she cleaned, housewifely chores combined with a meticulous search to be certain anything pertaining to her condition was locked away.

She cleaned and tidied rooms he had no reason to visit. In what she considered her personal media center, she scanned the room: huge cushy sofa, the indulgence of an enormous wall screen TV.

Would he think it odd that among the hundreds in her collection, she owned every movie available on VHS or DVD on werewolves? She wouldn't be able to explain to him any more than she could explain to herself why she was compelled to watch them.

She shrugged it off and arranged fresh potpourri in a bowl.

Then she groomed. A long shower, creams for her skin. She'd leave her hair down. Loose and liberated. Turning at the mirror, she brushed the weight of it off the back of her left shoulder and exposed the small tattoo of a full moon.

That had been a young, foolish act, she thought now. Branding herself with a symbol of her disease. But it served to remind her of what she was, every day. Not just at the full moon, but every day. And when she was cured, it would remind her of what she'd survived.

She dressed simply, casually in shirt and trousers, but selected soft fabrics. The sort men liked to touch. The silky shirt of silvery gray caught the light well—and would catch the eye.

If she decided to take Gabe as a lover, she was entitled, wasn't she? Entitled to pleasure and companionship. She'd be careful, very, very careful. She'd stay in control.

She wouldn't hurt him. She wouldn't hurt another human being.

She closed her fingers around the cross, felt the heat of the silver against her skin.

Back in the kitchen, she took another dose of her pills before setting the table. Were candles obvious or simply atmospheric? And if she had to debate something that basic, she'd gone much too long without human company.

Her head came up, as did Amico's, and seconds later the sound of tires on gravel was clearly audible. The dog went with her to the front door, sitting obediently at her command when she opened the door.

It blew through her again, just the look of him. And that twisting need inside her mocked all her claims about control and care. He carried a bag in one hand, and a bouquet of tiger lilies in the other.

In all of her life, no one had brought her flowers.

“Hi. I come bearing.”

She took the lilies. “They're beautiful.”

“I've got a big rawhide bone in here, if it's okay.”

“Thanks, but I don't want to spoil my dinner.”

He laughed, and with his lips still curved, leaned over the flowers to touch his lips to hers. “Okay, we'll just give it to the dog. But we get to drink the wine. Didn't know what was on the menu, so I've got white and red.”

“Don't miss a trick, do you?”

“My mother raised no fools.”

He glanced around the living room. The walls were painted a deep, warm green. Like a forest, he thought. The mantel over the stone fireplace where flames simmered held iron candlesticks and pale green candles he was betting she'd made herself. The furnishings were sparse, but what there was, was all color and comfort.

“Great painting.” He gestured toward the oil over the fireplace. It was a forest scene, deep with shadows, and a lake gone milky with the light of a full white moon.

“Yes, I like it.”

There was other art—all of places, wild, lonely places struck by moonlight, he noted. There were no people in any of the paintings, and no photographs at all.

“Got a thing for the moon,” he commented, then glanced at her. She studied him, he thought, as the dog did, speculatively. “The art, the name of your shop.”

“Yes, I have a thing for the moon.”

“Maybe we can take a walk out to the cliffs later. Take a look at it over the water. I don't know what phase it's in, but—”

“Waxing, nearly full.”

“Cool. You know your moons.”

“Intimately.”

“Okay if Amico has the bone?”

“Offer it.”

Gabe pulled it out of the bag, held it out. “Here you go, boy.”

But Amico sat, making no move. Then Simone murmured in Italian, and the dog leaned forward, closed his teeth over the bone, wagged his tail.

“That could've been a raw steak, I imagine,” Gabe commented, “with the same result. That's some dog.”

“He's a treasure. I'm in the kitchen. We're having spaghetti.”

“Smells great. And it shows how clever I was to pick a couple of Italian wines.” He patted the bag he carried as they stepped into the kitchen. “This Chianti's supposed to be fairly amazing. Should I open it?”

“All right.” She handed him a corkscrew. “Dinner's going to be a little while yet.”

“No problem.” He pulled off his jacket, then opened the wine. He set it and the corkscrew aside. “Simone. This is going to sound strange.”

“I'm rarely surprised by strange.”

“I was thinking today, trying to figure why I'm having such a strong reaction to you. And I can't. So I thought, maybe it's just sex—and what's wrong with that? But it's not. Not when I'm standing here looking at you, it isn't.”

She got down two glasses. “What is it then?”

“I don't know. But it's the kind of thing where I want to know all sorts of things about you. Where I want to sit down somewhere and talk to you for hours, which is weird considering we've only had two conversations before. It's the kind of thing where I think about how your voice sounds, and the way you move. And that sounds lame. It's just true.”

“But you don't know all sorts of things about me, do you?”

“Next to nothing. So tell me everything.”

She poured the wine, then got out a vase for the flowers. “I was born in Saint Louis,” she began as she filled the vase with water. “An only child. I lived there until I was twelve—dead normal childhood—until I was twelve. My parents were killed in a car accident. I got out of it with a broken arm and a concussion.”