03 Long Night Moon - Seasons of the Moon (6 page)

“She doesn’t need help from your type.”

Her head tilted as she studied him. “Oh no. You don’t know yet… do you?”

He backed toward the road to keep her in his sight.

“Know what?”

Bekah smiled. It was small and nervous, but definitely a smile. “You’ll find out soon.” She paused before adding, “You won’t believe me, but I’m sorry. Really.”

Seth kept edging backward. He didn’t turn around until he got to the corner of the sidewalk.

When he glanced over his shoulder, Bekah was still in the yard, still waiting and watching him with sparkling yellow eyes.

He went around the corner and she disappeared from sight.

Rylie insisted on cooking dinner for Gwyn that night. She felt miserable from crying too much, but her aunt looked even worse. “You need the iron,” Rylie announced as she carried steak into the living room.

Gwyn gave her a shrewd look. “You’re six kinds of helpful all of a sudden. Maybe I need to get a cold more often.”

“Cooking is my chore. I’m not being weird or anything.”

“I’ve got a bug, babe. Don’t start carving my tombstone yet. I’ll be better after dinner and sleep, and you can go back to being a useless teenager again.”

“It’s a deal,” she said with a forced smile.

Rylie hovered in the kitchen while Gwyn ate, watching silently through the doorway. Her aunt had a coughing fit and had to set down the fork to catch her breath.

How long had that chest cold been hanging around? Maybe it wasn’t a cold at all. She had an appointment with her doctor at the end of the month, but Rylie wished it was sooner.

She did the dishes before collapsing in bed, totally tired and completely unable to sleep. The night after a moon, she usually blacked out for at least twelve hours. But her mind wouldn’t shut up. She kept imagining Gwyn dead in the fields with Isaiah Branson’s injuries.

Rylie held up her hand, watching the light on her ceiling through her fingers.

She had grown claws when she smelled Bekah in class. What would have happened if she hadn’t stopped it? Would the rest of her body have changed, too?

Just because she hadn’t done it before didn’t mean it was impossible. Bekah did it. The thought of changing at will held no temptation for her. She didn’t like transforming on the moons, so why would she do it willingly at other times?

But it wasn’t painful or bloody for Bekah, was it?

Rylie buried her face into her pillow with a groan. “Stop thinking,” she mumbled.

It was too late to banish the mental image of seeing Bekah trot away in wolf form. No blood. No screaming.

That kind of control wasn’t exactly a cure, but it was almost as good.

Something tapped outside.

She went rigid. It was rhythmic and sharp, like metal drumming against glass.

Rylie got out of bed and peeked through the curtains. Abel’s ugly, twisted face stared at her from the other side. “What is wrong with you?” she hissed, opening the window a crack.

“Are you sleeping?”

“It’s night and this is my bedroom! What do you think I’m doing?” It occurred to her that she was wearing pajamas, and she folded her arms over her chest as she tried not to blush.

“Come on, let’s go hunting,” he said.

“Now?”

Abel grunted. “Yes,
now
. Hurry up.”

He vanished. Rylie gaped at the spot he had been standing. “No,” she said, even though he was gone. “This is stupid. I’m not doing it.”

She found herself pulling a pair of Gwyn’s jeans over her shorts anyway. By the time she added a jacket, gloves, and hat, she was sweltering and eager to get outside.

Abel waited by the truck. It must have been a million degrees below freezing, but he didn’t have a jacket. He looked exhilarated and out of breath, and Rylie could see how handsome he might have been with his scars hidden by shadow.

He snorted when he saw her. “Nice. You look like a marshmallow.”

“You look like you’re going to die of hypothermia.” Rylie wrinkled her nose. “Where’s Seth?”

“Probably doing homework or being virtuous or something. I don’t know, what am I? His babysitter?” He blew a breath out of his lips, and it fogged the air around him. “Forget Seth. How do you think you’re going to run dressed like that?”

The question shocked her into dropping her earmuffs. “I’m not running anywhere!”

“You can’t smell stuff from inside a truck.”

Rylie was tired enough that it took several seconds for her to piece together his meaning. He wanted to run. He wanted to smell. He wanted to
hunt—
not with guns, but like wolves.

“You’re crazy,” she said flatly.

“Human Rylie is thinking too much right now. Where’s wolf Rylie?” He glared into her eyes like he would be able to see the werewolf on the other side, and she gritted her teeth, refusing to back down.

“Wolf Rylie doesn’t want to play with you either. We both think you’re a jerk!”

She spun to stomp back inside.

Something clicked behind her.

It was a distinctive sound, and after the last few months,
way
too familiar. She looked over her shoulder to see Abel pull back the bolt on a rifle. It was pointed at her.

Stillness settled over her as the world came into sharp focus. She saw the pulse in his throat and the way his hands were braced on the metal.

Her lip curled.

“That’s better,” Abel said.

She circled him, and he tracked the rifle along her path. Rylie angled so she could duck behind the truck if he squeezed the trigger, but a whiff of something meaty blew past her.

A skinned rabbit had been left in the truck bed.

The wolf swelled to life as the odors and sounds of the ranch came rushing around her. She could smell the livestock and hear the rustling of animals in their shelters.

None of that mattered. There were more important smells. Other wolves.

“You want to get them, don’t you?” he asked, voice low.

Rylie trotted down the hill without speaking. The trail of the wolves was old, but it grew stronger by the road.

Abel followed. Distantly, she realized two things—first, that he was no longer armed, and second, that he didn’t smell like fresh gunpowder. The rifle hadn’t been loaded. She didn’t care anymore.

She inspected the fence at the highway junction. One of the wolves had rubbed against it.

“They’ve been watching for awhile, haven’t they?”

Abel’s words annoyed her, though they made little sense. She shook to loosen a strange pressure against her body. Jacket. Gloves. What was she doing wearing such human things?

Pushing off her hat, she followed the scents across the road.

Abel was right behind.

The motion of Rylie’s legs and pumping arms made her human mind drift away. Too hot, too constricted, too slow. Rylie dropped her outerwear until she was in jeans and a tank top, then kept running untouched by cold.

They slipped through the night as shadows, darting from hill to hill with their noses to the wind and bodies low.

Time blurred. All she knew was the hunt.

The smells changed as they reached the edge of town. Images of pink skin came to mind. The wolves became man and walked with the humans. Strange. Her nose wrinkled.

“Watch it,” Abel said, grabbing her arm before she darted into the street. Headlights sliced through the darkness as a car sluiced past.

She stared at him blankly.
Watch it
. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the meaning.

“Jesus, you go under hard,” he muttered, studying her face. “You’re not in there at all, are you?”

Too many words.

Abel tried to move ahead, but she reached out for him, digging claws into his upper arm. He swatted her hand away. “Let go.”

She backhanded him. His head snapped back, and he staggered.

Rylie didn’t follow Abel. He followed
her
.

When he came up, he looked furious. He wiped blood off his upper lip with his hand. But when he stalked toward her, she gave a warning growl, and he froze. He needed to know his place.

They stared each other down, and after a moment, he dropped his gaze. Good.

Leading the way through town, she didn’t watch to make sure he stayed behind her like he was supposed to. She didn’t have to.

Rylie and Abel stayed along the fringes of civilization, even though few people were outside on such a cold night. The scent of wolf-as-man became beastly again on the other side of town.

They sped along the highway, and the tracks split a mile down the road. Each was fresh and belonged to different wolves.

She circled the junction to evaluate both paths. The wolf that followed the highway was weaker. Its smell was tainted by something strange and sickly. They could take that one and go back for the other.

Rylie led Abel on, getting more excited as the smells strengthened. It wasn’t long before they came upon another group of houses completely unlike the farms. These ones were surrounded by gates and gardens and icy fountains with a manmade lake in the center.

The fence was no challenge to climb. When they dropped to the other side, she knew they had found the wolf.

The lust for the hunt abruptly died.

Rylie knew that house. She recognized the fancy gate, all those cars, and the neatly-manicured bushes, even underneath the snow. She had wasted a lot of hours in the basement while her friends played video games. She could smell the bong from outside.

“Stop,” she said when Abel moved forward. Forcing her tongue and lips to make sounds was harder than it should have been. “We can’t go in there.”

“Why? One of them is inside.”

Rylie shut her eyes, shook her head, and tried to focus on human thoughts and feelings.

This is where Tate lives. My friends are playing games right now.

She realized belatedly that she was standing knee-deep in a snowdrift. Her shoulders were so cold she couldn’t feel them. Her face burned with the slap of wind.

“What are we doing?” she asked, hugging herself. Her brain felt thick and fuzzy. “This is insane!” She rubbed her upper arms, trying to bring heat into them.

“It’s too late to go back,” Abel said. “We can finish this!”

“How? With your hands?”

He drew a knife from the back of his belt. It was wrapped in a plastic bag and sheathed in leather, but she could see a hint of silver metal.

“Yeah,” he said. “With my hands.”

She snarled. “Put that away!”

“If we don’t do something now, the werewolf could kill one of these rich punks. You know that, right?”

Rylie punched the buzzer by the front gate. Abel nearly jumped out of his skin. “What are you
doing
?” He dragged her behind a bush flocked with ice and a good three inches of snow.

She shoved him. His back smacked into the brick wall.

“Don’t touch me!”

“If that thing is living here—”

“It’s not. Shut up.” She cast a sideways look at the knife. “And I told you to put that away!”

It took a long time for anyone to respond to the buzzer, and in the meantime, Rylie danced from foot to foot to keep warm. Then something rustled over the speaker, and a sluggish voice asked, “What?”

“Requesting permission to enter the Tate Zone,” she said through chattering teeth. Abel gaped at her.

Tate laughed. He was joined by at least three other voices. She thought she heard aliens getting shot on TV. “Is this Rylie? What are you doing outside in the middle of the night?”

“It’s hard to explain, but I am
so
cold. Open the gate.” It immediately unlocked with a buzz. Abel didn’t move. “Come on. Seth would be annoyed if I let you freeze to death.”

He followed reluctantly. Tate greeted them at the door.

“Dude, what the heck? You look like a freaking ice cube.” He was in pajama pants and his hair stuck up in the back. He didn’t look like he belonged among chandeliers or marble fixtures at all. His eyes widened when he spotted Abel. “Whoa. Who chewed your face?”

A growl rose in Abel’s throat, and Rylie stepped between them. “This is Seth’s brother. His car broke down and I forgot my phone,” she said. “We had to walk here. Can we get a ride back to the ranch?”

Tate blinked. “Oh. Yeah, sure, let me tell the guys.”

They waited upstairs while he went back into the basement, which was a horrible, stinking bachelor pad. She thought she might get a contact high when the door swung open.

But weed wasn’t the only stench. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths.

The other wolf was downstairs.

Abel’s upper lip pulled back to bare his teeth. He eyed the stairs. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “Someone could get hurt.”

He grinned. “That’s the point.”

“No. Do you hear me?”

Tate’s friends followed him into the entryway. He pulled baggy jeans over his boxers, stuffing his hands down the sides to smooth them out. Rylie gave a little wave to the other guys, who went to the same school, but then she saw an unfamiliar face in the back.

He had the same honey-blond hair and sharp nose as Bekah. There was a silver stud in his left ear marked with a star.

Levi. It had to be.

“Don’t even think about beating the boss until I’m back,” Tate said, jabbing a finger at Patrick while John ambled toward the kitchen. They all smelled like potato chip grease and frozen pizza.

Patrick snorted. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Hey, Rylie.”

She didn’t hear him. Her eyes met Levi’s. He looked surprised to see her, but not angry. It wasn’t until he turned to Abel that a spark of challenge flashed through his gaze.

Rylie grabbed Abel’s arm. She wasn’t sure if it was to keep him from jumping on Levi, or to stop herself.

Tate didn’t notice the sudden tension. “Want to borrow one of my mom’s jackets?”

She caught onto the conversation and shook her head.

“I just want to go home.”

“Cool,” he said. “Come on, the garage is downstairs.”