High Moon

by Kati Wilde

  Makena’s rushing as fast as she can, desperate to get into that chamber and destroy that hand before Fauconnier gets close enough to start shooting. I can hear her panicked, panting breaths even over this distance, and each one threatens to rip the heart from my chest.

  But I know there’s not enough time. Even now, his rig is making its way across Rudder’s pasture. By the time she gets through that crawlspace and back out…even if Fauconnier hasn’t pumped my gut full of silver by then, it’d still be another ten minutes before could set off the dynamite.

  I’ll likely be dead by then. And that’ll be all right—as long as I take Fauconnier with me. Because killing him is the only damn thing that matters. Makena is safe from him now, but Christ knows how long he might wait her and Kyle out…with Makena trapped in a nightmare of anxiety and panic. So I’ve got to make certain that it’ll be safe for them to leave that mine.

  I know the second Makena gets into the crawlspace because she starts sobbing helplessly, talking herself through the panic as she scrapes into the tiny space. Her words become more muffled, but every one is telling herself that she has to do this, to help me, because she loves me and needs me and can’t lose me.

  And with every muffled word, I steel myself a little more. Against the pain that’s coming. Because she’s hurrying, but he’s coming faster. Already he’s parked his SUV not far from where I tipped over Charlie Langerman’s truck.

  When he gets out and starts heading this way, I get a pretty good idea of why his beast hasn’t taken over. I’ve looked through enough of Mikael’s notebooks with Makena to recognize the silver lasso that he’s wearing like a bandolier across his chest. The same lasso that tamed the wolf demon who got a dead king yanked out of his anus. Somehow, the lasso’s taming Fauconnier’s beast. But judging by what he did with that sledgehammer, it hasn’t affected his strength.

  I bring up the shotgun and take aim as he crosses the stream separating Rudder’s property from Makena’s. “That’s far enough!” I call out—though the truth is, I hope to hell he comes closer. Because these guns might not offer me much of an advantage, but if I can get him into the area outside the mine’s entrance, he’ll likely end up sick and dizzy. I will be, too. But thanks to Jonas, I’ve gotten plenty of practice lately of fighting through sick and dizzy. “If you know what the fuck is good for you, you’ll turn tail and run.”

  He keeps coming, wearing a smug smile that has my finger itching on the trigger. His revolvers are in shoulder holsters, and there’s not a damn thing about him that looks like he hunts werewolves. Instead he looks like a banker on his day off.

  Except for those guns. And the leather gloves he’s wearing. They tell me that he intends to handle some of that silver—maybe by digging bullets out of me or by using the knife sheathed at his belt. Jonas’s knife, I bet.

  Tonight I’ll be getting that back.

  “I’m not the one who ought to be running,” he tells me. “So let me lay it out for you, Grimmson. They aren’t going to blow the entrance to the mine while they’re still inside it. And as soon as they come out, I don’t have to get close to them. I can shoot from here. Then I just have to…tidy up loose ends.”

  Loose ends like Jonas. Or maybe Charlie and his friends, too. And point their murders at someone else—probably me. Which will be pretty easy to do if I’m dead.

  “So as you can see, Grimmson…it doesn’t matter what you do. You’ll die, as your kind should. Bjørn and Amira’s daughter will die. I’ll retrieve whatever’s in that mine. And I’ll win.”

  “Maybe.” Not a fucking chance in hell. “I just want to know one thing. You called me Grimmson, so you know who I am. Did you kill my family?”

  —I’m at the chamber! And it’s here!—

  Makena’s faint, muffled shout tightens everything in my gut and sends my focus flying behind me, so although I don’t take my eyes off of Fauconnier, I barely hear his reply.

  “I did. And your father, especially, made it really easy to find them. He was a bit too good at his job, solved too many cases, found evidence too easily. A man can’t do that unless he’s got a good nose to rely on.”

  My throat closes up. Too good at his job. The job that helped him protect and serve the people around him. Just as my mother and brother did.

  And this fucker thinks they were a danger to the world? That humans are better off without them?

  “I have to give you credit, though. You’re much more prepared than they were,” Fauconnier continues. “They brought claws to a gunfight. So I put bullets in their guts and watched them die slowly. Much like I’ll do to you now.”

  I hope so. Dying slow is a hell of a lot better than dying fast. It gives you more wriggle room. But I guess we’ll see.

  I squeeze the trigger. The blast hits him square in the chest. He staggers back, grimacing, and I pump the shotgun and squeeze off another shot. This time as he absorbs the impact, I drop the shotgun and whip out the pistol. I get off two bullets—one tearing a bloody streak off his forehead, the other smashing into his cheek—before he reaches for his revolver.

  —They’re shooting! Oh my god oh my god, Kyle, go see—

  He’s fast. I’m just a bit faster. The silver bullet whizzes past me.

  The next one catches me in the ribs. And it’s exactly like every other time that silver got into me. Agony flares hot, dropping me to my knees. I can’t even try to avoid the next bullet. It punches me in the stomach and my blood pours out, hot and metallic. Biting back a scream, I clamp my hand over my gut. Fauconnier walks up and kicks me aside like a piece of trash.

  I crumple to the ground. My mind shredded by pain, I haul up everything I practiced with Jonas and his knife. Working past the agony. Focusing on the point where the silver touches my skin…or where it’s burning a hole inside me.

  Dimly I’m aware of Makena screaming. The pain in my gut spreads. But that’s not the silver. That’s my fingers, digging for the bullet. Digging it out, just like Fauconnier dug it out of my parents and my brother.

  Tearing open my own gut hurts less than the fucking silver bullets do.

  While Fauconnier stands near—not even paying attention to me. Because I’m as good as dead.

  That crack of another gun and Fauconnier’s pained grunt sends my eyes flying open. Kyle. The sheriff stands at the entrance to the mine, using the broken door as cover when Fauconnier aims his revolver to return fire. Bullets ping off stone, thud into wood. Makena’s muffled cry is followed by Kyle’s low answer. Telling her I’m down.

  But I’m not down yet.

  Agony fills my hand as I pull the bullet out of my gut. Just one bullet. But this will have to be enough. Just enough to make sure she survives. Using Makena’s own plan—the one she told to Carrie. Grab his bare skin. She doesn’t even know that she’ll end up saving herself with that suggestion. My intention was to dig out any bullets Fauconnier shot into me and while he was unprepared, transform into my wolfskin and launch an attack. But I won’t be able to get to the other bullet unless I shred open my lungs to get to it. That one will kill me. But not before I finish him.

  And he’s good and distracted now, watching that mine entrance, waiting to shoot at Kyle again.

  Pain rips through me as I roll over in the dirt, my stomach torn to hell, and gather my strength. It’s not much. But I’ll only get one chance at this, so I haul up everything I’ve got left inside me. Everything bit of strength I manage to find amid the anguish shredding my mind, I figure it’s only because I love Makena so goddamn much.

  That love pushes me up onto my feet. With his back to me, Fauconnier stiffens as if he heard the scrape of my boots over dirt and realized it was different from the scrape of me writhing over the ground in agony. Holding that bloody silver bullet, I lurch forward—slapping my hand against the side of his bare neck.

  Fauconnier shrieks, his back arching violently in agony. With darkness rushing in at the edges of my vision, I snatch the silver knife from the sheath at his hip, new
pain swamping over me again as my fingers close around the silver. Almost too weak to lift that small weight, the only reason I’m able to plunge the blade into his chest is because Jonas kept it so damn sharp.

  With the very last of my strength, I shove Fauconnier forward, toward the mine. The instant he stumbles too close, he falls to his knees, retching. His gloved fingers pull at the blade but the sickness and dizziness take him and he slumps over onto his back, his hands falling uselessly away from the knife.

  The world tilts. I’m not standing now but lying in the dirt, staring up at the full moon. The agony in my chest isn’t spreading anymore. Instead, numbness is moving in. Because I’m dying.

  But it’s all right. Makena’s safe.

  And I hold the vision of her close as I begin slipping away.

  25

  Makena

  Even worse than all the gunfire is everything falling silent.

  Frantically I prepare the explosive and shout for another update from Kyle. “What’s happening?!”

  Because the last time, Ethan was down. Shot. Tears splash over my cheeks as I crouch next to the giant skeletal hand, the bony fingers curled into a loose fist like a dead spider’s legs. A god’s hand. I should be taking pictures, recording this discovery for humanity, so that researchers like my father could study it and people like me could look at it and wonder if everything they’ve known about life just got turned upside down. This hand has the potential to upend the world, to usher in a new era of knowledge and understanding.

  Instead I shove a stick of dynamite under it. “Kyle!” I scream. “Is he still moving?”

  No answer. Then a hoarse “No” scrapes its way through the crawlspace and tears open my heart.

  Dead. Or no, no—I can’t think that way. Not dead. But maybe dying.

  Through helpless tears, I look toward the opening in the wall of the chamber. The rope dangles from the crawlspace, and the fuse is at least twenty feet long from the opposite end of the crawlspace to the blasting cap. At least ten minutes to burn after we ignite—but we can’t even do that until I’m on the other side of the crawlspace, and it’ll take me at least a couple of minutes just to get back out there. Ten to fifteen minutes, with Ethan dying from agonizing wounds in his gut and his chest.

  I won’t let him.

  My heart pounding sick and heavy, I retrieve one of the emergency flares from the bag. Thirty seconds per foot. How fast can I get through the crawlspace? It’s only eight feet long.

  Eight tight enclosed feet, with me wriggling my way through on my belly and propelled forward by the shuffling movements of my elbows and the tips of my boots. But there’s the rope. And Kyle at the other end to pull it.

  Kyle’s voice raises in alarm as the flare ignites with a distinctive hiss and burst of orange light. “Makena? What the hell are you doing?”

  Mentally measuring the distance from the blasting cap against how long Ethan might have left. Against how long I’ll need. Weighing them against each other…and knowing that I’m going to have to crawl like crazy.

  Thirty seconds per foot. I estimate two feet, point the burning end of the flare at the fuse cord, and the stink of melting plastic rises with a wisp of smoke. I wait until the flare burns all the way through the fuse—it’ll start burning in both directions, but only one direction matters now.

  Dropping the flare, I race across the chamber and grab the rope. “Sixty seconds!” I shout, hauling myself up with my booted feet scrabbling along the stone wall. “Give or take ten or twenty seconds!”

  “What?”

  “Start counting! And pull!”

  Something like “oh holy motherfucking shit” shoots down the crawlspace and then I’m squeezing my way into it, sucking in a hiss of pain when it feels as if the edge of the rock tears away half the skin over my stomach. With my left hand, I grip the rope ahead of me and frantically begin scooting, scooting, the toes of my boots slipping too often, my right elbow on fire where I’m using it to help push me along. The steady pull on the rope seems to make each scoot go twice as far, but I’m aware of my mental clock counting down down down.

  Thirty-three. Thirty-two. And I’m not sure if I’m halfway through.

  “Hurry, Makena!” Kyle shouts and pulls harder. I bite back a scream as a jutting stone overhead seems to gouge a river of blood out of my shoulder. I’m fully inside the eight-foot-long tunnel, and with my left arm outstretched I can almost touch the other end. But the tightest part is up ahead, a slight upward bend that I have to contort around.

  Fifteen. Fourteen.

  Give or take ten or twenty seconds. Which means the time might be gone.

  “Get back!” I shout at him, desperately wriggling forward. “Get the ear protection on and get out of the blast radius!”

  Because all that heated air and pressure is going to shoot through this crawlspace like someone opening a shaken bottle of soda pop—and anyone in the path of that explosion is going to have a real bad fucking day.

  He doesn’t move but keeps pulling. Sobbing, I scramble and scramble, reaching out with my hand. He grabs it and—

  Three. Two.

  We’re out of time, we have to be out of time. I scream as it feels like my arm is nearly ripped out of its socket, as my back is scraped raw, then I’m out of the crawlspace, crashing against Kyle as we stumble, racing deeper into the mine. At the first bend we tumble to the dirt floor and scramble to put on the ear muffs before he pushes me down, covering me with his body.

  Negative ten. Negative eleven.

  Maybe I didn’t insert the blasting cap right? Frowning, I glance up at Kyle and the explosion knocks me down again. My ears pop. The mine shaft shudders and rains dirt and gravel. I try to drag in a lungful of air and begin coughing as I inhale a lungful of smoke and dust. Beside me, Kyle’s shouting something, but through the ringing in my ears and the ear protectors I can’t hear him. And can barely see him. Just gray smoke.

  Kyle grabs my hand, jerks me to my feet, pushes the ear muffs off my head. “—have to get out of here!”

  Because the mine hasn’t stopped raining debris. Everything around us seems as unsteady as I am, stumbling forward through the smoke with my arm around Kyle’s solid waist.

  Heading out. Toward Ethan.

  A shadow staggers through the swirling dust and smoke ahead. Kyle comes to an abrupt stop, his free hand dropping to his firearm, but I know that silhouette.

  I’d know him anywhere. Tears slipping down my cheeks, I race the last few steps that separate us and throw myself into his arms. Grunting, Ethan catches me, holding me tight.

  “I heard you,” he says, his voice raw. “Sixty seconds. Sixty seconds of sheer hell, when I couldn’t even fucking move and come help you. Don’t you ever do anything like that again. Not for me.”

  I will for him. But given a choice, I hope neither of us has to do anything like that again. “As long as you promise not to get shot with magical bullets,” I tell him—then I feel and see the blood, so much blood, and I draw back in horror. “Oh my god.” His stomach. His chest. “Oh my god.”

  “I’m all right,” he rasps. “I’m healing fast.”

  This is after he’s been healing?

  Kyle looks beyond him. “Fauconnier?”

  “Probably healing fast, too.” Ethan catches my face in his big hands, his amber gaze searching my face. “You all right? All I can smell is your blood.”

  “I got a little ripped up.” A shower of dirt falls between us. “We should go.”

  Ethan nods. “The explosion shook everything up pretty good. It’s settling down now but… You should both wait just inside entrance while I take care of this bastard. The walls are shored up better there.”

  “Inside the mine? But…the magic is gone, isn’t it?” After all, Ethan’s in here with me. “So it doesn’t protect us from him anymore.”

  “It doesn’t need to. I’ll protect you from him.” His voice drops to a growl and he drags off the bloodied remains of his shirt, then
shoves down his jeans. “But if you’re inside, you won’t have to see what I do to him.”

  I don’t care what he does to Fauconnier. But I can’t let Ethan out of my sight again. Not yet.

  And I can’t let him go yet, either. Burying my hands in his hair, I drag him down for a kiss that tastes of blood and smoke and dust, and the sheer miracle that is Ethan Grimmson.

  “I love you,” I tell him, then say it again a moment later to the giant werewolf hunched over beneath the mine’s stone ceiling, with my fingers buried in his shaggy fur. “Be careful.”

  He grins, showing all those teeth. Kyle makes a choking noise behind me. Then Ethan turns and heads outside. I scoop up his jeans and the rag of his shirt, then Kyle and I follow him.

  Smoke and dust eddies into the clear air outside the mine’s entrance. Two large, dark stains on the ground freeze my insides for a horrible moment. One of those bloodstains was where Ethan had lain.

  The other was where Fauconnier did. Now he’s gone.

  But not far. Halfway down the slope, Ethan stands beneath the full moon, those amber eyes gleaming, his enormous body still and his pointed ears swiveling. His head abruptly turns to the right just as the crack of a gunshot splits the night.

  I slap my hands over my mouth to stop my shriek when Ethan’s big head jerks back. Then he growls, stalking forward—toward the boulders piled up near the mine, I realize. Where Fauconnier must be hiding. And taking aim. Another shot rings out. Another. Each one striking Ethan’s massive form. As if Fauconnier hasn’t yet caught on to the fact that the silver doesn’t have the same magic anymore.

  And Ethan… Ethan is letting him, I realize. Letting him become more and more desperate, shooting faster and faster, as Ethan slowly stalks closer in that horrifying form.

  I knew Ethan was playful. But I’ve never seen exactly how deadly and menacing his playfulness could be. I do now.