Crescent Moon

by Lori Handeland

  Frank’s eyes glazed with the memory. “I’d taken my family to our cabin. We were having dinner in town and Henri was at the bar. He and I struck up a conversation. He was an interesting, intelligent man. I even considered fixing him up with my daughter.” He shuddered. “You should have seen what he did to her.”

  No, I shouldn’t.

  “He leaped right through our picture window. I tried to stop him, and he knocked me down the steps. Something snapped in my back, and I couldn’t move my legs. I watched him kill them all. I’ll never forget his eyes. I see them every night in my sleep.”

  “The curse makes all the Ruelle men look alike.” I wasn’t certain that was true, but the explanation made sense, especially when combined with the lack of females born into the family since the voodoo queen had done her thing. “This is Adam,” I insisted, “not Henri.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Frank sighted down the barrel of his gun.

  I threw myself in front of Adam as the weapon fired. I expected pain; instead all I felt was Adam’s arms close around me.

  “He missed,” I breathed in wonder.

  Adam glanced at his bicep, where blood dripped from a two-inch gash. “Not exactly.”

  “Get out of the way, Diana. I don’t want to, but I will kill you.”

  “I’m not moving,” I said.

  Adam’s hands tightened on my shoulders. I smiled, thinking the movement was affection, then gasped when he tossed me aside to land with a thud out of the line of fire.

  “Adam!” I shouted, scrambling up, tensing in expectation of a gunshot, but there wasn’t one.

  Detective Sullivan stood behind Frank, pressing his sidearm to the base of Frank’s skull. “Drop it,” he said. “And your friends, too.”

  Frank complied, as did his goons.

  “You don’t understand—” Frank began.

  “I understand plenty.” The hula dancer on Sullivan’s tie undulated with the force of his anger. “You’re under arrest. You tried to kill that man, and you threatened that woman.”

  “But he’s a werewolf.”

  Sullivan blinked, then glanced at me. I shrugged and made the crazy sign by rolling my index finger next to my ear.

  “He asked me to find a wolf in the swamp.” I looked at Adam, who was letting the blood drip down his arm and into the ground, making no attempt to stanch the flow. “I didn’t realize he was nuts and meant a werewolf.”

  “This is the guy you work for?” Sullivan asked.

  “Not anymore,” Frank muttered.

  Sullivan put away his weapon as the clearing filled with cops who began to cuff the minions and collect the evidence.

  “Do you know who I am?” Frank shouted. “I’ll have your job for this.”

  Two cops carried a struggling, cursing Frank Tallient away.

  I hurried across the short space separating me from Adam, tearing a strip off my shirt as I went. He must have been feeling pretty woozy, because he let me bind his arm without arguing.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked Sullivan.

  “Some guy wanted to know where Charlie died. Since that’s an open case, I got suspicious. I came to your place and saw them head into the swamp. That much guns and ammo, couldn’t be good. So I called for backup and here we are.”

  “I appreciate the help.” Adam offered his nonbloody hand.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while.” Sullivan took it and they shook.

  “Talk.”

  “You know anything about the man strangled on your property?”

  “No.”

  “Ever seen any animals behaving oddly? Maybe rabid?”

  “No.”

  Sullivan’s gaze slid to mine. “A regular fountain, isn’t he?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “The rabies expert has arrived. He was supposed to meet me at the mansion—” Sullivan glanced at his watch. “Damn. I need to get back there.”

  He disappeared pretty quickly for such a big guy. Within moments, everyone else had followed, and Adam and I were alone.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to do,” Adam murmured.

  “Now?”

  His lips quirked before he reached out and yanked the gold chain from around my waist, then tossed it into the weeds. He lifted his hand and another spilled out—interlinking silver fleurs-de-lis. “I’d put it on for you, but—” He shrugged, then winced when the movement tugged his wounded bicep.

  I took the gift and looped it around my belly, unreasonably touched. I had to admit, silver flattered my skin much better than gold. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.” Adam shifted his gaze from my stomach to the trail. “Sullivan’s expert will be Henri bait.”

  “You don’t think Henri is long gone?”

  “Even if he left, he’ll be back. This place is as much a part of him as his fur.”

  “I’ll have to tell the expert there’s no wolf, no rabies. Considering my credentials, maybe he’ll believe me and go away.”

  Adam continued to stare into the swamp with a frown. I followed his gaze to a nearby cypress tree where a tall, gaunt, ancient man watched us from the shadows.

  “Hello,” I called. “Are you lost?”

  He approached slowly, his gait more measured than pained. Despite the heat, he was dressed in black, which only made him appear more skeletal. I figured his age at eighty-plus. His hair might once have been blond but had faded to a dusky white. His blue eyes had faded, too, but they still shone with a fervor that made me want to snap a salute.

  “Diana Malone?”

  The accent was German—less pronounced than if he still lived in the motherland but thick enough to reveal he’d been born there.

  “Yes?”

  “I am Edward Mandenauer. I was called by Detective Sullivan about a rabies problem.” His gaze flicked to Adam. “Would he be you?”

  Adam merely shook his head.

  “This is Adam Ruelle.” I spared Adam a “don’t be rude” glare. “He owns this land. Detective Sullivan returned to the mansion to meet you.”

  “I must have missed him. His men directed me here.” Mandenauer strode to the cage, inspected the lock, the moss, the bars, then lifted a yellowed brow in my direction. “You caught nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  He turned to the nearest cypress, where my tree stand remained.

  “Hmmm,” was all he said—until he turned with a pistol in his hand. “Where are the werewolves?”

  Chapter 39

  “Werewolves?” I laughed. “You’ve been watching too many B movies.”

  Mandenauer’s face didn’t change. He didn’t find me funny. Imagine that?

  “You lie to everyone else, but you cannot lie to me. I have hunted these beasts for longer than you have both been alive. Unless...” He considered us. “Unless one or both of you are possessed by the demon werewolf.” His gaze lowered to Adam’s bloody arm. “I don’t suppose you were shot with silver.”

  “As a matter of fact—” I began, and Adam elbowed me in the ribs.

  “Who the hell are you, mister?” Adam demanded.

  “I will be happy to tell you as soon as you prove you aren’t evil.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” I asked.

  “Well, in the good old days, I would just shoot you and see if you exploded. But as everyone has been telling me, that causes too many questions. I hate questions. So I have come up with another way.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge silver crucifix, throwing it at me before I knew what he was up to. I had no choice but to catch the thing or let it hit me in the nose.

  “No smoke,” Mandenauer said. “You live.”

  My silver fleur-de-lis chain had disappeared down my shorts. I tugged it free. “I could have shown you this.”

  He glanced at Adam. “Are you wearing one?”

  Adam cast him a bland glance.

  The old man lifted an eyebrow in brow in my direction. “I
f you please?”

  “I’ve already done this test.”

  “Humor me.”

  I pressed the cross to Adam’s nonbloody bicep, then glanced in Mandenauer’s direction. “No smoke, no flame, no explosion. Happy?”

  The old man lowered his gun. “Ecstatic. Now where is the beast?”

  “What beast?” I asked.

  “You have a cage in the swamp. You have been hunting from a tree. You understand about the silver. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were one of mine.”

  “Your what?”

  “Jager-Suchers.”

  “My German is a little rusty.”

  “Hunter-searchers,” Adam said.

  Mandenauer’s gaze narrowed. “You know of us?”

  “I know a little German. My guess is you hunt things no one else believes in.”

  “Ja.”

  “You’ll find nothing here.”

  “I know better. Even without the physical evidence, the newspaper reports of disappearances and deaths, the rabies concern, there’s what I know about her.”

  “Me?”

  “Diana Malone, obsessed since her husband’s untimely death with finding evidence of a paranormal creature and clearing his name. For the past four years you have traversed the globe searching. But at last I think you have found one. Why are you not calling the national media?”

  I tightened my lips and kept quiet.

  “Could it be because you’re in love with the thing?” His gaze turned to Adam. “Lycanthropes are accomplished at the physical. They will do anything, say anything, to keep themselves alive.”

  “Are you hinting that I’ve allowed myself to be seduced to the dark side?” I asked.

  “It has happened before,” Mandenauer muttered.

  “I just showed you that silver doesn’t affect him.”

  “Perhaps the beast in the swamp is a different kind of beast from the one I am used to. Perhaps whatever hunts beneath the crescent moon in the Crescent City has grown strong enough to survive the usual methods.”

  He lifted his gun, and I stepped in front of Adam again. “No. I mean, yes. But... hell. Adam, I think we should tell him.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I sent a man down here a few weeks ago,” Mandenauer continued as if we’d said nothing. “He saw wolves where they did not belong, led by a black wolf with all too human blue eyes. Then my man disappeared. Now I learn he was strangled not far from here. Do you know anything about that?”

  I started to sweat—actually I’d been sweating all along, it was hot, but the sweat trickling down my back turned cold.

  Although Adam hadn’t told me so, I was pretty sure he’d been responsible for the strangulation. What would Mandenauer do if he discovered Adam had killed one of his operatives to protect the evil, murdering loup-garou? Edward Mandenauer might appear too old to do much of anything, but in his eyes I recognized a steely resolve, a lack of compassion reminiscent of the beasts he hunted, and that made me nervous. Because even my grandpa could fire a gun.

  “I can cure lycanthropy,” Mandenauer said.

  Adam’s sharply indrawn breath was drowned out by my blurted, “You can?”

  “Not me, but there is someone I would call.”

  I turned to Adam, hope making me babble. “This could be the break you’ve been looking for.”

  “Or a trap. He said he’s a hunter. All he knows is how to kill.”

  True. Why should we trust someone who’d walked out of the swamp? He could be anyone. Or anything.

  “You were in the army, Ruelle. Elite Special Forces. A team known as Company Z—last resort. You were assassins.”

  “How do you know that?” Adam demanded. “No one is supposed to know that.”

  “I have worked for the government most of my life,” Mandenauer said. “Even now, though I am in complete charge of my unit, I receive my funding from them.” He pulled a cell phone off his belt and tossed it to Adam. “You must have a contact, a friend, still in the employ of Uncle Sam. Call him.”

  “If you are who you say you are, no one will tell me anything.”

  “They will if I say so. Call your friend; have him access my file, then type in A-I-R-A-M when asked for security clearance. After he relates the information, you can decide if you want to tell me the truth. But remember, I will either kill or cure whatever I find here. It is your choice which it will be.”

  Adam’s gaze met mine and I shrugged. What could it hurt?

  He followed the instructions, then listened as his contact recited the information in Mandenauer’s file. Adam disconnected, appearing a little shell-shocked.

  “He is who he says he is. He runs some Special Forces monster-hunting unit.”

  “You mean werewolf-hunting?”

  “According to my contact, there are a lot more than werewolves out there.”

  “Simon was right all along.”

  “And often quite helpful to us,” Mandenauer said. “We monitored his Internet and library usage, his book purchases—”

  My eyes narrowed. The Patriot Act could be a real pain in the ass. Although this seemed to be slightly beyond the realm of the rightly paranoid Homeland Security Force. Just what kind of power did Mandenauer wield?

  “Your husband was very good at weeding the truth from the lies,” he continued. “Often we followed him, and on more than one occasion we eliminated what he found.”

  “Those times he said he’d discovered something, but when he took me to see it, it wasn’t there.” The times I’d wondered about his sanity.

  “We killed the beasts before they killed someone else.”

  “What about the night he died?”

  I’d always wondered what had really happened. Not that it made any difference. Dead was dead. Or was it?

  Simon had died from a fall. His body had been broken, marked, torn. Then, I hadn’t thought to check for bite marks. If there’d been one—

  The Simon I’d seen at the window of Adam’s shack could very well be running around the swamp on four paws. And if Mandenauer actually had a cure—

  My heart leaped with hope, even as my gaze went to Adam. What would I do? I loved them both.

  “Was one of your agents there that night?” I asked. “Did they see what happened to Simon? Is he—?”

  “Out there killing people? No. We made certain he would not rise again.”

  “He was bitten?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you said you could cure lycanthropy.”

  “The developments are recent I am sorry.”

  “You couldn’t save Simon before he was attacked?” Adam asked. “What kind of army are you?”

  “The best that we can be. But sometimes even the best are too late. All the Jager-Suchers can do is continue to fight as we’ve been fighting since the war.”

  “Which war?” I asked.

  “World War Two.”

  The idea that monsters had been multiplying for over sixty years was disturbing, to say the least.

  “You had better explain what you mean by that,” Adam ordered.

  The old man collapsed onto the stump where Frank had been. “I was sent to Berlin to find out what Hitler was up to.”

  “Hitler,” Adam repeated.

  “I hate that guy,” I said.

  Mandenauer’s lips twitched. He didn’t seem like a man who would smile much or laugh ever, but I’d been wrong about the nature of a man before. I took Adam’s hand in mine, some of my tension easing when he not only let me, but held on, too.

  “The fuehrer ordered Josef Mengele to create a werewolf army.”

  “Mengele was the one who performed the experiments on the Jews?” I asked.

  “And the Gypsies and those lacking in their mental capabilities, and anyone else Hitler did not like.”

  “Which means he had plenty of test subjects.”

  “He had no shortage,” Mandenauer agreed. “Mengele was given a laboratory in the Black Forest. By the t
ime I discovered this, D-day came and went. Hitler panicked and ordered Mengele to release what he’d created into the world. I was only able to watch as unimaginable atrocities emerged from the trees.”

  “And the werewolf army?”

  “Has been multiplying ever since, as have all the other beasts he created.”

  “What others?”

  Mandenauer didn’t answer at first; then he clapped his hands on his knees and rose. “One problem at a time.” He fixed Adam with a stare. “I can help you, if you will help me. What is going on in New Orleans that has left so many dead and so many others undead?”

  Adam took a deep breath and began to tell Mandenauer the history of his family and the curse. He revealed everything, except that he had a son. The old man listened without interrupting.

  Though Edward Mandenauer was spooky, he seemed to know what he was doing, and while his story about the Black Forest was far-fetched, it was also plausible. I had no problem imagining that Hitler might demand a werewolf army; I found it easy to believe Mengele would concoct monsters. He had, after all, been one of them. And it made perfect sense that those horrors had been released into the world to wreak havoc for the next half-century and beyond. I’d always known Hitler was far too evil to just die.

  “My grandpere wasn’t made by Mengele,” Adam said. “But by a voodoo queen.”

  “Not all the monsters came out of the Black Forest. There are things walking the earth so ancient they are beyond the scope of our minds. Every culture has its dark myths, and legends. Each day new beasts are born and others mutate by accident or design.” He spread his hands. “Magic, if you will. What worked to kill them once, does not a second time. This is why my Jager-Sucher society is getting larger with each passing year.”

  “It’s a wonder I’ve never caught wind of you,” Adam said.

  “We are a secret society.”

  “Yet you told me.”

  “I am sure you can keep my secret as you have kept your grandfather’s for so long. I’ve sent agents here before. None of them were able to discover anything until this one. And they all disappeared.”

  “Maybe they got tired of working for you.”

  The two men held each other’s eyes like two alpha wolves over a fresh kill.

  “Maybe,” the old man conceded.