Barking at the Moon

by Nene Adams

  “Come on,” Annalee said after a pause. Screw it. You only live once. “We’ll go out there to Cutshall’s place and play it by ear.”

  Lunella took a deep breath, several expressions chasing across her face one by one—relief, terror, tender affection, fierce protectiveness. “You’ll help us?” she asked uncertainly, staring at the floor. Her gaze swept up. “You don’t mind?”

  In answer, Annalee stroked her thumb over Lunella’s upper lip, remembering how it had felt to kiss her, to lose herself in the moment, in the embrace. The sweetly painful throb of her heart hadn’t altered with this new facet. Her acceptance of Lunella as a werewolf came easily, perhaps aided by her dreams. Her self-denial, her excuses, her doubts had been for nothing. Maybe things would never work between her and Lunella. Maybe any relationship they tried to develop would go seriously to hell in a couple of months, the break-up punctuated by thrown dishes, tears, accusations, screaming matches and slashed tires. Maybe she’d be run out of town by a torch-bearing mob for the crime of loving another woman. Maybe the world would end tomorrow.

  Maybe she ought to get her head out of her ass and surrender to the inevitable.

  The unusual romance seemed swift and sudden, unexpected and likely to blow up in her face, but she had to take a chance on happiness at some point. Now seemed as good a time as any to try. If she lost her badge because she was outed as a lesbian, so be it. She would make sure the ones responsible for her father’s death paid, whether she was sheriff or not. For now, it was a thrill to be wanted, to know Lunella desired her above any others.

  She looked into Lunella’s eyes and read hope there, the slowly dawning realization that the affection was mutual and wouldn’t be rejected. “You win,” she murmured, leaning in to rest her forehead against Lunella’s. “I’ll rent the damned U-Haul trailer.”

  Lunella kissed her gently, a brush of mouth against mouth that was the most erotic touch Annalee had ever felt in her life. Something broke inside her, filling her with a wave of tenderness. She pulled away with great reluctance, shivering.

  “We’d better get going,” she whispered against Lunella’s lips.

  Lunella’s inhalation seemed more of a gasp, but she nodded and took a step back. Her gaze was hazy and drugged. She ducked back into the kitchen, the door closing behind her. When she returned, the softer emotions in her expression had been replaced by resolution and what Annalee interpreted as a good dose of guilt.

  Aunt Rachael, Annalee assigned guilt automatically. Nobody like a mother or mother-substitute to manipulate the right buttons. Wonder what’s going on there?

  “I’m ready,” Lunella said.

  “How’s Ezra?”

  “He’ll heal. Aunt Rachael got the silver pellets out.”

  Annalee couldn’t resist pulling Lunella in for another soft, sweet kiss, hoping to erase the frown tugging her mouth down at the corners. She felt Lunella stiffen. Breaking off the kiss, she glanced up and met Rachael’s steady gaze.

  Rachael had an impressive scowl on her face. She said nothing, just stood there with her arms crossed over her chest, motionless, silent and judgmental.

  Annalee wanted to stick out her tongue like a defiant child. Instead, she nodded at Rachael and guided Lunella to the ruined front door. Whatever Rachael’s problem, it would keep until after they’d rescued Bear.

  A few minutes later, on the way to Cutshall’s mansion in the Land Cruiser, Lunella clicked off the radio, ending some country music singer’s yodeling wail about a lost lover.

  The sun had fallen behind the high ridge of the tree line, allowing magenta-tinged twilight to creep over the ground. In the darkness, Lunella was reduced to a silhouette in the passenger seat until a reflection of the SUV’s headlights off a road sign caught her eyes, making them glow like honey amber and gilt for a brief second.

  “Your daddy knew about us,” Lunella said out of the blue.

  Annalee jerked the wheel in surprise, sending the SUV skidding onto the shoulder of the road. She fought the grip of the dusty soil, managing to shift the vehicle back onto the road, grateful for the tires’ bite on the asphalt surface. After sitting in silence a moment and trying to regain her composure, she asked, “What?”

  “Uncle Ezra and your daddy went to high school together. Kind of like you and me.” Lunella’s voice was soft. The lack of light made it impossible to read her expression. “He knew about the change, about how we are. He tried to stop Lassiter.”

  “You know who killed my father?” Annalee gripped the wheel so hard, her hands ached. A renewed surge of grief was tempered by rage—at those who had done the killing and at the ones who had shielded the murderer with their silence.

  “I wanted to tell you.”

  “I know, honey. I know.” Annalee tried to push back the anger. She wasn’t really mad at Lunella. “Just tell me now.”

  Lunella touched her thigh, fingertips stroking lightly. “It was one of the Gunns who pulled the trigger, one of Titus’ boys, Dewey maybe, but we think Lassiter ordered it done.” She sighed. “I’d best start at the beginning. Jesus, what a mess!”

  “You can say that again.” Annalee kept her gaze on the road by force of will.

  “Look, I know what you’re thinking.” Lunella sounded bitter. “You think it’s our fault Jefferson Crow got killed.”

  “No. Daddy was a lawman. He made his choice.” Annalee patted Lunella’s hand in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, not everything. Uncle Ezra went to talk to your daddy when Lassiter took Bear. I guess Dempsey was doin’ experiments or something. He needed Bear’s blood. They put a silver collar on Bear so’s he couldn’t change from fur to skin even if he wanted to—that was Lassiter’s doin’, he knew what silver does to us.”

  That explained the canine hair caught in the links of the necklace. “Lassiter took some silver stuff that turned his skin gray,” Annalee said. “I forget what the ME called it.”

  “Yeah. That’s how Johnny burned his mouth, biting him.”

  Annalee thought about the nips on the dead man’s shins and the nasty, raw-looking rash around Johnny Skinner’s mouth. “Was that before or after he shot Lassiter?”

  “No, you still don’t understand. They took Bear. Your daddy went to straighten it out, but the Gunns killed him. They put his body in the forest for us to find, you know, like a warning. Lassiter…he ain’t right in the head, Annie. Him and Dempsey, they got some crazy idea about living forever, and they think we’ve got the secret, and they don’t care who they kill. Poor Bear. They were hurtin’ him. Bear couldn’t tell me what all went on, he ain’t got no words, but I found scars on his body. Dempsey was cuttin’ him, cuttin’ him open—” Lunella’s hand clenched into a fist. “Your daddy tried to save my brother. We owe him, so we owe you the truth.”

  “Tell me what happened at Yellow Jacket Pond.” When Lunella continued to hesitate, Annalee went on, “It’s not like I’m going to arrest anybody at this point. I can’t, honey. If I arrest your uncle or anybody else connected to the killing, your secret’s bound to get out.”

  “But you’re the sheriff.”

  “My concern here is justice.” Annalee watched the road, feeling the weight of the badge pinned to her chest. “I understand how feuds get started. I was bred in the hills too. Whatever happens…” She paused, trying to decide how to articulate her feelings. Fierce resolution stiffened her spine. “It ends here. No matter what happens, the whole thing—the Skinners, the Gunns, Dempsey’s experiments—it’s going to end now, I swear.”

  “How can you—”

  “Trust me.” Annalee risked a glance at the passenger side. Lunella remained swathed in shadow—unreadable, but not unreachable. “Please, just trust me. I will not let you come to harm. You hear me? I’m going to protect you and your kin, and do what needs to be done.” She pulled off her badge and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat. “Tonight, I’m not the sheriff of Daredevil County. Tonig
ht, I’m plain ol’ Annalee Crow.”

  “There’s not a thing that’s plain or old about you,” Lunella replied at once, a hint of laughter in her voice.

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Annalee smiled. “So you were telling me about the pond?” she prompted.

  Lunella sighed again, her levity vanishing. “Dempsey wanted a test subject he could talk to, you know? Bear ain’t got words, like I said, but he understands a lot, and I guess it wasn’t enough. Lassiter talked to Uncle Ezra, said he’d exchange Bear for somebody else, like me or one of the younger boys. Aunt Rachael was so pissed, I thought she was gonna have a stroke. Anyhow, me and Matthew, Mark and Luke went out to the pond in fur, while Uncle Ezra and Johnny went there in skin to meet Lassiter. Johnny was bait, yeah? We wouldn’t have let anything happen to him, none of us. We just wanted to get Bear back.

  “You should’ve heard that bastard Lassiter, talkin’ like we was just a step above the animals or maybe lower than that. He said we was cursed by God. Said we ought to be grateful—grateful!—that our curse was gonna help righteous Christian folk like Cutshall and the rest of his congregation. They’re all wastes of air, you ask me.”

  “I take it the meeting went bad.”

  “You’d be right about that.” Lunella fell silent a moment. She went on, “Johnny don’t have a lot of control yet. He went nuts when he smelled Bear’s blood. Lassiter had Bear in a cage. He was hurt and he was howlin’, and Johnny…Look, it’s hard to keep hold on the change when you’re young, that’s why we mostly live apart. A man gets killed by a wolf in the woods, it’s an accident. Man gets killed by a wolf in the city, everybody gets riled, asks questions, starts poking around. It’s safer to stay hid.”

  “Johnny killed Lassiter.” Annalee wasn’t shocked. Apart from the details, all murders were the same—the deliberate taking of a life for one reason or another. Some reasons were justifiable by law or moral code. Others, not so much.

  “Not exactly. Johnny bit Lassiter, and Lassiter panicked and ran, which was about the worst thing he could’ve done.”

  Running would trigger a predator’s chase instinct. Stupid bastard never had a chance. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be happy when a citizen was murdered, but she couldn’t help feeling some satisfaction. Lassiter had gotten what he deserved. Kidnapping what amounted to an incompetent minor, even if that minor was in the form of a wolf, and allowing said minor to be tortured, all in the name of helping a bunch of rich old people stay alive…it was sickening. Dempsey was shaping up as a Josef Mengele wannabe. The muscles in her jaw tightened. Not on my watch, goddamn it.

  “Uncle Ezra turned to fur and killed him, took out his throat.” Lunella’s statement came out low, almost a whisper. “I used the shotgun after so nobody could tell he’d been bit.”

  “The ME said the edges of the wound looked a little irregular,” Annalee commented, proud that her tone betrayed none of the faint sense of horror she felt at the thought of her girlfriend’s uncle killing a man by shredding the victim’s carotid artery with his teeth. Silence fell between them again, broken when curiosity prompted her to ask, “That was you at the pond, wasn’t it? The day we found Lassiter’s body. I saw a wolf.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And at Lassiter’s house.”

  “I have to protect you.”

  “Yeah, honey—you did that when you killed Barabbas Ricketts.”

  “He was gonna shoot you!” Lunella exclaimed.

  “I’m not arguing or accusing you of doing wrong or anything like that,” Annalee said mildly. “I just hope you understand that if every idiot who threatens me gets killed by a wolf, people are gonna talk. You want to end up dodging silver bullets the rest of your life?”

  Lunella’s answering growl was deep, pitched low enough to create an answering vibration in Annalee’s body. She squirmed, gooseflesh rising.

  “I am not going to stand by and let you get hurt,” Lunella said. “You’re mine!”

  When Lunella said that in such a possessive tone of voice, Annalee felt a strong inclination to roll over and beg. “Yes, I’m yours,” she replied, “but you’ve got to—”

  She nearly lost control of the SUV when Lunella slithered across the seat, grabbed her and forced her head around. As Lunella’s lips captured hers, she applied the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a coasting halt on the shoulder while thanking God there wasn’t any traffic.

  Lunella kissed her delicately, lapping at her mouth. Caught in an awkward position, Annalee ignored the twinge in her neck and strained to return the kiss, using her tongue to chase the unique mélange of flavors that meant Lunella to her. She wasn’t aware of whimpering until Lunella pulled away. She felt teeth nipping the side of her throat.

  “Mine,” Lunella whispered, biting harder.

  Annalee felt a staggering surge of arousal mingled with pain. Her inner muscles clenched, a sweet ache that had her clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. Lunella released her just before the bite would have broken the skin, leaving that area of her flesh sensitized and throbbing. She struggled to catch her breath. Lunella nuzzled her face, snuffling and rubbing cheek-to-cheek. The motions reminded her of Mongo demanding attention. She realized Lunella was scent marking her.

  “Just don’t pee on me,” she murmured.

  Lunella’s startled snort of laughter was muffled by her neck. “Sorry.”

  Annalee inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, her body easing. “No, it’s okay. I’ll have to remember to cover up the hickey. What brought that on, anyway?” Even as she asked, the answer came to her. “I’m yours,” she stated, amazed anew when Lunella let out a soft whimper, her eyes huge and glimmering soft gold.

  “You keep saying that, we’re gonna get arrested for public indecency,” Lunella said, moving back to the passenger side with obvious reluctance.

  “It’s an instinct thing, yeah? A wolf thing?”

  Lunella’s reply was clipped. “It’s a you thing. Now get going—I won’t tell you twice.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Annalee shook herself mentally and set the SUV back on course.

  Once she calmed down enough to think with her brain instead of her lady parts, Annalee turned the case over in her mind. She believed Ruth Lassiter and Aiden Thompson had gotten some kind of experimental gene therapy treatment from Dempsey. The debacle with Lassiter’s murder and Dempsey being wanted as a suspect had likely put enormous pressure on the project. Perhaps the widow and the lawyer had demanded they receive treatment in case Dempsey was caught and arrested. Well, whatever Dempsey was doing, he still hadn’t perfected his recipe, judging from the less-than-stellar results.

  “Who killed Aiden Thompson and Ruth Lassiter?” she asked, thanking God she hadn’t completed the paperwork authorizing expedited DNA testing. “We found their bodies yesterday by the Ateeska River, near your place.”

  “No idea. None of my pack,” Lunella answered defensively.

  “Hush, honey. I wasn’t accusing anybody of anything. After tonight, I reckon none of us are going to be without sin.” Annalee made the turn-off onto the highway, cutting between a Volvo and a Ford truck. She left off the flashing lights and siren that would have cleared her path because, one, she wasn’t on official police business, and, two, she didn’t want to give Cutshall an early warning of her presence.

  After twenty minutes in traffic, Annalee spotted the long driveway to the antebellum mansion and turned the vehicle onto it. She clicked off the headlights, navigating by the moon and her memory. “Lunella, you got any idea where Dempsey might be hiding out?” she asked. “Cutshall’s got thirty acres around the house and a shitload of outbuildings where he could stash a fugitive away. I don’t think we have time to search everywhere.”

  When there was no answer from Lunella, she slowed the cruiser and brought it to a halt on the side of the driveway, parking beneath the spreading branches of a peach tree. As soon as the SUV stopped, she flicked on the interior light, squinting until her e
yes adjusted to the brightness. It was worth the risk of detection to see Lunella’s face.

  Lunella sat huddled against the passenger side door, her legs drawn up on the seat. Her expression of hopeless fear and doubt made Annalee feel sick. “I can find them, I think,” she said slowly, “but I’d have to…you know, sniff them out.”

  At first, Annalee was nonplussed, then she remembered Lunella’s unusual abilities. My girlfriend’s a werewolf. Could give new meaning to the phrase “that time of the month.” Nope. No way. Not going there.

  “Uh, sure, yeah, of course, good plan.” Annalee stumbled over the rush of words that spilled out of her stupid mouth. Scratching her eyebrow, she tried to find a way to soothe Lunella’s fear of rejection. She understood that, at least. “I don’t mind, honey. My hand to God. The other part of you is hairy, sure. Scary, not so much. You’re kind of cute, you know? Cuddly.” The instant she said it, she flushed in embarrassment. Geez, Crow, dorky much?

  A bright red blush crept up Lunella’s neck to stain her cheeks. Her grin was wide and slightly goofy. “Yeah? You think I’m cute?”

  “Uh-huh.” Annalee had to grin back, some of the tension draining from her muscles. “Cuter ’n a sack full of puppies, matter of fact.” She winced, thinking the phrase might not be taken as a compliment by a woman who could become a wolf at will.

  Instead of being offended, Lunella scooted closer and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you,” she said, her gaze luminous with affection.