Captured by Moonlight

by Nancy Gideon

  The truth would rob Oscar of those simple pleasures. What right did he have to strip away the things he himself had so desired and been denied?

  His poignant feelings were swept away by one cruel fact. To make sure Oscar survived, he had every right. Because somehow, some way, the boy was more than just one of Max’s kind.

  Oscar was part of him.

  “DETECTIVE CAISSIE?”

  The anxious whisper woke Cee Cee. For a moment she wondered wildly what a child was doing in her room, then she remembered.

  “Ozzy? Are you okay?”

  She could see the boy’s lanky silhouette at the foot of the bed she shared with Max, and was hugely relieved that she’d put on a tee shirt before falling asleep. She struggled to sit up, thinking the boy had probably had a bad dream.

  “Something’s wrong with Max.”

  Her gaze darted to the empty sheets beside her. Panicked, she scrambled to the end of the bed to seize the boy’s arms. He was shaking, which made her alarm shoot higher.

  “What happened to Max? What’s wrong with him? Ozzy, tell me!”

  The boy was pale as a ghost, his dark eyes huge and swimming with tears, and uncertainty. “He said I could come to you. He said I could trust you.”

  Cee Cee took a breath, then a deeper one to overcome the terrible fright quivering through her. All she could think of were those cold beasts in their suits, crouched and ready to lunge.

  She made her voice calm, firm, and comforting. “You can. Ozzy, you can. Talk to me. How do you know something’s happened to Max? Did you see something? Hear something?”

  He shook his head, causing his tears to splash onto her hands.

  “Ozzy, did you feel something was wrong?”

  Relief crumpled the last of his hesitation. “It just woke me up, like someone was shaking me. He’s hurt. Real bad.” The child’s features convulsed, as if even now he was sharing that pain.

  “Where is he, Ozzy? Do you know where he is?”

  “Someplace close.”

  She rubbed his bare arms and quieted her tone. “Take a breath, Oscar. Slow. Slow. Close your eyes. Reach out for him. Real easy. Real quiet. Can you find him?”

  Oscar’s head came up, his eyes came open, bright and glowing as he looked straight out the open balcony doors. “He’s out there.”

  Biting back a curse, Cee Cee eased off the bed and hopped to her dresser. Just pulling on loose workout pants broke a sweat on her fear-chilled skin. She left her feet bare.

  “Gimme a shoulder, kid,” she urged as she tucked her Smith & Wesson carrying silver loads into the elastic waistband. “Let’s go find him.”

  The stairs took a teeth-grinding forever. Then Oscar was leading her out across the dark yard, the grass wet and cool under her feet. A faint light flickered through a grove of oaks and down a long slant of rough-cut lawn. She hadn’t been to this part of the property before, but recognized the utility of the stone-lined cave cut into the opposing hillside. Its semicircular opening was caged by wrought iron. Before the turn of the twentieth century, landowners had used the coolness of the crude underground Quonsets to house their food supplies and their dead until roads were passable in the spring. The bars kept marauding creatures away.

  She saw Giles St. Clair in the bright glow of his cigarette, and as she drew closer she realized the bars were now being used to keep a creature inside.

  “Ozzy, you stay here. Right here. Okay?”

  “But Max—”

  “If Giles is here, I’m sure Max is fine. Let me go check. Wait.”

  A jerky nod.

  There was no way to manage a stealthy approach. She slid and swore her way down the embankment.

  When Giles caught sight of her, his features froze in surprise and dread. And then relief as he jogged over to help her the rest of the way.

  “Detective, you shouldn’t be out here.”

  “Tell me quick what the hell is going on.”

  The big man looked uncomfortable. “His orders. To keep everyone safe.”

  “From what?”

  “Him.”

  “Let me see.”

  Giles lifted a heavy-duty flashlight that illuminated the area. She stepped closer to the heavy grill and saw Max locked inside. He was on his back on the brick floor, one foot shackled by a short chain to the wall. She could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing and the low rumble that growled beneath it.

  “Open it.”

  Giles stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “No, ma’am. No way. You and the boy go on back up to the house. He’ll be fine soon. He comes around quicker every night.”

  “Comes around from what? How long has this been going on? Giles, don’t look to him, talk to me. Why have you locked him in there?”

  Giles looked very wary. “I didn’t, detective. He did that himself. I’m just looking out for him, to make sure he don’t hurt himself.”

  Her momentary pang of gratitude hardened as she watched Max writhing on the cold stone and heard the low, awful sounds he was making. “What do you call that?”

  The big guy’s face pinched tight with uneasiness. “Better than it was. Charlotte, please go back up. He don’t want you down here.”

  “I don’t much care what he wants. Open it.”

  “He’s not himself.”

  “I know what he is.”

  “If any harm comes to you by his hand—”

  “He won’t hurt me, Giles. I have to see for myself that he’s all right. Please. I can’t see him like that and just walk away. Please.”

  Muttering softly, he undid the padlock holding the gate closed.

  “The key for his ankle.”

  He passed it to her. And the admiration in his gaze went a long way toward shoring up her courage.

  Because Max was not himself.

  She gave Giles her gun; she didn’t want to think that she might need it. “Take Oscar back up to his room. Tell him Max is sick, that I’m going to stay with him. He doesn’t need to see this. Go on—I’ll be fine. You take care of the boy. Don’t let him be afraid. I’ll take care of Max.”

  Reluctantly, Giles lumbered up the hill to where Oscar stood frozen.

  She listened for his low assurances, and waited until they started to move away. Then she entered the cavern with caution, approaching Max carefully, the way she would any sick or injured wild thing. She kept the beam of the flashlight low and indirect so as not to alarm him.

  “Max, it’s Charlotte.”

  At the sound of her voice, he scrambled up to his hands and knees, regarding her with unblinking eyes shot through with blood red and molten gold. His features were taut, all sharp bones and sunken hollows. Misshapen. His hair stuck up in haphazard angles, glazed stiff by sweat. Shaking so hard he could barely maintain his balance, he edged back farther into the shadows.

  “Go away. I don’t want you here.” She almost didn’t recognize the hoarse whisper as his voice.

  “Max, what is it? What are you doing?”

  “Get out. You can’t be here.”

  She reached out a tentative hand, and he shrank back with a low moan.

  “Charlotte, please. Please go.”

  She’d seen the ravaging effects of silver before. Once from a bullet, once from a treacherously offered drink, once from a bite. And once from her own hand. Silver was somehow streaking through his system, its toxic hold poisoning him. What she didn’t know was why. Seeing him suffer so shook her badly, and made her mad as hell.

  “I’m not leaving. I’m not afraid of you. It’s all right. Come here to me.”

  Gritting her teeth, she knelt down and waited, her hand outstretched and steady. He kept to the shadows, panting unevenly, his eyes burning with that unnatural fire. Alarmed and afraid for him, she coaxed gently, “It’s all right, baby. Come here. I’ll stay with you. Let me help you.”

  She waited until his palm crossed hers, then pulled him toward her.

  Max collapsed across her knees, giving himself over to the chil
ls and fever that wracked him, entrusting himself to her care while he was helpless. Just the feel of her arms around him was better than any balm, soothing the raw rips of pain twisting through him. Her hand was on his sticky hair, her lips against his ear, her scent filling him, calming him.

  It’s better if you don’t fight it, his father had told him. Easy to say; hard to do when agony was gnawing at every nerve ending. A low, plaintive sound escaped him, and instantly he was surrounded by the fierce tenderness he’d come to depend upon.

  “I’ve got you, Max. You rest. I’ve got you.”

  “I love you, Charlotte.”

  Her kiss touched to his damp brow. “I’ll try to remember that later, when I’m kicking your ass.”

  A smile trembled across his lips as his eyes closed and his body sagged.

  Safe.

  PAIN FROM HER ankle woke Cee Cee to a bright morning. Sun pooled across the hardwood floor, bringing the promise of warmth.

  She pulled the sheet over her head, cursing irritably. Her hand strayed to the other side of the bed, which was unoccupied.

  Finding Max gone didn’t improve her mood. The one thing she looked forward to on weekends was waking up with him. Waking up just before he did, to watch him sleep. Having him wake her with the softest of kisses, followed by slow, smoldering passion.

  Hard to do that when he wasn’t there.

  The scent of rich chicory coffee coaxed her out of the covers, but it was the sight of the table set up at her bedside that nudged her from her grumpiness. Coffee in a carafe, waffles warming in a chafing dish, strawberries mashed and sweetened. And a single red rose atop a folded note.

  “Dammit, Savoie. You make it hard for a girl to stay pissed off.”

  She rubbed the soft petals of the rose against her lips as she read the short message printed with neat precision.

  “You looked too beautiful to waken.”

  She made a rude noise. “Coward.”

  “I couldn’t let you try to kick my butt on an empty stomach. Back in a couple of hours. Will tend to your rodents for you. You are my every dream.”

  She scowled as her heart went noodle soft. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, Savoie?” There was no real annoyance in her tone, and she was smiling as she cut into the first waffle.

  As she was finishing the last of the coffee, Helen knocked softly and peered in.

  “You’re awake.”

  “Awake and fed.”

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Is Oscar up yet?”

  “He left with Mr. Savoie about an hour ago.”

  “Really?” Where could the two of them be going without saying a word to her? She kept her tone nonchalant. “Did Max happen to mention where they were off to?”

  “Something about going to Mass.”

  Twelve

  MAX ENJOYED CHURCH. Though not particularly religious, he liked the discipline of ritual and pageantry. He understood the necessity of guidelines in one’s life. And he never got tired of listening to Father Furness tending to heart and soul.

  Not only a man of God but also one of strength and compassion, the priest had Max’s eternal gratitude for housing Cee Cee when she was a child, taking her in while her undercover-cop dad was out on the streets in places she couldn’t go. St. Bart’s was a humble bastion of hope and comfort and, much like the burly father, wasn’t much for pretense. The frightened, the wounded in body and spirit, the confused, and the lost were all welcomed within its doors.

  Doors recently reopened after a devastating fire failed in its attempt to close them. A fire ordered by Jimmy Legere to conceal the attempted murder of Charlotte Caissie’s best friend, Mary Kate. An order Max hadn’t been able to follow, on a night that ultimately led to Legere’s death. An ironic fated circle, if one believed in those things. Today, Max did.

  “Max, come to see if your money was well spent?”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that, Father.”

  “And who’s this? Hello, young man. Yours is a familiar face.” He looked up at Max for an explanation.

  “This is Oscar. Charlotte’s partner, Alain Babineau, married his mother last year.”

  “Yes. Of course.” But that’s not what he saw when he looked in the boy’s eyes, and Max knew it.

  Long ago Father Furness had taken in Benjamin Spratt, who, like Max, had been confused and frightened by what he was. He’d housed Dolores Gautreaux and her baby until they were able to return to their clan. He took in more than the lost, Max had recently discovered from Jacques LaRoche. He also took in those like himself—those who were not human. Max wasn’t sure what to make of that yet; a lifetime of cautious habits was hard to break.

  “We need to talk, Father.”

  “Yes. I can see that we do.”

  They went to the small park across the street to watch Oscar Babineau on the old playground equipment.

  “You know I can’t betray a confidence, Max.”

  “I need you to tell me enough to keep him safe. Tina’s parents were killed.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. Who is his father?”

  Father Furness was silent a moment. “She brought the child to me, a beautiful baby girl, and asked me to find a safe place for her. Someplace she would never be found.”

  “A baby girl? Tina?”

  “Christina.” He smiled wistfully as he watched Oscar on the jungle gym. “I didn’t ask any questions. I assumed she was illegitimate, that the circumstances of her conception were less than ideal, so I agreed. I found a good, solid couple who’d just lost their own baby girl. They paid extremely well to have some paperwork altered. He was in the military, always moving, about to go overseas for four years. Far enough for whomever was searching to lose the trail.”

  “But they just found it again, didn’t they?” It wasn’t him they were after. It was Oscar.

  “When Christina came to me heavy with child, just a child herself, I couldn’t turn her away. After the boy was born and old enough to travel, Mary Kate—Sister Catherine—convinced me to have St. Bart’s sponsor them on a mission assignment. They lived in South America until the boy was six, then returned when our funds got too low to sustain them there. That’s when Mary Kate introduced her to Alain Babineau.”

  “Someone else who could keep Tina and the boy safe.”

  “And close to you, should you ever discover who they were.”

  Max took a quick step back, his features going stiff. “What do you know about me?”

  The priest smiled. “Probably a lot more than you’d be comfortable with me knowing. I wasn’t always a servant of the church, Max. A long time ago, I had a different master. Someday, when you decide you can trust me, we’ll talk about it. But now, you were right to be concerned.” He looked toward Oscar, watching him through worried eyes. His voice lowered. “Keep the boy safe at all costs, Max. You’re the only one who can. And you must be prepared to lose everything that’s dear to you. You might be their leader—but the boy may well be their future.”

  CEE CEE WAS just finishing up a phone call when she saw Max in the hall. He started to fade back when he saw her, but she pointed to him, then to the leather couch along the wall. He obediently came into the study where Jimmy Legere had once conducted his nefarious business, but instead of sitting tamely to wait for her, he went to stand at the doors opening onto the shaded porch.

  Distracted by his presence, by his solitary stance, Cee Cee wrapped up her call to Babineau with assurances that Oscar was fine and that he missed them and he would be in good hands with them until Tina brought her parents home to be buried the next afternoon.

  Then she said, “Talk to me, Max.”

  “About what, Charlotte?”

  Because his back was to her, the effect of her narrowed glare was lost. “Let’s start with why you’ve been poisoning yourself. Yes, let’s start there.”

  He spoke matter-of-factly, as if what he was doing was no big deal.
“You know silver is deadly to us. It’s the surest way to kill us. It keeps us from shifting, from healing.”

  “And you’re pouring it into yourself every night, why?”

  “I’m building up a tolerance to it. It takes time, but eventually it won’t be able to bring me down.”

  She suppressed a shiver, thinking of those creatures in Tito’s room, the way they just shook off the effects of her bullets. Could they have done that if the bullets had been silver? “And is this, this self-torture a common practice?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone survived it that you’re aware of?” The panic in her heart was disguised by the anger in her tone.

  “Just one.” A pause. “My father.”

  “Rollo told you.” If she could have reached him, she would have smacked him upside the head. “Rollo the wise and reliable. Did it ever occur to you that he was lying? That maybe he wanted you sick and weak and possibly dying, so he could take everything that was yours?”

  His words were calm. “Yes, it occurred to me. I decided it was worth the risk.”

  “You decided? You decided that you’d just trust your life to a lying, cheating con man who sold you out not once, but twice, so he could make a buck? Come over here so I can hit you for being so stupid.”

  “No, I don’t think I will.”

  “Then come over here and hold me—because I’m really scared for you right now.”

  The unplanned tremor in her voice brought him to kneel by her. The whack of her hand against the side of his head didn’t surprise him, but her silent tears as she hugged him close did.

  “It’s so dangerous, Max.”

  Needing her to understand, he said simply, “Not as dangerous as standing out there in the open unprotected. I can’t be vulnerable, Charlotte—not if I want to keep those I care about safe. I can’t have any weaknesses. Too many things depend on me now.”

  “Things more important than me?”

  Months ago, his answer would have come without hesitation. Even a week ago, he would have said no, nothing could matter as much as her.

  But he was silent—and Cee Cee realized that something huge had happened to unseat her from that treasured first place she’d stolen from Jimmy Legere.