Trial by Moon

by Lizzy Ford

  “I’m going to a worksite this morning. Have the driver take you to headquarters when you’re ready,” he says. “Your backpack is in the bedroom.”

  “Worksite.”

  “Now I know you can’t read that book.” With an aggravating wink, he whisks our plates away and crosses to the counter before starting to leave. “If you go anywhere else, tell me first.”

  Some part of me, the wolf, panics at the idea of him being gone, and I suppress it with effort. It’s annoying for my emotions to be tied to him, even if they aren’t truly my emotions.

  I sit, tense and yelling at myself, until his scent fades. Only then do I relax and rise. He seems confident I’ll do what he told me and go to his headquarters.

  But that’s not how I roll. I definitely don’t do what I’m told no matter how sexy the man giving me orders and I’m not about to ask permission from him to go home.

  I retreat to the bedroom and stand in the middle of it again. It’s silent and smells of him. My backpack is on the couch near the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I pause there to explore the forest visually.

  I can’t quite fight the draw of his scent. Not the way I want to. With some reluctance, I return to his closet and dig out one of his worn t-shirts. Pressing it to my face, I breathe him in and sigh, a shudder running through me.

  “Magic.” But I love it.

  I stuff it into my bag and check my cell. He’s wiped out all my contacts, aside from his and one marked ‘driver.’ Irritated at the man who seems to want to take over my life, I text the driver and leave the bedroom for the driveway.

  Chapter Four

  I’m not stupid enough to tell the driver where I live. I have a suspicion the three clan leaders already know, but I’m not taking any chances.

  The silent driver, who smells of man and wolf, drops me off at a bus stop a couple of miles from my father’s place.

  The moment I leave the safety of the quiet car, I’m off balance. The city smells of exhaust, garbage, people, water, oil … and a myriad of other scents that bombard me. I can hear everything for several blocks in each direction, from the alarm clock blaring in an apartment building to a couple arguing about whose turn it is to take their kid to school, to the squeak of someone’s car brakes, the whir of a bicyclist …

  “Hey, you getting on?”

  Blinking out of the spell, I turn to see the bus driver leaning towards me from his seat in the massive bus.

  “Yeah, sorry.” I climb on board, swimming in my senses, and sit down.

  Seconds later, I’m sick to my stomach. This bus has to be fifteen years old – and it’s never once been cleaned decently. The scents of the thousands of people it’s carried over the years linger, along with dirt, grime, disinfectant from where the driver tried to clean up someone’s vomit, cigarette smoke and god knows what else. I can hear the heartbeats of everyone present, and the girl with the ear buds is playing rap music no one else can hear, but which sounds like I’m at a concert. The tap of someone playing Angry Birds on their phone, the scrape of shoes against gravel caught in the rivets of the floor …

  I yank the cord for the next stop and bolt to the front of the bus, unable to tolerate the sounds and scents. My eyes are watering from both, and even then, I can see better than I ever did before I became a werewolf.

  I vault off the bus and bend over, sucking in deep breaths to keep from puking. It’s morning rush hour, and the streets are crowded, loud and smelly.

  I straighten and look around, recognizing where I am. “Oh, fuck.” The sensations of my normal world, most of which I never knew existed, are pounding into me with the intensity of a full-body migraine. When I realize how far it is home, I consider curling up in a ball on the sidewalk and hoping I fall asleep or just flat out die.

  Instead, I start to run. Overwhelmed, I sprint through the morning crowds, across jammed streets, past eateries whose scents make me more nauseous. The wolfy side of me is howling in distress. I’m struggling to hold onto myself amidst the onslaught of my senses, and I race by my house before I recognize the scent of the plug-ins I have in the bottom hallway.

  Unlike Benjamin’s mansion, my father’s row house is in a rundown part of town. The neighborhood was probably nice about a hundred years ago but has since declined. Bars line the windows, and the sagging brick façade has needed power washing for several years.

  I notice none of that, though. I race up the stairs, trip twice and then struggle to insert my key into the door before the world catches up with me and I collapse beneath the weight of it.

  I manage to fling the door open then slam it closed and sink to the ground. My heart is erratic, as is my breathing, and I’m shaking from sensory overload. I have the urge to stick my head in a sensory deprivation chamber until I balance out. My home is quiet, though not as quiet as I remember. The walls muffle the outside world without blocking it. The fragrant plugins I have in the walls are enough to make me sick, and I catch a faint whiff of N-Thrall, the drug of choice I’ve been using the past few weeks to dull the pain of my father’s death. My dealer slips it through the mailbox slot once a week.

  When I can breathe again, I look around blearily and pick up the small baggy of pills marked with an N. One of my friends from high school is the neighborhood drug dealer and gives me pills at a steep discount. Normally, N-Thrall gives me a euphoric high. I’m wondering if it’ll help my current werewolf state or make it worse.

  I stand and smack the plugins out of the walls in an attempt to dampen the impact of my world. I run upstairs next and hide in my room but not before I chug down two N-Thralls. Pulling down the blinds, I throw myself into my bed and pull the covers over my head and wait for the pills to take effect.

  Here it smells of nothing but me, and gradually, I start to stabilize. The pills tug me out of reality, turn my world into a dreamscape impermeable to reality, where my senses are indeed dulled. It’s not working nearly as well as usual, but I can use all the help I can get.

  It takes an hour or so before I stop shaking and start scratching. Flinging off the sheets, I look down at my arms. I’m breaking out in hives and frown, puzzled. The itching sensation comes and goes in waves, an effect of the N-Thrall.

  “Long morning,” I murmur and climb out of bed. It’s dark and relatively quiet. I tug the door of my overflowing closet open and glance around, once more struck by how differently my father and Benjamin live. My bedroom, the biggest in the house, has barely enough room for my full-sized bed and a dresser. We never had much money. We weren’t living in poverty by any means. We always had food and clothes and a roof over our heads, but not much else.

  If my father and his predecessors have possessed the secrets of powerful supernaturals for twenty generations, why are we poor? Did no one in my family history think to enrich us by asking a few favors? Or, hell, by outright blackmailing a supernatural or two?

  “Something is really weird about all this,” I say aloud. I run my hand down the line of clothing, marveling at the different fabrics. My fingers linger on one of my few expensive pieces of clothing, a designer dress my father splurged on for my senior prom. The maroon, silk dress is strapless and reaches the floor.

  Right now, my skin is begging me to feel it across my body. I hesitate. I wore it to a wedding a couple of years ago, and it seems silly to put it on when I’m just messing around the house.

  But the call of silk is supported by my N-Thrall high and wins. What do I care if I parade around the house in a gown? I can pretend I’m a princess, as I used to when I was little.

  I strip out of Benjamin’s clothing and maneuver into the dress. I’ve gained about ten pounds since high school, so it’s a tight fit, and the zipper doesn’t go all the way up.

  The silk … oh, god the silk! Benjamin’s scent is everywhere, and the silk dress caressing me to the point I’m ready to throw myself down on the bed for some good old fashioned quality time with my vibrator and the clit that’s been screaming at me since I awoke in Benjamin’
s muscular arms. I’ve never felt so sensual, so beautiful, so aroused.

  Yanking my backpack up off the bed so I can lay down, the Book of Secrets topples out as I toss it. I cringe, not wanting to destroy what my father considered to be the single most important treasure he owned. I bend to retrieve it and gasp.

  The book landed on its spine, opening to a random page in the process.

  I can read it. The pages that appeared blank before now are flowing with writing. At least, some of them are. My hormones forgotten, I snatch the book up and sit down, skimming through the pages.

  The first twenty or so pages now contain writing, though the rest of the book is blank. Afraid to blink or breathe, in case the writing disappears, I flip to the inside of the front cover.

  A list of twenty names scrolls down one side, and I read each one.

  Erish Girin Kingmaker, death by vampire, reads the first. Each name is followed by the method of death, and I skim through them, seeking some sort of pattern. The deaths of each Kingmaker appear to be random, with every one of the ten other supernatural clans having killed one of my predecessors. Half the names are female, the other half male, though I’m the first female Kingmaker born in six generations.

  Thomas Albert Kingmaker, death by

  With some regret, I pause at the last name on the list. My father’s name is written in his hand, though his method of death is blank.

  I touch the writing, wishing I could touch him again, too. Is this what I’m supposed to do first? Write my name and leave a blank spot for who murders me?

  Needing to know more, namely why violent deaths are so common in my family, I turn to the first full page of text written in cursive and dated sometime in the sixteenth century. The words have been rewritten in modern English beneath the flowery, antiquated writing.

  “’The Rituals: Mating, Exile and Succession,’” I whisper. “’Every Kingmaker must have an heir before his death. Upon the murder of the current Kingmaker, his heir must choose a mate and sire a successor so that the Kingmaker line is never broken.’” I read more of the convoluted explanation behind needing an heir and come to the conclusion the original text was written by someone who used ten words for every one that was necessary. I resist the urge to take a highlighter to the ancient book so I can mark what’s relevant. “’Kingmaker’s must choose a supernatural mate. Said mate cannot be from a supernatural clan chosen in the past five generations.’”

  I glance at my arm. My mother was a zombie, my grandmother a succubus, my great grandmother a banshee. Before them, a magician, a minor goddess, a merman and a pixie princess round out my family history. None of the three supernaturals I’ve met have interbred with my family for at least five generations.

  “’The mating, exile and leadership succession rituals will initially occur in tandem with one another. Three clans must present candidates to the elder Kingmaker, who must approve of the candidates before they can pursue the younger Kingmaker, upon the death of the elder,’” I read.

  According to this, my father didn’t just know, he’d chosen the three supernaturals. But why didn’t he tell me?

  “’The surviving Kingmaker must decide which of the candidates is a potential mate, which poses a threat to our Community and which is the best leader. Once a mate is chosen of the three, one of the other two candidates must immediately be named the community leader and the other exiled. Said mate must resign from her leadership position and live with the Kingmaker and thus becomes ineligible to lead the clans. One of those remaining will be appointed by the Kingmaker as the leader of all the clans, hereby known simply as the Community, while the other will be exiled for falsely pursing the leadership position. These positions remain unchanged until the Community leader’s death, upon which, the Kingmaker chooses a successor at will. The Kingmaker shall retain access to all histories of the seven plus three, despite death, and to the histories of new candidates presented for leadership.’”

  I pause and reread everything, confused as hell. My father told me about one of the rituals – the selection of a Community leader. But Exile?

  Mating? Of everything I’ve read, this part floors me the most. The supernaturals were right.

  More convoluted language, some of which baffles me, and a lot of which I skim. Five pages later, the chapter on the ritual is over, and a new chapter begins, this one entitled, “Reference A: Werewolves, in order of historical significance, as categorized by …” Seven names are written, the latest being my father. I flip the page and see a list of titles written in what appears to be random order. I recognize some from my father’s library but am at a loss as to why the list is in the order it’s in.

  Standing, I clutch the book to my chest and leave the safety of my room. The house smells too strong of air fresheners, and the sound of traffic is annoying, but I’m not about to lose it like I did the first time around. I trot down the stairs and go to the door of my father’s study.

  Opening it, I suck in a deep breath – and can’t move.

  The place where my father spent most of his time is saturated with his scent. It’s as if he were just here and stepped outside to smoke a cigar. If I wait another five minutes, he’ll be back at his desk, where he always is.

  Tears prick my eyes. His scent is warm, comforting – and strong. It was bad enough coming to his favorite room in the house before I could smell him like this. He’s alive in this room and dead everywhere else.

  Swallowing hard, I force myself to enter and close the door. I don’t want his scent to escape this room, ever, or to lose the final piece of him.

  This is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I go to the bookshelves crammed into the small space. Most of the books are old, bound in leather, with their titles embossed on the spines. I start to look for the first title on the list in my Book of Secrets.

  Surrounded by his scent, I catch myself looking frequently at his desk to see if he’s there. It feels like he’s with me, and I’m both tormented and comforted by the sense.

  “A History of the Chesapeake Bay,” I murmur when I spot the book. I pull it off the shelf and open it.

  “A History of the Werewolf Clan,” reads the inside title page.

  I pause and flip through it. I’ve looked in every book here at some point. Raised in the study, with my scholarly father looking over his current read at me, I played with the books and built towers out of them before I was old enough to read them. When I learned to read, I’d pluck random books off the shelf and practice and then, he used to read me sections of them sometimes at night, too.

  But none of the books I’d ever read had been about werewolves or supernaturals. Puzzled, I place it aside and go to the second book on the list.

  “The Chesapeake Bay Watershed: Flora and Fauna,” is the title of the second. I find it on another shelf, close to the floor, and open it to the title page. “The Werewolf Civil War of the Fourth Century.”

  The books are encoded. It’s the only explanation. And for some reason, I’m able to read what’s hidden inside them now where I wasn’t able to before this. I ponder this for a moment before flipping open the Book of Secrets once more and struggling through some of the convoluted sections of the first chapter.

  “’The Kingmaker shall retain access to all histories of the seven plus three, despite death.’” I close the book and glance at the markings of my arm. “Seven markings, three candidates.” I look anew at the books around me. “I can access the information of ten clans.” Flipping through the Book of Secrets, I stop once I reach a blank page. “Hmm. Or maybe, I’ll be able to eventually.” I can only read about twenty pages of the five hundred page book, and the first Reference pertains only to werewolves. I’m not sure what that means, unless I have to spend time with all ten clans before I can understand their histories and secrets.

  I flip to the end of the Reference, where the list is written in my father’s familiar hand. I go through and pick out another four books, then heft them all to the floor and make
a place where I can start reading. I don’t have the heart to take my father’s seat. It’s stupid, but I feel like he might come back, and if I sit at his desk, he never will.

  Sighing, I pick up the most recent book of those I selected, a book written by my father.

  When I open the book, his scent washes over me again, tainted by the ashes of his cigar, as if he wrote this book ten minute ago, hunched over his desk and smoking. Combined with the sight of his handwriting, I glance towards his desk.

  “Please don’t leave me alone,” I beg him in a whisper.

  Fat tears slide down my face. I can’t stop them. I never can once this mood hits. Burying my face in my hands, I sit among his books in his study, tortured by his scent, and sob. The N-Thrall has worn completely off, so much faster than usual, and all the pain I managed to cage for a couple hours this morning is slamming into me, along with a headache.

  And that’s how Benjamin finds me, sitting in my prom dress surrounded by books. I smell him before I see him, but I’m too lost in my sorrow to register it’s him.

  The side of me he awoke craves his touch before he reaches me, and I hunch away, hating for anyone to see me cry.

  “Leave … me alone!” I order him.

  The instant his hand rests on my arm, however, I swoon. “Drugs and books. Interesting combination,” he says. There’s no judgment in his voice. He kneels behind me and his arms slide around me.

  I resist as long as I can, which isn’t long at all, before I let him pull me into his body. Almost instantly, I start to stabilize once more. My headache lessens, and the impact of my world eases.

  Benjamin holds me quietly until I’m no longer shaking. I’m having a harder time stopping my tears, though, and twist, burying my face into his shirt so I can smell his skin. It’s this that calms me – his scent, his touch, his warmth.