by Steph2
EDGE OF MOONLIGHT
STEPHANIE JULIAN
Copyright
Stephanie Julian
Published by Stephanie Julian
Copyright 2015. Stephanie Julian.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate bookseller to purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.
Glossary
Arus: magical power inherent in the Fata and Enu, races of Etruscan descent
Boschetta: Etruscan coven, traditionally comprised of thirteen streghe
Candela: Etruscan sprite, tiny magical beings with wings and a certain glow about them
Decurio : legion rank of commander
Eteri (pl. eteri): Etruscan for foreigner, used to describe regular humans without magic
Enu: humans of magical Etruscan descent
Fata: elemental beings of magical Etruscan descent
Folletta (pl. folletti): Etruscan female fairy
Linchetto (pl. linchetti): Etruscan night elf
Malandante: descended from the Etruscans but born with a bent toward evil, with a taste for power and wealth
Praenuntio: Goddess Gift of foresight
Pugio: a Roman dagger
Quercioli: the offspring of a folletta and a linchetto, always female
Salbinelli: Etruscan satyr
Sicari (pl: sicarii): assassin
Silvani: one of the three original Etruscan Fata; always female, protectors of fields and forests
Speculator: spy
Strega (pl. streghe): Etruscan witch
Versipellis (pl. versipelli): literally “skin shifter”—shapeshifters including Etruscan Lucani (wolves), Norse Berkserkir (bears) and French loup garou (wolves)
Chapter One
“Kaine! Wake up.”
Coming back to consciousness with a start, Kaine Giliati bolted upright, her heart pounding not only from being startled but from the dream.
In her mind’s eye, she still saw him. Glass-green eyes ringed in topaz, sharp cheekbones, strong jaw. An intensely masculine face framed by short, dark brown hair clipped close to the skull.
He’d been bending closer, nearly to her lips…
Blinking, Kaine registered the sight of Tira Belludi’s concerned face staring down at her.
Shit. Shit. She’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room of the home she shared with three of the people she trusted most in her life. Three people who cared about her, worried about her.
She saw the worry in Tira’s eyes now, in the way she bit her bottom lip. Worried because Kaine had been dreaming.
When she dreamed, she dreamed of him.
And longed for what she couldn’t have.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Really.” Maybe if she said it enough, it’d be true. “I’m fine. What’s wrong?”
Tira shook her head slowly. “Nothing’s wrong. I just…thought you called out. Were you…” Tira huffed, as though exasperated by trying to talk about the subject no one would broach.
Kaine didn’t blame her, not one bit. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to worry you.” And that was the absolute truth. “But I don’t know what I was dreaming about.”
And that was a big lie. Huge lie.
Which Tira knew. Her hands went to her hips and her mouth flattened into that line she got when one of her men tried to pull something over on her. Tira might look like a sweet little blonde cupcake but she had a backbone that was fast becoming steel-plated.
Kaine thought that was great. Really. Tira needed it to put up with the two men in her life who also happened to be Kaine’s partners, Nic Rocca and Duke Ducati. Kaine knew from working with the men how overbearing they could be. How protective.
But Kaine didn’t like when Tira turned that steel-plating her way.
“All right.” Tira crossed her arms over her chest, her tone firm. “This has gone on long enough. You need to talk to someone. I’m here. The guys aren’t so…” she sighed. “We’re worried about you. You haven’t been yourself. Believe me, it’ll be better if you do talk about it.”
No, Kaine was pretty sure it wouldn’t get any better if she talked about her problems. Because unlike Tira, who’d spent eight years separated from the men she loved and who loved her back, Kaine’s separation wasn’t willing. Not on her part, anyway.
What was worse, the man didn’t even know she existed. At least, not anymore.
So, yes, Kaine was pretty sure she didn’t want to talk. She hadn’t wanted to talk since that day a week ago when her commanding legion officer, Kyle Rossini, and his former partner, Dan Ferrante, had loaded two unconscious eteri in their car and driven them away.
“I’m fine.”
Tira shook her head. “No, you’re not.” Moving to the front of the couch, she sat on the cushion beside Kaine. Tira didn’t touch her and for that, Kaine was grateful. As a strega, an Etruscan witch, Tira had inherited her mother’s Goddess Gift of praenuntio. That gift allowed her to see the future through skin-on-skin contact.
Kaine didn’t want to know what her future held. She already knew what it didn’t.
“I know you’ve been crying even though you try to hide it,” Tira said. “The guys can’t see the signs but I can. I know you’re not sleeping well. And…I know you miss him.”
Kaine dropped her gaze to stare at her hands, clenched into fists on her lap. With a conscious effort, she forced them to relax.
“Miss” was too tame to describe how she felt.
Vaffanculo, she’d only known John a couple of days. How could he—
“Kaine,” Tira’s voice snuck in under the wall of ice she was trying to erect against her emotions. “Just say it.”
Her lips started to tremble but she bit them. Hard. The weight on her chest grew heavier. She felt like heated emotion was being forced through her entire body until finally she couldn’t contain it anymore.
She opened her mouth to speak but the tears rolling down her cheeks must have released the floodgates. She sobbed. The sound frightened her because she never cried. Not since she’d been a kid.
Now, hard sobs wracked her body, making her feel horrible.
She wanted to curl into a ball and fade away until she didn’t hurt anymore.
Gentle hands settled on her shoulders, guiding her down until she rested her head on Tira’s denim-covered thigh as Kaine poured out her heart in her tears.
Outside, she heard the howl of the late February wind and thought how much it sounded like a wolf in pain.
*
“Hey, don’t you have that job interview today?”
John Simmons set aside the classified section of the local paper and let his gaze scan his sister instead.
Standing beside the small kitchen table, Evangeline looked tired. Her pale gray eyes held shadows and her cheeks looked hollow. At five-one and a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, Evie had always reminded John of a pixie, pretty and delicate. Someone to be shielded and protected.
Fucked up that job requirement, didn’t you?
Anger and frustration bubbled in his gut but he forced it back, hopefully without alerting Evie to its presence. “How’d you sleep, brat?”
She shrugged one too-slim shoulder before moving to the kitchen in their apartment in downtown Reading. Not hers. Not his. Their
apartment. “Not too bad. No dreams last night so that’s an improvement.”
Yeah, it was. Although he couldn’t say the same.
He’d dreamed last night, the one he’d had every night for the past two weeks.
It always started the same way. With the debilitating horror of discovering his sister had been kidnapped.
That was no dream. That had actually happened several weeks ago but the dream made him relive it again and again.
Then bits and pieces of his life flashed by, like a montage from a movie. The day he’d signed onto the Navy. The moment he’d received his Budweiser. Then the realization that his sister had missed her weekly call. And that he hadn’t noticed until three days had passed.
That hadn’t been a dream, either.
He’d requested emergency leave and hopped the next flight back to Philadelphia before renting a car for the drive to Reading. He’d gone to her former apartment. He remembered opening the door, seeing the mess then being overpowered and waking in a cell with no windows.
Drugs had kept him docile while they’d done blood tests. His captors had never spoken to him or asked him questions. It’d been surreal, like he’d been thrown into a movie, one he’d never auditioned for.
They’d fed him, given him water but they’d never released him from the cage. Then one day, he’d read the lips of his captors and discovered the address where they were keeping Evie.
He’d escaped somehow. That part was fuzzy in the dreams, though when he was awake, he remembered exactly what had happened. His kidnappers had drugged him and left him there to die. But he’d managed to crawl out of the cell and out of the house. Managed to remember where they’d been keeping his sister and he’d gone to save her. Alone.
He remembered fighting the kidnappers who finally ran off, leaving him and Evie to bolt in the opposite direction.
But then the dream got weird because the woman appeared. A woman he didn’t remember ever meeting.
An exotically beautiful woman with huge, dark brown eyes, a full mouth and a shaggy mass of hair that ranged from shades of gray to brown to gold. Sleek and lightly muscled with small breasts and no hips.
She should’ve looked like a boy. John had no doubt she was all woman. His body yearned for her. But every time he dreamed of her, he never got to actually kiss her.
He wanted to kiss her with a passion that was becoming obsessive.
“Hey, John. Where’d you go?”
His gaze snapped back to his sister, now holding a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. Damn, he must have blanked for at least a minute while Evie stood there, staring at him with worry in her eyes.
No way did he want her to worry.
“Just thinking about the interview.”
For a job he didn’t want.
“John?”
Evie cocked her head to the side, wide gray eyes watching his every movement. His wild-child, fuck-authority, leap-first baby sister had become a timid mouse since the kidnapping.
She’d given him no hassle about dying her hair back to its natural light brown, losing the midnight black with blue streaks that would make her too noticeable.
She’d had it cut too, in a chin-length bob that made her look so much younger than her twenty-two years. She still had the multiple piercings in her ears, though the multitude of different earrings had been replaced with tiny silver hoops and balls. She’d removed the tiny diamond stud in her nose though the hoop remained in her bellybutton.
And now she jumped at shadows.
John had moved her out of her former apartment the day after they’d escaped. He’d considered moving them out of state but figured whoever had kidnapped them wouldn’t expect them to stay in the area. They wouldn’t look so close to home, if they looked at all.
As off-the-wall as it sounded, John had come to the conclusion that the kidnappers must have been organ harvesters. He could explain the testing no other way. He must not have had whatever they were looking for, but Evie…
Would they return for Evie? Common sense said they wouldn’t but he wasn’t taking chances.
He’d retired. Effective immediately. That hadn’t been easy but he’d jumped through every hoop and dotted every last “I.” No one would take his sister again.
He and Evie had stayed a few nights in a hotel before he’d found this apartment. Located in a decent neighborhood on Eleventh Street in Reading only a block from City Park, the apartment occupied the entire top floor of a townhouse.
From the front window, they looked down into the garden of the house on the other side of the street. From the back, they looked up onto Mt. Penn where the Pagoda, a bright red replica of a Japanese temple, lit the night with its vivid lights.
The building’s owners, a middle-aged couple with no children, lived on the two floors beneath.
John had turned on the Navy charm to impress the couple, yes-ma’amed and no-sirred until they’d finally agreed to let them move in immediately. Of course, no one could resist Evie when she turned her imp smile on them. Adam and Beth Schultz had fallen under her spell immediately.
He’d used an alias to sign the lease, one only Uncle Sam would know was him. Evie hadn’t batted an eye at the false name. Just as she hadn’t cared when she’d called her boss at the preschool where she’d worked and was told she’d been fired for not showing up.
John had thought she’d loved that job.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He nodded, not trying to a force a smile. She’d know it was fake and then she’d worry even more. “Mostly, yeah. What about you? How are you? We…haven’t talked about what happened.”
Because every time he broached the subject, her expression wiped clean. He hadn’t known she could do that. She must’ve learned it from him. And she had her response down perfectly.
“I’m fine. Honestly. They didn’t hurt me, didn’t do anything except take some blood and hair samples.” Then she dropped his gaze with the pretense of grabbing a box of donuts from the counter and setting them on the table.
She pulled out a powdered-sugar fat bomb and took a huge bite then nearly choked on it when he asked, “What about the police? Do you want to go to the cops?”
Her eyes widened again and John cursed himself for putting the fear there.
“Do you think we need to? I thought you said they wouldn’t come after us again. That they were long gone and would think we were too. I don’t want to go to the cops. No cops, John, you promised.”
Yes, they’d agreed. John would take care of everything. He’d hide them in plain sight and deal with the bastards who’d kidnapped them.
He even had a lead, one he’d been following the past couple of days. Nothing to get too excited about yet but it was a name, something to go on.
“We can’t go to the cops,” she said, shaking her head.
Evie had been adamant about the no-cops thing and he couldn’t—
Two lightbulbs burst in the ceiling fan in the living room showering tiny bits of glass over the couch and chair.
Evie jumped about a foot off the ground, gasping and trembling.
John stood, reaching for her to draw her into his arms and gather her against him. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s all right. It’s just a couple of bulbs. A power surge. You’re fine. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll clean it up before I go.”
He hated that it took a full minute before she finally drew a deep breath and began to control the shakes. He didn’t try to restrain her when she pulled away from him.
“No. It’s okay. I’m okay.” She nodded as if trying to convince herself. “I’ll clean it up. You better get moving. Don’t want to be late for your interview.”
Actually, yes, he did. He didn’t want the damn job but they needed to eat and pay bills. He’d rather be out finding the bastards who’d stolen the light from his sister’s eyes.
While he’d run wild after their dad’s death when John was sixteen and Evie was eight, Evie had fallen into depression. He’d
left his mom to deal with most of it when he’d chosen to enlist in the Navy right out of high school.
While he’d been straightening his life out in the Navy, Evie had gotten into drugs and alcohol as a teenager, which led to therapy and rehab at nineteen.
Then their mom had died two years ago in that fucking car accident. And John had thought he might lose Evie to the depression and the drugs again.
But she’d pulled through. She’d made a life for herself these past two years.
Until those kidnappers had done something to her.
He looked up at the now-dark light fixture.
Something strange. Something John couldn’t explain.
And was afraid he didn’t want to.
Chapter Two
Two months later
Shivering in the cool April morning, Kaine knelt on the patch of soft green moss in the woods behind her home and prayed to the Great Mother Goddess for a miracle.
“Blessed Uni, I’m begging here. Please, I’m just asking for a little help.”
Closing her eyes, she turned her thoughts inward and called to her wolf.
She listened, strained to hear the answering howl in her head.
And heard only the birdsong in the trees around her.
Fear began to rise up but she forced it back with an effort of will and tried again.
She longed to feel the sharp prick of magic as it shot through her body, changing her very cells into those of a wolf. Longed for those milliseconds of sheer agony when her body shifted.
She was versipellis lucani. A wolf skin-shifter bred with magic in her blood and the ability to transform her body into that of a sleek gray wolf.
Only…she couldn’t do it.
Her lips parted to draw in much needed air, even as she tried to control the impulse to hyperventilate.
She couldn’t shift. Hadn’t been able to for two months.
Not since John—
With a frustrated groan, she let herself curl into a ball, her naked body cushioned by the moss. Arms wrapped around her legs drawn up again her chest, she stared into the forest floor reawakening from its winter nap.
Spring in southeastern Pennsylvania was in full swing. The redbuds had already burst into vibrant violet blooms. The mayapples and dutchman’s pipes were just beginning their show on the forest floor.