Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4)

by McKenzie Hunter

  He leaned forward to kiss me but I didn’t respond, keeping my lips pressed firmly together. Distractions. Distractions. Distractions. This was now his new sleight of hand and I wasn’t having any of it.

  “I keep thinking about what Logan said about the Faeries,” I said. “What if Maya was one? That would explain so much. It would definitely explain why they resorted to infanticide to get rid of her. If she is, how horrible were the Fairies that people would resort to such things?”

  A lot of the things that happened in the otherworld as an effort to prevent future problems were cruel by most standards. Its denizens often “contained” situations, which meant they killed off many for the pure agenda of keeping the world safe. But were you really ever safe in a world with vampires who devoured blood to survive and had moral compasses that seemed to be perpetually broken? Or elves who lived in the shadows, hidden from the world by glamours, and spent most of their time genetically engineering creatures that if released could cause the type of havoc that could destroy this world and the real world? Or their lesser counterparts who could control weather and agriculture? Faes who could control the mind, force the truth with a kiss? Or were-animals who shifted into creatures larger than the animal counterpart found in nature, who accepted fights of dominance as pack culture? Witches, despite their objections, were just as much a part of this world as anyone else. Magic and the depth of their control to cast curses that could kill, to form barriers that protected them from most things. How did the people in this world decide what addition to this ominous and bizarre place was too much for it to handle?

  Ethan ran his hands through his hair and heaved a ragged breath. “If my research is correct, I think the best choice was to kill them before they could reach their full potential.” I knew what he was eluding to—and it made me sick.

  “No, that is never an option.”

  His lips dipped into a frown. “Sky, the Faeries were not good people. And because of how powerful they were they couldn’t be destroyed, so what other options did they have?”

  I didn’t know what options they had, but I hated the very idea that someone thought it was okay to kill a child because it might grow up to be something horrible.

  Ethan rolled out of bed and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to get something out of my car.”

  “You’re going out there like that? Clothes please.”

  He looked out the window—it was still dark outside. Then he glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. “I doubt there’s anyone outside. I’m used to my home.”

  The estate which Ethan called a home did provide a lot of privacy. There were only six homes in the subdivision and they were so far apart I doubt he ever saw his neighbors, I’m pretty sure he was pleased with that.

  “Well, I have neighbors, and I doubt they want to see your naked ass and junk while having their morning coffee.”

  They were probably used to it. After multiple discussions with Steven, he finally at least started wearing pants. The neighbors didn’t seem to mind. In fact, most of my neighbors happened to make too much of everything and used that as a reason to come over and share their various dishes with us. Free food. The pang of Steven’s absence hit me again. Sometime over the past couple of days he had removed more of his things. I wasn’t sure if he was saving me the pain of an uncomfortable departure or he didn’t want to deal with my maudlin display of emotions that I wouldn’t be able to control once he actually left. I pushed the thoughts aside.

  He sighed, frowning as he grabbed his underwear and slipped them on as he headed out the door.

  It’s just clothes.

  He returned with a book that he dropped on my lap. As I read through the pages, I was met with recounts of enslavement, torture, destruction, and exceptionally cruel displays of power. They were cruel, and the more I read, the less the idea of “containing” people seemed abhorrent. Many of the Faeries were eventually killed, but not without the loss of thousands in order to kill a few. Limited in their ability to procreate, they started to do so with humans, but doing that left them the less powerful progeny that we called fae. Logan described Faeries as godlike, and as I read on, I realized he wasn’t far off. They fought hard to retain their status, finding that witches produced a stronger offspring.

  I don’t believe in infanticide. I don’t believe in infanticide. I repeated that mantra over and over in my head despite reading how they forced were-animals into animal form and treated them as such. The anxiety of my new discovery wound tight in my stomach as I came across the names Ravyn, Emmalesse, Leonel, and Ethosial. Considered the strongest of the Faeries because of their ability to manipulate magic, shapeshift, perform necro-magic equivalent to that of dark elves, and transfer magic similar to what I was able to do with Josh. I stared at the names as my fingers went numb and my hand became cool and clammy. Was Ethos a descendant of the Faerie himself? If a knife in the throat didn’t kill him and enclosing him in an oxygen-deprived protective field barely stopped him, he might actually be. How old were they? I could only imagine the extent of his magic. Emma’s story of losing her child, Maya: was it really as tragic as I believed? Emma—was it coincidently similar to Emmalesse? Who was she?

  “How long have you had this information?” I asked.

  “Not long.”

  “And you didn’t tell me about it? You can’t continue keeping information like this and then just springing it on me,” I snapped. I wanted to be upset and angry with someone. It was the only emotion that was easily at my disposal. The others had retreated, leaving me feeling empty. I kept looking at the names, the familiarity and how unusual they were. I just didn’t believe in coincidences anymore after witnessing collusion, secret alliances, worlds hidden by glamours, creatures created by the manipulation of magic, lives captured into shades, and natural elements controlled by the wiggle of a hand. I didn’t have the luxury of believing that things were coincidences, because they never were. Was Emma a grieving mother or participant in making sure that Faeries continued to exist, maintaining their hold on the otherworld, living as gods, and expecting reverence? As the mother of such a powerful being she would hold a place of power by association.

  I’d read enough but I forced myself to continue, hoping someone had written a how-to on killing them, but there wasn’t any such luck. Pages and pages of their talents, when they could have simply written, “They can do everything—the end.”

  Startled, I quickly grabbed the phone as soon as it vibrated and played David’s ringtone. I answered, expecting his typical greeting of calling me a feline or a pastry. Instead, his voice was shaky and raspy. “Skylar, I need you here, now.” Then he hung up.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got to his house, but I was prepared for anything. I didn’t care about the peculiar look Ethan gave me when I grabbed a hunter’s knife and the Aufero and headed out the door with him in tow—thankfully fully dressed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked the moment David answered the door. In response, he moved aside, and curled up against the wall was a man covered by a blood-speckled sheet. David pulled back the covers, exposing a half-naked man, hair punctured through his sallow skin. I knelt in front of him, and he attempted to speak but could only get out a pained “k” or “ca.” I tried to make it out but couldn’t.

  “Don’t try to talk. I’m going to help you.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt because I didn’t know how to help him. His eyes resembled the odd ones of the man I nearly ran over. Was he a mutated were-animal, and if so, what the hell happened? David plopped in the chair next to us and looked relieved that I had a handle on things.

  “Where’s Trent?” Ethan asked.

  Even David looked surprised by the question, probably because Ethan had never met him.

  “I had to give him something. When the guy started growing hair he freaked out. He’s sleeping right now.”

  “I need to take off the rest of your clot
hes, okay?” I said to the injured man. I used my knife to remove the rest of his clothes and then placed my hand on his sweaty warm skin trying to force a change. I wasn’t sure what he was going to change to. My experience with helping someone change was novice at best, but since I’d helped Ethan, I felt confident I could do it. Closing my eyes, I felt the tingles of the change that happened in my body, the prickle of my skin as the hairs prepared to force their way through. The tension on my joints as they prepared to be stretched and contorted to accommodate a new form. My heart slowed and I could feel my vital organs starting to perform at accelerated levels, preparing for what my body would endure.

  The man squirmed under my touch, but eventually he relaxed against the floor. His eyes widened, and a frown made its way across his face distorting his appearance. Sweat started to pool and roll down his face. He appeared to be waiting for me to make the pain disappear—something I wasn’t sure I could do. Time stretched, and nothing happen. The same obscure hairs remained, and his eyes had the odd appearance of an animal’s stuck in a human’s body. In the background I could hear Ethan on the phone with Dr. Jeremy and Josh. Once he hung up with them he took up a position next to me. Moving my hand, he continued trying to force a change. The man’s back rounded, the crunching of his bones breaking and reassembling filling the air. David looked like he was about to lose whatever he had eaten in the past week as he retched behind us. It would have been rude to suggest that he take whatever he had given Trent, but he needed something.

  I went to the kitchen to get him something. At first I considered ginger ale, but hell, he was about to see a man transition to an animal and our transition wasn’t pretty and fluid. It was going to be ugly and gross. Instead, I brought back vodka, but I didn’t bother with a mixer or a glass that I knew wouldn’t be used. As soon as I handed it to him, he threw back the bottle, and gulped down most of it before he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. This disheveled, flustered mess wasn’t David, and I felt like crap that he was going through this.

  I guided him to the sofa, and he took another look at the corner to get a view of the man that was a wolf from the waist down. The cracking continued, along with the screech-like sound of ligaments being stretched beyond their physiological tensile ability. The panic of knowing the heart was about to stop for a few moments sent Strange Eyes into a panic.

  “You didn’t look like that when you changed.”

  I didn’t want to lie to David, our friendship was better than that. “It gets better each time. He’s different and I don’t know what his deal is, but when I know something I’ll tell you, okay?”

  He nodded. And then he frowned. “Oh kitten, I hate that my cupcake has to go through that every month.”

  Look at that a twofer, feline and a pastry in one sentence.

  Another look at Strange Eyes and then David took another hard hit from the bottle. By the time the man had fully transitioned David had excused himself to the bathroom, bottle of liquid courage in hand. His tenuous grip on bravery had snapped, and I would have followed him, but I had a feeling he really wanted to be alone.

  Dr. Jeremy, Josh, Sebastian, and Winter had filed into the room when David returned, having somehow gathered his composure. A smile eased across his lips as he greeted everyone as though an exhausted Ethan wasn’t propped against the wall with a fully formed wolf that was barely breathing lying next to him. But he was so obviously drunk off his ass, something like that just wouldn’t seem so bothersome. He nearly ignored everyone and went to Winter, whom he had seen numerous time at my house but had never been officially introduced to.

  “The dark swan, how beautiful you truly are in person.” Sober David was going to regret that statement. I needed to get him out of here before he started espousing all his little nicknames he had for people. Winter’s didn’t make a lot of sense, either. He said it was because she was beautiful, graceful, and pleasing to look at, but her resting bitch face made her seem dark and menacing.

  The glare she gave him only served to prove my point. Her eye thing freaked him the hell out—amber slits flashing in her dark pupils. It freaked me out the first time I saw it and pretty much every other time she did it. But not David. It seemed to add to her mystique and he appeared to be even more intrigued by her. I could imagine him doing something totally inappropriate with her, like treating her face like putty and trying to push a smile on it.

  I formed a tight gird around his arm and guided him to the kitchen to get water and whatever I could to help get him sober—or the nicknames he thought were clever and cute weren’t going to make him a friend of the pack.

  From his kitchen I could see everything while I kept handing him water, and he sat on a stool. After a few minutes he seemed better and chomped down the sandwich I quickly assembled. I didn’t blame him—this was a lot to handle, and since I’d only changed once with him and most of it happened with me behind a tree, this was the first time he’d actually seen a change, and it was a horribly grotesque one. I made a promise to allow him to see someone else change, preferably Gavin. His change was absolutely striking, pure fluidity and as graceful as the panther he became.

  “Is he okay to question?” Sebastian asked, entering the kitchen.

  David, who had lowered his face onto the counter resting it on his hands, rose up and immediately started to stare at Sebastian. It was the same look that most people had when they first met him: diametrical chaos. He was the living embodiment of a beautiful monster. An alluring predator that incited the desire to have him and the need to run and cower. Just forty-eight hours after nearly dying he still possessed it like a second layer of skin.

  David straightened. “I’m fine.” His self-assurance was fake, and if I could see it, I know Sebastian could as well.

  His deep baritone voice was genteel as he addressed David. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I was getting ready for work.” David worked in public relations. Most of the time he worked from home but went to the office once a week. He was always so stylishly dressed I never knew if it was the day he went to the office or not.

  He looked around the kitchen; I was sure he was ready to take another drink of liquid courage. I slid a cup of water over to him. He took a sip and continued. “I heard a light knocking. He looked injured so I opened the door. I was about to call the police when I got a look at his legs, that’s when I called Skylar.”

  Sebastian shot a glance in my direction and then back at David. “Did he say anything?”

  “Just partial words, ‘kil'l’... kela’ maybe. I couldn’t make out any of it.”

  “Could it have been Kelly?” Sebastian asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Sebastian thanked him and quickly made his way back to the living room. Reluctantly, I left David and followed Sebastian, who was going through the man’s discarded clothing searching through the pockets of his pants where he found a license. Kelly’s license.

  “She didn’t leave, she was taken,” he said and then swore under his breath. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Sebastian. At every given moment he was playing three-dimensional chess with the otherworld, and just when he was about to call “checkmate” everything gets knocked over and he has to start over and he’s given a hell of a hand to play with: Your Beta is a dark elf. Kelly, your employee, becomes injured by a creature from the dark forest. You fix her, and now she is missing. You have to placate a psychotic and troublesome Seethe’s Mistress to prevent a war with the vampires. Someone calls you to tell you they are about to kill a child because of an antiquated belief and you have to fly across the world and decimate a pack to save her. I couldn’t believe he would challenge anyone to keep his position. I’d offer pie to anyone who would take it.

  Sebastian was about to speak when Dr. Jeremy started yelling for assistance. Strange Eyes was convulsing on the ground. The short spastic movements came to an abrupt stop, and Dr. Jeremy checked him and immediately started CPR. Winter took over while he searche
d through his bag and gave him a shot directly to the heart. Things had to be bad—my mother was a pathologist and I’d seen this done so many times on television shows that I thought it was a viable option, and she’d simply rolled her eyes and said, “Now if only they would show the doctor going through his malpractice case, this story would be more realistic.” It was a procedure done in emergencies only. Like now, when a recently changed were-animal, and I’m not sure if we could categorize him as that, went into cardiac arrest.

  He didn’t move. We waited. Nothing. Dr. Jeremy’s hands ran through his hair, ruffling the silver mass that already looked like he had just gotten out of his bed to get here. I could tell Dr. Jeremy didn’t lose patients often. His typically relaxed demeanor was constricted, and the gentle lines that gave his regal features character made him look weathered and aged. “I want to take him back to the retreat to study him,” he said.

  Sebastian turned to David, who had made his way out of the kitchen with the horrible timing of seeing the were-animal die. He blanched and looked like he was going to be sick. They took the wolf to the car through the garage; since it had been hours, we were well into the day and I was sure the neighbors were out.

  After Dr. Jeremy left with the body, I was nervous when Sebastian came back in to talk to David. “He won’t say anything,” I assured him.

  “I know. But I still need to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  His eyes narrowed to small slits. Sebastian hated to be questioned, and his firm handling of his job confirmed he wasn’t very often.

  “He’s scared and you’re kind of ”—Raging box of scary—“intense and I think he’s been through enough.”

  Sebastian considered it for a few minutes and then me for even longer. “Give him my number and have him call me. He needs to call me, Skylar, okay?” As he walked away, he shot back over his shoulder, “I will see you tomorrow at five for training.”