Over the Moon

by Angela Knight

“I have to go back,” he said.

  Her gaze was steady on his face. “To collect your things.”

  He did not correct her.

  “Well…” She sighed. “I’m meeting up with some friends in Hot Springs in two weeks. If you change your mind.”

  He held himself rigid. Was it his imagination, or were the birds suddenly, strangely still?

  “Or…or you could call,” she said.

  He willed himself not to say anything. Her tears and her blood constrained him. Maybe they bound her, too. If he called her, she might come.

  And if she came, it would be to her doom.

  Her gaze fell. “I don’t even know your last name.”

  There was power in names. But he would give her his, to carry like a talisman back to safety.

  “Rhys Danuson.” Rhys, son of the goddess.

  She smiled as if they’d just been introduced. “Cait MacLean.”

  The forest was quiet. Too quiet. Even the rush and drip of water seemed muted and far away.

  “Yes,” Rhys said, unthinking. “I know.”

  Cait’s brown eyes widened. “How—”

  The trees held their breath. The air around them shivered.

  “Go,” he said harshly. “Go now. Quickly.”

  But it was already too late.

  CHAPTER 5

  Cait stared at Rhys. Her heart ached like a bruise.

  She was an adult. She accepted responsibility for her own choices. Just because they’d had sex…[ ]She heard her own voice demanding, pleading, “Do it,” and shuddered. Anyway, just because she’d given herself for the first time in a fit of lust or rebellion or adolescent curiosity didn’t mean she expected Rhys to say he loved her.

  But at least he could say, I’ll call you.

  He was looking over her shoulder. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes.

  “‘Go quickly’?” Cait repeated. “That’s it? You can’t do better than that?”

  “Apparently not.” The cold, clear voice, a woman’s voice, rang from behind Cait—not loud, but as hard and scoured of emotion as a mountaintop. Rhys stiffened. “So, he disappoints us both.”

  Cait turned. And gaped. Whatever weird sparkly thing had affected her sight must have affected her brain, too, because she was definitely seeing things.

  At least, she hoped she was.

  She wanted to believe the woman blocking the path to the trail couldn’t possibly be for real. She was too tall, over six feet at least, like a runway model. Not thin, like a model, or young, but fierce and beautiful and outlandishly dressed in a long, full skirt the color of blood and a high, white collar that framed her face.

  Her face…Cait gulped. Her face was cold and shining as the moon. Her eyes were black and hostile. And at her skirts, crouched like a dog, was the short hiker, Goodfellow.

  Cait’s heart hammered. Her gaze darted to the trees, searching for Ursus. But the woman wasn’t the sort of person you felt comfortable taking your eyes off for long.

  “Bind her,” the woman commanded. Her voice echoed in Cait’s head.

  Cait blinked. Uh…

  “I cannot. Not against her will,” Rhys replied seriously, as if the woman had actually made a rational request.

  As if…[ ]Cait glanced back at him, her stomach sinking. As if he knew her. Now that Cait saw them together, they even looked a little alike. Their height, she supposed, and their hair color, and something strong and proud and secret in their faces.

  He disappoints us both.

  Oh, no.

  The woman drew herself up, so she looked even taller and scary, despite the Mardi Gras costume. Or maybe because of it.

  She sneered. “I do not need you to instruct me, manling. You must bend her will to your desire.”

  Nobody sane, nobody real, talked like that. Either the lady was crazy and Rhys was mixed up with these loonies, or Cait was losing her own mind.

  And yet…Cait had a sick, growing conviction they were talking about her, Caitlin, about her will, about…[ ]Okay, she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. But her gut knew it was bad.

  Goodfellow cleared his throat. “Perhaps with time, Lady…”

  “It is not time he lacks,” the proud woman said with crushing scorn. “It is stomach.”

  Speaking of stomachs, Cait’s was making a serious effort to lose the tea and apples. Her head throbbed as if she had a migraine.

  The woman’s voice bored into her brain. “…deal with it myself.”

  Rhys answered.

  Good, Cait thought, struggling to focus. He knew her. Let him deal with her.

  Through the pounding in her skull, Cait heard, “…your grievance” and, “…not her fault,” and felt a spurt of gratitude.

  “I will have what is mine,” the woman said.

  “She was never yours,” Rhys said evenly. “Nor is she mine.”

  The woman pinned him with her coal black eyes. “You lie. I can smell her on you.”

  Cait winced. Okay, that was creepy.

  Her head hurt. She wanted to cling to the idea that the woman was crazy. Scary, the way the homeless guy in the campus garden mumbling to himself was sometimes scary, but not actually dangerous. But what did that make Goodfellow? A fellow escapee from the asylum?

  Cait shivered. And what about Rhys?

  Goodfellow cocked his head, regarding Cait with bright, black eyes. “She does not wear the necklace.”

  The woman’s laser beam focus switched to Cait. Cait froze, her heart beating like a rabbit’s, the necklace burning in her pocket. Her hand crept to her throat.

  Leave me out of this, she wanted to protest. But the words clogged in her throat.

  “It does not matter,” the woman announced at last with magnificent indifference. “My debt will be satisfied.”

  “The debt is her parents’.” Rhys was rigid, his voice without expression. “Let the punishment be theirs.”

  Now, wait a minute…

  The woman smiled. Not a nice smile. “Her fate is their punishment.”

  Cait tried to think through the jagged pain in her head. They were definitely talking about her fate. About her parents. Talk about crazy. Her parents were the steadiest, most boring people Cait knew. Her mother was a librarian, for crying out loud. Her father owned a garage. Any two people less likely to be involved in…involved in…But here her imagination quite simply failed.

  Your parents…They would be upset if something happened to you, Rhys had said.

  Her fate is their punishment.

  Cait felt a small, warming spurt of anger. (“Too stubborn for her own good,” her mother used to say, and her father would laugh and shake his head.) She was tired and confused and her head hurt and the man she had given her virginity to was talking about her as if she wasn’t there with a seven-foot-tall scary psycho woman. But she wasn’t standing by while they threatened her parents.

  She took a step forward. “Look—”

  The lady swung her savage focus on Cait. Cait met the full force of her black gaze.

  And immediately wished she hadn’t.

  The darkness in those eyes yawned like a pit before her. Whoever, whatever, stared back at her from the lady’s eyes wasn’t crazy.

  It wasn’t human, either.

  Black wasn’t a color, it was the void, deep and treacherous as a shaft under the mountain, empty as space without moon or stars. Faced with that bottomless gaze, Cait couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. She was being drawn in, sucked into oblivion.

  Relax. The memory of Rhys’s voice caught at her soul like an anchor. I can’t do anything you don’t want me to do.

  She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. The lady’s gaze sapped her will, weighted her limbs, squeezed her lungs. Her resolution slipped. She trembled on the brink of falling.

  The chain burned in her pocket like a hot coal against her thigh.

  From somewhere, Cait found the strength to breathe, and then the courage to resist. She concentrated on the pa
in, using it, holding on to it to withstand the pull of that black, immortal gaze, to drag herself back from whatever edge summoned her.

  Gradually the grip on her senses slackened. Cait came to, still staring into the lady’s eyes.

  The lady frowned in displeasure. “There is more of your dam in you than I reckoned. Well, no matter.” She raised her hand.

  Cait gulped.

  Rhys jerked. “No. Mother—”

  Cait felt herself teeter on another edge. Mother?

  The lady barely spared him a glance. “I am the Queen. I will have payment of my debt.”

  Rhys’s face was as white, as set, as hard as hers. Seeing the two faces, so close, so alike, made Cait’s stomach lurch. “Then take me.”

  Slowly, the lady lowered her arm. The quiet pressed under the trees.

  Sharp anxiety seized Cait. “What are you doing?”

  Goodfellow coughed. “Majesty…[ ]Please. Consider.”

  “Take me in payment,” Rhys repeated, never taking his eyes from the lady. His mother? “And let her go free.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cait snapped.

  “So be it.” The words dropped like stones. The air shimmered like the surface of a pond. The queen flung up her hand. “Live solitary, apart from all your kind. And die alone.”

  “No!” Cait yelled. “Wait! Stop it!”

  She didn’t even know what she was trying to stop. But “die alone” couldn’t be good.

  She threw herself toward Rhys. The sky cracked. The earth heaved. She flung her arms around his shoulders and felt him change, felt his bones shudder and lengthen, felt his skin roughen and erupt with fur, felt his muscles shift and bunch. She tumbled with him to the ground, sprawling on her knees as the cry from his throat stretched into a howl that hung on the air. For one horrible, hairy, confused moment, she clung to him, feeling the terrible wrongness of his shape without comprehending. Details flashed without registering. Hot breath. Bared teeth.

  Flaming golden eyes in a snouted, furry face.

  Cait screamed.

  The animal (“Wolf!” her mind shrieked) in her arms scrambled desperately for freedom, his paws digging at her thighs, ripping her clothes, his claws scoring her arms, drawing blood. Pain welled, thick and hot as fear, blotting out thought. Fresh screams tore from her throat.

  The wolf crashed away through the underbrush.

  Cait was sobbing, bleeding, her mind bright and blank with disbelief. She staggered to her feet. To follow it? To follow him? The forest floor buckled, pitching her into darkness.

  She lay stunned, her fingers clutching rotting leaves, her body sprawled in melting snow. Her brain buzzed like a fly caught in a web. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. A black haze wrapped her, tangling her mind, trapping her limbs.

  “What will you do with her, then?” somebody asked close to her head.

  “Nothing.” The silver voice stabbed like a knife through the fog. “She’s none of mine.”

  None of mine, none of mine, none…[ ]The words spread through the woods like ripples on water.

  Take me in payment, Rhys had said. And let her go free.

  No! Cait cried in her heart.

  But she could not move.

  Overhead, the trees whirled lazily with a sound like car tires on wet road. Time passed, measured in heartbeats and the pulse of pain. Cold seeped into her bones. Snow pressed her cheek. She couldn’t feel her feet.

  She tried again to move. To cry out. Nothing.

  Alone, she struggled against the creeping cold, against the blinding, binding fog and the pull of the dark. Her parents would be really upset if she never came home. And Rhys…Her mind splintered into a kaleidoscope of fangs and fur and burning golden eyes. Her cuts throbbed.

  Okay, she wouldn’t think about Rhys. Not yet.

  A rustle broke the quiet. Cait’s heart pumped. A squirrel? The Queen?

  The wolf?

  She heard…Could that be voices? She wasn’t that far from the path to the trail. Casual, normal, human voices, carrying through the woods.

  Hope rose, a warm trickle against the cold. Cait fought to lift her head. A weak croak escaped her throat.

  Encouraged, she tried again. “Here.”

  Better.

  “Help!”

  Better still.

  Two hikers—male and female, middle-aged, with sensible gear and shocked, concerned faces—rushed forward.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” the woman kept repeating.

  I’m fine, Cait tried to reassure her through chattering teeth, but she was shaking too hard to speak.

  The man helped her to sit.

  “What happened?” he asked as the woman pulled a thermal space blanket from her pack.

  Cait accepted the blanket gratefully, clutching its foil edges around her shoulders. She looked into their kind, pragmatic faces and her heart sank.

  What could she possibly say?

  “Your daughter is a very lucky girl,” the doctor told Cait’s parents. Her father, Ross MacLean, stood at the foot of Cait’s hospital bed. Her mother, Janet, sat holding her hand. “She’s going to be fine. You’ll be able to take her home this afternoon.”

  Cait didn’t feel lucky. Or fine, either. Depressed, uncertain, and confused was more like it. She had no context and no explanation for what had happened. She was glad her parents were here. But…

  “She can’t walk,” Janet objected. “Shouldn’t she stay another night for observation?”

  “All of her symptoms—the stumbling, the slurred speech, the confusion—are a result of hypothermia.” The young doctor spoke in an earnest, lecturing manner he’d copied either from his teachers or some doctor on TV. “Not surprising, given that she was lost all night in a snowstorm. Now that the IV fluids have brought her temperature back up, she should make a rapid recovery.”

  “What about her cuts?” Ross asked.

  “You’ll want to change the dressings once a day when you get her home. And she’ll need to see her doctor to complete the series of rabies injections.”

  Cait winced. She didn’t want more shots. But if she tried to explain she wasn’t likely to get infected from a man who had been magically transformed into a wolf by his pissed-off mother, the doctor wouldn’t just treat her for rabies. He’d lock her up as a loony.

  Her father frowned. “You said she wasn’t bitten.”

  “The rabies virus can enter through a scratch. And since we don’t have the dog that attacked her to test it for infection…” The doctor shrugged.

  “It wasn’t a dog,” Cait said.

  They all looked at her.

  She dropped her gaze to the white top sheet on her bed, sorry she’d said anything. “It was a wolf,” she mumbled.

  “That’s impossible,” the doctor announced. “There are no wolves along the Appalachian Trail.”

  “Actually, that might not be true,” Janet said in her librarian voice. “Back in the nineties, the Fish and Wildlife Service attempted to reintroduce red wolves into Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but the experiment failed. The pups all died and the surviving adults were supposedly recaptured. But there might be one wolf left in the wild.”

  Live solitary, apart from all your kind, the Queen had intoned. And die alone.

  Cait stared at her mother, stricken.

  Janet tightened her hold on her hand. “Honey? What is it?”

  “Are you all right?” her father asked.

  Cait pulled herself together. Her parents were her strength. Her support. How could she confront them? “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Her parents exchanged looks over the foot of her bed, drawing together, as they always did, at the least sign of trouble.

  Rhys’s voice haunted Cait. The debt is her parents’. Let the punishment be theirs.

  What debt had he taken on? What had her parents done?

  “You’ll feel better when we get you home,” her mother said with determined cheerfulness.

 
The young doctor scrawled on Cait’s chart. “The nurse will be in later to remove the IV and go over your discharge instructions. Your things are in the locker. Any questions?”

  None that he could answer. Cait shook her head.

  “Well, then.” He offered her his hand, clean, cool, a little dry. “Best of luck.”

  Cait had the feeling she was going to need it. Her heart pounded as the door closed behind him. Her mouth was dry.

  “Do you want anything, honey?” Janet asked.

  She wanted her life back. She wanted the confidence that had set her on the trail, the time when her parents’ love was the bedrock of her life, the world where her mother kept all woo-woo stuff away and tall, terrifying queens didn’t materialize out of the woods to wreak magical vengeance.

  But Rhys didn’t belong to that world.

  If she wanted Rhys, if she wanted to save Rhys, she had to leave that life behind.

  She was afraid to question her parents, terrified their answers would shake the foundation of everything she knew and believed. Something had happened out there. She hadn’t cut her arms and legs walking into a tree. But a tiny, persistent doubt niggled at her. She could have hallucinated. What if her parents had no idea what she was talking about?

  Or…A knot formed in her chest. What if they did?

  Cait swallowed. “Could I have my clothes, please?”

  Her mother frowned. “Don’t you want to wait for the nurse? Your IV—”

  Cait tightened her hands on the sheet. If she didn’t do this now, she might lose her nerve. “Can you just get them?”

  Another look between her parents.

  “Sure.” Janet stood and retrieved a small overnight bag from the bottom of the room locker. “I didn’t know what you would need, so I packed a little of everything.”

  Her mother’s thoughtfulness tightened her throat.

  “Thanks,” Cait said. “But I meant my old clothes. In the locker.”

  “You can’t wear those,” Janet said.

  “I know. Can I have them please?”

  Janet opened the locker and laid the plastic bag that held Cait’s wet, dirty, bloodstained clothes on the bed.

  Taking a deep breath, Cait tugged the bag toward her. She needed proof her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, that she hadn’t made everything up—Rhys, the Queen, the wolf—in some exposure-induced dream. With a quiver of distaste, she plunged her hand into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers touched warm, smooth metal.