Moon

by Samantha Allard

  "I beg to differ. Since it looks like you're staying at Auntie Rose's house, it is my business."

  My mouth went dry. "Auntie Rose?"

  He reached out and opened the door behind me.

  Rose waddled down the hallway towards us. Any hope of her helping me took a flying leap out of the window when she smiled at my rescuer—or maybe he was my kidnapper. I didn’t really know for sure what to call him.

  "Henry, I wasn't sure if we'd be seeing you today."

  I guess Henry will do.

  "Hey, Rosie. Lucky I did. Found her outside with a group of lads."

  I glanced over my shoulder. The door was close enough that I could risk making a run for it, but before the thought completely formed, Henry kicked it shut and smiled at me.

  Rose paled, which was impressive for someone whose skin resembled transparent paper. "You mean they were right outside?"

  There was a faint tremble to her voice. I hadn’t seen her like this again. The way she’d stood up to her son made me think she wasn’t scared often. Whoever those boys were, it looked as if quite a few people were wary of them.

  "It's okay. They're gone now."

  Henry nudged me towards the kitchen. After the absolute darkness of outside, the light’s harsh.

  He points a chair out to me. "Sit."

  I didn’t like following orders or the people who gave them. The last three years had been spent rebelling against everything. I still hadn’t learnt how to keep my mouth shut.

  “Colin isn’t here. They wouldn’t risk coming so close to the motel if he were. We’re neutral ground.” Rose followed us into the kitchen and frowned at me. "Didn't you have dark hair this morning?"

  I felt uncomfortable under their stares. She made her way around the kitchen table. It was huge against her small size. When she finally reached, the kettle she switched it on. I didn’t really have an answer for that so I shrugged instead.

  Rose opened the fridge, pulled out a plate, and put it down unceremoniously in front of me. "If your stomach growls any louder, you'll take my attention away from my soaps."

  I took a bite out of one of the sandwiches and winced, cheese. Rose made herself busy with pouring hot water from the kettle into cups. She left something that could be tea in front of us. Nobody said anything and I couldn’t shake the feeling of awkwardness that swept over me.

  Henry didn’t inspire much trust. He might have saved me from the boys outside but what if they wanted to call my parents?

  I picked the cup of tea up and blew on it. It smelled sweeter than normal tea, and as I sip it, the feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach slowly started to fade.

  "Who are you?"

  By the tone of his voice, I didn’t have to be a genius to know that lying wouldn't be a good idea. "My name is Rachel."

  He rolled his eyes at my vague answer as if he knew I’d try to stall. "Do you have a last name?" Henry took one of the sandwiches from the plate and ate it.

  I took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh before I answered. "Valentine. Rachel Valentine."

  As soon as my name left my lips, he stopped and frowned, a second sandwich halfway to his lips. The almost playful, exasperated act had vanished. In that second, it was impossible to read his expression. It was like he flipped a switch. He paused, took several more bites, and chewed—looking deep in thought.

  "Why are you in London?"

  "My brother Michael."

  "What about him?" Henry leaned back, his now empty hands resting on the armrests of the chair.

  “Michael went missing a few years back, and I got a new lead.” I glanced down at the plate and noticed all the sandwiches were gone, including the one I had started. My stomach rumbled at me.

  Henry smiled at me, a little apologetically. "Sorry, I was hungry."

  "So am I." I replied tartly.

  A flash of guilt passed over his face. "I'll get Rose to order pizza. I’ll be right back." He stood up and left.

  A few minutes ticked past when it finally occurred to me. God, instead of sitting down and waiting for Henry to return I could have been making a run for the front door.

  Being very careful not to make a noise, I pushed my chair out and got to my feet. There wasn’t enough time to retrieve my stuff from upstairs. Thankfully, Henry had left my bag at the bottom of the stairs. My money was still buried in the bottom of it.

  But where would I go? The boys from earlier only served to remind me London was a dangerous place. The motel might not be much safer. Maybe if I took a knife out of one of the drawers? At least I wouldn’t be walking around unarmed. Knowing my luck, I’d end up dropping it on my foot, but something was better than nothing. I went to go find one.

  "Where do you think you're going?"

  The old woman's voice stopped me in my tracks. "I just wanted some water."

  "No, you didn't. You're thinking you want to get out of here as fast as you can." She walked into the kitchen with a menu in her hand.

  "You're a mind reader?"

  "No, but I would be thinking the same thing if our roles were reversed." She stopped and smiled. The wrinkles on her face deepened. "Colin, on the other hand, has touch telepath. Not as powerful as actual telepathy, he has to touch you for it to work. I'm what you’d call a Crone, a witch. There isn't a blend of spices and herbs that I don't know about."

  Oh, dear. I'd been joking when I’d called her a mind reader. So, she is actually crazy. Wonderful. Can the night get any better? I' was still standing between the table and the sink. Unless I planned to throw myself out of the window to escape, I was stuck.

  "Sit down, sweetie."

  I reluctantly walked back to my seat. Just as I was sitting down, Henry walked back into the kitchen. In a space of a few minutes, he'd changed. Not his clothes, but the expression on his face. He couldn’t meet my curious gaze. If anything, he looked guilty?

  "I need to tell you something." He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat back down. He glanced at the older woman, his expression pained.

  Rose sighed. "We both know your brother."

  My eyes widened as if they had a life of their own. No, that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

  “Now that we’ve got that out there, I’m going to order some pizza.”

  Chapter Six

  We all ended up sat around the table. I hadn’t been about to get my head around the idea that they knew my brother. The pizza had been delivered about ten minutes before, and I’d piled up some pieces onto a plate. If Henry tried helping himself to any, he’d lose a hand or a finger if he’s lucky. After I’d eaten two pieces and my stomach had relaxed, I glanced over at Rose. Her piece of pizza had been left mostly untouched.

  I finally said the thing that had been praying on my mind. "But you said you didn't recognize his picture."

  She squirmed under my intense stare and put the plate down on the table. "It wasn't until Colin touched you that I knew you were Michael's sister. I'm sorry, neither of us should have lied, but it wasn't our story to tell and in truth I didn’t think that you would believe me."

  "I'm confused. Why wouldn’t I believe you?"

  A look passed between them again.

  "What aren't you telling me?" I swapped my focus between them, the old lady and the boy. Henry called her Auntie Rose, but I couldn’t see any family resemblance. Not like Rose and Colin, who at least shared the same eye color.

  "You better start, boy."

  Henry nodded. "I've known your brother for about a year." He took a deep breath, and some of the tension left him as it started to settle in me. The tightness in his shoulders loosened. "The first thing you need to know, Rachel, is that the world is much more complicated than anyone really knows. Nothing is as simple as black and white. No-one in this motel is normal. Michael's like us. He’s different."

  I opened my mouth to say something but Henry raised his hand to stop me even before I got the words out. "This will be a lot easier if you don’t interrupt. I work for
an Alpha."

  I shrugged. The word obviously meant something different for him.

  "An Alpha is what you would call a leader of a werewolf pack." He said the words slowly as if trying to explain something to a child. A werewolf pack? As in walking on all fours and howling at the moon?

  "That doesn’t make any sense." I wanted answers, not more questions. I rubbed the palm of my hand against my forehead trying to stop the headache brewing just behind my eyes.

  Henry smiled, and my heart did a weird fluttering thing in my chest.

  "Come on, Rachel, I asked you not to interrupt. Michael was probably acting a little strange right before he disappeared. Well, he'd been brainwashed. There are two different types of shifters. The ones you saw outside, they're the ones who started off as pureblood human and were bitten.” I looked at the window half expecting to see them standing outside.

  “Infecting a plain old human is frowned on by the ruling Alphas. You saw those boys out there. They became must more likely to be driven by instinct, almost feral after they are bitten. Sometimes it isn’t a bad thing. Accidents happen and if the change is controlled they would be fine but if the Alpha is cruel? The end results can be much more dangerous.”

  “There are others, me included, who were born with the dormant werewolf gene. When those with the gene are bitten, we become something else. After the first shift, we end up being more in control. We still follow the Alpha, but we aren’t puppets, and we don’t go mad just because we’re werewolves. And it’s the ones like me who have the chance to become future Alphas. To have packs of our own.

  "I met your brother almost by accident. I'm in London on assignment. My Alpha believes a higher-ranked Alpha is hoping to take over the city. Instead of sending his pack in, he sent me. I’m here to find proof and report back before he takes action."

  Rose leaned forward, catching my attention. "You watch the news? The disappearances…all those people… Those are all signs of someone trying to create his own pack. Wolves generally keep their packs outside of the major towns. Cuts down on accidents."

  I didn’t have to ask what those accidents were.

  Henry continued to study me, clearly not impressed that I'd been the one to interrupt his story. "The first day I laid eyes on Michael, I knew something was wrong with him. He looked dazed." Henry shook his head, a small smile across his lips. “There was something different about him by the way the other wolves followed his orders. For weeks, I kept a discreet distance. Humans with the gene are rare and far between, and bitten genetic wolves with the Alpha potential rarer still."

  He shrugged. "I was curious. One day, I caught him alone. It was my chance to talk to him." He pulled up the sleeve of his top. The scars were white, even against the pale color of his skin. He sighed. "Probably should have realized creeping up on a werewolf would be a bad idea."

  "Christ, did he really cut up your arm?" Michael hurt someone? It was hard to believe since my brother had gotten a nosebleed once and fainted. I had teased him for weeks about it.

  Henry nodded. "Wolves can heal most wounds, but he got me with silver. I wasn't really expecting him to pull a knife. There weren't many options open to me, so I knocked him out."

  My eyes went wide. The person Henry was describing couldn’t be further away from my impression of my brother. It's like I never knew him at all. The thought scared me.

  "What the hell?"

  "I ended up hitting him with a bin, a large one. Then I brought Michael here, strapped him to a chair in the basement, and worked at deprogramming him. Rose and Colin helped." He shrugged. "It was either that or something more final. As a future Alpha, he would have been dangerous. I figured he was a victim, so I decided to focus on helping him."

  Relief flooded me, but I couldn’t end it there. I had to know if the person in front of me was someone I could trust. "But you didn't even know him."

  "Rachel. I might be able to shift into a wolf with barely a thought, but I'm not a monster. None of us are."

  A small cough from behind me reminded me that Rose hadn’t left the kitchen. "We helped you reluctantly, boy." The old woman glanced at me. "It's because deprogramming a wolf isn't easy. The species are stubborn at the best of times."

  "But you did help.” He turned back to me. “You see, this place is a sanctuary, and everyone here is part of our world. There's a banshee in one of the rooms upstairs. A vampire in another, but he doesn't come out during the day so you probably won’t meet him.”

  There was a vampire in the motel? I’ll be double checking the lock on the door before I went to bed. A locked door probably won’t stop a hungry vampire. I thought with a sigh.

  “It took weeks to free your brother. When we finally did, it didn't take him long to offer to help me. I knew it was a bad idea, but it was the only lead I had. People were going missing. They're still going missing. The only Alpha in town is Jonas and I don’t know where to find him.” He clenched his hands into fists. "He has to be the one behind it, but without solid proof about what he hoped to accomplish, accusing him of breaking the most sacred laws of our kind would start the war he seems eager for. Michael suggested going back in, taking some pictures, and giving us an idea of numbers. He never came out again."

  The mysterious Jonas didn’t ring any bells for me. My brother had never mentioned anyone by that name while he was still home. "Did Jonas turn him again?"

  Henry shook his head. "No, I don’t think it’s even possible."

  "He didn't come back home." The words sounded heavy to my ears and my heart ached. I couldn’t believe it. Michael had a chance to come back home, but he chose this, a world that didn’t make sense.

  "I'm sorry, Rachel. Michael knew that, if he didn't do this, the war would end up hurting a lot of people. Normals who don't even know this world exists.” He reached over and touched the back of my hand. “He told me about you, and he missed you, but Michael figured it would be safer if you didn't know he was alive. At least until everything was over."

  For a split second, I believed him. Typical Michael. He never liked it when people worried about him. When he’d first started to act odd, he’d become defensive when Mum had questioned him about it. Now, I knew why. It hadn’t been drugs. He’d been brainwashed by an Alpha werewolf bent on starting a war.

  Michael was a werewolf—a mythical creature that howled at the moon. It sounded so strange. Something that was near possible to believe.

  As if he hadn’t noticed my inner turmoil, Henry continued. “He disappeared about a week ago. He told me he had the information that would confirm what my Alpha feared. I needed to meet him at our usual place, an abandoned building near Trafalgar Square, but he never showed."

  Was that the day I saw him on television? The pizza box was empty, and the slices I’d managed to eat sat heavy in my stomach. They were both missing some very vital brain cells. I couldn’t believe how close I’d been to believing them.

  "I don't believe you."

  Rose sighed. "I didn't think you would."

  Henry stood. "There's one thing I can do to make you believe us."

  Rose hit the table with an audible thud, and I flinched.

  "Get that thought out of your mind, Henry. A wolf will not fit into this kitchen."

  "You've got a better suggestion?" Henry leaned against the fridge, his arms crossed.

  "Any suggestion would be better than shifting in front of a girl who, five minutes ago, didn't know anything about our world." Rose took a deep breath. "I'll get Colin. At least his talents are less likely to end in a broken chair or table."

  “That only happened one time.”

  “One time was enough.” She hobbled out of the kitchen.

  I didn’t hear her make her way up the stairs. The woman was light enough that she barely disturbed the dust on the floor, but there was no mistaking her presence or her belief in the story they’d just told me. She believed she had powers. That scared me.

  Henry turned his attention back to me, and t
he intense look on his face made me feel uncomfortable. It was a mixture of sadness and something that reminded me of pity. Like the look the vet had gotten when he’d told us our rabbit was going to die. Nobody liked being the bearer of bad news.

  "Let's say I believe you.” I didn’t. I couldn’t. If I started believing in things like that, my mother would have me in a straitjacket so fast my head would spin, but I couldn’t stop myself. “If my brother has this gene, what’s the chance I have it too?"

  “Pretty high. It’s hereditary."

  I crossed my arms and rested my head against them. “It doesn't matter. I don't believe you anyway."

  Henry got to his feet and moved around the table. I barely paid him any attention. My head was filled with noise—impossible questions with answers I didn’t want to hear. A heavy thud on the table made me glance up in surprise. A small glass of water had been placed in front of me. I tried to ignore the fact my hand shook as I reached for it and took a sip.

  "Can't this wait, Mother? I don't want to be rooting around in someone's head tonight."

  Rose sighed. "All you need is to pick something out of it. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl, Colin. It isn’t rocket science.”

  I frowned.

  “Prove it to her without Henry making a mess of the kitchen floor."

  Colin grumbled incoherently as he walked into the kitchen. He wore a pair of jogging bottoms, complete with stains, tied at the waist just underneath his round stomach. The white T-shirt strained against the roundness of his stomach, trying to keep it covered. There was no mistaking the thinly veiled disgust on his face. I guess it mirrored my own.

  Damn, that is a man only a mother could love.

  "I already told you that she's Michael's sister."

  Henry stood and moved away from me, watching everything with quiet intensity. I was pretty sure the three people in the room with me were all insane.

  God must be laughing at me. I could almost hear him saying, "Very funny, Miss Valentine. You thought you could break into a nun's office and get away with it? I don't think so, mere mortal."