Under a Raging Moon: Part Three

by Chambers, V. J.

  When I tried to argue with them further, they decided I was paranoid and hysterical, and that I must be feeling both those things because I was a woman. Then they made annoying comments about my having PMS, even though they knew that I’d just had my period at the cabin, less than a week ago.

  I decided that having two men around was less than cool sometimes. When they weren’t pleasuring me sexually, they were just ganging up on me and calling me names.

  Yet another reason why a relationship with both of them would never work.

  That evening, Hudson took the truck and went out to pick up some food for us. I was getting sick of fast food, and I really wanted something a little more healthy—with some vegetables or something, so Hudson had agreed to get take-out from a local restaurant instead of pizza or McDonald’s.

  When he was gone for a while, we didn’t think anything of it. Kale and I were sitting on opposite sides of the room, both watching the TV. He really didn’t like talking to me, and I hardly even tried to spark conversation anymore. He’d think what he wanted about me.

  But after I realized that an entire hour had passed, I began to think that maybe something was wrong.

  “You think it’s taking Hudson too long?” I asked Kale.

  “How long has he been gone?”

  I told him.

  “Oh, wow. Maybe that is a while.”

  Just then, my phone rang. Sal calling, it said.

  My heart sank into my stomach. My worst fears were realized. I put the phone to my ear. “Where is he?”

  Sal chuckled. “So, I had the wrong guy, then, did I? I figured you were sweet on that Kale person, but it turns out, it’s this Hudson guy.”

  Oh hell, he could think what he wanted. “Where is he?”

  “No, no,” said Sal. “We’re not playing that game this time. No, I’ve wised up. Here’s how it’s going to go down. You will deliver the necklace to me. Once I have the necklace in my hands and have confirmed you haven’t double-crossed me, then I’ll call you and let you know where you can find Mr. Slade.”

  I got up and started to pace. “That doesn’t work for me, Sal. I don’t have any assurance that he’s even still alive.”

  “Too bad,” said Sal. “If you want him back, that’s the deal.” He hung up.

  Furious, I dashed the phone across the room. It collided with the wall, and the back fell off.

  Kale was on his feet too. “What happened?”

  “They’ve got Hudson,” I said.

  All the color drained out of Kale’s face. “How did they find us?”

  “I tried to tell you guys that they were resourceful. I tried to tell you that we shouldn’t stay in one place.” I buried my hands in my hair.

  “I’m sorry,” Kale said dully.

  “No, it’s not your fault.” There was no point in getting all I-told-you-so about it. That wouldn’t help Hudson. I took a deep breath, and then I explained the deal that Sal had offered me to get Hudson back.

  Kale’s nostrils flared. “Well, I don’t want them to have the necklace. Just because they took him doesn’t mean they should profit from this jewelry.”

  “Oh, I agree with you,” I said. “That’s why we’re not going to follow that fucking deal.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. I think I can find out where they might be keeping Hudson. We’ll go and see if we can get him out on our own.”

  Kale slammed his fist into his hand. “And kill them.”

  I swallowed. “Well…”

  * * *

  Once in the parking lot outside the hotel room, Kale and I realized that Hudson had taken the truck.

  “Damn it.” I kicked a concrete parking stop.

  Kale glared at me. “I don’t see why you’re so angry. This is all your fault, anyway.”

  “What? How is it my fault?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe because you’re the one who got us into this mess in the first place? If it weren’t for you, they wouldn’t even be after us.”

  My face fell. He just had to throw that in my face, didn’t he?

  “You came to my house to steal from me,” said Kale. “You made me think that I mattered to you—”

  “You do matter.”

  “Bullshit. Right now, you’re just using us to sell that necklace. Once you get the money—”

  “Kale, if I wanted to sell the necklace on my own, I could have done that. I didn’t need to include you guys at all.” I stalked away from him, leaving the parking lot.

  He came after me. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to walk to that restaurant where Hudson went to see if the damned truck’s there, that’s what.”

  “Fine,” said Kale.

  “Fine,” I said.

  We trudged on in silence, and we walked for a very long time. The restaurant was nearly two miles away. By the time we got there, we were both sweaty and a little out of breath, even Kale, who was clearly in better shape than me. It wasn’t every day that we both walked two miles, though.

  The good news was that my hunch was right. The truck was there. I knew that there would have been no reason for Sal and his goons to take it. I didn’t know how to drive it, because it was a manual transmission, so I got into the passenger’s side and let Kale drive. We sped out of the parking lot, and I told him what direction to take.

  Then I leaned my head against the window. “You know, it’s not true, what you said.”

  “What?” He barely glanced at me.

  I’d been thinking about this all during the walk to the truck. “It actually isn’t my fault. Sal and his people already knew about you, and they knew about that necklace. I don’t know how, but they knew. They hired me. If they hadn’t hired me, it would have been someone else. So, no matter what, they would be after you.”

  His grip tightened on the steering wheel.

  I sighed. “Never mind.”

  “No,” he said. “I guess you’re right. I see your point.”

  “But it doesn’t mean that you forgive me.” I looked back out the window. “You don’t forgive easily.”

  “You lied to me and you used me. I don’t know how to forgive something like that. I don’t know how to trust you again.”

  I nodded. “I get that. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

  We were quiet for several minutes.

  Then Kale spoke again. “I still…” He glanced over at me again, and then looked back at the road. “When I first met you, I wasn’t interested in ever getting involved with another woman. What happened with Lila was too painful. So, I wasn’t going to let myself get attached. I wanted you, though, and I tried to keep myself from being with you. But I couldn’t. I gave in. Do you remember that? In my kitchen?”

  I sucked in a little breath as the memory rolled over me, bringing with it the strong sensations of arousal. “Yes,” I breathed.

  “You’re hard to resist, Piper.”

  I peered at him. He was staring straight ahead, and his face was an expressionless mask, the way he’d been when I’d first met him. I remembered how he’d seemed to be a man encased in a shell of ice. But now, I’d seen inside him. I’d melted away his exterior. His anger with me meant that there was hope. Before, he hadn’t cared one way or the other about me. Now, I meant enough to him that I made him feel.

  My hand darted across the truck, and I rested my hand on his upper thigh.

  He let my hand stay there, let me touch him.

  I saw that as a small victory.

  * * *

  My phone was ringing, and I was asleep in the truck, knees curled up under me in the front seat, head resting against the window.

  Shit. I was drooling. I glanced over to see if Kale had noticed. He was looking at the road. “You going to answer that?”

  I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hi there, this is David March.”

  I sat up straight. “Oh, hi there. Look, we’ve got a little bit of a situa
tion here, and I don’t know if it’s really a good time to talk about the necklace.”

  “A situation?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty dire, and I don’t think we can really talk about anything concrete at this point. We really have to take care of this before we can sell you the necklace.”

  David was quiet for a moment. “Is this some strange, roundabout way of telling me that there’s another buyer interested? Did we take too long with our verification process?”

  “I’m not going to lie. If you’d called yesterday, that would have been a helluvalot better. But, no, there’s no other buyer. It’s just a bad situation here. I’m very sorry.”

  “If you’re serious about trying to sell that necklace, you’ll have a discussion with me.”

  “Look, someone is in danger. The necklace is just not at the top of my priority list. If I can get everything squared away, then we’ll be back in business.”

  “Which would be when?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  More silence. When he spoke again, he sounded pretty perturbed. “Do you even have this necklace?”

  “Of course we have it,” I said.

  “This is a prank, isn’t it? Some young kids yanking my chain. Where did you get the photos, though? Someone has this necklace.”

  “We have it,” I said. “And we want to sell it to you. I just… I can’t tell you when.”

  “Forget it,” muttered David. “I don’t have time to deal with this. Thanks for wasting my time.” He hung up.

  I rested my head against the window. “Damn it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him what was going on? Don’t you think he’d understand that we’ve got our hands full dealing with Hudson’s capture?” said Kale.

  “He’d just notify the police,” I said. “For various reasons, that’s no good.”

  “True.”

  I rubbed my forehead.

  “So, we don’t have a buyer anymore?”

  “We’ll have a buyer,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “He’ll come around. I know they want that necklace. Don’t worry about that. Let’s focus on Hudson. Once we get him back, everything falls into place.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” said Kale.

  “It will.”

  * * *

  After a while, Kale got too tired to drive anymore, so we stopped the truck for the night. We parked in a rest area in the overnight section. It was nice outside, and there were blankets in the truck, so we could sleep in the truck bed.

  We munched on more fast food, although I insisted on trying a salad, just to get a little bit of green back in my body. I seriously didn’t understand how some people could handle eating that kind of stuff all the time. Kale didn’t seem to be having any trouble, even though I knew he didn’t eat junk all the time. He laughed at me as he ate his cheeseburger, telling me that it had lettuce and tomato on it, and that was all the vegetable he needed.

  He held up his fries. “Potatoes are totally a vegetable.”

  “Starch,” I countered. But I snagged one of his fries anyway. They were delicious.

  He grinned at me, and I melted. I was falling for this man, I realized. Maybe I’d always known that I was, but it hit me hard how difficult it would be if I never got to see him again. How much that would hurt.

  And Hudson… well, it was already killing me that he was gone and that we didn’t know where he was.

  “What are you thinking about?” Kale asked me.

  I shrugged, taking a bite of salad, hoping that my chewing would take so long he’d forget he’d asked.

  But he waited patiently until I’d swallowed. “Well?”

  “I was thinking about…” I couldn’t tell him that I was falling for him, could I? “You and Hudson, I guess. How much I’ve gotten used to being around both of you.”

  He looked up at the night sky. “Yeah, it’s awful to think of what they’re doing to him.”

  I ate more salad, not even wanting to face that thought.

  “He’ll be okay, though.” Kale touched my arm. “Hudson’s tough. Tougher than me, you know?”

  “I don’t know, you’re pretty tough,” I said.

  “I’m not. It was always him looking out for me in high school, and I couldn’t have made it without him.” He shook his head. “I don’t want anything to happen to him. I know that you’ve seen us at each other’s throats, but the truth is that we used to be really close.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I can see that when you’re together. I really can.”

  He finished his cheeseburger and crumpled up the wrapper. “You think we’re going to find him?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But on the phone with that Sal guy, you said that thing about not knowing if he was alive.”

  “He’s alive.” I said it quickly—maybe too quickly. But I wasn’t even going to consider the idea that Hudson was dead.

  “They might have done… things to him, you know? Because he’s a werewolf, and they’re afraid? What if they did kill him?”

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  “Look, you don’t know—”

  “The fact that we’re werewolves is what’s complicating this whole thing. They made it worse because he’s a werewolf, and now he might even be dead.” I got up, taking my salad with me. I had lost my appetite, and I was going to throw it in the trash can. “There’s nothing good about being a wolf. Nothing.” I picked up Kale’s trash and stalked off.

  When I got back, he was somber. “You really think that? That there’s nothing good about being a wolf?”

  “I hate it.” I climbed back into the truck. I didn’t want to talk about this. Right now, I was thinking about the people dead in my dorm room, the dead electric workers outside the cabin, and the men that we’d killed to free Kale. All that carnage. I was thinking about how much the wolf inside me liked to hunt and kill, how much it gloried in carnage. I scooted up to the top of the truck bed and began to wrap myself in blankets.

  “Piper, if you hate werewolves, then you hate us—me and Hudson. Because we’re wolves.”

  I didn’t answer. I just bundled myself up and lay down on my side, shutting my eyes tight. I was going to go to sleep. Tomorrow, when we got up, we’d go find out where Hudson was, and then all of this would be over.

  Except there might be more killing, whispered a voice in my head. And the animal inside me seemed excited at the prospect.

  I felt Kale settle down beside me, but he didn’t touch me. “There are good things about being a werewolf.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s the way I grew up, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. There’s something wonderful about being in a wolf family, being close because of the pack bonds. And I think that you always feel closer to nature—to animals and the trees and the sky. Didn’t you ever feel that way?”

  The truth was that I had. My parents could never understand how I spent so many hours outside, wandering around in the woods behind our house, with seemingly nothing to occupy me. In fact, I found it all fascinating. I liked looking at various leaves on various trees, at vines that draped over limbs, at small furry creatures that scurried over the forest floor. Out in the woods, I’d always felt at home. But I wasn’t going to admit that was a good thing. Hell, I’d been forced to read the Transcendentalists in high school, same as every other American student. “You don’t need to be a wolf to feel that.”

  “Maybe not, but it makes it easier,” he said. “Look, Piper, I know you think the wolf doesn’t have a conscience, but you’re looking at it the wrong way. When we’re wolves, we’re perfectly wolves, you know, and what does an animal need with an emotion like guilt? Only humans need that.”

  “But I feel guilt about the things I did when I was a wolf.”

  “But you don’t have to,” said Kale. “That’s what’s beautiful about being a wolf. It makes you free. You can go run under the moon and be alive and unrestricted, and that’s su
blime.”

  I sighed. “What do you care, anyway? After we get all this stuff squared away with the necklace, I figure you’ll never want to see me again. You can go back to being free and sublime, and I’ll go back to not shifting ever again.”

  He was quiet.

  There. Shut him up. I pulled a blanket over my head.

  Suddenly, I felt him behind me, his body pressing against my own. His arm slipped underneath my shoulder. “You know it’s not that simple,” he said in a husky voice.

  God, he felt so good like this. I snuggled backwards into him, enjoying his warmth and closeness. I couldn’t help but want to surrender to him. Kale always had that effect on me.

  “Of course I want to see you again, Piper. I want to see you always. I just… I think I’m stupid to want those things, because I’m sure that if I trust you again, you’ll betray me.”

  I turned in his arms. “I won’t.” I was adamant. I didn’t want him thinking that.

  “Of course you’d say that.” He chuckled a little, stroking my face.

  “It’s true. How can I convince you of that?”

  “I don’t know if you can. I think… I think I would have to decide to trust you again, even if it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if I can do that.”

  That made me sad. But I guessed I understood. I knew how difficult it was to let go. I didn’t let go easily either.

  He held onto me, though, holding me close. “But you’re saying… even if I could, even if I could trust you again… you’d never be with us, because you hate being a werewolf?”

  “Us?” I said. “I didn’t think you were keen on Hudson’s little plan for us all to date each other.”

  “I didn’t think I was,” said Kale. “But… I don’t know. With him gone, it makes me realize how much he means to me. He’s my best friend, and I’ve never been closer to another person in my entire life. Before all the stuff with Lila, I didn’t think there was anything he could do that would make me uncomfortable. The reality of it isn’t bad, either. When we’re all together, you know, fucking, it’s sort of awesome.”

  I smiled. “That’s true.”

  “I think it’s just the thinking that gets to me. I mean, it’s so obvious that you and Hudson have a deeper connection than you and I do.”