Moon Fever

by Susan Sizemore, Maggie Shayne, Lori Handeland

  “J.T. could have told them Phoebe was alive and where to find her,” Shepard continued.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “People will do just about anything for one more minute of life.”

  I liked to think I wouldn’t, but I’d never had the opportunity to test the theory. I hoped I never would.

  “We should go,” Shepard said. “They think we’re dead, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make certain of it.”

  He began to walk; I began to follow. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ve got to stash you somewhere safe,” he said. “Then I’ll find your mother.”

  “Like hell.” I stopped. “I’m going with you.”

  Shepard didn’t even turn. “No, you aren’t.”

  “She’s my mother.” He kept walking. “Hey!”

  His shoulders flinched, but at least he turned. “Keep it down, Highness. The bad guys aren’t deaf, and noises travel fast and far around here.”

  In Manhattan, noises blended. Shouting wasn’t a big deal; cab drivers did it every day.

  “Sorry,” I said more quietly. “I just want to find my mother. I need to find her, to see her. To explain—”

  To my horror, my voice broke. I wasn’t a crier, at least not anymore. Crying hadn’t brought my mother back; it hadn’t made J.T. love me. Nothing could.

  I cleared my throat, stiffened my spine, and met Shepard’s hard hazel eyes. He said nothing, just turned and walked away.

  I had no choice but to follow, and as I did, my mind picked at a single pounding question. Why had J.T. told me my mother was dead?

  Not that I was shocked he’d lied—when hadn’t he?—but what was the point? Why would J.T. have cared if I visited Phoebe? It wasn’t as if he was competing for my affections. He’d never wanted them.

  There was so much going on I didn’t understand, and there was no way I was going to sit somewhere safe, wherever that was, and wait for Dylan Shepard to find my mother for me. Just once, I was going to be there for the woman who’d brought me into the world.

  Shepard paused; I did, too. His shoulders were so massive they blocked out the sight of whatever it was that had made him stop. I leaned to the right, the left. Nothing. I glanced behind us, then upward. The trees were so thick I could barely discern the moon, let alone the stars.

  “Are we lost?”

  He shot me a withering glare. “Stay here.”

  Before I could argue, he strode into the forest and, despite his size, blended into the shadows.

  Without Shepard, the night closed in. Logically, I knew the trees hadn’t moved nearer; nevertheless, I kept throwing glances over my shoulder to check. The wind whistled through the branches, the chill of the snow crept through my boots, and the air stung my cheeks. I was the last living soul for miles.

  “Phoebe’s gone.” Shepard’s voice sounded right next to my ear, and I jumped, managing to bite off the shriek before it echoed everywhere.

  “Don’t do that!” I rubbed between my breasts with the heel of my hand. How could such a big guy move so quietly?

  “Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded amused, which caused me to snap, “I know Phoebe’s gone. Tell me something new.”

  “She was here less than an hour ago, and she headed”—he pointed north—”that way.”

  I swallowed my childish annoyance. “How do you know?”

  “Rangers lead the way. Hoo-ah.”

  “You were in the Special Forces?” He nodded. “Thought you were a nurse.”

  “Medic.”

  Trust J.T. to hire the best of both worlds—medical training and supreme security.

  “We need to find your mother before someone else does,” he said, and turned away.

  I followed him to a small hole in the snow where human tracks led north.

  “Abandoned coyote den,” Shepard explained. “I showed the place to Phoebe once. Made it our rendezvous point, just in case something like this happened.”

  “You expected to be attacked?”

  His eyes met mine, and I saw the man he’d been, the man he still was. “Guys like me always expect to be attacked.”

  Which was probably how he’d stayed alive. “If this was a rendezvous,” I asked, “why didn’t she wait?”

  “Probably got spooked.”

  “Because of the continual darkness, prehistoric trees, gun-wielding maniacs with explosives, and marauding wolf packs? I can’t understand why.”

  He studied me. “How much do you know about why your mother was sent here?”

  “She had delusions.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you what those delusions were?”

  “No.”

  A delusion was a delusion, as far as I was concerned. Phoebe had seen things that weren’t there, heard things that didn’t exist, believed things that weren’t true. What difference did it make what those things were?

  “Phoebe thought there were monsters after her,” Shepard continued. “Werewolves, to be exact.”

  Chapter 5

  “T hat’s ridiculous,” I snapped.

  “There’s more to this world than you think, Highness.”

  I doubted that. J.T.’d had no patience for tall tales. He’d set me straight on the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny toot-sweet. Considering my mother’s slim grip on reality, that was probably for the best.

  I’d had no delusions of my own. No hope that magic would change my life. No belief that love could conquer all. I knew better.

  Shepard reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out Joe’s gun. He popped the clip, removed a bullet, and held it up. “What does that look like to you?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Look at it closely. What’s the first thing you see?”

  “Violence. Death. Blood.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “I mean physical properties.” He turned the bullet this way and that, until a shaft of moonlight bounced off its surface and nearly blinded me.

  “Shiny,” I answered.

  “What kind of shiny?”

  “Silver.” Shepard lifted his eyebrows, and I understood. “Joe carried silver bullets?”

  “So did I before my guns were blown to smithereens.”

  “Why?”

  “Silver kills people, too.”

  “Too?” I repeated. “You were expecting werewolves?”

  “Phoebe was.”

  “She was insane!”

  “Was she?” He snapped the silver bullet back into the clip and popped the clip into the gun. “You said J.T. was killed in the same way as Joe and the nurse—throat torn, bite marks on the hands?”

  “That pretty much sums it up.”

  “You didn’t find this bizarre?”

  “There was an attack dog.”

  “Isn’t it too big of a coincidence for J.T.’s security hound to flip out and kill three people on one side of the country and another beast thousands of miles away to do the same?”

  “That explanation makes more sense than werewolves. There’s no such thing. Believing there was put my mother in the nuthouse.”

  “Burying your head in the sand will put you in the morgue.”

  Now I was exasperated. “How can you stand there and tell me you believe in werewolves?”

  “Because I’ve seen them.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it again. If he believed that—and I could tell he did—Shepard was as crazy as Phoebe. For all I knew, he could have been a resident of the clinic and not an employee. I only had his word that he was a nurse, a former soldier, a sane person.

  “Didn’t you find it odd,” he continued, “that the guys at the clinic were able to follow us to my cabin so easily, hardly making a sound?”

  “They were highly trained.”

  “They were werewolves.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said, before I could stop myself. Crazy people often got crazier when you called them crazy. One of their many quirks. “T
hey were assassins or government operatives, maybe both.”

  When put that way, maybe werewolves were the better choice.

  “I heard them howling, Carly. So did you. We were surrounded by wolves.”

  Though I knew it was pointless, I tried one more time to convince him. “You don’t honestly think wolves blew up the cabin? Kind of hard to manage without thumbs.”

  “They shape-shifted. That’s what werewolves do.”

  “So they became wolves to follow us, shifted into people so they could blow us up, then became wolves again? Seems like a lot of hassle to me.”

  “If I were in charge, I’d have some shift and some remain human. Takes care of all your hunting and killing needs.”

  He had a point, but I still didn’t believe in werewolves.

  “If there aren’t werewolves,” he pressed, “why the silver bullets in the guns at the clinic?”

  “To keep Phoebe from flipping out?” And you, too, I wanted to add, but refrained. “Why would they kill J.T. and the others as werewolves, then try to blow us up?”

  “To make certain you’re dead, that you won’t rise again as one of them.”

  Though I knew he was nuts and none of this was real, nevertheless, his words made me shiver, or maybe it was just the continuous ill wind whipping my hair, stinging my cheeks, and insinuating itself through the fibers of Julie’s too-light-for-an-Alaskan-winter-night coat.

  “The others aren’t dead?” I asked.

  “Hard to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned up somewhere. You said there was an attack dog at J.T.’s office. Was it a big dog?”

  “Aren’t all attack dogs huge?”

  “Were the eyes human?”

  I started to laugh. Shepard didn’t.

  “Werewolves retain human eyes even in wolf form. If you’d gotten a good look at the animal, you might have recognized it.”

  My laughter died as I rubbed my forehead. “You think the attack dog was a werewolf, the one that killed my father?”

  “For all we know, it could have been your father.”

  My hand dropped. J.T. as a werewolf—now, that was a frightening thought.

  “Tell me one thing,” Shepard continued. “Were the dead people still dead when you left the building?”

  My heart gave one hard, painful thump as if trying to jump from my chest, then began to patter too fast.

  Shepard grabbed my elbow. “What happened?”

  “The bodies were gone,” I whispered. “I thought the murderer had moved them.”

  “Sounds like they moved themselves.”

  I didn’t believe this. I didn’t. There had to be a logical explanation other than dead people returning to life as murderous beasts.

  “We need to keep going.” Shepard glanced back the way we’d come. “At the moment, they think we’re dead, but that won’t last forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Werewolves possess the physical abilities of wolves.” At my blank expression, he elaborated. “Superior senses of sight, sound, and scent.”

  In other words, they’d be able to smell us out here, if they didn’t hear or see us first. I glanced over my shoulder, too. “We should have a good head start.”

  “Won’t last. Wolves can run forty miles an hour. They’ve been known to range a hundred twenty-five miles in a single day—although forty is average. They’ll chase a herd for miles just to tire them out, then accelerate. Combine all of that with human intelligence…” He spread his hands.

  I wasn’t buying this, but it wasn’t doing me any good to stand there, either. “Okay, let’s go.”

  We began to walk again, Shepard leading the way, breaking a path through the snow so I could follow. Every once in a while, he stopped, pointing to my mother’s footprint. I only had his word that the prints were Phoebe’s, but who else would be walking around the Alaskan wilderness alone?

  The longer I followed Shepard, the more nervous I became. He was leading me Lord knew where, for God only knew what reason. He’d walked out of the forest right after I’d found dead bodies. He could have killed them.

  Of course, he could have killed me, too, if he’d wanted to. Why wait?

  Why did a crazy person do anything?

  Surreptitiously, I took out my cell phone and nearly dropped it when I saw I had a signal.

  “I—uh—” Shepard stopped; I slipped the phone into my pocket as he turned. “Need to go.” I jerked a thumb at a nearby tree, and Shepard nodded.

  As soon as I was out of sight, I increased my pace. As soon as I was out of earshot, I ran.

  Stupid, really. Shepard had been tracking Phoebe; he could easily track me. But I had the crazy idea that if I could make a phone call before he caught me, the cavalry would arrive. Except, how would any cavalry find me in this vast wilderness, especially when I had no idea where I was?

  I paused, breathing hard, wondering if I should zig to the right or zag to the left. Then the crackle of feet atop hard snow made me turn.

  The wolf was huge, its fur both silver and black, enough like Shepard’s coat to make my skin prickle. Wasn’t there a legend about shamans who donned the skin of a wolf and became one?

  It advanced as I retreated. The shape and shade of its eyes were difficult to determine in the night beneath the canopy of trees. Something light, perhaps hazel?

  The beast growled, low, threatening, and I stumbled, nearly falling before managing to stay upright. What was it waiting for?

  My boot slid as if I’d stepped on ice. I glanced down. I was on ice. My gaze returned to the wolf, which appeared to be grinning. But why?

  That became evident as a sharp crack split the night, and the ice gave way beneath my feet.

  Chapter 6

  T he shock of the water made me cry out. The wolf surged forward, and for the first time, I saw its eyes clearly. They were human.

  Fear made me flail. Broken ice bobbed around me. My mouth filled with water so cold my teeth hurt. I needed to calm down, take one disaster at a time.

  First, don’t drown.

  Second, get out of the water—fast.

  Third, don’t get eaten by the werewolf.

  I managed to tread water despite the weight of my boots, clothes, and coat, but I wouldn’t be able to do so for long. I lunged at the side of the hole, my gloved hands scrabbling for purchase, and the wolf snarled, then snapped at my fingers. I let go and went under again.

  What was going on? If the beast wanted me dead, there were faster ways than drowning me.

  When I bobbed up, blinking water from eyeballs that burned with cold, the wolf lay on the ice, nose on its forepaws, staring right at me. This close, I could see the eyes quite clearly; I didn’t know them.

  Nevertheless, I was screwed. If I tried to get out, the werewolf would attack; if I stayed in, I’d drown or freeze to death. Already, the lethargy that preceded hypothermia slowed my movements. My lips froze together, and my eyelashes dripped with teeny-tiny icicles.

  Suddenly, the beast lifted its head. Something was coming. By the sounds of the approach, something big. Maybe a bear.

  Would that be better or worse?

  The figure that shot from the trees wasn’t a bear but Shepard. The wolf scrambled to its feet.

  “Dylan.” I tried to shout, but my voice had gone hoarse from the cold. “It’s—”

  I meant to say “a werewolf,” but Shepard finished the sentence with a single word: “Joe.”

  The animal charged. Shepard drew his gun and pulled the trigger in a smooth, practiced movement that reminded me of old westerns and gunslingers—although I’d never seen one where the gunman wore fur.

  The werewolf exploded, flames shooting so high I feared the trees might catch fire. Huh. The assassin in New York must have been a werewolf, too.

  Shepard hurried past the burning ball of fire without even giving it a glance. “Why did you walk on the ice?” he asked, pausing at the edge. “It isn’t stable.”

  “Like I’d k
now stable ice if it bit me on the ass.” I wasn’t making sense, but can you blame me?

  Shepard dropped to his knees, then stretched flat, inching onto the surface, but every movement caused more cracks to race between him and me. He stopped, worry etching furrows in his face. “We’ve got to get you out of there. Fast.”

  I didn’t have the energy to say something sarcastic, which bothered me more than the cold.

  Behind Shepard, shadows emerged from the trees. I blinked several times, and enough of the icicles fell away so that I could see clearly.

  “Wolves,” I whispered.

  Shepard scooted backward so fast the ice crackled threateningly, but he managed to reach solid ground and draw the gun. This time, however, he didn’t shoot. The wolves were actually wolves, their eyes devoid of the whites that marked both a human and a werewolf.

  The animals skirted Shepard, slinking nearer to me, their manner nonthreatening. A large black male paused at the edge, then hunkered down and crept forward in a movement that mimicked Shepard’s. Except that the wolf weighed less than I did, so the ice did not protest. It reached me and bent its head as if in submission. I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Grab on,” Shepard said quietly.

  I hesitated, not wild about going anywhere near the powerful jaw and sharp teeth, but the cold had gotten so bad I didn’t much care how I died. So I used the last of my energy to make a final lunge, and my fingers found fur.

  I clutched, pulled, then wrapped my arms around the wolf’s neck and hugged with all my might. The animal inched backward until we were both on solid ground, and I let go.

  The wolf stood and shook itself. Bits of ice, snow, and water sprayed everywhere, and the world began to fade.

  A chorus of growls snapped me back. The wolves stood between Shepard and me. Shepard pointed his gun at the nearest one.

  “No,” I managed. “They’re trying to help.”

  “I have to get you warm, or your heart will stop.”

  As if they’d understood, the wolves closed in, encircling me, snuggling close, sharing their heat.

  The last thing I heard before I passed out was Shepard muttering, “I’ll be damned.”