Moon Cursed: The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles, Book 1

by Centanni, Tori

  When my lunch break rolled around a little after two, I grabbed him on my way out the door. He looked confused and half-asleep, which wasn’t exactly a huge vote of confidence for his ability to deal with evil gunmen. We walked a few blocks to a burrito place. Despite my breakfast binge, I was still starving and nursing what could only be described as “wolf hangover.”

  I ordered a large burrito and the biggest drink size they offered, which I filled with blue Gatorade. Raff followed my lead and we got a table in the back. It was pretty empty now that the main lunch rush had ended.

  “Why the yogurt shop?” Raff asked, as I unrolled my burrito.

  “I don’t know. Why not?”

  “Doesn’t seem like a fitting use of your skills.” He hadn’t even unwrapped the foil around his burrito. Maybe he didn’t understand that I only got thirty minutes for lunch.

  “You don’t know me and you don’t know what my skills are. Maybe all I’m capable of doing is serving frozen yogurt.” I took a big bite of my food.

  “I meant your wolf skills,” Raff said, leaning closer.

  I nearly choked. “I don’t have wolf skills,” I hissed in a whisper.

  “Sure you do,” he said. “Heightened senses of smell and hearing, heightened strength…”

  “I don’t have those,” I said, mouth half full.

  “You do. All were—all of us do.” He took the daintiest bite of burrito possible while I ate like I might never see food again. When I finished, I crumpled my foil into a ball.

  “I don’t, though,” I said.

  Raff was still eating as I got up to throw away my trash. Then I left him, figuring he could find his way back to the yogurt shop on his own with all of his wolf skills. It was mid-afternoon and Queen Anne Avenue was pretty packed with people walking dogs and strollers, and walking to and from the bus stop a block away.

  It should have been safe so I wasn’t really paying attention to anything besides the walk signal as I waited on the curb to cross. I didn’t even notice anything was amiss until someone pressed a gun barrel against my spine.

  My heart pounded as my stomach churned.

  “Come with me, you curr,” a man’s voice hissed in my ear. “And don’t make a fuss, or I’ll shoot.”

  I glanced back to see a guy my age, which startled me. He was brunette with blue eyes and wore a camouflage jacket. He had sweat beading on his upper lip and forehead and his expression could only described as “constipated.”

  “Babe, there you are,” Raff said, pushing through the crowd to grab my arm on the opposite side of the gunman. He pulled me away and the gunman quickly moved to conceal his weapon.

  When the light turned, the gunman didn’t move and Raff held me back as well. People bumped into us as they rushed to beat the light. Raff looked like he wanted to punch a hole in the gunman’s face, but the gunman finally joined the crowd and crossed the street.

  “I doubt he’s alone,” Raff said to me urgently. “Come on.”

  “I have to get back to work,” I said, my brain spinning too fast to process what had just happened. All I knew was that I was tired of having guns aimed at me. Before this weekend, I’d never even been within five feet of a firearm, let alone nearly shot twice. I wanted to go back to work, do my job, and have everything go back to normal.

  Chapter 7

  Everything was not normal. I got through the rest of my shift in a daze, working the register where I only had to hit buttons and take money. Raff was in the shop the entire time and I kept checking to make sure he was there, because if that guy had doubled-back and followed me to Yogurt Time, I wanted someone who would recognize him to be keeping an eye out.

  I jumped a little every time the door opened or the phone rang, and the guy who was working the closing shift, Noah, asked if I was okay so many times that I snapped at him.

  By the time my shift was over, I was determined to make this go away for real.

  And the only way to do that was to stop these monster hunters.

  “I don’t suppose the pack…err…Council has a sketch artist,” I said as we walked to Raff’s car. I itched to walk the few blocks home, but home wasn’t safe right now.

  “What?” Raff asked. He was buckling his seatbelt and stopped mid-way to look at me like I’d suggested we go to the moon.

  “You know. A sketch artist. They draw suspects for the police.”

  “We can’t go to the police.”

  “I honestly feel like you’re not listening to the actual words I’m saying,” I said, irritated. “I’m just asking if anyone can draw the guy based on my description so all of the werewolves can see what he looks like.”

  Raff considered. “That’s not usually how we do things.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “There’s one member of our pack who can draw quite well. But she might not wish to see me. Anna Kahale.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want to see you?”

  Raff stared straight ahead. “She’s my ex-girlfriend.”

  My stomach flip-flopped. Not like I cared who Raff had dated—or was dating, for that matter—but the thought of begging his ex for favors was a little unappealing.

  “She’s cool, though. She draws comics, and stuff. She’s working on a graphic novel.”

  That didn’t sound cool to me but I’d never gotten the appeal of comic books. Granted, I’d never really read them, but it wasn’t my thing. I preferred monsters to superheroes, and while I knew that comics featured a whole array of characters, I was more into facts than fiction. I usually scoured historical accounts and most of those were not illustrated save for the odd sketch where the journal writer, at a loss for words to describe whatever supernatural creature they had encountered, resorted to trying to draw a picture.

  “And we get along okay,” Raff added. “I just hate to barge in on her, you know? But if you think it will help, Anna will probably be relieved to have something to do. She tends to worry.”

  “Don’t we all?” I said.

  Raff drove to Anna’s apartment on Capitol Hill, near the community college. Of course she lived in the cool neighborhood.

  When she opened the door, my heart leapt into my throat. Anna was gorgeous, with light brown skin and beautiful brown eyes. Her black hair was silky and her tight blue jeans hugged her hips. She wore a white peasant top that accentuated her large boobs. She was of Polynesian descent and her apartment walls were covered in comic art and photos of Hawaii. She had a floral candle burning inside and the scent of wax and gardenia wafted around her.

  “Raff!” She threw her arms around him. “It’s so great to see you. This whole hunter thing has me totally rattled.”

  That didn’t seem like the greeting of an ex-girlfriend. I cleared my throat loudly. Anna unwrapped herself from Raff and looked at me. She smiled warmly. “Oh, hi, I’m Anna,” she said, extending a hand.

  “Charlie.” We shook and she invited us inside. Raff took a seat on the sofa without prompting. He seemed mighty comfortable in her space. I wondered how long they’d been together and just how long ago they’d broken up.

  “Charlie saw one of the hunters. He tried to grab her near her work.”

  “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible,” Anna said. She was so sincere that it was almost impossible to hate her. Until I realized half the art on the walls was stuff she’d drawn and she was really good. Plus she was super pretty. I couldn’t imagine why she and Raff had ended things, especially when he draped his arm over the back of the couch like someone who owned the place.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I was hoping you could draw the guy so everyone could see what he looks like.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea! Let me get my sketch book. Feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Raff knows where the glasses are.”

  “I bet he does,” I murmured.

  She practically skipped down the hall to a room off to the side.

  “You guys seem to get along really well,” I said.

  “Yeah. To be hone
st, it’s kind of a relief. We haven’t spoken much since… well… you know.” He kept his voice low, but his smile was huge. Dude was clearly still smitten, so I was guessing he wasn’t the one to end things. Figured.

  I sat down, which was when I realized that not only could I not compare to Anna’s cool artsy style and stunning good looks on a good day, but I was still wearing my gross work uniform with my hair in a ponytail.

  Not that I wanted Raff to smile at me like that. Raff was a werewolf and therefore, not my type. But still, I wished I’d insisted on going home to change first.

  Anna came back with her sketchbook and drew while I described the guy to the best of my ability. I remembered his eyes and the way the skin around them had crinkled in anger or disgust, and shuddered. The result wasn’t exactly a police sketch, but it was good approximation of the man who’d tried to grab me.

  Raff took a photo of it with his phone and sent it to all relevant parties.

  “What, you guys have like a phone tree or something?” I asked, because Raff spent exactly three seconds on his phone. He gave me a blank look.

  “There’s a group chat,” Anna said. “You should join it! Here, give me your phone, I’ll set it up.” She made a grabby hands motion.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said. I’d rather have nails hammered into each of my toes than join a chat group of werewolves talking about the full moon and organizing barbecues where they sat around getting in touch with their inner wolves or whatever.

  “Charlie is not a fan of being one of us,” Raff said. He sounded teasing, but his face was hard.

  I thought Anna was going to get all serious, too, but instead, she smiled sympathetically. “It’s a rough transition. I was pretty freaked out when it happened to me. Took me two years to come to terms with it. I still have nights where I break down and cry.”

  A small lump formed in my throat. I refused to admit it to anyone, even Michael, but there were plenty of nights that I cried myself to sleep.

  “When were you bitten?” Anna asked.

  “Three years ago,” I said. Her eyes widened a little and she exchanged glance with Raff, and they shared some unspoken thought, which irritated me further. “I’m fine. I just don’t like it. It’s a hassle to get the full moon off work and I’m already moody without the help of werewolfism.”

  Anna’s tight smile widened and she patted me on the shoulder. “If you ever need to talk or want to come join me on the full moon for a run, don’t be shy, okay? Here,” she scribbled something on a piece of paper and tore it off, “this is my number. Text anytime.”

  “Thanks,” I said, putting her number in my pocket with zero intention of ever using it.

  “We should get out of your hair,” Raff said, standing. “Thanks again for all of your help.” He bent down and kissed her on the cheek and I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Who the hell kisses their ex-girlfriend?

  I exited quickly to give them some space. Maybe this little visit would spark a romantic reunion. Yuck. But I suppose for a wolf boy, Raff could do a lot worse.

  I waited in the hall, trying to figure out what to do next. I’d been a scholar of vampires during high school. I could name the most famous real vampires (Edgar the Terrible, born in 1650, was a particular favorite and apparently still alive, though Damien refused to spill if he’d ever met him), and real vampire hunters (The Way of the Red Beating Heart was the most infamous group, around from 1823 to 1860 on the East Coast). I’d read up a bit on the fae, solely because a fae woman lended me her library, and I’d done some light reading about other supernatural beings. But I didn’t know jack about werewolves, because frankly, I didn’t want to know. Werewolves weren’t cool and mysterious: they were people bitten by diseased animals who were forced by said disease to howl at the moon and turn into animals. It wasn’t a superpower, it was an illness.

  I’d spent the last three years learning the bare minimum—things like yes, you will get cranky and suddenly need to eat all the meat right before and after the full moon, and yes, the transformation does hurt like hell and that’s normal—but otherwise, I’d done my best to ignore it and hope it would go away except for the few days each month it would not be ignored.

  Now, though, someone was trying to kill me for it. Which meant it was time to do what I did best: research.

  Chapter 8

  In most cases, the internet is the worst place you can look for information on the supernatural. It’s too clogged with fictional stories, movies, comics, video games, and role play content to find the real stuff. There are exceptions, where monsters use the internet to hide in plain sight, but they can be hard to spot.

  For example, Cara deMille, a vampire who’s at least six hundred years old and whom I suspect was the inspiration for Carmilla, has a Youtube channel where she does Gothic fashion and makeup tutorials. Most people think she’s just really good at rocking the vampire look. (Michael got his idea to do his “Confessions of a Vampire’s Boyfriend” channel from her, and while Michael has lots of subscribers, ninety-nine percent of them think it’s a fictional web series.)

  Werewolves are less active online as a community. Apparently they use private chat apps, but they don’t have “How to Cope With That Time of the Month” podcasts, at least not that I’ve found.

  Luckily, I had a contact with a collection of arcane books, a veritable library of the supernatural. Unluckily, she would demand something in exchange for using them. And she wouldn’t take a credit card.

  “I don’t suppose you have any, like, wolf hair or something?” I asked.

  Raff blinked. “What?”

  “You know, like, fur from your wolf form?”

  “Why would I have that?” Raff asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I tried to think what else I could offer Ellianne. I’d already given her my hair, blood, and one time, one of my baby teeth. But that had been when I was human. I wondered if she’d take something else from me now that I was a werewolf. Surely my blood was more valuable.

  If not, I had Raff. She didn’t have anything from him yet. Of course, that was only if he was willing to give. Ellianne had rules, one of which was that whatever she received was given willingly. Meaning you couldn’t go pluck hairs from a vampire’s head and offer them up. The vampire had to gift them to you. It was a pain in the ass, but rules were rules.

  * * *

  Ellianne lived in a penthouse apartment at the top of a tall, beach-front building in West Seattle. Raff and I rode the elevator up in silence. Raff had been surprisingly amenable to my plans, not asking many questions as I ordered him to drive here, park there, and go into this strange building.

  There were only two units on the top floor and Ellianne lived in the water-facing side. Leafless plants in silver pots flanked her door. I rang the doorbell, which sounded a delicate chime inside.

  Ellianne opened the door and looked from me to Raff and then back to me. She was gorgeous, with high cheekbones and a chin that was almost pointy. Her pointy ears sported silver earrings and her skin was pale white. Her hair was a powder blue with bits of white, like a winter frost. Her gown was ethereal, like a night gown with intricate beading that flowed behind her. Ellianne was a winter fae of some kind though she was closed lipped beyond that.

  “Come in,” she said, and let us inside.

  Her penthouse was freezing, the AC blasting like she was trying to turn her home into a freezer. The walls were stark white except for the windows, which displayed a stunning view of Alki Beach and Puget Sound. Her furniture was hard-looking with artsy angles and swoops and almost no padding. The sofa looked like an artist’s rendition of a bus stop bench, covered in thin blue fabric. In the next room, visible through an open double doorway, was the library, its walls lined with bookshelves.

  “I suppose you wish to use my library,” she said. That was the only reason I ever came, so it was a good guess. I’d met Ellianne through a scholar I’d met during my pursuit of local vampires, a guy who was
also fascinated with the supernatural and had run into Ellianne in the course of his studies.

  “That would be lovely,” I said, and bowed slightly. Raff raised his eyebrows but then quickly replicated my posture.

  “And what do you offer in exchange, little wolf?” she asked, her sapphire eyes raking me over.

  “As you know, I’m infected with werewolfism now.” Raff bristled beside me but didn’t speak. “If you’d take a new sample of my blood…”

  Ellianne shook her head. “I have no interest in your blood. But your friend… He has luxurious hair.”

  I turned to look at Raff’s sandy surfer locks mixed with blue dye. He did have the mane of an angel, but I wasn’t sure he was going to cooperate. Luckily, he understood her meaning.

  “And what do you want with my hair?” he asked, but there was no rancor in his voice, only curiosity.

  “I collect beautiful things.” And seriously strange things, I thought, thinking of my tooth. But I didn’t say so. It wasn’t any of my business what a faerie wanted with hair and bone. “I only require a lock for the use of my library this night.”

  “That sounds fair,” Raff said.

  I nearly fell over in shock. I was sure he was going to protest and make this hard, but he was being surprisingly agreeable about the whole thing. I guess he was as eager to catch the hunters and be rid of me as I was of him. Ellianne smiled at him, but her smile was somehow icy and cold. She took a pair of silver scissors from a drawer and gingerly cut a thick lock of his hair. She put it into a small glass container and then shoved a stopper into the top. Then she gestured toward the library. “You have its use until dawn.”

  I nodded gratefully and headed for the stacks.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to Raff as I shut the library doors behind us.

  “She’s not going to… you know… curse me with it or something, is she?”