Moon Cursed: The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles, Book 1

by Centanni, Tori

  Holly had a nasty wound in her other arm, the one that had been broken before she’d been taken. It looked like her skin had been sliced open on the top, where she wouldn’t bleed out. The cut was two inches long and a raw, red color. Yellow pus collected inside of it. I gagged.

  “What happened to her?”

  “They cut her with a silver knife,” Michael said, disgusted. “She started getting sick right away and they strapped her the bed to ‘monitor’ her progress.”

  There were no monitors here like you’d find in a hospital and given the gross, infected state of her wound, I highly doubted they were taking good care of her.

  Bile rose in my throat. Silver was poison to our kind. I didn’t know how much we could survive and recover from. I didn’t know if that meant it was already too late for Holly.

  “How are you?” I asked Michael, tearing my gaze from her arm.

  “Okay. No worse for the wear. Would love to be untied though.” He rattled his arms to demonstrate how he was bound with Zip-ties.

  I nodded. “Let me grab a knife.”

  I crossed the cellar in quick steps and then paused at the bottom of the stairs, listening.

  The shooting had stopped. That could be good or bad, depending on who had shot whom. Honestly, part of me didn’t want to know. Then again, if the hunters had shot Raff, they would be coming after us shortly. If Raff had shot them, we had one less thing to worry about. If it was some combination of the two, or if more hunters were on the way here as backup, then there was going to be a lot more trouble.

  I stuck my tongue out as I headed up the stairs, almost on instinct, and tasted the air. It tasted like cooper and heat and gunpowder mixed together with sweat and urine (gross). I slipped into the kitchen and, staying flat against the wall, peered out into the living room.

  Raff sat on the floor. The guy who wasn’t Doug was lying on the floor with a very obvious bullet hole in his chest, blood seeping through his camouflage jacket. Doug was standing there looking horrified, the front of his pants wet. Guess that explained the urine smell. His gun was no longer in his hand. He’d dropped it and I saw it gleaming on the wood floor.

  I ran to Raff. He was barely sitting and ready to keel over, his face a few shades too pale. Sweat beaded his upper lip and forehead. I checked his chest and head for wounds. The arm of his jacket, near his shoulder was torn. My heart sank. This wasn’t happening. I tore the hole of his jacket bigger. There was only a thin line of blood. Barely anything. I let out a huge sigh of relief.

  “Bullet grazed me,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  Relief twisted into terror. “A silver bullet?”

  He nodded.

  I swore.

  Doug, who finally seemed to shake himself out of his shock, started to bend down for his gun. I whirled, standing and aiming my gun at him so fast that I was surprised I didn’t fall over. Every part of me was shaky and unsteady, but I held the gun up and aimed it at his chest.

  He straightened and put his hands up. “Don’t shoot.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Doug’s lips moved, but it was like he couldn’t from words.

  “Asshole friend of his said there was an easier way to end this, and aimed his gun at Doug, so I shot,” Raff said, his voice raspy. “Doug got scared and shot at me before dropping his gun.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Doug said. “I was surprised.”

  “What do I do?” I asked Raff.

  Doug was a hateful coward. He was hanging out with murderous assholes and had played a part in kidnapping my friends, hurting Holly, and possibly killing both her and Raff, not to mention those who’d already been killed. And still, I didn’t want to shoot him. He deserved it and worse, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it.

  “Where’s Holly?” Raff asked.

  Somehow, my heart managed to sink even further as it tried to burrow down into my kidneys. It seemed crappy to give him bad news when he was in pain. “Downstairs. But she’s not well. One of these a-holes cut her with a silver knife.”

  Raff’s gaze flicked from me to Doug, and then toward the kitchen. “Where’s Michael?”

  “He’s okay. I need a knife to cut them free.” But I don’t want to leave you. I left the last part unspoken. Raff seemed to understand anyhow.

  “Shoot him,” Raff finally said. Doug whimpered.

  “I’m not going to kill him if I don’t have to,” I argued. Doug deserved it. Even if Holly and Raff both made miraculous recoveries, Drake was dead, and so were two others. Doug had helped make that happen. But I’d never killed anyone and I didn’t exactly want to start. Even in my plans to be a vampire, I’d hoped to live off blood bags (the plastic kind, from a hospital) and people willing to let me drink from them. I wasn’t a killer.

  Besides, Doug was pathetic. He’d peed his pants after his own friend had tried to shoot him. I couldn’t bring myself to put a bullet in him.

  Raff slowly got to his feet, blocking my shot for only a second. That was all it took. Doug lunged for his gun. Raff, surprised, jumped out of the way. The moment he was clear, I pulled the trigger so hard it hurt. The bullet Doug hit in his thigh and he dropped the gun again as he crumpled to the ground, screeching in pain. The gun kicked back and my shoulder burned. It felt hot and dirty in my hand, but I couldn’t let go of it.

  “Charlie!” Michael screamed from downstairs.

  “I’m okay,” I called back, staring at Doug, who was coughing and sputtering on the floor. Blood pooled around his wound on his already soiled pants.

  “Go get them,” Raff said, wiping sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. He kept his gun aimed at Doug’s hand.

  I bent down and grabbed the fallen gun and then the gun his dead friend was still clinging to for good measure. I piled the guns on the counter beside the sink and then riffled through drawers until I found the knives. Armed with big chef’s knife, I headed back downstairs.

  I cut Michael free quickly and then together we unstrapped Holly from the bed. I hesitated again at the needle in her arm. “What’s in the IV drip?” I asked.

  “Saline, I think. They didn’t want her to die before some doctor friend of theirs arrived.”

  I remembered the sketches of the dead wolf necropsy in John’s journal and felt sick all over again. “Good thing we got here first,” I said, and gently pulled out the IV.

  Holly moaned, her eyelids fluttering.

  “Holly?” Michael said eagerly.

  She mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “We’re going to get you to safety,” I said.

  She moaned again. Michael and I helped her out of bed. Her feet moved like bricks, but with each of us supporting her, we managed to get her up the stairs. Raff saw us struggling in the kitchen and rushed to help, taking Holly from me and handing me his gun, which I definitely didn’t want. I held it like it was a scorpion.

  “Just keep an eye on Shithead over there,” Raff said, nodding at Doug.

  Doug whined. He was still on the floor, sweating and panting, blood pooling beneath his leg. Doug tried his best puppy dog eyes on me, but it didn’t work.

  “Tell me you’re not the one who cut open my friend’s arm with a silver blade,” I said.

  Doug shook his head. “That was Tim.” He nodded toward the body of the cocky guy who was now dead.

  “The one who tried to shoot you? Wow. You have wonderful friends.”

  Raff came back to the doorway. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Wait! You can’t leave me,” Doug said.

  Raff growled. “You’re lucky we don’t set the house on fire first. Come on, Charlie.”

  “He’s right. We can’t just leave him.”

  Raff growled and bent down next to Doug. He pulled the cell phone from Doug’s back pocket and threw it at him. “Call someone. We have to get our friend help while she still has a chance.”

  Raff stomped out. My heart swelled a little hearing that he thought Holly still had
a chance. Doug coughed and sputtered, reaching with a shaking hand for the phone. Help would be slow to reach him out here, but at the moment I was way more worried with Holly and Raff’s well-being than this guy’s.

  It took a small eternity to help Holly in the backseat, but we were on our way long before any help came to Doug’s aid. I drove while Michael kept watch over Holly in back and Raff sat in the passenger seat glaring out the window.

  Chapter 24

  It wasn’t easy making a four-hour drive with two silver-poisoned werewolves and an exhausted human in the car. Plus, the smell of silver was making me itchy. It was faint, but it still managed to crawl up my nostrils and make me sneeze. At one point, I had to open all the windows, which only drew complaints from Holly, who was having chills, and I had to close them again.

  About an hour into the drive, Holly took a turn for the worse. Her chills turned into shakes. Her teeth chattered and her lips turned blue, while the rest of her skin looked almost grayish though I couldn’t tell how much of that was because of the cell phone light Michael was using to illuminate her as we drove in the shadows of a tree-lined highway. It was my cell phone, as his and Holly’s phones had been left behind when the hunters had snatched them. Raff’s phone was serving as the GPS, telling me how to get back to the orchard.

  “Can’t we do something for her?” Michael demanded.

  “I don’t know. Can we?” I directed the question at Raff who, while a little pale and groggy, was doing okay.

  Raff licked his lips. “We can get her to Kai, our healer. If anyone can help her, Kai can.”

  “She needs help now,” Michael said. “What counteracts silver poisoning?”

  I didn’t know so I said nothing, hoping Raff might offer a solution. He didn’t.

  “Come on, Charlie, you must have some idea! You usually know everything,” Michael pleaded. My heart squeezed. Once again, I felt stupid for not researching werewolves with the same zeal as I’d researched vampires. Maybe if I had, I’d know of some way to help Holly, some herb or balm or trick that would keep the silver from wreaking more havoc on her system until we could get her better help.

  “There are salves and potions that can help,” Raff finally said. “But none we can make in the car. Her best bet to get to Kai, and fast. The orchard isn’t too much farther.”

  According to the GPS on Raff’s phone, it was almost three hours away. I glanced in the rear view. Holly was unconscious. The shakes had stopped, but now she was passed out, and that was probably not a good sign.

  I jammed the gas pedal to the floor and drove as fast as possible without wrecking the car.

  * * *

  By the time I skidded the car to a stop behind a pickup truck in the dirt lot in front of Drake and Jean’s farmhouse, it was after eleven o’clock at night. The sky was dark and a cold wind blew through the trees. Yellow leaves illuminated by the porch light littered the lawn and walkway that led to the house.

  Holly had been unconscious for the majority of the rest of the drive, though Michael had managed to rouse her as soon as we’d parked. When we pulled her out of the car and I finally got a good look at her in the light from the from porch, I gasped. Her skin was definitely gray and her lips had turned blue. Her hair was ratty and tangled, which wasn’t her fault, but added the effect that she was a corpse pulled out of the ground right after burial rather than a still-living, breathing person.

  My stomach flip-flopped. It was completely messed up and unsettling. I’d held out hope that she could be helped, but looking at her now, it was really hard to believe she didn’t have one and a half feet in the grave.

  Raff and I supported Holly as Michael ran to the door and rang the bell. As we managed to get Holly on the porch, the door opened. Jean stood there in jeans and a flannel shirt, her expression going slack at the sight of Holly. She immediately called for Kai. Someone behind Jean said they’d go get the healer. Then Jean rushed out to help us get Holly to a sofa, abandoning the mug on a porch railing. The living room was too far, so we veered right into a parlor.

  The room had a formal feel, with wood-accented blue Victorian sofas and heavy oak furniture that would probably fetch a high price on one of those flea market reality shows. We got Holly onto the long sofa and she immediately passed out again. That definitely wasn’t good.

  “Silver poisoning?” Jean asked.

  “Yes. And Raff was grazed by a silver bullet, too,” I said.

  Raff looked a little taken aback, like perhaps he’d forgotten, but then I realized he’d just wanted to keep the attention on Holly, who needed help far more desperately than he did. So far, anyway.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re not fine,” I said.

  Michael looked lost, shifting from foot to foot and moving his hands to his pockets before dropping them again.

  “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and boil some water, dear?” Jean said to him. “The kettle is on the island. And while you’re at it, help yourself to a snack or two. You look famished.”

  Michael and I made eye contact and I nodded to indicate that he should do exactly that. He probably hadn’t eaten since he was taken last night—and from what I could tell, he hadn’t eaten much before that—and anyhow, he was no use here.

  Neither was I, but that didn’t stop me from standing around uselessly watching the colors change in Holly’s face.

  “She was shot?” Jean asked.

  “Stabbed,” I said. “According to Michael, they raked the silver knife down her arm.” I pointed to the gaping, seeping wound.

  Jean blanched and then knelt next to Holly, gingerly removing the sweatshirt Michael had found in Raff’s car and wrapped around her. Once it was off, the red mark on her other arm was obvious. It was dark red, flecked with dried blood, and the skin around it was raw and black. It was no wonder she was so sick. Even without the silver poisoning, the wound was obviously infected.

  Beside me, Raff let out a small sound. It was almost a whimper.

  “She’ll be okay,” I said.

  He shot me a dark look.

  “She’s here. She’s getting help,” I said.

  Raff pressed his lips together and the nodded solemnly.

  A woman in flowing silk pants came running into the room with a black medical bag like you’d see on old television shows about doctors who made house calls. She bent down next to Jean, who quickly moved out the way.

  The doctor woman, Kai, sucked in a breath when she saw the nasty cut on Holly’s arm.

  “When was her contact with silver?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. How long had it been since they’d been taken? Less than twenty-four hours, even thought it felt like a freaking week. “Less than a day ago.”

  “About twelve hours,” Michael said, appearing like a ghost beside me. “They wanted to see if a small amount of silver might kill the wolf but spare her. They had a doctor or something coming soon, I guess to do more experiments.” His throat hitched on the last word. I’m sure he could imagine the kind of experiments those jerks had had in mind. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Kai answered honestly. “This cut is infected and the silver has had plenty of time to work its way through her system. With silver poisoning, the sooner the treatment is administered, the better.”

  I turned to Raff. If sooner was better, he needed help now. I opened my mouth. Raff shook his head, eyes practically popping out of his head as he silently begged me to be quiet.

  Kai began pulling things out of her bag until she found a jar. It was the size of a jam jar and was half-full of a black substance. She opened the jar and the foulest smell permeated the room. It was like burned garbage and rotting animal carcasses.

  It was so bad my eyes watered and I desperately tried to breathe though my mouth, only with my stupid werewolf sense of smell, the scent on my tongue was like tasting it.

  “Sorry, this stuff stinks a little,” Kai said, as she slathered it on Hol
ly’s wound.

  “A little?” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud and ignored Raff’s chiding look. Michael smartly retreated back to the kitchen. I wanted to follow, but it felt unfair to leave Holly in her time of need, unconscious and out of it though she was. Even though the smell was seriously rank.

  “What does it do?” Raff asked.

  Kai finished spreading the goop and finally closed the lid of on her jar of aromatic horrors. Unfortunately, the stench was now on Holly and it filled the air like a stinky fog. “It’s a salve made with the help of a local witch. It should leech the silver from her veins, but it might be too late for that. If the silver has already started shutting down major organs, even a magical salve can’t do much.”

  I elbowed Raff, but it was a warning shot. If he didn’t speak up about how he, too, needed the smell gunk on his wound, I would.

  Luckily, Raff didn’t have a death wish. “A silver bullet grazed my shoulder,” he said.

  Kai frowned at him. “Nathaniel, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Holly’s in dire straights. I’ll be fine.”

  “Not without help, you won’t,” Kai said. She stood and reopened the jar. I sneezed as if my nose was trying to ward off the scent, but it was no use. Kai came closer and the smell managed to get even stronger. “Even a small amount of silver can spread through your body and kill you, young man.”

  “I know, but it didn’t seem as urgent,” Raff said.

  “Take off your jacket.”

  Raff complied, and then also pulled off his shirt, which no one had asked him to do. Sure, it did give Kai better access to the tiny little cut on his upper arm, but still. I made myself look away from his naked upper half and focused on Holly, my eyes pricking with tears at the stink. And, if I were honest, out of sheer worry for Holly.

  There had been plenty of times I’d downright hated her over the last few years, blaming her for biting me even though it hadn’t been her fault. It was easier to hate her and her existence than to admit I’d been kind of a jerk to barge in on someone I didn’t know to demand the ultimate supernatural gift.