Not Until Moonrise

by Heather Hellinger

  Jackson lifted his head with a groan. “You don’t really have to leave yet, do you?”

  She rubbed the back of his neck apologetically. “It’s a full moon tonight, and I’ve got a long drive up to Beacon.”

  “Shit. You’ve got the weirdest job.” He sat up, throwing the blankets off and exposing them all at once to the cold.

  Kate laughed, but her teeth chattered, and she dove for the closet. One good thing about winter—bulky clothing made it easier to hide weapons. She hopped into a pair of loose pants and considered a sweater that didn’t quite match.

  Jackson was quiet behind her—too quiet. She knew the instant his eyes fell on the scar.

  “I wish you would retire,” he said, in that low, deep voice that could make her shiver with anticipation, or clench her jaw and reconsider the wisdom of long-term relationships.

  “I will,” she returned lightly, pulling on a sports bra.

  “You could do it now. We’d find another way to get money. Other people get by with normal jobs.”

  “Hmm, and I bet that’s so much fun.” Absently, she touched the scar that ran down her left shoulder. It had faded to white after a year, but she could still feel the raised line of it easily enough. The werewolf’s claws had sliced through muscle like it was butter, right down to the bone. For a while, the doctors had said she would never regain full use of her arm. They’d underestimated her.

  Kate yanked on a black sweatshirt to match her pants. She couldn’t tell Jackson the real truth, and that irritated her. That she loved her job. That the hunt made her feel alive, and more powerful than she had ever felt in her life. That most of all, she loved the kill. The explosion of pure violence as every inch of her body and mind became a weapon.

  Jackson didn’t understand violence. He was everything that was gentle and good, everything she had once—and still—needed. If hunting monsters satisfied one part of her damaged psyche, then Jackson satisfied every other part.

  Guilt made her climb back onto the bed. She crawled into his lap and wrapped both arms around his neck, buried her nose in his hair. “It’s an easy job. All the recon’s done. I just have to go up there and wait for this guy to show, and put a bullet in his heart when he does. That’s all.”

  Jackson sighed, warm breath stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck. “Just… be careful anyway.”

  “I will be. I promise.” She leaned back, gave him a long look from beneath her lashes. “Wait up?”

  “Don’t I always?” He gave her a swat and moved her off his lap. “Fine, go now. Protect the world from evil. Come home and get naked for me.”

  “If you make lasagna,” she called, jumping clear of the bed before he could catch her again. “Lasagna first, then sex.”

  His laugh followed her out the door.

  So she had gone. She’d left him, left him alone, and the wolves had come for him.

  “Hey, hon, sorry about the wait.”

  Kate startled, blinked up at the waitress who’d suddenly materialized at her side, and was glad not to have given into her first impulse, which was to draw her knife. Focus, she needed to focus on the present, and stop falling into daydreams.

  The waitress pulled a pencil from her hair and gave Kate a harried smiled. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Kate never drank on the job, not even a beer. What she did was difficult enough without impaired judgment. A single moment’s hesitation could get her killed, or worse.

  But this didn’t feel like a job. It felt like hell.

  “Scotch, neat,” she said. “Well liquor’s fine.”

  “Gotcha. You want to hear tonight’s specials? I can tell you right now, the blue cheese burger’s worth dying for.”

  Kate returned a smile that she hoped betrayed none of her tension. Friendly and forgettable was the aim now. “Just the drink, thanks.”

  There was something vaguely familiar about the other woman. Kate wondered if they’d gone to school together. The waitress didn’t seem to recognize her, but she doubted anyone would. The Kate Morgan who’d gone to Porter High was wide-eyed and fresh-faced, the kind of girl who jumped at her own shadow and apologized to the girls who stuck out their high heels to trip her in the halls. Not likely anyone would see her in the woman she’d become. She hardened a lot since she left Porter. She’d hardened a lot more since Jackson left her. And that was all for the best.

  Most jobs, most towns, she’d be booking herself into a motel now, settling in for a stay. She would have gotten to know the locals, listened to gossip about the murders. What kind of people had the victims been, who were their friends and colleagues, their lovers? Did they beat their children, or spoil them rotten?

  Eddie had told her in the beginning, what had once been a man would always think in part like a man. Men did not kill indiscriminately. There was a pattern, a mold that each victim fit, even if the killer didn’t know it himself. Understand the victims, and you understood the killer.

  But that was another town. This place, Kate knew like she knew every scar on her body. She knew the dead men, what kind of men they’d been, and what kind of man—or woman—wanted them dead. She knew the killer.

  Her scotch arrived. Kate took a long swallow, and leaned back to wait for Jackson.

  Third

  TIME STUCK. THE CLOCK OVER the bar ticked off minutes that never seemed to pass, and each time the door opened, Kate tensed. But it was never him.

  Full dark now, the sun nothing but a ghost of violet fading fast. When she looked out the front windows, she saw the waxing moon—not yet full, thank god—rising over the trees across the road. No reason for him not to be here.

  Then the door opened, blowing in a gust of autumn wind, blowing Jackson in with it.

  Kate’s breath went to ice. Every bone in her body ached with a sudden and vicious pain, and if she could have moved, she would have reached for her gun.

  He was exactly like she remembered, and nothing like it. The same dark hair, longer now, falling in tangles over the shoulders of his T-shirt. The same old shitkicker boots, the same hunch to his shoulders, as if he worried his real height might frighten the world.

  But now… Kate couldn’t be certain from the distance, but those shoulders looked wider, the shirt stretched taut over new muscles. When he walked, his boots struck the floor in silence. Jackson moved across the room like a predator, his gaze sliding everywhere. Everywhere, except the back booth.

  He went straight to the bar, and sat on a stool beside no one. The bartender nodded, set down a beer and poured him a shot of Jameson, took his money off the bar.

  Kate slipped a hand under the table. The gun was too obtrusive. She drew the blade strapped to her ankle instead. Seven inches of steel, the edge razored in silver. Out of all her arsenal, this was her favorite weapon, a blade that ached to slip between a man’s ribs. It had been a present the day she graduated from the Division’s exhausting training program and went on active duty. Jackson had tied a crimson ribbon around the hilt and said, with an ironic twist of a smile, Try not to get dead.

  When you killed a man with a knife, Kate thought, it was personal.

  At the bar, a skinny girl sidled up to the empty place beside Jackson and gave him a flirtatious smile. His response must have been encouraging; she draped an arm over his shoulder and leaned into him with her whole body.

  Kate’s chest tightened. Two years of guilt and nightmares, always searching, always preparing for the worst. But not once had she considered that the worst might include a little girl in ass-baring shorts, a little girl who’d probably still been in diapers the first time Jackson swore to love her forever.

  It changes them, Eddie’s voice said in her head. Everything they were, the mutation turns it inside out. The man’s motives are still there—but it’s the animal that controls them now. Animals don’t care about right or wrong, or anything but feeling good. And what makes these particular animals feel good is hunting and killing. Once you realize that, that’s when y
ou understand that putting them down is a mercy.

  Jackson lifted one hand to cup the back of the girl’s head and draw her down. Kate turned the knife in her hands, turned it and imagined sinking it between his shoulder blades.

  But the kiss didn’t happen. Jackson put his lips to the girl’s ear instead of her mouth, said something that made her draw back with a grin, nodding. An instant later she was bounding off across the room and disappearing into a tangle of kids surrounding the jukebox.

  A headache unfurled behind Kate’s eyes. It was her fault. She had wanted to see him again, had lain awake at night and prayed that he was alive somewhere. A selfish prayer.

  Selfish, too, each time she had gone out on a job knowing trouble might follow her home. She should have left Jackson the moment she started working for the Division. Eddie had tried to warn her. You’re only as strong as your biggest weakness. But she had always been so afraid Jackson would leave her; leaving him was simply unimaginable.

  Jackson’s stool scraped back as he stood. He swept one more look around the bar—the back, why wasn’t he looking toward their old booth? Had he really forgotten everything?—and headed for the restroom.

  Kate swallowed the last of her second scotch, and left the booth. With the knife hidden against her side, she wove between tables, following in the path Jackson cleared.

  The restrooms were down a short, wood-paneled hallway. The men’s door was still swinging softly when she arrived. Kate waited to a count of fifteen, forced her breathing to steady, her nerves to calm, her muscles to gather.

  This was it. She bared the knife, and entered.

  The restroom was dingy yellow, mildew growing between the cheap wall tiles. Two stalls, both empty, and a line of urinals against the far wall. Jackson stood at the farthest one with his back to the door, giving no sign that he’d heard her entrance or cared. Music from the bar poured in; it was louder than Kate’s footsteps, louder than her pounding heart.

  She stopped behind Jackson, close enough to reach out and run her fingers down the line of his spine—if she wanted to. Close enough to feel the startling warmth radiating out from him. Her first glance hadn’t been wrong. He’d put on muscle. It made him look harder, more dangerous. An animal musk surrounded him.

  Kate drew her arm back. Her heart beat in her throat, but her grip was steady. When she struck, she was lightning.

  Jackson was faster.

  One moment Kate was lunging at his unguarded back. The next he was simply gone. She had just enough time to curse herself for her stupidity, and then she crashed into the wall, the tip of her blade jamming between the wall tiles.

  “That’s one way to say hello.”

  Adrenaline burst through Kate’s veins. She yanked the knife from the wall and spun ready to defend—but Jackson wasn’t attacking.

  He stood two paces back, watching her from eyes even bluer than she remembered. He leaned against the wall, hands tucked into his pockets, everything about him lazy and unconcerned.

  This time Kate wasn’t fooled.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here.”

  Jackson’s answer was a sardonic twist of lips made expressly for kissing. “Yeah. I missed you, too, baby.”

  The sound of his voice was awful to listen to. The same low rumble—a little deeper, a little darker—and every word set memories loose. His laugh, his dry jokes. How he always seemed to know what she needed, whether it was to be alone or to be held. The way he said her name when they were in bed and his lips were on her skin. And the way she’d felt two years ago when she came home bloody and bruised and too tired to stand, and for the first time Jackson wasn’t there waiting for her.

  Suddenly there were a thousand things she wanted to say, but all that made it through her gritted teeth was, “How could you do this to me?”

  His smile vanished. “What pisses you off more, Kate? The fact that you almost got me killed, or the fact that I left you?”

  “Don’t try to turn this on me. You made your choice, and you damn well knew—”

  The restroom door swung open, cutting her off. A teen boy froze in the doorway. For a count of five he stared between Kate, Jackson, and the silver blade, and then he backed out in a hurry.

  Jackson lifted a brow, infuriatingly calm.

  For half a second Kate thought about going after the boy. But to what end? There was nothing she could do to keep him quiet, and he had just effectively bound her hands. If anything happened to Jackson here, that boy would remember her, and sooner or later, somebody would put the pieces together and figure out who she was.

  Out in the barroom, the jukebox started a new song. Patsy Cline, and that was just perfect, just fucking perfect.

  “I fall to pieces, each time I see you again. I fall to pieces—”

  Kate thought of Jackson whispering into that girl’s ear, and her headache compounded. Everything about her, Jackson already knew. Every weakness, every single little thing guaranteed to make her ache, he would use against her.

  It was all going wrong. She’d known Jackson would be waiting for her. Knowing should have given her the upper hand, but instead she’d fucked it all up. Stumbled in here with no plan at all, like she could just cut Jackson’s heart out on the bathroom floor and walk away clean. She was better than this. She had to salvage things, even if they turned out to be anything but clean.

  She pulled in a deep breath, caught his gaze and held it. “You owe me.”

  Jackson’s lips drew back slightly. “For what, exactly?”

  “For walking out without one word. For letting me think you were dead. For letting me waste two years of my life trying to find your sorry ass.”

  His narrowed eyes spoke for him.

  Kate refused to back down. “You owe me answers about that night.”

  “Answers won’t help.”

  “I want to know, Jackson.” She had to get him away from here, somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed. Somewhere with no witnesses. She swallowed, and forced her voice to falter, just a little. “Please. Can we just go somewhere and talk?”

  Jackson’s softening was almost imperceptible. A shift in his stance, a furrowing of his brow as he looked at her. Kate wondered if it was true that werewolves could smell guilt, and she pulled all of her shame deep, deep into herself. She was not betraying Jackson. She was betraying the thing that had taken him over, the thing that walked in his skin and wore his expressions too convincingly.

  He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “If that’s what you want… then okay.”

  Kate smiled. “Okay. Okay, good. Let’s go—”

  “To the barn.”

  She stiffened. “No.”

  “I want to show you something there.”

  “Jackson, no. I won’t—”

  “You will.”

  He had played her.

  “You—” Kate grabbed for him, but he shifted away with a hard look, slipped through the door and was gone before she could finish cursing him.

  “Jackson!” She bolted after him, through the door and down the hall, back into the bar. The knife was in her hand again, and to hell with the customers who gaped at her over their beers, to hell with her training and the threat of prison. He wasn’t getting away again.

  Jackson was a blur of dark hair and dark clothes. The front door opened, was already falling shut behind him when Kate reached it. She plunged through just as someone else opened it from the other side, and they collided hard.

  “Would you watch where you’re—” The man entering broke off and stared at her, and Kate stared back, frozen to the quick.

  He was almost Jackson’s height, but nothing like Jackson. His hair was sandy, his body thick, high school muscles gone doughy. His mouth worked the air a moment, before he managed to speak again. Then: “Jesus! What are you doing here?”

  Kate swallowed hard, couldn’t speak or look away.

  Three victims of the wolf—but that was wrong. There were four. The fourth just didn’t know i
t yet.

  “You walk by and I fall to pieces… you walk by and I fall to pieces.”

  The jukebox crackled and went silent.

  Howard grabbed her arm. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Kate’s hand shot up. The heel of her palm connected hard with her step-brother’s nose, and the crack of breaking bone echoed through the silent bar.

  Howard grunted and staggered back, both hands flying to cover his face. Blood trickled between his fingers, ran down the collar of his garage uniform. His curse came out gargled.

  Kate’s chest felt hard and tight—she couldn’t be sure if she was breathing, if her heart was even beating. But she knew the knife was still in her hand, and every inch of her wanted to use it.

  “Kate.”

  The call came from outside. The sky was utterly dark now, the moon luminous. Jackson stood in the center of the lot. His gaze moved over Howard, nostrils flaring slightly, and Kate wondered if he could smell the blood. Then his gaze shifted to her, and she wondered nothing at all. His eyes—they had gone pale as starlight, glittering and cold, and Kate had the sense that if she looked long enough, she would fall right into their void, into another world entirely.

  “Come with me, Katie.” His voice carried on the still air. “Now or never.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Howard standing motionless and pale in the doorway. The will to use the knife on him passed; it wasn’t Howard she’d come for.

  She lowered the blade and stepped out into the night.

  Jackson met her at the truck, stopped her when she reached for the door. She flinched from the touch of his hand—too warm, his skin electric like the air before a storm—and he drew back.

  “I’ll drive,” he said.

  “You’re joking.”

  He extended his hand, palm up.

  “Fuck... Fuck it.” Kate clenched her jaw, and handed the keys over. She stalked around to the passenger side, climbed in as Jackson’s door slammed and the engine revved to life.

  She sat ramrod straight, every muscle tensed as she ran through a mental inventory of the truck’s defenses. Throwing knives under each seat, a crowbar in the back, brass knuckles and a spray can loaded with colloidal silver. She still had the gun, of course, but would only use it if she had to. The sound would attract too much attention, even in this hick town.