Hunter's Moon

by Bevill, C. L.

  The children of the Bloodletter.

  “You’ve got the wrong weres,” she mumbled, hardly able to make the words come out of her mouth. Her internal beast screamed silently, desperate for freedom, unable to combat the power of the tranquilizer.

  The were knelt at her side. He gently turned her head and brushed some of the hair out of her eyes. She saw him, but it seemed like he was kneeling a league distant from her. “No, señorita, we do not. I have people watching your clan. It was only a matter of time before we got one of the two of you. It was fortunate we got both of you.” He smiled down at her.

  Claire tried to get to her feet. She planted her knees in the ground, but her arms wouldn’t work, and she fell. The were chuckled darkly. “Go to sleep, pequeña. We’ve got miles to go, and I’ve got a date with a young woman in Colorado.”

  Chapter 2

  There are nights when the wolves are silent,

  and only the moon howls. – George Carlin

  They called him Shade, although it wasn’t his name. It was the name he used while he worked under the auspices of the Council. It was the name he’d used for nearly ten years. It wasn’t uncommon for weres to change their names. They had human names for the purposes of blending in, but Shade hadn’t blended in for almost two decades. The Council didn’t care about names. They cared about power and allegiances.

  Once the Council had been what it had needed to be. Now it was crap.

  Shade heard whispers at first. One day a were named Braydon Bennett had been part of the Council. Then he was gone. His mate and two young children had vanished with him. That had happened before Shade’s time in Paris, but the rumors had run rampant and continued for years. It was said that Bennett would return. Blood would rain down upon the Catacombs of Paris when he did. Justice would be served.

  Then the Council had added another were to their triumvirate in order to present a façade to the outside world of weres.

  There was Scarlotte the wererat, the one who looked as if she was merely twelve years old. Weres whispered in the darkest shadows about her combined witch/were heritage. Another was Quincy. He was a weresnow leopard, although his human hair was the color of decayed maple leaves, and his eyes were black. Little was said about him except that he wasn’t the type one wanted to meet on a bright afternoon, much less in a dark alley during the dead of night. The third was Renard the Elderly. His forbidding gray hair and a harsh visage correctly revealed his nature.

  Together they presented a universal front of unspoken cruelty and general disregard for weres’ wellbeing.

  The Council had begun its deterioration.

  Abuse of power was an ugly thing. Shade believed that the shifter world needed to be policed. Humans weren’t ready for the new, improved species to be introduced into their realm. So the Council kept its secrets, but it also created more than its fair share.

  Shade’s eyes hadn’t been opened until he had progressed to his current rank. Prosecution wasn’t the same thing as persecution. He attempted to rein in the Council’s members, but instead, others had whispered into his ears.

  The Council was no longer just. But it was worse than that. Weres who entered the catacombs did not come out. The Bloodletter was said to be mounting a revolt. The three members of the Council were becoming paranoid. The rat witch was apt to let her bone monster deal with their problems instead of making decisions that needed to be made.

  Not six months before, an old friend had enticed Shade to a bar in Algiers. It had been six hours on a borrowed jet to make sure Shade was out of the Council’s immediate influence, but it had been worth it.

  The old friend was another bear, a Kodiak by the name of Aningan, and he sat with another were in the rear of the bar, both of them with their backs against the wall. Bars in Algiers were few and far between, secretive affairs that were kept from general knowledge through frequent movement and camouflage. Alcohol sales in the conservative Muslim country were limited and generally only catered to tourism in the larger hotels.

  The locals didn’t care to have their hidey-hole invaded. They stared at the newcomer with nervous attention. Then they looked with even more nervousness at the pair at the back of the dive.

  The latest customer had to duck to get through the door. His black hair and black eyes could have been the result of numerous regions. Shade had been told he could be Mongolian or American Indian. It didn’t matter to him. He’d been born in Alaska and abandoned to a clan of shifters there. The Kodiak shifter named Aningan had been the one to take Shade into his home and make it the bear’s world, as well. As Shade grew into a man, his world was the one he had created, the one formed by the lessons taught to him by Aningan. However, Shade’s world had begun to crumble because the vision of a place with integrity was putrefying into a black-tinged hot mess.

  Nevertheless, Aningan remained ever the same: solid, dependable, loyal, and fiercely patriotic. When Aningan called Shade, Shade had come, because Aningan was the father Shade should have been born to.

  Shade looked at the solitary bartender, who immediately looked away.

  Shade slowly stalked through the tiny bar, stopped a full five feet away from the rearmost table, and looked at his old friend. “It’s been nearly a year, Aningan,” he said. “You don’t post on Facebook, and Jesus, you don’t even tweet. You should definitely have a blog.”

  The older were grinned broadly. “I really didn’t think the Council would let you come, even for a short jaunt.”

  “I can’t work all the time.” Shade glanced at the other were. He discreetly used his nose, trying to decide what was sitting there and the best way to deal with it. Wolf. Big. Dangerous. He felt as though he should know the person. The were was huge, even sitting down, and his thick gray hair didn’t denigrate his threat potential. And his pale blue eyes, shards of ice that would cut open an artery if so disposed, marked him as a creature with whom he should not trifle.

  “Sit down,” Aningan said. His hair was black and his eyes just as black as Shade’s. They might have been brothers. The Inuit bloodline in the man had lent him the coloring, but the size was all shifter DNA.

  Shade sat and studied the other were. “You didn’t tell me you were dabbling in politics, Aningan,” he said without looking away from the wolf.

  “I told you he would understand quickly,” Aningan said to the wolf. “My brother,” he said to Shade, “this is Braydon Bennett.”

  Shade wasn’t particularly surprised. Braydon Bennett was the Bloodletter, and Aningan was prone to support the underdog. It might have been over a decade, but the Bloodletter had returned to the shifter world, and his game was in play. Blood would rain down…

  “They have some beer here, an Algerian product,” Aningan said to fill up the silence. “The proprietor says that he serves the best chorba and dolma within the city. I’ve had the börek, and I think the man doesn’t exaggerate.” He turned slightly toward the Bloodletter. “Chorba is a spicy soup,” he told him. “Dolma is a mixture of tomatoes and peppers.” Aningan smacked his lips as if he wasn’t sitting in the company of two of the most dangerous weres in the shifter world. “Very tasty. And the börek is kind of an egg mincemeat. It’s rolled and fried with batter.” He motioned at the bartender and spouted off a number of instructions in Arabic.

  Shade remained silent for a long moment. “My old friend,” he said to Aningan, “I am never unhappy to see you. But this is a wretched time for revolution.”

  “On the contrary,” the Bloodletter said, “there has never been a better time.”

  That was all that it took because deep inside, Shade knew he was correct.

  * * *

  In the present, Shade stood on the edge of the Council’s chambers and listened to the three members discuss finances. Perhaps they thought he was oblivious. He studied the bones on the tall columns that supported the roof of the immense room and pretended that security was the only issue he cared about.

  “—special project,” Scarlotte said i
n French.

  Shade attempted to keep his face neutral. It was getting harder and harder not to frown in the presence of the Council. Scarlotte was a vicious back biter who relied on her dark magicks to pull through. Allegedly, she had been tempered by the Bloodletter and Renard. Perhaps she had tired of hiding her nature. Perhaps she had discovered that other things made her happier.

  Renard the Elderly was crueler than the rest. His decrees usually mandated death in some awful fashion in order to deter other weres who would follow down a dark path. Maybe he had been mitigated before, but Shade didn’t see it. Renard had been another one interested in power and was patient enough not to show his hand.

  Quincy had replaced the Bloodletter. He’d been handpicked by Scarlotte and backed her every move. He was as chillingly vicious as the others. In some ways he was worse. But if Shade had to kill one of the three, he would first go for the rat witch every time.

  “The reports are what we expected,” Quincy said. He tapped his laptop. “Although I would have thought some of these expenses would be less.”

  “As would I,” Renard added.

  “The human in charge,” Scarlotte said thoughtfully, “is to be trusted?”

  “As much as any human,” Renard said. “His references are impeccable, the top of his class, and the product of Ivy League universities. However, intelligence means that he is far from stupid. Perhaps he thinks that since the outcome is less than legal, then it wouldn’t be noticed if money trickled away into his pocket.”

  “Perhaps,” Scarlotte agreed.

  Shade’s attention perked up. What was it that the Council was doing that had a less than legal outcome?

  “Martinez followed through with our plans in Canada,” Quincy said.

  Martinez was a name Shade had heard before. He was a traitorous feline-were who did wet work for the Council. There were jobs that even the Council balked about. If Martinez had been in Canada, then he was up to something nasty. Furthermore, Canada was where the Bloodletter and his family had settled. Canada was a huge place, but what were the odds? It was obvious that the Council was hunting the Bloodletter because he presented a threat to them.

  But other recent happenings, all at the Council’s behest no doubt, sent chills down Shade’s spine. Weres had been vanishing in the United States and from India and the Balkans. Also, a dragon were from Japan had supposedly gone missing.

  Aningan and the Bloodletter wanted Shade to obtain as much information as possible, being careful not to arouse suspicion, until the death knell was about to be rung. Playing James Bond the werebear wasn’t his basket of salmon, but it was what it was.

  What Shade really had was a strong inclination to rip Scarlotte’s head from her shoulders before she could summon her out-of-a-nightmare bone creation to save herself. Then, he would follow up with a knife to Quincy’s throat before finishing Renard off with another weapon of his choice, probably the war harpoon he kept mounted on his back.

  It disagreed with Shade to remain as a spy. Digging around in paperwork and dredging through computer files was nearly mind-bogglingly boring, but Aningan and the Bloodletter weren’t ready for the bloody insurgency that was coming. He had to stuff the lump in his throat down deep into his stomach and like it, too.

  “Fuck,” he muttered because nothing else came to mind.

  “— more weres from the states,” Scarlotte said and Shade jerked. “We’ll send an envoy to see how this human—what is his name?—, is faring.”

  Quincy looked at the laptop. “Whitfield Dyson. Perhaps we’ve trusted him too much. Perhaps we should close down the facility while we’re ahead.”

  A tinkling bell indicating email sounded from Quincy’s computer. His fingers worked at the keyboard. “The two daughters are at the facility,” he said.

  “Both of them?” Scarlotte smirked.

  “We only need one,” Renard said. “Best to separate them in any case. He’ll come for them.”

  Scarlotte smiled coldly. Shade’s hand itched to touch the handle of the war harpoon on his back. “That’s what we want him to do, is it not?”

  Daughters. Two daughters. Shade frowned. It was said that the Bloodletter had two daughters. He needed to break away from these lunatics and make some phone calls, but it was going to take him time to get to a spot where he could do it safely.

  “Put one on a jet and bring her here,” Scarlotte commanded.

  “Which one?”

  Scarlotte shrugged delicately. “Shade,” she called and looked at him.

  Shade turned toward the Council. It was likely that they had forgotten his presence. That was good for him, but he doubted that Scarlotte ever truly forgot about him. The rat witch was the scariest were he’d ever encountered, and he’d encountered a great number of scary weres. She was, however, arrogant, and the arrogance would likely be her undoing.

  “A jet will arrive in Paris in approximately six to seven hours,” Scarlotte said. “Bring the were on board to us. She is not to be trusted and will attempt to persuade your assistance.”

  Many of the weres who came down into the catacombs attempted to persuade Shade’s assistance. He forced his face into compliant neutrality. That was what he was good at playing. He was the muscle, and he didn’t have a brain. All he had was unwavering loyalty, but that was the Council’s assumption, and assuming was always a mistake.

  * * *

  “She’s unconscious,” one of the weres said to Shade. He had brought four of his soldiers with him to the small private airport hours later. He trusted three of them with his life; the fourth was likely a mole for Quincy. The game had to continue its play.

  “Drugged?” Shade asked.

  A were named Yves nodded. “They said it was a special type of ketamine with a minimal amount of silver nitrate in it. She’s a wolf like me, I can smell it.”

  Two of Shade’s weres carried a stretcher with the girl off the small private jet. They were careful not to overly jostle the stretcher. Shade had previously met the human doctor who walked at their side. The man checked the unconscious girl’s pulse when they paused near Shade, then nodded at Shade. “She should be out another few hours,” the doctor said. “Her metabolism will blow right through the drugs. We had to give her an extra two shots so she wouldn’t tear up the plane mid-Atlantic.”

  Shade’s teeth ground together. It was getting harder and harder to deal with the Council’s injustices. What had this were done? Nothing but be the daughter of someone they wished to control. There’s no crime here.

  Shade turned and indicated that the two weres carrying the stretcher should go toward the Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV waiting on the tarmac. “Load her up,” he said in French. “Make certain she’s comfortable.”

  “I’m supposed to—” the doctor began to say and stopped when he saw Shade’s face.

  “I don’t care what you do,” Shade said in English. “Go back to the facility. Do some more experiments. Do what the Council wants you to do. Just get the hell out of here!”

  The man blinked and stepped back. He looked around him, and it obviously dawned on him that he was surrounded by weres. “I’m only doing what I’m supposed to do.”

  Yves grunted in a derogatory manner.

  “I’m a veterinarian. I don’t—” the man said, and his mouth immediately closed, likely realizing what he had said and to whom he had said it.

  “Go back to the states,” Shade said. He knew he wasn’t supposed to act like an ass. He was supposed to be one of the committed lackeys, but something was grating on his last nerve. There was a scent in the air. It had come to him as soon as the jet doors opened. It reached around him and tugged at the very inmost part of his being. It bothered him on an instinctual level so that his temper was very close to flaring.

  “Make certain she drinks plenty of fluids,” the doctor persisted. “The drugs have different effects on your kind, so that—”

  “GET BACK ON THE FUCKING PLANE!” Shade roared.

  The human turn
ed and fled.

  Yves blinked and stepped away from Shade.

  Shade watched as the other weres loaded the female into the back of the Mercedes Benz. With the seats folded down in back, there was enough room for the stretcher, the driver, and two weres. The other two soldiers would go back to the building the Council owned near the main entrance of the catacombs in another SUV. One of the two other soldiers would be the were Shade thought was the mole.

  “You drive,” he told Yves. Then instead of getting into the front passenger side, Shade surprised himself by getting into the rear seat that hadn’t been folded down.

  The woman’s head was turned away from him as he bent himself into the seat. Her hair was black and a tangled mess. Angry bruises colored the part of her shoulder that he could see. Shade’s growl was low, long, and mournful.

  Shade took a moment to cover the woman’s shoulder up with the thin blanket that had come with her.

  “Humans,” Yves said. His voice was high and agitated. “I can’t believe I used to be one.”

  Shade stared down at the woman.

  “It was the thing he said about being a vet,” Yves added nervously, “as if shifters are merely animals to—” He closed his mouth and twisted the key in the ignition. The Mercedes Benz revved to life. “I’ll shut up now and drive,” he added.

  Shade tossed the back of Yves’ head a volcanic glare. Shade thought that was probably best. He had an overwhelming urge to rip heads from bodies lately. There was no telling what he might do if Yves spun him up even a notch more.