Hunter's Moon

by Bevill, C. L.

  He looked down and saw that his hand was stroking the curve of the female’s shoulder. She was wearing pale green scrubs and one shoulder was ripped, revealing the very top of her arm. Only the uppermost purple green smudge of the bruises he’d noticed showed.

  Once all the doors were shut in the Benz, Shade realized that the unsettling scent emanated from the woman herself.

  She moved restlessly, and her head came back to face him with her eyes still shut. It was a pert face with well-formed bones. It was a face that had seen pain and effort. It was also a face that made his breath catch in his throat. Her lips were full and perfectly formed, the shade of a pomegranate seed.

  Abruptly her eyes opened. Pale blue, they unnerved him. She couldn’t really focus on him, and after a single moment, they closed again.

  Shade nearly sighed. He caught himself. This female was going into one of the deepest, murkiest cells the Council reserved for its prisoners. Political prisoners were down there along with others Shade couldn’t fathom the reason for their imprisonment. There was even another female were named Tatsu imprisoned who never talked to anyone. Based on whispered rumors about the Asian were, he suspected that Tatsu was something very dangerous herself. In his ten years of working for the Council and directing special operations, he had never seen a prisoner leave the catacombs. Rather, he had never seen a prisoner walk away from the catacombs.

  Shade refocused his concentration on the woman beside him. She looked so fragile. So small, bruised, and ever so delicate.

  With revolution impending and he himself embroiled in the darkest of conspiracies, Shade knew he couldn’t help her, and she, whoever she was, was his mate.

  Chapter 3

  A society of sheep must in time beget

  a government of wolves. – Bertrand de Jouvenel

  Claire woke up with a howl of rage. Both wolf and girl were ready to do battle. She instinctively swung her fists, aiming for that which threatened her. No one was there. Reluctantly stilling, finding herself in a crouched position with her fists out in front of her, she scanned the gloom. A meager light from the exterior of the room shown through the set of iron bars set in heavy mortar. She was in a stone-walled room not much bigger than herself. There was a plastic mat on the hard stone ground. A plastic bucket sat in a corner. A liter-sized bottle of water was propped on the wall by the door as if someone had stuck it in through the bars as a kind of afterthought.

  It wasn’t much of an improvement over the last prison she’d been in. Claire and Ula had been drugged and transported somewhere. She could vaguely remember the smell of jet fuel and the roar of airplane engines. They’d woken in cages designed for animals and reinforced with silver because they were weres. Other female weres, mostly cats and one bird were, had also been imprisoned.

  Humans had been there, too, but not as prisoners. There’d been a guard, Scott, who leered at her and warned her that escape would be punished severely. A man in a suit had asked about her animal form, and medical personnel had darted her again before they’d examined her. It wasn’t long before Claire had been drugged again. She had floated weightlessly through hallways as she had been carried away to somewhere unknown. She’d heard Ula shrieking her rage.

  Claire fought, and she had fought every time she’d woken up. The Spanish speaking were had been there to hold her down, but he hadn’t gotten on the last plane with them, only advising the doctor to “Keep her under or the lobito loca will rip out your throat.”

  Ripping throats out sounded like a dandy idea.

  Claire found herself slowly regaining consciousness. No longer on a plane, she seemed to be in a moving vehicle. Lights from businesses shown inside, and the weres around her were speaking in French. No more humans, French speaking weres— was this good or bad?

  Claire’s French was about as good as her sister’s, which was poor at best. They’d always been more interested in things more fascinating than learning another language. She’d even liked the classes about armaments better than the language classes. Her grogginess held her translation abilities in check. It took her a long time to realize that the driver said something about vets and then something about humans.

  But for a slice of time that stretched away into infinity, Claire had felt protected. Even the inner beast was calm for the moment, only a whimpering yip echoed in her brain. Someone sat next to her. Someone had his fingers on the flesh of her shoulder. The tips of the fingers were gentle and understanding. They would never hurt her. Then the slice was gone when she’d slipped away again into unconsciousness.

  Now, here in this dark, foul-smelling place, this dungeon cell with its iron bars, her terror had reasserted itself, all sense of safety slipped away.

  If Ula was here, she would have ripped the bars from the mortar and shoved them down someone’s throat. Claire’s stare slowly rotated over the cell. Ula wasn’t here, and she wasn’t going to help her.

  Overwhelmed by an all-consuming thirst, probably drug induced, Claire grasped the bottle of water. As she twisted the cap the safety seal popped open. If they wanted to drug her further, they would simply dart her from the safety of the hallway. Regardless, she sniffed the contents trying to detect the stink of unknown chemicals. It smelled like water and nothing more.

  She drank half the bottle before she made herself stop. Allowing herself to become dehydrated would be dangerous, but she couldn’t know when she might get more water either.

  Claire approached the bars and touched them tentatively. The wolf inside cried out for freedom. It roared its frustration, and she couldn’t do anything about its distress but to attempt to alleviate it with calm reasoning. There wasn’t a point in screaming or crying or calling out. She was in this place for an ambiguous reason. No one was going to hear her. More specifically, no one who could or would help her would hear her.

  She could see the stone-constructed wall across from her, and if she turned her head, she could see a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling about five feet down. The walls were oddly shaped, and she pushed her face to the very edge of the bars to see closer. If she could have reached out to touch one of the stones, she would have felt the smooth rounded top of a…cranium.

  The walls of the hallway that she could see were covered with bones. They might have been human bones or weres, she didn’t know.

  “You’re in the Catacombes de Paris,” a deep voice said in English from somewhere beyond the light. As she strained to discern the speaker, Claire saw the edge of another set of bars. The speaker was also caged.

  “Well,” he amended, “it’s actually below the Catacombes de Paris, if you want to be specific.”

  Dripping moisture echoed in the little hollow spaces, moving ever downward. The ground creaked its protest of the weight it withstood. The walls groaned in response. A distant moan echoed from another hallway, from another cell. It was the tormented call of a were who was dying or going crazy, or both. She felt underground. It was like being in a cave with heavy humidity and a thickness of atmosphere that couldn’t be replicated.

  The Catacombs of Paris. The Council. Only the Council was in Paris. The Council ruled Paris, above as well as underground. The catacombs were a tourist’s affair. But, in a place where the tourists did not go, miles and miles of tunnels for the Council’s evil and malevolent pleasure existed.

  Claire had always wanted to see Paris, but not from below.

  Humans headed by a single were had taken Ula and Claire. They had been at some other facility with at least two dozen captive weres. Humans had been experimenting on them. Testing them. Doing things to them. But it was the Council who controlled the reins.

  Claire growled and knelt. The bones under her flesh begin to tremble and move. She didn’t want to change, but her temper was provoking her. Whatever was happening was for a reason out of her control, but her inner beast was always at her disposal. The wolf might fit through the bars of the cell. It screamed at her to let loose and let it take command.

  �
�Don’t,” the similarly caged were said. “Don’t change. They’ll know. They watch. Look up.”

  Claire’s eyes, already feral and animalistic, looked up. There was a single security camera focused on her cell. She snarled and retreated into the darkest part of her cell.

  Claire focused on her breathing. It was a technique taught to her by her mother, who believed in self-control at all times. They might be weres, but they were still powerful. In. Out. In. Out. The beast retreated into its inner cage, unhappy, but barely willing to do her bidding.

  Soon. Soon she’d do exactly what was needed to do to escape this hellhole and she’d make the weres responsible for this aware of the fact that the Bennetts are not ones with which to fuck.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice was thick and throaty. Her inner wolf still itching to emerge.

  “Just another wretch caught in the middle,” he said.

  He spoke in American-accented English.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “Claire,” she said. There wasn’t any point in lying. They knew exactly who she was. “Do the cameras listen, too?”

  “There’s no sound. They only watch. But they always watch.”

  “Did they bring in another wolf besides me?” Claire asked.

  “No, you were alone.”

  Ula was back in that other place. Alone. Afraid. Without her sister. Claire almost snorted at herself. Ula wasn’t afraid. She’d probably escape before Claire could. She’d come after her. If their father doesn’t beat her to it. Or their mother.

  “What’s my crime to be brought into the Council’s dungeons?” she asked before she could help herself.

  “Crime?” the voice sounded skeptical and bitter. “No crimes need be committed for the Council to act.”

  “And you? What’s your crime?”

  “Having my eyes opened to what is wrong with the were’s world,” he said with acrid intensity.

  Living in the northernmost part of Manitoba meant that the clan was cut off from much of the Council’s machinations. They heard things. They had Internet and friends all over the world, but everything seemed far removed from their business in the Canadian wilderness.

  “Do you know why I’m here?” Claire asked carefully.

  “Because of who you are,” the man said.

  “And who am I?” They might know who she was, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for them if they didn’t.

  “Don’t you know?”

  Claire wasn’t unfamiliar with the games men could play. Plenty of male weres in Manitoba wanted to be more than friends with the daughter of the Alpha, but Claire wasn’t the type to play with those who seemed manipulative. It was silly, and she wanted more. The stories that they had heard about mates had struck her in a personal way. Ula thought it was ridiculous. What if they found their mate in the ugliest, nastiest were imaginable?

  Then it was meant to be. Many weres never found a true mate. Her parents were well and truly mated. They loved each other in a way that Claire often found embarrassing. On another level she would never admit out loud, she also envied them.

  The boys of the clan circled the girls, trying to urge them into relationships. Claire had never fallen for any of them. She had always waited. She wasn’t about to fall for anything now.

  “Let’s assume I don’t know who I am,” she said.

  He laughed. It was a nice laugh, profound and husky, all male. She could imagine his face, the same face of the were who had protected her in the final transport vehicle to this place. A dark face but one that could be generous and loving at the same time.

  “You’re his daughter,” he said after he stopped laughing. It wasn’t cynical or biting, but merely a statement of fact. “The guards have big mouths.”

  I’m no one’s daughter but Braydon Bennett’s. Braydon Bennett is the Alpha male of the Manitoba Clan, and we’ve nothing the Council could want.

  Without warning, a feeling of vague understanding overcame her, perhaps a memory of a different time, long in the past.

  Claire had been young and the world was frantic and full of strange smells. Odd weres came and went from their apartment. Her mother had been full of fear. Her normally serene aura had been tinged with the black stain of dread.

  One day their overly large father had come home and simply said, “It’s time.” Sonja Bennett hadn’t asked questions. She took out pre-packed bags from a great wooden armoire and hustled the two girls out of the front door, closely following Braydon Bennett. “We’re having an adventure, children,” she’d told Ula and Claire. And they had had an adventure.

  They drove and drove into a night without city lights and eventually found a remote airport with a small plane that moved and squealed each time the wind changed direction. Because her mother told her it was all right, Claire had fallen asleep wrapped up in Ula’s arms. When they woke up, they were in another country, in fact, on another continent, and the world was a different place.

  The fear that had surrounded her mother had eventually faded away.

  The Bennetts had run from something, and Claire never would have never thought that Braydon and Sonja Bennett would run from anything. But the Council was its own horror story. No one crossed the Council. No one.

  Except perhaps Braydon Bennett. Her father. If someone wanted something from Braydon, wouldn’t they be inclined to take a hostage? Words from the humans and Martinez trickled back to her. “It’s the sister!” “The children of the Bloodletter.” “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.”

  Okay, Daddy wasn’t just Braydon Bennett. He was the Bloodletter, the boogeyman of all boogeymen. And the Council, the other boogeyman of all boogeymen, was now keeping the boogeyman’s daughter in their dungeon.

  “What do they want with him?” she asked quietly.

  “What does the Council want with anyone?” he said. “Power. Control. Absoluteness. The world in its pocket.”

  Claire touched the bars. Though no silver lined these bars, the mortar was thick and reinforced. It wasn’t old and cracking. These bars had been recently reinforced. She wrapped her fist around the bar and pulled. It didn’t budge in the slightest.

  “I’ve tested these bars a dozen times, no a hundred,” the were said. He wasn’t reading her mind, but was clearly familiar with the thought processes of the new prisoners. “There’s no way to escape except with a key and an invitation.”

  The Council wanted something from her father. They wanted something from the Bloodletter, and she was the key to that something.

  “Do you know where they brought me from?”

  “The States,” the were said. “They didn’t show me the GPS.”

  Claire nearly smiled. The were sounded like her sister. All spit and vinegar and ready to do battle with whatever badass the world happened to hand her.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Taqukaq,” he said. The q’s and k’s clicked as he said the name.

  “It sounds like how the Inuit pronounce bear.”

  “Grizzly bear,” he corrected. “Taq for short. I was born in Alaska.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Ten years.”

  Claire gasped. “Are there others here?”

  “Yes. There are several other cell blocks.”

  A distant scream filled the hallway. It echoed away as if it had been running down an isolated canyon filled with nothing but stone and air.

  “Not alone,” she murmured. She thought of the inuksuk she had seen on a hill in distant Manitoba. Someone had been there and built a marker. It might have been a marker to designate a direction, a guide for the lost. It might have been a reminder of someone who once was. It might have been an homage to the father of all gods. But it was the last remnant of a person who existed. As long as the inuksuk stood, the person who built it would be remembered.

  How long would Cl
aire be remembered?

  * * *

  Food came a few hours later delivered by a lone were who glided along the rock wall on a determined mission. He didn’t say anything, but Claire could hear his occasional pauses and the sound of paper rustling, as if he stopped to toss something into each cell. She wasn’t surprised when the black shape hesitated in front of her bars and thrust a paper bag inside.

  Claire was prepared and lunged for the shape, thrusting her arms through the bars and wrapping her hands around his neck.

  The were chuckled, then contorted, and slipped away from her.

  Claire shuddered and fell back on her butt. She’d just touched scales and suddenly her hands felt dirty.

  “Ah-ah-ah.” The were hissed from a safe distance from the bars. “No food for you tomorrow.” Its voice was comprised of sibilant tones.

  She sniffed almost by reflex, taking in its dry earthy scent. The rattle when it sounded, was not completely unexpected as it moved away from her cell.

  Her mother had told her that the world was a mysterious place. Humans couldn’t change, but some of them could be infected with the shifter DNA. Most didn’t survive. Born shifters were commonplace, but occasionally weres mated with humans. Sometimes the genes bred true. A wide variety of weres existed, such as the extinct stag-moose were in her clan. She had seen the bird were at the other facility where she and Ula had been held. She’d never even heard of a snake were. But obviously, now she knew they existed. The one who’d just served her meal rattled just like the rattlesnake she’d once seen in the Toronto Zoo.

  “Ignore him,” came Taq’s voice. “Eat. Eat because you’ll need your strength.”

  It occurred to Claire that she could trust no one in this place. Not Taq, not any other were, because she didn’t know them, she couldn’t know them. It would be dangerously stupid to assume anything about any were. Her father would be proud to know that some of his lessons had stuck.

  Claire pulled a ham and cheese sandwich in a plastic baggie from the paper bag. No condiments were included. Her captors had also provided two boiled eggs. Lots of protein to maintain the were.