Hunter's Moon

by Bevill, C. L.

  It meant “Absolutely nothing.”

  * * *

  “That human’s created a mess in Wyoming,” Quincy said to Scarlotte and Renard. Shade stood in the shadows of the Council’s main chamber and listened. “The New York Clan and the Colorado Clan are up in arms. Female weres have been kidnapped and worse. That imbécile, Dyson and that mercenary, Martinez, took the Alpha’s mate from Colorado.”

  Scarlotte looked at her watch. “Take the jet, Shade. Take one of the teams. Clean their mess up. You might be able to beat the Colorado Clan to the location. The team with the special helicopters will meet you in Wyoming so you can go in quietly.”

  Shade nodded. Though this main chamber was dimly lit, he was positive that Scarlotte saw it.

  He suppressed the urge to grin as he swept out of the Council chamber. Thank goodness Scarlotte hadn’t been more specific. It gave him more leeway than he could have imagined. He would be able to make calls to clans that he wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise. Yves waited outside the chamber, and Shade growled, “Pack them up. Bring the special weapons, mon ami. We have to blow some things up.”

  “Shade,” Scarlotte said from behind him and he froze. “Bring the human here. What was his name, Dyson, Whitfield Dyson? He has something that belongs to us, I think. Make sure you search his office for anything of interest to the Council.” She clicked her tongue. “Don’t leave any loose ends.”

  When Scarlotte sauntered back into the Council’s chambers and the doors slammed behind her, Yves shuddered. “She gives me the willies,” he said in English.

  “She speaks English, too,” Shade advised with a grim smile. Then he whispered, “Tell the snake to move the girl. As soon as possible.”

  Yves’ eyes darted left at the bone-laden doors leading to the Council’s inner sanctum. Shade nodded incrementally. “The rat witch knows where Claire is. Hurry,” he whispered. He knew that his tone was neutral, but the words conveyed the urgency that stabbed deep inside his soul.

  Yves nodded and sprinted down one of the halls.

  Chapter 6

  Wolves are very resourceful. All they need to survive

  is for people not to shoot them. – Bob Ferris

  Somehow Claire knew that Taq was no longer near her. There was an emptiness inside her now that was almost as filling as had been the bear’s presence before. Because she had no choice, she waited, and the waiting was nearly intolerable. Braced against the back wall, she let her inner beast play on a distant tundra. In her mind’s eye, the wolf gamboled and jumped, playfully snapping at the flies.

  What does it mean? the wolf asked Claire in reference to knowing that Taq was gone. It had been a full week since the wolf had been allowed out, and it was taking full advantage. Deep inside, Claire knew the wolf was only another manifestation of herself, but at the moment, she didn’t care that she had two voices in her head. The beast was welcome company.

  I don’t know.

  The wolf huffed. Oh, you know. You’re but a silly fool.

  I’m not a fool. Don’t trust anyone. Not him. Not the were thing that suddenly appears right now, right in front of you!

  Arrooooo, the wolf cried because for the first time, it was the second to notice something very significant.

  Claire opened her eyes. A little girl stood in front of the bars, staring inside the cell. The child’s head rested against one bar while she held the closest one to it with one slight hand. Her thin face pointed in Claire’s direction as if she was taking in the caged were’s measure. She was dressed in a rag that looked somewhat like a peasant dress, and her dirty blonde hair was untidy, falling messily around her shoulders.

  Claire hadn’t heard the girl approach and stop. Her nose told her something else about the girl. The wolf inside Claire howled again. The wolf didn’t like the girl. Were! Magicks! Blackness! Arrooooo! Arrooooo!

  The girl’s face was the mask. The youth was the bait. Others were meant to be fooled by the façade of innocence and childhood. Claire wasn’t the fastest with a sword or a knife. She couldn’t tumble the heaviest were in the clan with a simple shoulder flex as could Ula. Claire couldn’t run as fast as most of the other wolves. But Claire had a very good nose. It wasn’t something that was always useful, but it helped now.

  The girl at the bars was like the trapdoor spider. It constructs its nest and its door out of silk and vegetation, using clever camouflage. It sets out trip lines constructed from its webs. When the prey comes close enough, fooled by the camouflage into thinking nothing predatory is about, the spider pounces, and makes a hasty end of the prey.

  But the girl at the bars was also a were. Claire had heard of such a being. The rumors even made their way to the northernmost parts of Manitoba. Now she understood why her mother didn’t like others to repeat the stories. They weren’t stories at all. Here was the rat witch in front of her, not really larger than life. Scarlotte was her name, and she was seemingly innocuous.

  Let me go! Arrooooo! Let me fight her!

  “Do you know who I am?” Scarlotte asked in French-accented English. She might have been a young school girl asking for directions to the nearest bibliothèque.

  Claire nodded.

  “Good. It’s so much better when I don’t have to explain everything.”

  Claire kept her mouth shut. No one was going to help her but herself. That Parisian coffee was sounding better by the moment.

  Wait for opportunity, the wolf advised her. There is always a moment when an adversary’s throat is exposed. There was a pause, and a subdued inner howl followed as if trying not to tip its hand to the enemy.

  The rat witch studied Claire as if she was a bug under a microscope. “I thought the Bloodletter’s children would be larger.”

  Children? Had she seen Ula? Claire’s pulse quickened.

  “But you take after your mother, do you not?” Scarlotte smiled and showed tiny pegged teeth. “Except the eyes. Those are your father’s eyes. Pale blue. Like the dog with the pale blue eyes. What do they call that breed?”

  The wolf didn’t like being compared to a mere dog. Of course, Claire didn’t like it either. However, who wanted to argue with a rat witch? Not her, for sure!

  I do, the wolf said. Wait for the time and rip her throat out! Drink her blood! Make her pay for what she’s done to us! Arrooooo!

  “You should step away from the bars,” Claire warned.

  “What did you say?” Scarlotte asked.

  Without hesitation, Claire leapt across the tiny space, and in that instant of time, her hands became wolf paws with the claws extended. They weren’t cat claws, but they could dig and tear. Her mouth opened wide, and the incisors erupted as she was midair. She hadn’t known she could do that. She felt her paws push through the openings between the bars and wrap around the tiny were. She tried to push and pull at the rat’s flesh at the same time. The growl exploding from her mouth was only halted when she shoved her head between the bars and it closed around the were’s throat. She was a millisecond from ending the rat witch’s existence when a gut-wrenching pain seared through her middle.

  The rat witch had reached through the bars and touched Claire’s midsection, delivering a burst of dark magick to her stomach that felt like she’d been punched with a ten pound mallet.

  Claire jerked back, trying to find her breath again.

  Something else reached through the bars and wrapped its bony grip around Claire’s head and tossed her to the rear of the cell. She hit the back wall with a loud grunt and slid to the ground. In the next moment, she was standing up, snarling, and ready to pursue the next opportunity.

  The rat witch stood on the opposite side of the hallway, looking in at Claire with a hint of newfound respect. But it was the other thing that stood beside the bars, gazing in at Claire that made her snarl harder.

  Fully seven feet tall, it looked like a figure encased in bones. No, not encased in bones. This creature, whatever it was, seemed constructed entirely of bones.

  A
thin skin covered the bones, but the paltry light in the hallway shone through it, revealing stringy cartilage and gray, ropy muscles. It also showed the barbed wire that held the creation together.

  Worst of all were the red-rimmed black eyes like tiny stones that stared at her from a skull with massive teeth jutting downward, like the skull of a long extinct saber tooth tiger.

  Scarlotte wiped away Claire’s spittle from her neck and motioned to the creature. “Put her in chains,” she said in French.

  The door popped open as if it hadn’t been locked at all.

  The thing clanked inside, twisting in ways that normal things don’t twist. Its bony hands reached for Claire.

  Claire roared her response before she launched herself at it.

  * * *

  Yves stopped when he heard the roar. There was a response to the roar as the bone-wrought monster made a noise that gave fingernails raking a chalkboard a run for its money.

  He’d been delayed for only five minutes as he gave directions to members of one the Council’s special teams. By the time he reached the door that led to the pit holding the Bloodletter’s daughter, the monster was dragging the girl out. One of its great bony hands held onto her shoulder and the other pulled at the chains of the manacles encasing each of her slender wrists. Yves faded into the shadows as the thing rattled by him, and a bruised and battered Claire apparently didn’t notice the other shifter at all. Yves was about to follow when a cat-sized rat scampered past him. He froze, and the red, beady eyes only glanced at him curiously.

  Yves swallowed compulsively. Large rats lived in the catacombs, but not many that size.

  “Don’t you have a plane to catch?” the rat asked in lilting French. “The Council’s business to attend to?”

  And none of the cat-sized rats in residence spoke French in their animal forms. Not normal ones anyway.

  Yves nodded and strode away as the odd trio disappeared down the skull-lined hallway in the direction of the Council’s main chamber.

  He had to find the snake. Only the snake was going to be able to help Claire Bennett now.

  * * *

  The bone monster dropped Claire on the floor of the Council’s main chamber. At least that’s where Claire assumed she was. Witch lights dotted the walls; their blue lights eerily illuminated the large room. Their lights waxed and waned as if they were alive. Columns supported the great arched ceiling. Each was decorated with elaborate patterns of bones that got smaller and smaller as they went up the column. Thousands of bones held testament to the living beings who once used them and took them all too well for granted. It was a grim locale suitable for dark deeds.

  On the far side of the chamber, a raised platform held three elegant chairs. Two were occupied, by the weres who couldn’t be bothered to look up from whatever activities occupied them to see who’d come in.

  Claire lay on the floor, catching her breath, urging the inner beast to calm itself. Scarlotte stepped past her, again in human form. Her dirty blonde hair dropped to her shoulders, bouncing as she walked, and her plain cloth dress was still nothing more than a rag. Her stained slippers clip-clapped on the stone floors.

  How did a shifter return to her human shape dressed in clothing again? Must be the dark magicks she wielded. Claire wouldn’t mind changing into human form dressed again. But if she could, she’d surely never wear such an ugly cloth dress.

  Claire studied the other Council members. She knew the names and the reputations. What were didn’t? Even a were living in isolation, under a rock in a cave on the tip of an arctic isle, knew of Quincy and Renard. No one wanted to come before the Council.

  She climbed to her feet, awkwardly handling the ancient iron manacles. They should have been coated with silver for maximum effect, but Claire suspected the rat witch didn’t think she needed silver-coated manacles to control the weres she was terrorizing.

  They waited for a good long time before saying anything. It seemed like a lifetime, thought it was no more than ten long minutes, during which Claire had to force herself to remain calm. Quincy tapped at his laptop while Renard stared at his smartphone. Scarlotte was the only one who didn’t do anything particular. Instead, she sat in her chair, swinging one foot back and forth idly. Her legs weren’t quite long enough to touch the floor.

  After a while, Quincy closed his laptop, and Renard glanced up from his phone. Scarlotte cleared her throat, sounding like a little child playing at being a grownup.

  “What do you know about the Bloodletter’s plans?” she asked in her peculiar French-accented English, and Claire was ironically certain that the rat witch was, in fact, speaking to her.

  “I know about my father,” Claire said curtly.

  “And your father is the Bloodletter,” Renard the Elderly said.

  “I’ve never known him to let blood,” Claire said.

  Scarlotte tittered. It sounded like the laughter of the exceptionally mad. It suggested that a tea party followed by a ritualized decapitation would ensue. It certainly didn’t make Claire want to laugh along.

  “Let’s break some of her bones and see if she changes her tune,” Quincy suggested.

  “Do we really want to provoke the Bloodletter?” Renard asked.

  “Eventually, we’re going to kill him,” Quincy snapped, “what difference does it make if he’s pissed off over his assaulted daughter or not?”

  “Is your father planning a rebellion?” Scarlotte asked Claire rather politely.

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. She stared at the trio in front of her and then glanced at the bone monster. It stood about five feet away from her, and it swayed back and forth just a little as if it was impatient, as if it was truly alive. She looked at her hands. The manacles were attached to a chain about two feet apart. It would have been enough to hold most people down.

  “This is the daughter who’s a little slower,” Quincy said. “They say the other one is as swift as her father.”

  “Oh, hey,” Claire protested, “I’m not that much slower than Ula. Sometimes I can beat her high score on Halo. That’s Halo 4, by the way, for you nongaming pussies.”

  “Is the girl being sarcastic?” Quincy asked the other Council members. “The youngest child of the Bloodletter has a mouthy aspect because she’s got nothing else?”

  Scarlotte tittered again.

  “Okay, I’m slower, and I’m the youngest daughter, and I don’t know what my father’s doing,” Claire said. She suspected that it mattered not a whit what she said or did here. No doubt, her ass was about to be waxed.

  The doors crashed open. Claire glanced over her shoulder and saw the weresnake. He looked a little wild-eyed. His gaze settled on Claire before he took in the Council and the bone monster.

  “Serpent,” Scarlotte said to the snake. Claire didn’t know if Scarlotte was calling him by name or by his were species.

  “There’s an escape,” he said urgently. “The female prisoner has gone. Several of the guards are dead.”

  “Tatsu?” Scarlotte asked.

  The snake nodded without looking at Claire. “She ripped them to pieces.”

  “Get as many weres as possible,” Scarlotte instructed. “Has Shade left already?”

  The snake nodded again. Scarlotte glanced at Quincy. “You should hunt the drakken down. She’ll run to fire. If you’re not quick about it, she’ll burn half of Paris down.”

  Quincy shrugged. “Should have killed her.” However casual he felt about it, he immediately got up and swept away.

  Scarlotte wrinkled her nose. “I suppose we should help. Best to stay together until she’s caught again.”

  Renard looked pointedly at Claire. “Best to kill all the prisoners before they become problems.”

  “We can’t kill them all,” Scarlotte said. “Where would we put the bodies?” She waved at the bone-decorated columns and walls. “Space is at a premium here.”

  “That’s why we have Shadow Realms, my dear,” Renard said insouciantly.

 
Claire studied both of them. She couldn’t take all of them, but if she took out the bone monster, she might have a fighting chance. She suddenly closed her eyes and let her inner beast take control.

  It’s about friggin’ time, the wolf thought. Arrooooo!

  No one moved when Claire did. She bent to the left and wrapped the chain of the manacle around the leg bones of the bone monster. She slung the doubled end of the chain around the thick lower bones and caught it with her other hand. She caught the bones in a firm grip and yanked. The thick femur, not shin bones as it should have been, was covered with a thin layer of grayish flesh stretching across it. The flesh ripped like newsprint and fell away as she gave a tremendous pull. The bone popped away and the barbed wire snapped like popcorn.

  Claire heard Scarlotte curse in French, but the bone monster was already falling away from Claire, unbalanced by the sudden loss of one of its legs. It fell hard, several smaller bones cracked as it hit the stone floor, and spread out as if someone was throwing a set of dice.

  Twisting around, Claire flipped the thick femur in her hand and swung it at the snake. The snake let out an annoyed bellow and rapid jangles sounded sharply like an angry child waving a toy rattle. The balled joint of the femur caught him in the stomach, and he lurched over forward, keening with the sudden loss of oxygen.

  Claire growled as she spun toward the members of the Council. The inner wolf chortled with triumph. She paused to kick the grasping bony fingers of the monster away. It was pulling itself toward her. Claws reached for her flesh. Claire stomped on the bones and felt them crunch even while she felt them cut into the roughened flesh of her heel.

  She didn’t waste time running for the door. Although it might have been smarter if the human part of her had been in charge, then she might have stopped to think about it. But the wolf was holding the reins, and the wolf was ticked off. Furthermore, the weres at whom the wolf was ticked, were only ten feet away.