Hunter's Moon

by Bevill, C. L.

  It was all a large headache. Shade tried to avoid killing as much as he could. The clans that had reached the Wyoming facility had taken care of most of it. He heard the shots in the nearby forest and the roaring of an enraged lion and knew that the Alpha of the Colorado Clan had taken care of the remainder.

  He did want to kill the Irish were, Killian, with his smartass mouth and tendency to shoot it off. Unfortunately, Shade was going to need all the good weres later, and he couldn’t justify it in his head. Not that he really wanted to kill Killian, but it would have been nice to break some of the mouthy were’s bones.

  By the time Shade had returned to the helo and was headed back to Riverton, he was in the foulest mood imaginable. He’d tried to forget about Claire. But the rat witch knew where Claire was located. The snake was supposed to move Claire to somewhere safe, but Scarlotte was tenacious, and no one could predict what she would do and what she wouldn’t do. The Council needed Claire for the moment or until Scarlotte decided the Council didn’t need her.

  Shade sat back against the bench seat and stared into nothingness. He finally glanced at Yves and saw that the wolf shifter didn’t want to look at him. Yves had been busy on the ride over from France. He’d been busy with planting the explosives throughout the facility to ensure there wasn’t a trace left of what the humans had been doing. Shade hadn’t had a chance to talk to him until this moment.

  “Did you do what I told you?” Shade asked.

  “Scarlotte already had her,” Yves said. There wasn’t any humor left in the were’s normally genial tone. “I told the snake to get to her and get her away from the Council. I don’t know what happened.”

  Shade growled and clenched his fists helplessly. That wasn’t the news he wanted to hear. Claire was in the Council’s hands, and he was half a world away.

  Chapter 8

  Talk about the wolf, and the wolf

  is here. – Russian Proverb

  “You can’t go after her,” the snake said to Shade. Yves nodded in agreement. “The attack has been planned for months. If we don’t have you in the Council’s chambers, then we can’t be sure of the other weres. You’re the linchpin, my friend, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Those weres who are teetering on the edge of the Council’s service look to you. It means the difference between all of us triumphing or being executed by a bone monster.”

  The three weres sat in the Parc du Champ-de-Mars. They’d disdained the crowded benches for the grass. The Eiffel Tower could be seen soaring over the nearby trees. Tourists speaking a dozen languages wandered past. One busker juggled three lit torches nearby. A sidewalk artist just past the busker drew a rendition of the Mona Lisa with chalks. The three weres might have been any three humans.

  “It’s a one-way portal,” Yves emphasized. “One way in. No way out. No were ever thrown in that one ever came back out.”

  “That isn’t helping,” the snake hissed at Yves.

  “You have to be at the Council’s chambers when the Bloodletter comes,” Yves said to Shade. The big bear stared at the blue skies. What color of sky was Claire looking at now?

  “Jaxxom said the portal opened up like a mouth,” Shade said. Jaxxom was one of his loyal weres. He wouldn’t be spreading rumors or telling where the drakken and the Bloodletter’s daughter had gone to. He had come up on the two females’ backs just as they approached the portal. The rat witch had created that portal an unknown amount of time before. They used it to dispose of weres and beings they didn’t like. Personally, Shade thought it would have been more merciful to slit their throats, not that he was thinking it at the moment. No one knew where it went or what happened to the humans and weres who went through it. “The whispers say the rat witch used dragon’s blood to create the gateway. That might explain why Tatsu was attracted to it.”

  “We can contact one of the dragon weres from Japan,” the snake said. “My grandmother has some distant ties there. If they know something about portals and the drakken, we’ll find out.”

  Shade clenched his fists. Reluctantly, the snake had also said that Claire was onto Taq’s real identity. “I didn’t tell her,” the snake protested. “She figured it out by herself. She isn’t stupid. The Bloodletter’s daughter wouldn’t be stupid.”

  “Told you,” Yves said and then his mouth snapped shut at Shade’s volcanic expression.

  “And what did you say to the drakken that got her so ticked off at you?” Shade asked coldly.

  “Nothing,” the snake said. “I freed her to distract the Council while I snatched Claire back. I figured it was killing two birds with one stone. You wanted the drakken on the Bloodletter’s side, right? I freed her. I suggested that she might get farther if she had another prisoner who would have her back, but I didn’t realize she would think of Claire in that capacity. I think she choked me because she didn’t want me to know where they were going.” He rubbed his throat. The bruises were long gone. “The evidence was enough for the Council to persuade them that I hadn’t been in on it.”

  Shade looked up as a tourist approached and held his camera out to him. “Would you take a picture of my family?” he asked in English with a heavy Germanic accent. “Ja?”

  Shade took the camera while Yves covered a snigger with his hand. Shade waited while the German family got lined up with the tower directly behind them in the distance and then took several shots with the small digital camera. It wasn’t hard. It was a simple point-and-shoot camera. Hard to mess up. But he’d messed up with Claire. Fuckall.

  Shade handed the camera back to the German while the man said effusively, “Dankeschön!”

  “Bitteschön,” Shade said to the tourist with a little wave.

  “You know it could be three a.m. and snow storming,” the snake said, “and tourists would still be here, looking at the Eiffel Tower.”

  “And I don’t smell another were within hearing distance,” Shade growled.

  “Will you wait?” Yves insisted on asking.

  Shade thought about right and wrong. He’d been waiting to right a wrong for the better part of his decade with the Council. Aningan had raised Shade to be on the moral side because the immoral side led to a denigrated character and helplessness. The fact that his mate had come along at exactly the wrong time shouldn’t make a difference.

  It shouldn’t, but every fiber of his being was crying out to follow Claire, to protect her. He knew that the portal that the rat witch had created led somewhere where life existed. It was located on another plane and likely one where dragons lived because of the dragon blood she’d used in her spells. Dragons didn’t like most other sentient beings except other dragons. Sometimes they didn’t even like other dragons. Perhaps they would like the drakken, but she wasn’t exactly a dragon. If…

  If. If. If.

  “I’ll wait,” Shade growled, and the bear wanted to roar its dismay and frustration. His hand rippled as claws began to emerge.

  The snake covered Shade’s hand with his own, glancing up to see if any humans had noticed. “It’s ten days, Shade. I’ll go with you myself. I swear. I’ll not quit until we find your mate.”

  Shade clenched his errant hand into an awkward fist and willed the rage-fueled change to go away.

  * * *

  Relief weighed on Shade’s soul as he watched the doors to the Council’s chamber burst open, one door banging on the wall. The hinges on one side gave way, and the bone-covered wood collapsed onto the floor. More bones fell across the floor in an appalling mess of fibulas and tibias.

  “What makes you think we came alone?” Killian, the were from the Colorado Clan, asked with cocky certainty.

  “The plan was to wait until we showed up,” the Bloodletter boomed as he stepped through the doorway.

  Braydon Bennett hesitated at the threshold, holding a huge double-edged axe dripping with blood. His chest was heaving as if he had done battle, and Shade knew very well that he’d done just that. The entire Council was under a concentrated, orchestrated at
tack. A petite, black-haired woman stepped beside the enormous Braydon Bennett, a great broadsword held ably in her tiny hands. Other weres streamed past, ready to corral all the weres still loyal to the Council.

  Killian pulled Ula back from Renard even while Braydon Bennett’s weres efficiently placed Renard and Quincy into silver chains. Shade knew many of them from trips to the United States. Some he had seen the night he had closed up the Wyoming facility.

  “Things got a little out of hand,” Killian said to Braydon. He motioned at the bones strewn across the cobbled floor. “The wererat brought out the creature instead of just threatening us for a while. I don’t think she had much of a sense of humor.”

  “I told you Scarlotte wouldn’t put up with all of that smartass shit,” Shade said, and he tamped down the relief. Now, his bear screamed at him. Go get Claire, now!

  But Braydon was wrapping up his coup d’état. There would be pockets of pro-Council weres to take down. The word would get out, and Braydon would put a new Council in place and enact a new set of democratic rules designed to have checks and balances in order to be fair and just. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better than what they’d had. The stories about the Council as the worst boogeyman of all, might have a chance to dissipate.

  Long minutes passed with a frustration that grated down Shade’s spine not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard. Finally, he heard Ula demand Claire’s whereabouts from Renard.

  “She escaped,” Shade said. He should have said something earlier, but he had been thinking of keeping weres alive when he could. He looked down at Ula. “Claire Bennett freed herself—” he wasn’t sure if he should mention the snake or the drakken until after Claire had been returned safely “— and escaped into the catacombs.” He wasn’t happy. “It happened during the time you were freed in Wyoming. They brought her here to help persuade your father to do certain things in the were world. They didn’t want to kill the Bloodletter. They wanted him to be an example. So they took his daughters and hid them in the human facility. The humans were instructed not to kill either one of you, but anything else went. When Braydon came here,” he paused, “they wanted leverage. I didn’t tell the Council that Claire had escaped. They thought she was still locked up below with all the other prisoners.” Fortunately, Scarlotte hadn’t wanted to play with Claire anymore, and accepted that Shade frequently moved the prisoner to different dungeons in order to thwart an escape attempt.

  “They didn’t want the Bloodletter to become a martyr,” Ula said. “Was that the last straw for you, bear?”

  “No, that straw had been broken a long time ago,” he answered heavily. Shade turned away, and Braydon took a moment to converse quietly with him.

  When Shade stepped into the hallway after another five minutes, Ula and Killian followed him. Yves and the snake took their places behind them. “I’ve got weapons and dried food,” Yves said. “I don’t know what to expect, so I’ve got enough to last each person ten days. I’ve got dragon’s blood and a witch’s spell. The witch wouldn’t go through the portal even for her weight in gold, so we’ll have to make due. If we can’t get back to this world, we might be able to portal to another world that has an active portal to Earth. Of course, we might end up in Outer Mongolia, but who cares.”

  It took Shade nearly twenty minutes to reach the portal. He’d been there before. He’d never actually thrown someone through it, but he knew that Scarlotte had her bone monster do it a number of times. By the time he reached it, he was running.

  His jaw dropped as he came down the corridor. He knew immediately that something was wrong. The blue witch lights still burned, revealing the bare wall which should have rippled as he came close. As far as he knew, it had never swallowed someone up the way it had snapped up the drakken and Claire, but if one put his hand to the wall and whispered “intrant,” the wall should have shimmered with power and allowed the person to pass through, or be thrown through as the case had been many times in the past.

  Panic seeped through Shade’s deepest core like icy mountain water percolating through porous mountains. He put his hand to the wall and said, “Intrant.” Intrant was Latin for enter.

  Nothing happened.

  Yves said something in French. “The rat witch made the portal,” he added in English, dismay clear in his voice.

  “Intrant!” Shade said louder, pounding his fists against the wall. He screamed the word over and over before Yves, the snake, and Killian dragged him and his bloody fists away.

  “I killed Scarlotte,” Ula murmured, “and it was she who made the portal work. Oh, what have I done?”

  “Saved your mate’s life,” Yves said. “You did what had to be done. Scarlotte was insane. She would have brought another half-dozen bone creations out to fight us. You didn’t know. No one knew.”

  Shade closed his eyes, convinced that the emptiness inside him would never be filled again.

  * * *

  The species known as branwyns controlled most of the known portals. Occasionally they didn’t have domination of one created by black magicks. They had probably known about the portal in the Council’s basement, but who wanted to tell the Council that they couldn’t have their little garbage disposal portal?

  Not the branwyns, they were a slender type of humanoid that blended in with the human population and sometimes interbred with them. They had been called witches before because of their affiliation with magicks, but they weren’t. Shade had a conversation once with one who swore that a guarded portal had existed in Salem, Massachusetts. It had been, according to the branwyn, what had started the whole Salem Witch Trials and why Massachusetts now was off limits to all branwyns.

  Shade himself hadn’t been to Boston for years, so he couldn’t say for sure if branwyns dared venture there these days.

  But the branwyns did like the deserts and particularly those in the southwest part of the United States. Groups of them thrived in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. It had taken him the better part of a month to get in touch with someone who did business with the branwyns. The overthrowing of the Council had startled weres and otherworlders alike into various hidey holes. Normally used cell phone numbers didn’t work or messages weren’t returned. Every branwyn, it seemed, was waiting for the dust to settle.

  That didn’t make Shade any happier. He had called in all of his markers. Even Braydon Bennett had been calling in favors to find some branwyns who would work on the defunct portal.

  Finally, Shade found himself on Dyer Street in El Paso, Texas. The sun had set an hour before and neon lights dotted the street, showing a variety of stores and shops that catered to night owls. There were Water Burgers and Circle Ks. Pawn shops galore, along with a check cashing place on each corner. A few girls strolled the dim streets, looking for just the right person to spend a profitable hour with. There was also a little dive, pulled back from the street by only a few feet. It was built from cinderblock and the windows had been painted black. The door was equally black, and the only light was from the sign on the street side of the building. The sign was neon, too, but it was a dim flickering green, and its words didn’t convey what it really was. It said Zum Stammtisch.

  Shade frowned. Where was a German tourist when you needed him for translation? The little dive turned out to be a bar that served pub food. Shade could smell the pomme frites and the beer before he walked inside.

  The interior of the bar reminded Shade of when he’d gone to Algiers to see his old friend, Aningan, and had met the Bloodletter, too. The seeds of a revolution had been started before that meeting, but the meeting was the fertilizer they needed. He couldn’t regret that a horrible series of wrongs had been righted. Political prisoners had been freed, and the new Council was working through a backlog that was likely disheartening.

  But Claire was still gone.

  Several customers and the single bartender looked at Shade. They were all branwyns, with the exception of an inebriated solider wearing ACUs and playing the single pool table in t
he back with all of the expertise of a drugged sloth. A battered Wurlitzer played the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication.”

  After all, they couldn’t keep all of the humans out. It might give the bar a certain reputation.

  Shade, with his expert hearing, overheard the shocked whisper of one branwyn, “Shade.” Shade sighed; he might not know who they were, but they obviously knew him.

  He approached the bar that was almost bigger than the small front area. The bar top was marble and the fittings polished brass. The branwyn bartender winced as his eyes scanned Shade from head to toe. No doubt Shade’s extreme size caused the barkeep some trepidation. The branwyns would never beat a were in a fight but they could outthink them and because of the tremendous value of the portals, they had otherworldly friends in every venue who could easily beat most weres into bits of dust. But perhaps that wasn’t the case at the moment. At least, Shade hoped not.

  “I don’t want trouble,” Shade said. His bear said, I want trouble. I want to rip and shred and tear every single otherworlder apart who stands between us and our mate.

  The bartender winced again. “We’ve heard about your quest,” he said. His hair was pale blonde and his eyes almost as pale as Claire’s. “We can’t help you.”

  “Won’t help me,” Shade corrected.

  “That portal was created by the black magicks of the rat witch,” the branwyn said carefully. “No one knows where it goes or whether it goes anywhere at all. It’s a great black hole of a portal, and no branwyns would be able to replicate it.”

  Shade stared at the man. He wasn’t exactly a man, but he looked close enough to be human. He glanced at the other branwyns at the nearby tables. There were about ten of them in there, each with a glass or a bottle of beer, and not a one of them looked at anything but Shade.

  “I don’t work for the Council any longer,” Shade gritted. “There’s a new Council with the Bloodletter that’s making sure all otherworlders are treated fairly, not just the weres.”