by Nora Roberts
“Sometimes I think I’m imagining you, making you up inside my head so I don’t go crazy.”
“I am too good to be true.” He disposed of the needle, slid his hand down her arm to take her pulse. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. The same.”
“No dizziness, nausea.”
“No, nothing.”
He bent over the table to make notes. “No urge to chase your tail, hump my leg?”
“Ha ha.”
“We’ll give it another thirty minutes, then check your vitals, take another sample.” He walked back to her, rolled down her sleeve himself, buttoned the cuff, then pecked a kiss on her wrist. “Let’s go walk our dogs.”
THE wolf came with the October moon. The Hunter’s Moon. It came again, howling in with the Beaver Moon of November, pacing its cage, yearning for blood though for the three nights clouds covered the light and left the sky black as death.
December came, bringing snow, and its long, cold nights.
They adjusted the serum, and within ten minutes, Simone was shaking with chills and fever.
“I was crazy to let you pressure me into upping the dose before we tested it.”
“I’d have injected myself when you weren’t here.”
“I know. You’re burning up.” He tucked the blanket around her more securely as she lay on the cot he’d brought down so he could sleep during the cycle. “You’re up to a hundred and six. You need a hospital.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. One test, and it’s over for me. You know what they’ll do to me.” Her restless hand gripped his, and felt like burning sticks. “I’ll be a freak. It’ll pass, Gabe. It’ll pass.”
“It’s too high. We’ll get you upstairs, into the tub. Cool you down.”
“I dream.” Her head lolled on his shoulder even as her body shook. “I can smell you when I dream. Smell you in the dream.”
“It’s all right,” he soothed as he carried her up the first flight of stairs.
“Dreams? Are they dreams? You can’t run fast enough. I love when you run, and I smell the fear. It’s delicious.”
“Ssh.” He gathered her closer, both dogs trailing behind, whining as he carried her through the house, up to the second floor.
“Stalking, hunting. I can taste your blood before I bite. It fills my throat. I want to drown in it.”
He laid her on the bed, hurried into the bath to fill the tub with cool water. She was writhing on the bed when he came back, like a woman aroused by a lover.
“Like me. Finally like me.”
He stripped her, and she began to convulse. He had to strap down every instinct not to gather her close, to wait—and pray—while the seizure ran its course.
The dogs knew, he noted. Young Butch quivered as he growled and backed away; Amico snarled low as his hackles rose. They knew what he could see.
Her eyes were wrong. Not just gold flecks now. The gold was spreading, taking over the green. He dragged her up, caging her against his body as she flailed. He could hear the change, the shifting of bones.
Prayers for both of them raced through his mind as he laid her in the cool water. “Simone, listen to me. Simone. You can fight this. It’s not time. It’s the fever. You have to hold on, hold it off, until we get the fever down.”
“I can’t. I want. It wants. Get out. Run.”
“Look at me, you look at me.” There were claws under the water, clicking against the porcelain. “Fight back. You’re stronger, you’re still stronger.”
“The knife. The silver knife. In the dresser, I showed you.” Her hand, tipped with sharp black claws, clamped over his arm. Drew blood. “Get it. Use it.”
“Not now. Not ever.” His blood dripped into the water, stained it. “I love you. Fight.”
Her head reared back, her face, narrowing, lengthening, was a mask of pain and struggle. Then she went limp, would have slid under the water if he hadn’t steadied her.
“NO. We’re not using that formula again.”
“Listen to me.” She felt woozy, weak, but herself as he helped her into a robe. “I’ve never been sick, not a day since the attack. Look.” She dragged up the loose sleeve of the robe, showed him the faint mark where the needle had bit her skin. “It’s healing, but not quickly, not as quickly. It means something.”
“Yeah, it means I might’ve killed you. And it means that formula, that dose, brought on a dangerously high fever which in turn brought on a seizure, which in turn brought out the wolf—or nearly. A full week before the cycle.”
“It was weaker. You said I was stronger. I heard you, and you were right. It fought to get out—to you, to take you, Gabe. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. I was stronger.”
“Yeah, and you look like you could go two rounds with a toddler and lose.”
“I’m not saying I don’t feel it. In fact, I really want to lie down.”
To simplify, he scooped her up, carried her across the room to the bed. “I used to think guys carrying women around was sexist. Funny how perceptions change.”
“I’ve never been so scared.” He rested his brow on hers. “Even the first time I saw . . . Do you understand, Simone? I’ve never been so scared. I thought I was going to lose you.”
“You helped me win. I’ve never won before. It’s heady. It wanted out, and I stopped it. If I can win once, I can win again. We can win.” She turned her cheek to his. “I never really believed it. I pretended to, ordered myself to, but inside, I never believed I could win. We have to do tests. Right away.”
“You stay in bed. You’re still running a low-grade fever, and your color’s not good. I’ll get what I need, and you can rest here while I run tests.”
“I can rest downstairs.” She twined his hair around her finger, smiled. “If you carried me.”
Chapter 10
“IT was sick, too. That’s why it fought to get out, why it couldn’t quite make it.”
She’d recovered quickly, was already up, pacing the lab, studying slides and computer analyses with her robe flapping around her legs.
“Isn’t it more to the point that you were sick, and the fever—another sort of infection—allowed it to manifest without the lunar cycle.”
“It’s one in the same—that’s the real point. The fever, and we should have gotten a blood sample while it was spiking, caused the change, but weakened it, gave me the chance to fight it off. It was sick, it was scared. It can die. I don’t know why I never thought of this before.”
Her eyes were bright again, almost fever-bright, when she whirled to him. “This could be the answer.”
“You need to slow down.”
“No, we need to speed up. There’s still time before the full moon to bring it out again, in a weakened state. To use that moment, Gabe, when I’m between human and lycan form.”
“Which means injecting you with a drug that shoots your body temperature to dangerous, potentially fatal levels. Which causes a fever that could result in brain damage, paralysis, stroke, even death.”
“There’s no risk of brain damage until the fever hits one hundred and eight.”
“You were at one hundred and six and climbing,” he snapped back. “For God’s sake, you had a seizure.”
“I came back. I came back. And with more controlled circumstances, we could lessen the dangers. Gabe, they’re doing tests now, and having a lot of success with treating cancer cells with iron oxide, heating the cells and giving them a fever. Magnetic fluid hyperthermia. I read about it.”
“You don’t have cancer, Simone.”
“But using that theory, we could attack the lycan cells. What are they but a form of malignancy? And it has a faster metabolism than mine. You concluded that yourself.”
What he hadn’t concluded until now was that the cure could kill her. “It’s not safe, Simone, not even close to safe. And this kind of risk isn’t worth your life. We can work with it, yeah, start researching and testing on this theory. But I’m not pumping something into your sy
stem that could kill you.
“It’s progress,” he said more gently and reached out for her. “A big step. We’ll work the problem.”
SHE knew he was right. Logically, scientifically, rationally. They could and should do more tests, make further studies, continue to run computer analyses.
They could keep spending nearly every night in the lab focused on her condition, swimming in equations and formulas and theories. And dreading the full moon.
She was sick of it. Sick of herself.
She lay beside him, unable to sleep.
It had been easier when she’d been alone, when she’d been able to carve everything else away and concentrate only on herself, her mission. Her Holy Grail. It had been simpler when she’d had only a well-trained and devoted dog to engage her affections. Then she didn’t have anyone else to consult, anyone to worry about, anyone to consider.
Anyone to love.
She hadn’t wasted valuable time on lazy Sunday mornings, or foolish conversations, on daydreaming impossible plans for an impossible future.
She should break it off, push him away, convince him that she didn’t love or want him. She could do it—in heat or in cold. Pick a fight, be vicious and cruel. Or simply freeze him out with disinterest. She’d be better off, and so would he.
And that was ridiculous.
Sighing, she turned on her side to study him as he slept. She wasn’t that stupid, and she was far from that unselfish. She had no intention of giving him up, of insulting the love they shared by denying it, or of damning herself to an empty, rootless one-dimensional existence.
She had her lover in her bed, her wounded warrior who even now bore the badge of the gouges she—it—had given him. He slept on his left side, always, and sometimes in the night he’d manage to maneuver himself so that his body was nearly diagonal over the mattress, his right leg hooked over hers, just above her knees.
How could she give that up?
Their dogs slept curled together at the foot of the bed. Gabe’s cell phone was clipped into its charger on her dresser. His shaving cream stood beside her mouthwash in the medicine cabinet, and his clothes were mixed with hers in the hamper.
No, she’d never give it up. She wouldn’t throw away the gift of love, or the treasure of normal he’d brought to her life. But neither would she watch it erode, gnawed away by the demands and violence of what lived inside her.
She knew what she had to do, not only to keep what they had, but to open the possibility for more.
WHEN he left for work, after a routine morning, a wonderful morning, of muffins and dogs, kitchen kisses and his last mad rush out the door, she locked herself in the lab.
The test she ran she wouldn’t tell him about—until after. Using a lycan blood sample Gabe had taken, she poured a few drops in a petri dish, then heated it to 106 degrees.
They didn’t like it, she mused, studying the cells. But they adjusted.
But when she added the serum, the cells struggled with form. They absorbed it. That metabolism, she thought again. Fast and hungry and mistaking the serum for fuel.
“Yeah, eat it up. Eat hardy. Have seconds, you bastard.”
She made notes, began a computer analysis, then let out a cry of despair when the cells reverted to their former state.
“It fights it off. Damn it!” She thumped a fist against the table, caught herself. “Think. Think. Feeds, weakens, sickens. How long did it take?”
She checked the time, then flipped through files until she found Gabe’s notes from the episode the night before.
And saw how it could be done.
IT took most of the day to run each step, to wait for results, to analyze. She prepared the syringes, labeled them, then sat down to write Gabe a letter she hoped he wouldn’t have to read.
It’s nearly sunset. There’s so little light in December. Do you know they call the December moon the Full Cold Moon? It is, the coldest of moons and has always been—for reasons I can’t understand or explain—the hardest for me to face.
The Full Wolf Moon is not until January, but they’ve all been the wolf moon for me, since the first change. I hope—no believe—I won’t have to face another wolf moon.
I know you’ll be angry, and you’ll have a right to be. We’re a team, you and I, and that union happened so unexpectedly for me. So beautifully. I’d gotten so used to sharing myself only with the ugliness, the violence and pain, I may never have shown you, or told you, often enough, well enough, what you mean to me.
Everything, Gabriel. Just everything.
I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you and won’t be able to finish without you. So we’re still a team. I’m starting without you. I have to, but the finish will be in your hands. The only hands I’ve ever trusted besides my own.
I found the answer. I believe that with my heart, my mind, my gut. I know it’s dangerous and might cost me more than either of us wants to pay. A calculated risk. Last night you said the risk wasn’t worth my life.
I didn’t have a life, Gabe, until you. I had a few weeks, precious weeks, of freedom and joy and adventure before I changed into something that can never be free. Because of that, I learned to be lonely, not just to accept it, but to like it. To want it. I learned not to think beyond the moment, the immediate needs, what had to be done. I lived for the cure, and even if I’d found it, alone, I’m not sure I would’ve changed.
But I have a life now, and it’s worth any risk.
I’ve already changed, and I won’t lose what I’ve become, or what I might yet be. I want this life with you, a family with you. I want to walk in the moonlight, to revel in the light of the full white moon with you.
Help me.
Do you know, I’ve never said those two words to anyone but you? They’re more intense somehow than I love you.
I’m not doing this for you. Don’t you hate when someone does something you don’t want and tries to justify it by saying they’ve done it for you? I’m doing this for me. And asking you to finish it for me.
And if we fail, please know that I’ve lived more, been happier, felt more real in these past few months than ever in my life.
I love you,
Simone
She sealed the letter, left it under the pillow of the cot. Then, taking the syringes, went into the cell. She clamped her ankles, then her wrists in the shackles she’d drilled into the wall that afternoon. And sat down to wait.
HE’D been feeling off all day, as if somehow a splinter had gotten wedged just under his heart. He wanted to get home, sit on the sofa next to Simone with their legs all tangled together and have a beer. He wanted to look at her face, hear her voice, maybe reassure himself that everything was all right between them.
Which was stupid, he knew. Hadn’t she turned to him that morning before either of them was fully awake. Sliding over him, he remembered as he turned into the drive. Surrounding him. Hands, lips, hair, skin.
But there’d been an urgency about the way she’d moved over him, a desperation in the speed. The same urgency, the same desperation that had been in her hand—Simone’s lovely human hand with its beastly black claws—when she’d gripped his arm the night before.
The wound throbbed a bit, as if it wanted to remind him, and he found himself snatching up the white roses he’d brought for her and hurrying toward the door.
It was already dark, and fresh snow had fallen that afternoon. Just an inch, just enough to make everything look clean and white in the moonlight. He glanced up before he went inside, looked at the nearly full ball riding the sky.
It looked, to him, cold and pitiless.
Inside it was warm and fragrant. He knew now she even used herbs and plants to clean. Beeswax and soapwort, wood sorrel and hazelnut kernels, so the house always smelled like a garden or a forest.
He tossed his keys into a bowl and called out a greeting as he wandered back toward the kitchen. She wasn’t there, nor was there anything simmering on the stove.
He’d gott
en spoiled in that area. He could admit it and without shame. He was a guy, after all, and if there was a guy who didn’t like coming home to a beautiful woman and a hot meal, well, Gabe pitied him.
He glanced toward the kitchen door, and everything inside him shrank when he saw she’d left it unlocked.
He knew, even before he leaped for the door and bolted down the steps, he knew.
And even then, what he saw shocked him.
She’d chained herself to the back wall of the cage. But she’d left enough play to be able to work the syringe. Butch bounded forward, barking a greeting, only to scramble back away at Gabe’s shout.
“It’s done.” Her voice was utterly calm. “I need your help now. I need you to—”
“Where are the keys?” He was storming into the cage, yanking at the chains. “Where are the keys to these goddamn things?”
“You won’t find them in time. Please listen to me. Listen while I’m still lucid. Be furious later.”
“Too late.” He braced a foot on the wall, and though he knew it was impossible, tried to pull the bolt free.
“You need to administer the other dose. There, in the safety case. You need to wait until the change, until the moment we’re trapped together, fighting each other—until the moment I let it think it’s won. You’ll know when. I know you will.”
“Damn it, Simone.” He heaved the chain against the wall. “You could die here, chained like an animal.”
“Don’t let me.” She hadn’t meant to say that, to put it on him, but the fever was already burning through her. “I did the labs, Gabe. I worked all day, and I found the finish to what we started last night. To the cure you helped me find. To the cure you’d already found.”