Huntress Moon (Bones and Bounties Book 2)

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “He feared Death. I do not.”

  “What do you fear?” he asked, leaning in even closer so that his warm breath fanned across my face.

  My mind was instantly filled with the memory of Mannan. The crush of his lips, the blood in my mouth, the slick feel of his tentacles on my skin.

  “Now you smell of fear,” Byron said, his voice a husky growl that rumbled low in his chest as his eyes went amber.

  “What I fear is not up for debate. Suffice it to say that it’s not you.” I stepped into his body, forcing him to back up, allowing the breath of the gap between us to close.

  Byron shuffled backwards, the light in his eyes fading, and I watched his claws retract back into his hands. Shit, I hadn’t even noticed it happening. He’d very nearly gotten the drop on me, and all because I’d allowed my mind to wander… something that was happening far too often for my liking.

  Clearly, the situation with the wolf-human hybrids and the dreams I’d been having of Mannan had affected me far more than I’d been willing to admit.

  “And there you go again.” Byron cut through my thoughts with his sharp tone.

  “Nope, still very much here. You just haven’t answered my question. What did the Noree say?”

  “She didn’t say to bring an abomination into the den,” a strange female voice said from somewhere behind me.

  One of the floorboards of the stairs creaked, as though adjusting to a sudden thrust of weight. I whirled to the side, trusting my instincts. The space I stood in, which formed a corridor between the wall and the sick wolves, was too small to truly get out of the way of the small shape that leaped toward me, especially with Byron close enough that I could make out the stubble on his jaw.

  Something solid slammed into my shoulder, spinning me off course and directly into the path of the male wolf with the human teeth. He lunged forward, the saliva in his maw trickling down the sides of his mouth and dripping onto the dirt floor with heavy plops. I tried to bring myself up short and halt my headlong fall, but he’d learned his lesson the first time. Instead of attempting to snap at me with just his teeth, his arms whipped out lightning fast and his clawed hands snagged my jacket before he jerked me toward his waiting mouth.

  Chapter Five

  “Heather! No!” Byron shouted, but his words came microseconds too late. The wolf-man already had me, his still-human teeth sinking into my shoulder, his powerful jaws biting down with the full force of a werewolf.

  I felt the bone in my shoulder pop and crunch beneath his bite, and he worried at the wound, jerking my body back and forth the way a dog would play with a doll.

  Power surged in my veins and I screamed, the sound filling the small space, bouncing off the walls as though magnified by whatever magic was keeping the house plunged in darkness. Only the work of a powerful witch could keep the sounds from within contained. As that thought passed through my mind, I quickly discarded it. That wasn’t going to save me.

  The wolf-man released his hold on me, shifting his body over mine as he opened his mouth to snap his jaws over my throat. My injured arm refused to move properly, and I jammed one of my silver blades into his rear leg instead of his exposed underbelly. He howled in pain and skipped to the side, giving me the precious seconds I needed to crab-walk backwards out of his reach.

  Strong arms grabbed me from beneath the wolf and carried me over to the relative safety of the other side of the basement. Raising my other blade, I prepared to defend myself, but Byron’s hand closed over my fist. The scent of burning flesh filled the air as his skin came into contact with the pure silver blade.

  His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out the words, my ears ringing with the anguished howls of anger and pain from the wolves still chained to the walls.

  “Silence,” he bellowed, his voice rising above the howls, and I felt his power pulse through the room. The howls died away, replaced with a low, pitiful murmur of pain from those who were either too injured, too mad, or just too plain stupid to listen to him.

  “Christ, I told you not to get too close,” he said, anger radiating from him as he propped me gently against the wall.

  “Yeah, because that was really my intention. Someone pushed me.” I clenched my teeth as the shattered bones in my shoulder shifted against one another painfully.

  He growled low under his breath and leaned closer to examine the wound. Shrugging away from his touch, I cradled my arm close to my body.

  “Don’t, I’ll be fine,” I said with a wince as I moved, my body struggling to compensate against the wound.

  I could feel my shoulder already attempting to heal, but the bones kept shifting as the muscle knit faster than they could.

  “Is there nothing you can do?” Byron asked, watching me carefully, his expression closed.

  “What, like shape shift into an animal?” I asked, my voice heavy with sarcasm. “I think you’ll find that’s not exactly my kind’s strength.”

  “You should have let Timothy rip it apart,” a female voice said, the same female who had spoken just before I’d been pushed into the wolf-man.

  I whipped my head around, biting back the pain that echoed through my body from my ruined shoulder, a snarl on my lips as I laid eyes on my would-be killer.

  The bitch—and I felt confident in calling her that because I could feel the power of her beast as it roiled just beneath the surface of her human skin—stood near the stairs. She was petite, and her dark hair and large almond eyes transformed her from beautiful to utterly stunning with just a tilt of her chin. She tossed her head, and a shimmering mane of blue-black hair fell down her back in a waterfall of colour against her white shirt. She narrowed her delicate eyes in my direction, and I could feel her hatred for me rolling off her in waves. She looked at me as though I had personally offended her, as though we had already met and I should know who she was. But I didn’t.

  Tension sang through Byron’s body, and I could feel his longing as he stared at her. The other half-changed wolf-men in the room whimpered and edged closer to her. Then, it hit me.

  Closing my eyes, I drank in her scent. The sex pheromones she was releasing tickled the inside of my nose, and I sneezed as a burst of laughter escaped me. She was doing it on purpose—deliberately ratcheting up the tension in the basement, driving the males surrounding her into a sort of frenzy. I’d heard of sex appeal but apparently female werewolves took that to a whole new level.

  Once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. Maybe it was the pain, the panic, or the adrenaline still coursing in my veins from when I’d almost become werewolf chowder, but the laughter bubbled up from my core, causing me to rock despite the pain in my shoulder. I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks, and even then I couldn’t stop.

  Byron shot me a look of concern, and the tension tightening his muscles eased. Struggling to hold back the laughter, I wiped at my face with my good hand.

  “Don’t look at me like I’ve lost my mind,” I said to him.

  “You’re behaving like someone losing her mind. The others didn’t react quite like this when they were infected, but they definitely didn’t behave sanely.” He reached out to me with his large hand.

  From the corner of my eye, I watched as the were-bitch stiffened considerably. Her pheromones suddenly spiked high enough that my eyes started to water.

  “Christ on a cracker, cut the bullshit already,” I said, moving out of Byron’s range as I gave the woman my full attention. “I’m not going to steal him from you.”

  “What?” Her anger mingled with the sexual waves she was giving off.

  “You want him, he’s yours,” I said, tilting my head in Byron’s direction.

  If she thought I was trying to muscle in on her territory, then she was the mad one, not me, and Byron should have been worried about her sanity instead. I’d never met a female wolf before, but I’d definitely heard about them. They were rare, mainly because they didn’t survive the birth of their children. I’d heard that some gave birth to both pu
ps and human babies, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes. And I really wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  I’d also heard that they were extremely possessive, jealous, and tended to have anger issues. The longer I spent in the same room with the she-wolf, the more convinced I was of the truth of that particular rumour.

  “We’re not an item,” Byron said, catching me off guard. I swivelled to face him, then realized my mistake as pain ripped through me once more, causing my vision to run in brightly coloured streamers.

  Byron caught me, his grip gentle as he kept me on my feet. For that, I was grateful. At least he hadn’t tried to pick me up, which would have made me look even weaker in the eyes of the wolf-bitch. As soon as I had the opportunity, I was going to kick her ass. But first I needed to heal.

  “I need you to take me to the Noree,” I said, digging my fingers into Byron’s arm hard enough that I could smell his blood on the air.

  “She can help?” he whispered.

  I nodded, but the motion turned my stomach. There was definitely something weird going on with the bite, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. All I knew was that the wolf had crushed my shoulder blade and possibly part of my collar bone.

  “The sooner, the better,” I said, meeting his gaze, “especially if you want me to keep helping you.”

  Byron nodded and kept a tight grip on me as he half-walked, half-carried me toward the stairs.

  The wolf-bitch stared at me, her dark eyes swimming with hatred.

  “Ash will hear of this, Byron,” she said.

  “Let him. He asked me to help with the problem, and that’s what I’m trying to do. If my brother doesn’t like it, then he can rescind the invitation.”

  Byron urged me upstairs ahead of him, each step pure agony as my shoulder struggled to heal itself. That was both the blessing and the curse of being fae—I healed much faster than a human, but bone still took longer than muscle. Normally it wasn’t an issue, but then my bones weren’t usually crushed.

  My head lolled forward and the stairs rolled beneath me as a strong wave of pain swept over me, leaving my head reeling. The memory of my bone shards sliding beneath my skin caused me to retch.

  How had I forgotten?

  I hadn’t forgotten; I had just buried it with the other painful memories locked away in the dark recesses of my mind where they couldn’t hurt me.

  “Submit to them, Darcey,” Lunn said. But when I snapped my head up, it wasn’t Lunn’s hand keeping me moving but Byron’s. Was I losing my mind? It certainly felt that way, and only one person could tell me for certain. She could do more than that too—she could tell me why the hell she’d told the wolf to ask me for help in the first place.

  “Going to pass out now,” I said as we reached the top step.

  “Fuck.” Byron pulled my jacket away from my shoulder. From his tone of voice, I knew that whatever he’d seen wasn’t good, but I didn’t have the strength to ask him about it.

  “Don’t eat me,” I mumbled, the words sounding garbled even to my own ears as Byron’s pace picked up and the ground seemed to disappear from beneath my feet.

  I felt the rumble of Byron’s voice, but his words never reached my ears. Instead, Mannan’s welcoming arms reached out for me, sucking me into the darkness and the sweet embrace of agony that only his love could bring.

  Chapter Six

  “Stupid girl.” Noree’s all-too-familiar voice called me back from the place where Mannan had left me.

  The memory of what he had done to me was hazy, snippets of it coming back to me like wonky reception on a broken television.

  “Wake up, lazy, stupid girl!” Pain accompanied Noree’s words as she ground her fingers into my healing shoulder. I pulled away from her touch with a hiss, but she pinned me to the couch, her grip surprisingly strong for a woman of her years. Despite her lack of eyes, I felt her gaze rake over me, assessing me, but I couldn’t quite tell whether she was checking to see if I had other injuries or simply trying to unnerve me.

  “How did you let a wolf bite you? I thought someone like you would be able to stay out of reach of the dogs,” she said, leaning away from me. “Also, you smell…”

  “Thanks.” I jerked free of her grip despite the pain in my shoulder. She let me go, and I pushed up into a sitting position. “You’re not such a delightful fragrance yourself,” I said. It was petty and utterly beneath me, but my head was throbbing and I had the overwhelming urge to go home and shower until every inch of my skin was raw but free of Mannan’s touch.

  “But I do not smell of dog and”—she leaned in once more and sniffed the air around me—“rot. You smell of rot, death, and dying.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  Ignoring her, I rolled my shoulder, wincing a little as I felt the tightness in my muscles.

  “What did you do?” I asked, flexing my fingers and finding them slower than usual.

  “Fixed you, and it wasn’t easy,” she said. “So don’t make it a habit.”

  I raised an eyebrow in her direction; her intense dislike of me wasn’t exactly a secret, so how I was getting off so lightly was beyond me.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it for you.” She smiled unpleasantly and turned her head to the side. I followed the direction of her sightless gaze and found Byron staring back at me. His expression was stony and dark, but something else I saw lurking in his eyes surprised me. If I didn’t know any better, I might have thought it was relief…but that was impossible, and I dismissed the thought as soon as it popped into my head. No way was a wolf relieved that I was all right.

  “What did she make you promise her?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

  “Nothing.” He pushed away from the wall.

  His response stunned me, and I whirled to face Noree once more. “Nothing?” I repeated, my voice rising several octaves in surprise.

  “I can be generous with my time, harbinger. Not everyone is my enemy.” She busied herself with the small box of bottles open on the table next to the sofa.

  I shook my head—no way had she done such a huge favour for nothing in return. For as long as I had known the Noree, she was nothing but mercenary, always looking to see how a situation might benefit her. She must have wanted something from the alpha wolf, and knowing Noree she would ask for it at the most inopportune of times.

  “You were poisoned,” she said, and her words shocked me out of my thoughts. Although they really shouldn’t have. I had been bitten by a wolf infected with something that was driving him insane. But I wasn’t a wolf, so why would I be effected?

  “What was I poisoned with?” I asked, trying to keep my tone disinterested. Noree would only keep the information to herself if she thought I really needed it. She was that petty.

  She smiled at me, a wide grin that showed off her sharpened tooth. Her single tooth had something to do with the kind of magic she practiced, but I’d never been able to figure out the connection. I’d once asked her what it meant, but she had merely tutted and told me to mind my business lest it fall into the hands of those who would use it against me.

  “If I knew what it was, then I would have helped the wolf myself,” she said.

  “But you cured me?” I asked. “Couldn’t you have done the same for them?”

  “Cured you of their poison, yes. You are not one with the beast; your blood would have destroyed the poison on its own. Well, it should have destroyed it, but something has weakened you.” She raised an eyebrow above her empty sockets.

  “You know the answer to that,” I said, my voice full of warning.

  Noree sat back in her chair, her smile curling down at the corners. “I know what has turned you into this pathetic lump of self-loathing,” she said, gesturing to me. “But something else has weakened you, something much more recent.”

  Her words struck a chord within me, and bile rose up the back of my throat. She thought something was wrong with me. The bites on the insides of my arms began to itch, and I fought the
urge to tear at them, as though that alone would be enough to rid myself of Mannan’s touch.

  He had touched me, and worse—he had used his creature to bite me, to mark me across the plains, something I had long thought impossible. Of course, to Mannan, ‘impossible’ was just a word—it held no power for him.

  “And do you know what might be weakening me?” I asked, turning back to Noree.

  She shook her head and steepled her fingers in front of her body. “No, I was hoping you might tell me.”

  “You don’t trust me, so why should I trust you?”

  Noree jerked her face up, and I could practically feel her phantom eyes raking over my face. “What makes you think I don’t trust you?”

  “I don’t mean to break up this little reunion, as interesting as it is,” Byron interjected, “but I’ve got more pressing matters to deal with.”

  A flash of annoyance crossed Noree’s usually impassable expression, and then it was gone as she turned to direct all of her irritation at Byron.

  “I sent you to the harbinger to seek her aid in your predicament. I did not send you there to kill her.”

  “And that was not my intention,” he answered, his voice tight with anger.

  “Good. Don’t make me regret the decision.”

  Pushing up from my chair, I moved toward Byron as he made his way toward the door. The Noree stood behind me, her gnarled hand whipping out to latch onto my shoulder so she could lean in to whisper in my ear.

  “We must talk, and soon,” she said. “You are keeping the truth from me when you should be sharing it freely. It is not just you he will seek vengeance upon.”

  Hesitating, I glanced back at her, but she nudged me toward the door. “Get out,” she said, “and the next time you darken my door, wolf, it better be with a token of your appreciation. I am getting older, and a woman of my years deserves to be spoilt.”