by SM Reine
Long Night Moon
By SM Reine
Copyright 2012 SM Reine
Red Iris Books
Prelude
Prey
Gwyneth had run too long. She couldn’t do it anymore.
Her feet slipped on the snow, and she shrieked as she tumbled down the hill. Rocks and branches battered her body. Her hands scrabbled for purchase and found nothing. She bounced over a boulder and hit the bottom in a snowdrift.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.
Something approached her. The heavy thump of footfalls were like nails in the lid of a coffin, and Gwyn raised her head to stare her hunter in the face.
The wolf circled. Its hackles lifted into thick spikes, and every huffing breath fogged the frigid air. Chunks of ice stuck to its lower legs and between its paw pads, and blood matted its face.
“Please… don’t do this.” Gwyn’s voice shook with cold and fear. A low rumble rose in the wolf’s throat, lips peeling back as it stepped closer.
Gwyn hadn’t believed. She had denied everything her niece said. It was impossible—full moons and werewolves and monsters. She lived in a rational world. A world of ranching. Herding, hard work. There was no such thing as magic.
But now, she believed. She believed everything.
With a growl, the wolf leaped.
Gwyn screamed. “Rylie!”
One
The Grove
Seth knew it would be a long day when he found blood in the fields.
Blood was never a good sign, since it often meant Rylie had gotten into the pastures again and eaten something she would regret. He could already hear her long speech about the innocence of cows again. It had been kind of cute… the first three times.
But this was different. He had never found so much blood after a moon. It was splattered over the frozen surface of the duck pond with a dark cherry sheen, like hard candy, and he didn’t think it belonged to a cow.
The human handprints weren’t a good sign, either.
He glared at his cell phone. When human bodies became involved, he had to call the police. Cops would mean an investigation, and if they saw him with a gun, he would have to answer a lot of questions.
It would be a long day. Seth hated long days.
He trudged around the duck pond in calf-deep snow, keeping the blood in his periphery. There weren’t any paw prints around the pond, nor were there the other normal signs of a werewolf attack. There should have been claw marks on everything. Frenzied werewolves liked to leave marks.
Plus, there was no body. If a human died, it wasn’t Rylie’s fault, and that was almost worse. It meant his werewolf girlfriend wasn’t the only dangerous thing in the night.
“This won’t be good,” he muttered.
He tracked the blood away from the pond, across the pastures, and into the fields of a neighboring farm. He picked the trail of blood up a few yards down, where it smeared for a few feet.
He didn’t have to go far to find the source. Seth crossed the field and entered the thicket at its edge. Naked trees made skeleton shadows on the ground, and the fingers of the branches all pointed at one thing—the body of a farmer, half-buried in snow with his throat torn out.
Yeah. It was definitely going to be a long day.
Rylie would never get used to waking up outside.
She stretched out in a snowdrift, reaching her hands high over her head and flexing her toes so every muscle went taut. She felt like she had been beaten up. Her skin was battered and sore, but unmarked.
Sitting up, she peered around the fields in the light of early dawn. Snow stuck to her hair. Rylie recognized the ridge to the south, but all her normal landmarks were masked in a thick layer of snow. She had no idea whose property she was on.
And where was Seth? He usually tracked her all night so he could be close when she woke up, but there was no sign of him this time. The only footprints nearby were in the shape of wolf paws.
She got up and brushed the snow off her skin. Even though she was wet and her hair had frozen, she wasn’t cold yet. The change kept her warm.
Tilting her head into the still air, she took several short sniffs. The colors of winter splashed through her mind: the chill of ice, rabbits warm in their dens, and the flowery smell of cheap perfume.
But there was another scent, too. It was the kind of smell that caught the attention of the wolf inside her, even though it should have been sleeping after a new moon.
Blood. Lots of it.
She was torn. Rylie needed her clothing before she got cold—or worse, before someone saw her streaking through the snow—but the blood smelled sticky-sweet and delicious, and she was so hungry.
Maybe just a peek.
Rylie jogged across the hills. Steam drifted off her skin and plumed around her mouth. Even though she was sleepy and sore, the call of blood made her push on.
More than a mile away, the smell became much stronger. It came from a large grove of trees.
And people were waiting on the east end.
Rylie hesitated before plunging inside. She ducked behind a thicket to keep herself hidden. Trucks with the sheriff’s logo were parked nearby, as well as an ambulance, and some other vehicles with government plates.
She sniffed again. So much blood.
Ignoring her better instincts, Rylie crouch-walked through the grove and followed her nose.
A man in a uniform appeared on the other side of a tree.
She froze.
His back was turned, so he didn’t see her. “Jesus H. Christ, what a mess,” he muttered. “You ever seen something like this before, Mary?”
“What a mess,” echoed a woman that Rylie couldn’t see. She was blocked by a bush.
The officer moved, letting Rylie see around his legs.
At first, all she saw was meat, raw and dripping. It was laying there on the snow, waiting for someone to take it. Still fresh. Still warm. Her stomach growled so loudly that she was afraid the deputies might hear.
After a moment, her human mind kicked in.
A human body.
The man shifted again, blocking Rylie’s view, but the corpse was branded into her mind. Her stomach lurched. Rylie clamped both hands over her mouth to keep from vomiting. Her shoulders heaved, and bile rose in the back of her throat. She couldn’t make a noise. She couldn’t get caught.
“Think it was a coyote?” Mary asked.
“Hard to say. I’ve never seen a coyote that vicious.”
Rylie slipped out of the trees again. She felt dizzy.
Motion on the hill overlooking the grove caught her eye. A dark figure at the top waved his hand, silhouetted by the rising sun. Even though he was too far away to smell, she recognized Seth, and he disappeared as soon as she waved back.
His message was clear. Rylie had to get away from the sheriffs.
She kept low as she followed the smell of her own perfume to the clothing she had hidden between rocks a half mile away. It was far enough behind the hill that the investigators couldn’t see, but she had to hurry. Finding a body meant they would probably sweep the whole area to find what killed him.
By the time she reached the rocks, her temperature started to drop, and the chill seeped into her bones. Her feet burned with cold. Her fingers became stiff and unresponsive. She hurried to pull the jeans over her legs, and they felt strange scraping over numb skin.
She had to blow on her hands until her fingers would bend before she could manage the socks and boots. Rylie skipped the shirt to put on the fur-lined jacket. She had initially refused to wear it, since she used to be a vegetarian and still hated animal products, but she was grateful for its war
mth that morning.
“Sorry,” she muttered through chattering teeth, trying not to imagine any poor dead bunnies.
Rylie jerked the hood over her head, stuffed the shirt into her pocket, and trudged toward the road where Seth parked the truck. They reached it at the same time.
The windows were iced over, and its hood was covered in an inch of snow. He tossed his rifle inside.
“What happened?” she asked.
He grinned when he saw her buried deep in the oversized jacket. His slanted smile made her heart stop beating for a second. Seth was wearing all black as usual, and his freshly-trimmed hair accentuated the hard lines of his cheekbones and jaw. “You’re not cold, are you?”
“No,” Rylie said.
“Liar.”
“I’d like to see you spend all night naked one of these moons. Then we’ll see who’s cold.”
Rylie had to move Seth’s school books to get in the truck. He must have spent the night glued to his books. He was serious about semester finals, and determined to get all A’s on his report card, so he didn’t do much other than study.
He got in the driver’s seat. She pushed back her hood.
“Seriously, Seth, what happened?”
“You saw the body. What do you think happened? Someone got killed.”
“What did it?”
“I got a good look before I tipped off the sheriff. His throat had been torn out, but it was too neat to be a werewolf. They’re savage when they attack,” Seth said.
“You mean, I’m savage when I attack.”
“It wasn’t you. I tracked you for half the night, and you stayed out in federal lands.” He didn’t look at her. “And none of him had been eaten. Like I said, you’re innocent.”
Rylie stared at her boots. “Oh.” He was right. She had gotten a few animals before, and she never left much behind. “Who died?”
“Isaiah Branson.”
Her hands flew to her mouth. “My neighbor? Oh God! That’s so close to my house! What if my aunt had been outside? What if—?”
Seth grabbed her hand. His touch spread warmth through her body.
“It wasn’t Gwyneth, so don’t worry about something that didn’t happen. There’s lots else to worry about anyway. If it wasn’t a werewolf that tore open Branson’s throat, then what was it?”
Rylie couldn’t answer that. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know.
Two
Transfers
They rode back to the ranch without talking. Once the adrenaline faded, she was comfortable. A little too comfortable to stay awake, in fact. Rylie’s eyes soon fell shut and she slid onto Seth’s shoulder, dozing under the rumbling engine sounds.
She couldn’t fall completely asleep despite her exhaustion. The memory of smells and sensations from her night as a wolf flitted through her mind. Rylie never remembered anything of the change. The more she tried to recall details, the more they slipped away. But it haunted her like a nightmare she couldn’t escape.
Seth parked by Gwyn’s barn and let the truck idle. “Wait here for a few minutes.”
He got out. Rylie tried to relax while he did a couple chores around the ranch. Gwyn would already be awake, so she would assume an empty house meant they were out working, and she would be suspicious if they went to breakfast with nothing done.
As light crept over the fields and burned away the haze of early morning, she could make out Isaiah Branson’s fence. Rylie didn’t want to think of what would happen to his farm now that he was dead.
Seth fed the animals and shoveled the paths. Once he was done, he came back to the truck. “Let’s go inside, Rylie. I can smell breakfast.”
He half-carried her up the hill to her aunt’s house. After a long night running on all fours, her muscles felt like jelly. But that wasn’t really why she hung off him. She could have lived her entire life with his arm around her body. Seth was all leather and gunpowder, but he spent enough time around the ranch to pick up its familiar scents, and pressing her face into his shoulder was like smelling home.
When she caught a whiff of bacon and eggs, it perked her up in a way even Seth couldn’t do. Hunger gave her enough energy to stand on her own so it wouldn’t look like Seth was dragging a body into the house, which would have looked weird to Aunt Gwyneth.
But it wasn’t Gwyn waiting when they entered the kitchen.
It was Seth’s brother.
“Good morning, sunshines. Looks like you had a good night,” Abel said.
He had made himself at home in the kitchen. He gnawed on a chunk of leftover steak while cooking bacon, sausage, and eggs on the griddle. Judging by the smell of the oven, he was making ham, too. The sight of so much meat made her mouth fill with saliva.
“What are you doing here?” Rylie asked.
“I’m cooking breakfast. What does it look like?”
It looked like one of Rylie’s worst nightmares had taken over her house again. She couldn’t get used to it. Gwyn hired him as a ranch hand after Rylie hospitalized the last one, and now Abel and Seth worked there all the time.
They were supposed to be friends now. Abel had even kind of apologized for spending half of the autumn stalking and threatening to kill her. She was still pretty sure he hated her. Rylie felt the same about him.
“Where’s Gwyn?” she asked.
“Still asleep. I haven’t seen her.” Abel flipped an egg on the griddle and the yolk broke, oozing into a puddle of bacon grease.
Rylie took several deep breaths to settle her nerves. Finding a werewolf hunter in her kitchen right after a new moon made her adrenaline spike to ridiculous levels.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, leaning over to kiss Seth on the cheek.
When she left the kitchen, she didn’t go to the bathroom. She stood on the other side of the doorway to listen.
“What are you doing?” Seth asked.
“I said, I’m making—”
“That’s not what I mean. You promised not to make trouble.”
“I’m not making trouble. I’m making eggs.” There was a dangerous undertone to Abel’s voice.
“Were you following Rylie last night? I saw boot prints.”
Abel laughed. “Listen to yourself, bro. You’re paranoid. Dating a werewolf is turning you crazy.”
“Oh yeah? Why else would you be here so early?”
“Gwyn asked me to come.”
Whatever they said beyond that, she didn’t hear it. The brothers continued their conversation in lowered voices, and she couldn’t make it out over the sizzle of bacon. She dropped her boots by the woodstove and pressed her ear to her aunt’s bedroom door. There was no hint of motion on the other side.
Gwyn was a total morning person. By the time the sun rose, she should have done a thousand things around the ranch and cooked a hearty breakfast.
She claimed she got sluggish during winter, but Rylie had to wonder if it wasn’t something else.
Her aunt was sick. Really sick. What if it was catching up with her?
Rylie tried to purge her worries in the shower, but no amount of hot water could dislodge the sense of fear creeping over her. After she finished, she combed out her hair and dressed in leggings, boots, and a sweater that went to her knees.
When she left the bathroom, Gwyn’s door was still shut.
Abel and Seth were sitting at the kitchen table when she joined them. The sight of Seth made her glow with warmth, but Abel was another story. His face was bisected by deep, cruel scars that horribly twisted his handsome profile. He had been mauled by a werewolf more than once. It was an unpleasant reminder of the damage Rylie could cause.
Seth’s smile was heart-stopping. “You were in there for days. I thought you drowned.”
Rylie took the chair next to him, which was as far from Abel as she could get without eating in the living room. Even though he pretended to focus on his breakfast, she could feel him watching. “Sorry. You can have a turn before we go to school. I left some hot wa
ter.”
“Nah. It’s fine.” He pushed a plate toward her. It was heaped high with ham and sausage. “Here, I saved some from my monstrous brother.”
Abel stayed silent. Rylie ate without looking at him.
When the first werewolf mauled him, Abel had been infected. There was a short period after the bite where the victim could stop the transformation, and with Seth’s help, Abel hadn’t become a werewolf. Some of the symptoms stuck around, though—mostly the craving for meat, an endless appetite, and serious anger issues. Between the two of them, they could have eaten an entire cow.
But Rylie wasn’t as hungry as usual. “We should get to school,” she said, wiping her mouth with a cloth napkin.
“Okay.” Seth dropped their dishes in the sink.
“Have a good time, kids,” Abel said with mock brightness. “Lots to do today! All that learning!”
Seth shoved him. “Shut up, you ugly jerk.”
“Touch me again and I’ll bite off your hands, dork wad.”
Rylie packed leftover roast beef and boiled eggs for lunch, keeping Abel in the corner of her eye as she prepared. When he caught Rylie looking, she shot him a dirty look.
“What’s taking so long?” Seth called from the front room.
She hurried to catch up.
The drive to school was long on good days. On snowy days, it was practically a road trip. It took almost an hour to do twenty miles, with nothing to look at on the way except endless sheets of white, so Rylie grabbed Seth’s homework binder.
“Brainstem,” she prompted.
Seth thought about it for a minute. “It keeps people alive and controls all the secondary stuff, like breathing and coughing. Right?”
She checked the back of the flash card. “Yeah. And the heartbeat, too.”
“Heartbeat,” he repeated. “Okay. I’ve got it. Give me another.”
“Cerebellum.”
“Is that the attention one?”
“No,” Rylie said. Seth tried to peek at the back, but she pressed it to her chest. “No cheating!”
“Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath and furrowed his brow. “Cerebellum. Cerebellum…” One vein stuck out on his forehead when he concentrated. Rylie thought it was cute. This was the first time Seth had tried to do an entire year of school, so she saw that vein a lot.