Crave the Moon

by Lori Handeland

  That.

  Gina lowered the binoculars, then handed them to Jase. “What’s wrong with these wolves?”

  “More than you can imagine,” Isaac said softly.

  “A virus? Rabies? What?”

  “A virus, yes. One called lycanthropy. Why do you think there were no wolves round here till now?”

  “There’s gotta be a better explanation than lycanthropy,” Gina muttered. Of course she was the one who’d been contemplating a sorcerer.

  “Wolves avoid werewolves. They sense their otherness.”

  Gina glanced at Jase, but he still stared through the binoculars. Teo peered at Isaac as if he’d said something fascinating, instead of gibbering like a madman.

  “I’ve never seen a wolf on this property. Not even one like that.” Gina jabbed a finger at the semi-circle of freaks. “So what ‘otherness’ did they sense?”

  “What lay beneath,” Isaac intoned.

  “The Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao,” Teo said.

  “We buried it. But animals know. From that point on no true wolf would come within fifty miles and the horses refused to walk there.”

  Gina was starting to get a headache.

  “Jase,” she said. “What do you know about this?”

  He lowered the field glasses. His pupils were dilated so large she took a step backward. He almost looked like one of … them.

  “Jase?” She reached for him, and he shoved the binoculars into her outstretched hand.

  “Check the last one on the right.” When she hesitated, he lifted his chin in a sharp, jerky movement. “Do it, Gina.”

  She did, tweaking the focus, moving a little closer, a little closer, waiting for the silvery-gray beast to turn his head her way.

  When at last he did, Gina squeaked and dropped the binoculars on the floor.

  Those were Mel’s eyes.

  * * *

  The instant Gina gave a strangled cry and dropped the field glasses, both Matt and McCord started forward.

  Matt reached her first, which only gave the other man an excuse to snarl, especially when Gina grasped Matt’s outstretched hand and ignored his.

  “That’s— That’s—” Her eyes were wide, exposing more of the whites than usual, which made Matt frown and glance at the wolves again.

  What was it about their eyes?

  “Impossible,” she finished, her fingers clenching until his cracked in protest.

  “What’s impossible?” Matt asked, glancing at McCord, who continued to glare at him like a two-year-old denied his favorite toy.

  Gina bent, picked up the binoculars, and handed them to Matt without a word.

  One tug on his hand and she released him. Matt shoved his glasses on top of his head, then lifted the binoculars and zeroed in on the nearest wolf’s eyes.

  “Some kind of virus,” he muttered, and Isaac snorted. “Which makes the sclera expand, while decreasing the amount of pigment.” What other possible explanation could there be?

  Not lycanthropy. He was with Gina on that one.

  “What the hell is a sclera?” McCord muttered. “Speak English, Dr. Moldy.”

  “The white,” Gina said, and Matt had to resist the urge to stick out his tongue at McCord. That would be a good way to get it ripped out of his head.

  “You recognize any of them?” Isaac asked.

  “Recognize?” Matt repeated. “The wolves?” Until yesterday there hadn’t been any wolves.

  “Look again,” the old man urged.

  Matt glanced at Gina, whose scleras seemed to have expanded, too. For an instant he worried that she’d caught the virus as well. But the transmission of viruses between species was very rare. Of course if these were werewolves and half-human, that could cause a prob—

  Matt heard what his mind was saying and a choked laugh escaped. Talk about mass hysteria.

  “Quit yucking it up,” McCord grumbled, “and take another look.”

  “Look close,” Gina urged, so Matt did.

  One was black with gray eyes; another was sable with brown; the third from the left had a shiny, smooth coat, which was a lovely shade of gold, with blue eyes that stared into his and—

  Matt yelped and dropped the binoculars.

  Those were Ashleigh’s eyes.

  Gina set her hand on his arm. “You saw him?”

  “Him?” He blinked several times, staring through the window at her. The Ashleigh-eyed wolf seemed to be staring back—and grinning.

  “Mel.” Gina pointed. “Over there.”

  “Mel’s there, too?”

  “Too?” Gina bent and retrieved the binoculars, peering through them until she saw—

  “Ashleigh.” Gina lowered the field glasses. McCord snatched them up, put them to his eyes, then cursed.

  “And Juan.” Isaac lifted a gnarled finger to indicate the second black wolf, this one with equally black eyes—except for the whites that blared freakishly against the dark fur.

  Matt lowered his glasses back into place. He couldn’t believe what he was thinking, what they were. There had to be another explanation, but he really couldn’t fathom what it was. He needed more information. And Isaac appeared just the man to give it to him.

  “What did you bury?” he asked.

  Isaac’s dark gaze cut from the wolves to Matt, then back again. “We better sit.” He waved his wrinkled hand at the furniture. “Turn those round so we can keep our eyes…” He first pointed his forefinger and middle finger at his face, then jabbed them toward the window.

  The younger men moved the couch, as well as two wing chairs, while Gina retrieved Fanny and the two women went upstairs. In all the excitement, they’d forgotten about the “blond chick” sucking her thumb in the hall.

  “All asleep,” Gina said when she returned. “Except for the kid, who’s playing some game on his phone and barely looked at me when I opened his door. Fanny will stay to make sure no one comes down and hears something they shouldn’t. We can catch her up later.”

  “Fanny won’t need catching up.” Isaac sat on the couch. “The legend of the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao has been known to my people since we confined him.”

  Gina glanced at McCord, who shrugged. “It’s a legend.” He made a mouth with his hand, opening and shutting his fingers and thumb while muttering, “Blah, blah, blah. We’ve got a million.”

  Isaac shot his grandson an irritated glare. “This legend became a legend on this land. The creature is—” His mouth twisted. “Was. Buried here.”

  Matt took the wing chair closest to Gina, ignoring McCord’s inevitable snarl. “You call the buried creature the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao, but you also call them,” Matt pointed to the wolves, “Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao.”

  Isaac shrugged. “What do you want to call them?”

  “Werewolves,” Gina murmured.

  “A different name don’t make ’em somethin’ they’re not.”

  “You should probably start at the beginning,” Matt said, and the old man inclined his head, then did.

  “Centuries ago—at least four, maybe five—an army came from the south. There’d been rumors for years of this army, which swept over the land, leaving blood and death and destruction behind. Those they didn’t kill they stole, and took them back to the place where Tauaci, the sun, lives, never to be seen or heard from again.”

  Matt leaned forward. The people who lived with the sun had to be the Aztecs.

  “However, the Nucio, the Ute people, were fierce, and they didn’t die as easily as the others had. They killed more of the Sun People than anyone had before, and the invaders were forced to call forth their sorcerer.”

  Bingo, Matt thought; the two stories were beginning to mesh.

  “This sorcerer could become a wolf, and he could make others into wolves, too.”

  Matt straightened as if he’d been jabbed in the butt with a stick. That wasn’t how the story went. The Aztecs’ sorcerer was a superwarrior—stronger, better, faster. He mowed through the opposition like a ravenous wol
f.

  Of course that was a translation, which was subject to interpretation. What if, instead, the sorcerer was a ravenous wolf?

  Matt couldn’t believe he was thinking this. He, who had broken his mother’s heart, contributed to her death by sneering at her irrational belief in a sorcerer, was now considering a werewolf sorcerer.

  Of course with all that had happened lately—howling black smoke, dead bodies getting up and walking away, wolves with the eyes of people he knew …

  “Go on,” Matt said.

  “He replenished the Army of the Sun with the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao, beings that couldn’t be killed with anything other than pure silver.”

  “How’d the Ute know this?” Matt blurted. “Did they just poke the creatures with every substance they had until one of them died?”

  “Maybe.” Isaac shrugged. “How they knew isn’t part of the story.”

  “Okay,” Matt said, though for him the how and the why and the what were the story.

  “No matter how many of the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao were killed,” Isaac continued, “the sorcerer made more. He created an army, and the People had no choice but to call forth their own maker of magic.”

  “We had a sorcerer?” McCord murmured. “Cool.”

  “Shaman,” Isaac corrected.

  “Whatever.” McCord ignored the narrow-eyed stare his grandfather shot his way. “What did he do?”

  “He confined the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao beneath,” Isaac said, as if that explained everything.

  “How?” Matt asked.

  “A spell, which imprisoned the creature beyond the door. Then the Ute filled in the cavern and told everyone the area was cursed. It didn’t take long before death made their lies the truth.”

  “What does that mean?” Gina asked.

  “People died there.”

  “Voilà,” Matt murmured. “It is cursed.”

  “But why did people die there?” Gina’s voice wavered.

  Matt laid his hand on hers. Outside, one of the wolves—he thought it might have been Ashleigh—yipped. He ignored them, along with McCord, who glared hard enough to put a hole in Matt’s forehead.

  “The Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao was buried, but his voice was never silenced. His calls are heard on the wind and in the mountains.”

  Beneath Matt’s hand, Gina’s jerked. He cast her a concerned glance, but she peered intently at Isaac.

  “You’re saying the howls of the unwolves were made by the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao?” Matt asked.

  “He called people to him. Because he was Nahua, every death made him stronger, keeping alive the whisper of his voice on the wind.” Isaac shook his head. “That kind of power is damn hard to contain.”

  “So you spread the rumor that the place was cursed.”

  “It is,” Isaac muttered. “But yeah. The less people who go there, the less chance their deaths will feed the beast.”

  “How’d the shaman confine him?”

  “He learned their picture talk, then used it against them.”

  Understanding hit Matt like a flash of light. “The glyphs on the wall weren’t drawn by the Aztecs but by the Ute shaman.” Which explained why they were kind of off.

  “The man-dog figure on the wall…” Gina tilted her head. “And the one in your mom’s notebook. They both appeared overly vicious to represent loyalty. But what if they were meant to represent—” She turned her gaze to the window and lifted her chin to indicate the ever-patient circle of wolves.

  What if the drawings of dogs weren’t dogs at all but wolves? And the combination of the man with the dog didn’t mean a loyal man but a man-wolf, which was exactly what the Ute had labeled him?

  Why hadn’t he seen it before? In his own defense, Matt had never heard the story until now.

  “There were larger-than-life men,” he murmured. “Both sorcerers. The size of the glyph indicated power, not actual size. One was a shape-shifter, the other—” He closed his eyes and brought up the second glyph against the dark screen of his mind. “Magic.” He opened his eyes and met Gina’s gaze. “That’s what the stars shooting from his hands meant. But—” Matt frowned as another puzzle presented itself. “What about the horses that looked like dogs, which had stars all around their feet?”

  “Magic dogs,” Isaac said. “It’s what the Ute called horses.”

  Magic dogs. Matt liked that. The way people talked in times long past had always held a certain poetry for him.

  “The Ute wrote what happened on the wall,” Gina said. “How does that confine a monster?”

  “Words have power,” Isaac answered. “Words begin and end wars. They create and destroy families. They break hearts. They heal them. If you have the right words, there’s nothin’ on this earth you can’t do.”

  As a professor, Matt had to agree. As a scientist, he needed more data.

  “If words kept him in,” Matt wondered, “how did he get out?”

  “The story ends with the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao being confined to the cavern. I never heard anything about his ever getting out.”

  Probably smart of the Ute in the long run. If there were no instructions on releasing the thing, then he would be pretty hard to release.

  In theory.

  Most experts would not have read the man-wolf glyph as Nahual and released the creature. Only Gina, who had known both too little and too much, could have done so.

  The shaman had been very clever to draw things the way he had. The glyphs could be deciphered, but only by a certain, and highly uncommon, few. The chances of the Nahual ever being freed had been slim. Of course any chance was still a chance. But it had taken nearly five centuries.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t help them now.

  “How about confining him?” Matt asked. “You know the recipe for that?”

  Isaac shook his head.

  Swell.

  “What happened to his werewolf army?” Gina asked.

  “Without the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao to replenish the numbers…” Isaac shrugged. “Eventually those he’d made were hunted down and eliminated.”

  “He made them,” she murmured, “by killing them.”

  “The usual werewolf rules involve biting,” McCord offered.

  “I don’t think the usual rules apply,” Matt said.

  “Well, it does explain what happened out there.” Gina waved at the window. The gazes of the wolves followed her hand as if it were a dog treat.

  “It does?” McCord asked. “Then explain it to me.”

  “The Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao killed Ashleigh. She, uh…” Gina glanced at Matt for help.

  “Rose?” he suggested.

  “She rose and ran off. Which clears up the single set of footprints leading away from the horse.”

  “By then Mel was dead,” Matt added.

  “So she joined him and together they…” She made the gesture of running with two fingers.

  “Which also clarifies the two sets of footprints leading away from the…” Matt paused, glancing at Gina for help.

  “Splotch?”

  Matt let his head fall to the side and gave her a look that said: Is that the best you could do? Gina shrugged and spread her hands.

  “What it doesn’t clarify,” McCord emphasized the word with a sarcastic twist of his lips, “is how he killed them.”

  “I’d … uh … hazard to guess that the torn throats were a pretty certain COD.”

  “Oh, you’d hazard, would you?” McCord mocked. “And what the hell does Cash On Delivery have to do with anything?”

  “Cause Of Death,” Gina translated, and when McCord turned his scowl on her she rolled her eyes. “Try watching some CSI instead of all-night TV poker.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how a whoosh and howl could rip out someone’s throat,” McCord pointed out.

  Everyone went silent, which caused McCord’s frown to turn upside down.

  “Just because Amberleigh and Melda didn’t see them taken by someone,” Gina swallowed thickly, “or
something, doesn’t mean they weren’t.”

  “No tracks but the victim’s,” McCord said. “Human or wolf.”

  Matt had to give the guy credit. He was smarter than he appeared.

  “There was nothing there,” Gina said. “When we got to the open door, there was nothing behind it.” She turned to Isaac. “What did they bury?”

  The old man’s mouth pulled down, causing the myriad creases in his face to deepen. “He was a man, at least part of the time.”

  “Could the sorcerer be killed?” This from McCord, who was eyeing the silver-filled rifle Isaac had placed next to himself on the couch.

  “If he could be,” the old man said reasonably, “there’d have been no need to confine him.”

  “A man, even one that was wolf, would have been dust by now,” Matt said. Or at least a pile of bones.

  “He was invincible,” Isaac intoned. “Immortal. I’m sure he was more than dust.”

  “Black smoke swirled from the opening.” Gina lifted one shoulder. “It could have been dust.”

  “That cavern was locked up for centuries,” Matt said. “Maybe it was just dust.”

  Gina’s gaze flicked to the window, then back again. She seemed to be hesitating, struggling, but at last she blurted, “Whatever it was swirled around me, whispered my name, then shot up and out of the hole.”

  Matt stared at her. “You didn’t tell me this?”

  “Would you have believed me before…?” She waved at the wolves, then Isaac, then flipped her hands up in disgust.

  “Pretty talented dust,” McCord muttered.

  “Which then snatched up two human beings and ripped out their throats. Damn talented dust,” Matt agreed.

  “The Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao is a sorcerer and a shape-shifter,” Isaac said. “He may have been smoke at first, but by now…” The old man’s dark gaze met each of theirs in turn. “He could be anything.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “What the hell are we gonna do?” McCord asked.

  Isaac continued to stare through the window, hand stroking his rifle as if he were just waiting for the wolves to give him an excuse. Any excuse.

  “Why don’t you just blast them, Granddad?” McCord sighted down his hand, which he’d contorted into the shape of a gun. “Bang, bang, bang. Like ducks in a pond.”