Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon

by S. M. Reine

  The witch glanced back at Seth in the doorway when Stripes left. “Move on,” she snapped.

  Seth jumped down, but he didn’t know where to go. It would be too easy to track him. He squinted at the branches in the falling light of evening. He didn’t see any sensors, but he wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t monitor camp, or because they were too well hidden.

  Could he use the monitors to find Eleanor? Or even better—could he find Rylie?

  He wandered across the field, watching the men forge silver from a distance. The stone church’s crumbling walls caught his gaze. If there were four werewolves in the church, and one of them was Bekah, then who were the other three?

  Seth intercepted a young man in Union black who was going to the church. He looked way too young to be with an army, no older than thirteen or fourteen, and he was carrying a tray of food.

  “Is that for the werewolves?” Seth asked.

  The boy straightened his back, lifted his chin, and gave a stiff nod. “Yes, sir.” His voice hadn’t even dropped yet.

  “Give it to me.”

  He took the tray and mounted the stairs to the ruined church. The door was barred from the outside. Seth balanced the tray on his shoulder and went inside.

  Not much had changed in the church since he was last there with Rylie. The benches had been pushed aside, the holes in the walls had been patched, and a few sleeping bags had been left for the captives. There was a bucket by the door that smelled of human effluence.

  “Bekah?” he called, setting the tray on a pew.

  Shapes moved in the shadows by the back wall, where there used to be a priest’s apartment. Bekah emerged from the doorway. She looked tired and dirty, but uninjured. “Is it feeding time already? I’m having so much fun being imprisoned that the time just flies.”

  He laughed and offered her a plate. The Union didn’t seem to care about the dietary preferences of potential werewolves. They had sent along cornbread, potatoes, and canned beans instead of meat. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

  “I’m criminally bored, but they haven’t hurt us. Look who I found. Hey! Stephanie!”

  Another woman emerged. She was tall, slender, strawberry blond, and looked much angrier than Bekah. “What’s going on? Who is this?”

  “This is Rylie’s boyfriend,” Bekah said. “I told you about him. Seth, this is Scott’s daughter. Um, biological daughter. Not adopted, like me and Levi. Stephanie is a doctor and a witch and super cool. She came here to search for me, but the Union grabbed her on the highway up the mountain.”

  Seth compulsively held out a hand to shake hers, but she stayed back and gave him a cold look that did not seem “super cool” to him.

  “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I’m not feeling polite today. Being locked in this church and forced to relieve myself in a bucket for two days has destroyed my sense of courtesy,” Stephanie said.

  He shrugged. “It could be worse. I brought food.” He offered Stephanie a second plate.

  “No, thank you. I’ve seen what the Union considers food.” She scanned him with a critical eye, and it gave him the distinct feeling of being trapped under a microscope. “Don’t tell me you listened to their moronic propaganda and enlisted. Bekah didn’t say you’re stupid.”

  “I’m not enlisted,” Seth said. “Do you know the Union?”

  “I’ve come across them before. Not this unit, but others.” She glared around at the church and twisted her mouth. “I can’t believe they think I’m a werewolf. For Pete’s sake. As if I would ever get myself that dirty.”

  He rolled his eyes and faced Bekah again. “Who else is here?”

  “There are these two Mexicans back in the priest’s room. Stephanie knows Spanish, so they’ve been talking a little.” Bekah sat on a pew to eat. “They haven’t seen Rylie or Abel. Sorry.”

  “No. That’s good. It’s better that way.”

  Stephanie folded her arms. “I can’t stand this place for another day. I’m breaking out—tonight, if I can. What will you do to help us?”

  “He doesn’t have to do anything,” Bekah said before he could respond. “It’s dangerous.”

  “No, I was going to escape too, actually.” Seth quickly explained what had happened with his mother to Stephanie, and then described their surveillance in the forest. “They’re going to do a sweep and pick up all the humans they can find and put them in the church, too. Everyone dies on the next moon. None of us can be here when that happens.”

  Bekah picked at the beans, seemingly unable to stomach the cornbread. “What about the mountain? We were called here for a reason, Seth. I can’t leave until I know why.”

  “They’ll kill you,” he said. “They’re going to kill everyone.”

  She grinned. It was less like a smile and more like she bared her teeth in wolfish fear. “They’ll have to catch us first. Don’t worry about it. We’ll sneak out when they leave for that sweep, and there’s no reason you should put yourself at risk, too.”

  “I agree,” Stephanie said with a sigh. “Good Lord, I hate these people. You damn kopides are completely incapable of staying out of trouble.” She eyeballed Seth. “Are you certain you know what team you’re on?”

  “I know,” he said firmly. He glanced at his watch. He had already been in the church too long to only be dropping off food. “Do you know where the girls’ camp is? I want you to meet me there tomorrow, after the sweep. We can figure out what to do from there.”

  “Okay,” Bekah said. “Be careful.”

  He nodded. “You too.”

  Leaving the tray of food, Seth stepped outside the church again. The sun had dipped below the trees, but it was still ten times brighter than it was inside the murky ruins.

  Yasir stood at the bottom of the stairs with a shotgun.

  “What were you doing in there?” he asked.

  Seth gave a casual shrug. “I was dropping off food.”

  “You weren’t assigned to do that.”

  “I wasn’t assigned to do anything. I’m not a member of your team. I wanted to see how Bekah’s doing.”

  It didn’t look like the answer satisfied him, but Yasir only nodded. “Follow me.”

  They walked through the camp together. In the time that he’d been inside the church, the units had jumped into motion. The men who had been eating were gearing up. Those who had been training were assembled by the main tent.

  “What’s going on?” Seth asked when Yasir stopped to let a line of men march past.

  “The team’s mobilizing.”

  “For the sweep?”

  He nodded. “It will be dangerous, you know. Sometimes, a werewolf that feels threatened will spontaneously shift. They’re wild between moons. Men could get hurt.” Yasir cast a sideways look at him. “The Union always needs good doctors.”

  Seth blinked. “What are you saying?”

  “If you wanted enlist, the Union could send you to medical school. Full ride scholarship to any university you want, and an apprenticeship on the front lines of our war against evil. Nobody else could give you that.”

  He gaped, unable to find words.

  The line of men passed them, and Yasir continued to the supply tent.

  “Listen to me, kid. The Union’s a good team to be on. A good guy like you deserves a good team. The right team.” It was like he had heard Seth’s conversation with Bekah inside the church.

  He struggled not to react. “Is that an invitation?”

  “Definitely. I don’t need an answer now. Just… mull on it.”

  Half of the camp was lined up to get their guns, including Stripes and Jakob. Yasir marched Seth straight past them.

  The number of weapons inside the tent was staggering. Seth missed his rifle, which had been lost with the Chevelle, but the one that Yasir handed to him was a Lamborghini in comparison. His excitement waned when he saw that it was loaded with silver bullets.

  “A group of confirmed werewolves have been located,” Yasir explaine
d. “We caught a fight on camera. One of them even changed in the middle of the day. So we have all the proof we need to exterminate them.”

  The commander left a pause after that, like he was waiting to see how Seth would react.

  He had a terrible feeling he knew who had been fighting by the cabins.

  It took all his strength to make himself copy Stripes’s bored expression. If the Union was hunting Rylie and Abel that night, Seth wasn’t going to get left behind.

  “Okay,” he said with forced calm. “When do we leave?”

  FIFTEEN

  Pack

  Rylie took Toshiko and the red-haired werewolf, who asked to be called Trick, to the beach before going back to camp for more blankets and pillows. She grabbed extra cans of food while she was at it, too. If she was going to start collecting werewolves, she would need a lot more of everything.

  When she returned to the beach, she found Trick with a massive black eye.

  “Your friend is back,” he said, washing blood off his cheek in the lake. The bruise was already healing, but it looked like his pride was seriously damaged.

  She had to laugh. “Lost that fight, too?”

  “The man’s a beast! You said ‘friend,’ and I thought it would be another cute girl!”

  “Abel’s not that much of a beast,” she said, feeling strangely defensive, even though she had called him worse names many times. “Just don’t challenge him for territory. He doesn’t like it very much.”

  “I see that,” Trick said, splashing more water on his face.

  Rylie waded through the lake to drop blankets off with Toshiko. The new wolves had taken one of the bigger caves on the edge, and the woman was already curled up on the sand and totally unconscious. Rylie set everything down without disturbing her and paddled to her cave.

  Abel was waiting for her. He had the duffel bag.

  “I found people,” she started to say, but then he turned around and she saw that he held the box of letters in his hand.

  Her amusement at Trick’s black eye vanished in an instant. She could tell by the way that Abel approached that he had found the stolen gun.

  He lifted it between them. “What is this?” he asked, eyes bright with anger.

  “Those are my letters,” she said. Her voice was very small.

  He flung the box to the rocks. The wood cracked at the corners and the lid flew open. All the letters spilled out, and so did the gun. It slid to a stop with its end pointing at her feet. Her cheeks burned. She bit her lower lip and focused on her toes in the sand so she wouldn’t have to see Abel’s fury.

  His low growl was almost worse than being yelled at. “For the last few days I’ve been asking myself, what’s that silver smell? I mean, we don’t have anything silver. And you know, I still don’t have a hang of the werewolf senses. There are a lot of scents I don’t understand yet. So when I found that box in the car and I smelled the silver…”

  Her fists trembled at her sides, but she didn’t look up. “You shouldn’t have opened that. It’s my private box.”

  Abel grabbed the pistol and shoved it in her face. She took a reflexive step back. “And this is my gun! What the hell are you doing with my gun, Rylie?”

  The wolf inside of her responded to his heat in kind. It fed off the humiliation and grew to occupy every empty space in her skull. She snapped.

  “It’s for me!” she yelled.

  His hand wavered. “You were going to use this… on yourself?”

  Rylie made herself meet his gaze, and she let all of the wolf’s rage, all the pain, show in her gold-flecked eyes. “I’ve killed people, Abel. And that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I don’t even remember it. I don’t know what I did, or who I killed, or if they… if they suffered.” Her voice hitched. “I’m a monster.”

  “So this is your answer?” Abel unloaded the gun and shook the bullet in her face. The wolf wanted to bite his hand off.

  “It’s my choice,” she said. Her eyes burned with tears.

  “That’s not a choice. That’s a copout! What’s wrong with you, Rylie?”

  “What’s wrong with me? I got bitten by a werewolf, that’s what’s wrong with me. I can’t control when I change, and when I do, it hurts. It hurts, Abel.”

  “Yeah, it hurts,” he said. His lip was curled with anger and the tendons in his neck were rigid. “But you know what? You deal with it. That’s what you do. You don’t go and shoot yourself!”

  She reached for the bullet in his hand, but Abel was too fast. He stepped out of her reach and threw it with all of his strength. It plunked into the lake and sank.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  Abel he spread his fingers wide to show that his skin had blistered where he held the bullet. “You see what that does? You want that in your skull?”

  Her jaw ached. She pressed her hands against her temples. “It’s better than having this thing inside of me!”

  “You really think it’s better to be dead?”

  “Yes!”

  Abel’s eyes widened. His mouth moved, but no response came out, like the ability to speak had fled from him. He paced to the front of the cave and then back again, weighing the gun in his hand as he glared at her. Finally, he seemed to come to a silent decision.

  He shoved the pistol into the waistband of his jeans.

  “What are you doing?” Rylie asked.

  “This is my gun. I’m taking it back.”

  “But I need it.”

  Abel grabbed her shoulders in both of his huge hands and forced her to face him. The span of his fingers almost wrapped all the way around her arms. “What would Seth say if he knew what you were thinking? What do you think he would do if you killed yourself?”

  The mention of his name put her over the edge, and once the tears started flowing, it was like breaking open a dam. They cascaded down her cheeks and rolled off of her chin. “He wouldn’t want me to die. But that’s not his choice, Abel. He doesn’t have to live with what I’ve done.”

  Abel searched her face, confusion and dismay etching his features.

  “No,” he said forcefully, like it changed anything. “No.”

  “I don’t know why you care,” Rylie mumbled, hanging her head. “You would have killed me months ago if you could have. And maybe you should have done it. I wouldn’t have bitten you, and you wouldn’t have turned into this horrible thing.”

  The muscles in his cheek flexed as he clenched his jaw, but the scarred part of his face didn’t move at all. Abel gave her a hard shake. “You don’t know why I care? You’re my pack, Rylie! I need you!” It came out a roar, and his voice was as rough as a wolf’s cry.

  As though shocked by his own reaction, he dropped her and took a big step back.

  Guilt weighed heavily on Rylie. “Abel…”

  He didn’t look at her. “Killing yourself isn’t a choice,” he told the wall, more quietly than before, but with no less fury. And then he strode out of the cave, taking the gun and the last of Rylie’s choices with him.

  Trick pretended to be busy digging holes in the sand when Rylie finally left the cave. He had probably heard the entire argument, not to mention all the crying she did afterwards. It was too embarrassing to consider.

  “Where’s Abel?” she asked, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks.

  He pointed her up the beach.

  Rylie found Abel on the shore a half-mile away. He stared at the moon-dappled surface of the water, and she sat on the log next to him.

  He radiated anger and hurt and fury. It was in every tense line of his body, the deep furrow between his eyebrows, and the slant of his eyes. He didn’t even acknowledge her when she scooted over to bump her arm against his.

  “Hey,” she said.

  His fists clenched.

  Mosquitoes buzzed around them in a cloud without landing. It seemed like even the insects were too afraid to attack them. She nudged a rock with her toe, scooting it through the damp sand to make a divot. The slopping w
ater immediately softened the shape in the sand.

  Rylie tilted her head to the side to look up at him. “You wouldn’t shoot me. Would you?”

  After a long pause, Abel shook his head. It made her sadder than she expected. If he couldn’t pull the trigger—Abel, who used to be a scary hunter, who had stalked her and threatened her and tried to ruin her life—then who could do it for her? Who would be there to stop her if she tried to hurt someone?

  “But you promised,” she whispered.

  “I lied.”

  They shared a long look. Rylie didn’t even see the scars anymore. She just saw Abel—who probably had never been as scary as he pretended to be—and all the vulnerability he had been hiding. He said he needed her, and he meant it.

  She wanted to be angry with him for lying, but she couldn’t find it within herself. She was too tired to be angry anymore.

  Rylie rested her head on his shoulder. His body was even hotter than hers. It drove away the late evening chill of spring ice. “I get it,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  She didn’t bother trying to tell him it was okay. It wasn’t. Regret twisted in her heart—not regret at what she had been planning, but regret that he had found out.

  There was nothing left to be said about it after that. He had gotten rid of her silver bullet, taken the gun away, and said he wouldn’t shoot her. She couldn’t trust him to stop her anymore.

  “So what’s with the new guys?” Abel asked. It was a welcome change of subject.

  “I found them in the cabins when I was looking for supplies. They’re not even from America, and Trick—that’s the red-haired guy—he said that he’s run across other groups in the forest. There are werewolves everywhere, from all over the world.”

  “Yeah. I figured that would happen. But what are those two doing here?”

  “They were wandering around naked and hungry. What was I supposed to do?”