Moonlight Lovers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 7)

by K. R. Alexander

  More cars past on the road beside the boardwalk behind us.

  We walked to the building taking up almost the width of the pier, displaying the massive Brighton Pier sign above, flanked by twin British flags. Here, we could go around it by sticking to the planking on the right, also gaining a clear view of the beach.

  Even though the black water now reflected the lights of the city from this vantage, the sight of that blackness straight below gave me a fresh spasm of fear. I hurried back from the edge.

  We walked past closed and dark games and amusements, ice cream, fish and chips, tarot readings, and eventually past Victoria’s Bar.

  Nothing wrong.

  I let out a held breath, again beside the railing to look back to the city. If anything, I felt better out here. Farther away from … something. As long as I didn’t look down it wasn’t bad.

  “Let’s go,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t see Henry and it wasn’t like I came out this far in my dream. It was only something around this area.”

  No Henry needing help. No casters or wolves out here. So Melanie was who I should be with now, and get us all out of here. Then scry for real: focus, take the plunge, and see if I could find what had happened to him through Henry’s own eyes, as I had for Peter.

  The wolves didn’t seem to be listening, however.

  Jed’s nose was in the air, facing south, toward the end of the pier—still a long way off beyond many carnival rides from bumper cars to a roller coaster, fur bristling again.

  Kage and Jason had moved off a little, walking past the bar. Kage’s eyes were fixed to the right and ahead. Jason caught his arm. Jason was also sniffing, turning his head into the wind which blew from the west.

  Jed growled, very softly, almost blending into the breeze and rushing waves now far behind and below us.

  All watching Jason or Jed, the other three moved closer around me.

  “Someone there?” Isaac asked.

  Jason shook his head. “I think it’s blood.”

  “Do you hear anyone?” I whispered.

  More shaking of heads.

  Kage moved on, heading for the merry-go-round at the right-hand side, surrounded by white picket fencing. We followed slowly, Jason beside Kage, Jed and Zar to each side of me.

  Wind picked up out here. The old planks creaked below our feet.

  The carousel glowed with hundreds of tiny, round lights inside like Christmas lights, tracing the structure and supports above the rows of brightly painted horses. Rather small, running clockwise instead of counterclockwise like North American models, it made up in brilliant colors and details for the dainty scale.

  Like the others, I kept looking in all directions, as if something might rush us. Yet they all grew more and more focused on the smell coming from the direction of the carousel.

  The horses were painted with whimsical, coloring book patterns, each bearing a name like Charlotte or Polly across painted-on ribbons at their necks. Scattered among them were a few gigantic roosters as well as cushioned bench seats.

  Kage and Jason walked up to the low, white fence, sniffing.

  Something moved at the center of the carousel and I jumped. Only our own reflections, snatches of motion cast back at us in oval mirrors beyond the horses.

  Kage stepped over the fence, Jason following, and I unclipped the leash from Jed’s heavy collar. He jumped in after them as easily as walking, yet his claws clattered and slid on the wet planks inside. Everyone froze for a second, listening. Then we followed as they started to walk around the carousel to the right.

  They didn’t go far. The rest of us had just climbed the little fence, right after them, when Jed stopped.

  I’d been pretty sure if there was something to find down here that smelled like blood it would be Henry’s body. So I shouldn’t have been as shocked and, yes, horrified, as I was when I saw him. After the past couple hours of warnings maybe I should have been able to gasp and go. Call the police, run to Melanie, and pray the image would not haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Instead, even with that much warning, that much being “ready” for the worst, I wasn’t. Not even close.

  The scene patterned itself into my vision like reading a comic book: panel, panel, panel, more and more until the whole story fills up and comes to life.

  Henry hung upside down from the crisscross of structural beams and lights inside the carousel. He’d been stripped, even down to socks and watch, although was liberally covered in dried, dark blood. His feet were swollen purple while much of the rest of him was chalky below the blood, making a contrast as sharp as a black and white photo.

  A wooden stake, slender but substantial, had been driven into his chest, pounded with a hammer or mallet. His throat had been cut while he was still upright because the blood had splashed all down his body. Mostly, though, it covered his face and hair. The blood from the wide open gash in his throat still dripped in a very slow, steady, final fall along the streams of his face and off his short hair onto the dark floor of the carousel. On its way, it trickled past his eyeless sockets—the eyes having been carved from his head.

  A sweeping pool of blood ran away from below his body in little streams. It had seeped mostly down the side toward us and the railing at the edge of the pier, looking northwest—back to the mobile home park, the same way he faced. Two steps down, across the rough surface for shoe traction, the blood pooled and ran off until it had dripped to the planks and fallen through into black saltwater far below.

  It was a matter of seconds, a pause, a silent scream, everyone seeing what was there, before Kage stepped forward, climbing onto the carousel, and I said, “Kage, no. Leave him.” And we were all backing away. Yet it was plenty of time for panel after panel, detail after detail, to leap out as if I held a magnifying glass up to the page to study for hours.

  Buckled tightly around his feet was a leather dog collar. He dangled from an equally stout leather leash. In the wind off the coast, the heavy body swayed ever so gently from this hold, the leash tied expertly above. Kage had clearly been meaning to unclip the stainless steel snap and bring him down from there. Instead, it held as if indefinite, solid and strong and unmindful of what service it was called on to perform.

  The supports this leash was looped through were between the rows ended by Ffion, a blue, pink, red, and green horse with red bridal and ribbon, and Vicky, a tan, pink, and green horse with green bridle and ribbon. The brass support posts running into the nearest horses were not at the withers—as I’d thought was usual for carousel animals—but behind the saddle so it would be at the rider’s back. Here, a second, small saddle followed. Each horse on the outside of the circle was meant to hold two children and not just one.

  Between Ffion and Vicky, at the outside steps, was a brass handrail smeared in blood from dragging finger marks and spatters. He’d still been alive, fighting, trying to catch hold of something, possibly eyeless, when they’d dragged him to the carousel. Yet there’d been no trail of blood here. Jed would have found even a drop. So they’d waited for all of this until they reached their destination.

  Why the destination?

  All the details of that rushed in as fast as every other trivial nonsense like the colors of the horses and the way the wind made rain scatter across the whole ride like fog.

  Convenient, yet out of the way, the location had a lot to offer. They had all night to hope I found the place before anyone else came along—like cops—to spoil their careful work. Lit by the lights of the ride, and the pier itself once we arrived, although invisible from land. Overhung in shelter in case of rain, with a readymade support system as useful as tree branches for tying something overhead. Able to face the Sable Pack’s territory, face me as I’d been in my bed. Yet, most poetic of all in the placement, right beside Vicky, the middle horse on the row was a cream-colored specimen with a flying brown mane and a bald eagle pattern, as if American, on his saddle. Henry had been hung just in front of this hors
e, his dangling arm bumping into the out-flung hooves. The name on the bright red ribbon read Alen.

  There was even more written out plainly to be seen in that moment, that glimpse and lifetime of taking it all in.

  I had a flash, a single gasp when I caught sight of him, of the damage to the body, when it flickered through my mind that my brother-in-law was a shifter and I hadn’t known it. Then reason prevailed and I saw, and knew, everything else about this picture. Henry had not been murdered in this way because of who he was. If he’d been a shifter, the Sable Pack would have known it from first meeting me. They’d have smelled him on me. I’d been staying in his home, riding in his car, sharing meals with him. No, this wasn’t about who Henry was. It was about who I was. The killers had spelled out that much also.

  Painted across the first step down from the carousel in drying blood that was now smeared and beginning to separate in the rain, were the words, Stop searching, with two more words on the next step below, even more blurred with rain and almost illegible: and live.

  Chapter 31

  “Melanie!” I pounded on the door, drops of rain flying from my jacket, a metallic, burning taste still in my mouth from vomiting. At least I’d had a ready excuse. “Mel! It’s me! Open the door!”

  Why didn’t she come? The lights were on. Wasn’t she up pacing? Waiting for me? They hadn’t come straight here, surely. No, no, no, Henry had just been the first warning. If they were going to go straight for her, why bother about him at all?

  Yet…

  “Mel!”

  The door flew open. There stood my big sister, pale and shocked and terrified, breathing hard as she must have come running from the upstairs bedroom.

  My own fear, my voice, and the group behind me, left her, not rushing, sobbing, into my arms, but jumping back from me.

  “Oh, my God, Cassia—”

  “We have to go.”

  “What?”

  “You have to come with me. Tonight. Right now. You’re in danger.”

  “No shit—” She backed through the foyer. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “These are friends of mine. They’re going to take care of us, but we have to go.”

  “Cassia—”

  My being terrified was not going to help her to not be terrified, I realized as I crossed the few steps to her and hugged her.

  “I love you,” I said. “I’m sorry, Mel. This is my fault. The stuff I’m involved in—I’m so sorry. We’re in danger, all of us, and we need to go. Pack an overnight bag—”

  “What are you talking about? Cass, why are you in the country? What about Henry? What are—?”

  “Henry’s dead.”

  She stared, mouth open mid-word. She looked past me at Isaac, Zar, and Andrew in the doorway, all wet, waiting. Kage, Jason, and Jed remained in the Jeep, beyond the parallel parked cars past the steps to the sidewalk. Her hands were tight on my forearms, even as she again tried to back away.

  “What?”

  “Mel, listen, there have been murders in this area lately that have been … kept quiet. Hardly anyone knows about them. They’re targeting a fringe community and I’ve been trying to help these people find the killers. You remember me saying I was involved in a secret society? Okay, well, these people are being killed. Now, because I’m helping them, the killers are going after me. They couldn’t get to me directly without a lot of … complications. So they’re going for Henry and you. This is my fault. Henry’s already dead. You’re in danger. They must know where you are. My friends have a more secure place where you can stay. Come with me now and we’ll take you there.”

  I’d followed her all the way into the kitchen, holding onto each other’s arms, Melanie still backing.

  “How … how do you know…?” Her voice was a shrill gasp, like a mouse being stepped on.

  “I saw him. I had a dream. Right before I got your messages, I dreamed about the pier and the waterfront. Before we came here to see you we stopped there to look. Just in case. He was there. He’s dead and it was the same killers and I’m certain they’re still around.”

  Sense of doom, feeling of watching eyes, padding paws, shifters lurking in the dark, waiting and watching in case we made a wrong turn and they could get us. They hadn’t followed us onto the pier, however, and we’d made it here in the Jeep without ever actually “seeing” a wolf or human watching or following. Our imagination then?

  I didn’t think so. But I did suspect they’d chickened out when they’d seen how many of us there were. They were letting us go with this warning, not able to finish any of us off right now. But they knew so much about me, including about Henry and Melanie, that they had to know where she lived.

  She was shaking, tears rolling down her face as she said my name and his. “I don’t—Cassia—what—?”

  Andrew swept past us into the lit kitchen, sniffing at the closed cabinets.

  “Down there.” I jerked my head. “Glass doors.”

  He found the wine wrack and very limited liquor cabinet and a glass. Most of the cabinet was taken up by miniature English china that Melanie adored and collected from charity shops and antique markets.

  “What matters now is we’re getting you out of here. I’ll tell you all I can. Right now, an overnight bag, keys, and let’s go. That’s it.”

  “Cass—?”

  Andrew pushed a glass of brandy along the island counter at her.

  Melanie only stared at it, then him. “Who are you?”

  “Your guardian angel,” he said under his breath. “Our family will look after you, but you need to drink that and come with us.”

  “Family?” She looked back at me, blank, tears still flowing.

  I shoved the drink into her hand. “It’s going to be okay, Mel. I’m sorry. I have no right to ask you to trust me.” I pushed the glass and she finally drank and coughed.

  I grabbed the bottle from Andrew. He pulled away, trying to jerk it from my hands. The brandy splashed onto the counter. I’d taken him by surprise and got it away for one gulp before he yanked it back.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” he hissed, capping the bottle.

  Melanie drained her glass while the brandy burned by throat, pleasantly drawing all my senses to the feeling of it sliding to my stomach like hot coffee and a quick kick by a mule all at once.

  I shot Andrew a look, but said nothing. He’d agreed he could keep this secret. His flipping out because I had one swallow of alcohol during pregnancy didn’t feel exactly secretive.

  Melanie and I blinked into each other’s eyes, her still swallowing, gasping.

  “I’ll help you. Upstairs. We’ll grab a bag, pack a few things. Okay?”

  She shook her head, then nodded. “Cass, I need to go to him. What about an ambulance? What about the police?” Tears fell from her lashes and I embraced her.

  This really made her cry and I held on, pressing tight into her back while she squeezed in return as if breaking apart, trying to stop the explosion.

  “We didn’t call. We can’t stay and talk to them. We have to get you, and all of us, out of here. And I’m scared … for more than us. If we start trying to explain to the police and get more and more people involved, it could be dangerous for them. We’re figuring out answers to this case. I’m finding out more and now killers are going after me. If some officer or detective found them … Mel, these people … they have certain … advantages. They’re very, very dangerous. If we go now, and you come with us and lie low while we go on hunting, we’ll have a chance to find them ourselves. The cops will go over the scene in daylight when someone finds him and they’ll have no idea who he is or who did it. His ID and everything was gone. I’m sorry. If there was anything we could do for him, we would. Anything. But it’s too late. We just need to go and keep you safe.”

  Pulling away, Melanie again part nodded and part shook her head. Her hands were cold with shock, her breaths ragged as she cried.

  “Come on.” I steered her toward the stairs
. “Quickly, Mel, please. We have to go. Like Andrew said, we’ll look after you.”

  This time, she really nodded.

  Chapter 32

  Shock, confusion, fear, overriding grief and sending her to blindly follow my orders like grasping at straws, ruled the moment and saw Melanie through to packing a bag with me before switching out the lights and locking up behind us.

  Climbing into the Jeep, however, broke her own stupor. She screamed, making all of us jump.

  “Jed!” I snapped. “Lie down!”

  He’d looked over the backs of the seats at us when Jason opened the door, placing his bearish head close to hers in the glowing interior.

  “Holy crap!” Melanie yelled.

  “It’s okay.” I held her arm, pushing her forward. “Get in.”

  “Is that a freaking wolf?” She was still almost screaming.

  “Go, Mel, it’s fine. Go.” Pushing her to follow Jason.

  Jason took the bag from me and, once he was on the bench seat with this in his lap, reached for Melanie’s hand. “No one here’s going to hurt you. Cassia means everything to us and we’ll look out for you too. You’re safe with us.” The whole time she climbed in after him, sliding into the middle seat, trembling, Jason talked to her like this.

  I could actually see her calming down, taking deep breaths, looking over the backs of the seats to see the beast there, but not in panic. Andrew and Zar had the far back open, climbing in to wedge themselves with Jed like sardines. She stared at the two of them as much as Jed, then at Jason, who still squeezed her hand.

  I knew what was crossing her petrified mind through the haze of shock. They were so damn beautiful you saw it even in the midst of a poorly lit catastrophe.

  “All right?” Kage looked around to me as I shut the door.

  I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He popped the clutch, then got the thing in gear.

  Melanie’s red-rimmed eyes were huge as she stared at me. “Cass—?”

  “It’s okay.” I buckled my seatbelt and wrapped my arms around her again, sucking on the last of a piece of crystalized ginger.