Canticle to the Midnight Moon

by Val St. Crowe

  “Sure,” I said. “But Desta wouldn’t.”

  “Well, fine, he can be saved too,” said Aston.

  “Keep working on a cure for Landon,” I said, and I left.

  * * *

  Landon was asleep when I got back, and I didn’t want to wake him, because he had so much trouble getting to sleep these days. It was hard with the pain. The pain kept him awake.

  But within ten minutes of my getting home, he woke up screaming.

  I rushed into the bedroom where he’d been sleeping, heart in my throat. I hadn’t heard him scream like that. I wondered if this was it, the last burst of pain. Was he going to die right now?

  No. Not yet. Please, not yet.

  I climbed onto the bed and wrapped my arms around him.

  But he thrashed and pushed me off, swearing at me, telling me not to touch him.

  So, all I could do was sit next to him and watch and try to keep it together. I wanted to fall apart, but Landon might need me, and if there was anything that I could do, I wanted to be able to do it.

  Then, abruptly, Landon fell back on the bed and was quiet. His eyes were open and he was breathing. He was still with me. His chest rose and fell as he panted.

  “Landon?” I whispered.

  “The pain,” he said. “It’s gone.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “But… I don’t understand.”

  He looked at me. “I think it’s the last phase. It’s like you said, the rat wouldn’t mate, probably because he was in pain. But then the pain stopped, he mated, and then he died.”

  “No,” I said. “The rat died days after it mated.”

  “Yeah, I probably don’t have a lot of time left.”

  “No,” I said, and now I was starting to fall apart, damn everything. I couldn’t keep myself together.

  Landon sat up. “Stop it. No, don’t do that. It doesn’t hurt, and now we have to make every moment we have together count.”

  I tried to stop myself from crying, but tears were still leaking out of my eyes. “By doing what? I want a life with you, Landon. I don’t want a week or a handful of days. I can’t accept that—”

  He grabbed both of my hands. “You think I want to die?”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “I am,” he said, and his eyes were shining. “I’m dying, and I want…” He leaned forward and kissed me fiercely.

  I pushed him away. “I can’t.”

  “Please, Camber, I want to touch you. I want you to touch me.”

  “Why? Because that’s why we did this? So that we could have sex? Well, I take it back. I don’t care. I’d rather have you alive and never get to—”

  He kissed me again. “Shut up,” he whispered harshly. His hands were inside my shirt. “We don’t get what we want, remember? This isn’t a fairy tale.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Afterward, I pressed close to him in bed, holding onto him as tightly as I could, afraid to let go. I was glad of it, now, glad to have made love to him, because it had been sweet and good to be connected like that. I wished that I could somehow take him into my body and make him part of me and cure him that way. I wished that I could love him hard enough to keep him alive.

  He stroked my hair. “What happened at the council meeting?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “It does to me. I want to know.”

  “They’re still deliberating. They voted to let Meridian out of jail.”

  “Oh, well, that’s promising,” he said sarcastically.

  “I know,” I said. “They’re going to do the spell, and maybe Desta survives, but how could she ever be happy in a world where her kind are all dead and she’s despised?”

  His fingers brushed my bare arm. “You have to have Desta. If you lost Desta and me both, it would devastate you. We have to save her.”

  “You hate Desta.”

  “Not really,” he said. “Not anymore, not now that you and I have this.” He kissed me. “Being with you, it’s real and good. I thought I was only ever going to have memories of it being forced and against my will, and I don’t. I have you. So, it doesn’t matter anymore. And Desta, she didn’t mean it. She loved me. She tried her best to make it better. She’s good, deep down, and you need her.”

  I was crying again.

  He kissed me.

  I kissed back and we kissed like we were drowning and only each other’s lips would save us.

  He pulled back. “So, what do we do? Do you take charge of the pack and force the council to vote Meridian out?”

  “If I do that, Judah will take drastic action against me. Tempest said he’d kill me, and he denied it, but he listens to her. He loves her. And it’s wrong, Landon, you know that it’s wrong, to take over people’s minds and make them do things against their will. It’s the whole reason you didn’t want me in a pack in the first place.”

  He sighed. “That is the moral high ground, all right.”

  “So, I think I have to try to kill Meridian instead.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s definitely the more moral choice. Does Aston have something you could use to poison her?”

  “Oh, he won’t give it to me. He wants the vampires gone.”

  “I thought you went to see him,” said Landon. “I thought maybe he had something to use against the witch.”

  “No, he just wanted to tell me about synth blood.”

  “What’s synth blood?”

  I explained it to him.

  “Huh,” said Landon. “How much of this could he make?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

  * * *

  “If I had the resources,” said Aston, “the amount of synth blood I could make would be limitless. It could be mass produced in a factory, like ketchup or something. It takes certain raw materials, and it reproduces the cells itself. I just have to feed it glucose. That’s basically what I’d need. A lot of glucose.”

  “Well,” said Landon, “where can we get the resources to do it?” Landon and I were in Aston’s labs. All the rats he’d made were dead now. He was waiting for a new shipment of rats to do more tests. He didn’t sound very hopeful, however.

  “I don’t know,” said Aston. “Maybe if we took over a factory somewhere.”

  “And the glucose?” I said.

  “That’s just sugar,” said Aston. “That’s easy to get. If we found the right factory, I might even be able to use what’s there.”

  “Okay,” said Landon. “So, how long would you say it would take to get something like that up and running?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Aston. “You’d have to ask someone else. I mean, I created the stuff, but I’m not really an expert in manufacturing. And anyway, why do you want to manufacture this? If you just want enough for Desta and Viggo, I can make that in this lab.”

  “Well, we might want more,” said Landon. “Anyway, we’d need enough for a sample, I guess. And then if it went over all right, we could start the manufacturing.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Aston.

  * * *

  “The council recognizes Landon Bowie,” said Mary.

  “Thank you,” said Landon, nodding at the council and out at the other members of the pack, who were all gathered in the main lodge, which was just as packed as it had been every other time. We’d installed closed circuit TVs for the overflow, because everyone in the entire village was here. “I want to talk to you about the problem that we’re facing here, as I see it. The problem is the vampires. You all may not know this about me, but I grew up in the Baccophen Pack, on the other side of the woods. I was a full human member, not a wolf. And after my pack was destroyed by vampires, I was taken in as a blood slave. It was only later that I became a bloodhound. I know firsthand what it is like to hate vampires, because they took my family from me, my freedom, and eventually, they turned me into this.” He held up his clawed hands to the gathered assembly. “So, I understand why, when someone comes to you and
says that they can annihilate all vampires, you want to get on board.

  “But,” Landon continued, “the real problem with vampires is that they will always prey on others. They feel as though they need to control their prey, because they need a food source. If they had another food source, one that didn’t involve humans or werewolves, they could choose that. And—as it happens—our very own Aston Waterfield has created a synthetic form of blood that the vampires could drink instead of human blood. I think there is a way that we can get the vampires to drink that blood instead. I think we should be looking for a solution that doesn’t involve wholesale slaughter. The vampires have attempted to wipe out the werewolf race, but they haven’t succeeded. We shouldn’t stoop to their level and kill them all. We should bring solutions, not violence. Thank you, that’s all I have.”

  I clapped for Landon and so did a few others, but mostly everyone seemed puzzled.

  Neil stood up. “This is ridiculous. Why would the vampires drink this synthetic blood? They would never go for it.”

  Henry stood up. “No, they wouldn’t if we just offered it to them. But if they were frightened, they might.”

  Neil turned to Henry, eyebrows raised. “What are you saying?”

  “Perhaps we don’t need to kill all the vampires,” said Henry, “just a few.” His gaze swept the room. “Meridian?”

  “Yes?” said Meridian, who was sitting opposite him.

  “Could you do a smaller spell, one that was contained within the borders of, say, the capital city?”

  “Certainly,” said Meridian. “That would require even less blood than the spell I proposed. But I caution you that it is not a good idea to only kill some vampires. Vampires are pure evil.”

  “Thank you,” said Henry. He nodded at Neil. “So, we attack the city, level it. And then we say to whatever vampires that survive, which will be significantly less, since most vampires are in the city at any given time, that they can’t prey on humans anymore, and they can’t keep werewolves inside the fences. We tell them that they have to drink the synthetic blood, and then we start fresh, without any species ruling over the others.”

  The entire lodge erupted into cheers and applause.

  I exchanged a look with Landon. This wasn’t what we’d wanted. It was better, but only marginally so. Killing all the vampires in the city would get rid of ninety percent of the population on this continent. Almost all the vampires lived there. We’d have the vampires overseas to contend with, of course, but Henry was right that they’d get in line if they knew there was a powerful weapon.

  Meridian was on her feet, motioning with her hands. She was saying something.

  As the applause died out, we could hear her.

  “All vampires must die!” Meridian was shouting. “All vampires!”

  “Will you help us with the compromise or not?” said Henry.

  Meridian’s nostrils flared. “I could go to another werewolf pack, you know. I could get help elsewhere.”

  “There’s no other pack you haven’t stolen from,” I called out. “You killed so many of the wolves in this woods.”

  Meridian turned on her heels and stalked out of the main lodge.

  Conversation erupted from every corner of the place.

  Within moments, it was chaos, people leaving the room and talking amongst themselves. The council meeting couldn’t even be officially drawn to a close, because they couldn’t get silence.

  * * *

  Judah came to me, and together, we did a little bit to calm the pack, but Judah instructed me that I wasn’t to attempt to influence anyone any further. We only calmed them enough so that everyone could get out of the main lodge and home in an orderly manner.

  Landon and I were some of the last to leave.

  We walked home through the streets of the village, hand in hand.

  “It wasn’t what you wanted,” Landon said.

  “No, I know,” I said. “But the truth is that I don’t know how we would convince the vampires to drink the synth blood otherwise.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  “But there’s got to be a better way than wholesale slaughter,” I said.

  “Well, the vampires are awful,” he said. “They’re oppressors. They force people to do things against their will. They do need to stop doing that.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I know that you were a blood slave for years, and I don’t know all the things that you went through. I can see why you’d want them dead.”

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t. I get what you’re saying about finding another way. And as I’m staring death in the face now, I feel… well, I see how final it is.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “At the same time, we’re talking about vampires. Most of them have lived longer than the time of most human lifespans. Maybe they’ve had their time.”

  I found I couldn’t argue with that. I’d often thought that living too long was what made the vampires cruel and inhuman. Nothing meant anything to them anymore. Maybe the fear of death was the only thing that could bring them back in line.

  Still, it seemed as though killing a whole city of people was a step too far.

  “Camber?” said Landon.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t know if it matters, since Meridian left. Maybe she won’t agree to the plan.”

  “Right,” said Landon. “Maybe she’ll go off on her own and find another pack, like she said.”

  “I don’t know if we can afford to waste any more time thinking about it,” I said. “I want to think about you, and only you.”

  He squeezed my hand. “I agree.”

  And we went home and climbed into bed together and I held onto him as tightly as I could.

  In the middle of the night, I awoke and someone was standing over the bed.

  I gasped, sitting up straight.

  Meridian Vine drew her hood down to reveal her face. “Come and speak to me, alpha.”

  I looked at Landon, who was still asleep next to me, and then back at the witch.

  “You will want to hear what I have to say, I think,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “It would probably be polite to offer you something to drink,” I said to the witch, who was now in my living room. “But I’m not going to do that. You nearly killed me, so I don’t feel like being polite.”

  “And you nearly killed me,” she said. “Perhaps we could consider ourselves even?”

  I scoffed. “Doesn’t work that way. I tried to kill you out of self-defense. You deserve to die.”

  “Ah,” she said. “But the vampires don’t deserve it?”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Not your sister?” said Meridian. “Not her lover, the former king?”

  “I…” I looked away. “I’m sure Viggo does deserve it. But if you kill him, it will hurt Desta. That’s the thing about death. It’s not only the person who dies who feels a consequence. It’s a ripple out amongst everyone who cares about them.”

  “You would kill me, I assume? You think there is no one to care about me?”

  “I haven’t killed you, have I?”

  “True,” she said. “Anyway, this is not what I came to talk about.”

  “Well, talk, then,” I said. “I’m growing impatient.”

  “I have overheard things about your bloodhound,” she said. “It’s a very interesting situation, I have to admit. You and your male alpha are mated, but not together, both with your own mates. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I regarded her. Was she going somewhere with this?

  “I hear that your bloodhound is dying,” she said.

  I pressed my lips together.

  “I presume you’d like him alive?”

  “You know a way to help him? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It is. I do know a way. I’ll tell you what to do if you promise to back up my idea to annihilate all the vampires—except your s
ister, of course. You can influence the pack. You’re the alpha.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Just like that? No? I thought the bloodhound meant something to you.”

  “He does,” I said. “It’s only that what you’re asking, I can’t do it. I won’t change the minds of the pack for you. And I can’t be responsible for the death of an entire species. I won’t have that much blood on my hands.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You wouldn’t trade the lives of all of those vampires for your bloodhound?”

  “I…” My face crumpled. “I guess not.” I pointed at the door. “Get out.”

  Meridian shook her head. “I don’t understand you, alpha.”

  “I can’t trust you,” I said. “You’re a liar and a murderer, and you don’t belong in my village. Now leave my house.”

  Meridian shrugged, looking disappointed. “Fine, if that’s what you wish.”

  “It is.”

  She left.

  I sat down on the couch and I put my head in my hands and I felt like a fool. What good were principles without Landon? I tried to imagine my life without him, and I couldn’t.

  I could not bear to lose him.

  What kind of idiot was I?

  * * *

  “Hey.” Landon was in the door of the living room, scratching his stomach and yawning. “There you are.”

  I stretched, sitting up on the couch. “I must have fallen asleep out here.”

  “When did you come out here?” he said. “Was I snoring or something?”

  I laughed. “No, you don’t snore.”

  “You do sometimes.”

  “I do not.” I was horrified.

  He shrugged. “Sorry, but you’re a snorer.” He winked at me.

  “I came out here because Meridian came to pay me a visit. She knows a way that can cure you.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What? Oh, hell, Camber, tell me you did not make some awful deal with that bitch.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t. But I should have. I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I—”

  “We can’t trust her,” he said. “Maybe she’s got a cure, maybe she doesn’t, but the odds of her screwing us over are probably around eighty percent, don’t you think?”