Canticle to the Midnight Moon

by Val St. Crowe

  I had loved him so much, and I had done everything to save him, and then the fact that I’d lost control of the car, it had ended it. One minute, we were about to win. The next, we were dying, and it was all over.

  I trembled, sobs wringing themselves from my body.

  Maybe it was a fitting end, considering everything we’d lived through together. It was just the way things were for us. Just when we thought we would prevail, the rug got pulled out from under us.

  I reached over across the car and found his hand. I wrapped my fingers around his.

  And I felt his pulse in his wrist—faint but unmistakable.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  He wasn’t dead. He was dying, but he was still in there, and I could still save him if I tried.

  I had to shift, that was the only way. But where was my wolf?

  I closed my eyes again, and I went in search of her. At first, I didn’t feel her, but then I forced myself to do as Landon had said and to breathe and calm down, and then I did find my wolf, curled up in the recesses of myself. She was shaking and in pain and terrified. She didn’t want to come out.

  But I coaxed her, and slowly, she came.

  The shift wasn’t easy, not the way it usually was. It was like the way shifts were back when I was first starting out. Painful, all my bones shattering and being reformed.

  But finally, I was a wolf. And I was whole.

  I squeezed out of the wreckage and shifted back into human form. Then I opened the door and tried to pull Landon out.

  He was heavy, and he wasn’t helping me at all.

  If I were in wolf form, I would be strong enough, but I wouldn’t be able to carry him.

  I dragged him out.

  He was lifeless.

  I checked his pulse again. Still there.

  Okay, well, we had to find the pool. I didn’t know where the pool might be, but I needed to find it now.

  Struggling with Landon’s inert form, I pulled him along the side of the road. I followed the glowing flowers.

  But after ten feet or so, they stopped. They were growing up on the top of the cliff there. Maybe I was meant to go up there and follow them. But the cliff face was steep, and I didn’t see how I could climb up there with Landon. I would have to do it in human form. There was no way a wolf could climb it.

  I surveyed the cliff, the flowers, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

  Panting, I lay Landon on the ground and I sat down next to him. I didn’t have clothes, so I was doing this completely naked, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was finding that pool, getting Landon there.

  I caught my breath. I wracked my brain. What to do? What to do?

  Suddenly, I had an idea. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was the best I could do. I took Landon’s shirt off of him and fashioned it into a kind of sling. Using the arms, I tied him to my back. With him secure, I began to try to climb the cliff.

  My muscles screamed in pain.

  He was too heavy.

  I forced myself to do it anyway. I wrenched something in my shoulder. It was so painful that I shrieked. But there was no place to pause here, no place to stop. So, I climbed the rest of the way to the top of the cliff, sweating and pulsating in pain.

  When I reached the top, I lay there for a while, Landon’s dead weight on my back, pinning me face down. I was nothing but pain.

  Eventually, I got out of the sling and shifted into wolf form.

  I wanted to stay in that form for a little longer. It felt good that way, and I wanted to rest.

  But I didn’t have time to rest, so I shifted back. I put on Landon’s shirt, and I continued to drag him.

  Up here, on top of the cliff, there was a grassy area, dotted all over with the glowing flowers. The ground was hilly, heading upwards, but it wasn’t the steep rock face I’d finished climbing.

  I crested the top of a hill, dragging Landon along, and there it was.

  The pool.

  It was a shimmering, beautiful body of water, and all around it grew the glowing flowers.

  I gasped. I’d found it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Suddenly, I had a burst of energy. I scrambled toward the pool, tugging Landon along, as fast as I could manage.

  But before I could get there, someone stepped into my path.

  A sandaled male foot, the toenails perfectly manicured.

  I followed the line of the foot up to a cleanly shaved calf and then to brightly colored fabric, which hung just below the man’s knee.

  “Hello there,” said a voice. “Well, stand up, then.”

  I laid Landon down, and then I managed to get to my feet. “Are you the Guardian of the Pool?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard of me. How flattering.” He was an elderly man, probably in his sixties. His salt-and-pepper hair was long and pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was wearing a brightly colored garb that resembled a toga. It was gathered with a shimmering silver belt at his waist. He had long, elegant fingers which he had made a tent of and was pressing them against his lips, which were very, very red. He arched a plucked eyebrow at me. “I so rarely get visitors, and usually, when I do, they wander in here accidentally. But you’re a true pilgrim, aren’t you? Seeking the healing waters.”

  “I am,” I said. “But it’s not for me. It’s for my mate.” I looked down at Landon.

  “Mate, hmm?” He looked down at Landon. “Well, how interesting. He’s not a werewolf. Are you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Give me your hand,” said the man.

  I put my hand in his.

  He shut his eyes and a slow smile began to stretch across his face. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, my.”

  Was he seeing something? Just from touching me? He must be.

  “Oh, my,” he said again, chuckling softly. His eyes popped open. “Well, quite a life you’ve had, Camber Fordham.”

  I pulled my hand back. “You know my name?”

  “Of course,” he said. “It is my job to decide whether or not one is worthy of healing. I must have some way to determine that, mustn’t I?”

  “But it’s not me who needs healing.”

  “Right, right, indeed. It’s Landon.” The Guardian knelt down and put his hand on Landon’s shoulder. He closed his eyes.

  I watched him, nervous.

  Time passed. Long moments where all I could do was listen to the breeze in the trees, to a distant car motor on the road below.

  And then the Guardian’s eyes opened and he stood up. “Well… I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “The worthiness,” he said. “Healing is meant to be bestowed on one who deserves it.”

  “Landon does.”

  “Your Landon is rather selfish,” said the Guardian. “He doesn’t seem to follow any moral code. He does whatever he pleases, and he’s driven only by two things. Running from the pain of his past and, well, you. Protecting you, trying to have you, trying to keep you.” He chuckled. “Trying to screw you.”

  “Yes, but that’s not selfish,” I said. “He cares about me.”

  “And you, you are his moral guide? You keep him from doing awful things because he wishes to please you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The Guardian shook his head. “Now, now, that’s not true.”

  “Is this about letting Meridian kill the vampires?” I said. “Because there was no good choice there. You know, the longer I’m alive, the more I realize that there are rarely good choices. Life is hard, and people get hurt all the time, and of course what we all do is try to protect the people we love. That’s just the way it is. I try not to hurt others, and if I do, it’s only because I have to.”

  The Guardian raised his eyebrows.

  “Please,” I said. “You can’t tell me that’s not good enough. We’ve done the best we could.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Look, I love him. I would do anything for him. That’s go
t to mean something, that kind of love. It’s got to be worthy of healing. No matter what Landon and I have done, our love for each other, it’s always been pure and strong and perfect.”

  The Guardian mused over this. “You do love him to distraction.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And he loves you too, just as deeply.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I told you that you could not heal him in this pool, I suspect that you would attempt to do it anyway, and if I was in the way, you would kill me.”

  I opened my mouth to protest that wasn’t true.

  “Don’t deny it,” said the Guardian. “I know that you would.”

  I tensed. I didn’t even have a weapon. Was that what it was going to take? How could I kill this guy? He was obviously some kind of powerful magic being. I guessed I could shift. Maybe that would work.

  “You are right,” the Guardian said in a low, soft voice. “We don’t live in a moral world. We live in a world of choices, and we all have our changing priorities. Your love is not pure, I’m afraid. It’s strong and intense, but it could be used to destroy just as easily as to unite. However, I think you know that. You are quite aware of what you are, Camber, and so is your mate. That, my dear, is rare. Most people tell themselves lies about themselves, either that they are much better than they actually are or that they are much worse. But you do not deceive yourselves, either of you. And it is for this virtue that I have decided that you are both worthy after all.”

  “You have?” I let out a breath of relief. I had been sure I was going to have to fight.

  “Yes,” said the Guardian. “I have. Go ahead and put him in the pool.”

  * * *

  The Guardian didn’t help me at all. He stood aside while I struggled to tug Landon’s body over the ground and into the water.

  I had to wade in to bring Landon in with me. Eventually, I got him all the way under, completely submerged by the water. The water was clear and sparkling, and I could see him there, under the water, and nothing happened.

  I looked up at the Guardian. “Does the water heal everyone?”

  “Well,” said the Guardian. “I’ve never seen one of his kind before. What are they again? Bloodhounds? Surely, one’s never been in the pool.”

  My shoulders sagged. No way. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Hmm?” said the Guardian.

  “I’ve gotten this far, and gone through all of this, and now it’s not going to work because Landon’s a bloodhound. That can’t be.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t going to work,” said the Guardian. “Really, you just put him in there.”

  “Well, if I leave him in here, he’s going to drown. Which typically wouldn’t kill him, but he’s in a weakened state now, so…” I peered down at Landon under the water. “How long does it usually take?”

  “It depends on the depths of the wounds,” said the Guardian. “The water will find the places that are broken, and then it will find a way to heal all that is wrong. Just wait. Watch. Stop worrying so much.”

  “If you’d been through everything I’d been through, you’d worry too,” I said.

  “I don’t think I would,” said the Guardian. “Worry is pointless. Things either happen or they don’t. Worrying has no effect whatsoever.”

  Oh, easy for him to say.

  And then, something happened.

  Landon was changing under the water, the fur on his face was shrinking and disappearing, and his claws were getting smaller.

  My breath caught in my throat. Was the water going to heal him completely? Turn him back to a human, so that he wouldn’t be a bloodhound at all?

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. As a bloodhound, Landon and I would have a similarly long lifespan, because bloodhounds aged slowly, like wolves. As a human, I would lose him. But I wasn’t sure he was happy as a bloodhound, and if he wanted to be human, I would understand. We would make it work.

  But then, suddenly, Landon’s fur started to come back, and so did his claws.

  And then he sat up straight in the water, gasping and sputtering.

  “Landon!” I said.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  I tugged him to his feet and kissed him as hard as I could.

  He wrapped his arms around me.

  * * *

  “I had this sort of vision,” Landon was saying. We were sitting on the grass together, drying in the sun, because we were both sopping wet.

  After Landon got out of the pool, both it and the Guardian completely disappeared. The Guardian didn’t even say goodbye.

  “What, when you passed out?”

  “When I was in the water,” said Landon. “It, like, it communicated with me, whatever is in the water. It didn’t use words exactly, but I understood it, you know? It said that it could heal me completely, take away what had been done to me.”

  “I saw that,” I said. “It was turning you into a human.”

  “Yeah, at first I thought that would be great,” he said. “I was thinking about how I look like a freak and how these claws are in the way, and how I never wanted to hurt you again.”

  “But that was the rage mode.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I realized,” he said. “And if I were a human, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you. I wouldn’t be able to protect you or to fight with you.”

  “And you’d grow old and die really soon,” I said.

  “Oh, I didn’t even think about that,” he said.

  “Well, I did.”

  “Anyway, I sort of chose for it not to heal that part of me, for me to stay as a bloodhound.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s because you have some kinky thing for my fur.”

  I giggled. “The claws too. The claws are hot.”

  He shook his head at me, grinning. “Blood and fangs, I love you, Camber Fordham.”

  I felt goodness washing through me like a torrent of blue light. “I love you, too.”

  We gazed at each other for a few minutes just basking in that goodness.

  “Uh, how are we going to get out of here?” he said. “The car’s toast.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “And our phones?”

  “Mine…” He pulled it out of his pocket. “It got a little wet.”

  “I didn’t even think about that,” I said. “My phone’s got to be back with the car. I lost it when I shifted. It was the last thing on my mind.”

  “We’ll go back there, then,” he said.

  “Who are we going to call?” I said.

  “Call the dog,” he said. “He can send someone to pick us up, right?”

  “You never call Judah that anymore,” I said. “I thought you two bonded.”

  “Oh, we did,” said Landon. He held up his forefinger and middle finger, crossed. “We’re like this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And this is the kind of stuff that is why the Guardian of the pool almost decided we weren’t worthy of healing.”

  “What?” he said. “What’d I do?”

  I got to my feet. “I’m really happy you’re alive, and you’re healed and everything, but seriously, Landon. Let’s go find the car.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The car was buckled metal and shattered glass. It barely looked like a car anymore.

  Landon surveyed it. “How did you manage to cock up this vehicle so badly?”

  “Shut up,” I said. “I, um, think I sort of got the brake and the gas mixed up.”

  “You what?”

  “Like that’s never happened to you.”

  “Uh, it hasn’t.”

  “Well, it’s a thing,” I said. “It happens to people.”

  “If you say so.”

  I did find my phone in the wreckage, and I tried to call Judah, but he didn’t answer. I debated leaving a message, but I didn’t entirely know what to say, so I just hung up.

  Absent anything else to do, we started walking down the mountain on the side
of the road.

  “There’s got to be someone else you can call,” said Landon.

  “Maybe Sinead,” I said. “I just kind of wanted her to be able to sit this one out, what with the baby and all.”

  “Wait, what?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t tell you that Sinead was pregnant?” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “I guess it slipped my mind with everything going on,” I said.

  “That’s… wow.” He shook his head. “Is she even twenty years old?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s a year older than me.”

  He scratched the side of his neck. “So, if your best friend is all giving birth or whatever, does that mean you’re going to want to—”

  “Oh, not anytime soon,” I said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Someday, though.”

  “Oh, someday,” he agreed. “In the distant future.”

  “Very distant.”

  We kept walking.

  He reached over and seized my hand. “Uh, Camber?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did we, like, win?”

  I glanced at him. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to wait a few days and see if everything goes to hell again. It has a tendency to do that.”

  He smirked. “Yeah, but we’re good at gone-to-hell, you know?”

  “We are,” I said. I leaned in and he kissed me.

  “So, about calling Sinead?” he said. “I’m just thinking that if we already won, then she did sit this out, you know?”

  * * *

  We waited at a gas station at the bottom of the hill for Sinead. It was going to take her a while to get there. Probably a day. She said everything was insane back home.

  Meridian had done the spell on the vampires. Sinead didn’t know how many vampires had been killed. Not the whole city, but a lot. They’d died badly, blood pouring out of their eyes and ears while they screamed. I hadn’t known it was going to be like that. Then, after they were practically bled out, they burst into flames and there was nothing left of them but ash.

  The remaining vampires were angry and sad and out for revenge, but enough of them had been killed that their numbers had dwindled considerably, and they weren’t mounting any kind of attack, especially considering that all the bloodhounds were on our side, and they were happy to kill any vampire who got out of line.