Vanilla Moon: Acrimony

by Airiel Hawkins

  "Yep."

  "How many do you need?"

  "I need a total of sixty," Wolfgang replied. "I have the Vampire kiss out here volunteering people to help. We have a bit of an alliance with them, and now the Hunters are on our side as well. It's a trifecta that has the Witches at a disadvantage, but they're using us, so the dirty work is all on our shoulders."

  "Do you know how many Vamps you have?'

  "Not yet," Wolfgang admitted. "Do you know how many you can send?"

  "I'll send you sixty if I have that many volunteers. I'll get the pack together and ask. I'll have Rodney and Amanda act as leaders for my people. I'll send you two who I don't want back. They're good people, but they don't fit in this pack and I'm spending more time protecting them from my wolves than I can spare."

  "What did they do?"

  "They've got a story that it's best if they tell," he replied. "The short side of it is that they were brought into their family pack in Arizona and things went sour when they turned out to not be the people they were supposed to be. Pack eventually exiled them, but the man, Declan, knew Rodney. Rod brought them in. They're good people," he insisted. "They're good wolves. They just need to be somewhere that's not as violent as my pack can be."

  "I'm sure Dad won't turn anyone away at this point," Wolfgang said. "Send them up. Text me when you know how many people are coming."

  "I will," his uncle promised. "Wolfie?" he asked.

  "Yeah?"

  "Rip them to shreds," he requested. "No one hurts our family like this and gets away with it."

  "I promise," Wolfgang vowed. "Live well, Uncle."

  "Die free."

  Wolfgang ended the call and let out a long sigh as he put his phone in his pocket. "Well, that makes me feel better," he said. "I'd rather have wolves from his pack than Vamps I've never met."

  "Me too," I replied. "I hope they get here soon."

  Wolfgang nodded. "If we have any luck at all, even bad luck, they will."

  I chuckled. "Oh, we have luck, alright," I said. "I'm not sure what kind it is right now, but I know we've got it." I sighed as I stood up. "I'm going to take Lena and run to the store," I said. "We're going to need food for lunch and dinner."

  "Take Riley," he said before he kissed me. "Be safe."

  "Always," I promised before I kissed him back.

  Fifteen minutes later, Selena, Riley, and I were on our way to the grocery store. I tried not to think of the first time I went shopping in Adamsville as I drove us down to Grover's Market. The memory of Alan using his magic on me to take me out of the store where he knocked me unconscious was so close that, as we walked into the store, a woman walking by reminded me of Abigail. I turned for a doubletake, but she disappeared behind a corner.

  I followed the woman around the corner but didn't see anyone else in the aisle.

  Selena and Riley came up behind me. "What is it?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "I swear I just saw Abigail," I whispered.

  Selena turned white. "That's not possible," she replied.

  The memory of ripping Abigail's heart from her chest made me agree with her. I knew that it wasn't possible for her to be here. She was dead. I killed her. I nodded as Selena urged me toward the carts. We grabbed two and started making our way through the store.

  When we reached the check stands, I didn't want the cashier to tell me what the total of the groceries came to. I handed her my card for the purchase without looking. Being Lycan meant that we needed more meat in our diets than humans. Being a small town meant that most of our meals came from the cattle we saw on the way to the store, making it cheaper than New York by leaps and bounds.

  Selena and I loaded the car with the groceries while Riley kept watch. Even though the market was supposed to be neutral territory, past experiences taught us that the Witches were more than willing to break the rules.

  As I opened the driver's side door to get in, I caught the scent that made my stomach plummet as if it had turned to lead.

  I looked in the direction of the breeze and saw the same woman again. I kept my eyes locked on her and started walking without much thought. Her loose brown hair fluttered in the wind and I swore that I'd seen that flannel shirt before. I couldn't let her leave without knowing for a fact that she wasn't Abigail.

  "Excuse me!" I called out to her as I jogged to catch her. She turned around and looked at me.

  I stopped as if I'd hit a wall and stared at her as a different kind of recognition hit me. "Ms. Caulfield?" I whispered, astonished that she would reveal herself at a grocery store of all places.

  "Ceres!" she exclaimed. "I heard a rumor that you were here, but I didn't dare believe it!"

  In that one sentence, I realized that I'd played right into her hand. I swallowed my alarm and fear, knowing that I had Riley at my back. "I've been in and out," I lied. "I have a case that I'm finishing up in New York. I was there until just yesterday. What are you doing out here?" I asked.

  "Family business to take care of," she told me. "My sister-in-law was savagely murdered a few weeks ago. I dropped everything to come out here and take care of her effects. I'm not leaving until I see her killer brought to justice. Unfortunately, the police out here don't seem very concerned about it."

  "Your sister?" I asked.

  "My brother's ex-wife," she clarified with a smile. "We were very close. Her name was Addie. Your dad's wife, if you'll recall," she said. Her voice was like venom dripping from the fangs of a snake. "You know, given the personal tragedy in our family, I'm surprised I haven't seen you around until now. The three of them being murdered makes you Alan's only surviving relative."

  "I couldn't deal," I said. "I checked out. Haven't been around since before it happened. I went camping for a few days…."

  "Yes, I've heard that you've become somewhat… wild," she said. Her tone suggested that she knew everything I had to hide.

  A jolt of fear shot through me because now she wasn't the only one who knew. "You're still as enchanting as ever, aren't you?" I whispered.

  "More so, my dear," she replied. "You should go back to the dogs." She nodded toward the car. It was the first obvious reference to my kind she dropped. "I'm sure that we'll see you later."

  "I look forward to it," I said before I turned and walked away. By the time I reached the car, my hands were shaking so much that it took me three tries to get the key into the ignition.

  "What happened?" Selena asked.

  I looked at Riley in the back seat and met his eyes. "Brenda's planning another attack," I said. It was the only thing I said on the drive home.

  Chapter 11 ~Ceres~

  Selena, Riley, and a few other volunteers took care of bringing in the groceries while I rushed to the library to find Wolfgang. He was in there, pacing by the desk as Mira lay on the floor in front of the fireplace with a coloring book and an array of crayons at her disposal. They looked up as I walked in and Wolfgang reacted to the distress on my face in an instant.

  He rushed toward me. "What happened?"

  "I saw Brenda at Grover's," I told him. His eyes widened, bleeding from blue to amber with alarm. He ushered me out of the library and away from Mira's ears. He pulled me aside in front of a small powder room beneath the staircase.

  "What happened?" he asked in a hushed voice.

  "She looked like Abigail," I explained. "I walked up to her and I was more surprised to see that she wasn't Abigail than that she was Brenda. I'm telling you, Wolfie, she even smelled like Abigail."

  "What then?" he asked. I could smell his distress and relief that I wasn't harmed. He reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of my face.

  "She acted like she didn't know that I was in town at first and mentioned how she hadn't seen me at any of the wakes. She tried to play off that she was surprised that I wasn't angry at their deaths. After a minute though, she made it clear that she knows I'm Lycan."

  Wolfgang swore.

  "There's more," I added, hesitant to pile more stress
onto his shoulders.

  "What?" he asked, wariness lowering his voice.

  "She's planning another attack."

  He met my eyes. "You're sure?" he asked. I knew what he really meant.

  I nodded. "She promised to see me again soon. I think she's going to attack the house."

  "She doesn't know where the house is," he protested.

  "Just like she didn't know where the Resting Grounds were?" I asked. I sighed. "Wolfgang, if she can get her coven to the Resting Grounds because our traitor told her where they are, what makes you think that our traitor isn't going to give her this address as well?" He stiffened as if it was the one thing he hadn't thought about. "Whoever is responsible for what we've lost is trying to make sure they kill us all. I wouldn't be surprised if she knows where the clinic is."

  Wolfgang swore before he kicked a bench set up in the hallway. The leg splintered under the force of his blow and collapsed. He swore again.

  "I'm doubling the number of people protecting the house and the clinic," he said. "I'll take fewer people out there with me as long as I know that every defenseless Lycan is safe. The Vampires are sending us fifteen, so they'll come out with us. My uncle says that sixty are on their way out here from Moab."

  "That's not very many Vampires," I said.

  Wolfgang shrugged. "It's more than I was expecting," he confessed. "Honestly, they don't trust us; not that they should. The only reason those fifteen are coming is that they want the Witches dead, not because they consider us worthy allies. They figure that if we fail, their necks are on the chopping block next, so they may as well stave off the attack now instead of later."

  "How kind of them," I muttered.

  "It's better than nothing," Wolfgang reminded me. "It gives me enough to double up security here and at the clinic without losing men in the field."

  I nodded. "Yeah," I sighed. "We brought back pizzas and subs for everyone for lunch," I said. "For dinner, I cleaned them out of steaks."

  Wolfgang chuckled, but there wasn't much genuine humor in it. "Thank you," he said. "You're going to make an amazing Skaapie when the time comes."

  I gave him a small smile. "Until then, let's just focus on today and my audition. After this business with the Witches is said and done, we can talk about my future as Skaapie and how good at it I'll be."

  "Deal," Wolfgang replied. "Let's go feed some hungry wolves."

  I nodded. We headed down to the kitchen, hand in hand. One of the most fascinating things to me about being a Lycan and having mated with him was the magnetic connection between us that always made us reach out toward each other. It was a pull, from his soul to mine, that made us stand close enough that nothing would get between us.

  The pizzas were already in the oven when we entered the kitchen. Selena had sorted everything into piles. The bags with the sandwiches were together on the counter. Selena and Riley worked on fitting all the meat into the fridge. Wolfgang and I grabbed as many of the bags with the subs in them as we could carry and started off down the stairs to the basement.

  Once downstairs, we passed the food around with the promise that more was on the way. A few volunteers went up to the kitchen to get what we left behind. Everyone was grateful for the food.

  It was also the perfect chance for me to get to know those who were willing to talk to me.

  I met Astrid, a pregnant Lycan, seven weeks shy of her due date. She was surprised that the stress of the day hadn't sent her into preterm labor. Her mate had been slaughtered at the Resting Grounds, but she held onto life because of their baby. She said that he wasn't her true mate, but she couldn't imagine loving anyone else even before they gave each other a piece of themselves. She only ate a sandwich because she knew it was bad for her baby if she didn't. She'd promised Lloyd a healthy child, regardless of whether he was there to meet him.

  Jennifer was strong enough to hold off her own shift, but her son, an eighteen-year-old getting ready to graduate, wasn't quite there yet. She said that he'd been a late bloomer and she wanted to keep him from the hunt—as all mothers would—but it wasn't possible.

  "He told me that the Witches were going to come anyway and that he'd hate us both forever if I kept him behind," she explained. "I could live with the thought of him hating me, but I couldn't ask him to hate himself."

  Archer was an old man who remembered when Wolfgang's father was in diapers. I found myself amazed by our aging process and wondered just how many years we could live. As far as anyone knew, there hadn't been a Lycan who died of old age. Archer certainly didn't know when his number would come, and he was okay with that. He didn't want to go anywhere anytime soon, especially now that we'd lost so many.

  Blane was only ten years old and very proud to be Lycan, thank you very much. He vowed to take over as Skvaeoi one day, to protect his Enkidu with his life. He thought that all girls were icky, except for Mary Shielder, but she didn't want to talk to him today because the Witches killed her parents. She, he was certain, would come around and he looked forward to seeing her smile again.

  It amazed me that these people managed to smile, despite the tragedy we experienced this morning. Archer said it was because everyone knew we would serve the Witches a heap of justice sure to boil their insides. While that could never make up for the losses, it did make them all feel a little better about the situation, and that was good enough for now.

  It seemed to me like the brain just couldn't take so much grief and so it made us all forget, for just a moment, that so many were dead. It made us forget long enough to smile, laugh, and eat because it knew that if we never forgot, we would die. Of course, it also made us feel guilty for having those brief respites, but they were too important. Eventually, everyone would feel less bad for living while so many died. Eventually.

  No one here gave any indication that they would, or even could betray the pack. No one harbored any bitterness or ill will to anyone here. Our traitor had to be one of three things: An escape artist, a brilliant sociopathic liar, or dead. I doubted that anyone here would commit that kind of betrayal only to die afterward. Whoever had done this was still very much alive, which meant that they left the house or were injured at the clinic. The last thing I wanted was for the clinic to be compromised.

  Not that I had any say in it.

  "You won't find what you're looking for here."

  I turned to look behind me and saw a man wearing a plain white mask. I could see a blindfold through the holes of the eyes. The costume he wore was scented in a way that I couldn't pick up any part of the man beneath the robes. There was no way to know who was under that mask.

  "What am I looking for?" I asked.

  "A traitor capable of this destruction," he replied. His voice was smooth and deep. I saw a golden S embroidered on the collar of his white robes. Scholler. "You won't find that here. You keep looking though. I admire that. You would have been a good Chindi had you not mated the Volsunga."

  "I've heard," I said as I turned back toward the crowd of people eating lunch.

  "We are also searching for the traitor," he informed me. "As much as you're looking for this apostate, we are too. That person, whoever he or she may be, is not in this house or its caves."

  "But still in town," I said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  "Yes," Scholler agreed.

  I turned back and looked at him again. His mask gave me no indication of anything beneath it. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or if he could see anything at all behind that blindfold. They were the judge and jury of the pack, so I wondered if they were as blind as justice was supposed to be. In my experience as a lawyer, I knew that Justice's eyes were wide open, and she was not as impartial as she was supposed to be.

  "Is there anyone on the radar?" I asked.

  "We have our eyes on a couple of suspects," he replied, turning that blank mask toward me.

  "Am I one of your suspects?"

  "Should you be?" he asked by way of reply before he walked away from me. I watche
d him leave and felt a shudder pass through me. The way Wolfgang described the Neuri to me when he brought me into the pack made them seem like such a foreboding force. Speaking with Scholler both disillusioned and upheld that image.

  I looked at the people in the cave again. So many of them lost their families. Those who hadn't lost someone by blood still lost someone close to them. There were few families kept whole in this tragedy. Wolfgang's, for instance. Luke's. Blane's. But they were the exceptions, not the rule.

  Through the loss, the people smiled. Again, some laughed. The weight of grief hung over us like a cloud and after we killed the Witches, it would crash down. For now, life moved forward. We cleaned up the garbage of our lunch. Wolfgang and I took some food into Mira so that the three of us could eat. I sat with them and told Wolfgang that I was working on getting to know people here. I couldn't hide behind him and trust his connections to work for me. I had to build my own relationships with these people, otherwise, I'd find myself in Ravyn's position and it would take me too many years to build trust.

  I wondered if any of them blamed me. In a way, this was my fault. Alan was my stepfather. I caused the tense peace to erupt in a violent explosion. I was the catalyst that caused the deaths of most of the coven and the pack. The massacre Brenda and her amassed forces caused here in Adamsville could have been avoided if I'd stayed in New York and not started to question the purpose of my life.

  Out of nowhere, I felt like the Neuri needed to come down on me and destroy me. The only reason I was grateful they didn't as because I knew that my death would mean Wolfgang's as well. That was the catch of being mated. I gave him a piece of my body and soul in exchange for his.

  I prayed that the violence and circle of revenge would end soon. I knew that I couldn't live with any more blood on my hands, regardless of how possible it was to find itself there. This war was far from over. The damage from the war would take us decades to recover. So many people died because of my decision to come here and stay here. It was my responsibility to get them out of this, even though Wolfgang seemed to want to keep me locked in the tower.