Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

He frowned at the clock, then the calendar, then back at Julian. “What day is it?”

“Friday.”

The frown deepened. “But you left on Thursday.”

“I’ve been gone over a week, Cade.”

Cade glanced at the calendar again, then shrugged and murmured, “Huh. Is it morning or is it night?”

“I told you to put a window in this place.”

The laboratory was more like a fortress. The single window in the entire building existed in Cade’s living quarters, and that only because Julian had gone behind his brother’s back with the builders. He wasn’t sure Cade had even noticed.

“It helps me to focus,” Cade said. “If there are no windows, my only world is this.”

“Your only world has always been this.”

“True,” Cade agreed, and returned to his work.

Julian’s brother was shorter than he—though at six feet Cade was by no means short. He was also slim instead of muscular, pale instead of tan, and his hair, which had once been as blond as Julian’s, had darkened to a dusty brown.

While Julian’s brushed his shoulders, straight and smooth, Cade’s reached halfway down his back, the length more because he forgot to cut it—hell, sometimes he forgot to wash it—than for any fashion statement. He’d attempted to confine it in a ponytail, but strands had come free and billowed, curling into his face.

“You never said where you were going or why,” Cade murmured as he mixed a bit of this and a tad of that.

With good reason. Alana had not made friends easily, but she’d made friends with Cade. Her loss had hit him hard. If his brother had known why Julian was going, there would have been no leaving him behind, and Julian had needed to do this alone.

“I went to LA to follow a lead on Alana’s killer.”

Cade knocked one of the test tubes onto the floor as he spun. “Did you find anything?”

Julian stared Cade directly in the eye. “No,” he said.

Cade sighed, then he began to clean up the mess on the floor.

“What did you drop?” Julian asked.

“Human blood derivative.”

Julian straightened away from the counter. “You found it?”

“Not yet.”

“You will.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

The need for human blood on the night of the full moon necessitated some fancy planning on Julian’s part. The amount of human blood necessary to satisfy the cravings of his entire village was copious, which was why Cade spent the majority of his time searching for a substitute. That and the fact that Alana had hated taking human blood. She’d said it made her feel ew-ky .

Julian smiled at the memory, but his smile faded as he recalled that her dislike of that basic need had eventually grown into a dislike of a whole lot more.

“You invented the serum that allows werewolves to touch in human form,” Julian blurted, doing his best to make the unpleasant memories go away.

And speaking of unpleasant memories.

“I brought a woman back with me.”

Cade, who had been choosing a new test tube from the shiny selection near the sink, nearly bobbled and broke another. “You what?”

“She was…dying,” Julian muttered.

Liar, liar, pants on fire, his mind taunted.

“What happened to the no-more-werewolves rule?”

“That isn’t the rule,” Julian said.

“Fine. You didn’t ask permission .” His voice twisted sarcastically on the final word.

“Since I’m the one who gives permission, I figured I’d save a step.”

Cade rolled his eyes, and Julian stifled a smile. His brother was the only one who dared stand up to him— although not often or very well—the only one with whom Julian could be truly himself.

Alex’s face flitted through his mind. She stood up to him. And if he wasn’t being himself with her—evil, murderous beast that he was—then who was he being?

“You’re growling,” Cade observed.

Alex seemed to have that effect on him, even when she wasn’t around.

“You said it’s dangerous to create a new wolf,” Cade pointed out. “That it should only be done by one who’s done it before, for a damn good reason, with the new wolf’s consent and preferably here.” Cade jabbed a finger at the floor.

“I say a lot of things,” Julian muttered.

“Besides, the village is packed. Where is this woman going to stay?” His eyes widened. “With you?”

“Hell no!” Julian erupted before he could stop himself.

His brother’s expression became contemplative. “Who is she?”

“Just some woman.” Julian put his hands in his pockets and became vastly interested in the ceiling. “She was lying there bleeding. What was I supposed to do?”

“You said yourself that we can’t save everyone.”

“I suppose, but there was something about her—”

That little matter of murdering my wife.

“Wait a second,” Cade began. “You were in LA?”

“So?”

“You made a wolf in LA? A place with the population of mainland China shoved into a shoe box. You know how a new wolf is the first time they change.” He walked away muttering. “Kill anything. Everything. Anywhere. Doesn’t matter.”

Cade booted up his laptop, typed a few quick commands, then peered at the screen. “No mass murders by unknown perpetrators. No wild dog packs loose in the suburbs. No rogue coyotes down from the hills munching on unsuspecting preschoolers.”

Julian lifted his eyebrow and let his brother rant on. Sometimes that was best.

Cade continued to scroll and click, Google and search, his mutterings lapsing into Norwegian now and then.

“Ah-ha!” Cade pointed at the screen. “Known child molester found with his throat torn out in a nasty area of LA. No suspects.” He cast Julian a glance. “That has you written all over it.”

Julian didn’t answer. Cade was right.

“Except…” Cade tapped his fingernail against the keyboard. “If you found this woman and she was dying, then you bit her and she shifted, she’d be ravenous. So how did you have time to find a child molester and take him for lunch?”

Good question.

Cade’s eyes narrowed. “It’s almost as if you’d planned it.”

His brother was too smart for anyone’s good. Especially Julian’s.

“I didn’t have to plan anything,” Julian said. “I’m magic, remember?”

“You use that as an answer to everything.”

“It’s a pretty good answer.”

Julian waited for Cade to call him a liar, but he didn’t. He couldn’t prove anything, and when it came right down to it, why would Julian lie?

“This woman,” Julian said. “I didn’t plan to make her.”

Liar!

“So I didn’t have any of your serum to give her.” Julian spoke more loudly, trying to drown out the accusing voice in his head. Cade frowned. “Yet when we came into town just now, everyone welcomed her, and no one got a headache.”

“That’s impossible,” his brother insisted.

“Since it happened, guess not.”

“Who is this woman?”

“Name is Alexandra Trevalyn. Other than that…” Julian shrugged. “You’ve never heard of this happening before?”

“Never.” Cade turned back to his computer, hit a few more commands, then began to type. “Bring her here. I’ll need a sample of her blood.”

Julian sighed. He’d hoped Cade would have a scientific explanation that would set Julian’s mind at ease, or that his brother would at least say that while he didn’t know the cause, he had heard of the phenomenon a hundred times before.

No such luck.

Ella took Alex’s arm, ignoring her start of surprise. No one seemed to find it odd that they could touch, and since she’d been able to touch Julian, too, Alex guessed that this was just another of the many ways that Barlow’s wolves were different.