Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

“Who the hell are you ?” he returned.

Now that she got a good look, she wasn’t sure why she’d ever mistaken him for Barlow. The eyes aside— which she hadn’t seen until just now—his hair was darker, longer, messier. Besides being shorter, he was also vampire-pale and kind of weak looking. She was surprised he’d been able to lift that huge sword, let alone swing it.

Of course, he was a werewolf. He could bench-press a car if he wanted to.

“I asked you first.” Alex pressed her boot into his chest, and he coughed. She let up a little. These days she wasn’t sure of her own strength.

“You’re in my home. Get out.”

Alex laughed. “I don’t think you’re in any position to order me around. And if this is a home, you need a new architect. Badly.”

“Why are you here?” he asked.

Why was she here? She’d seen him, followed him, kicked the crap out of him, and now—

She sniffed, and the hair at the back of her neck ruffled as if a chill breeze had just swirled past. She could still smell the blood.

“What is this place?” she asked. “It’s not a home.” She shoved at his chest again with her foot. “Don’t bullshit me. I can smell the blood.”

His eyebrows lifted, then his eyes slowly narrowed. “You’re Alex,” he said.

She stiffened. “How do you know?”

“You should have just told me. I can take care of this quickly. You’ll be out of here in no time.”

With a speed that blurred, even to her eyes, he snatched her foot and pushed it aside, coming nimbly to his feet, still favoring the knee she’d wrecked.

Alex brought up her hands, already clenched into fists, but he turned away, moving back into the room he’d just come out of.

“I’m going to grab some pants.” He vanished through a doorway at the far end, and his next words were muffled. “Probably a shirt.”

She’d taken one step forward, wondering if there was an escape route and he was using it, when he returned, pulling a geeky white lab coat over a pair of wrinkled black trousers.

The pronounced limp with which he’d walked away was already fading to a small hitch in his giddy-up. He was healing damn fast. Which meant he was a helluva lot older than he looked.

Around here, everyone was.

“Follow me.” He strode past her and into the hall.

“Why?”

He disappeared around the corner just ahead without answering.

Alex glanced at the door that led outside, caught sight of the sword, and picked it up. The weapon was heavy, obviously very old, with an intricately carved but well-worn grip. She took it with her. She didn’t plan on being surprised again.

But she was. How could she not be when she turned the same corner he had and found herself in a huge, glaringly bright laboratory?

“Hello, Dr. Frankenstein,” she murmured, gaze touching on the bottles and beakers, the test tubes and Bunsen burners, many of them sporting a liquid that shone scarlet beneath the fluorescent lights and explained why the place smelled like a slaughter house. She wondered if Elise knew about this.

Or if he knew about her .

“Cade,” the man said, his back to her as he messed with something atop a long, shiny black table to the rear.

“Huh?”

“Not Frankenstein.” He turned, a large needle in his hand. “Not yet.”

Alex brought the sword up. “What do you plan to do with that?”

Confusion dropped over his face. “Draw your blood. What else?”

“Take your own. I’m not sharing.”

“But—” The creases in his forehead deepened. “Didn’t Julian tell you?”

Barlow had told her a lot of things. None of them had involved giving Herr Doctor her blood.

“No,” she said, figuring that answered his question and told him what she thought of his poking her with that needle. But she waved his sword back and forth just in case he didn’t get the message.

Cade—was that his first name or his last?—sighed. “He forgot again. He has a lot on his mind.”

Alex lifted a brow. No doubt.

He motioned for her to come closer. “Just a little prick—”

“Don’t sell yourself short, pal. I’m sure it’s not that little.”

He blinked, clearly not getting the joke. Then shook his head dismissing it. “No, really.” He stepped forward. “I promise. It’ll be over before you know it.”

Alex waved the sword in a faster, wider arc. “Since it ain’t happening, you’re right.”

“Don’t you want to know why you’re different?”

The sword stopped mid-arc. “What?”

“Julian said that you could touch the others and they could touch you.”

“So?”

“Unless you were inoculated with my serum, your head should threaten to split open if you do that.”

“But he said—” Alex paused. Barlow had said that he could touch the wolves he’d made and they could touch him. He’d never said that they could all play patty-cake together. “What else did Barlow say?”

“That he wanted me to find out why.”

“And you always do what he says?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not me.”

Cade tilted his head. “I should probably find out why that is, too.”

“Because I’m a bitch, he’s an ass, and I don’t wanna?”

Cade choked; then his laughter spilled free. “This is going to be so much fun to watch. No one’s defied him in centuries. I think the last wolf that did woke up one day without a throat.”

“I see now where the fun comes in,” Alex said drily.

Cade, who’d finally stopped laughing, snorted. “If he hasn’t killed you yet, he isn’t going to.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

The sword was getting heavy. Not that she couldn’t manage it but Alex saw no reason to continue holding the thing in front of her as if she were auditioning for the movie version of Xena: Warrior Werewolf. So she set the weapon on the nearest tabletop that wasn’t cluttered with books and papers and glass, but she kept her hand on the hilt.

“How do you resist his…?” Cade made a circle in the air with the needle.

Alex’s mouth tightened. She hadn’t resisted him very well at all—at least when it came to sex. She could tell Barlow to blow off, but when it came right down to it, all she really wanted to do was blow him.

“Commands,” Cade finished.

Alex had to scramble for the question. Resisting his commands? It wasn’t easy. But the more she did it, the easier it got. Maybe if she refrained from doing him a few times, she’d be able to resist him for good.

And why did the thought of never feeling his skin beneath her palms, his mouth on hers, his body deep within make her twitchy? She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to.

“I just say nuh-uh,” Alex answered. “You should try it sometime.”

“I have. It makes me…” Cade shifted his thin shoulders beneath the starched white coat. “Squirrelly.”

Alex nodded. That was as good a word as any. “Me too. But I’d rather feel squirrelly than…owned.”

“He doesn’t own us.”

“Close enough,” Alex muttered. Then, since she didn’t want to argue a point she wouldn’t win—not with one of the ownees—Alex moved on. “Why were you out alone in the night?” she asked.

“Alone?” he repeated.

“There’s a rogue wolf picking off the Inuit villagers one by one.”

“Wasn’t me,” he said with the quickness of a seven-year-old accused of breaking into the cookie jar. “And no one from our village would ever hurt anyone from theirs.”

“Because of the agreement.”

Cade bobbled the needle, barely managing to keep from sticking himself or dropping it. “Julian’s been chatty.”