Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

“And your sword is right there.” Julian pointed at the weapon on the table. “You let a girl take it from you.”

“Right here,” Alex murmured. “And I’m not just any girl.”

Julian spoke before his brother could question that comment. “Cade’s a loner. Always has been.”

“Loner,” Alex repeated. “Isn’t that another word for ‘rogue’?”

“What are you?” Cade asked. “A cop?”

“Yes,” Julian said, at the same time Alex said, “No.”

“She was,” Julian blurted. “Obviously she isn’t anymore.”

“I could be,” she said.

“I’m all the cop we need around here.”

“Yeah, you’re doin’ a great job so far. How many are dead?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Start with him. Can’t you touch him and…” She wiggled her fingers like a sitcom witch performing a spell. “Voodoo the truth free?”

“It wasn’t him,” Julian said.

“Just because he’s your brother doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed someone.”

“That is what it means. Exactly.”

Alex threw up her hands. “He’s a werewolf.”

“What is there about this town that you don’t understand?” Julian snapped. “We don’t kill people.”

She stared him right in the eye as she said with utter conviction, “One of you does.”

Barlow wanted to smack her. Alex could see it on his face. But he didn’t want to do it in front of his brother. Which meant he hadn’t told Cade who she really was.

Interesting.

The two had been together for centuries. They appeared very close. Yet Barlow was keeping secrets. Was Cade keeping secrets, too?

“No one here would dare hurt anyone from there,” Julian said.

“I think you’re wrong.”

“I don’t care what you think. I know. Whoever’s killing the Inuit does not live here.”

“You’d rather believe a lone werewolf wandered out in the middle of nowhere and started snacking on the pets,” Alex said. “Instead of the logical answer that someone from a village full of werewolves has decided you aren’t the boss of them?”

Doubt flickered over Julian’s face, there, then gone the next instant. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I believe.”

But she’d gotten him thinking. Which was good enough for her.

Alex had also started to think. She’d come here to find the werewolf that had murdered her father, only to discover a werewolf murdering villagers. What were the chances they were one and the same?

Pretty damn high.

Especially if she bought into the theory that Barlow’s wolves were different—and considering their seeming lack of a desire to kill everyone they met, she kind of did—then it would follow that the one wolf that had murdered before was now doing so again.

She was going to have to start meeting people, giving them a good, long look-see. She’d winged—or eared —the werewolf that had murdered her father with a silver bullet, and silver left a mark—in both forms.

However, cheerily chatting up the populace when she was supposed to loathe them was going to arouse Barlow’s suspicions. She’d just have to do it when he wasn’t around.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked.

Barlow lifted a brow. “Trying to get rid of me?”

“Always.”

Cade laughed. She was really starting to like the guy.

“Before you go.” Cade lifted the needle. “You mind?”

“I prefer my blood inside instead of outside.” Alex turned toward the exit.

Barlow snatched her by the elbow, and she froze as his touch seemed to flow through her like another virus, this one making her want him, need him. Now.

She yanked her arm free, and he let her, dropping his hand to his thigh and rubbing the palm against his jeans as if his skin was buzzing, too.

“Don’t you want to know why you’re different from all the others?”

Yeah, she kinda did.

“Cade can help.”

Alex turned to him. “Can you?”

Cade shrugged. “I’ll try.”

“What else have you been up to?” She waved her hand to indicate the room and all its contents.

Cade glanced at Julian, who nodded, making Alex grind her teeth. Did everyone have to ask him everything?

“I invented the serum so that we can touch in human form.”

“And here I’d thought that was just another handy-dandy gift from Big Daddy.”

Cade appeared about to laugh, but he coughed instead before giving her an answer. “I’ve been attempting to isolate what it is in the virus Julian passes on that keeps us from becoming—” Cade broke off, lips pressed together, forehead creased.

“Psychotic, evil killing machines?” Alex supplied.

“Sheesh,” Julian muttered.

Oh, yeah. She wasn’t supposed to hate them so much.

“For want of a better description,” Cade agreed, but he glanced back and forth between Alex and Julian, waiting for an explanation that wasn’t ever going to come.

“How’s that working out for you?” Alex asked.

“I’m getting there.”

“I’ve told you before that my wolves aren’t possessed by evil.” Barlow tilted his head, and his hair swung like a golden pendulum beneath the bright fluorescent lights.

“Except for that inevitable first kill,” she pointed out.

“Except for that.”

“Maybe some of your wolves like the first one so much they keep right on doing it.”

“They don’t,” he said with conviction. “They don’t have the taste for it.”

“So you say. But what’s truth and what’s lies?”

“If you were evil, wouldn’t you want to kill everything that crossed your path?”

She looked him up and down. “Who says I haven’t?”

His lips twitched. “You’ve resisted. A werewolf not made by me wouldn’t be able to.”

“What good is that serum if you were all born demon-free?”

“It’s not for us,” Cade said. “It’s for every poor human being who’s been changed against their will.”

“But—” Alex began, then paused.

Cade didn’t appear to know about Edward’s cure. Or maybe he just didn’t care. According to Julian, being one of his wolves was super -cool. None of them wanted to go back.

In her experience, no werewolf wanted to. The ones that were possessed by the demon liked what they were. As the virus strangled the person they’d been before they were bitten, they embraced the evil. She had to wonder if, even after Edward’s cure, that person ever found their way back.

“But what?” Julian prompted.

“Nothing.” Alex was supposed to keep her secret Jäger-Sucher past a secret, which meant she wouldn’t know about a cure, either. She stuck out her arm toward Cade. “Do me.”

Julian choked. Cade fumbled the needle again.

At least she’d distracted them from further questions, and she did want to know why she could touch the other wolves without the serum. Or why she wanted to touch Barlow at all.

Alex watched the tube fill rapidly with her blood. Strange. It didn’t seem any different now than when she’d been human.

Cade removed the needle and turned away.

“Aren’t you gonna swab me with alcohol or anything?” Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t swabbed her arm before he’d stuck her, either.

“You aren’t going to get an infection,” Barlow said.

“Right.” A single drop of blood welled from the tiny pin-prick before it healed over.

Cade capped the tube and began to write something on a label. Alex moved closer, fascinated despite herself. “Why don’t you try and cure lycanthropy?” she asked.

“Why would I do that?” His voice was absent, his eyes focused on her blood and the mysteries it might solve.