Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Julian Barlow.” Edward’s thin lips tightened. “One of the oldest I’ve ever known.”

Which explained why Edward had brought a drawing instead of a photograph. Werewolves didn’t show up on film. Any photos would have to have been taken before the people became werewolves, which made Alex wonder about Alana.

“Barlow isn’t one of Mengele’s wolves,” Alex concluded.

“No.”

According to Edward, whom she was inclined to believe since he’d been a double agent during The Big One, Hitler had demanded a werewolf army. His equally psychotic pal, Mengele, gave him one.

When the Allies landed and began to sweep across France toward Germany, the evil doctor panicked and released everything he’d concocted in his secret laboratory deep in the Black Forest. Edward had been trying to rid the world of them ever since.

What Edward hadn’t known then, but found out fairly quickly, was that there had been werewolves long before Mengele. A lot of them.

“ What is he?” Alex asked. “From where? When?”

“No one knows.”

“ You don’t? How can that be?” Edward knew everything, or at least pretended to.

“Barlow has more powers than any werewolf I’ve ever encountered. He can change in an instant. He can run so fast he seems to disappear. He can make things happen just by thinking of them.”

“He’s more than a werewolf.”

“I want you to find out what.”

“I don’t work for you anymore. And besides, I’ve got a little problem with my tail.” Alex wiggled her ass. It was still naked, and she still didn’t care.

“He could have killed you,” Edward murmured, “but he didn’t.”

“Dying would be too easy. He wanted me to suffer.”

Actually, he’d wanted her to understand, and she was starting to. She was still Alex but better—and that she believed she was better, not doomed, scared her.

“I know you can fix me,” she blurted. She just wasn’t sure how.

“Barlow has been following you,” Edward continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “He’s had this planned for a while.”

As the words sank in, fury rolled through her, a wave of ice just beneath the surface of her overheated skin. It felt…glorious. She wanted to leap across the table, grab Edward by the throat, and—

Alex rubbed a thumb between her eyes, where her pulse still throbbed. Allowing the anger in was letting the beast out. She had to take several deep breaths before she could speak again.

“You let him bite me.”

He didn’t deny it; she hadn’t expected him to. Edward could be depended upon for one thing, and one thing only. He’d do whatever he had to do to defeat the monsters.

“We need someone on the inside of Barlow’s pack,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s up to something, Alex.”

“Werewolves always are.”

Edward’s face tightened, the expression stretching pale skin over sharp bones, making him appear almost skeletal. “There are rumors of another army amassing, with Barlow at the helm.”

“A werewolf army?” Alex clarified.

Edward dipped his chin. “Can you imagine one with him in the lead? They will march over the earth, leaving blood and death and fire behind.”

For an instant Alex saw the world in flames, an army of werewolves on the rampage, and she ached to be one of them. She’d never be alone again. She’d never be afraid. No one could ever harm her. Then the image vanished, and she was left blinking in confusion, stunned at the duality raging within her.

“I don’t want to stay like this,” Alex said urgently. “Cure me. Then tell me where they are, and I’ll turn them to ashes.”

“We don’t know where they are. Anyone who’s ever followed Barlow hasn’t come back.”

She lifted her brows. If the British SAS were considered by many to be the best Special Forces in the world, and the US Special Forces were easily the best equipped, the Jäger-Suchers were both. Not only did Edward recruit those who were willing to give their lives, but he had them trained by agents who had seen everything, fought it all, and won. Like her father.

Edward also had a secret ops budget that would make Delta Force envious, if they knew about it, and an in with whatever weapons and technology experts were considered the boy and girl geniuses of the moment. Edward volunteered his elite group to test new toys, and if they lived, they got to keep them.

So if every J-S agent he’d sent after Barlow had failed to come back, Alex had to wonder what the wolf man was packing. The only thing more powerful than American weaponry was magic.

“We’ve never had a chance like this before,” Edward continued. “You’re one of his now. He’ll take you with him.”

“He hates my guts.”

“Nevertheless, he has made you. If you’re in danger, he cannot abandon you. He will teach you things. It is their way.”

Huh, their way didn’t sound half bad.

Alex smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. She had to stop thinking like that.

“What if he takes one whiff of me and smells you?”

Edward narrowed his eyes, sensing an insult in there somewhere but not quite sure what it was. “You’ll have to take that chance.”

“Why should I?”

“Because someone in that pack killed your father.”

Alex froze. “What?”

“You think I allow the monsters who murder my agents to run free? It may take time, Alex, but eventually I find them; then I make them pay.”

She didn’t need to ask how he’d discovered the information when she couldn’t. She’d been traversing the country hunting on her own, taking odd jobs wherever she could find them just to have enough money to keep herself in ham sandwiches and silver bullets. Edward had access to resources she did not, and still it had taken him eight years.

“Are you in,” Edward asked, “or are you out?”

“In,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.

Julian’s plan had been to infect Alexandra Trevalyn with the lycanthropy virus, gift her with a man who deserved very much to die, then leave. She would shift; she would kill; she would have no choice. Then, when she changed back, maybe she would understand a little better what she had done when she had murdered his wife.

That was the part he would miss seeing. The ecstasy followed by the agony. The unbearable hunger, then the quenching of it. The inevitable realization of what had happened beneath the moon and the horror that would result from it.

Most werewolves were evil, but some were not, and all the wolves in Julian’s pack were of the latter variety. He’d heard of others as well, though he’d never met them.

Julian was different, and because of that, those he made were different, too. Instead of being consumed by a demon that urged them to kill at every opportunity, Julian’s wolves retained their humanity. They valued their lives and the lives of others. Certainly human blood was required beneath the full moon. But blood and death were two very different things.

Unfortunately a kill was still inevitable after the initial change. It was the only way to come back from the edge of insanity. After that, however, Julian’s wolves were loath to kill again. The core of evil that characterized other werewolves did not exist in his.

Once upon a time Julian had attempted to prevent his wolves from making that original kill—supplying them with fresh human blood instead as he did on all of the full moons that followed. But it didn’t work. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, not killing that first time turned them into killing machines ever after.

A fate he didn’t want for Alexandra. No, he wanted her to regain her humanity and experience the anguish of being unable to stop herself from killing, then live with it as they all did. He wanted her to understand that once the initial change and kill were behind them, some werewolves were just like everyone else. When she’d shot Alana, she had murdered a person; she had not rid the world of a monster.