Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

They followed her back toward Awanitok. Julian bent and grabbed the discarded rifle as they hurried past. He didn’t bother to check if there were any bullets left. He could smell them.

Ella appeared on her way somewhere, trotting purposefully through town as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

“Just because she’s here,” Alex said, “doesn’t mean she’s evil.”

“This from the woman who thinks that just because we breathe we’re evil.”

Alex didn’t have a snappy comeback for that, and Julian would have asked why if Ella hadn’t chosen that moment to turn into Jorund’s backyard.

“Faet!” Julian spat, and began to run.

He came around the corner as the wolf gracefully leaped onto the back porch. Sliding glass doors reflected the swirling snow and the foggy sheen of the moon. Julian feared Ella would crash right through them.

Was Jorund sitting at his kitchen table, peacefully drinking tea? Did he have his aching feet propped up on an ottoman, glasses settled on his determined blade of a nose, a science-fiction novel—his favorite—open on his quilt-covered lap?

When the werewolf burst through his window would the old man spring up, tangle his feet in the quilt, and fall down? Break a hip? An arm? Have a heart attack? Any of those would be preferable to the alternative— bloody, painful death by rogue werewolf.

Julian couldn’t let that happen. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and sighted on Ella’s flank.

“Wait,” Alex whispered.

“No.”

“Look.”

Something in her voice stopped him. Perhaps that she’d tried to stop him. Alex would be the first person to let him shoot a werewolf—unless she had a very good reason not to.

The glass doors slid open. Jorund appeared in a wash of yellow light from his kitchen. He wore a black silk robe adorned with golden dragons and tied loosely with a matching sash. His hair flowed in a river of silver-threaded black past his shoulders, and he held a glass of red wine in one hand. Behind him, on the table, sat the bottle and a second, empty glass.

The old man stood to the side, and the wolf trotted in. Jorund let his free hand trail over her back, on his face an expression Julian had never seen there before.

“Maybe we’d better go,” Alex said.

“Put down the gun, Ataniq. ” Jorund turned away, leaving the door open. “And come inside.”

By the time Julian and Alex got there, Jorund had pulled out two more glasses and poured them each some wine. Ella was nowhere to be found, though Julian heard someone moving about in one of the bedrooms.

Jorund sat at the table. From the way he carefully adjusted his knee-length robe to avoid flashing them, he wore nothing beneath the silk. Julian was becoming more uncomfortable by the second. He downed his wine in a single swallow.

“George told me what you had planned.”

Julian scowled. “He was supposed to tell no one.”

“I’m the leader of this village, not you.”

Annoyed, Julian snapped, “Yet you call me master.”

“Courtesy title,” the old man murmured.

“Then why did you send George to bring me here each time you found someone dead?”

“You promised to protect us from your wolves. You aren’t living up to your end of the agreement. Why wouldn’t I call you?”

“We haven’t established that one of my wolves is the wolf.”

The elder lifted his brows but didn’t comment.

“Who else did George tell?” Alex asked. She had yet to touch her wine; she merely kept toying with the stem of the glass.

Jorund’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Julian. “No one.”

“Who did you tell?” Julian demanded.

“Just me,” Ella said.

She’d donned a robe that matched Jorund’s, and her pale skin held a flush across the cheeks.

“What’s going on here?” Julian asked.

Ella’s lips curved, and she entwined her fingers with Jorund’s. The contrast of her youthful hand and his ancient, gnarled appendage was like a monkey’s paw and a baby’s fist. “I love him,” she said. “And he loves me.”

“Since when?”

“Twenty years now,” Ella answered.

“Give or take,” Jorund added.

“He’s old enough to be your great-grandfather,” Julian pointed out.

“I’m two hundred and forty-six years old, Julian.”

“Got you there,” Alex said.

Julian ignored her. “He’s going to die, Ella, and you’re not.”

“Barring a silver bullet.”

Julian took a second to scowl at Alex. He did not need any help. From her smirk, she was enjoying this.

“We wanted to talk to you about that.”

Ella’s comment brought Julian’s attention back to them just as Jorund’s hand jerked. “Not now,” the old man murmured.

“Yes.” Ella’s grip tightened on his. “Now.”

For an instant Julian wondered if Ella had been behind that shot. He really had no idea who to trust anymore. Everything he’d thought to be true was not.

He lifted his gaze from their linked fingers to Ella’s dark eyes. “Talk to me about what?”

“I want you to make Jorund like us.”

Alex’s amusement with Julian’s obvious discomfort at the sexual activity of his “grandson” faded with Ella’s words.

“Why?” she blurted.

Julian gave her another dirty look—he was getting very good at them—then glanced back at the Frenchwoman. “Why now?” he amended.

“Jorund’s fading,” she said simply.

Julian let his gaze wander over the old man. “He seems to be doing all right to me.”

Jorund’s lips twitched, but he didn’t take the bait.

“Julian,” Ella snapped, her impatience evident in her Frenchifying of his name. “If you do not do it, I will.”

“Told you they all weren’t as beta as you thought,” Alex murmured, which earned her another evil glare from the wolf-god.

Alex was beginning to wonder about Ella. Although in the robe, she could see the woman’s neck for the first time and it was unscarred, she’d never gotten a decent peek at Ella’s ears since she always wore her hair down.

Alex would not have considered the Frenchwoman a good candidate for rogue werewolf killer of the month —until she’d trotted out of the snowstorm right after the rogue had trotted into it. What better way to remove suspicion than to appear as if you hadn’t just disappeared?

Ella had obviously been sneaking away and coming here for a long time. The Inuit would think nothing of her hanging around, and she could therefore eat whomever she liked and lope off with no one the wiser.

Except if she was an evil killing machine, why hadn’t she started evilly killing before now?

Julian pushed back his chair and stood, towering over them all. “We have rules about new wolves.”

Ella glanced pointedly at Alex. “You mean like asking them if they want to become one?”

“I told you that was going to bite you on the butt,” Alex muttered. “So to speak.”

Ella’s comment reminded Alex that the Frenchwoman knew who she really was. Sure, Ella had taken Alex’s side; she’d called her “poor thing,” but if she was a rogue werewolf, lying was the least of her sins. Wouldn’t a rogue be first in line to kill the person most qualified to kill them?

“If Jorund wanted to become a werewolf, why didn’t he do it before he was eight thousand years old?” Julian asked.

“I wasn’t…certain.” The old man sighed. “I’m still not.”

“Then I can’t turn you. You have to be sure.”

“Alex wasn’t,” Ella said flatly.

“Dammit, Ella,” Julian erupted. “That was different.”

“I agree. This is about love. That was about hate.”