Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

Neil’s lips tightened, and he rubbed a big hand through his shorn dirty blond hair. No matter how many centuries he lived, no matter how short he cut his hair, or how many flannel shirts he collected, Neil would never look like anything but a Norse raider.

“I thought he’d gotten over that.”

“Who got over what?”

“I’d have told you if he’d eaten a wise woman in the past two centuries.” Neil’s eyes met Julian’s. “I swear.”

“Who—” Julian began, then he knew.

He shoved Neil out of the way and raced barefoot and bare-chested across the snow.

Alex chased Cade through the moonlight. She wasn’t enjoying this run at all. She’d thought when werewolves shared the moon, they bonded. That it was the equivalent of coffee with the girls, poker with the boys, maybe a couples’ potluck.

Instead, she kept getting ice and snow kicked in her face as she followed his light brown tail on and on. No gamboling, no rolling and wrestling, no playing. No fun.

They weren’t too far away from town at least. She didn’t feel sick. But she did miss Julian. She wished she’d stayed home and run with him.

First she and Cade had loped around and around Barlowsville in larger and larger circles. Alex was a new wolf. She didn’t know the procedure. It had seemed a little foolish to her, but Cade appeared to enjoy it. Every time she glanced at him, he was grinning.

Eventually they’d headed away from town, and the terrain had become rougher if that were possible. Even on wolf feet, Alex had stumbled, fallen, then slid all the way down a hill and into a hollow of water so cold she couldn’t understand how it wasn’t frozen.

Once she’d extricated herself, she looked around for Cade and huffed a surprised bit of air through her nose to discover that he’d disappeared into a fairly large grove of trees. She plunged in, too, managing to keep sight of his tail, even though the thickness of the branches nearly obscured the moon.

Eventually she popped out of the cover and into a clearing where a house stood, surrounded on all sides by trees and tall piles of snow—an oasis in a desert of ice.

Unlit, the building was but a shadow, not a wisp of smoke from the fireplace, no hint of a generator. Cade trotted past the huge monster truck parked to the side. How had that gotten there? She didn’t see a road anywhere.

Alex made an anxious sound as Cade approached the door. What was he doing?

That became apparent an instant later when Cade straightened to his full height, naked skin gleaming silver. Then he reached out and opened the door.

Alex cocked her head, afraid she’d hear screams, shots, but there was nothing. Perhaps this was a place Cade kept apart from the lab where he could relax away from his weird science. She wouldn’t blame him.

The thought of going inside, finding warmth, a towel, even clothes, appealed more and more as the water on her fur turned to ice, then began to crackle and break and rain around her paws like sleet.

The natural reticence of a wolf for a human abode made her hang back, paw the snow, pace. She wasn’t going to be able to go in until she—

Alex closed her eyes and reached for human form. The shift took longer than Cade’s had. Of course Cade was nearly as old, and therefore as powerful, as Julian.

Once she had two legs instead of four, Alex hurried inside.

“Close the door.”

Cade’s voice came from somewhere to her right. With the door closed and human eyes, she couldn’t see much. The windows were covered. The moon could not spill in.

“This is yours?” she asked.

“It is now.”

A light flared, so brilliant she was left blinking against the glare. When the black spots went away, she saw that Cade had set a portable lantern on the mantel. The room was so small and the lantern so bright, everything was illuminated.

The blood splotches on the floor, the basket of toys in the corner, and the hundreds of pictures of Alana Barlow that had been tacked over every inch of the walls.

Alex slowly tugged her gaze from the pictures to Cade, but before she even saw his face, she knew she was in trouble.

Julian managed to slow down long enough to avoid crashing through the door of the lab; he managed to calm down enough to keep from shouting his brother’s name. Until he discovered the place was empty. Then he shouted a lot.

However when he found Alex’s clothes, he couldn’t speak at all.

A shadow fell over Julian where he knelt next to the neatly folded black slacks and white blouse. He had one of her ugly boots cradled in his arms like a baby.

“You’ve got it bad,” Neil murmured.

Julian couldn’t argue. He did have it bad. What he didn’t have was her.

Apparently, his brother—the murdering, rogue werewolf—did.

“We have to find them,” he said.

“Mmm,” Neil agreed, moving around the room, glancing into drawers, closets, and the refrigerator. “They obviously went running together by choice.” Neil gazed pointedly at the perfectly folded shirt. “He didn’t tear her clothes from her body and force her to do anything. There’d be blood somewhere other than the refrigerator.”

Julian growled.

“Calm down.”

“How can I when I’ve just discovered my brother’s been killing Inuit?” Julian set Alex’s boot on the floor and got to his feet. “And why is that?”

Neil began to sort through a pile of papers on the desk. “I only know why he killed the wise women.”

Neil calmly opened a folder and peered inside. When he didn’t continue, Julian snapped, “Why?”

“I thought you knew.”

“If I knew, Neil ”—Julian drew out the name—“I wouldn’t be asking you.”

Neil frowned and glanced up. “Cade told me you knew, and that you were all right with it.”

“With what?” Julian ground between clenched teeth. Several empty beakers rattled, one of them burst into shards.

“Don’t get excited.” Though Julian could incinerate him if he was of a mind to, Neil’s voice and manner were nothing but calm. “You remember how Cade always had to talk to the local wise woman, shaman, whatever?”

“Yes. He wanted to know what they did.”

Neil nodded. “Which is why he ate them. That way all their knowledge became his.”

“That’s nuts.”

“That’s Cade.”

“And you thought I was okay with this?”

“Back in those days things were different. We were different. Besides, you never did anything about it.”

“I didn’t know!”

“That was probably why.”

“What the hell was I doing when this was going on?”

“Leading a boatload of Vikings. You had a lot on your mind.”

Julian ran a hand over his face.

“It wasn’t as if people weren’t dying, Julian. Back then, that was kind of what we did.”

“I don’t understand why he’d suddenly decide that killing someone, then eating them, gave him their knowledge. He was always talking to the local witch doctor types.”

“And he was always killing and eating them. He didn’t start when he became a werewolf.”

Julian opened his mouth, then shut it again as he remembered Alex telling him her theory of the rogue.

A psychotic murderer in both forms.

How could Julian have been so blind?

“I have to find him.”

“He has no reason to hurt her.” Neil picked up another folder. “She’s just some girl.” He opened the cover. “Or not. What the hell, Julian?”

He slid the folder across the desk, and the contents spilled out. Photos of Alex. News clippings. Printouts of Internet searches. It all looked very familiar.

Because it was his.

Somehow Cade had gotten hold of the file Julian had made about Alexandra Trevalyn.