Dark of the Moon

by Shannon West

  The MacKays lived some twenty miles away from Blackwater Falls, even deeper in the mountains in a town called, unoriginally enough, MacKaysville. A man about Hawke’s age named Holden MacKay headed up this pride, and he and Hawke had never been friends

  Regardless of that fact, on dark moon nights, Hawke took it upon himself to watch out for everyone, even though a few of the MacKays wouldn’t appreciate his concern, especially those like Holden. Hawke would still be trying to keep it together enough to search for anyone out of control, because, as he’d already reminded himself, when a pride member shifted into their beasts, there were no guarantees their brains would stay human.

  Mostly they didn’t. Hawke himself, as the leader of the Sutherland pride, had some practice in trying to keep his brain at least partially human, but it wasn’t easy.

  At five o’clock, Hawke walked into the outer office and told his deputy, “Come on, Bart, let’s lock everything up here and check the rest of the buildings. Then we’ll head on out of here.”

  “Okay, Sheriff.”

  Hawke was pleased to see that Jace’s truck was nowhere to be seen and breathed a sigh of relief. At least, that was one less thing to worry about tonight. Once this thing was over, he’d see about finding him again.

  ****

  Jace finished eating dinner and paid the check, still fuming at the sheriff’s high-handedness, and trying not to remember how he’d clicked his heels like fucking Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. That had certainly left no doubt in the man’s mind about his sexuality if there had been any before.

  But hell, was the whole damn town as crazy as he thought they were? The waitress had been barely civil—not even that. She gave him the same kind of looks throughout dinner that Jeffrey Dahmer probably gave his victims just before he cut them up to put them in his freezer. Jace thought she’d actually growled at him there towards the end, jerking up his plate as soon as he’d finished and telling him they were about to close, so he’d have to get out.

  He didn’t want any trouble here, so he decided that discretion really was the better part of valor, as the saying went, and decided to take her surly advice and get the hell out of Dodge. He sure didn’t want to have a problem with the sheriff, so he’d just go back to his motel room for the night like a good little census taker. But tomorrow, he would be back, no matter what the sheriff said, armed with his supervisor’s ultimatum if he had to, and the man would just have to deal with it. He’d call his supervisor as soon as he got back to the motel to tell him about the weird reception.

  Jace walked out to his truck, whistling under his breath, refusing to let these bumpkins ruin his road trip. He thought he might just check out the nightlife in Huntsville. Maybe he’d get lucky—he sure did need to, because that sheriff had made him feel a little restless. Jace was surprised by his reaction to Sutherland, and had never felt exactly like that before. It was more than just attraction, more like a feeling that had curled around his insides with warmth and need and landed squarely in his groin.

  Hell, he was feeling it right now just thinking about the man. He wanted to get out of his truck and make up some excuse to cross the street to the sheriff’s office, just to see him one more time. Had he completely lost his mind? Sheriff Macho would probably give him another one of those scornful looks and slap him in jail just for disobeying his damn orders.

  It was getting late—the sun was going down, so Jace decided he’d better get a move on. Pulling out of the parking space by the side of the diner, he headed back down the mountain. It had been the only available spot when he’d come into the diner, but now the streets were deserted. Talk about rolling up the sidewalks. He must have stayed later than he’d planned, because he was surprised to see how long the shadows were on the side of the building. If he was going out tonight, he needed to get a move on.

  Jace made it a few miles out of town when the truck started skipping, shuddered once, and died right there in the middle of the road. Groaning, he got out of the truck and raised the hood. Like he knew what to do once he did. It was getting so dark outside that he couldn’t really see anything anyway, even if he did know what the hell he was looking at.

  When he’d thought earlier about taking a look at it over the weekend, he had more in mind asking one of the guys he used to work with to come over and take a look. Straight guys always seemed to know how to work on cars.

  He looked down at the motor, trying to find any visible cause for it to die so precipitously, but didn’t see anything that looked obviously wrong. Slamming the hood back down, he spent the next few minutes trying to crank it again until he realized the battery was dying on top of whatever else was wrong.

  Damn it! He struck the steering wheel with his hands and looked around hopefully. No helpful houses anywhere around, so he’d just have to walk back to town. His damn cell phone didn’t have any service either, and hadn’t since he left town. He remembered that from his trip up the mountain, but he couldn’t resist a quick look anyway. Still no signal.

  The sheriff might not like him coming back into town, but he would just have to punch his tough shit card, because it was getting dark as hell out here and getting creepy even faster.

  Jace got his keys and locked his truck, noticing again how damn dark it was. How the hell long had he spent dicking around with his truck, anyway? It was still early September—usually it didn’t get dark so early, did it? Maybe it was because there was no moon. The sky had plenty of stars so far from the competing lights of the city, but they shed little light on the gloomy road. He climbed out of the truck wearily and started walking back up the mountain.

  His eyes finally began to adjust, and he was able to miss most of the ruts gouged deeply into the road. Damn, they needed to keep this thing up better. It was almost as if they didn’t want any visitors, as anyone with anything less than four-wheel drive vehicle would turn around and go back home. He thought again of his favorite movie as a child, The Wizard of Oz— apparently a recurring theme of this evening—and the sign outside the Haunted Forest. I’d turn back if I were you. Damn, he wished he could.

  Of course he didn’t have a flashlight, because that just wouldn’t have been fucked up enough. It was so dark he couldn’t see shit, and he had at least three miles to walk. He was in pretty good shape so it shouldn’t be too bad, or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.

  But could it get any darker out? He looked up at the sky, but there was still absolutely no moon that he could see, though the stars looked so big out here in the middle of nowhere they looked like he could reach up and grab one. The pine trees crowded along the shoulder, bent over the road like old men muttering to themselves as the wind picked up and set the limbs to rustling.

  The road was spooky, darkened not only by the big pines, but also by the cedars, which Jace had always thought to be the gloomiest trees of the forest. In the south, the ugly old cedars often stood guard over small cemeteries, especially the little family plots you could still sometimes see on the sides of the road. Here the cedars barely stood aside long enough to let the narrow road creep through, and seemed to close immediately behind it.

  It was lonely and scary, and Jace imagined there were people and wild animals concealed by the tree trunks and the thick bushes by the side of the road. He could almost hear them breathing. Maybe he was even now surrounded by them.

  At least Dorothy hadn’t been alone when the flying monkeys swooped in to get her. And look how that turned out. He couldn’t resist a furtive, hunted glance up at the sky.

  Pretty soon, the wind was sighing in the treetops, and Jace began to hear other little sounds coming from among the trees. Weird sounds, like someone, or some…thing, running in the woods. Grunts and moans too, just there, beyond the pines. He wondered if he should go investigate, and then reminded himself how the guys in the scary movies who went to investigate never came back.

  He stopped dead still and turned around in the middle of the road, looking behind him. Nothing. Although, wa
s that a shuffling noise he heard just beyond that crook in the road? Should he go back and get in the truck?

  No, surely he wasn’t that big a damn wuss. Well, he was, but surely he was only scaring himself. It had to be just the wind. Keep walking. It’s nothing. Jace kept talking to himself, trying not to be afraid, but now he was hearing other sounds that sounded like low growls. Probably just a coyote, but then a shocking sound like a woman’s loud scream pierced the night and stopped him dead in the middle of the road again.

  What. The fuck. Was that? It wasn’t just a scream—it was a howl, long and undulating and way too damn close. And why the hell hadn’t he just stayed in the goddamned truck?

  Just as that thought passed through his head, he heard the running again, closer this time, then another bloodcurdling scream, just there behind those bushes. He started running himself, back toward the truck in a blind panic. He ran as if the hounds of hell were at his heels and for all he knew, they were. Something was sure as shit coming for him—he could hear it behind him, getting closer. Unable to bear it, he turned toward the sound behind him, just as something big barreled into his chest like a freight train and knocked him to his back on the dirt road. He screamed as he went down, throwing his hands up defensively. His screams were hopeless, because he knew there was nobody out there to hear it.

  He must have hit his head on a rock or something equally hard, because a blinding sharp pain pierced his head. He looked up in horror to find a huge cat standing on his chest, snarling down at him, its open jaws dripping saliva down onto his body. His mind refused to process that image and simply went tilt, shutting off. His last conscious thought as he sank down into oblivion was that he was going to die out here in the middle of nowhere, and the animals would pick his bones.

  It could have minutes or hours later, Jace couldn’t be sure, when he swam up out of the darkness. He looked up and saw the stars still hanging over him and he reached up for one, feeling groggy. Something soft but scratchy was beneath his head, like pine needles, and there was something big and warm right next to him with a heaviness on his chest. A low purring sounded near his ear, and he could feel the vibration of it all the way through his body.

  Without moving anything but his eyes, he looked down at his chest and saw a huge paw on top of him, holding him down, but not exerting any real pressure. He looked up sharply into a pair of golden eyes, the pupils small, narrow and straight up and down. The cougar’s eyes stared steadily back at him from inches away, blinking slowly. Those strange eyes looked incongruous, like they’d been lined with black eyeliner. The big cat gazed steadily down at him, the look as cold and dead as a Fundamentalist preacher’s heart. Jace tried to hiss in a breath but couldn’t quite manage it. He opened his mouth to scream, just before everything mercifully went black.

  ****

  Hawke had been running through the woods, flat out, enjoying the freedom and power of his sleek body, when he heard a human scream from the direction of the highway. His cat had known instinctively it was the voice of his mate, though he couldn’t understand why his mate would be here in this place. He’d turned quickly in the direction of the sound and arrived at the roadway just in time to see his mate hit the dirt with a big cat pouncing on top of him, bending low over his neck, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. With a loud roar, Hawke leapt onto the road and the other cat whirled around with a vicious snarl and faced off to him, not wanting to give up its prey.

  Hawke roared at him again, beyond furious and ready to rip the other cat’s throat out. The cat slowly laid its ears back on its head and lowered its head, slinking backward a few steps, acknowledging Hawke as a bigger and more powerful predator. With one last snarl, it turned and ran across the road to leap off into the shadows of the trees.

  Hawke’s cat was big, much bigger than a natural mountain lion. He was about five feet at the shoulder and seven feet long from head to tail, far bigger than anything else in these woods, though all the members of his pride were unnaturally big. He sniffed around the boy. This was his mate, and though he’d rather be running through the woods, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave him on the road.

  Closing his teeth on the collar of the boy’s shirt, he dragged him off the road and over to a clearing just inside the woods. His need to protect the boy was greater than his need to prowl, so he lay down beside him and put one of his big paws on his chest so that he could feel him breathing. His thought processes weren’t clear, but he thought it was important that he stayed beside his mate. He sniffed and licked at the blood seeping from the back of his mate’s head and wondered why he didn’t wake up.

  Hawke was aware when Jace finally did wake up during the night, but he had no reason to make any move. He was tired by then and the warmth of the boy’s body beside him was lulling him to sleep. It didn’t matter, though, since the boy looked up at him and passed out again almost immediately. The big cat kept his paw on Jace’s chest and stayed close to him. After a while he rested his head on his stomach and went to sleep.

  Just before daybreak, Hawke awoke to find himself back in his human form. The change was always a painful and awkward process. He was glad he seemed to have slept through most of it this time. He stood up, his bones literally still cracking and reforming. His skin felt prickly and chilled in the cool, damp morning air.

  Seeing that Jace was still unconscious or maybe sleeping, he decided to leave him for the few minutes it would take to get home, even though his joints were aching. Running swiftly, ignoring the pain, he was at his cabin in about fifteen minutes. He ran naked, of course, the soles of his feet long since hardened to running outside.

  Grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of the closet inside the house, he quickly dressed and pulled the keys to his 4-wheeler off the hook in the kitchen on his way out the door. Rolling the 4-wheeler out of the garage, he jumped on and cranked it, flying out of the yard and back toward where Jace was. He was worried that the boy was still unconscious. He wondered if he should drive him directly down the mountain to the hospital, or if Dr. Roberts could take care of him up here. He didn’t want to think about the fact he might be badly hurt—he’d only just found him.

  On the other hand, if he was awake and lucid, how in the hell was he going to explain all this to him? He would most likely think that Hawke was a lunatic who was to be avoided at all costs if he tried to explain. Hawke had no idea how he was going to do it, but he had to make Jace understand, somehow.

  Arriving at the clearing, Hawke saw that Jace was still there and breathing. That was such a huge relief it left him shaking. As he pulled the 4-wheeler into the clearing, Jace began to stir, trying to sit up. Hawke cut the engine and went over to him quickly, kneeling beside him and patting his body, looking for any injuries he hadn’t found yet. The boy smelled like blood. The vestiges of his cat were still hanging on him this close to the change, so the blood smelled good to Hawke and he had to stop himself from nuzzling and licking him. Jace groaned and opened one eye to peer up at him.

  “S-sheriff? What are you doing here? Where am I? W-what happened? Oh God, my head hurts.”

  Relief that he was awake and seemed to be coherent surged through Hawke. He put a hand on Jace’s forehead, as if he was checking him for fever, but really, he just badly needed to touch him. He hadn’t allowed himself to think Jace might not have survived this attack by the other huge cat until just then. Thank God the cat hadn’t scratched or bitten the boy before he got to him. He was pretty sure the cat had been Travis and just as soon as he saw to his mate, he was going to have a few words with Spencer and his father.

  “Lie still and let me check you. Let me see the back of your head.”

  He helped Jace sit up, slowly, and Hawke knelt behind him. “Hurts,” Jace said.

  “I’ll bet it does,” he said, rubbing his shoulder soothingly, “but at least the bleeding’s stopped.”

  “W-what happened?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember th
at my truck died, and—and I was walking back to town. It was so dark I couldn’t see a hand in front of my face.”

  Hawke gave him an intense look and asked, “Anything else?”

  “S-something came out of the woods at me—some kind of damned big animal.” He clutched Hawke’s forearm, his grip strong and desperate. He looked around himself wildly. “What was that thing?” He looked up at Hawke in confusion. “I-I don’t understand. Did you find me on the road? How did I get in the woods?”

  “I have no idea. But yes, we have wild animals up here. It’s a dangerous place after dark—like I told you. But we’ll talk about it later. Right now, I’m going to take you to my cabin and get you fixed up. It’s not far from here, and I have a first-aid kit, so we may be able to take care of your head without you having to go to a hospital.”

  “Okay,” he nodded and then winced, like the motion hurt his head.

  Hawke carefully pulled him to his feet, an arm around his waist to support him. He was a little unsteady and leaned into Hawke with another little moan. Deep feelings of tenderness and protectiveness washed over Hawke, and he tightened his grip around the boy’s waist.

  Helping him over to the 4-wheeler, he got him settled on the back. “Wrap your arms around me. The terrain’s rough through here and the last thing you need is to get bounced off.”

  Jace nodded solemnly, and Hawke tried to remember if he’d been this pale the day before. He didn’t think he had. He waited until the boy had his arms wrapped tightly around him and took off as slowly as he could at first. Once they reached the road, he could put on some extra speed.

  Jace was sitting flush against his back and as the bouncing of the 4-wheeler caused Hawke’s butt to rub against him, he could feel Jace’s cock getting harder next to it. Hawke could smell his arousal, just like he had the day before in his office. Jace had been so cute trying to hide his erection with the folders. Hawke smiled a little and adjusted himself. Having his mate so close was damn near intoxicating.