Beneath a Darkening Moon

by Keri Arthur

  Candy licked her lips, her sudden uncertainty palpable. “You can't cut me with that. It's against the rules."

  "Who said I was going to cut you with it?” She raised her free hand and ran it across the sharp edge of the cup. The flesh across her palm parted and blood began to well, tainting the warm air with its richness. She clenched her fist, ignoring the pain as she met Candy's widening gaze. “And you didn't answer my question."

  Damn it, Cade cut in, there's no need—

  This will work, if only because she's less afraid of me than you. Just stay where you are and watch.

  Candy licked her lips. “I can't answer that question. It'll incriminate me."

  Savannah snorted softly. “The three of us saw you standing over the bodies of the hikers and consuming their flesh. We don't need you to admit to anything. And as you said, your fate will be the electric chair, regardless of what you do or don't say here."

  "Then what does it matter?"

  It didn't matter, because the hunger in the other woman's eyes, the sudden sharpness of her breathing, gave Savannah the answer. This was bloodlust. She squeezed her hand, making the blood run faster.

  "Imagine it,” she continued softly. “Your home until you die will be ten feet of concrete and bars. No wind to ruffle your coat. No sunlight to warm your skin. No earth under your paws."

  She paused again. The hunger was sharper, Candy's expression more avid, more haunted.

  "No prey to hunt and bring down. No flesh to rend. No blood to lap fresh and warm from the body.” That last bit was a guess, but a fairly safe one. Candy had to be the one doing it, since it was the only real difference from the Rosehall murders.

  So how had they known all the details in the first place? Whether or not she was Jontee's kid, the fact was, she hadn't been at Rosehall. So who'd told her? That's what she had to uncover here. That, and whether or not Cade was right and Nelle was involved.

  A growl rumbled up Candy's throat. “I'd rather be dead."

  "That can be arranged. Easily."

  Candy snarled, but the hunger in her eyes was giving way to desperation. “You wouldn't. You were always such a goody two-shoes."

  She raised an eyebrow and raised a hand so that Candy could see the drops of blood falling from her palm. The other woman's gaze followed it avidly, her mouth open, her breath little more than savage pants. Savannah reached out telepathically. The shields were still there, still strong.

  Blood wasn't going to be enough. She was going to need help with this.

  "And how would you know something like that?” she asked, at the same time reaching out mentally to her sister. Neva?

  Still here at the mansion and still bored shitless. What can I do for you?

  Can't explain why, but I need to siphon your physic abilities. Neva had extremely strong empathic skills, and when combined with the pack's naturally strong telepathic skills, it was a formidable weapon—one that had saved both their lives in the past.

  Sure. Can I help?

  No. I'm questioning a suspect, and I want you out of it in case it goes belly up.

  You're as overprotective as my damn mate.

  Hey, I want to be there when my nephews are born. I don't want labor being induced through overexertion.

  No chance of that, Neva grumbled. I can't even take a walk without someone in this damn place fussing over me. She hesitated. Okay. I'm comfortable. Take what you need anytime.

  Ta, Sis. She reached deeper, forming a connection between Neva and her so that she could use the empathic skills any time she desired. She studied Candy for a moment longer, and then she said aloud, “You and I had never met before yesterday, and you haven't been in Ripple Creek very long. So why would you think I'm a goody two-shoes?"

  Candy flashed a bloody smile. “I hear things."

  "From whom?” She raised her hand and slowly licked at the blood dripping from her palm. She'd never enjoyed the taste of blood, which is why she avoided hunting in wolf form. But she'd sucked at cuts to clean them enough times not to blanch at the taste now.

  Candy's nostrils flared and the craving in her eyes became fierce. The hunger in the air became a fire of need that burned across Savannah's borrowed empathic senses, like the electricity touching the air before a storm.

  She reached out empathetically, just enough to gather the emotions burning through the air and gently thrust them Candy's way—soaking her, drowning her, in her own passions and fears.

  And under the flood, Candy's shields began to weaken. They were still extremely strong, but this was definitely working.

  She raised her hand again. “Smell the blood, Candy. Smell the richness of it. Imagine never being able to taste it again."

  The other woman snarled, her form quivering, changing to something more than human but less than wolf. The proximity of the silver was preventing the full change. Savannah just hoped that it would also prevent Candy from breaking out, because if that happened when she was in the middle of mind reading, she'd be dead meat.

  Now, Cade said, even as she gathered her psychic forces.

  She hit the other wolf as hard as she could. Hit her with not only the emotions that burned through the air, but reached deep within herself, gathering all the anger and all the horror that had been building since that first murder, weeks ago. Gathered, too, the soul-deep loneliness that had haunted her since Rosehall, a loneliness that been buried so deep it had only come out in her dreams. She mixed it with the despair that burned in her now—an inner, secret despair born of the fear that her time here with Cade was destined to be as short as it had been at Rosehall. All of that was flung at Candy, and the force of the emotive blow hit like a punch to the chin, smashing Candy backwards, making her stagger and gasp, as her head cracked hard against the rear of the cell. In that precise moment of confusion and dazedness, Savannah raided Candy's mind.

  And learned that the woman Candy reported to, the woman who was the brains behind it all, was Candy's aunt, who went by the name of Jina Hawkins.

  Only Jina Hawkins was the woman she knew as Anni Jenkins.

  Chapter Twelve

  "It doesn't make any sense,” Vannah said, slamming the door behind her as she walked across to the window. She shoved her hands into her pockets, her expression dark but eyes distant as she continued, “If Anni is behind these attacks, why wait six months? Why not just kill me and get it over with?"

  Cade shrugged as he sat down on one of the visitor's chairs. “She wants my death as much as yours. Maybe she didn't realize I was an IIS agent until recently."

  "So what's wrong with one at a time? And if she wants revenge for what happened at Rosehall, then surely she'd have to know you were IIS?"

  "Maybe not. It all depends on how deeply involved she was with Rosehall."

  "Anni or Jina, or whatever her real name is, wasn't at Rosehall. I'd remember her if she was."

  He studied her for a moment, seeing the tension in her and wondering if its sole cause was the knowledge she'd lived above a crazed killer for six months. He had a feeling it wasn't. He'd felt the power of her assault on Candy, and he knew its source wasn't just a reflection of Candy's hunger for blood and her terror of being contained in a small space. Much of the fear in that assault had been Vannah's. The source of her fear was his fault, because he kept throwing hints at what he wanted, but he wouldn't really talk to her. Wouldn't confirm what he was feeling, or where he thought their future might lie. And not really knowing or understanding those things himself was no excuse.

  Or was that in itself just another excuse?

  "At least it explains how Candy spotted you that night at the club."

  She nodded. “Anni was in the shop, so it's possible she saw me."

  "And couldn't Anni be Nelle? It's been ten years since you've seen her. That's time enough for someone to change beyond recognition."

  Vannah shook her head. “Nelle was a couple of inches taller."

  "Time stoops us all, and Nelle would be over fifty by no
w."

  She glanced at him, amusement sparking briefly in her shadowed green eyes. “Fifty isn't old for a wolf. It's barely even prime, you know that. Besides, the whole shape of her face is wrong. Anni isn't Nelle."

  As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, he had to trust Vannah's judgment. Besides, he'd had a brief glimpse of Anni after the note had been left on Vannah's windshield, and he had to agree—there was little resemblance to Nelle. “Then that leaves us with no connection between her and Rosehall, unless she is connected to Jontee in some other way.” He hesitated. “Did Jontee ever mention his past when you were with him?"

  The words tasted bitter on his tongue, even as he said them. It had all happened ten years ago, and yet he still couldn't get past the hurt—the anger—of that time. Was it just pride? Or was it the acidic taste of knowing that he'd never been good enough to hold her solely to himself?

  Was that same fear stopping him from doing the right thing now?

  Probably, he thought wearily. And it was wrong. Yes, he'd been hurt, but so had she. Too much had been left unsaid between them, and history was repeating itself. Unless he did something about it, he stood the chance of losing her all over again.

  He couldn't face that a second time. He had to do something now rather than wait until after this mess was cleaned up. If he died, then at least she'd know how he really felt—the confusion, the fear, and the desperate, driving need to hold her all to himself. Now and forever.

  He stood abruptly, unable to sit still, unwilling to think more than necessary. Thinking had always gotten him into trouble when it came to the emotional stuff, which is why he tended to steer away from it. But this—Vannah—was far too important to do that now.

  "I mean,” he continued, “You were with him for quite a while. Surely you learned a little something about him."

  She crossed her arms and shook her head. “He rarely spoke of where he came from. I knew he had family, and at least one sister, but that was about it."

  He frowned. “Jontee was an only child."

  She glanced at him. “Did he tell you that?"

  "Yes. And there's no record of a sister on file."

  "That doesn't mean anything. We both know there are reservations where wolves live and die without ever raising a blip on government records."

  He walked across the room and stood beside her, his arm brushing hers lightly and somehow intimately. Heat flowed between them, warming his skin, warming his soul. “What did he tell you about his sister?"

  "Nothing much.” She hesitated. “It was weird, really. We were sitting there one morning, eating breakfast, and he just said, out of the blue, that if this all goes to hell, his sister would put things right."

  By murdering all those responsible for Rosehall's downfall? Was his sister as crazy as he'd been? “And when was this?"

  "A few weeks before you arrived.” She paused again. “It was about that time I began to notice a darkness in him. A frustration. I know it sounds clichéd, but it was as if the Jontee I knew and cared for was gradually being swallowed by that darkness."

  "Maybe some part of him hated what he was doing."

  She glanced at him, amusement glittering briefly in her eyes. “That's the first almost-nice thing I've heard you say about him."

  He grimaced. “No one is ever a complete monster.” And if Jontee had been, Vannah wouldn't have gone near him. He was sure of that, if nothing else. “Did he say anything else about his sister?"

  She shook her head. “He wouldn't be drawn out. He was like a kid with a naughty secret. He just kept saying she knew what was going on and that she would make it right in the end."

  Cade raised an eyebrow. “Meaning she was at Rosehall?"

  "No. But I had a feeling Jontee was in constant contact with her."

  "How, when there were no phones?"

  She gave him a wry look. “This from the man who uses telepathy daily in his job."

  He grinned. “As someone recently informed me, my telepathy skills aren't what they should be."

  "At least you make up for it in other areas."

  She leaned into him, wrapping him in heat and her erotic, sensual aroma. His reaction was instant and intense, his erection pressing painfully against the fly of his jeans. The pain was made fiercer by the knowledge that he couldn't do anything here. Or even in the near future. So he contented himself with wrapping an arm around her shoulder and drawing her even closer.

  And it felt so good, so right, that he almost wished they could just stay here, right in this office, keeping the world at bay as they concentrated on them. Just them.

  Just for a little while.

  "Did Jontee have many visitors while he was locked up?” she continued, after what seemed like a long, contented sigh. “Maybe his sister was one of them."

  "Besides his lawyers, he only had two other visitors, and neither were women."

  "What about phone calls?"

  "Only from his defense team.” He frowned, remembering the trial, trying to recall the faces. But the only one he'd been concentrating on was Jontee, and to a lesser extent, his lawyer. Everything else—everyone else—was a blur. But there had been plenty of people in the courtroom during the trail. If Jontee had a sister, then it wasn't beyond reason that she'd been one of them.

  But if that were the case, why wait ten years to set this scheme up? It didn't make any sense.

  "Do you have your investigation notes here?” she asked.

  "On the computer in my room."

  "Then why don't we get our butts over there and check them out?"

  "Because I know what's in those notes. I've been studying them since the first murder."

  "All this time you were convinced that Nelle was behind these murders. Maybe that certainty caused you to miss other clues. Maybe the reason you recognize Jina's name is the fact that you actually saw it in those notes somewhere."

  He opened his mouth to refute her statement, but closed it. Maybe he had missed something. He'd been certain for so long that Nelle was involved that it was entirely possible he had overlooked some key point. And while Trista and Anton had studied those files as much as he had, they hadn't been involved in the original investigation and would never know it as intimately as he did.

  "Good point,” he said, and tightened his grip on her shoulders to stop her from moving. “But first, I have to do something."

  He turned her around to face him. Her expression was one of amused anticipation. “One of the rules we agreed to,” she said mildly, “was no kissing during the day. And certainly not in my office."

  "I had my fingers crossed behind my back when I agreed to that,” he said, voice bland. “But I don't actually intend to kiss you."

  "And why the hell not?” she asked, her voice filled with a fierceness that was belied by the twinkle in her eyes.

  He grinned. “Because I have something more important to do."

  She raised an eyebrow, amusement giving way to speculation in her eyes. “More important that tracking down a killer?"

  "Very much so."

  He caught her hand and pressed it against his chest. The heat of her fingers, combined with the heady richness of her scent, stirred him in ways he'd never thought possible. Not just his body, but where it really mattered—his heart, his soul. If this wasn't love, then he sure as hell didn't know what was. But whatever it was, he wanted it, now and forever.

  "Does my lady acknowledge the power of the moon?"

  She took a sharp breath, her gaze widening in surprise. But deep in the green of her eyes a joyousness bloomed, and the power of it shimmered right though him. And he knew, right at that moment, that if there was ever one thing in his life he'd done right, then it was this. And he would never regret it, no matter what happened between them.

  She took another deep breath and released it slowly. Then she said the words that were the beginning of the end for his moon-spun hold on her. “It is the power of the moon that binds us as one."

  The air
seemed to stir around them, and energy crackled. Desire and something else, something more ethereal, shimmered between them, warming the night. Warming him.

  "Does my lady acknowledge my moon-gifted claim on her?"

  She moved a little closer, so that every inch of her supple body seemed pressed against his. “I acknowledge the claim of the moon. I acknowledge the rights it has given you."

  He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed each one slowly. Energy zapped between them each time his lips met her skin, making his mouth tingle and his body ache. Or maybe the ache, the magic, had nothing to do with the moon and the power they were raising, but was simply the result of having her so close.

  "Then by the right of the moon, and the power she has given me, I hereby renounce my claim on you. For this night, and for the remaining nights the moon has ceded me rights to."

  The air seemed to thrum, to burn, at his words. A vortex of power whirled around them, snatching at their clothes, their hair, and, just for an instant, the very breath from his mouth. Then it was gone and all that was left was the two of them.

  She rose on her toes and kissed him slowly, softly, and it was unlike any kiss he'd ever shared with her. It was so filled with glorious promise that it shook him to the core.

  "Thank you,” she said eventually, “for giving me the choice. For taking that risk."

  He raised a hand to her cheek and ran a finger across her lips. “Now we have the chance to uncover whether what lies between is real, or simply the moon madness."

  "It may be mad, but I doubt the moon has anything to do with it.” She hesitated, raising an eyebrow. “Do you think it's real?"

  Though her expression was serious, amusement played with the corners of her lips, as if she already knew the answer to her question. And maybe she did. Women were always more intuitive than men when it came to the emotional stuff.

  He let his hand slide around to the back of her neck, holding her still as his mouth brushed hers. “Yes,” he said against the teasing, luscious warmth of her lips. “I do believe this is real."

  And he kissed her, trying to impart all his feelings, all his wants and desires, in that one simple action. He knew it was never going to be enough. Knew that the words themselves would have to be said—that after all these years, she deserved to hear them, even if she knew in her heart and could feel his emotions in his kiss.