Moonlight Hunters: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 2)

by K. R. Alexander

  Zar and Isaac flinched, turning their heads away.

  Andrew had remained behind in the middle of the room. “When was the last time you looked in a mirror, cupcake?” he asked under his breath. “Might want to watch your mouth.”

  I stepped around Isaac. Now I was wise enough to keep eye contact with that thing in check, though.

  “Who are you?” I asked again. “Are you the leader of these vampires?”

  “Leader? ‘Silver,’ ‘alpha,’ ‘cataja’—have you started eating raw steaks with them as well?” The tone derisive, mocking. “One of the pack now, are you? You spellers say, no, no, you mind your own affairs. We’ll mind ours. We’re the witches. We’re the smart ones. Like all the humans lording over all the beasts. You keep to your own, we’ll keep to our own. That’s what you say to us. As long as it suits you.”

  “What—?”

  “But to them? Oh, no. For them it’s all puppy eyes and swagger and now she’s choosing sides, isn’t she? Whose side is she on? Hmm? Who’s a good dog? Braver Hund! Twee, aren’t they? Cute. That’s what matters. Cute and alive. Give her cute and there’s a good boy. ‘Doing you a favor.’”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “And if we asked? My people? If we called the spelled ones and made a plea for our existence? If we asked them to stop the flooding of our homes or find our missing families, what would they say? ‘Oh, who’s a good boy? So charming. Of course, of course, delighted. Anything for you, dear one.’ Yes, send us a representative. Send us a speller. Then fight the ‘good fight.' Vote justice. Vote every man equal.” The tirade was interrupted by a fresh fit of coughing that left him doubled over.

  Through this, he again started shouting, “Max! Wo bist du, Max? Bring me Max!” over and over.

  If we had to stay much longer I was going to expire from the heat even if I could keep my stomach under control.

  “Listen. I’m sorry if you’re feeling unfairly treated by spellcasters, but, first of all, I’m a stranger here and I know nothing about that so you don’t need to blame me. Second, I only want to ask you some questions—no more. Third, if there is something that you need, if your people are in trouble, maybe we could help you also. I never said I wouldn’t. You never asked.”

  “You can bring me Max!” he screamed and gagged again.

  “Who is Max?”

  “Maximilian Walkenhorst. Promoted Oberleutnant. Bring him to me. I call and he doesn’t answer.”

  “Is he down here?” I asked.

  “Where?”

  “Down here underground? Or up above in London? Where is the last place you saw him?”

  My companions shifted impatiently beside me.

  “London!” Spitting out the word. “Der Schmutz. Max should have been here. If he’s not here, he’s home.”

  “Home? Maybe … we could call him for you?”

  “Bring him!”

  “We can look into it and try to bring him. In the meantime, could we ask you a couple questions? You may not know, but wolves south of here have come under attack. Some of the details seem connected to vampires.”

  For the first time, he didn’t interrupt while I spoke. Instead, he was getting to his feet. This was a slow, grinding process, as painful to watch as his voice was to listen to.

  “We wondered if you might have heard anything about this?” I continued. “If you know of any connection between the vampires and werewolves that has been leading to violence?”

  Stooped over, he finally managed to stand. Even if he’d stood up straight, he would have been a good head shorter than me. A withered, crumpled up, and dead old man. Still wheezing and gasping while he tottered away from us to the counter.

  He muttered to himself as he went—all in German. Max’s name came up often. He felt over the counters, then around the back, looking for something. Isaac moved to keep an eye on him and see behind the space. He fumbled about there, groping through litter.

  “Do London vampires ever go south? Have you ever been to the coast?” I asked.

  Still muttering, he changed to English. “Dugouts all night, and it’s what they need. They won’t hide, will they? Too big and tough, ja? When shelling stops we run for the guns. The machine guns. Here they come. Here they go. Drop, drop, drop, smash out ants with your toe. Drop, drop, drop, watch them break. Where?” With a sudden yell he bashed his puny fist into the counter. Then he squealed and tucked the apparently damaged hand against his chest. Could vampires feel pain? As well as breathe?

  “What is it you’re looking for?” I asked.

  “My pen. Dieter’s own pen. Not the cheap, breaking, empty, dragging, jagged, damnable pens in this place. They cannot make pens, the English, so they buy them from the Chinese.”

  I glanced at Zar. “My purse.” I didn’t want to rummage in the little leather bag as I kept my hands up with the light. Zar took the hint and fished out the slim notebook and my purple ballpoint.

  “What do you want to write down?” I asked.

  “Max, Max, Max! Don’t you listen? Don’t you remember?” Turning from his search to shout at me, though his harsh voice was weak and he leaned into the counter for support. “This is why you must have everything written down! You have no memory! You pay no attention!”

  “No,” I agreed, “of course not. What would you like us to write?”

  He spotted the pen and paper in Zar’s hands and started toward him, holding out those claw hands. “Give, give, give—”

  It made my skin crawl and my heart pound in my throat to see him coming at me. I held up the light in my palms—brightening, sharpening—and he stopped, flinching away, covering his eyes with one thin arm.

  Isaac again stepped between us. Andrew finally also moved forward.

  “Just tell us,” I said calmly. “Zar will write it down.”

  “Maximilian Walkenhorst,” he gasped. He spelled the whole thing, then added a rank, regiment, and home town in Germany. “You’ll bring my Max?”

  “We will look into it,” I said. “I promise you.”

  He nodded, apparently satisfied, and tottered feebly back to his heap, where he flopped, again is if on a beanbag chair, panting.

  “So,” I said. “Down south? What do you know about what’s happening to the wolves there?”

  “After the guns, we’d defend our trenches. Or retaliate. When I was newborn, I could do anything. We can, you know. Anything.”

  “Is your name Dieter?” I asked.

  “Dieter, Dieter, Dieter and Max. There go Dieter and Max. Where’s my Max?”

  “We’ll find him if we can. Dieter, have you ever been to Brighton?”

  “Berlin. It’s Berlin you want to see. Dark places, very dark. Brighton…” He shuddered. “It is bright.”

  “You’ve been there then?”

  “When you go to Berlin, look up Bridget for me. Bridget in Berlin. Give her a Lilie. Tell her it’s from Dieter.” He blinked dazedly up at us. “Did you find Max?”

  “We haven’t even looked yet. We’re wanting to know—”

  “Then go! Go and look! Curse you! Curse your blood, you filthy, mangy animals! Curses! Get out of my house!”

  “What do you know about these deaths?” I shouted back.

  “Out! Come back when you have Max!”

  “You don’t know anything, do you? Come on.” I started for the door, passing Andrew who was taking a look at the bags and bottles around the counter.

  Dieter hissed and gurgled angrily behind us as Isaac and Zar followed.

  “What is that?” I whispered to Andrew.

  “Heroin.”

  “Vampires are drug dealers?” I stared.

  “Class A, nothing but the best,” he murmured. “I bet giving dependent humans downers provides them a constant supply of willing victims.”

  “Go.” I pushed his arm. My head spun, stench and heat overwhelming. I’d never fainted but I was starting to get an idea of what it must be like.

  Andrew led the way b
ack to the passage. I had to summon more strength just for enough light to see by while Zar followed with the flashlight aimed behind us.

  Also behind us, a crackling, grating voice called, “Your wolves … they were staked, weren’t they?”

  We stopped as one and I whipped around. “What did you say?”

  “Your pretty, pretty pets? Your wolf friends? Staked in the heart as if they were vampires, weren’t they?”

  Blood hammered in my ears. I felt the tension in my companions intensifying my own.

  “How do you know that?” I breathed. “If you know anything about this—”

  “Bring me Max.”

  “Tell us what you know, please. Tell us. And I promise we’ll do our best to bring him.”

  “Bring me Max,” Dieter repeated, settling back into his throne, almost out of sight.

  “Lives are at risk. Every day that we don’t know what’s happening, who’s behind this… Do you know anything? Are vampires—?” I stopped. No accusations. Anyway, how could vampires do this? If this was a vampire… “Are there ones that are … stronger?” I finished.

  “Newborns,” Dieter wheezed, sounding testy. “The young are strong. And think they know everything. When I was newborn…” Mumbling in German, then, “Max? Have you seen Max? Maximilian!”

  “What do you know about the murders?”

  “When they’re fresh, they know everything, get all the glory, all the attention, all the applause. No time. No time at all and you’re over and done. Over and dead. Like that.” He tried to snap his fingers but there was only a weak scuffing sound. “And more and more. Spawning. Think they’re so handsome. While wolves break the old truce. Now what? What? What do we do?”

  Isaac again stepped toward him. “What do you mean they’re spawning? There are hardly any vampires now.”

  Dieter laughed. It was a horrible sound that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, even in the film of sweat. Like a cross between nails on a chalkboard and someone blowing sharply in your ear.

  Once more, the wolves flinched at the noise.

  “Just what the Generaloberst said. Hardly any. To the guns, to the firing step. Hardly any. So the shell holes filled with blood too spoilt to drink, the bodies piled up like maggots in a wound. Then they said hardly any ‘more.' And more. And more.”

  “Are vampires in London spawning?” Isaac asked, undaunted.

  “Max? Max, listen. Du weißt gar nichts, oder?” He chuckled to himself, a rasping breath, and went on in German.

  “Dieter?” Isaac raised his voice while Dieter rambled on.

  I couldn’t stay. Sure I was either going to vomit or pass out, I started down the passageway with Andrew leading and Zar behind me. I hoped Isaac followed.

  There were many hisses in the darkness as we passed. All the way down, Dieter’s voice grew fainter behind us, talking about trenches, or calling for Max.

  Chapter 5

  It was 4:00 a.m. by the time we returned to our hostel, having spent many more hours searching Central London for any hint of a wolf that was not in our own pack.

  My feet hurt, my back hurt. My bruised right arm hurt where Jed had—accidentally—bitten me a couple nights ago. I felt disgusting, still smelling that bomb shelter on my hair and clothes. Mostly, though, I felt exhausted.

  Jason and Andrew—their clothes carried in their own bags by Kage and Isaac—changed into their skins in the public bathrooms at Saint Pancras Station. Then we all met up on Midland Road, walking to the Midland Hostel.

  “I’ve snorted enough fag ends tonight that you might as well let corpse-nose make the rounds tomorrow.” Andrew coughed and blew his nose in paper towels.

  Jason was also coughing. “Who would live here? Wolf or not? It’s a Moon-cursed cesspit.”

  “Nice try,” I told Andrew. “You and Jason, maybe Jed, are the only ones we can get away with pretending are rare dogs.”

  “Make Jed go,” Andrew said. “Chop off his ears and tell people he’s a Newfoundland.”

  Jed growled.

  “We don’t need to know about this right now. Neither of you got one clue?”

  They shook their heads.

  Isaac held the door for the Midland Hostel and we filed inside in more or less dejection.

  I headed to shower before bed in a dorm room shared with seven others. One towel, a duvet and pillow, and not much else was provided by the hostel. The female shower room had five stalls with feeble plastic doors offering two feet of modesty. At this hour, though, I wasn’t much bothered.

  Out of the cold and sporadic shower—a shocking comedown from my sister and brother-in-law’s house in Brighton, yet still blissfully welcome—I dressed in my blue pajama pants and white bedtime tank.

  I hoped Zar had also bathed after that place. If he hadn’t, I was afraid I would still be able to smell it in our room. It seemed the vapors remained trapped in my nose even now, that it would never leave.

  He shouldn’t have been sharing with me at all. They’d drawn blades of grass in Hyde Park the previous evening and Jason and Jed had won the spots to share. I was glad of this strange combination. Jason was kind to me and I’d been wanting to talk to Jed for a few days anyway about his privileged knowledge of the renegade Beech Pack.

  But Jason had wanted to stay with Kage since Kage had failed to land the other winning ticket, so he'd turned his spot over to Jed’s brother.

  I’d expected Jason to give it to Andrew, the two of them being so chummy, but maybe Jason had the sense to realize that rooming Andrew and Jed together was the worst possible idea. And no one ever showed Isaac any favoritism any more than they picked fights with him in their skin forms.

  Isaac was the outsider in the group and I still wasn’t sure if this was only skin-deep—from another pack originally, northern wolves, a little older than the others, the only professional in the human world as far as I knew—or if there was more to it. I wondered if Isaac had a higher status in their normal home lives and it set him apart. Junior high kids didn’t need to have anything for or against a high school kid to avoid him. They just weren’t part of the same scene.

  Yet they’d picked a fight with Isaac that first night in Cornwall in fur. My fault, I was sure. I’d first given Isaac the privilege of driving, then accepted a gift, even if only a borrowed one, from him, and ridden up front in Kage’s Jeep with him all day. So I was mindful of the whole group’s interest in favoritism and my behavior toward each individual.

  Hence: drawing straws to share a room. Speaking of dealing with school children.

  By the time I returned to bed, I found Zar waiting for me in the doorway of our dark room: full of human snores and enviable breathing of those who were sound asleep. His long hair was wet, he smelled like olive oil soap, and he had nothing on besides sleep shorts.

  It was difficult to be distracted from my own black hole state of mind on my way to bed just then. I would have said impossible as I had no space left to focus on anything but falling into my allotted bunk and not waking up until noon. But their toned bodies, like swimmers’ bodies and then some, were jarring even from the most zoned out states of mind. I had to assume they were like this by virtue of their species. Now wasn’t the time to pry and find out for sure.

  “There’s a bed free by the door or by the window,” Zar whispered. “Both lower bunks. Which would you prefer?”

  “Window. What about Jed?”

  “Already asleep.” Zar was smiling at me, close and … hopeful. Looking at him in the doorway—damp black hair pushed back but still falling out from behind his ears, his caramel skin tones, rich and tempting as the clean definition in his body—I realized he almost always appeared hopeful when he looked at me.

  “I need to talk to you about the truce. And vampires in general,” I told him. “But right now … sleep.”

  “Tomorrow—or, rather, later today.” He smiled more.

  He was so sweet compared to the rest of them. And Jason. Jason had been civil from the s
tart. I was beginning to see another side of Jason, though. Like watching him join in tricks and schemes for hoodwinking tourists with Andrew, then ganging up on Jed for practical jokes. Zar didn’t go after anyone else unless provoked. And he read. Maybe it was the teacher in me, growing up trundling around my grandmother’s personal library, or only my own interest in a good story, but I do love a man who reads.

  “Man” being the key word here. Which Zar was not. He was a magical creature. I was a witch from another country who, in just over a week, had to get on a plane at Heathrow and fly home to Portland.

  There could be no future in this. Not with him, not with Isaac, who’d kissed me on the front steps at my sister’s house. Or Kage, who’d tried but was already in a relationship with Jason. Or Andrew, who wouldn’t leave me alone. Or Jed, who had brought me flowers each night in Cornwall, yet wouldn’t speak to me by day.

  Not with any of them.

  We were in London trying to solve serial murders. And going about it on nothing but flimsy leads and paranoid suspicions. We could ourselves be in danger now if these killers knew what we were up to.

  In light of all that, I should not be thinking about my available relationship status versus my upcoming flight home versus pros and cons of greater involvement with these werewolves versus my own quickly beating heart and that sculpted, smooth body and intense dark eyes watching me.

  But here I was.

  I stepped closer. Zar bent his head. I reached to hold his face in both hands as I kissed him. Our second kiss.

  And what about showing favoritism? What about them ganging up on him like they had Isaac? Isaac had lived through that and come out apparently fine the next day after changing into his skin and healing the wounds.

  Zar stroked my lips with his tongue, stepping in.

  Could Zar hold his own just as well as the great white wolf had?

  I parted my lips for him and felt his hot tongue slip between them in a careful, testing touch.

  But none of them were going to be doing any such attacking right now. We had a job to do in this “cesspit.” Preventing murders. Not committing them on each other.