Five Moons Rising

by Lise MacTague

  Malice rushed the nearest lycan, katana held in front of her like a spear. He turned and reached toward her, claws ripping through the air. They passed nowhere near her; he was probably still blind from the grenades. He had no way of knowing she’d dropped to one knee and pivoted. Her blade opened a long gash in his belly and blood poured from the wound, staining the fur around it bright red. His whimper was drowned out by another roar. MacTavish wasn’t happy. Malice grinned. Good.

  The lycan fell forward, landing on his hands and knees. He’d been halfway to his wolf-form, and now it seemed he was trying to finish the transformation. It couldn’t be allowed to finish. The process of shifting would hasten the lycan’s already insanely quick healing abilities. It was a desperate gamble. He was completely unable to defend himself when she thrust the katana through the base of his neck, severing the spinal column. He collapsed, beyond the point of regeneration. There was no coming back from having the spinal cord severed, not even for a lycan.

  She fell back into a recovery stance, the katana blade down and off to one side. She had company. Three lycans closed in on her, their eyes glowing steadily at her from the shadows. Her blood pounded in her ears, filling her head with exultant pounding. This was what she lived for, to surf the edge of the adrenaline rush. Pressure filled her chest, demanding she surge forward, insisting she take the fight to them. Experience told her to stay put, to let them come to her. The smile on her face widened.

  Ruri came back to herself in a puddle of blood. At the sight of Brittney, her wolf had overwhelmed her completely. It had been almost a hundred years since she lost herself in the wolf when it wasn’t a full moon. The results weren’t pretty. Brittney’s body lay mangled and bent below her. She licked her chops, her long tongue removing blood from her muzzle, blood that tasted of the woman she had once loved, the woman she’d thought had loved her. The dead wolven had already undergone the final shift back to human form. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle; in her blind rage, Ruri had snapped her neck.

  The amount of damage Ruri’s wolf had inflicted upon her was insane. Hardly an inch of her looked as if it had escaped her angry jaws, and yet Britt’s face was almost completely untouched. At least she still looks good, Ruri thought. She’d like that.

  Now that she was dead, Ruri could no longer summon her blazing anger toward her former paramour. All she felt was sadness and disappointment. She wondered again why Britt had seen fit to betray Dean and the rest of the pack. She doubted she would ever know.

  Nothing moved around her and she looked up to see a ring of shocked glowing eyes surrounding her. Lewis and Cassidy were behind her. She could feel their presences solidly at her back without looking, but they weren’t moving any more than those facing them. All seemed to have been stunned into stillness by the ferocity of her attack upon Britt.

  Have I even been hit? Ruri wondered. It doesn’t feel like it. She would probably feel every bump, bruise and laceration when this was finished, but for now she felt nothing but the need to keep moving. Every second they let up on the wolven in front of them was a second MacTavish wasn’t feeling pressured by their attack.

  She growled and moved forward. The grouped wolven skittered away from her. Lewis and Cassidy sprang away from her flanks, heading the wolven off. They’d have to harry them, drive them even further apart before they could regroup, but the wolven she tracked scattered in different directions. She hesitated for a moment, torn about who to go after. Lewis was taking on the bigger group, but her first priority had to be the Alpha. Cassidy was facing a group of three wolven who seemed more interested in avoiding her than in confrontation.

  Ruri crept up on the group while Cassidy had their attention. Given an opening, there was one who would turn and run—she could tell by the wolven’s shifting eyes and twitching ears. She was looking for her chance, but she was the furthest of the three from being able to make a break. Ruri lunged forward and snapped her jaws around the hind leg of the closest wolven. A surprised yip met her attack. She twisted, dragging the wolven across the floor as it struggled to flip around and bite her.

  Cassidy took advantage of Ruri’s distraction and rushed the middle wolven. She dropped her shoulder at the last second and bowled it over. They rolled together a short distance, smashing up against the near wall with a resounding thud. Wooden lath snapped inside the wall and plaster rained down from the ceiling to dust the struggling tangle of wolven below.

  As Ruri had anticipated, the female wolven took the opportunity to run. She’d had enough. Ruri was happy to allow her to take off. One of those outside would take care of her. If they didn’t, she would disappear into the night. Maybe she’d show up again and maybe she wouldn’t.

  The wolven she’d pulled down had managed to regain its feet, though the leg she’d grabbed no longer held his weight. He wasn’t too slowed down by his injury, however, and lunged at her. Ruri dodged to one side, then shouldered back into him as he flew past her. He went down in a tangle of limbs and she pressed her advantage, grabbing another leg and crushing the joint between her jaws. The shatter of bone beneath her teeth pulled an agonized half-howl from his throat. He tried to get up, but with two legs that wouldn’t bear his weight, he flopped around on the floor instead. Satisfied the wolven would be no immediate threat, Ruri turned to look for Cassidy.

  Her Alpha looked up at her from where she crouched over the body of the wolven she’d demolished. Blood flecked her muzzle, fading into the crazed stripes and speckles of her coat. Satisfied that Cassidy was all right, Ruri looked round for Lewis, but he was no longer with them. The fight had boiled into the next room and, by the sound of it, was still raging.

  Cassidy’s ears pricked forward, and her entire body stiffened for a second. She shot out of the room as if from a bow. Something had happened to one of her wolven and she’d felt it. Ruri had seen the same response from Dean on more than one occasion. The link between Alpha and pack went both ways.

  Ruri flew after her, right on her tail. Somebody had to watch her back.

  What furniture had once graced the adjoining room was little more than toothpicks now. Two wolven were down, but four more had backed Lewis into a corner. He bled from half a dozen wounds and his right ear had been torn clean off. Try as they might, they weren’t quick enough to get past his flashing teeth and raking claws. The wolven who faced him were as bad off as he was, but there were four of them and Lewis was tired. His tail was down and his reactions sluggish, allowing a graze here and a swipe there.

  One of the wolven got in a lucky bite as Lewis dodged away from one of her companions. Ruri and Cassidy bolted across the room in a flash, but not in time to stop the side of Lewis’s face from being laid open to the bone, taking his eye with it. Though he must have been in terrible pain, Lewis pivoted and lunged in one motion, taking his attacker by the throat and bearing them both down to the ground.

  Before he could regain his feet, the other three were upon him and he disappeared under a pile of blood-soaked fur and ripping teeth. Cassidy bellowed and flung herself at the pile, but Ruri was there first, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and pulling her back. Lewis was done for, and if Cassidy went in there, she would be, too. Cassidy roared again, but the sound died in her throat, swallowed by a pained whimper.

  The wolven turned toward them, leaving their prey behind. Lewis didn’t move, but neither did the wolven he’d taken to the ground. The three paced toward them, wounds closing before their eyes as they took sustenance from Lewis’s blood and flesh. His physical essence boosted their metabolisms and they benefited fully. As she and Cassidy backed up, Ruri realized they’d miscalculated, and badly. The wolven they fought against had no compunctions about devouring their flesh for the energy it gave, while Cassidy’s pack members were foregoing the opportunity. Though they fought for their lives, Ruri still thought of the wolven as family and the idea of consuming them was repugnant to her and her wolf. Cassidy might not be so sentimental—certainly she had no attachment to these
wolven—but she didn’t know. And there was no way to tell her.

  More wolven were coming; she could hear their claws scraping against the hardwood floors of the row houses’ narrow halls, coming ever closer. They were cornered and badly outmatched.

  Chapter Forty

  The lycans took their time getting to Malice. One lifted his head, sniffing deeply, likely trying to determine if there were more of her. It would have been nice, but the day she couldn’t take on a handful of lycans was the day she needed to hang up her katana. She wouldn’t hang it up, though. It would be torn from her hands and her head separated from her body. Her enemies would rejoice, but no one from the human world would ever know what had become of her. She would simply disappear; all trace of her activities would be wiped from existence, traces which now included Cassidy. Malice firmed her grip on her blade and bided her time just a little longer.

  One lycan bumped into the lycan next to him and was rewarded with a snarl and shove for his trouble. Good, they weren’t used to working together, at least not like this. She could take advantage of that. It was funny. Pack structure should have meant that working together was second nature, but these lycans seemed more like they happened to be fighting her at the same time, not that they were there to support each other. Has MacTavish been bringing in new weres? If that was true, that was bad news for Ruri and Cassidy. They could be facing far more lycans than they’d bargained for.

  She glanced past the three lycans at the rogue Alpha. They had to take him down and soon. Her training still told her to wait while her brain and heart, in perfect agreement for once, screamed at her to move. The katana quivered in her hand from the tension of not giving in to her instincts.

  More eyes glowed at them from the dark than Cassidy had thought possible. They were well and truly outnumbered. She knew she was strong, far stronger than she ought to have been, at least according to Ruri and the others back at the safe house, but there was no way the two of them could take on all those now gathered against them. At her side, Ruri rumbled threateningly. It was an impressive display and some of the wolven seemed cowed by it.

  Harold still battled somewhere in the house, but he was weakening. Aching emptiness yawned within her where Lewis’s point of light had been. His presence in her heart was more conspicuous for its absence. Another point had disappeared, this one when Ruri had gone berserk and savaged the white werewolf to death. She’d known wolven fought and knew they sometimes killed each other, that much had been easy to surmise, but Ruri’s ferocity had taken her aback. Her own ferocity had taken her aback at first also. Letting her wolf take the lead had helped and she’d quickly lost her hesitation. It seemed she had a knack for this.

  The other point that had gone out still troubled her and she gnawed at it while they did their best to keep the wolven at bay. From what she’d been told, she could only affect those in her pack. If that was true, how had she felt that wolven’s death?

  Cassidy snapped at a wolven who dared to get too close. She mostly missed, but still managed to graze a bit of ruff. She dug into the thick fur and pulled, coming away with a hank that bled at the roots. The wolven pulled back, only to be replaced by another.

  This wasn’t going to work. They would soon be buried in hostile wolven. Her packmates outside were all alive, but being pressed. She could feel the distant echo of wounds on them, each one a spot of cold fire upon her body.

  If her sister had been successful, they should have been able to overwhelm these wolven, or so Ruri had said. Cassidy should have been able to step into the void and assume the mantle of Alpha. Mary Alice was either dead or things weren’t working out well for them either. There was no time to wait. She had to do something.

  New points of lights numbered among the stars of her pack. These outnumbered those of her people by quite a few, but they didn’t flicker nearly as strongly. It was as though they were stars light-years further away than her own. They corresponded to the lives of the wolves they fought. Maybe she could do something about them.

  Her wolf rumbled in warm agreement. She paced on the outside of their skin, rippling along the edges of her fur.

  Can you take over? Cassidy asked the wolf. Is that even possible?

  The wolf’s assent was palpable, and Cassidy stepped back within herself. Her body kept moving, more purposefully now. It was strange to be a passenger in her own form, but she had more important things to attend to—like saving their collective asses—than to worry about which of them would disembowel the next wolven.

  The pinprick points beckoned to her and she reached out toward them. There was something there after all, something she could hook into. Maybe. They slipped through her fingers on the first try. She could almost grasp them, but they felt fragile as if they might crumble to dust in her fingers if she grasped too hard. With deadly concentration, Cassidy reached out again.

  Her body moved beyond her field of concentration. She was barely aware of her wolf bringing down another wolven, riding him to the ground. That meant nothing if she couldn’t succeed.

  Some of the points twitched, quivering as she reached one hand toward them. Four of them seemed more solid than the rest and she concentrated on those. It wasn’t all the wolven facing them, but at this point, even four might sway the battle their way. Cassidy screwed her face up into a mask of utter focus. Her nose scrunched and her mouth pulled back from clenched teeth. Her jaw ached from grinding her teeth together. It reminded her of the faces she would make when in kindergarten, trying to force her recalcitrant fingers to trace unfamiliar letter shapes.

  The points vibrated more now, moving faster and faster. She dragged them slowly toward her, yet another power held them back and they oscillated back and forth between her and the other force. She reached out with her other hand and pulled mightily, hauling at the points with the entire weight of her body. Finally, after what seemed like hours, they moved smoothly forward into her orbit. They matched the other stars she saw in intensity and warmth. They were hers!

  She threw her head back and howled in triumph. Eyes closed, she reveled in the feeling of her conquest. Her gambit had worked; the struggle had paid off. She opened her eyes to a ruined room, walls spattered with blood. From the lines of fire that lined her rib cage and one haunch, some of that blood was hers. She had no idea how much time had passed since she handed control of their body over to the wolf, but she was still alive. From the sound of fighting, Ruri was still kicking also. A wolven lay on its side in front of her, ribs heaving as it tried to draw breath. One back leg was ripped open, hamstrings shredded and dangling. It was no longer a threat and Cassidy turned to confront the next one.

  Ruri was forced away from Cassidy a step at a time, one wolven snapping at her from one side and another inserting his body between her and the Alpha when she recoiled. What had started out as a few feet widened until they were on opposite sides of the room. Cassidy was a dervish of teeth and claws. She fought without regard for herself, doing her best to take down the wolven that harried her cautiously. Ruri recognized the all-or-nothing approach most wolven couldn’t achieve unless they’d given themselves over fully to their wolves.

  Her own style of combat was more conservative now. She bled from a dozen or so wounds, some had partially healed, but at least one was still actively bleeding. Beyond that, one knee ached, though she hadn’t been injured there. It felt like the memory of a wound, which was no surprise as it came to her over a long distance. Somewhere, Mary Alice had been injured. There was also a stitch in her ribs. She couldn’t tell if it was from exertion or if her mate had been wounded there as well.

  The clash of teeth by her right shoulder was kept from being more only by her frantic dodge to one side. Then she was in range of a wicked raking of claws from another wolven. Three more lines of fire joined those that already burned at her. She was surrounded on three sides, her tail in the corner. There was nothing to do except keep them at bay as long as she could. They were going to take her down.

&n
bsp; I’m sorry. Ruri sent the thought winging to serious eyes peering out from a strong façade. Would Mary Alice feel her fall? She would have felt it if the Hunter had gone down, she knew that. Something had gone wrong. Had it been her fault? Ruri fended off another wicked bite and received a shoulder to the ribs for her trouble. Stars burst behind her eyes as she slammed into the wall, then slid down it to land in a boneless heap.

  Her wolf howled at her, urging her to stand, to continue the fight.

  I’m trying, she thought fiercely at it. The thoughts were the only point of clarity in her mind. Everything else shimmered and wobbled.

  The wolf’s only answer was to howl louder and louder.

  That’s not my wolf. Ruri blinked her eyes, trying to see through the fog of her head injury and the legs that blocked her way. Confusion reigned as the wolven attacking her paused to look over at Cassidy whose howl was not one of pain or despair, but rather that of victory. She disappeared from Ruri’s view again as the wolven dismissed her and stalked ever closer to where Ruri lay, desperately trying to get her legs to move. All she could see were teeth smooth and sharp against muzzles slick with her blood.

  First one wolven then another looked back. Snarls rose to a high crescendo, punctuated by the concussive snap of jaws breaking bone and piercing skin. A wolven skidded into Ruri’s view, turning to present its back to her. As she watched, unable to comprehend what was happening, one of the wolven who had tried to tear out her throat was snatched between the jaws of this new arrival and smashed to the ground. Ruri struggled to her feet, though her legs wouldn’t work quite right. Getting all her knees to lock was still a bit of a problem.

  The wolven, a charcoal-colored male slightly bigger than average, was taking on all comers. The other wolven seemed reluctant to confront him, trying to get past him to get at her, but he wouldn’t allow it. He was familiar, and Ruri was fairly certain she’d just seen him in the group that was trying to take out Cassidy. His scent rolled over her and it was familiar. He wasn’t one she’d known in the pack before Dean, but she’d smelled him before. The aroma tickled something in the back of her mind, but she didn’t have time to track it down. There would be time enough for that when she wasn’t a hair from dying.