MoonFall: A Paranormal Werewolf and Urban Fantasy of Suspense (Supernatural Siblings Series Book 2)

by Drew VanDyke

  “Except for Shane,” I muttered.

  “Except for Shane,” she echoed, grabbing the telescopic pole and skimmer net from me. “I wouldn’t think you’d need to…” The pool equipment slipped out of her hands and her voice trailed off as her eyes rolled back in their sockets for a moment. I grabbed her to keep her from falling in, and then laid her onto a nearby chaise chair.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” she murmured, her head snapping back and forth, face screwed shut.

  “What is it?”

  Her eyes snapped open. “I thought you were going to give up on saving the wolves in our back yard.”

  “I haven’t made my decision yet.”

  “Not from what I saw.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  Her mouth clapped shut and her face took on a mulish look I knew well.

  “Amber, what did you see?” I yelled at her, but she marched back into the house, closed herself inside her room and didn’t come out until dinner.

  “Lord, now what?” I looked up at the sky and waited for the thunderbolt.

  One of the sad things about having secrets is that you can’t tell the rest of the world what isolates you. Even about people who love you, you wonder. If they really knew you, would they run screaming from your presence with fear and loathing?

  As it was, I suddenly realized how most of my friends were men and since I was pretty pissed off at all of them right now – damned alien species – and since Peg and Samantha had their own problems, there weren’t many people I could talk to. Amber was keeping her psychic shields up and whenever I talked to Elle, it was like she was the consummate adult, straddling the line between defending her wife and offending me, being completely noncommittal and non-judgmental – which meant useless as a sounding board. But she made my sister happy. Who was I to judge? Sigh. Damn left hemisphere.

  “I need to get out and do something,” I said as I joined Amber, Elle, Adam and JR at the kitchen bar for breakfast. “I’m sick of sitting in front of my laptop. Anybody got any ideas?”

  “How about a hike up to Rettig Falls?” Adam replied.

  “Good idea. Anyone want to come along?” I didn’t actually want company, but it seemed polite to ask.

  “What about Will?” Elle said.

  “He’s…busy,” In fact, he hadn’t been answering my texts or attempts to call. I was giving him his space. Right.

  Amber looked at me. “Why do you do that?”

  “What?” I gave her my best blank return stare.

  “Never mind.”

  “I’ll go, Aunt Ash.” Which sounded a little like Aunt Ass, but I think that was JR’s way of getting away with saying a dirty word in front of his mom, whose eyes narrowed at the two of us.

  “Really, squirt?” I asked JR.

  Amber looked like she was going to object, but instead, she did that eye-twitching thing and grabbed her head as if it was going to split open. “Damn you, Adam.”

  “What did I do?”

  Elle put her hand on Amber’s arm to comfort her. You may think I should have been more sympathetic to my sister’s pains, but she didn’t like calling attention to her gift, so I ignored her distress. She headed for the medicine cabinet.

  Adam said, “Maybe it’s better that JR not go.”

  “Why not? I never get to do anything fun!”

  “Oh, kid, that is so not true.”

  “I’ll take him along,” I said. “It will be a fun aunt-nephew thing.”

  Adam looked caught. Later I had cause to remember his attempt to put the kibosh on JR being there, but right then, I was oblivious and caught up in reflexive sibling rivalry. If he didn’t want JR to come along, then I did.

  I could see JR’s pleading was working, though, as he said with the disarming directness of a child, “Come on! I’ve been wanting to go up to the falls again for a while.”

  “I’ll go along,” Elle said, nodding firmly at Adam, and that settled it, stepmom-fashion. “Amber?”

  “The maids are coming by in an hour.” Amber made it sound like an excuse, not a reason.

  “So cancel them,” said Elle, and then chuckled at the look on Amber’s face. “Never mind. We’ll be fine.”

  I grinned, triumphant, as Adam sat back, his face unhappy. “Cool. We’ll leave in an hour.”

  I could have been insulted by the implication that we needed Elle’s supervision, but I decided to let it go. Since she’d prepped an insulated backpack with sandwiches and drinks, and drove us to the trailhead in the 49er-mobile, who was I to complain? The more the merrier.

  We reached the falls just as the sun was coming off its hottest, but up here, in the shade of the rock walls, with the cool spray misting us, it was perfect. Today, I told myself, I was going to put aside all the crap going on in my head and try to relax, be normal.

  I know, right? But I tried.

  We set our picnic up as close as we could without getting soaked. The majesty of crashing water surrounded me and underneath it all I noticed…singing.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked the two of them.

  “Hear what?” JR asked. He listened for a moment.

  “Don’t look at me,” Elle said. “I’m not the one with the ears.”

  JR waved. “Oh, you mean Paula.”

  “Paula?”

  “Yeah, she’s the river goddess. I thought I was the only one who could hear her.”

  “Well, I sure can’t,” Elle said. “And it’s probably a good thing…” she muttered.

  Wow, my nephew heard goddesses. And for some reason, now I did too! I high-fived myself in my head. “What’s that she’s singing now?”

  “Some oldie, I think.”

  And he was right. We both listened as the sound of the waterfall swelled into a celestial arrangement of You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel.

  I guess the universe was trying to tell me something. I began to cry. JR climbed into my lap to hug me, and Elle reached across the food to put a hand on my shoulder.

  We sat that way in silence as the sun sent rainbows dancing in the mists of the falls.

  “The legends say she knows just what the listener needs to hear,” JR said as he held my hand. And though Rodgers and Hammerstein was a slight diversion from my normal playlist, through my tears I could see the figure of a buxom beauty shining down upon me with the most amazing look of compassion on her face. Guess she nailed that one.

  At least she wasn’t singing Kiss Today Goodbye. But then her face turned cloudy as she disappeared in a huff at the sound of a gunshot.

  I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but I got the tale from Adam later, so I’ll tell it to you now, like I was writing a story.

  Chapter 13

  Adam watched from his perch up an oak tree as Ashlee, Elle and JR approached Rettig Falls. He’d rushed up and staked out his position at a spot with the best view of the area, a perfect hide for a sniper. His suggestion had worked. Now he just had to wait.

  JR coming along hadn’t been part of the plan, but if he did his job right, it wouldn’t matter….and sometimes you had to risk collateral damage to complete the mission. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

  But it was for the family’s own good, he justified to himself. Hell, he would be lying if he claimed his deeds were entirely altruistic. He would be doing this for himself just as much as for them.

  The sound of leaves rustling below brought him out of his head. A feeling of cold anger settled over him as he unfocused his eyes and let the movement reveal itself, as he’d done hunting insurgents in Afghanistan.

  Ashlee believed it was Sierra that had shot Jackson and her that night, and he’d done nothing to dispel that idea. Between Shelby’s reconnaissance and his own, though, it had become clear who the culprit must be.

  A man, dressed in muffling camo and carrying a hunting rifle, crept out of cover and scuttled across the open space at the top of the cliff. He dropped to his knees, inched up to the edge and peered over.

>   Adam looked over the sights of his heavy automatic pistol and considered taking the shot right now. Fifty yards…it was an iffy distance with a handgun even for an expert, and if he missed, his opponent could take him down easily with the rifle before he could get close.

  He climbed carefully, quietly down the oak tree, but apparently not quietly enough. As he eased his head out from behind the trunk, he saw the man aim his rifle in his direction and fire. A chunk of bark flew as the heavy bullet creased the wood.

  “Whelan!” Adam yelled. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

  “Fuck off, Adam,” he replied. “The bitch deserves to die for what she did.” Another bullet slammed into the trunk. “Come to think of it, you do too.”

  Adam launched himself from behind the tree, moving laterally and firing low. His flurry of rounds spanged off the rock at his cousin’s feet, causing Whelan to curse and run for the nearest fallen log to dive behind.

  “What the hell did she ever do to you?” Adam yelled as he found a boulder for cover and began to work his way forward.

  “Like you’d understand, you little faggot.”

  “You’re making even less sense now, bro. I’m as straight as they come.”

  A string of vile expletives wafted across the distance between them, and Adam used the noise to slip from rock to rock, staying low. When next he spotted Whelan, the distance had fallen to twenty yards.

  Lifting his weapon, he sighted carefully and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked in his hand, and Whelan dropped out of sight.

  Continuing to circle forward, Adam reached a position to see where the other man should have fallen. Blood spattered the rock there, but no other evidence remained. Reaching out with his senses, he couldn’t locate anyone human, so he relaxed, popping the magazine to reload.

  A heavy blow fell on his shoulder, knocking him to the ground. His handgun went flying into the brush, and then Whelan was on him.

  How the hell did he creep up on me? Adam thought. Impossible!

  Evidently not.

  Whelan swung the rifle butt again and Adam rolled frantically out of the way, but his enemy didn’t give him a chance to recover, swinging repeatedly, hard and fast. It was only when the stock splintered against a rock that Adam had the chance to sweep Whelan’s legs from under him, and the damaged rifle skittered away.

  “You should have shot me when you had the chance, scumbag,” Adam said as he grabbed an arm, pulling it in for a bar attempt.

  Whelan twisted out of the hold, showing a surprising strength and skill. “You got lucky again, bitch. Your last round broke the rifle’s action.” He rolled to his feet, as did Adam.

  Adam could see a crease in Whelan’s forehead, and blood dripped down like a surrealist painting, forcing the man to hurriedly wipe his eyes with his sleeve. “You’re mine now, you know. You should have run away again.”

  “Not this time, little brother. Today, you two get what’s coming. I’ll deal with Amber later.”

  “You’re still making no sense.”

  “Show’s you still don’t know shit for all your books.”

  Adam poured power into his voice of persuasion. “Whelan, you need to calm down and chill out. We can talk this over, work it out, just you and me.”

  Whelan chuckled. “That shit don’t work on me no more.” Then he attacked.

  Adam had never run across a mundane who could take him hand to hand. There might have been a few – pro MMA fighters or master martial artists – but the blessings of his knighthood had conferred upon him supernatural strength and speed that had never failed him.

  Today, though, he found himself in a fight for his life. Whelan’s fists hammered at him like stones, bruising his arms even as he blocked them. He got in a couple good strikes to the body that Whelan didn’t even seem to notice. The man’s flesh felt like wood against his knuckles.

  Obviously, his cousin wasn’t an ordinary man anymore.

  Backing off, Adam drew his blade, eight inches of high-carbon steel made by a master knifesmith in Arizona.

  Whelan sneered as he advanced like a machine. “That won’t save you. I’m gonna beat your ass to a pulp, just like I used to.” Ignoring the knife, he stepped in to grab the front of Adam’s camouflage tunic.

  “Never again,” Adam grunted as his reflexes saw the opening. Before he could stop himself, he slammed the blade straight through Whelan’s ribs and into his heart.

  His cousin’s eyes filled with surprise for a brief moment. He grabbed Adam’s wrists and twisted, leaving abrasions and deep nail tracks.

  Shocked that Whelan could still move, Adam let go of the knife and applied a jiujutsu break to the claw-fingered hold, stepping back. Whelan drew the knife out of his flesh, stared at it a moment, tried to speak, and then fell.

  Adam watched Whelan’s spirit leaving its body. It rose for a moment, a blurred specter of ectoplasm vaguely resembling its mortal shell. Hesitating, it seemed to look upward for a moment, and then its mouth opened and it let out a brief, inaudible wail as it was dragged downward into the earth.

  Adam felt a sadness come over him then, mourning the boy he’d known so long ago, before he’d given in to the demons that twisted his soul.

  You make your choices, and then your choices make you, he told himself. Forgiveness was available to all, but even the Savior Himself wouldn’t pardon a man who didn’t repent of his evil.

  Sometimes, free will’s a bitch.

  Adam picked up his knife – like all his blades, consecrated in the holiest of Templar ceremonies – and wiped it off on Whelan’s clothing. I wish I hadn’t killed him, he thought. A stretch in prison might have given him time to change…and now, I may never get the answers to why.

  Chapter 14

  I rose at the sound of the gunshot. “I have to –”

  “NO!” Elle barked, grabbing my wrist. “You and I have to get JR out of here.” She used her grip to lever herself to her feet, let me go, and then drew the compact automatic she always carried, privilege of being a former cop. “Now!”

  I grabbed JR’s hand and we ran down the trail. My nephew twisted his hand out of mine. “I can run better this way,” he said, and he was right. With the utter fearlessness of a child, he sprinted ahead, leaping over rocks and roots with abandon. I could have caught him on the flat, or in wolf form, but for the moment it was me that was having trouble keeping from tripping.

  Elle brought up the rear, pistol in hand, as the sound of gunfire faded behind us. Ten minutes later we reached the SUV parked at the trailhead, out of breath.

  My phone beeped. “It’s Adam,” I gasped, and took the call.

  “Ash? You all right?”

  “Yeah, we’re good. What the hell is going on?”

  “I caught our sniper. You’re safe for now.”

  “Who was it?”

  A silence. “I’ll tell you all about it later.” The call ended.

  He’d sounded, I don’t know, shaken, and that just wasn’t Adam. He’d always been a rock, it seemed like, never stumbling on his competent stroll through life.

  “Get in, dammit,” Elle said from behind the wheel. She and JR were already buckled in.

  “Adam said he caught the sniper.”

  “Might be another one.”

  “What about our stuff?”

  Elle snorted. “We can always buy more stuff. Now get your ass in the truck!”

  I followed orders this time, because she was right. I might risk myself, and Elle could take care of herself, but JR was another story. An unfamiliar feeling of responsibility grabbed me and shook me by the scruff of the neck as Elle hauled ass down the hills. If this was what being a mom felt like, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  An hour later, Adam showed up in his black Suburban. Its lower half was caked with dried mud, like he’d gone four-wheeling. He opened the seldom-used vehicle gate to the back yard and drove straight onto Amber’s perfectly manicured lawn, next to the pool.

  Hoo boy. At least I wasn’t
going to be the target of her wrath.

  Speaking of wrath, here she came. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Adam?” Amber shrieked. “You know how much I pay to maintain that grass?”

  “Chill out,” he said, his voice flat as Kansas. “I’ll pay for the damage.”

  That stopped her dead in her tracks, and me too. There must be a reason he’d done it, undoubtedly related to the seven foot privacy fence that shielded us from view.

  Adam stalked to the back of the SUV and motioned us over. Elle stepped out the back door and joined us.

  “Where’s JR?” Adam said.

  “I sent him over to the Matsons.”

  “Good.” He raised the tinted glass so we could see inside.

  “Oh, shit,” Amber said. “Oh shit! That’s Whelan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  Elle grabbed Amber and turned her around. “Don’t look, hon,” she said.

  “Oh, shit,” I breathed. “He was the sniper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But why?”

  Adam shook his head, his eyes distant. “Sorry, I didn’t have a lot of time to interrogate him as he was trying to kill me.”

  I stared at him. “Couldn’t you have just, you know, wounded him? You do all that karate crap, right?”

  “Jiujutsu,” he replied automatically. “Normally, yes. But I was fighting for my life. Something about him was different. Supernatural.”

  My nostril flared as I stuck my head inside the truck. Then I sneezed. He reeked of magic. Vampire magic.

  I told Adam.

  Adam and I drove over to the rectory. He seemed to know the way without me directing him. More secrets. I was tempted to question him about what more he knew, but now didn’t seem the time, as grim as he was acting. Would knowing help? I sighed.

  At our loud knock, one of Shelby’s intimates opened the door and Adam shoved his way in, throwing Whelan’s body onto the altar while the scared thrall went to get her master.

  The vampire soon appeared in the dimly lit room, wrapping a silk dressing gown around himself as if he’d just risen from his coffin, which he probably had. “Adam.”