Witching Moon

by Rebecca York

  And why not? A werewolf was a kind of supernatural creature. Perhaps his ancestors had sprung from a place very similar to this.

  “It’s like taking a trip into wonderland,” Barbara murmured, her voice hushed. “Is the park all like this?” she asked.

  Her husband had gotten out his fancy camera and was busily snapping pictures.

  Adam brought his mind back to the tour.

  “No,” he answered. “We have these narrow channels. But they open up into what are called prairies, kind of water meadows. The higher elevations in the park are dry land. Well, higher is a relative term. We’re about a hundred feet above sea level, in a natural depression. Some of the land is also boggy. And we have over seventy islands—I mean in the whole swamp, not just Nature’s Refuge. The terrain makes for a variety of plants and animals.”

  The mention of plants sent his mind zinging back to Sara Weston. He’d met her where the footing was dry. But if she’d come to the swamp, she must be here to collect some of the aquatic specimens like floating heart, arrow arum, pickerelweed, or golden club.

  The channels could be confusing, if you didn’t know your way around. She’d need a guide. And he was the perfect choice.

  He went into a little fantasy, imagining them alone in a boat out in this vast wilderness, pictured himself helping her with her work, the two of them silent but very aware of each other. Sexually aware, like they’d been this morning. But now she wouldn’t be wary of him.

  She’d want him as much as he wanted her. She’d put her hand on his arm, letting him know. He pictured his gaze locking with hers, before he steered the craft into a shallow waterway where they could reach for each other without worrying about the boat tipping dangerously.

  He held the tantalizing image for several heartbeats, then ruthlessly wiped it from his mind. He’d thought that giving a tour would relax him. Instead, he was wound up tighter than a kudzu vine choking the life out of a tree trunk.

  Embarrassed, he shifted in his seat, glad that he was sitting behind his passengers and they were looking toward the front of the boat.

  His eyes scanning the shoreline. It didn’t take too long to spot what he wanted. He cut the engine, drifting toward the bank. “Look at that floating log,” he said, pointing.

  As the boat eased closer, a small alligator lifted its head out of the water and stared at them.

  Barbara started in alarm. John began snapping more shots.

  “One of the twelve thousand gators we have in the swamp,” he remarked. “Decades ago, a lot of them were turned into shoes and handbags. Now they’re protected.” He wondered if the couple would also like to know that there were thirty-seven species of snakes in the area, including five poisonous ones.

  Probably not, he thought, hiding a grin as he guided the boat around a bend and into one of the more open areas, past clumps of water lilies and tall grass.

  He saw a wood stork feeding near the shore and dutifully pointed it out, so John could label his pictures later.

  Usually he enjoyed giving these tours. He’d always been interested in wildlife. And he’d done a lot of reading on his own. Maybe he’d been trying to figure out where the werewolf fit into the natural order of things.

  He realized he’d been silent for several moments and came up with another piece of nature lore as he guided the boat into another narrow channel. “White-tailed deer come down to the water for a drink.”

  “Don’t the gators get them?” John asked.

  “Rarely. They have almost no natural enemies.”

  “Are there wolves around here?” Barbara asked.

  “They were last seen here in the nineteen twenties,” Adam said easily. He didn’t add that a wolf had been prowling the park for the past four months.

  Barbara scanned the shoreline. “I’d like to see the deer.”

  “Maybe on the way back. They rest during the day, then become more active late in the afternoon.”

  “It’s so amazing that this place survived into the twenty-first century,” John mused.

  “It almost didn’t. The swamp’s ecosystem came close to being destroyed in the early nineteen hundreds by a company dedicated to turning cypress trees into telegraph poles and floorboards. They took out four hundred and thirty million board feet of cypress before the easily accessible timber ran out. President Franklin Roosevelt stepped in and converted a large part of the swamp into a wildlife refuge in nineteen thirty-seven.”

  “He established Nature’s Refuge?”

  “No. Austen Barnette bought this area much later.”

  The waterway opened up again, and he steered the skiff through a grove of cypress trees, following a muskrat who swam away from them as quickly as possible.

  When he came around a curve, something odd caught his eye. Something that looked as though it didn’t belong in the natural environment.

  From time to time he found junk floating in the water. Paper cups. Plastic jugs. He always scooped them up and brought them back to throw into the trash.

  But this wasn’t in the water. It looked like a piece of yellow paper tied to the trunk of a young cypress tree, standing out against the dark bark. It wasn’t a bright yellow. It was faded, so that he might have mistaken it for something else. It could have been here for months, he supposed, getting drenched in the rain and baking in the sun. He didn’t know for sure because he hadn’t been in this particular corner of the swamp recently.

  He could feel his heart rate picking up. He wanted to think that he simply didn’t like finding something man-made tied to a tree where no human artifacts should be. But he knew it was more than that. Last night he’d encountered drugged smoke and naked people out here. Today there was something strange tied to a tree. Had the party-goers marked their territory?

  The Carltons hadn’t spotted the thing. He could steer the boat on by, then come back later, when he was alone. Probably that was what he should do, but he wanted to know what the damn thing was—now.

  Barbara and John looked in the direction where he was headed and spotted the anomaly.

  “What’s that?” the husband asked.

  “I don’t know. It looks like someone left it for a marker,” he added, plucking a phrase out of the air.

  “Who would do that?”

  “Maybe a poacher,” he improvised even as his mind clawed for answers. The official entrance to the park was through the front gate, but it was always possible for someone to come in the back way. One of many back ways, actually.

  The Olakompa Swamp was over six hundred square miles. Austen Barnette owned only a small corner of the watery real estate, about three hundred acres. That wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. But it was plenty of room for the birds and animals who lived here plus various assorted trespassers.

  Like the group last night, he was thinking as he leaned out to examine the object. It wasn’t paper, but cloth. In fact, it was a crudely made bag of old fabric, tied together at the top with a piece of rough twine. It looked like there was something inside.

  Nothing heavy. But enough material to puff out the yellow fabric.

  He pulled the boat as close as he could get, but it wasn’t close enough to snag the thing without endangering his passengers, and that would be unforgivable. So he tied up to a cypress knee, then started to climb out.

  A scream from Barbara had him leaping back, rocking the boat dangerously.

  Both passengers gripped the sides of the craft, and he found himself sitting back down heavily.

  When the rocking had stopped, he turned toward Barbara, struggling to keep his expression bland. Really, he wanted to chew her out for startling him, but he knew it was prudent to resist the impulse.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Over there. A snake.”

  He followed her outstretched hand, but if the creature had been real, it had already slithered away.

  “Thanks,” he said, then took his time inspecting the area before climbing onto the slippery surfa
ce of the tree root and finding a handhold on the rough bark. Carefully, he worked his way toward the object.

  When he was close enough, he hauled out the penknife he always carried and cut the piece of rough cord that held the bag to the tree.

  Moments later, he was back on the aluminum bench, where he stowed the thing at his feet.

  John reached for it. Adam kicked it under his seat. “Leave it,” he growled.

  The other man must have heard the wolf tone in his voice, because he reared back.

  “The tour’s over,” Adam said. “Sorry we have to return early, but I’ll refund your money when we get back to the dock.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  FALCON LEANED BACK in his chair, stretching out his long legs under the table, and crossed his scuffed boots at the ankle as he sipped his Bud Lite. His head had been a little muzzy, but he’d put in most of a day’s work.

  He was still feeling a nice warm glow from the up close and personal contact with the clan last night.

  Of course, he had to steer his mind away from the ending of the night’s revelries. But that wasn’t difficult. He was the kind of guy who could ignore inconvenient details when he wanted to.

  He’d packed up his tools, and now he was relaxing at his favorite little café on Main Street.

  Some part of him would have liked to see the core of Wayland shrivel and die like so many of the little southern towns with their boarded-up storefronts, trash blowing down the main drag, and all the action, such as it was, out on the highway in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

  But there were some advantages to what the chamber of commerce liked to call Historic Wayland.

  The town’s core had survived the new development that had come to the cheap land on the outskirts of town. The old business district had transformed itself into a kind of yuppy tourist haven, with a few bright spots for the locals to enjoy.

  Like the Good Times Café, with its down-home southern cooking at reasonable prices.

  He saw the waitress step out of the kitchen. Her name was Betty Sue, and she was about his age, mid-twenties. She’d lived here all her life. Not like him. His family had left town, suddenly, in the middle of the night. They’d run for their lives and found a place to rent in Jacksonville, where his dad had gotten a job driving a delivery truck.

  Daddy had scraped along. It had been better than getting burned up or ripped apart by the nice Christian folks of Wayland.

  That had been twenty-five years ago. And now the son was back. And as far as he knew, the good people of the town didn’t know who he was. But they were going to find out, and they were going to be sorry for what they had done.

  Betty Sue came swishing over to the table and delivered his food. A hamburger and fries, nestled in a napkin-lined plastic basket to save on dishes.

  She and the rest of Wayland were in for a surprise when the clan had consolidated their power. Just a few more weeks, and they would be ready to get even for the sins of the past.

  He picked up the catsup bottle and shook it over the thick home-cut fries, being careful not to get the napkin soggy.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Betty Sue asked.

  He considered a suggestive answer, then thought better of it and shook his head as he bit into a fry.

  Um, um good.

  He had taken a seat by the window, and as he ate his fries and burger, he watched the car and pedestrian traffic. There were a lot of tourists. Which was good for business. But there were a fair number of townspeople out as well.

  He watched a woman pushing a baby carriage. A family of four, the parents and kids all licking ice cream cones. An old guy leaning on a cane. An old lady with an ugly dalmatian on a leash.

  Wayland looked like such a peaceful little town. Yet the things that had happened here would curl your hair.

  Regular witch-hunts. Like in the middle ages. Only now the witches were getting ready to turn the tables.

  He chomped off a bite of burger and bun, chewed, and swallowed, his thoughts turning back to the night before. To the smoke, the women, the feeling of strength that he knew came partly from the black waters of the swamp. And the unity of the group. It wasn’t just having mind-blowing sex. It was the way they fed each other’s power when they joined together. It had been his idea to gather up the descendants of the witches. He’d thought of it after he’d met Willow and found out her parents had run away from Wayland, just like his momma and daddy.

  He and Willow had hit it off in bed real well. But he’d recognized the experience as something more profound—as a pooling of energy. And he’d wondered if he could multiply the effect. So he’d set about gathering the clan around himself.

  Eyes closed, he relived the scene last night. Relived the orgiastic frenzy and the pleasure like a thousand suns bursting in his brain.

  But this time he couldn’t ignore the ending. The way everything had all come to a screeching halt in the moment when they sensed that guy watching.

  After Ken White, Falcon had been sure nobody else was going to bother them. Then this guy had shown up.

  Who the hell was he?

  His hand clenched around the glass of beer, and he made a concerted effort to relax.

  The guy had been naked. Ready for action.

  Falcon gave a soft laugh. He’d also sensed the man’s longing for a connection with them.

  Maybe and maybe not. He’d decide, after they figured out who he was. Falcon already had a couple of candidates in mind. Actually, by chance, he’d gotten a look at one of them today. With his clothes on, he’d just looked like an ordinary guy.

  Of course, Falcon knew that was true of himself, too. But he wasn’t ordinary. He had power and the strength of his convictions. And he was going to make damn sure that nobody wrecked his plans. He and the members of the clan had waited too long to get revenge on this town that had killed their parents and their grandparents down through the generations. This time, the hunting and the terror were going the other way.

  ADAM was feeling more in control by the time he reached the boat dock. Probably he shouldn’t have overreacted to the bag. Or to Sara earlier. But he’d been on edge since the moment he’d opened his eyes.

  “Sorry for hurrying you back here,” he apologized when he’d tied up and helped the Carltons back onto the planking. “I want to find out what’s in this thing.”

  “No problem,” John answered.

  It was obvious from the tone of the other man’s voice that he’d also like to know what was in the yellow bag. Adam didn’t offer to share the information. Really, he would have preferred to have been on his own when he’d found the damn thing. He counted himself lucky that he’d been the one and not someone else on the staff.

  Would they have brought it to him? Would they have pitched it in the dark water? Or would they have known what the thing was and hidden it? Ordinarily he wouldn’t make that assumption. But he was learning that the town kept the secrets of the swamp to itself.

  “I can give you a refund,” he said. “Or if you’re going to be in the area tomorrow, I can give you another trip into the swamp for free.”

  The couple exchanged glances.

  “A free trip,” Barbara said.

  “Okay. Good.” Free trips weren’t something he handed out on a regular basis, because he knew that Barnette could be tight with his money. He wanted an accounting of how much was being spent and how much was being taken in, although he didn’t insist that the park make a profit. Sometimes receipts were ahead of expenses and sometimes they weren’t. If the operation needed extra cash, the owner had reluctantly supplied it.

  But Adam didn’t plan to push his luck in that department. He led the way to the service counter, where Amy was staring at them.

  Her gaze flicked to the bag, then quickly away.

  “You seen anything like this?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He was almost positive she was lying, but he didn’t press the point. Instead he asked her to wr
ite up a ticket for a courtesy trip for the Carltons. When that was taken care of, he headed back to his cabin. He didn’t know exactly why he wanted to be alone when he opened the damn bag. It was just a feeling he had.

  Probably it came from his wolf instincts. Subliminal awareness was always stronger when he was a gray shape running free in the darkness of the night.

  But he wasn’t a wolf at the moment. And he wasn’t going to change now, not when someone could come marching up to his cabin and find a dangerous animal inside.

  So he set the bag on the kitchen table, then started working at the knotted twine that held the top closed. Of course, he could have slit it with his penknife, but he wanted to keep as much of the artifact intact as possible. And besides, the knot told him something about whoever had left the bag.

  It wasn’t any kind of expert knot. It was a crude series of ties, probably done in haste.

  As he worked, he became aware that the makeshift bag was giving off a pungent odor. Stopping, he took a cautious sniff. The last thing he wanted was to find himself overcome by more drugged fumes like last night.

  But this was a clean odor, not like the smoke of the night before. When he’d worked the knot loose, he carefully spread open the cloth. Inside was a collection of leaves and twigs and a few other things, like chicken feathers.

  He lifted a sprig of something and sniffed. The unmistakable scent of feverfew filled his nostrils. It was hard to describe. Something like mothballs. But not as unpleasant as moth repellent. The sprig wasn’t dried. It had been picked fresh and put into the bag, where it had wilted.

  Its condition told him something about the length of time the bag had been there. Only a few days, because the herbs inside hadn’t had time to go brittle.

  Herbs. Yes. That was a good guess. In addition to the feverfew, he recognized the smell and the small leaves of a thyme sprig. There were others, too. But he wasn’t an expert on the subject, so he couldn’t be sure what they all were.