Witching Moon

by Rebecca York

  SARA sped past the cabin and continued down the road, then turned off onto a side trail. Her teeth were clamped together to keep herself from screaming.

  She pulled to a halt just before the trail disappeared into a flat stretch of black water and started running into the swamp.

  Jumbled images were still coming to her.

  Austen Barnette lay crumpled on the ground. Unmoving. Probably dead.

  Adam still sat propped against the tree trunk, the group of painted witches standing over him.

  She watched them kneel down, watched them tearing at his clothing.

  God, what were they going to do to him?

  She ran toward the clearing where the scene was happening. The last time she’d confronted these people, they’d been wearing hoods over their heads. Now they were wearing nothing. Just as she reached the campfire, a figure loomed in front of her. One of the naked, painted men. One of the people who had hurt her.

  Only now he was alone.

  He stopped short, staring at her with malevolent, glittering eyes. Before she could react, he attacked—not physically but with one of those thunderbolts that made the inside of her skull feel like she’d been strapped into the electric chair and someone had pulled the switch.

  She struggled to stay on her feet. Struggled to find a way to protect herself from him. Because if she couldn’t do it, he would kill her.

  ADAM lay on the ground, forcing himself not to react to Falcon’s goading words, or to the feel of hands moving roughly over him, stripping the clothing from his body, tearing fabric and popping buttons.

  They had killed Barnette, and there had been nothing he could do about it. They planned to kill him, too. They had used Barnette to lure him out here. And he had walked right into the trap.

  He recognized two of them. One was the workman he’d seen that afternoon at Barnette’s house, the one who called himself Falcon. The other was the sexpot who had come to the park and tried to get into his pants. Falcon had addressed her as Starflower.

  She was tearing at his pants now. But her motives were a bit different. She wanted him naked and vulnerable.

  He concentrated on keeping his body limp. For a while there, his mind had been filled with the smoke. Thoughts had floated in a cloud of cotton wool. But the drug had drifted away, and now he was only a little impaired. At least he hoped so.

  He kept his lids lowered and his mouth slack as they tore off his shirt and pants. Then his undershorts and shoes and socks.

  By the time they had finished, he was already chanting, his voice low, barely audible.

  “Taranis. Epona. Cerridwen.” He tried to repeat the phrase as one of them pushed him onto his back and kicked him in the midsection.

  The chant turned into a groan of pain. He lost his place and had to start all over again, wondering if he was going to manage the change under these circumstances.

  Another of the bastards aimed a kick at his head, and he somehow ducked away from the blow.

  Hands clenched against the pain, he focused on getting the words out.

  “Ga. Feart. Cleas. Duais. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdai is dtreorai na deithe thu.”

  The crowd of people had sprung into savage action, flailing at him with hands and feet, making it all but impossible for him to focus.

  “What the hell are you saying?” one of them shouted.

  He didn’t answer. He was beyond speech. The change was on him now. His vocal cords would no longer form human sounds.

  One of the women screamed. Then another. All of them jumped back as his body jerked and contorted. Wolf hair sprouted on his skin, covering his body in a thick, silver-tipped pelt. The color and structure of his eyes changed as he rolled over so he could stand on all fours. He was no longer a man but an animal, far more suited to the swamp than the crowd of painted, naked people who surrounded him.

  “Jesus Christ! He’s the wolf who went after us. He’s the damn wolf!” one of them shouted.

  “Run!”

  Yes he screamed in his mind. Yes, you bastards. Run.

  Howling his rage aloud, he sprang at the man who had kicked him, tearing at a naked thigh, finding that he wasn’t in quite as good shape as he’d thought. His movements were slower, more sluggish than they should be.

  He could hear someone shouting, but he was too absorbed in the chase to pay attention to the words.

  People were scattering, screaming. He charged a woman and brought her to the ground, slashing at her arm and leg. Then he rounded on a man, dragging him to his knees.

  He was slashing the man’s naked back when something hit him. A blow to the back of his head that sent him sprawling.

  He thought at first that one of them had thrown a rock at him. But it wasn’t something physical, he realized. It was like a mental jolt to his brain. Like what Sara had described. Like when he’d thought they were shooting at him. Only now he knew for sure that had just been an illusion his mind had manufactured to cope with what it hadn’t understood.

  He turned and faced the enemy. Three of them were holding hands, their eyes bright with concentration. It was the workman guy, Miss Sexpot, and another one of the women.

  He felt another invisible blow slam into him and fell back, gasping with the pain.

  He had watched them kill Barnette like this. They were going to do the same thing to him, because teeth and claws weren’t going to cut it against their thunderbolts. His only hope was to get them before they got him. But he couldn’t do it. When he tried to stagger toward them, he couldn’t make his legs cooperate.

  He sank to the ground, panting, trying to keep his brain from dissolving under the force of the pain. He was going to die here in this patch of swamp, because the hatred radiating from these people was going to destroy him.

  He longed to disappear into unconsciousness to make the pain go away. But he knew that the moment he let go, he was giving in to death. So he focused all of his energy on keeping hold of consciousness. It was all he could do. He knew that it wasn’t nearly enough.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  BY SOME MIRACLE, the agony suddenly lessened. Somehow Adam managed to raise his head in time to see the three witches jolt as though they’d been hit by rifle bullets. The woman he didn’t recognize fell to her knees. The workman and the sexpot whirled around, as if to face another enemy. Had Delacorte found him?

  Not the sheriff. Adam’s heart stopped, then started pounding hard as he saw Sara standing beside a large tree, her eyes focused on the group.

  The sky had been a clear blue moments earlier. Now storm clouds swirled over her, turning the whole scene dark and ominous. Trees swayed as the wind picked up bits of plant material and sent them flying through the air.

  He wanted to howl in fear and frustration.

  Sara was here! He’d made sure she was safe. He’d counted on that. But now she’d rushed into danger to help him.

  She must be fighting the witches. And whatever she’d done had broken their hold on him. The pain still pounded in his head. But he could move now.

  He saw Sara sag against the tree, saw the witches move from their frozen positions. The two still on their feet, Falcon and Starflower, bent to the other woman and pulled her up, pulled her toward Sara.

  Lightning flashed in the clouds above them. He heard Sara gasp and knew they had hit her with another one of their mental artillery shells.

  Anger surged through him. With a savage snarl, he gathered his remaining strength and sprang, taking down the one named Falcon, clawing at his back, biting at his shoulders, mauling for no other purpose than to inflict pain on the bastard who was hurting Sara.

  The man screamed. The unknown woman fell to the ground again, drew up her knees, and folded her hands protectively over her head, no longer in the fight.

  The man’s body went limp, and Adam instantly backed off, planning to go after Starflower.

  He made a low, growling sound when he saw all of her attention was focused on Sara.

&nb
sp; His body coiled as he prepared to spring at her. But a voice in his head rang out, “NO!”

  It was Sara. Warning him off. Warning him to stay out of it. There was a charged moment when the two women faced each other, and he knew that only one of them would come out of the confrontation alive.

  The clouds turned darker. The wind roared through the trees, sending leaves flying like small guided missiles.

  Energy seemed to crackle in the air. Deadly energy. Sara squared her shoulders, her whole body rigid with concentration.

  Then Starflower’s body jerked, and he thought she would go down. But she stiffened her legs and thrust her head forward as though every cell of her mind and body were focused on her enemy: Sara.

  The struggle was one he could only imagine.

  Sara had warned him to stay clear. But when he heard her scream and saw her knees buckle, he went mad, leaping at the woman.

  As his teeth closed around her arm, a bolt of electricity seared through his body, but he held on, bringing her to the ground, aware in some part of his mind that she was already as limp as a dead bird. That she was already defeated.

  He might have ripped out the bitch’s throat just for the satisfaction of it, but he head Sara shout again, “No. Don’t do it!”

  Lifting his head, he watched her stagger forward. Watched the clouds above her float away in the howling wind, leaving the sky as blue as it had been a few minutes earlier.

  “Adam, Adam,” she shouted above the roaring in his ears. “It’s over.”

  He raised his head and stared at her, dragging himself on all fours across the ground toward her. She looked pale. Deep purple streaks marred the tender skin under her eyes, making them appear bruised. But she was moving under her own power.

  They met at the edge of the clearing. She knelt beside him, and he turned his face, rubbing it against the parts of her he could reach, her leg, her hand. He was hurting and bone weary, but he scooted closer, needing the contact, needing to know she was all right.

  She curved her body around his, running her fingers over his head and his silky ears, then lower to the thick hairs that ringed his neck.

  He sighed with pleasure at the contact, then shifted so that he could meet her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked urgently.

  He gave a small nod, his gaze intense on her face, because as a wolf, there was no way he could ask the questions he urgently needed answered.

  But she seemed to understand what he wanted. “I’m okay,” she whispered, circling him with her arms, pressing close, stroking her hand along the length of his back, her touch soothing and sensual at the same time.

  Long moments passed. Long moments when all he wanted to do was nestle in her arms, feeling her magic touch. But before he had his fill of her, she made an effort to rouse herself.

  “Delacorte is coming. You have to get out of here. You have to change before he sees you.”

  He kept his gaze on hers, asking a silent question in his mind. What good would it do to slink away now? The damage was already done.

  “Don’t worry about the damn witches. They won’t remember the wolf. They won’t remember much of anything. I figured out how to hurt them. I…I put up some kind of shield in my mind. It sent their nasty little guided missiles back at them. And I think it fried their damn brains.”

  Was she right? Well, they’d find out.

  “Go on. Go! Hurry.”

  He gathered his last small bits of energy, then heaved himself to his feet and staggered away from the clearing and into the underbrush. He was beyond fatigue. Almost beyond remembering what Sara had said. All he wanted to do was sink into the ground and sleep.

  But she had told him to change. And he had something else he must do, also. He raked the claws of his right paw down his left side, fighting off the jolt of pain. Then he turned his head and bit into his right front leg. The pain helped to concentrate his mind. With his remaining strength, he changed back to his human form, then lost consciousness.

  Voices woke him.

  Sara and Delacorte talking.

  He pushed himself to a sitting position and dragged shaky fingers through his hair. His arm hurt. And so did his side. He looked down and saw the long scratches and the bite he’d inflicted. He also saw he was naked. But so was almost everybody else out there in the clearing. And he wasn’t the one who had torn off his clothing, he reminded himself.

  It took a considerable effort to make it to his feet. When he did, he staggered toward Sara.

  She looked up when she saw him, then ran to him and embraced him.

  “Adam! Are you all right? Where were you?”

  He hugged her to him. She’d seen the wolf at his savage worst. But she wasn’t running in the other direction. She was still letting him hold her. For that he was profoundly grateful. “I’m all right.”

  Delacorte strode toward him. “What happened here?”

  He shifted Sara so that she was standing at his side, his arm still around her. “I’m not sure. The smoke did something wacky to my brain. I remember Barnette staggering out of the swamp, terrified and naked. I was already kind of out of it because I had to take off the mask to talk to you. I’d put it back on, but Barnette clawed it off again.

  “Then this gang of painted savages came after Barnette. I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think they did something with their minds that killed him.” He turned and looked at the men and women sprawled around on the ground. “I mean, they used some kind of mental weapon on him. After that, I remember them tearing my clothing off.” He stopped and looked around again. “I’d like to put my pants on, if you don’t mind—if they aren’t ripped up.”

  He made his way to the tree where he’d been sitting and found his clothing. The trousers were torn but wearable. One half of the hook at the waistband was torn away. But he pulled up the zipper, which more or less kept them on. Getting partially dressed gave him a chance to plan what he was going to say next.

  Turning back to Delacorte, he said, “Whatever they were doing to Barnette, I think they were trying to do to me. It felt like they were sending flaming arrows into my head. It hurt like hell. It must have screwed up my memory, because that’s the last thing I remember.”

  “Lucky it didn’t kill you, too.”

  “I’m younger and stronger than he was.”

  “Some of them are clawed up and bitten,” the sheriff said in a tight voice.

  He could see Sara’s eyes on him. He opened his mouth and said, “Maybe a bear or some other big animal came out of the swamp and attacked them. Maybe the smoke made him crazy. It looks like the thing attacked me, too.” He pointed to the scratches on his side and to the bite on his leg. “But I honestly don’t remember any of it.”

  The sheriff peered at him. “Yeah, you’re kind of mauled up. You’d better get some antiseptic on those wounds.”

  “I will.” He looked toward the witches. “Are they dead?” he asked.

  “One woman is dead.”

  Sara held herself steady. He assumed the dead woman was Starflower. He assumed she had died in the battle with Sara. But he wasn’t going to ask about that now.

  “The rest of them are alive,” Delacorte was saying. “But none of them is making sense. It’s like their brains are cooked. I’d like to know what happened to them.”

  Adam gave him a steady look. “Maybe this is a case of a bunch of druggies poisoning themselves. Maybe they got too much of that smoke, and it killed too many of their brain cells. It was pretty potent stuff. Or maybe it made them so crazy that they turned their death rays on each other. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group.”

  Delacorte took in the explanations. After a moment, he nodded.

  Adam wondered if the sheriff believed any of it. Maybe and maybe not. But at least the drugged smoke and the big animal gave him something to put in his police report. It played better than the real scenario: the werewolf and his mate fighting off the evil witches.

  Adam
looked back at the naked men and women sprawled on the ground and added, “One of them told me his name was Falcon. He said he was the leader of the clan. I guess they had names they used among themselves. I recognized him. He was a workman at Barnette’s place.”

  “Yeah.” The sheriff looked from him to the casualties and back again. “It won’t be hard to get his real name. I suppose the same ought to be true for the others. I’ve seen some of them around. The dead woman worked at the card shop on Main Street.”

  “I heard them say they were going to kill Barnette because he was the one who led the mob against Jenna Foster. Then apparently he grabbed the land of one of the witches he ran out of town.”

  Delacorte looked startled.

  “He did?” Sara gasped.

  “I don’t know if it’s true,” Adam answered.

  “Maybe the part about Jenna Foster was in those historical records that got stolen.”

  “Why would Barnette want them saved?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Delacorte answered, his language stronger than Adam had ever heard it. “Maybe he felt guilty all those years. Maybe in some twisted way, he wanted to be punished.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t know the dippy lady down at the historical society wasn’t much for housecleaning,” Adam gave another plausible explanation.

  In the distance, a siren wailed. “I sent for the paramedics,” Delacorte said. “And my deputies.”

  “That smoke and the thunderbolts about did me in,” Adam said, speaking the truth. “I know you want to question me some more. But there’s not much I can tell you.”

  Sara moved closer to him. “Adam’s in pretty bad shape. Can I take him home?” she asked.

  “In the car you stole?” Delacorte asked.

  She flushed scarlet. “Oh Lord, I did, didn’t I.”

  “How did you know that Adam was in trouble?” the sheriff asked.

  She took her bottom lip between her teeth, then let it go before she started to speak. “A…a vision. I saw it in a vision. Images…pictures have been coming into my mind since I got to Wayland. Dreams that turned out to be real. I knew Adam was in trouble, and I jumped up in a panic and ran down to tell Tyreen. But I knew right away she didn’t believe me. So I…I took her car. I’m sorry, but I had to do it.”