(Moon 1) - Killing Moon

by Rebecca York

  He'd started to turn away, but his father's words held him, words he'd heard in some form or another many times before.

  "You dare to blame me, you shit-head moron? Wait till it happens to you. They call it chemistry." His father gave a harsh laugh. "They hardly understand the meaning of the word. They don't know the burning need. The lust. The pain. Wait until you're old enough to start searching for a mate. When you meet her, you'll know. Fucking her once won't get her out of your system. Because a wolf mates for life, sonny.

  "The good part is that she'll want to fuck you as much as you want to fuck her. When you catch her scent, when you touch her, you'll understand what it's like for one of us, you sanctimonious bastard. So if you want to have some fun with the gals, do it now. 'Cause when you meet your mate, your cock just won't go in any other hole."

  He'd heard it all before, more times than he could count. This time his hands balled into fists, and he struck out, caught his father on the chin. One minute they were standing; the next minute they were rolling on the worn vinyl tile, snarling, hands at each other's throats.

  It was his mother who had dashed back into the kitchen and stopped the fight by dousing them with a pan of cold water. It was his mother who had fixed the cut on his cheek, hugged him fiercely, and said he'd better leave. She'd tried to give him money. He told her he didn't need it, but he'd promised to call her when he found a place to live. He'd clung to her for long moments, the way he had when he was a little boy and he'd scraped the skin off his knee. Then he'd gone, because he knew what would happen if he stayed. But his father's words were still ringing in his ears.

  He'd studied genetics and social biology, and he knew that bonding with one female was counter to the usual male survival tactic. In most species, the male scattered his seed as far and wide as possible. He'd come to the conclusion that the male werewolf needed to be around for the transition of his sons from boy to wolf. He needed to teach them the ritual and coach them on surviving the pain of transition.

  The werewolf was unique in that. And unique among wolves, too. Ross had also studied wolf behavior and had learned that in a wolf pack, there was only one alpha male, and all the others were subservient to him. Apparently werewolves didn't conform to the same social order. Every adult male was an alpha male. And if they stayed in one another's company for long, they would fight for supremacy. He'd explained that to Megan this morning, but not in such concrete terms.

  Once again, he found his thoughts wandering to her. Cursing under his breath, he pulled his attention back to the notes spread across his lap. His life depended on thinking through his options, on not making another mistake with Arnott tonight. And instead of planning his return to the scene of the disaster, he was thinking about Megan and his father.

  Of course, it didn't take a genius to figure out why. He was scared shitless. Not about Arnott. About what had already happened with Megan in the two days she'd been here.

  He wanted her—wanted her in a way he had never wanted another woman. Wanted her with a bone-deep hunger that clawed at his insides. And in the kitchen this morning she'd let him know in no uncertain terms that the feelings weren't all one-sided.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head in denial. He wasn't going to let hormones or chemistry or genes rule his life. He wasn't Vic Marshall. He was in control of himself.

  He wasn't a selfish bastard like his father, incapable of real love, only interested in fulfilling his own needs—and to hell with anyone else he hurt in the process.

  He wasn't a hostage to his genetic heritage. He—

  Another scene leaped into his mind. The woods at night. Crawford. The wolf following the scent of his prey. The blood lust of the kill. It had been the night of the full moon. Was that a coincidence? Or did the moon really affect werewolves—the way the old myths said?

  He made a strangled sound in his throat. When he realized he was mangling the sheet of paper in his hand, he loosened his grip.

  He had been younger then. Unaware of the danger that came from within. But he'd learned to handle his aggressions, channel them in an acceptable direction. And now he was damn well in control of himself. Ross Marshall, private eye.

  Who had dropped his phone in the woods where a serial killer could find it. And if he wanted to stay healthy, he had better get that phone back.

  Then there was the rest of the stuff he'd abandoned beside the fence. His brain had been too muzzy to think about that earlier. Now he closed his eyes, picturing the knapsack. He hadn't been stupid enough to stick a name tag on it, of course. Inside he'd stowed his wire cutters, the adjustable wrench, the set of Craftsman screwdrivers. The flashlight. And the big-ticket item: a top of the line pair of B & L binoculars.

  Arnott had probably pored over the contents, trying to figure out who had lost the pack. But there was nothing to tie any of that to a PI named Ross Marshall. The phone was another matter.

  A knock on Megan's office door had her looking up. She was startled to see Dr. Carter Stillwell standing there.

  She stared at his thin face, mop of curly hair, and deep-set brown eyes. When they'd first met, she'd thought he was handsome. Then she'd stopped liking the way the pieces fit together. Now she saw he was working to keep his features composed.

  "Carter?"

  He stepped into the room, glided toward her desk on silent feet. "I was in the neighborhood. Since I don't seem to be able to get you on the phone, I was hoping to catch you in."

  "I've been out of the office for a few days. I'm just getting back. And we had some problems here this morning. A break-in."

  He kept his unnerving gaze fixed on her. "The secretary gave me an earful."

  "We're all kind of upset."

  He waited a beat, then lowered his voice before saying, "I've got some new information that could be very helpful to you on your gene therapy project. Get you funding that won't have to rely on… a boss who's lost interest in your research."

  It was so completely inappropriate for him to be saying that here, she felt her jaw drop. Recovering, she said, "Carter, I'm afraid… I'm too busy right now. I've got a whole bunch of work to catch up on."

  His eyes narrowed. "I was hoping we could get together to discuss it. But you seem to be too busy all of the time lately."

  "What can I say?"

  "Really, Megan, it's a mistake to brush me off like this."

  "I'm not."

  "Then when can we talk? What about lunch today?"

  "I, uh—"

  Before she could finish, he stepped into the room.

  A few minutes ago, he had put her on the spot. Now relief flooded through her. "Uh… Walter. This is Carter Stillwell. Carter, this is my boss, Walter Galveston."

  They shook hands stiffly, made the appropriate noises.

  "Megan and I have a meeting," Walter said. "I was just coming to look for her."

  She glanced down at her hands to hide the expression on her face, since this was the first she'd heard of any meeting.

  "Well, then, I'll get out of your way." Stillwell pushed past the other man and exited the room.

  "Thanks for rescuing me," Megan breathed.

  "I could see you wanted to get rid of him. Who is he?"

  She thought about how to answer, then settled on, "I met him at a convention. He keeps making up excuses to get together with me."

  Walter looked down the hallway. "He has some nerve barging in here." Turning, he left Megan sitting at her desk. She stayed there for several moments, collecting herself, then pushed away from the desk and headed for the lab. After donning a white lab coat and rubber gloves, she reached into the refrigerator and pulled out the tube with Ross's blood.

  No, not Ross's blood. It was the wrong sample, she realized with a start as she stared at the label. Putting it back, she carefully retrieved the correct tube. She'd done hundreds of karyotypes and couldn't remember making a mistake like that before, yet this time she felt a sense of personal involvement that had always been missing in
the past. Lord, was she trying to prove there was nothing wrong with him by testing the wrong sample?

  Don't think about the man, she ordered herself. It was impossible to completely shut him out of her mind. Still, the scientist in her was able to focus on the tasks she had to accomplish. The first step was to break apart the double strands of Ross's DNA and the probe DNA being used by heating them in a solution of formamide at seventy degrees Celsius so that they could bind to each other.

  Working on autopilot, she finished the procedure, then placed the sample on a glass slide, set a cover slip on top, and sealed the edges. Next the slide went into an incubator at thirty-seven degrees Celsius, where it would have to remain overnight for the probe to hybridize with the sample chromosomes.

  Wishing she could go on to the next steps right away, she stared at the incubator. But there was no way to speed up the process. So she went back to the load of tests their boss had piled on her and Hank. Hank had already completed some of the procedures. She started on the next one, glancing over at his work area, wondering if he were making some vital mistake that was going to get them in trouble.

  But that didn't sound like Hank. He was always meticulous in the lab. In fact, the way things were going today, she was more likely to screw something up, since only half her mind was on what she was supposed to be doing.

  When she looked up and found Walter standing beside her workstation, she jumped.

  "Sorry," he apologized. "Do you have a minute?"

  Since the automatic equipment was now handling a polymerase chain reaction test, she nodded and stepped to the door.

  "In all the excitement, I forgot to ask you about that guy out in Lisbon. Ross Marshall. I thought you said he was really sick and you wanted to stay with him."

  "He got better pretty quickly."

  Her boss raised a questioning eyebrow.

  "Apparently he has remarkable recuperative powers."

  Walter's eyes flashed with interest. "I thought he had some sort of genetic defect. Is it something that affects him personally, or is he a carrier?"

  "He didn't want to give me much information." "This isn't supposed to be a guessing game. Have you started any tests on him yet?"

  Megan could have kicked herself as she recognized the eager look in his eyes. If she'd been less distracted, she would have thought of something more noncommital. "I've started the karyotyping," she answered. "Well, let me know what you find." "You really want a report on a routine case?" "From the way he approached us—and from what you're telling me—it doesn't sound routine."

  She shrugged, trying to look casual though her heart had started pounding like a trip-hammer inside her chest. She didn't want to discuss Ross Marshall with Dr. Galveston. She didn't want her boss poking into his business. But she forced a light tone into her voice when she said, "I'll let you know if I find anything interesting."

  ROSS washed the bloodstains out of the car seat as best he could, threw away the floor mat, then ate a couple of raw steaks for lunch. Pulling the blackout draperies in the bedroom, he slept until eleven-thirty that night and woke feeling almost normal. After wanning up and doing a half hour of weights, he showered and dressed in a black sweatshirt and pants. He was out of the house by twelve-thirty, hoping the late hour would provide some protection from Arnott. His namhaid, he thought, using the ancient Gaelic word.

  He had studied the language. He could probably hold a conversation in ancient Gaelic. If there was anyone to speak it with. Certainly not with his father. Vic Marshall had laughed at him when he'd first caught him studying a book on the ancient Druids, called it crap. He'd been interested in present results. Not his ancient heritage.

  Amadán. Fool, he warned himself.

  Keep your mind focused on the killer. But as he took the back roads to upper Montgomery County, he realized he was thinking about his own life. How it had worked out since the day he'd left home and never returned, except for brief visits to his mother when he knew the Big Bad Wolf was out of the house.

  He'd found himself a cheap room to rent in Cheverly, not too far from the university. Found a construction job for the summer, and lucked into his first detective case. The owner of the construction company, Phil Laniard, had been losing materials from one of his building sites. And Ross had said he could tell him who was doing it, if Laniard seeded a delivery of new lumber with wintergreen oil.

  The boss had been skeptical. But he was willing to give anything a try. Two days later, Ross led him to a garage in Dundalk where the lumber was being stored.

  That earned him a five-hundred-dollar bonus. And a referral to a guy who thought his wife was having an affair with one of their friends, only he didn't know which one.

  That time, Ross had negotiated a two-thousand-dollar fee—and earned it within the week.

  Other jobs had followed with increasing regularity as it became known that the Marshall boy could find missing objects and track people with uncanny accuracy.

  He'd banked as much of his earnings as he could spare all through college. Before he graduated, he had enough for a down payment on a run-down row house in the city. The bank had only been willing to give him a short-term loan. But that didn't matter. With his construction skills, he'd rehabbed it himself, sold it at a nice profit, and picked up another property in Ellicott City. All the time continuing his detective work.

  The two sources of income had allowed him to sock away enough to buy a twenty-four-acre tract in western Howard County with a house he could remodel to his liking.

  He'd been satisfied with his life. Until Arnott had shot him in the leg and Megan Sheridan had found him lying naked on the living room floor.

  Megan. Inevitably his thoughts had circled back to her. He tried to wrench his mind away. Tried not to think of her in the same breath with the crude language his father had used when he talked about the werewolf and his mate. But Ross was under no illusions about what he wanted to do with Megan.

  He didn't know how much of what his father had said to him over the years was true. Some of it, certainly, although he'd learned the bastard was capable of lying for effect.

  But he'd taken the warning to heart. His sexual partners had been few and far between. He'd never stayed with anyone long enough to get attached. And as he'd gotten closer to the age at which his father had married his mother, he'd stayed away from sexual liaisons altogether. Which was probably why he'd reacted like a stallion scenting a mare in heat when he'd encountered Megan. It was a plausible explanation. He wanted it to be true.

  More than that, he wanted her to stop haunting him. Her face, the touch of her hands, the way her breasts filled out the front of her T-shirt. Her sweet feminine scent, like a meadow in the sunshine.

  As the memory of her essence flooded his senses, he found himself hard and aching for her again.

  Cursing, he deliberately turned his mind to graves and bullets and the hot pain in his leg that had almost led to his death. The effect was sobering enough to drive thoughts of sex from his mind for the time being.

  After passing the spot where he'd parked last time, he drifted farther down the road, pulled onto the shoulder, and eased the SUV under some low-hanging tree branches.

  The last time he'd been here, he'd been energized—eager for the hunt. Tonight he felt subdued as he walked two dozen yards into the woods, where a thick tangle of brambles hid him from any motorists who might happen to pass by at this late hour.

  Discarding his clothing, he stood in the darkness, naked, mentally preparing himself for the pain that always came with transformation—and thinking about the words he was about to speak.

  He knew the meaning of them all. Taranis, the Lord of Thunder. Cerridwen, the Goddess of Darkness. Epona, the Goddess of Horses. Although the texts didn't say so, he was sure her influence extended to other animals as well.

  The familiar syllables flowed from his mouth.

  "Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen," he intoned, then repeated the same phrase and went on to another.


  "Gá. Feart. Cleas. Duals. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdaí is dtreoraí na déithe thú."

  His damn ancestor had asked for a miracle, a great feat of prowess, a gift from the gods. And he'd even dared to be specific—to ask for the power to change his shape.

  Ross repeated the words, felt the change—felt his jaw elongate, his teeth sharpen, his body contort as muscles and limbs transformed into the shape of his other self. Dropping to all fours, he endured the sensations of bones crunching, muscles jerking, fur sprouting from naked skin.

  In seconds it was over, and the world was a different place—rich with promise. A shiver of anticipation rippled through him as he breathed in the odors of the night. Damp soil. Rotting leaves. Insects. Tree bark. A rabbit in its burrow. All of it coming to him in layers, each scent separate and distinct and exciting.

  As always, he wanted to throw back his head and howl for the pleasure of it. But his human brain kept the words locked in his throat—kept him focused on the night's purpose.

  Ignoring the tantalizing rustling sounds in the underbrush and the scents of the animals around him, he trotted through the woods, heading for the place where he'd cut the fence.

  As he drew closer, he breathed in his own scent from four days earlier. It was still clinging to leaves and the debris on the ground but overpowered by the stench of another man, stronger, more recent, more pervasive. It could only be Arnott's. He must have come out here more than once, compulsively searching the woods for something besides the knapsack.

  Had he found the phone? Ross didn't allow himself to contemplate the possibility as he padded through the darkness.

  He was so intent on his purpose that he didn't see the glint of metal until almost too late.

  Recognition filtered into his brain, and he pulled back his right front paw. Hair rose along his spine as he stared down into the jagged teeth of the animal trap that had almost closed around his leg.

  A deep animal growl of anger welled in his throat.

  Arnott had been doing more out here than looking. He'd been busy setting traps for the animal he'd shot. The animal that had gotten away.