Moon Cursed: The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles, Book 1

by Centanni, Tori

  Raff squared his shoulders and stood tall. “We’re not halflings. We’re werewolves. And we’re not here for a territorial pissing contest.”

  I nearly fell over in shock. After his submissive demurring to the elf guy (if he was an elf), it was a refreshing change of pace to have “take-no-shit” Raff back.

  “Werewolves are not on equal footing with shifters, but if you’d like to test that…” He trailed off, when the coyotes around us snapped their jaws and growled to emphasize his point.

  “We’re not here to fight. Are you Brandon?” I asked.

  He sized me up before answering with a gruff, “I am.”

  “I spoke with your girlfriend? Sister? A woman who lives at your house,” I said. He frowned, clearly not liking that idea but I pressed on. “She said you’d be willing to answer some questions about hunters who attacked you a couple months back.”

  One of the coyotes behind me barked. It was a sharp bark and had the sound of a command.

  Brandon sighed. “Yeah, okay. Three questions. And then you need to leave our turf.”

  “Why three?” I asked. Raff ribbed me with his elbow. “I mean, three is fine, I guess.” Now I had to consider my questions carefully, so I ran through my list of most pressing ones. There were too many. I glanced over at Raff, who nodded encouragingly. I swallowed. My mouth was dry. “Can you give me a detailed account of the men who attacked you, possibly including a license plate number or name?”

  One of the coyotes to my left made a sound that was remarkably similar to a groan.

  Brandon blinked. And then he dropped his arms to his sides. “There were five guys, okay? They wore camouflage and one of them said they were the ‘Guardians of Pure Life,’ or some crap. None of them gave me names and I didn’t see a vehicle, but one of them was clinging to car keys for dear life. They jumped me outside of Crow and shot my leg with a silver bullet. They would have shot me again, but I shifted and went for one of their throats. They got freaked and ran. I would have thought they were just mundane muggers or something from the way they reacted to my shifting if they hadn’t been using silver bullets.” He shrugged. “That’s about all I can tell you.”

  “How did they know you were a shifter?” Raff asked. It was a damned good question.

  “I’m guessing they figured out Crow is a supernatural bar, and did the math.”

  “Could they have seen you shift?” I asked, without even thinking. The question just leapt out of my mouth.

  “Nope. I’m always careful and we can sense when humans are around. I’d never shift in those circumstances.”

  “Of course not. You’d just stand naked in the middle of a street surrounded by coyotes with people in houses a hundred feet away.”

  Brandon huffed. “That’s three,” he said, and before I could protest, he shifted back. Again, I was stunned by how quick the transformation was.

  The coyotes surrounded us and one let out a bark to encourage us forward. They herded us like dogs herding sheep all the way back to Raff’s car, and then waited while we drove away. I guess they really wanted to make sure we were gone.

  “Well, they were friendly,” I said. It was half-sarcastic, but in truth, they could have been worse: growled at us or chased us off without giving us anything. Brandon actually had spoken to us, even if he hadn’t really told us anything new, except for the hunter’s stupid group name. “Guardians of Pure Life.” Apparently made up of five guys, camouflage clothes, guns with silver bullets.

  “They were pretentious assholes,” Raff said. “I told you they think they’re better than us.”

  “Who cares what they think?” I said.

  Raff’s expression was dark, his jaw set. “You do. Because you agree with them.”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to fight about it. “I don’t agree that we’re like… unworthy or something. I just think it would be nice if I could control when I did or did not turn into a giant hairy dog. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Raff looked at me like I was an alien who’d just been plopped into the passenger seat of his car and he didn’t know how he was going to get out of this situation.

  “Look, regardless of what I or the coyotes think, we have one goal: stop these asshole monster hunters so I can go back to my life without a chaperone and you could go back to…whatever it is you do.”

  “Freelance web design.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “That’s what I do. I design web sites. It pays well and I set my own hours on a project-by-project basis.”

  I didn’t know what I expected, but it actually made sense. Being a werewolf prevented most of us from keeping normal hours and required us to be away from the workplace during the full moon, which didn’t always fall on a weekend. That made freelance work particularly appealing.

  “I knew you were a nerd,” I said, smiling.

  Raff rolled his eyes. “I’m a highly sought after professional. And at least I don’t have to deal with customers face to face.”

  “Fair point,” I said, because tonight’s customers had been particularly trying. “Well, then, let’s catch some hunters so you can go back to building websites.”

  “That would be great,” he said. “How?”

  “I actually happen to have a plan.”

  A ridiculous, dangerous and potentially deadly plan, but it was better than nothing. Which was the alternative.

  Chapter 16

  “This isn’t a plan,” Raff said, as he checked himself in the full length mirror hanging inside his closet door. The faux fur was definitely too much and he seemed to realize that because he shrugged off the coat.

  “Why do you even have a fur coat?” I asked.

  “It’s fake, and it’s my mom’s,” he said. “But you said ‘dress like a werewolf.’ Which I reiterate, is not a plan.”

  “It’s part of a plan. Step one, if you will.” I riffled through this hangers. His dresser was full of cartoony or ironic t-shirts with various wolves on them. He had everything from cheap Halloween tees to the famous Three Wolves and a Moon to a bright yellow shirt that said “Wolfman” in black block letters. His dressier shirts consisted mostly of flannel button-downs and a few collared shirts that would be appropriate for a job interview, but did not convey any hint of magic or supernatural ability.

  “I can wear one of the wolf shirts,” Raff said hopefully, as he unbuttoned the blue-and-white pinstripe shirt he’d put on beneath the coat.

  “Wolf shirts do not say ‘I am a werewolf.’ They say, ‘I put bacon on my veggie burger to be ironic and I’m three months away from sporting a man-bun.’”

  Raff tore off his current shirt and my breath caught. The scents of his aftershave and soap, pine and nutmeg, mingled and wafted over to me. I realized exactly how close I was standing to him. He smelled good. Plus, he had abs. Like, actual abs you could see. I knew he hit the gym but seeing him without a shirt was proof that he took his workouts seriously. I swallowed and cleared my throat, forcing myself to look away from his chest.

  “You don’t really need to look like a werewolf. They know who were are, remember? You just need to look… you know…” I turned my hand in the air as if trying to conjure the right word. “Not like you’d rather be a comic book store.”

  “I would rather be a comic book store,” he said, and walked across the room to his dresser. He opened the t-shirt drawer. I started to protest, but he produced a plain black t-shirt, which he shook in my direction before pulling it over his head as if to say “See, I have normal t-shirts, too.” Then he grabbed one of his flannel shirts and tugged it on over the t-shirt. “How about I just be me?”

  “Sure. That works. Just try to look imposing. If they shoot first, we’re pretty screwed.”

  “I’m sort of hoping part of your plan involves not getting shot,” he said, glancing in the mirror again as he ran fingers through his damp hair. We’d taken a break to shower and scarf down slices of a pizza we’d picked up on the way back to his house. I’d put o
n leggings, a black skirt with sequined trim, and a black sweater, and I’d done my Gothy not-at-work-makeup. It felt like warpaint to have thick black lines around my eyes.

  Now it was almost midnight, which seemed like the perfect time to try and lure monster hunters out of hiding. If this were a movie, this would be the part where we’d put on kevlar vests and get backup. We did have backup, in the form of a reluctant vampire who’d agree to keep watch, but I wasn’t counting on Damien actually swooping into help if things got dicey. Besides, while vampires were preternaturally fast, I didn’t know how they stacked up against the speed of a bullet. And I was really hoping tonight wasn’t the night I found out.

  “The plan is to get these hunters to come out of hiding, and avoid getting shot while doing it. Which means being at the places they’ll be looking for us.”

  “And then what?” Raff asked. It was a fair question.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought that far ahead so much as I didn’t know how this was going to go.

  “Then we stop them.”

  Raff smiled wryly. “Oh, is that all? You make it sound so easy.”

  “With any luck, it will be,” I said.

  * * *

  Raff stood on tiptoe, trying to look over one of the boards nailed across the window. There was a thin silver of window at the top that hadn’t been covered. Fire had burned the wood above the window frame, and heat had blown out the glass. The firefighters—or maybe my landlord—had nailed boards over some of the windows and doors, but there were still gaping holes where fire had eaten through the wood. Most of my stuff was still inside, ruined by fire, smoke, or the copious amounts of water used to extinguish the flames.

  I wasn’t superficial enough to care too much about stuff but still, knowing that all of my photos and collectables and posters were ruined was painful. Especially because it hadn’t been ruined in a random accident. The hunters had intended to ruin it all and probably hoped to kill me in the process.

  Anger flashed through me and I balled my fists. There was still a small part of me that wanted to go hide under a blanket until this was over and it was safe to come out, only these guys weren’t going to stop until I was dead. And even then, they’d keep going after those like me, innocent people turned into werewolves by happenstance.

  “It’s really bad,” Raff reported, returning to my side.

  “Thanks for the update,” I said.

  “I just mean, they did a number on the place.”

  “Do you think they thought I was home?” I asked, surprised at myself for voicing the question.

  “I think they would have happily set the fire if you were,” Raff said. “But if they spent that much time soaking everything in accelerant, it’s a good bet they knew you weren’t.”

  “Then why burn it down?” It came out like a whine, because the full impact of what I’d loss was starting to hit me. I was standing outside my home, but my home had been reduced to ash and dust and charred wood. I couldn’t go collapse onto my bed when this was all over because my bed was gone.

  “As a warning, I suppose,” Raff said. He put a hand on my shoulder and for once, I didn’t immediately shrug it off. Even with my black jacket on, the November air was chilly and the warmth of his hand was steadying. “The question is, are they going to know we’re here? No one would come here in the middle of the night.” He dropped his hand. “Well, no one with sense.”

  I punched him in the shoulder. He smiled. “They only know a few locations, right? I mean, they know the orchard, but clearly they’re too chicken-shit to attack it head on, so they attacked Drake and Holly when they were separated from the group. And they followed me home. They know I’m liable to come back at some point, so they’re probably watching.”

  I went back to the front of the burned house and looked out toward the sidewalk. No sign of anyone sitting in a parked car doing a stake out, but that didn’t mean they weren’t keeping an eye on the place. A glint in a tree rooted in the dirt at the edge of the sidewalk caught my eye. If it had rained today, I’d have chalked it up to water in the branches, but it had been dry so I stepped closer to investigate. The minute I realized what I was looking at, I turned away slowly and carefully studied the tree next to it in the same manner.

  “There’s a camera on the tree,” I said, facing away from the camera and toward the gray husk of a house. It looked like a cheap nanny cam, the kind operated with batteries that only recorded when motion was detected. It had been slapped on the tree trunk at a height meant to monitor the house’s front door. “Why would they mount a camera when they burned the place down?”

  Raff walked toward me, only surreptitiously glancing toward the small camera. And it was small.

  “Maybe one hand didn’t know what the other was doing,” he said, with a shrug. “Maybe one of them put up the camera so they’d know when you got home, and the other idiots set the fire.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s motion activated, they know we’re here now,” I said. “Sometimes, I hate to be right.”

  Raff smirked. “No, Charlie, you don’t.”

  I shot him a wry smile and then made another round of the perimeter. I kept a tight hold of the taser in my pocket, and stopped to bend down and look into in the window that led to my small wolf-out room. The window was still boarded up from when Raff had helped me cover it, the bullet hole still visible on top of the wood. The fire hadn’t done much damage downstairs, at least not enough to eat these boards.

  I came back around the front of the house just in time to see Raff go still, sniffing the air.

  “Is it them?” I asked, sniffing the air myself. All I smelled was the mossy, grassy scent of leaves on the muddy ground and a faint hit of Raff’s aftershave.

  “It’s your pal,” he said, nodding at something across the street. I saw the pale figure looming near the neighbor’s porch and felt my shoulders relax. It was Damien, the vampire, who’d come to be our backup. I resisted the urge to wave in acknowledgment.

  And then something happened. There was a change in the air. The faint aroma of sweat and something else hit my nostrils like a truck. I sniffed the air. The second odor was fear. But how could I possibly smell that?

  Raff must have smelled it at the same time because he went rigid and began searching around for the source.

  I did the same, catching only a flash of movement before the gun went off. I hit the ground, pressing myself into the soggy grass. My heart pounded so loudly that I barely heard the bullet slam into the house behind me. Raff, idiot that he was, ran toward the sound of the gun.

  I caught my breath and forced myself up, unsure what to do. I’d expected them to approach us. I hadn’t expected them to fire from the dark, but of course that was how they’d attack. They were cowards. Brandon’s description proved that, as did their prior attacks: firing through windows and chasing down cars.

  I ran across the yard to the other side of the house. In my periphery, I saw Damien—a white blur of a monster—running toward Raff. That was good. Raff needed backup and I was ill-equipped with my little stun gun.

  This plan had seemed dangerous and stupid in my head, but it felt like our best chance to draw them out. Except now they were just shooting from the shadows.

  Blood thrummed in my ears as I ducked behind the side of the burnt-out house. Another shot was fired and I could almost feel the bullet slam into my stomach. What if this brilliant idea of mine got Raff killed? Why did I always have to run straight into danger and not think things through? Because I didn’t know how else to make anything happen and I was incapable of sitting back and waiting. I always had been.

  I swallowed and tried to calm my breathing. Damien was there, with his vampire strength and speed. The hunters were no match for him. And Raff was a trained fighter. A warrior. That’s what I’d been told the day we met. He could handle himself.

  Even against hunters with silver bullets.

  The hand was over my mouth before I caught wind of his scent, a mixture
of sweat and unfamiliar soap. Except it was familiar. I hadn’t liked being a wolf and I found my newly sensitive sense of smell unappealing, so I’d tried to ignore it. But the smell of this hunter was something I’d smelled many times before, whether I’d realized it or not. My brain spun, even as the man gruffly pulled me away from the building, one sweaty hand across my mouth and chin, the other around my stomach.

  I waited until he stopped pulling me, and then lifted a leg to kick as high as I could. I didn’t quite get him in the balls, but I did land a blow against his knee that made him stumble. His grip around me loosened and I tore away, spinning to face him.

  My jaw nearly dropped.

  “John?” I asked. In front of me, wearing a camouflage jacket and holding a silver pistol, was my coworker John from the yogurt shop, the guy who’d only lasted a few months before quitting. I felt like the ground was crumbling beneath me as I tried to remain standing.

  “Shut up, bitch! You’re a dirty wolf.” The hatred in his eyes burned like lasers. He was looking at me like he wanted to gut me with his bare hands. I thought back to all of the furtive looks he’d given me at work, the ones where I thought he was trying to figure out how to ask me out, and felt physically sick. He hadn’t been working up the nerve to request a date. He’d been wondering how to destroy me. How had I gotten that so wrong?

  “How do you know what I am?” I asked.

  He shook his head and spat. Like, actually expectorated saliva onto the ground. Gross. “You always took off on the full moon. How obvious could you make it? But I suspected you long before that. It’s why I took the stupid job. First time I passed you on the street, you smelled like a wet dog.”

  “I absolutely never smelled like a dog,” I said, appalled. “Except maybe when I’m actually in wolf form but that definitely doesn’t count.”

  “You’re disgusting,” John said with acid in his voice that burned. He raised his gun.

  I swallowed, my heart leaping into my throat. I didn’t want to die. “Wait,” I said. “It’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to become a werewolf, trust me.” I slid my hand into my pocket. “I was bitten in a freak accident. It’s not something I want.”