Kiss of a Dark Moon

by Sharie Kohler

  But then, hunting lycans, she supposed, was less work. Finding love, making it work, making it last—that was harder. Maybe impossible.

  A few deft twists and she turned off the water and stepped from the shower.

  Her wet feet soaked the hand towel she had tossed down to serve as a rug. She rubbed her hair with a larger towel until curls sprang around her face and neck in semi-dry corkscrews. Dragging the towel over her body, she slowed her ministrations as awareness stole over with the insidiousness of a big cat stalking through tall savannah grass.

  Utter silence surrounded her. A tomblike quiet that felt heavy, oppressive. The buzz of the television was gone. No voices. No music. Nothing.

  Wrapping herself in her damp towel, she pushed open the cracked bathroom door. Its oil-hungry hinges creaked, the sound loud and obscene, pinching her nerves tight.

  Darkness yawned before her, thick as smoke. The lights had been on when she entered the bathroom. Of that she was certain. Just as she was certain of one other thing now: she wasn’t alone.

  CHAPTER 11

  She froze at the threshold, fingers twisting in the towel, knowing that with the bathroom light on, she was perfectly visible. A sitting target for whoever—whatever—watched and waited.

  Water from her hair ran down her neck. The uneven rattle of her breath joined with the humming silence. She could not steady it. She squinted, straining her vision to see into the blackness. The shower-head began to drip, each tiny splash on the tub like a rocket explosion in the deafening silence.

  Taking a deep breath, she pushed down the fear, the panic that threatened to consume her, and let her training take over.

  Her senses sprang into high alert, her hand gripping her towel so tightly her fingers went numb, bloodless.

  Her free hand flew to the light switch, dousing the tiny bathroom in blackness, and guaranteeing that anyone watching her, waiting for her, was now as blind as she was.

  Assuming he was human, of course.

  Rafe’s face flashed before her eyes. Dark eyes glinting. Her heart beat harder, faster, the pulse skittering at her neck.

  Let it be him. Let it be him. As much as she never wanted to see him again, she wanted even less to come face-to-face with a lycan.

  Her mind leapt into action, assessing her options, grim as they were. Even if Rafe Santiago had stolen into her room, he wasn’t there for idle chitchat.

  The gun she had left on the table was now too far to reach without her potentially colliding with her late-night visitor. Later she could kick herself for leaving it there.

  Her bag of guns and ammo sat on the bed. One gun tucked beneath the pillow. Not too far. The pillow. Her fingers twitched reflexively, readying. Her semiautomatic, with its attached silencer and fourteen-round clip of customized silver-tipped bullets that Gideon had given her upon completing her training two years ago, was just beneath the pillow.

  Dragging a silent breath into her lungs, she dropped her towel, tossing modesty to the wind. She did not need the distraction of trying to keep herself covered as she dove for the bed.

  She eased one foot out of the bathroom, the carpet dry and flat beneath her damp feet. Another step followed, as silent and slow as the last. She concentrated on not running for the gun in a mad, panicked dash. That would only draw attention and get her killed.

  Praying that she had just forgotten the act of shutting off the television, that the overhead light had simply burned out, she continued her careful advance toward the bed. Maybe someone wasn’t in the room, breathing in the same stale air. Maybe her imagination was working overtime. Maybe, for once, her gut was wrong.

  Despite her even breaths, her heart slammed fiercely against her ribs, unconvinced.

  Knowing she had to be near the bed, she squatted, her thigh muscles tense and burning, quivering with strain and anxiety.

  Her hand brushed the scratchy bedspread, sliding along its surface, searching for the pillow.

  Anxious, she set both hands on the bed, bumping into something…firm.

  Her throat constricting shut, she backed away, hands shaking, hovering over the bed. Her lips trembled on a silent whimper.

  A hand shot out and seized her wrist in a brutal grip.

  Her whimper spilled free then, startled and terrified as a shock of light flooded the room. She squinted against the harsh intrusion of brightness.

  “Hello, there, huntress. We’ve been looking for you.”

  Her gaze narrowed on the silver-eyed creature before her.

  “No easy task,” he added.

  She had no time to struggle. He flung her on the bed, the mattress hard beneath her back. Her head bounced, her neck wrenching at the rough treatment.

  She blinked past the discomfort and stared up as two lycans crowded her. The one who had flung her down hovered over her on the bed. Shaggy fair hair fell over his forehead and curtained his face, doing nothing, though, to shield the silver eyes crawling over her with a soulless evil she knew too well.

  She shrank back into the mattress, agonizingly aware of her nudity, of his relentless hold on her, of just what they would do to her if she didn’t figure a way out of this.

  From the corner of her eye, she spotted the pillow just to her right.

  The lycan’s hand fell on her bare leg. She jumped as he squeezed her thigh, his long fingers digging like a cruel claw.

  “Do you know what we’re going to do with you?” he rasped, his mouth close to hers, the scent of his breath coppery sweet. Blood-sweet.

  Shivering, she forced her gaze to hold his, to not look away from that cold pewter stare as her right hand crept to the pillow on the rumpled bed.

  Determined to keep their attention on her body—not such a challenge since she was nude—she suffered their hungry leers and the savage hand on her thigh as her fingers brushed the pillow.

  She let them look their fill, wincing when one reached down to pinch her breast, twisting the tip cruelly between his fingers.

  “Sweet,” he growled, eyes glittering that eerie silver. He glanced to his brethren. “Perfect timing. We can play with her for two days, then gorge ourselves.”

  The fair-haired lycan brushed his cohort’s hands off her with a growl. “I’m first.” He smiled an evil grin.

  His hand on her thigh gentled then, his fingers softening on her flesh, feather-light on the skin he had bruised. But the touch was somehow worse, turning her stomach until she feared she might be sick all over the bed. Swallowing down bile, she concentrated on sliding her hand beneath the pillow.

  A hand wedged between her thighs, forcing them apart.

  Oh God, please no.

  She forced herself to endure his touch, to resist instinct and not struggle until her gun was firmly in her grip. Without it, she did not stand a chance. Without it, she was dead. Only silver could stop him. Stop any of them.

  Holding her legs with both hands, he stretched her open before him, splaying her indecently.

  Her throat tightened, trapping the scream that threatened to shatter the air, shatter her sanity as she contemplated his foul touch on her, the depravity he would visit on her in moments if she did not stop him. Her hand fumbled over the rumpled bedspread, straining beneath the pillow, searching for cold steel.

  The other lycan crowded behind him, his devil eyes sharing the view, feasting on her.

  Shame washed over her, mingling with the fear that swam in her gut, threatening to spill over in hysteria. She fought for composure, for calm—for a way out of this hell.

  “You’re small, huntress. Hard to imagine you’ve put so many of my brethren into the ground,” he murmured thickly, his thumbs rotating in ever-widening circles on her flesh.

  And you’re about to join them, scum.

  As his hands slid up her thighs, thumbs gliding inward on her legs, inching ever closer to her nest of curls, his nostrils flared wide, inhaling her. “I’d like to keep you alive until moonrise, so that we can enjoy tearing you limb from delectable limb.” W
ith a click of his tongue, he shook his head. His fingers dug into her, increasing their pressure. “But I just don’t know if I can resist spilling your blood sooner. You smell so damn…delicious.”

  A whimper escaped her lips.

  His mouth curved in a cruel smile, clearly enjoying the sound of her pain.

  Keeping her movements subtle, she allowed her fingers to meet the cold steel. Carefully, she closed her damp hand around the grip and flipped off the safety. Her palm and fingers tightened around the textured grip, its reassuring weight the final liberation.

  Enough.

  Time to show them they’d messed with the wrong woman.

  “After tonight,” he continued, “there might not be much left of you.”

  An angry growl erupted from her then.

  She slid the gun from beneath the pillow and swung it in his face.

  Silver eyes widened in front of the gun’s unwavering barrel.

  “Wrong,” she bit out, staring down the barrel.

  Arm locked straight, she tightened her finger around the trigger and fired.

  CHAPTER 12

  He was too late.

  The sounds of splintering furniture and shattering glass carried through the door, and he knew instantly that they were already here. They had gotten to her first. Evidently with the same information EFLA had fed him regarding Kit’s location.

  His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together so tightly he tasted the coppery wash of blood in his mouth.

  If lycans stood on the other side of the door…

  Damn Laurent to hell. It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. This was the very thing that was never supposed to happen.

  He knew what lycans could do to a female. He had seen the aftermath, the haunting look that would come into his mother’s eyes every now and then. Her soft tears at night when she thought he and his brother were sleeping.

  For all he knew, what he hoped to prevent—what EFLA strove to stop—was happening even now. Again.

  He begged to God that he wasn’t too late.

  A descendant of Christophe Marshan, Kit could not be violated at the hands of a lycan. He regretted not making that risk clear to her before. He regretted waiting. Regretted not telling her everything. The truth. No matter how she would look at him once he did.

  Using his shoulder, he burst through the door, his blood simmering, scalding in his veins at the scene to greet him. He paused at the threshold, fists curling and uncurling at his sides. His bones seemed to expand, to stretch within him at his deep inhalation.

  One lycan thrashed wildly about the room, falling heavily to his knees, then on his back, feverishly clawing his shoulder where a bullet had already penetrated. Rafe sniffed, inhaling deeply. A silver bullet. He would be dead in a matter of minutes if he did not dig it out. A real possibility. Some lycans had been known to sever their limbs in an attempt to stop the silver from slowly poisoning them to death.

  A second lycan had pinned Kit to the floor. She squirmed beneath him, bare legs thrashing as they wrestled for the gun. He struck her in the face. Her head smacked the floor with a sickening thud, hands falling limply at her sides.

  Blood trailed from a nasty gash at the corner of her mouth, the streak of crimson obscene against her skin.

  The warm sweet smell of spilled blood floated toward him.

  The lycan leaned over her and swiped a finger along her bloodied lip, tasting her and moaning in appreciation.

  Typical. The bastard had not even noticed him yet. When it came to their victims, lycans were single-minded in their focus. Especially this close to moonrise, when their hunger was at its zenith.

  Something dark and grim—toxic as silver was to these monsters—stirred in Rafe’s gut at the sight of Kit’s injury, of the lycan tasting her, at the dazed, unfocused look in her lovely green eyes.

  Rage flared within him, a dangerous burning in his gut, spreading outward, racing along the path of his bones. The fiery heat burst in his chest, an explosion of force that fed his body.

  His skin tingled, smoldered. A familiar scratchy, prickly sensation swept over him. Unwelcome. Yet unable to prevent. He rushed the room, a low growl escaping through his tightly ground teeth.

  The bastard atop Kit swung his gaze to look up at Rafe, baring his teeth in a snarl.

  A return growl rose up from deep in Rafe’s chest. His fingers flexed at his sides.

  He felt his bones begin to stretch, pull…

  The lycan moved off Kit in a low crouch, rolling his shoulders back, readying himself to pounce.

  “Rafe,” Kit gasped, her head twisting to view him better. The barest moment passed as her green gaze locked on him. Relief flickered there…and bewilderment. He knew he must not look quite himself. And yet he knew he had to act. Before it took root. Before she made total sense of what she was seeing.

  He snatched a lamp off the table and launched it through the air above his head, smashing it into the overhead light. The fixture exploded in a shower of popping and hissing sparks. Broken glass rained down on them as darkness swallowed the room.

  Only the dim red haze from the motel’s perimeter lights spilled through the open doorway, saving them from total blackness. Rafe’s vision adjusted to the dark gloom. The red cast to the room, the crouching lycan, Kit’s wide gaze—all lent a surreal quality to the moment. As if they were in an antechamber of hell itself.

  But it was dark enough. Enough for what he would do. What instinct demanded of him. What Kit could not witness.

  Succumbing to his animal side, a dark rage that he always held in careful check, he surged forward in one lunge.

  Blood filled his vision, boiling through him as he met the lycan in a fierce crash of flesh and bone. Their spitting growls filled the room. His hands wrapped around the other’s neck, determined to wreak his vengeance.

  For himself. For Kit. For lifetimes of past wrongs.

  Kit sat up and squinted into the darkness, wincing as she brushed a hand against her throbbing lip. She inhaled thinly through her nostrils, struggling against the darkness and an aching head to follow the movements of Rafe and the lycan.

  Rafe.

  She had seen his face briefly, registered the anger in his expression, the fierce glittering in his dark eyes. For a moment they did not even look brown, glinting a cool gray, almost silver. Like the bloodthirsty lycans intent on destroying her. Certainly a play of the light. A trick of her imagination. She had, after all, managed only a glimpse before he shattered the light, plunging them into shadows and death.

  Why had he done that? Lycans possessed excellent vision. They could see him even in the dark. The lack of light could only incapacitate him.

  And yet that single glimpse of him had been enough to reassure her that the only thing he was bent on destroying was her attackers. She didn’t know how he had found her, but she felt only relief that he had.

  In the fleeting second when the door had burst open and Rafe stood on the threshold like some sort of dark angel—his large shape limned in muted crimson light, quivering, vibrating in the glow—her heart had ceased to beat. Silhouetted at the threshold—the ravaged door hanging only by a single stubborn hinge—it crossed her mind that she faced not a dark angel, but a demon emerging from the mouth of hell.

  Then he shot forward in a blur of movement. Impossibly fast. So quick she thought she had imagined it.

  She scrambled to her bare knees on the flat, threadbare carpet, peering into the gloom and trying to follow the two shapes locked in a struggle. They appeared almost as one writhing shape. Her hands moved fast, stretching over the carpet in search of her gun, fighting against the dizziness in her head.

  A low, gurgling sound reached her ears, followed by a sick, crunching sound—bone on bone. Her hands stopped, hovering over the grimy carpet.

  Then the large merged shape broke, fell apart as one body collapsed heavily to the floor, mimicking the drop of her heart.

  She went utterly still, staring at the shape still stand
ing. Rafe? Or the lycan?

  A harsh silence fell.

  Inhaling a deep breath, she fought against the ever-increasing pounding of agony in her head and groped for the bed. Gripping a fistful of the bedspread, she shot a desperate prayer to the night.

  Several more moments passed. The silence, thick and suffocating, played with her sanity. She could not stand one more minute of it. She had to know.

  “Rafe?” she whispered, her heart beating like a loud drum against her chest as she stared at the figure rising and unfolding to his full height.

  The dark shadow moved toward her, his features indistinguishable. The blood glow of light hummed around him, seeming to echo the ringing in her head.

  She edged back from the bed. The muscles in her arms straining as she dragged herself away, hands clawing the carpet—and her fingers brushed cold steel. Her gun.

  With an excited gasp, she fumbled for the weapon, her movements sluggish, slower than she would like, than she needed them to be. Dammit. She needed speed and a clear head right now.

  A hard hand grabbed her calf, nearly startling her into dropping her weapon.

  A quick glance down at the floor revealed glowing, silver eyes moving toward her.

  “Shit!”

  She had forgotten about the injured lycan, dismissed him, thinking him as good as dead. Even if he was shot only in the shoulder, the silver should have done its work. He shouldn’t have been able to crawl across the carpet and hold fast to her leg, to dig his nails savagely into her flesh.

  “Just die,” she hissed, kicking at his shoulder again and again.

  A growl rumbled over the air, lifting the hairs on her arms.

  Her throat tightened, killing her breath.

  Convinced Rafe had lost, that the shadow rising was the other lycan intent on finishing her off, she adjusted her grip on her gun and fired at the beast clinging to her leg.

  With a dying grunt, he released his hold on her and let his head drop with a thud to the floor.

  She spun around and fell alongside him from the abrupt motion. Her stomach heaved. Spots danced before her eyes. Fighting against sudden dizziness, she began to squeeze the trigger again just as the shadow lunged forward in a blur.