by Reinke, Sara
“Listen, Mr. Harker, I want to talk to you about something,” Gough said.
“Call me John.”
For Gough’s part, John was impressed with him. It was obvious the kid had been in love with Lucy. He wasn’t a very good actor, and his efforts to disguise his tears by frequent, fervent swats at his face and nose with a handkerchief as her ashes had been scattered had been piss-poor.
“Okay, John.” Gough said this with the decided discomfort of a kid asked to address a former teacher by his or her first name. “It’s about something Miss Dodd mentioned to me earlier.” When John looked at him, his brow raised curiously, he continued. “She said while you guys were on Duvall Island, you saw werewolves there.”
“Werehounds,” John corrected. “That’s what Wilder called them. Duvall Wilder anyway. Jame Covey and some of the other guys Boyd Wilder had working for him at the strip club, they were all a part.”
“Yes, well.” Gough set his beer aside, slipped his glasses off his nose and wiped the lenses idly with the flap of his suit jacket. “Werewolves and vampires had a long-standing history together. A lot of their folklore coincides, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s what Sandy had mentioned, yeah.”
“The thing is…” Gough put his glasses back on. “The legends about werewolf origins are pretty specific.”
“How so?”
“Some of the stories get a little wacky, like drinking water from a wolf’s paw print, being conceived or born during a full moon, sleeping outside on a Friday night while the light of the full moon shines in your face.”
“You made that last one up.”
“No, I swear. It’s Italian. Anyway, the most common way to become a werewolf is simply to be bitten by one. Almost every werewolf legend, no matter the country or culture of origin, says that.”
John swallowed. “You know, Mike, I have to tell you, while I appreciate this little lesson in urban myths, I really think I’ve had more than my fair share of ghosts and goblins and gobbledygook to last me a lifetime.”
Gough blinked at him. “But…”
“No.” John held up his hand. “Seriously.”
He turned to leave, to duck back inside.
“But one of them bit you,” Gough said.
John paused, realizing his point. “You were wrong about the vampires,” he said pointedly. “We didn’t need to cut off their heads, stick silver nails in their eyeballs, none of that.”
“Yes, but the stake through the heart worked, and that’s a pretty common thread throughout vampire lore,” Gough said. “So did the exposure to sunlight.”
John frowned. “I’m not turning into a werewolf.”
“Not yet, no,” Gough agreed. “And maybe not at all. There’s no way to know, not yet anyway. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Out of all of the stories about werewolves, almost every one says that transformations only occur during the full moon phase of the lunar cycle. And since one just passed, that would explain why you saw werewolves on Duvall Island. It also means you probably wouldn’t transform until the next full moon.”
John raised his brow. “Which will be…when?”
“Well, the annual full moon cycle is just under fourteen synodic months, or fifteen anomalistic ones,” Gough said. “If you factor in that the average anomalistic month is twenty-seven point five-five days, and the typical synodic month lasts around twenty-nine and a half, then—”
“In English, please,” John interjected.
“About four weeks,” Gough replied.
“Oh.” John nodded. “Good. Then I’ve got time for another beer or two.”
Turning again, he opened the door to the boat’s main cabin and ducked inside, leaving Gough to sputter on the swim deck behind him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Dark Thirst and Dark Hunger, the first two books in The Brethren Series of vampire romance are available from Kensington/Zebra Books, while the third installment, Dark Passion, is available from Double Dragon Publishing. The series continues with Dark Passages: Tristan * Karen, Dark Passages 2: Pilar & Elías and Dark Vengeance Part One, from Bloodhorse Press, and she explores the darker side of paranormal romance in Forsaken, Book One in The Netherworlde Series, available now. Find out more about Reinke and her books at: www.sarareinke.com.
