Hunter's Moon

by Bevill, C. L.

  “We know that,” the bartender said. “It’s just that it would cost more than you could—”

  Shade slapped a brick of platinum down onto the marble bar top. It sounded like the marble cracked, but he didn’t look down to check.

  “Um,” the branwyn said, eyeing the platinum. The branwyns preferred the metal over gold. They used it almost exclusively.

  “And there’s the whole dragon bones thing,” the branwyn added nervously.

  Shade pulled a small, leather bag out of his coat pocket. He rattled it in the air and placed it next to the platinum.

  “Then we need the rat witch’s blood and she’s deader than—” the branwyn cut off when Shade pulled out a tiny bottle capped with a wax seal. The Bloodletter had drawn off the blood when they realized the portal had shut down with Scarlotte’s death.

  “Finally, you’d have to find a branwyn who would be willing to pay the price,” the bartender said. “It isn’t a matter of just doing a spell. It takes a little bit of our life force. You’re asking us to sacrifice ourselves for you.”

  “I’ll do it,” the inebriated soldier said.

  “Kale!” the bartender protested.

  “He’s human,” Shade said, with a brief glance at the soldier.

  “I’m half,” the soldier said. “And I just got medically discharged from the army. You wanna know why?”

  He didn’t really want to know. If he ever told Claire that a young man gave up part of his life so that she could be returned, she might not be able to live with that.

  “Cancer,” Kale said. “Did you know that branwyns are prone to certain kinds of cancer? The military doctors are flabbergasted by the aggressive nature of my cancer. It’s like megacancer.” He paused to hiccough. “My JAG guy said I shouldn’t have signed the paperwork. I should have made the military doctors take care of me until I die. But that’s the clincher. I’m going to die. Going to die, and the settlement is going to my family.”

  “Kale!” the bartender said. “No. No, I absolutely forbid this.”

  “Dad,” Kale said gently, with only a little slur in his voice, “what are you going to do to stop me?”

  Shade frowned grimly.

  Chapter 9

  Don’t sell the bearskin before the

  bear is dead. – Dutch Proverb

  The Catacombs of Paris weren’t exactly different than the last time Shade had been there. It wasn’t like the new Council hung up posters of kittens dangling from trees that proclaimed “Hang in there, baby!” and they hadn’t put out welcome brochures in a display case by the entrance. But there was a certain air of change. Weres of all different types were present and going about their business. Not one of them looked over their shoulder to see if Shade was about to pounce on them from behind. Furthermore, the one entrance had become three entrances, in order to keep the humans from being too suspicious. The gatekeeper had split his job with two other weres.

  “Pitch,” Shade said to the were at the gate they entered. Pitch was something from Antarctica. Even Shade didn’t know what his shifted form was called. Apparently he was the last of his kind unless he married and got busy. He was one of the weres who had teetered on the fence of the old Council and the new regime. Shade knew that Pitch was mostly bark and no bite. He hadn’t liked what the three weres in charge were doing, but like many other weres, he hadn’t known what to do about it. Pitch wasn’t Shade’s favorite were by any length, but there were far worse ones.

  The tall skinny man wore a New York Yankees jersey and a perpetual frown on his face. “Shade,” he said. “Tell Ula Bennett the next time you see her that all of my fingers have grown back.” He waggled his fingers in demonstration. It should have been a happy announcement, but Pitch seemed wobble on the edge of complete sourness.

  “She still carries around that sword cane,” Shade advised Pitch.

  “Huh,” Pitch said. His large round eyes, something that looked like the marine creature he could shift into, came to rest on Kale. Clearly, he was sizing up the young man. Shade glanced over to see what Pitch was seeing. The boy was an inch over six feet. His shoulders were broad, and his figure appeared healthy. His eyes were the same light blue as the branwyns, but he had inherited the red hair from his mother’s side, although the high and tight cut was all from the military. He wore a t-shirt that had a picture of a flat-faced tan and black dog that said “Pugs, not drugs.” It turned out that Kale was almost as interesting sober as he was drunk.

  “No humans,” Pitch said declaratively.

  “Hey,” Kale protested. “I’m only half.”

  “Half what?” Pitch asked.

  “So what is he?” Kale asked Shade with a head jerk in Pitch’s direction. “I don’t have a were’s nose, but those eyes are freak-kay. If I tick him off enough will he turn into like a giant owl or something and then eat me?”

  Shade shrugged. “Only if he’s really hungry.”

  “I don’t eat humans,” Pitch said, feigning a retching motion. “They taste awful.”

  “He’s with me,” Shade said, tugging on Kale’s arm. “The Bloodletter knows about it.”

  Pitch nodded doubtfully. He stepped aside and let them past.

  Shade knew something that Pitch didn’t know, but that wasn’t surprising since Pitch didn’t hear about everything now. Braydon Bennett was on the other side of the world, talking to the drakken about their brethren. He’d taken Ula and Killian with him. They wanted to know if the drakken, Tatsu, had managed to do something to the portal because of her dragon blood. So far they hadn’t learned anything useful.

  If Shade told Braydon about Kale, then the Bloodletter would want Shade to wait until he made it back. Of course, Ula would be backing her father up, and Killian would want to pound on Shade just because he’d irritated his mate. Of course, Sonja Bennett would want to come, and then it would be a real crowd.

  “Do I smell dragon?” Pitch asked.

  Kale looked at Shade. Pitch was smelling the dragon bones. Kale took a moment to raise his arm and sniff at his armpit. “I totally put DO on this morning. Do you know he wouldn’t let me go to the Eiffel Tower because he’s in such a hurry?”

  Shade growled under his breath. He didn’t want Pitch spreading the word that a branwyn was present along with dragon bones and the rat witch’s blood. Too many weres had already expressed an interest in getting the portal open with hope of discovering what had happened to their loved ones. It came as a real surprise that the drakken’s family hadn’t descended en masse to demand Tatsu’s release. Braydon Bennett was likely explaining everything to the drakken, but the drakken had their own way of doing things. And for some reason, they apparently weren’t in a hurry to rescue this particular member of their clan.

  What Shade knew about Tatsu would explain that. She was one who always went her own way. She had eschewed the House of Dragon because of her connections to the American world of shifters. She challenged the Council and paid the price. The Council couldn’t figure out what to do with her, so they’d left her in the dungeon. If they had killed her or thrown her through the portal, the drakkens would have retaliated against the Council. So she had rotted in the black holes below until the snake had freed her. She had come along and collected Claire for her own reasons. Possibly it was because the drakken thought the Bloodletter’s cause was just. It was hard to say what Tatsu believed in, and she was no longer around to ask.

  Pitch glowered after them when neither Shade nor Kale answered his question. Shade led the way.

  “Can we stop to see the chambers?” Kale asked. “I’d like to say I got to see something interesting in Paris. Did you know there’s supposed to be millions of skeletons down here?”

  “If you weren’t dying, I’d turn into a bear and maul you,” Shade said conversationally.

  “If I weren’t dying, then I wouldn’t be here,” Kale said cheerfully.

  “How can you be so jovial when you’ve got terminal cancer?”

  “It doesn’t hurt
right now,” Kale said. “Hey look, that’s a wall of bones.” The hallways began to be covered in ornate designs using every sort of bone. The people who had originally interred the skeletons obviously got bored with simply putting the bones down in the catacombs. They attached them to the walls and the ceilings in ornate patterns. There were fat, round columns with rows of vertebras interrupted by rows of skulls. There was a pedestal constructed of leg bones and the bowl rimmed with jaw bones. There were places that people had obviously used to leave offerings to the City of the Dead.

  “Arrète! C’est ici l’empire de la mort,” Kale added with a little breath. “Stop! Here is the empire of the dead.”

  “Didn’t you go anywhere when you were in the military?” Shade asked.

  “Fort Jackson, South Carolina,” Kale said. “Basic training and A.I.T. I just got finished with the advanced training when I started coughing up blood. Lung cancer, in case I didn’t mention it. And before you say something about that, I don’t smoke.”

  Shade sighed and indicated the direction. He probably should have let him see the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t like he was ever going to have another chance.

  Kale continued to make observations about the bones. Shade let him go by the Council’s chambers, but since the new Council was in session, the two guards wouldn’t let Kale peek inside.

  Then Shade led the young man downward, and Kale whistled in appreciation. “No wonder shifters were so scared of this place.” The shadows got bigger and the bone designs a little less elaborate. The darkness in between the witch lights came alive in its utter blackness.

  Finally they reached the place where the portal had been. The witch lights still burned around the area. Was it possible that they might burn into infinity?

  “Whoa,” Kale said. “I can feel the magicks. This is just like the time my two uncles did a thing for an elfish prince in Los Angeles. Did you ever hear about that? His hottie got trapped in a cursed realm. They had a mirmir friend who swiped dragon bones from an actual dragon realm. Supposedly, the dragons chased the mirmir for months. I wouldn’t want to have a dragon ticked off at me.”

  “My hottie is trapped in wherever that portal went,” Shade said.

  Kale touched the wall with the flat of his hand pressed against the rock. There were no bones mounted there, no designs to impend his touch. “You understand that it might be a one way trip?”

  “I understand,” Shade said barely above a whisper.

  “Satphones won’t work there. There’s no cell phone towers. No popo,” Kale went on. “Just a badass werebear. Hey, that rhymes!”

  “I understand,” Shade repeated louder, impatience in his voice. The inner bear roared for them to hurry.

  “You’ve got your pack right, with all your goodies?” Kale knelt by the wall and took off the fanny pack he’d had attached to his waist. “Are you sure you don’t want to take some other weres with you?”

  “One way trip, remember,” Shade said. They’d all offered. Yves and the snake were on the top of the list. Braydon Bennett and his wife were next. Then Ula and Killian followed up. They all wanted to go, but Kale said that he wasn’t sure how long the portal would be open or whether he could open it again. That didn’t leave Shade with a lot of options.

  “Well, you’ve got some knives there,” Kale pointed out, “and what the hey-ell is that on your back?”

  “A war harpoon.”

  “For just in case you come across Moby the Dick? A giant white whale who wants to dance the merengue on your back?” Kale snickered.

  “I love your sense of humor, but you’re getting on my last nerve,” Shade warned.

  “Okay.” Kale looked at his fanny pack and started extracting items. “Dragon bones, check. Rat witch blood, check. Tears from an albino giant, check. A scale from a mermaid. That’s the kind in the Indian Ocean, by the by. They don’t like to give up their scales. My uncle said he traded a quarter bar of platinum for that scale. Laughing Cow cheese, check.”

  “Laughing Cow cheese?”

  Kale deftly unwrapped a wedge and popped it in his mouth. “I was hungry,” he said around a mouthful of cheese. “You want some?”

  Shade shook his head. Remember, dying. Dying young man, nearly still a boy. Remember.

  Kale swallowed the cheese and got to work, skillfully organizing and separating his items, which also included a gray chalice and a mortar and pestle. “Yves said that your hottie might be mad at you.”

  Claire might, indeed, be mad at him. It was true. The snake let the cat, er, wolf, out of the bag. It was none of Kale’s business. Shade didn’t respond, hoping that the matter would be dropped.

  “It’s not too late to bring her a present,” Kale suggested. “I’d go with a diamond ring. A big diamond ring. Sparkly, too.”

  Shade ground his teeth.

  “Not a diamond ring type of girl, huh?”

  “Not sure what kind of girl she is.” Maybe if he gave her an inuksuk. She was an inuksuk kind of girl for sure.

  “She’s your mate, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” Kale said and then whistled. “You don’t have a choice. Wham! That shit is forever. Humans would die.”

  “I don’t want a choice,” Shade said and realized it was true. It hadn’t been long, but he’d really gotten to know Claire Bennett. She had a healthy respect for the otherworld. She tried her best. She lived by the code she’d been taught. The fact that she was a hottie too, was just icing on the cake.

  “But what happens if she says, ‘Eff you, buster!’?”

  And that might well happen since she’d discovered he was a member of the Council’s guard, one of the teams that enforced their orders. She couldn’t know that he was also the one who had helped the Bloodletter orchestrate outright rebellion. She couldn’t know that he had protected as many weres and humans as he could. That he’d smuggled some of them out of the catacombs and delivered them to weres who ran an underground railroad of sorts, eventually getting everyone to safety.

  What was he to do when he glimpsed her lovely face again? Tell her all these things? Perhaps add that he’d never kicked a puppy in his life?

  Shade said a few eloquent swear words in Inuit. He’d made a real mess of things.

  “I guess that isn’t ‘I’ll just tell that girl I wuv her,’” Kale said, laughing. He accurately assessed the grim expression on Shade’s face and added, “You know, it’s funny, when you’re dying, you don’t worry about getting killed. Just sayin’.”

  Kale tilted his head and looked at the wall in front of him. “Of course, rescuing the fair damsel from the wretched realm of doom would be a nice little offering. You know what my girlfriend did when she found out I was dying from cancer?”

  Shade did not want to know. In fact, he didn’t want Kale repeating the whole cancer/dying thing anymore than he already had. “How old are you?” he asked instead.

  “I am twenty-five,” Kale said. “I could have gone into the branwyns’ business, but I wanted to be all I could be. Support my country by doing my fair share in paperwork. That was my MOS, by the way, administrative specialist. I thought I could do okay with that, and I didn’t really want to drive a tank.”

  “Okay, what did your girlfriend do?”

  “She said, ‘Hasta la lasagna, don’t get any on ya. Toodle-oo, caribou. See ya. Wouldn’t want to be ya.’” Kale grinned at Shade. “You see she didn’t really wuv me. I’m fairly certain that she wouldn’t have gotten a brick of platinum and dragon bones and a rat witch’s blood in order to open a portal and rescue my sorry ass.”

  Shade felt as though Kale was trying to make a point, though he wasn’t inclined to wait for said point.

  Kale sighed. “All right. Now, branwyns don’t actually create portals. That’s more witches and dark magicks and occasionally I think it’s a natural phenomenon. There’s this one portal at Carlsbad Caverns that will put you into this other cave that has these blue lizard things that love to
eat Pop Tarts. If you don’t bring Pop Tarts, then they eat you. They say they don’t like eating meat, but if they don’t have Pop Tarts they have to eat something.”

  “Are you always like this?”

  “Pretty much,” Kale admitted. He placed some of the dragon bones into the mortar and set to work with the pestle, grinding them into fine bits. “Anyway, branwyns don’t typically create portals, but we have some kind of gene that helps us control them. We control them better than witches. We can make them like revolving doors. It’s a gift. A biological gift, but a gift. You can ‘program’ a portal like this one. Bet it had a phrase to open it, right?”

  “A word in Latin,” Shade said.

  “Yeah. Predictable. The rat witch probably had a way to get out of it, but the Bloodletter’s other daughter fixed that possibility.”

  “Silver hair picks,” Shade said.

  “Ouch. Of course, since she’s dead, and I’m thinking she didn’t leave written instructions, right?” Kale asked.

  Scarlotte hadn’t left anything except a perplexing interest in Japanese manga. She had a particularly comprehensive collection in her quarters.

  Kale must have taken Shade’s silence for a ‘no.’ “So we have to do it this way.” He removed a few more small bags from his fanny pack. “Think of a portal like a jelly donut. When it’s first created, it’s a donut with a hole in the middle. Then when it’s closed, it’s a jelly donut, with jelly in the middle. Jelly is not as dense as donut.” His eyebrows constricted into a frown. “At least the donut in my metaphor is dense. You understand, right?”

  “I understand,” Shade said with a sigh. The bear didn’t understand. The bear was getting pissed.

  “So branwyns can figure out where the jelly is and suck it out with a metaphorical straw. A really big metaphorical straw.” Kale chuckled. “It takes a little out of us, of course. Ideally, no one but a dark witch should mess around with dark magicks, and even a dark witch is going to have issues.” Kale opened baggies and began mixing items with the crushed bone in the mortar.