Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel)

by Catherine Lundoff

  Lizzie went perfectly still under Becca’s examination, for all the world, Becca thought, like she was being checked out by a wild animal or something. Oh.

  The deputy cleared her throat once Becca stepped back. “Nope. I hope I will be one day.” She grinned, a rare flash of white teeth in her brown face. “To be one of the guardian grandmothers, to protect the land and the people. It’s a great honor, you know. Not many are called.”

  “She’s right, Becca.” Erin and Shelly walked slowly down from the bridge, their sudden appearance making them all jump. Erin had her arm in a cast and a sling. She swayed a bit, giving the impression that only Shelly’s hand at her elbow was holding her up.

  Becca stared at the two of them, a whirling storm of anger, betrayal and guilt swirling through her head and choking the words before they could cross her lips. They could have at least warned her. And then what? The voice of her own common sense demanded. You’d be happier about turning into a monster on the full moon?

  Erin gave her a quiet smile and Becca felt butterflies dance in her stomach, despite everything. Right up until she said, “You did what you needed to do last night. You did what the magic called you to do: protect the town and the land.”

  Becca stared at her in horror. She’d killed someone, she had to have. They wouldn’t keep talking about it this way if it wasn’t something big and horrible. The words forced themselves from her mouth in a whisper. “Who was it?” She remembered the woman by the river and how murderous she felt last night after Erin went down. The stranger didn’t seem to be a likeable kind of gal, certainly, but could she live with the other’s blood on her hands?

  Shelly walked up and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Look, Becca, there’s always an adjustment period…”

  The hot flash that swept through Becca just then was a doozy. It gave her the strength she needed to pull away, to haul her drenched and angry body up to the road and all the way into Wolf’s Point. She ran like she had never run before, at least not before last night. She ran until she reached her own porch, racing through the town that she was supposedly protecting against unknown dangers. For once, she didn’t care what the neighbors thought and ignored everyone in her flight.

  Her borrowed clothes dripped with sweat as she shed them on her way to the shower. She would get clean of this, somehow. Unthinking, she washed her hands thoroughly, forgetting that the blood was evidence if she really wanted to confess. She scrubbed vigorously, turning her skin hot and pink under the pressure.

  She had toweled off and was getting dressed again when she heard the knock at the front door. For a moment, she thought about pretending she wasn’t home or ducking out the back. Instead, she forced her reluctant feet to the door. She couldn’t hide forever, right? She found herself face to face with Erin through the glass inset on the front door. “Go away.” She surprised herself by meaning it.

  “Will you come by when you’re ready to talk?” Erin asked. Her eyes were sad and she looked worn down. “Please?”

  Becca nodded as if her head was on strings and Erin walked slowly away. She watched her neighbor go back to her porch. Molly was waiting for her. They went inside and Erin shut the front door.

  Becca groaned. She’d have to talk to one of them sooner or later. That or leave Wolf’s Point. Town was too small to avoid the whole group for long, especially when she worked for the leader of the Pack. She wondered if Pete and the kids knew about Shelly. He probably did; they didn’t seem to keep many secrets from each other. And how was she supposed to act around them now?

  Then it hit her: she didn’t have to stay. She could leave Wolf’s Point. Maybe that would get her outside the boundaries of the curse or whatever it was. If she got “called” because she lived here, why couldn’t she get “uncalled” if she left? She looked around the room and dismissed her possessions with a glance. There wasn’t time to pack. The moon was still pretty full tonight and she might change again. She’d seen that on TV once. She could come back for the rest or send for it when she was ready.

  She raced upstairs, refusing to look around her at the shabby, worn chairs or the one photo of her and Ed that she couldn’t manage to hide away or the knickknacks she’d inherited from her mother or her shelf of books. She’d think about what she wanted later, once she was safe and everything was back to normal.

  An hour later, her clothes and necessities were stuffed into a bag, and she and it were stuffed into her car. She forced herself not to peel out of the driveway. Two hundred miles away should do it; that was the limit of the original ordinance. Becca guessed that outside that zone, middle-aged women were just what they seemed and monsters didn’t run through the woods at night. Out there, maybe she could be boring, divorced Becca Thornton who didn’t change into things she shouldn’t under the moon and didn’t have thoughts she shouldn’t about her across the street neighbor either. Everything would go back to the way it was.

  She floored the gas once she got past the sheriff’s speed trap at the edge of town. No point in getting pulled over by Lizzie or one of the other deputies when she was this close to getting away. She hesitated when she hit the main road though, and paused, wondering where to go next.

  Then she remembered her cousins Marybeth and Hal up in Mountainview, about four hours away. They’d been after her to come visit since the divorce, said she was welcome whenever she had time, in fact. Now, well, she had nothing but time.

  Her phone chirped in her bag but she ignored it. She’d have to call Pete and Shelly from Mountainview while she was at it and spin some yarn, maybe something about a sick relative needing emergency care. They’d understand that, and it would give her an excuse if she decided not to come back. When she decided.

  That just left Erin and Becca wasn’t ready to think about her yet. Besides, Erin was a monster, like the rest of them, running through the woods and attacking people. But Becca was different. She was going to beat this thing. Then she’d make new friends, ones that didn’t hide things from her or make her feel funny inside.

  She told herself that again when she hit the next town over. And again on the road away from it as Wolf’s Point dwindled in the distance. But there was a hole inside her and she ached to think about leaving her home and not coming back. It hurt more every mile she drove but she kept going, hoping that silencing her beastly alter ego would make the loss worth it.

  Chapter 6

  ~

  Certainly the distance from Wolf’s Point didn’t put a stop to her body’s other changes. Between finally getting her period, the occasional hot flash and her mood swings, menopause was going right along as scheduled. Pity she couldn’t leave that little bit of fun behind along with the rest.

  Becca sighed a lot, stopped for more water and called her cousins to let them know she was on her way for a long delayed visit. Then she called and left a message about a fictitious sick relative for Pete and Shelly. It wasn’t an easy lie. But she told herself that she might need a job reference later. If she decided not to go back.

  After that, she thrust all thoughts about home to the back of her mind and concentrated on driving until she hit Mountainview. She wondered as she drove past the “Welcome to Mountainview” sign if the other town had taken the name after Wolf’s Point gave it up. Her mood sank a little lower; who wanted Wolf’s Point’s leftovers?

  It was a pretty little town by some standards, touristy with the kind of artificially quaint downtown that she always hated in towns like it. The buildings were trimmed with plastic gingerbread and a lot of the stores were called “Ye Olde” as part of their names. She made herself stop in front of a diner, almost inevitably named “Aunt Mabel’s.”

  At least it looked like any other small town diner, with the exception of the poster on the door. Some words leapt out at her as she went in. “Missing,” it said. “Eight-year-old boy, not seen for two days. Possibly abducted.” There were other things about a reward, the boy’s name and his family’s contact information but she ignored th
em as she looked at the boy’s picture under the headline. He looked like any other kid. Only the words made his face heartbreaking.

  It made her stomach turn. There were other monsters out there too, ones that she didn’t keep inside or know personally. The thought didn’t make her feel any better.

  Neither did Aunt Mabel’s greasy burger and wilted salad, but at least she wouldn’t be showing up to mooch dinner as well as arriving out of the blue. She finished up and drove over to Hal and Marybeth’s. They gave her a kind welcome and a hastily turned down the bed in the den, once they realized she planned on staying the night. Best of all, they asked her very few questions.

  So it certainly wasn’t their company that drove her out to walk in the moonlight that night. She had to promise them she’d bring her cell phone and a borrowed whistle from Marybeth. After all, you never knew what might happen and what with the Jensen boy missing and all, she really shouldn’t go out for a walk alone at night at all. Becca smiled patiently through their list of concerns and went out anyway.

  Still, she admitted to herself that it had been nice to have someone care about what she did. Someone besides those women from the club who she thought were her friends. Walking would ease the lump of ice in her center that was doing nothing to cool down her outsides. That was what she told herself.

  She looked up at the mountains as she walked and felt something stir inside her. Whatever it was, it was calling her to run but she resisted. She didn’t know the roads here. Or the neighbors. Maybe normal middle-aged women didn’t run down the streets in the dark out here.

  Her senses were sharper than she remembered them being, probably from the clear air. She inhaled deeply, pulling the wind inside her with its scents of woods and wild, exhaust and humans. Downtown was all too audible, though, so she walked away from it, hoping to find some peace in the fields and woods outside of town. Finally, the pull was too strong and she settled into a sedate jog past the houses and the parked cars.

  As she reached the edge of town, she began to feel the moon stirring in her blood, calling up last night’s wildness once more. What the hell? She was outside the limit of the ordinance and she’d turned last night. Shouldn’t this be over with for this month? Was she getting bonus wolf points or something?

  Glancing down, she could see that her hands didn’t look right. Suppressing a wail of horror, she dove into the woods, scrambling around until she found a dark spot surrounded by bushes. There she fought her transformation until it was obvious that she was losing. Even then, she forced herself to undress and remembered to turn her phone off.

  Then she reluctantly surrendered to the moon and the wild magic inside her. Once she changed, she ran all out, a lone wolf, freed from her Pack and charging through the woods until the trees blurred before her. Her path took her up the nearest mountain, farther from people and closer to the moon. For a time, she thought about nothing but the night, reveling in her speed and strength.

  She was miles outside of Mountainview when she heard the sounds for the first time. Her wolf senses didn’t recognize them at first but she moved toward them anyway, curiosity winning over caution. The Becca part of her brain woke up a bit as she got closer to whatever it was and tried to slow her wolf body down. Human fears warred with wolf curiosity until all of her attention was focused on the noises filtering through the woods.

  Slowly, she recognized it as the voice of a small boy. There was another human with him, an adult male from his scent. But the cub—child, she managed to remind herself—sounded scared. Even so, there was nothing she could do except make it worse, given what she looked like now. Becca tried to turn her wolf self away to run up the mountain, far from the campsite. It wouldn’t help the boy’s terrors to meet a real monster.

  Unbidden, a memory of the poster at the diner came back to her. Was this the same boy? She could remember his photo, back in the human portions of her memory. He was sniffling now, small sobs drifting out of the bushes and trees that still separated them. Whoever he was, he was terrified and hurting.

  She couldn’t just turn away. Literally. It was if she was frozen to the spot, all her instincts warring with each other until she wanted to bang her head against a tree. She wanted to help, if she could, but this was more than that. This felt more like a compulsion, a spell she couldn’t ignore. The feeling escalated until she finally did what that insistent pull demanded and followed the sounds and scents.

  Instinctively, she dropped into a hunting crouch and eased her way into the bushes, sliding slowly and carefully through them. The boy was silent now but she could still smell his fear. The wrongness she smelled on the man at his side made her lips lift back in a snarl. She slipped like a shadow through the trees until she could see them.

  The man had hidden them under a lean-to of branches. There was no fire or other sign to mark their hiding place. It was easy to see how he’d avoided the human searchers for two days. The boy gave a small cry that was suddenly silenced and wolf-Becca growled, the sound far louder than she had intended. It was loud enough to bring the man out to look around. He hesitated, then picked up his gun and took a few steps into the woods.

  Becca’s woods. She rustled the bushes as she backed further into the darkness, drawing the man from the clearing. Away from the moonlight, back into the darkness where he wouldn’t be able to see her, where she was protected. He stepped forward once, then again.

  She leapt, taking him off guard and knocking him down. He flailed backward, dropping his gun. Snarling, she bit into his struggling body as he thrashed and fought. His scent, a musk of lust and fear and pain, maddened her, made her sink her teeth in anywhere she could reach him through his heavy jacket. Her wolf-self wanted blood and wanted it now.

  He twisted sharply under her, drawing a hunting knife from his belt and slashing it across her side. She yowled in pain and tore into his arm, tasting his blood. He managed to whip her head back and forth for a couple of moments, but he couldn’t dislodge her. Becca dug her feet deeper into the soil and bit down with all the strength in her jaws.

  The man dropped the knife and Becca turned and bit into his neck. He fell with her on top of him. Then he kicked out a few times, the breath wheezing in his throat as she felt her mouth fill with blood. After that, there was a moment of stillness for them both. She met his terrified eyes with her fiercest snarl. She could kill him now; it would be easy, justified even. But the little bit of Becca Thornton still awake in her head was fighting her.

  Then he yanked suddenly away from her, reaching and seizing the knife again with his good hand. He slashed at her, grazing her good side and Becca lost herself, letting her wolf-self fight for her life. They twisted and turned, rolling on the rocky ground, as the knife sank in once, then twice. She howled in pain and fury, then struck again. This time, there no human voice in her head to stop her.

  When Becca emerged again to regain control of her body, the man was still and her mouth was full of his blood. The scent of it was everywhere, pooled beneath him and coating her fur. She forced herself to make sure he was dead, prodding him with her paw and sniffing his face. Even if the legends weren’t completely true, she didn’t want to risk making him a werewolf.

  Then she dragged herself over to the lean-to without looking back. The boy inside stared at her, his eyes so wide they were almost all white, and whimpered. For a long moment, she was torn between wanting to comfort him and wanting to eat him. The latter feeling sent a thrill of horror through her. Could she risk getting any closer to him?

  But help was down the mountain. She couldn’t just leave him with the corpse and she couldn’t carry him as she was. Either she needed to bring him to help or bring help to him, somehow. She could not do either in her current form. Moonlight caressed her fur as if mocking her indecisiveness.

  She tried to think and an idea slowly formed. Shelly had been able to partially change back in order to carry Erin to safety. If Shelly could do it, why couldn’t she? She limped back into the shadows, l
eaving a trail of her own blood on the leaves; whatever happened, the boy shouldn’t see this. At least she could feel her new body healing fast. Her wounds stopped bleeding as she sat down and she could feel itchy scabs beginning to form. If her healing continued like this, she might be able to make it down the mountain carrying the boy, despite the pain.

  Becca closed her eyes and shut out the moon. She thought of quiet days and walks in the woods, of picnics and tea. Of anything except blood and running through the woods and the call of magic. Breathing carefully in and out, she tried to emulate the teacher of a long ago yoga class.

  With excruciating slowness, her blood stilled and the pounding of her heart eased. She pictured herself with hands and a shorter muzzle, able to walk and run upright. Then she held her breath and tried to force her body to change. The horrible wrenching feeling that followed laid her out in the dirt, whimpering for a few minutes. But the second attempt went better. By her third try, she could stand on her hind legs, though she was still a bit shaky.

  She approached the lean to cautiously, trying to shape her wolf muzzle into human speech. “Come. No hurt. Save.” The words were horribly growly and barely comprehensible but she hoped the boy would understand them. At least he didn’t run or scream. She reached out with her clawed hands and his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.

  That was something of a mercy, or so Becca hoped. At least he was still breathing. She picked him up and heaved him over one furry shoulder. Then she began to race down the mountain.

  The trip was a blur of branches and pain and she stumbled frequently. The boy stayed unconscious. She tried to get him to drink at a stream they crossed but he wouldn’t open his eyes or his mouth.