Mark of the Moon

by Beth Dranoff

  The door shut behind me.

  “Are you sure?” Jon’s voice, hesitant, echoing against the exposed brick walls of his exhibition space. “I thought, with Claude—”

  “No,” I said. Not turning to look. “I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want to think. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes.” Knowing what that meant. A blindfold appearing and then vanishing into black as he tied it over my eyes. Blessed darkness.

  For the first time in days, since all of this began, I was able to relinquish control. What happened next was out of my hands and in Jon’s. Sam and I didn’t know each other well enough yet for these games. With Jon it was different; I didn’t have to explain. It was worth pretending Claude didn’t exist for a little while. Even if all of our problems would still be there when we were done.

  Jon’s long fingers drifting down to deftly undo the buttons on my coat, pull off my sweater, lift my T-shirt over my head. My bra still on. I suspected not for long.

  In my mind it could have been anyone or anything circling around me as I stood, half-naked, in a gallery on Queen Street West with the door unlocked against February’s evening cold.

  A streetcar went by then, rattling the windows and shaking the floor enough that I could feel my inner thighs quiver at the passing vibrations. A gust of chill air as the door blew open a crack. Firm footsteps on the wooden floor, a small creak with each thud, then the clear click of the deadbolt sliding into place.

  I could feel the tips of his fingers working their way around the underside of my breasts between my rib cage and the edges of my bra. Oh yes. The tips of coolness reaching, then peaking; nipples straining to meet his ever-elusive touch. A scrape of fingernail and I shuddered.

  Gods.

  I tried to reach back, to touch, but all I felt was empty air where moments before I knew he had been. Was I sure it was Jon? Really?

  Breath hitched in my throat at the thought that this was a stranger I had allowed to touch me, to partially disrobe me. The fantasy. Opened my mouth, to speak, to say—what? My mouth covered first by two fingers, then by cool dry lips tasting copper-salty with an after-hint of caramel. Then, too quickly for me to protest, more fabric over my mouth. I could breathe. But this, this game was new.

  Without my sight or the power to speak, I stood there. Waiting.

  Cool fingertips in front of me now, fumbling with the button on my jeans, easing down the zipper while leaving my pants on. Reaching around to trail along my waist from tailbone to belly. All thoughts of what I had done earlier in the day were banished by the thread of energy tracing along my nerve endings.

  I tasted cloves and cinnamon and I licked my lips.

  “I’m leaving your hands free,” he said. “You can’t speak a safe word, so you’ll have to show me.”

  I grunted softly, the sound muffled.

  Jon chuckled low in his chest and I felt the vibrations echo somewhere lower in me. “Be creative,” he said.

  And then he was in front of me again, his tongue inside my belly button, his hands reaching in and around to cup my ass. Urgency unbound. My pants now down around my knees, held in place by the heavy boots I still wore.

  I couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, couldn’t run.

  This is how it all started, a traitorous voice whispered in my ear.

  And then Jon fastened his teeth on my nipple, sucking, drinking me in without drinking from me, and all other thought was gone, focused on that fine point that was the hardened nub of me and the sharp pain that was his mouth on me.

  He was in control.

  But this was release. Relinquishing control; just for a while, knowing I could.

  I trusted Jon—enough. Enough to do this with me. Enough for him to know that this release was what I needed.

  Oh.

  Oh Gods.

  My hands, gripping Jon’s now bare shoulders—when had that happened? Drinking me in. Going lower. Along my belly, there, teasing as he dropped to my inner thigh. Teeth on flesh; an imprint that didn’t break the skin. Nudging my legs open. I kicked my pants down, the boots holding them in place. More. His tongue like a cat’s, rasping, grooming, faster and slower and then even faster. Darkness honed my awareness of that point, him, there. And then.

  I would have left imprints on his shoulders had he still been human. As it was, I arched back so far into my first release that it was only Jon’s strength, his arms wrapped around me, that kept me upright. More or less.

  I sank to the floor, reaching for him, and felt his belt buckle. A barrier. It felt flat, etched with ridges and vales that left an imprint when I pressed too hard.

  I yanked.

  The buckle resisted, even as the man behind it did not. If anything, the hardness pressing against the fly of his pants took up the space I needed to wriggle my way in. The denim felt rough against my skin.

  I gave up then and thrust my hands down the front of his pants. So smooth. So cold. I wanted to hold it in my mouth and suck it like a Popsicle.

  Jon took my wrists in one hand and placed them behind my back while he deftly unhooked his belt, unclasped the top button of his pants.

  Frustration caught in my throat; if Jon gave any response, I didn’t process it. Instead, I was struck by my current state: naked, my wrists held in place, my mouth covered so I couldn’t speak and my eyes covered so I couldn’t see.

  And now, silence.

  I wanted to scream, just to hear something. I struggled in his grasp unable to get free. Started to panic. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak the word I needed to make it stop.

  “Ssh,” Jon whispered in my ear, letting my wrists go, putting his hands to good albeit distracting use, feathering them up and down my sides. A wet finger trailed from my throat, down between my breasts, lower still to that place where heat meets wet.

  I could breathe again, and it was good.

  I reached out and grabbed the one thing I could—him—and pulled. Hard.

  At that, he groaned. Blessed sound. I did things I knew would make him groan more, and he rewarded me with a hum deep in his throat. Maybe it was more of a growl.

  You’d be surprised at what you can accomplish with just a fingernail and a thumb. Really.

  Finally, Jon grasped my wrists and extricated my hands. Not wanting to end things prematurely? I heard the whirr of a zipper being pulled down—not my own this time—and my hands were free to reach out and touch at will.

  A brief brush of flesh before it danced tantalizingly out of reach.

  “No,” he said.

  I made a questioning sound in my throat.

  “My turn,” he said. And slid his hands from my waist up my sides to cup my breasts once more before sliding his hands back around to lift me up. I could feel his hardness between my cheeks, then. Even more so when he leaned me over what felt like a cold, flat surface—table? countertop?—and slid in.

  My hands slapped down flat, reaching out to find an edge to hold on to. Instead, pressing down, I found myself flat on my stomach with my arms stretched out to nothingness. Jon’s hands on mine as he leaned into me, fingers interlaced in mine as he plunged into my folds. The energy of his thrusts, tantalizing slowness interspersed with bursts of intermittent speed increased the friction elsewhere. Breath catching, hitching, until my moans sliced through the buzzing quiet of the room.

  We gasped and gripped at each other through our release, and I was free.

  Chapter Forty

  I stopped to grab a coffee on the way to back to Cherry Beach. A smile whispering across my lips and a warmth, there, remembering as I stood in line to pay; muscles stretched and limber.

  * * *

  I parked and went out to meet the night but there was no more time. The moon was rising into the fullness of its final triumvirate and ev
ents were already in motion.

  I ran.

  I wore my boots and my fashion-forward parka and my hat, scarf and gloves. I shouted at the moon, darting back and forth from the lake, trying to disperse the resting birds in the scatter of frozen sparkle dust I kicked up as I passed.

  I ran to the trees, to my supposed pack mates, cats and horses most of them, darting tails and paws and hooves in the twisting shadows. Large wings rose up behind me, blacking out the moonlight momentarily before a blast of fire singed the tops of the nearest firs. I could have sworn I heard someone or something singing “Happy Birthday” right before another treetop went up in flames.

  “Celandra?” I was panting, my mouth open slightly, tasting scent on the wind. My cheeks tickling, ticklish, twitching.

  The dragon behind me was chuckling. Right before she bumped me with her nose.

  There was a very large cat beside me with a grin that reminded me of Sam’s. It nudged its head up under my hand and started purring, encouraging me to scratch that spot—yeah, there—behind its softly tufted ears.

  I felt a puff of warm air, saw the steam drift past; smelled hay and saliva and sugar and spring, and turned to find a stallion, deep black swirls in his fur and near his tail. His stance said alpha and the way he looked at me said Anshell. A smile incongruous on a face otherwise equine, like the Cheshire Cat grins of the horses in the meadow that should not have existed.

  Still, he bumped a head larger than most medium-sized dogs under my other hand, the one not already full of cat, and whinnied in pleasure as I scratched that spot for him as well.

  “Anshell,” I said, and he nuzzled my hand.

  I became aware of eyes on me, a cool breeze at my back. An intangible sense of longing and loss and rebirth tanged my tongue. I had a brief image of pomegranate seeds, sucked then spit out, bloody drops on the snow.

  “Jon.” I acknowledged his presence without turning around or releasing my touch on the magnificent beasts.

  “Dana,” he replied, ghosting up behind me, laying his hands on my shoulders. The gang was all here. Now all I needed was Celandra.

  Where had that dragon gone?

  She emerged from the trees, naked, her wrinkled breasts and sagging stomach and flaccid-skinned upper arms dancing and jiggling with each springing step. Celandra came close to me, winking at each of my companions in turn, before reaching out her arms to cup my face with hands smelling vaguely of days-old fish and urine and lemongrass and ginger.

  Her touch sent a jolt though me and I arched my back involuntarily, surprised. I was wet and sweating and couldn’t quite catch my breath. But not in a bad way. Then, not in a good way.

  Bones stretching. Fur sprouting. I tried to cry out but instead all I could hear was a yowl. Of pain, of frustration—no time to analyze before a spear of no-question-about-it pain slammed into me. Hard.

  And still Celandra held my face, all laughter gone, staring me down. Gods, how was it possible to survive this kind of pain?

  I slammed on the brakes, mentally forcing every joint, every nerve ending, every spike of tufted fur back from whence it came. Visualized my skin smooth and whole and unmarred by anything other than the fine downy fuzz found on all normal humans.

  It didn’t work.

  All those times before when I’d tried to shift and couldn’t. Two nights of frustration and now this. Pain. Oh gods, the pain.

  I was on my stomach now with no awareness of how I’d gotten here. Swiss cheese holes of consciousness. I suspected the pain was causing me to black out. Also the pressure. I could feel someone or something’s weight on my back, resting against my tailbone.

  Pressure. And hardness between my cheeks. Teeth, longer than any human’s had a right to be, holding my neck in place. The scent was familiar, almost my own but not quite. I tried to swipe my paw backwards to push whoever or whatever it was off me but couldn’t quite reach. I kept overshooting and underestimating relative distances and angles, not used to my new shape yet. Panting. Panic shooting out through my ears as fangs sprang from my teeth. I nicked my tongue and tasted blood.

  My hair had fallen over my eyes and everything I saw was through the drifting ivy snakes curling down from my scalp, shadows in my vision. Puffs of flame, spurting free, told me Celandra was close by.

  A cool hand on my forehead, stroking. Murmuring soft nothings, words blending together. All I could hear was my name—Dana Dana Dana—falling from Jon’s lips and dancing in the breeze. What was he doing here again? But the chill of him on my forehead felt so good. So right. A ballast in the midst of all of this mewling, roiling heat.

  And then I felt a head of fur bump up against my cheek. It, too, felt so familiar. But it didn’t smell at all like me and I tried to raise my head to look at who or what it was.

  No such luck as the teeth pressed more firmly against the back of my neck.

  Then the screaming started.

  * * *

  I couldn’t move my head—whoever or whatever was on me kept the jaws of my immobility locked in place. But I could angle my newly pointy ears around, and the sound I picked up from my furry sonar was anything but reassuring.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The voice was all kinds of lusty, wrapped in layers of dark chocolate with the hinted promise of a juicy, sweet cherry if you took a bite right there.

  My nipples tightened at the sound, and I could feel the male pressing down on my back harden a bit in response as well.

  The stallion reared up and let out a warning whinny, its front hooves coming down so close to my face that the dirt it kicked up sprayed up towards my eyes and nose. I blinked and sneezed. Which did little to relieve the tightness in my core; if anything, the jerk of my sneeze served to rub further those places I was trying to ignore.

  “Let me go,” I growled, trying again to buck the male off my back. This time I pushed myself up onto my paw pads and kicked with the balls of my still-human feet.

  Still human and still in combat boots.

  The guy on top of me grunted in what I hoped was pain, releasing his jaw-hold on my neck and rolling off to lie beside me, nursing his now-sore kidneys.

  “Claude?” Even in partial cat form and at a stage whisper, my incredulity was irrepressible. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Saving your furry, worthless ass,” he grated harshly back. Whispering with that much force must have hurt. Almost as much as my boot. I allowed myself a small, bewhiskered smile. But wait, what? Saving my ass? That same ass he’d tried to separate from the rest of me through a barrage of jealous gunfire?

  “Here kitty kitty kitty.” That voice of liquid butter spread across perfectly crispy toast called out once more from the opposite end of the beach. “Give us the girl with the map on her back.” Mutterings rippled through the scattered pack, questioning sounds layering one over the other. Words like map and back and what the fuck? I wasn’t even a full member yet and here they were, trying to help me. “You don’t need her. We want her. And what we want is what you want too.” The owner of the voice, female, was dressed in poured-on fire-truck-red PVC and platform toe point shoes as she oozed her surety at the sanctity, the rightness of her position. Any position you want, her voice seemed to promise without ever uttering the words. I can stretch in ways you can only imagine. All for you, only for you. Unless you want to share. I can do that too.

  “Just give me what I want,” she said, aloud.

  Nobody answered.

  The shrieking started up again, or maybe it had never stopped.

  “Why the hell would you want to save my ass now?” The words tickled where the tenderness of new teeth poked through previously unbroken gums, whistling through the spaces.

  “Reparations,” Claude bit out. I wondered if that hurt as well. “Either I protect you like my life depends on it, or I’m out o
f the pack.”

  I think my laughter surprised us both. Human emotion pushing through a jowl unsuited for the expression; the sound more of a snarling lisp that frothed my lips. “Ironic justice,” I finally managed.

  “Yes,” Claude replied, voice tight. Maybe he wasn’t appreciating the humor of the situation like I was. Then again, maybe I’d be pretty pissed as well if the not-me that my lover was sleeping with became a do-it-or-else protection scenario.

  Still, I wondered whether the stick had enough of a hold over the carrot to make this new relationship work.

  I wasn’t betting on it.

  More screams. I sat up and looked around.

  Twigs scattered and pressed into the snow as though ground in place by large boulders, or maybe boulder-sized footprints. Beyond the scatter and grind were rings of glowing red lights evenly spaced in pairs. I couldn’t tell from this distance whether they were Seven Moon eyes or those of the oily-voiced siren who called to us even now from the darkness. I felt exposed, and I caught Claude’s wandering eye, motioning him to follow my lead and edge farther away from the light.

  “She’s here,” he called out to the darkness. “Just over there.” Claude stayed where he was sitting but motioned to a clump of trees down the beach.

  “What are you doing?” My hiss followed his, threads of sound in the darkness.

  “Saving your ass,” he hissed back. “Remember?”

  “We have her.” Anshell’s voice rang out, all bass and timbre, rumbling in his chest. No longer at my head but away from me and closer to those trees.

  “You have nothing.” Ezra’s voice. It boomed and bounced along the slap slap slap of water sloshing through a crack in the ice. He was somewhere off to my right—and not as far off as I would have liked. “What you have is a dream, a promise of what might be. It is a fairy tale.”

  Anshell’s answering smile was tight. I squinted eyes that could make out detail in dark that even an hour earlier I was sure I’d have missed; thought maybe I was seeing the shadowed outline of a great cat pacing around and beside him. Sam?