Mark of the Moon

by Beth Dranoff

  “Where am I?” I asked Alina instead. It distracted me from her teeth, and from the skin on my back, still burning.

  “Does it matter? Would it help you to know how close you are to home, and yet so far that the geographic closeness won’t help you? Nobody knows about this place.”

  And then, somehow, I plucked the image from her mind. Huh. That’s new. The lighthouse past the beachfront area of the dog park—a cylindrical cone of white-painted aluminum siding with a largish beacon of light and three flèches of red striped lines. It rose up into the trees which shielded it from both direct moonlight and obvious view. Unless the light was strobing, it was completely invisible from the beach. I chose not to wonder too hard, at that moment, why a lighthouse would be hidden. Why the space where I was, within, did not match the remembered area without.

  Instead, since I hoped what I saw was real, I focused on the image of that place and prayed to that which did not want to be named for Anshell to find me.

  “It won’t help, you know.” Ezra was suddenly lucid in front of me. His lips had not moved and he spoke to me in a voice both familiar and not. “Even if you escape, she will find you.”

  I watched his lips gape open and shut, a fish gulping at water for air. Thought maybe this would be a good time to lose my mind, just a little. I closed my eyes, a deliberately long blink, then opened them again. Leaned back in my chair and allowed my eyes to roll up and back into my head. My stomach lurched. I swallowed, throat thick with acrid bile.

  In my moment of madness, I knew what to do.

  * * *

  Alina leaned forward; so close that I could smell ginger and clove and if I reached out my tongue, I was sure I’d taste lemon with the faintest after-bite of meringue.

  My hair had fallen partly forward into my face as I shielded my gaze. I could feign shyness, hesitation. It was only an act. I could feel the fur under my skin, my blood through the rivers of my veins.

  Alina unfurled a clenched fist, long fingers with purple and black-striped nails and blue tips. A bastardized, demon version of the conventional human French manicure. Carefully, with just an edge of blue, she separated a single curl from the rest of my hair that lay across my cheek. My breathing stilled as I tried not to broadcast my fear, my hesitation; my acid reflux.

  Not quite the reaction she had expected, apparently, her eyes widening just a bit but not enough to throw her off. I pushed my face to blankness, eyes downcast still, as I thought furiously back to that night outside the Swan. What had they said, those vamps in the midst of their summoning? Calling forth Alina, great mistress of...?

  Blank. I was drawing a blank.

  I did remember the puff of dancing dust Sam and I had made of the ritual-focused vampires, mindless in their desire to help their mistress rise from whatever pit I wished she’d return to. And in a small corner of my brain where thought and discomfort lurked, a tiny whisper of a voice pointed out to me that maybe I wasn’t ready for her to go just yet. Because I needed answers.

  Alina placed her palm against the flatness of my breastbone.

  That slight bit of pressure did it. My palm became a paw, my nails—suddenly claws; I drew five jagged lines of blood down the side of her neck. Mixing hers with mine. Feeling what she felt.

  Too much.

  I leaned forward and emptied the contents of my stomach on my captors. Both of them.

  They gaped at me, stunned by the sickly sweet bile I’d covered them with. I widened my eyes in horror, and this time I sold it.

  I don’t think Alina cared much about my horror though, though, because she let out a high-pitched shriek that probably would have shattered standard-issue glass had there been any around. I allowed my eyes to check out the windows through the fringes of my bile-spattered hair, but no luck.

  A drop of my own spittle fell from the end of a strand of hair and plopped onto the end of my nose. Yuck.

  I almost puked again right there but this time I resisted. Okay, the resistance was what you might call “barely” and there was retching involved, but still. I think it might have bought me a couple more milliseconds of sympathy from my captors than I’d had before. Maybe.

  Alina was clawing at the spittle dripping down her eyelids as if it burned. Maybe it did. I wasn’t sure she’d noticed the blood dripping underneath. Ezra looked stunned but otherwise had made no move yet to clean himself off.

  “Get it off me!” Alina continued to shriek. “Make it stop!” She reached out blindly to grab at Ezra, who leaned back just out of reach and watched her like a bug squirming on its back with its wings and legs pinned down under a microscope. There was utter clarity behind eyes which had been rheumy with age and confusion moments before. Was Alina loosening her hold on Ezra in her moment of freaked-out meltdown? Interesting.

  I glanced over at Ezra, checking to confirm my suspicions, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. I rose from my chair, graceful with feline speed and softness, and edged carefully, quietly, to the door I could now see etched in darkness on the far wall.

  I was almost completely behind Ezra when he spoke.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Dana,” he said. Perfect lucidity. “You’re only putting off the inevitable.”

  “I’m good with that,” I replied, raising the chair and smacking him over the back of the head with it. “Good thing you’re not me,” I muttered under my breath, stepping over his prone body.

  Only then did I notice Alina had vanished. I could have sworn her voice still lingered, shrill, on the air.

  I opened the door; Anshell, Sam and Jon almost fell on top of me in their haste to get through. The looks of shared surprise on their faces were priceless.

  “So,” I said. “Did we win?”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It was only for now. We all realized it. Alina had escaped, Ezra had vanished (apparently temporary unconsciousness wasn’t enough to keep him down), and there were reports almost daily of otherworldly nasties lurking about and stirring up trouble. We weren’t sure about the aftereffects of mixing Alina’s blood with mine either.

  Plus there was that thing where Ezra talked like my father, came back from the dead, and could drape the Ezra he used to be around his shoulders as easily as he could shed it in a puddle of discarded evaporating flesh. Because that was normal.

  Normal was a word I could no longer apply to any area of my life. I had a target on my back, something weird in my blood and a scary-ass demon after me. More questions than answers, and a lifetime of hints and half-truths to unravel.

  * * *

  My personal life was no less simple. Even though my ability to do a partial shift put me in a select club of near-alpha-level power in the supe community, I couldn’t be a full pack member until I managed to control my shift completely. So for now I was considered a Friend of Pack, which was something like an affiliate or associate member without the voting privileges. Shifter version of a learner’s permit.

  I still saw Sam, although we weren’t labeling things. Jon too, occasionally. But with his loyalty to Claude, after everything that had happened, I suspected it wouldn’t last much longer. Jon had made himself pretty scarce since that night on the beach.

  Still, I wasn’t ready to choose. Neither one seemed inclined to make me, either.

  Not yet, anyway.

  * * *

  There was a knock at my apartment door. It felt good to be home—not begging for favors, not couch surfing.

  It was late. I opened the door and saw Sam first. Smiled. Then I saw Jon and my smile widened before wavering, hesitant. Both of them? Here? At the same time?

  So many ways this could go, so few of them good.

  * * * * *

  Dana’s story continues in BETRAYED BY BLOOD, the next book in the MARK OF THE MOON series by Beth Dranoff. Don’t miss it!

&
nbsp; Acknowledgments

  First books take a village, and Mark of the Moon was no exception. Gratitude to my very first beta readers, without whom I’d have had no idea this story was worth finishing: Opher Caspi, Sandy Alexopoulos Jones and Melanie Fishbane.

  To Kelley Armstrong, herself an accomplished author and the first person to tell me my story was publishable.

  To all the people who gave me edits, feedback and productive encouragement along the way, including: Angela Fleury, Caitlin Sweet, Melanie Fishbane, Leigh Elliott, Katy Came, Chris Szego, Doug Schmidt and Marc Bissonnette.

  A huge shout-out to my full-manuscript beta readers for their time, patience, feedback and appreciation for my words: Galya Braggio, Angela Fleury and Judy Silver.

  So much respect and gratitude to my amazing agent, Rena Bunder Rossner, who gambled on a story she loved. And then polished my book to land the miracle three-book deal. Her instincts, support and encouragement have been invaluable and are so appreciated.

  Thank you to Kerri Buckley of Carina Press for taking a chance on me. And for choosing Stephanie Doig, an editor who possesses the awe-inspiring ability to protect my voice while coaxing my words and plots into something so much better. All writers need a good editor and I’m no exception.

  Thank you to Jack Marmer for being there when he didn’t have to be, and for loving when it was a choice and not a requirement.

  A special thank you to Judy Silver for her support, friendship and love above and beyond.

  An overwhelming thank you to my mother, Linda Silver Dranoff, for a lifetime of love and support—even when you didn’t understand what the hell I was writing! You’ve led by example. You were the first to teach me show, don’t tell, and I know you’ve always got my back.

  So much love and gratitude to Zak Dranoff-Caspi. For his patience and ingenuity in talking me through the plot walls I hit along the way, for helping to keep my fight scenes realistic and for his enduring enthusiasm for my stories.

  And finally for Opher Caspi—my best friend, partner and the love of my life—for supporting me no matter what, even when I couldn’t see that pinpoint of light at the end of this writing tunnel. You believed I could do this and here I am.

  Coming soon from Beth Dranoff

  and Carina Press

  Betrayed by Blood

  Shifting Loyalties

  About the Author

  Beth Dranoff tends to follow her interests. She cofounded and ran her own boutique digital agency during the dot-com boom, has produced and written for everything from websites to webisodes to children’s television, has managed hundreds of online and offline projects from agency to IT to broadcast, and has handled clients of all company sizes. She has even worked in social media marketing, online community management and event promotion. Dranoff’s actual degrees are in political science (University of Toronto) and broadcast journalism (Ryerson University). When not writing, Dranoff can generally be found working some kind of managerial role in either digital production or marketing communications. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family, her dog and more books than she can count.

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  ISBN-13: 9781488020162

  Mark of the Moon

  Copyright © 2017 by Beth Dranoff

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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