Seduced by the Moon

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  He spun the chamber and dumped the ammo onto his palm. A ripple of shock ran through him. The weapon was loaded, all right. With unusual ammunition. Make that highly unusual ammunition. Bullets made of silver that felt like fire on his open palm.

  Silver bullets were meant for hunting a specific kind of animal.

  His kind.

  Dumbfounded, he stared at a metal that, according to ancient lore, could take down werewolves with a single bullet, though no resources he found provided an explanation for why this might work when other metals didn’t.

  Some sources believed silver to be like a solid dose of moonlight that, if buried deep within werewolf tissue, would be too much for a beast to take all at once.

  Other sources proposed that silver, long used medicinally, would work its way to the heart through the bloodstream, trying to heal a system that could no longer be fixed, taking out both host and wolf at the same time.

  Yet there were plenty of arguments citing the silver-bullet theory as being hogwash, and stating that a bullet was a bullet, no matter what it was made of. If struck in the right place, a crucial place, any bullet might take down man or beast. Spots like the head, or a direct hit to the heart…

  A beating heart like his, which had already taken a blow from a diamond ring…no bullet necessary.

  Gavin reloaded the gun and replaced it on the chair, wondering as he looked to the front door if Skylar knew anything about the special bullets or if she’d merely found the weapon among her father’s things without looking closely at the ammo inside it.

  He thought back.

  “I have a gun,” she told him. “I know how to use it.”

  So, what else did she know about?

  Who was the lucky guy with the ring?

  He ran a hand through his hair and then pinched the bridge of his nose to ease the ache building behind his eyes as he remembered more of their conversation.

  “I think my father might have been chasing a wolf when he died.”

  New meaning about that struck Gavin with the force of a hammer falling from the sky. This was Skylar’s father’s gun. These were Dr. Donovan’s silver bullets. Chances were that Papa Donovan hadn’t been chasing just any old wolf out here if he had purposefully bought those custom bullets. A werewolf had been his target. And there were, as far as Gavin knew, only two werewolves here.

  Screeching noises roused him… The sound of a car driven around a tight curve by someone in a hurry.

  “Skylar.”

  Smelling the hot tires with his overworked wolf senses, Gavin headed outside, alerted by the sound of a car door being forcefully kicked open.

  She was there, as if he’d conjured her. Skylar faced him across the small yard, her face as white as parchment paper. “I think Tom Jeevers might be dead,” she said, holding on to the car for support.

  Chapter 11

  Gavin was by her side quickly, easing her from the car and into his arms. “What? What did you say?”

  “At his house. In the back. Bad smell. Really bad.”

  Gavin held her firmly. “I just came from there. Tom was fine.”

  “He wasn’t there. I found another building.”

  “What other building?”

  “The one behind the house, under the trees.”

  “The shed?”

  Skylar’s eyes pleaded with him to believe her. “Get help.”

  “Okay. You’ll come with me,” he said. “Get back in the car.”

  She did as he asked without question or argument and sat quietly as he got in beside her.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You didn’t go inside to look for the source of the odor?”

  Stricken by that idea, she shook her head. “Not so brave now, huh?”

  What was left of Gavin’s wounded heart went out to her. She was seriously shaken. Her tension transferred to him as though a lightning bolt had been trapped in the car with them, with nowhere else to go but back and forth between the two.

  “Did you see anyone?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Out of breath, that’s all. Scared for him. For Jeevers.”

  “Why did you come here, instead of heading for town?”

  “I left my phone here, and this was closer.”

  That wasn’t the entire truth. His uncanny connection to her suggested there was more. She must have known she’d find him at the cabin. Maybe she also knew he couldn’t have stayed away. He believed that she’d chosen to run to him, instead of in the opposite direction.

  Heat continued to flush the skin on the back of his neck. Gavin’s forearms tensed as he turned the steering wheel, fighting an impulse to pull over and kiss the woman beside him, no matter how dire the situation might be.

  There was no way for this connection, this bond, to be make-believe. Skylar either trusted him or wanted to. By being together, by joining their bodies in an exquisite physical union, and maybe even before that, they’d assessed and discovered each others’ worth. One soul sought the other, finding solace in their new companionship.

  “You’re engaged,” he said after using his radio to make a call, though his mind should have been elsewhere.

  She glanced at him.

  “It might not be a good idea to leave valuable things lying around where anyone could find them,” he added. “I saw the ring. The door was open, if that’s any excuse. I wanted to make sure everything was okay since we left in a hurry last night.”

  The conversational turn didn’t seem to unsettle Skylar. She said, “If it still meant something, that ring would be on my finger.”

  “Must have been a recent decision?”

  “Fairly recent, but ancient history now.”

  “But you brought it here?”

  “To send back.”

  Maybe that was on the note he hadn’t read.

  “I’m sorry.” Gavin heard the relief that gentled his voice, and figured she’d pick up on it, too.

  “I’m not,” she said, gazing at him.

  Gavin pulled the Jeep over with a sharp twist on the wheel. Unfortunately this wasn’t anywhere he could have been alone with Skylar, but in Tom Jeevers’s front yard.

  “Stay here, okay?” he said, hating to leave her.

  She nodded.

  Out of the car, and with his radio in hand, Gavin strode to the house and knocked. Receiving no answer, he skirted the perimeter, stopping short when Jeevers met him in the back.

  “Harris?” Tom said. “Back so soon?”

  Gavin lowered the radio. “You’re all right, Tom?”

  “The question supposes that something might have happened to me in the past hour?”

  With a glance behind him at the car, Gavin said, “Good. Glad to see you’re okay. Would you mind if I have a look at the building in the back, Tom?”

  “Why would you want to see that?”

  “I’ve had a complaint about a bad smell.”

  Tom’s returned gaze was one of surprise. “Bad smell?”

  “I’d like to investigate, Tom.”

  Tom’s brow furrowed, adding to the creases already ingrained in his deeply tanned skin. “Well, I suppose it’s okay to take you down there now that he’s gone.”

  Gavin tilted his head. “Now that who is gone?”

  “Doc Donovan.”

  “What’s he got to do with the building behind your house?”

  “He rented it to keep some of his things in.”

  “You decided not to mention that this morning when we spoke?”

  Tom shrugged. “I never saw him use it. As far as I knew, after moving stuff in a few years back, he never came here again.”

  “You haven’t looked at it in all that time?”

  “My knees aren’t what they used to be, and that hill is steep. There aren’t any windows in that structure, and he put a lock on the door. What would I have looked at?”

  “I�
�d appreciate it if you’d show me, Tom. I just need a quick look around.”

  “All right. I was going to have to bust that lock eventually, anyway, since the doctor is no longer with us. I’d thought to tell his daughter about it while she’s here. Hang tight and I’ll find some bolt cutters.”

  As Tom wandered toward the back door of his house, Gavin walked down the slope, only discovering that the little building he’d assumed was a shack was something slightly bigger once he got close to it. The painted camouflage was good. The smell emanating from it was as awful as Skylar had described.

  It was an odor having nothing to do with what had been stored here. Something had died.

  Gavin tightened his grip on the radio and paused by the door to stare at the dangling chain. The unmistakably silver chain, lightly tarnished with age and weather, and composed of huge interlocking links.

  Waves of apprehension washed over him as he reached for the door. He’d made it through a night of sexual gymnastics with a woman, fearing the worst in himself, but he doubted that facing what this building held would be nearly as easy.

  Hearing footsteps behind him that he recognized, Gavin pivoted to block Skylar’s approach. It just wasn’t in her nature to be left behind. He’d have to remember that.

  “Do you ever do what’s asked of you?” he challenged in a rough voice devoid of any of the kindness his lover might need at the moment after a discovery like this one.

  “Hardly ever,” she shot back.

  “You can’t go in there. I won’t allow it, Skylar.”

  “You’re going inside?”

  “I have to. Tom’s okay, and up at the house, so whatever this is requires my attention.”

  “I think this might have something to do with me.”

  “Why would that be true?”

  “My father has been here. I’m sure of that.”

  “Why would you think so?” Gavin pressed.

  “I just do.”

  He didn’t have time for this. Puzzles would have to wait and so would enigmatic women. This building was surrounded by an atmosphere of violence, and it reeked of death. Skylar had been right about that, too.

  “Could be that an animal wandered in and got stuck when the door partially closed off its escape. Rotting elk carcasses can smell like this as they decompose,” he explained, though his crystallizing senses told him a different story.

  This was no elk stench. The odor struck a chord that made his inner wolf squirm.

  Inching the door open, he held his breath and crossed from the light of day into the building’s ominously dark interior.

  *

  For once, Skylar didn’t move. Between the stench of the place and the expression on Gavin’s face, she felt frozen solid. Her muscles and her vocal cords were completely useless.

  “Got them,” a very alive old man she assumed must be Tom Jeevers shouted from the hill above them.

  She watched Gavin back out of the building. He looked to her and then to the man heading their way before again fixing his gaze on the radio clasped in one of the same strong hands that had given her such pleasure. When his eyes found hers, he said, “You’ll need to go back to the car.”

  She wanted to do as he asked. She really did. The chills spreading over her like an icy contagion were the cold fingers of premonition, warning that she might not want to find whatever was in this building. But her shoes were glued to the ground.

  Tom Jeevers slid down the last of the slope to stand beside them. He held a large tool she recognized. Bolt cutters.

  After taking a lingering look at her, he noticed the lock on the ground and the open door, and made a face.

  “There’s a light switch inside on the right,” he said to Gavin without introducing himself to her. “Shoulder high. I’ll show you.”

  Gavin stepped back to let the man pass and then followed Jeevers into the building when the lights came on.

  With no desire to actually see what that room held, and after hearing muffled exclamations from both men, Skylar swayed on her feet. Passing minutes slowed to a crawl. She put a hand to one ear to stop the ringing sounds about to drive her mad. She wasn’t a coward. Was not.

  Although neither man emerged from what she currently designated as a house of horror, it was crazy to think that a dangerous fate had befallen them, too. What could they be doing in there? Why were they taking so long?

  She wanted to shout out those questions.

  Covering her nose with the top of her shirt, she planted one foot in front of the other. Finding the nerve to shuffle forward, she reached the door. Nobody stopped her when she entered. Her fear gave the building a sinister cast, though sinister would have been putting things mildly.

  Four steps in, she froze again. Gavin and Tom Jeevers stood in the center of a large open space, unmoving after all that elapsed time, their faces contorted with horror and disgust.

  Skylar quickly saw why.

  The floor was gray concrete. Walls were padded with extra layers of insulation for soundproofing. Chains with medieval-looking manacles hung from the closest wall, bordering a huge floor-to-ceiling cage that took up most of one corner. The cage’s bars gleamed with silver flecks in the light from an overhead lamp. Its door hung open.

  Her first impression was that someone had built a torture chamber inside this building behind Tom’s house. The awful smell told her that someone had used it.

  Strong arms caught her when her legs gave way. Gavin—his pallor as gray as the concrete, his expression grim.

  “Tom, can you explain this?” he said.

  The older man shook his head. He also looked ill.

  “This sits on your property,” Gavin said.

  With her head pressed to his chest, Skylar felt the rumble of Gavin’s voice when he made that charge. His heart was racing. His shoulders continually twitched as if, like hers, his instincts told him to run.

  “How could you not know about this, Tom?”

  “It wasn’t my place to interfere,” Tom finally managed to croak. “I didn’t have a key. I never saw anyone come in or out.”

  Aware of Gavin’s gaze shifting to her, Skylar raised her chin. Feelings of terror shot through her when she read what lay behind Gavin’s intense blue gaze.

  “What about your father, Skylar? You told me you knew he’d been here.”

  She eyed the cage. Her breath squeezed out to form a reply to his question, but another question took precedence. “What kind of animal would that cage hold?”

  “A big one,” Gavin replied.

  “I was wrong. My father couldn’t have been here. He would not have allowed this. He was a doctor, and he was kind.”

  “Could he have discovered this place and been helping whomever or whatever he found here?”

  “Yes. That must be it, and why I thought he…” She couldn’t finish that sentence, frantic now for a way to explain this scene when her heart and head each maintained different fears.

  That cage was built to hold a large animal. A strong animal. For what purpose, though? What about the chains on the walls?

  Those chains weren’t low, or anywhere near the floor. They’d been attached to the walls with industrial-sized iron rings and placed high up, spread far enough apart to restrain something bigger than a human.

  No.

  Not that.

  She was going to be sick, and fought off a whirl of vertigo. Her father couldn’t have found and trapped the kind of creature he’d been seeking because they didn’t exist. Even if they did, he could not have kept one here.

  He wouldn’t have dared.

  Unless her father’s plan was to keep a dangerous creature locked away from others. Keep it from harming others. Study it closely.

  No. That can’t be it, either.

  Those manacles would eliminate wolves and other typical four-legged predators.

  “No,” she repeated aloud, helpless to explain this room. Any attempt to address her father’s motivations without the facts to back th
em up might damage his pristine reputation and all the good he’d done. He couldn’t speak for himself, and she refused to judge her dad by the way things looked.

  She was trembling so hard, Gavin pulled her closer. But she felt a change in him. He was unsure about her now, and about what she’d said about her dad.

  She wanted to shout “werewolf” and be done with it. Get that out in the open and let these men decide how crazy she was. But was she crazy? Had her father been nuts, too, or merely a damn good hunter to have bagged a beast? Was there a chance her father’s mad mind assumed some other poor animal was a werewolf?

  As more awful theories piled up, Skylar dug deep into her thoughts. If her father had trapped a werewolf, or any other kind of animal for study, there would be written evidence of that work. She’d have to search to see if such a diary existed in order to find out what had gone on in this dreadful place.

  “Charging my father with knowing about or abetting this kind of activity gets us nowhere if all we have to link him to this place is my hunch that he’d been here before,” she said.

  “He rented this building from Tom.” Gavin’s voice was as grim as his expression.

  “Anyone could have done this,” she insisted. “The lock was broken.”

  Transferring his attention to Tom, Gavin said, “She’s right. If Donovan hasn’t been here in a couple of years, room for blame is left wide-open.”

  “We don’t know what actually went on here.” Tom looked to Skylar as he spoke.

  “That smell tells us something did,” Gavin said.

  Her lover slowly distanced himself from her. His hold on her loosened in a way that suggested he might believe her a part of this, or think that she could have been tainted by her father’s deeds.

  She spoke again. “What happened to being innocent until proved guilty?”

  “Nothing happened to that,” Gavin said. “We’ve all had a nasty shock and we’re searching for meaning.”

  “They might think I did this.” Tom Jeevers headed for the door. “I’d better call it in.”

  Skylar pointed to the radio in Gavin’s hand. “Aren’t you going to use that?”

  “I already have.”