It was an awful idea, born of a darkness that could only get worse if the question was answered.
Jenna had admitted to being worried about her for a long time. A call from Trish had brought the doctor here to Colorado the same day. What would make Jenna do that?
She took in a breath and braced herself on the couch, fighting a rising sense of panic.
Opening her mouth, Skylar released the dreaded words, along with a long, exhaled breath.
“Was my mother a werewolf, Dr. James?”
Time seemed to freeze as the silence grew. She had to fill that silence, had to speak the next part of the question and complete the thought. Her lips parted. Sound came out.
“Not just a locked-up delusional lunatic,” she said, “but a real, claw-wielding Were?”
Chapter 26
The forest reeked with the smell of Otherness, as though the creature Gavin chased had marked off a specific territory. The problem came from the fact that the area afforded panoramic views of Skylar’s cabin through the trees, from all angles.
Gavin faced a second problem. He craved another scent so badly, he nearly turned back at each bend in the path. Her scent. Skylar’s. The woman whose essence was imprinted on his soul, according to the mysterious woman helping her.
He spun around and dropped to his haunches, trying to duck the feeling of being too close to the beast, to the kind of danger that could make bloody threads out of a young woman’s dewy flesh. It was possible the beast he sought could avoid being found tonight, but what about next month or the month after that?
Had it shown itself tonight because of Skylar’s presence, noticing the wolf in her? Did it want a piece?
Gavin refused to ponder that possibility, and yet he realized that the best thing for Skylar would be for her to go back to Florida, removing herself from this threat. If she left, though, was there any way to predict how far the imprinting might stretch to accommodate a long-distance relationship? Would that relationship disintegrate as she traveled away from him, state by state?
What would happen to their connection when Skylar discovered that her new werewolf self was due to something he’d done to her?
Forever. The woman in the cabin said werewolves mated forever. That thought seemed as monstrous as the rest of the werewolf thing, and still there was no getting around it. Nothing was to be done about any of this, except to stick to the original plan, which went so much deeper now that someone else was involved. Someone he cared deeply about.
Someone he ached for.
Gavin straightened and resumed his pace with his senses wide-open and his skull tingling from the effort of not thinking about Skylar. The world had become much more complicated in the past few days and he’d have to deal with it one problem at a time. Safety came first. Hers, and others’. Mostly hers.
This creature could not be allowed to infect anyone else.
Moonlight lit the forest with a clear silvery light that felt like liquid on his skin and tasted like particles of stardust. The light he now dreaded fed his energy, refueling his body with each step he took, but at the same time it stripped his humanity from him, and left him unsound.
As he neared a rock pile forming a ledge overlooking the valley beneath, Gavin stopped, breathing hard, not from physical exertion, but simply to take more scents in. He wasn’t alone. Every sense told him that. Red flags were waving in his mind. The air felt dense, thick, in a way even brilliant moonlight couldn’t penetrate.
Turning in a slow circle, hands raised, claws long, lethal and ready for the upcoming fight, he let a growl rip that transposed his anger into a sound the monster in the shadows would surely comprehend. Then he growled out an invitation for the damn thing to come out and face him.
Hair on the nape of his neck bristled as his shoulders began to undulate. The scars on his chest, as if recognizing the creature who’d made them, burned once again with an icy-cold fire.
Gavin wished for a voice, so he could to fling oaths at the night. Settling for a low disgruntled roar, he waited, watched, listened, as he studied his surroundings.
He heard it finally…a sound not meant to be an announcement. He spun toward the rocks with his heart pounding.
I might not make it back, Skylar. And I am so very sorry.
Low vibrations punched through his gut as if he’d swallowed an engine idling in neutral. Wildness began to gather and swirl inside him like a volcano about to erupt. His view of the landscape sharpened. Neck muscles stiffened.
Taking down this beast would soften the blow of his own possible demise. He might be a broken man, but as a werewolf, there’d be nothing to stop him now, short of death.
He rolled his massive shoulders, relishing the spark igniting his mounds of muscle. When the sound he both wanted and dreaded came again, he leaped to the rocks, growling a response. I know you’re here.
Branches moved to his right. Leaves fluttered down. A spot of shadow began to grow, getting larger by the second, filling the space between the trees.
You really are a monster. The world has no place for the likes of you.
When the beast stepped clear of the greenery, dark-furred, long-muzzled and twice the size of anything Gavin could recall, it stopped long enough for him to get a good long look before ambling forward at a gait that felt to Gavin like death approaching in slow-motion.
*
“Yes,” Jenna said, seated by Skylar, her face showing none of the fear flooding through Skylar at the moment.
Yes?
Had she heard correctly?
Yes, her mother was a werewolf?
Damn it, think back.
She’d been a child when she demanded visitation with her mother. Only six years old. Some of those memories, tucked away because they were too painful to dig up, came back now with the force of an unleashed tide.
Windowless cell. Men in white coats. The hole in the door that food passed through. A mattress on the floor.
More memory, burning like fire…
Her mother’s fuzz of dark hair, shaved close to her scalp. The wildness in her mother’s gray eyes that came and went, but mostly stayed, scaring a young girl who was determined to stick it out and be with her mom for as long as she could.
Cold concrete floors. Hushed voices. Foul smells. The sense of her mother holding back a raw, raging power.
Skylar repeated her question to Jenna James out of necessity. “My mother was…a werewolf?”
As she waited for a further response, Skylar found breathing difficult. Because that had to be the right answer, didn’t it, and a possible source of her own condition? This doctor had treated patients at Fairview, though not long enough ago to have known her mother.
And if Gavin hadn’t done this to her, someone else must have.
Love bites. Nips of her mother’s teeth on her hands and arms. Little endearments that didn’t seem strange to a child who craved motherly love and knew no better.
Could that have done it? Made her what she had supposedly become?
Faced with this new dilemma, those days inside Fairview’s walls became suspect, and the world continued to tilt on its axis.
Like mother, like daughter?
Maybe no bites were necessary, and her mother had passed her the genes? Could having only one wolf parent produce a genetic Were like Jenna?
God…
Had her father known about his wife’s condition?
How far back did her dad’s information and interest in werewolves go?
She shook so violently, her teeth rattled. When Jenna reached out to her, Skylar warded her off with a stiff raised hand. Jenna knew about her mother, so her dad must have confided everything.
What about silver bullets and metal cages?
Withholding a scream of frustration, Skylar forced herself to speak. “Since we’re on the path of truth, I believe I deserve to know more of my own.” It took a few tries to get that complete sentence out.
“You do deserve that. But your father ma
de me promise…”
“Promise what?”
“To keep some things from you unless those things became absolutely necessary.”
“You don’t think that time is now? I’ve just found out I’m something other than 100 percent human and that my mother wasn’t human, either. Neither is my lover or the woman speaking to me. How does that rate as a requirement for needing enlightenment?”
“Your father wasn’t sure about you,” Jenna said. “He didn’t know if you’d ever need to understand.”
“He kept my mother locked up.”
“For her safety, as well as the safety of others.”
“How did he explain that to the rest of the staff? Keeping a werewolf in a padded cell had to have its own challenges. So, which came to my mother first, the wolf or the madness? Or are they one and the same?”
Her voice broke as she went on, recalling things long repressed. “I remember darts. They shot her with darts when they couldn’t get close, when she wouldn’t let them in. They were careful not to hit me, but there were lots of darts when they finally took me away.”
“That would have been medication to calm her down.”
“It was barbaric. Would you condone that, Dr. James? If you kept a werewolf in a cell, would you treat it like that? Control it that way?”
Jenna didn’t answer that one.
“So, what? Times change? Why aren’t you locked away? Why didn’t my father go after you?”
“I’m not like your mother, Skylar.”
“How do you know? She was beautiful like you. She was lucid at times. What made her so different from you or Gavin?”
She could see the discomfort her question caused in the woman across from her who probably wasn’t much older than Trish. But the questions seemed fair under the circumstances. She had a right to know what to expect.
There were secrets, and then there were secrets, Skylar guessed. Maybe her mother had been stark raving mad on top of being Were and Fairview was the right place to handle that. Yet how was she going to find out without being privy to her own family history?
“Different,” Skylar pressed. “Explain that. If not bitten, like Gavin or a genetic werewolf like you, if that’s what you mean, what does that leave?”
“A creature that’s so much more dangerous,” Jenna said, her voice low and gentle. “One that has to be carefully monitored for everyone’s good.”
Skylar sank farther down on the seat. Damn it, they were talking about her mother as though she’d been possessed by some kind of demented demon.
“So she passed the wolf to me?” Skylar whispered, eyes closing, the last of her energy all used up.
“I think that must be the case.”
“And it just happened to show up in me now?” Her staccato voice was as shaky as the rest of her and showing the strain. “Can you even begin to explain that?”
“None of us can,” Jenna replied. “Very few of us have experience with anything like this.”
Skylar opened her eyes to focus on the woman beside her. She had to know everything, wanted to know…and at the same time didn’t want to hear any more. But they had already come this far.
Her voice cracked. “Wouldn’t it be easier for me to walk out that door and take it like a Donovan? Face my fate head-on and let my body get on with whatever it’s going to do? Prove that all this speculation is true?”
“No,” Jenna said adamantly. It was a stern warning, a no-nonsense reply backed by the threat of a werewolf’s strength and power. And it made Skylar realize that Jenna James had to be here for a reason that surpassed merely being concerned for a colleague’s daughter.
Possibly Jenna was here to monitor her, gauge her, study her since the original Donovan lunatic was lost long ago at Fairview.
And all that was missing from this sordid picture was a tranquilizer dart and a white lab coat.
Chapter 27
Gavin went cold. Numb. Staring at a presence that bridged the gap between heaven and hell by sucking the air and life right out of both. And out of him.
He had a sensation of falling, of the darkness weighing him down, so that thoughts of movement in any direction were impossible. There was no place for other emotions. Fear became an overarching cloud.
He dragged at the air in order to breathe, aware of the need to clear his head. This beast truly wasn’t like him at all. If he was its accidental offspring, something had gone terribly wrong with the process.
The thing, creature, monster, abomination, stopped several paces away in a repetition of their meeting earlier in the night, and again the hesitancy seemed strange. Through his stupor, Gavin realized he had to shake off his shock to properly assess this gigantic foe. But all he did was stare.
Again he noted how fur covered its body, with no resemblance to anything human. The dark fur rippled like water over a massive muscle structure each time the creature drew in a breath.
And anything that breathed could conceivably have its air supply cut off, Gavin thought, hoping for an opportunity to test the theory.
But the outline that seemed wolfish at first look went far past that in scope, outclassing Gavin by at least fifty pounds. Maybe out of self-defense or an act of self-preservation, he hadn’t allowed himself to remember details of the complete picture. Yet here those details were, larger than life and twice as nasty.
Watch the mouth and the claws, he warned himself as deep-set eyes stared back at him from red-rimmed sockets. Gavin was surprised to sense a terrifying intelligence gleaming from those eyes, which were a light color. Blue? Green? The creature’s eyes were the only evidence of an identifiable humanity in the monster, and for a few seconds they tripped Gavin up.
This wasn’t merely a super powerful animal, as he’d first thought. It was a walking, thinking machine—which Gavin figured made it ten times as deadly. And it appeared to be assessing him, too.
The claws were extended and at least six inches long, though the beast’s big hands, more reminiscent of paws than Gavin’s hands, remained lowered. Its impressive muscle wasn’t bunched, which would have suggested it was ready to take Gavin on.
Why are you looking at me? What are you waiting for? What the hell are you?
Gavin’s pulse hammered at his insides. He didn’t attack or do anything but try to stomach the fear and anxiousness of waiting this out.
The beast across from him sniffed the air and growled menacingly with sounds that raised chills on the back of Gavin’s neck. The pain in his chest intensified. His scars continued to burn.
He growled back. You can’t get past me, beast. You’ll never get to her.
He sensed the beast’s impatience. Its hunger beat at the air.
Only death will end this. Yours or mine.
Did it laugh at his threat, as if indeed it heard and understood the challenge? Was it anticipating the ease with which it might savor a kill?
The terrible humanlike eyes tracked to the right, looking past Gavin to the gap in the trees that bordered the path. Alerted to the direction of the beast’s new focus, Gavin inched sideways to block off the view.
Not going to happen. He growled. Not tonight. Not ever. Not if I can help it.
He didn’t want to die, and yet he had always been cognizant of the sacrifice he might be asked to make in the line of duty. Still, not making it through the next few minutes wasn’t an option he was willing to accept.
The monster roared softly and tossed its wolfish head. Once again it raised its muzzle to sniff the air. Then it stepped closer to Gavin, and though it was only one step, and still a distance from him, it sniffed again as if smelling something on Gavin that it might not have anticipated.
The vastness of the silence around them was chilling. Gavin readied for the fight, raising his claws, demonstrating his willingness to defend that path to the cabin at all cost. He had to force himself to anticipate the beast’s first incriminating move. Bile stuck in his throat as he waited.
The giant cocked its head and
continued to stare. The second sound it made rolled through Gavin, pulling from him another silent protest.
She’s mine. Forever. You did this.
The beast’s next roar, louder, more feral, caused a chain reaction. The forest came alive with movement, as if a hurricane had dropped from above, controlled by the creature across from him.
Gavin dropped to his haunches and roared his disgust. His chest heaved. He fought for breath and shook off the searing pain cutting through him from being near his maker. Drawing back his lips, he bared teeth that were so much less impressive than the demon’s.
The beast snapped at leaves hurling by as if it were a game. Then, without warning, it sprang. The transition from complete stillness to a moving wall of solid muscle took less time than it took Gavin to blink. The creature was on him before Gavin knew what had hit him, its great jaws open and mere inches from his face.
On the ground, on his back, Gavin felt the heat of its breath, felt its heavy bulk bearing down on him before regaining his wits. By then it should have been too late for him to inflict any real damage on the thing on top of him.
He struck out anyway, his claws parting the thick fur to connect with the monster’s ribs. The damn thing didn’t even react to the blow. Nor did it finish him off, though Gavin’s face was a bite away. Instead, it looked him in the eyes as if seeking something. As its light eyes probed his, a razor-sharp claw touched Gavin’s cheek and scratched its way toward his mouth, drawing blood, though the beast seemed to have no sense of that or take notice.
I will kill you, Gavin thought. Somehow.
He brought up one knee, rammed it into the beast’s thigh as hard as he could, and again went at it with his claws. The giant, seemingly oblivious to pain, tilted its head and let out a roar that rattled Gavin’s bones.
And then the beast heaved itself backward, lunged to its feet, and made for the path leading to…
The cabin.
*
Skylar sat forward, looking to the door and noting peripherally that Jenna looked there also.
“Closer,” Skylar said. “Whatever is out there is getting closer.”
Seduced by the Moon Page 19
