Gray Moon Rising: Seasons of the Moon

by S. M. Reine

  “Nobody saw her change, so I don’t think she’s one of the werewolves. I bet she’s a camper,” Stripes said.

  “Nobody asked you what you think. You’re not here for what you think. It’s obviously another wolf converging!” Eleanor said. She had been even more irate since finding Bekah. She had clearly hoped that Jakob would find Rylie.

  Her moping was making Seth angrier by the minute. “We have no way of knowing that,” he snapped.

  She glowered. “Who else would be out here?”

  Jakob was cleaning mud from under his fingernails with a knife. He had gotten messy digging graves. “We saw a wrecked car. Bet that’s where she came from.”

  “Do you see any signs of a car wreck on her?” she asked.

  Everyone standing around the SUV turned to look at Bekah again. She was asleep between the seats with her wrists and ankles trussed together. Having so many ropes for such a short girl looked ridiculous, but if she tried to break free, it still wouldn’t be enough. Each of the kopides studied her like she was on a slide under a microscope. Seth knew that they were trying to decide if that tingling at the back of their necks was because Bekah was a werewolf, or if it was from one of the other bodies.

  “There is a lot of blood,” Stripes admitted.

  “Because she was eating deer!” Eleanor said impatiently. “She ran with the wolves. She’s covered in blood. What other confirmation do we need? Let’s get over this and shoot her.”

  Stripes gave an incredulous laugh. “Shoot her? Really? She’s just a kid.”

  Jakob rolled his eyes. “You’re such a sissy.”

  “Well, it’s true! She’s got to be, like, fourteen,” he said. Yasir gave him a hard look. Stripes was too smart to challenge him. Instead, he stared at his feet as he shifted uncomfortably. “My sister’s fourteen.”

  “Waste of Union funds,” Eleanor muttered.

  Yasir finally spoke up. He had been organizing their collection of teeth beside the camping stove and pretending to ignore them.

  “We’ll take her with us. We’re almost to the mountain, and the moon is coming in a week. If she’s a werewolf, she’ll change sooner or later, and we can’t leave a girl stranded in the meantime. If we get a late season snow, she’ll die.” Eleanor opened her mouth to argue, but Yasir stopped her. “That’s my decision.”

  She got to her feet. “We should test how she responds to silver poisoning. Or cut her and see how she heals.”

  “No. We shot the others because we were already certain of their species. Not all werewolves heal quickly, either. It depends on how nourished they are.”

  “But—”

  “Stripes is right. This one’s a kid, probably younger than your son, and we don’t have reason to think she’s a werewolf. Remember that our primary mission is to protect humans. All of them.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

  Yasir moved so fast that Seth actually jumped. He leaped to his feet and punched Eleanor across the face.

  Her back hit the tree. A silver knife appeared in her hand instantly, and she lunged at him with a roar. Eleanor was terrifyingly fast, but even she was no match for the reflexes of a kopis with military training. He dodged out of the way before she hit.

  She spun and lashed out a foot. It caught him in the gut. His breath gusted from him, but he caught her ankle.

  With a swift motion, he pulled her off her feet. She landed with a grunt.

  Yasir planted a boot in her chest and crouched. “Who’s the commander?” he asked. Even though his voice was calm, his face was twisted into a look of hatred.

  “I’m the specialist,” Eleanor said without a hint of contrition. He leaned his weight on her chest, and bones creaked. She moved to stab him. He yanked the knife out of her hand.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Yasir said. “Who’s the commander?”

  “You are.”

  He let her stand. “We’ll take the girl with us. You hear me? But if anyone sees her change—shoot her. Bed down, everyone. Tomorrow morning, we go to the mountain.”

  Seth waited until everyone was asleep before climbing into Jakob’s SUV. He didn’t close the door all the way so he could keep an eye on the sleeping bags outside.

  Carefully, he unknotted Bekah’s bindings. The motion made her stir. Bekah’s eyes opened, and there was no recognition in her face. Only pure panic. Her wide eyes darted around the darkened car. She sounded like she was going to hyperventilate.

  “What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I?” Her words slurred over each other, as though she had forgotten how to talk like a human.

  “Shh,” Seth whispered, hoping she would take a hint from his volume. “Look at me, Bekah. It’s me. It’s Seth.”

  Confusion furrowed her brow. “Seth?”

  “Yeah. It’s all right. You’re okay.”

  He helped her sit up against the seats. Once he was sure she wouldn’t fall over, he let go. Bekah rubbed her eyes. Her hands left smudges of dirt on her face.

  She gave him a trembling smile that was barely a ghost of her usual glow. “I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve been… lost… for a while. So I didn’t expect to run into anyone I know. Did Rylie call you?”

  Seth blinked. “You didn’t come here with Rylie?”

  “No. Didn’t you?” Bekah frowned. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the car of… uh, some friends of mine. We found you in the forest not far from Gray Mountain. Aren’t you supposed to be at the sanctuary in California? How did you get all the way out here?”

  “I’ve been having dreams about this mountain. On the last moon, when I changed… it was like I totally lost myself. I must have been wolfed out for hours. I woke up the next day miles from home without any of my friends, and I didn’t know how to get back.” Bekah shivered. “But I didn’t want to go home. I hitched a ride with a family on an RV vacation. That’s how I got across the country.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. My leg hurts.” She shuddered again, harder than before. “What’s wrong with me, Seth?”

  He held out his hands to calm her. “Let me look. Okay? I know a little first aid.”

  Bekah lifted her leg. Seth helped her clean off some of the blood and found a wound in the thickest part of her calf. One of those Union bullets had grazed her and left silver behind. The last time he had seen a similar wound, it had been on Rylie’s thigh.

  “It looks like there might be bullet fragments in your leg. I can remove them, but you have to be quiet. Can you keep from making any noise?” Seth asked. When she looked horrified by the suggestion, he nodded toward the sleeping bags outside. “We can’t risk waking them up.”

  She went pale. “Okay. I guess.” She made herself stare at the roof of the car and dug her fingers into the felt floor mat. “You have to help distract me. Tell me why I keep seeing this forest.”

  “Werewolves originally came from Gray Mountain,” he said, grabbing a first aid kit out of the back, sterilizing his hands with alcohol, and opening sterile wipes. “Myth says that human settlers fought with the gods, and lycanthropy ended the war.” He cleaned off the rest of the blood. “This is going to hurt a lot.”

  At her nod, he took a deep breath and dug his fingers into the wound on her calf. The bullet hadn’t gone deep, so the first part was easy to find. Bekah bit her fist, but didn’t cry out.

  “All the werewolves are being called to the forest, so it’s not just you,” he went on, dropping the first fragment of bullet on a piece of gauze. “Nobody knows why or how, though.”

  She flapped her hands in the air as he extracted the second piece.

  Seth pocketed the bloody gauze so he could get rid of it. “Okay. You’re done.”

  “Ouch,” she whispered. “But… it’s burning. That’s good.” As they watched, the edges of the injury began to close.

  “We’ll have to bandage this,” he said, cleaning up the blood he had smeared on her. After a short moment, she was totally h
ealed, and the only sign something had happened was a red mark like a fading bruise. The wound wasn’t as bad as Rylie’s had been after all. “The Union can’t know you were shot, and they definitely can’t know that you’ve healed from it. So if anyone asks, you tripped in the forest and scraped yourself. Got it?”

  “I’ve got it. Who are you traveling with?” she asked below her breath, eyeballing the sleeping bags through the window. “What’s ‘the Union’?”

  Seth gave her a short summary. Bekah didn’t need much detail—she was smart enough to infer that the situation was bad.

  “So you’re saying this is an extermination force,” she said.

  “Pretty much.” He grimaced at the faint silhouette of the mountain against the sky. “There are supposed to be more of them on the mountain. And I’m expecting for us to run into more werewolves as we get close to the next moon, too.”

  “This is bad. This is really bad,” Bekah said.

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Seth ran through a list of options in his mind: Panic. Run away. Kill the Union in their sleep. Panic and run away. Find Rylie and Abel and probably dozens of other wolves. Or confront whatever was calling them to the mountain and get caught in a slaughter.

  None of that was especially inspirational, and judging by Bekah’s terrified eyes, she really needed inspiration.

  “Well, first, I’m going to sleep. I’m wasted.” He made himself smile even though he didn’t feel it. He wrapped the bandages around her leg and pinned them in place. “I could let you out of here. It would be safer than staying with us. If they find out what you are…” Seth trailed off and tried not to look toward the rifles mounted behind the driver’s seat. He failed. To her credit, Bekah only looked a little bit terrified.

  “But they would know that you did it.” She shook her head. “No. I can fake it for now. I’ll come up with a story and slip away when they’re watching you, so they know you didn’t set me free. And I know Levi will come for me. He won’t let them hurt me.”

  He patted her hand. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s not far away.”

  Seth wasn’t sure if that was a comforting thought or not. Bekah’s weak smile seemed to indicate agreement.

  “You’d better tie me back up,” she said, and she lay down.

  He knotted the ropes around her wrists and ankles the way they had been before. “We passed a car on the way here. You should tell them that’s how you got to the forest. Okay?” She nodded. Seth climbed out of the SUV again. “Try to get some sleep.”

  She rested her head on her arms. “Thanks. And Seth?” He paused halfway out the door. “Rylie’s going to be fine. I’m sure of it.”

  His stomach knotted just thinking about it.

  “Yeah,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Me too.”

  He silently slid the door of the SUV closed.

  When he turned around, Eleanor was watching him.

  Her sleeping bag was open and unzipped, and he had been too busy with Bekah to notice that she had gotten up. Eleanor probably hadn’t gone to sleep in the first place. There was no way she could have heard their conversation through the SUV’s door. They had been whispering, and she didn’t have a werewolf’s hearing. But she looked suspicious.

  He immediately felt guilty. Her glare had a way of making him feel like that. “Mom,” he said, just to break the silence of the night.

  She sat on the hood of the opposite SUV, running a sharpening stone along the business end of her silver-tipped knife. “How’s the girl doing?”

  “She’s awake. I heard her moving around and wanted to see what she could tell me.”

  “And?”

  “And she was driving through and got in a wreck. That was her car.” He wondered if his mother could hear his pulse racing. It took all of his control to keep his voice totally calm. “She’s not a werewolf. I helped bandage her up myself.”

  “Hmm,” Eleanor said. She held up the blade and tilted it to catch the starlight. She spit on it, rubbed it on her jeans, and looked again.

  “What are you doing awake?”

  “I’m looking out for werewolves… and werewolf sympathizers.”

  Even in the darkness, her black eyes were sharp.

  “I’m going to sleep, Mom,” he said, even though he could imagine all too clearly that blade plunging into his sleeping bag to bury into his back.

  “You look scared,” Eleanor said.

  “I’m tired.”

  She waved the knife in the air. “Don’t worry. This isn’t for you, boy. This is for the wolves.” She jabbed the blade at the other SUV. “Tell me, Seth. Haven’t I been a good mother?”

  “Are you looking for an honest answer? Or are you just feeling pensive tonight?”

  “Tell me the truth,” she said. “I kept a roof over your head. I kept you fed and dressed. I trained you to fight and survive in a hard world that wants you dead. I gave you boys everything I had of myself—my life, my body, my soul—and for what? An ungrateful punk who would rather drive cross-country with a stranger in his car instead of his mother.”

  “You tied me up and threw me under our mobile home,” Seth said dully.

  “I protected you.”

  “You dragged my girlfriend behind a motorcycle.”

  That got a reaction. She dropped to her feet and advanced on Seth. “She’s a monster,” Eleanor hissed.

  He glanced over at the sleeping bags. Nobody stirred, but he was pretty sure they had an audience. There was no way anyone could sleep through that. Seth lowered his tone. “Rylie’s not the one who dropped poisoned meat in a school.”

  “All for your protection.” She bit out the last word.

  “Did you ever think I didn’t want to be protected?” He gathered all his resolve and stood toe-to-toe with Eleanor. “No. That’s the answer to your question. You haven’t been a good mother. You’ve been mean. You’ve been a bully. You might have kept us dressed, but it was in uniform so we would march in your stupid army. You taught us to kill innocent people. You housed us in motels while you chased Dad’s dreams.”

  “You deserved worse,” Eleanor whispered. “I should have left you under the trailer.”

  “It takes a lot more than fur and fangs to make a monster. That’s all I’m saying, Mom.”

  “And I know why you’re here. I know what you plan to do. I’m watching you.”

  Seth sighed. “Okay. What am I planning to do?”

  “You’re going to kill them all in their sleep. The Union. And you’re going to run off with the wolves.”

  He had to laugh. “I’m not a killer, Mom. Not anymore. Not since I escaped from you.” He took another look at the sleeping bags. One of them had shifted. Was that Yasir? He raised his voice a little. “But we can end everything here. If all the werewolves die, there won’t be any more attacks. No more victims. And I want this to end as much as you do.”

  “I wish I believed you. I really wish I did. But I hear your lies, and so does God, and you’re going to be judged. You ought to know that.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face. “Goodnight, Mom.”

  “I’ll be watching,” she whispered.

  ELEVEN

  The Shores of Golden Lake

  Rylie opened her eyes on blue sky and a single drifting cloud.

  She smelled pine trees. Fresh water. Stone encrusted with winter’s ice. The crisp bite of spring air. There was something wet beneath her flexing fingertips that felt like sand, and her legs were damp.

  She sat up. Sand squished underneath her.

  Rylie lay on the shores of Golden Lake. The early morning light cast a yellow haze over the sky, though the trees were still heavy with the violet shadows of nighttime, and trees that had been growing for centuries towered overhead. There was a rock face behind her. If she climbed it, she knew she would see a path, and if she followed that path, there would be cabins.

  She twisted, and her gaze track
ed up the slope to the mountain and its bald peaks still marked with white snow.

  Gray Mountain.

  “I’m dreaming,” she whispered, “I have to be dreaming…”

  She got to her feet and spun around, searching for the body in the waves. Water slopped over her feet. Her legs must have been in the lake for a long time, because she couldn’t even feel it on her toes. But the surf was empty of everything except colorful rocks worn smooth by years of waves. The trees rustled with a breeze that blew the hair back from her face.

  Rylie ran her hands down her body. She was naked, but uninjured.

  Why was she naked? What happened?

  “I have to be dreaming,” she repeated, more firmly this time. A fresh breeze blew, and she shivered as chilly waves rippled over her skin. That didn’t feel like a dream breeze.

  She lifted her nose to the breeze and took a short sniff. Those weren’t dream smells, nor were they the faint echoes of Gray Mountain that she always picked up off other werewolves. It was the real thing. The wolf inside her recognized it, and it filled her with a powerful sense of calm and peace.

  Rylie wasn’t far from Camp Silver Brook.

  She climbed the rock face, digging in her fingers and toes for traction. It had been a long time since campers scrambled over the beach while enjoying warm summer days, so the moss had grown thick and slimy. It was tough getting a grip. But she was much stronger than she had been the year before, so it didn’t take much effort to get over the cliff.

  A winding dirt path led into the trees, just as she expected. She could make out the hard lines of what had once been the office building through the bushes. There was a sign by the path. One arrow pointed to a path parallel to the lake’s shore and said, “Archery Range.” Beneath that was another arrow that said, “Stables.” And the third arrow was aimed at the buildings. It said, “Camp Silver Brook.”

  Her throat clenched shut, and her hands flew to her mouth as her eyes began to burn.

  She hadn’t thought about where she was driving with Abel over the last couple of days. Not really. But now that she was there, she couldn’t deny it anymore.