Waxing Moon

by Sarah E Stevens

  I grabbed my gun back from Tony before he changed into a wolf and forgot again. I checked over the pistol: five shots left and one clip in my pocket. That would have to be enough. When I looked up again, Tony and Eliza had both slipped away.

  Even now, excitement underlay the grim look on Newt’s face.

  “Three coming from that direction,” he said, pointing. “Two men and a woman; no one we know. They may be close enough to call fire soon.”

  “Strong?”

  “Hard to say. Hopefully, not too strong.”

  I found cover behind a nearby tree and took a stance, holding my gun steady with both hands. Newt would take care of the fire; I’d shoot anything I saw. That was all the plan I needed.

  With a roar that made me jump and sent my heart into rapid pounding, flames leapt up at Newt’s feet—regular fire, not flesh-searing purple. It guttered with a small gesture from Newt. I risked a short glance at our Salamander and saw his eyes narrowed in concentration as he scanned the tree-laden slope in front of us. I grounded myself on the tree trunk and took a deep breath to force the trembling out of my muscles.

  I heard a wild crash and glimpsed a blur of motion through a tangle of blackberry bushes. Our wolves in action? Then purple fire erupted where Newt had stood—blindingly bright. I cursed. He’d be okay. He could handle it, I told myself. There was nothing I could do about fire. He was okay. I scanned frantically for the Salamanders.

  Then—that patch of sunlight, had that been there before? Was that—?

  I shot. The recoil jolted me and caused my head to pulse, stabbing pain radiating from behind my ear where the tree hit me. Relax, I told myself and huffed a breath. I forced my muscles to loosen, took aim, and fired again. The sunlight flickered and I saw a figure in its midst. I aimed at the torso and shot again. The Salamander jerked and then searing light streamed into the spot, so bright my eyes teared and I had to blink. The white-hot light consolidated into a stream of fire that arced toward me and deepened in color as it came—white to red, then flickers of blue and indigo.

  The beautiful brilliance of the colors, of the fire itself, nearly paralyzed me and only at the last minute did I yell something—who knows what—with the full realization that purple flesh-searing fire hurtled at me. I flung myself to the side, hit the ground hard, and rolled into a nearby Manzanita shrub. Pain blossomed in my leg. I looked down in horror to see my jeans burning near the ankle. I smashed my leg into the ground and tried to rub out the flames, even as they tried to climb and devour me. I somehow fumbled off my jacket and beat at the fire, even as the flames disappeared with a slight popping noise.

  Panting, I looked up and saw Newt.

  “You okay?” He asked in a terse voice. “Jules?”

  “Yes.”

  Before the word cleared my lips, he whirled and disappeared into a shaft of light that streaked through the trees. Indigo flames blossomed in a swath twenty feet from us, but then as quickly tamped down. Smoke lay heavy in the air. My leg hurt, but I couldn’t stop to feel it. My head swam with dizziness, but I pushed it aside. A confusion of light, flames, noise: I blinked my stinging eyes and forced panic to the side while I scanned the brightest spots. There. I took a breath, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

  The sunlight winked out as the Salamander I glimpsed spun around and fell heavily to the ground, exactly the way people do in movies. I needed a moment—needed the world to stop, the way it does in film sometimes, to stop and pan to me as I realized the enormity of what just happened. I killed someone. Again. Instead, a heavy body tackled me and drove me to the ground, pushed the air out of my lungs. My gun went off and spun from my hand. The world darkened for a moment and I swam back to myself to see Mike Hollis’s face inches from my own, his body holding me down. His hands clamped around my throat and I struggled to breathe past the crushing pressure.

  “Where is the baby?” He ground out the words through gritted teeth.

  My mouth opened and closed, not because I would tell him, but because I gasped for air. My hands scrabbled weakly at his wrists, trying to pull him off me. No use. Gun, where was my gun? I felt on the ground.

  “Tell me! Where is he?”

  I tried to throw him off me, but couldn’t, no matter how hard I thrashed. My hand closed on something. Not the gun. A rock? I tried to pick it up, but it stuck to the earth. I pried and tugged, all the while flailing with my other arm and hitting Hollis around the head and shoulders. He cursed and used one hand to pin my right arm above my head, as he kept his other hand around my neck. I sucked in a breath as he squeezed tighter.

  “Tell me!” He lifted my head up and thumped it back to the ground. Waves of pain flashed through my skull. The world grew black and fuzzy around the edges. All I saw was his face; all I felt was the damned rock, embedded in the baked Oregon soil.

  “Tell me!” Suddenly, fire danced in front of me, called by him and held there as a threat. I made a whining noise as I tried to scrabble away but couldn’t. I tried to nod, tried to show with my eyes that I’d tell him, if only he’d let me talk. His hand loosened a fraction and I sucked in a long gulp of air.

  “Where is he?”

  I panted and choked out the words. “He—is—he―”

  The rock loosened. I fumbled it into my hand and threw all my strength into my arm as I smashed into Hollis’s head. He grunted and lost hold of me with the impact, and I flung myself over and hit him again and again and again while I screamed in fury.

  When I finally stopped, I was covered in his blood and his head—

  I dropped the rock, dragged myself off his body, and threw up. My throat was so raw and swollen I could barely vomit; the retching made my skull pulse like it might explode; all I could see was the man’s broken, bloody face.

  “Julie!” Newt. I became dimly aware he’d been calling my name for a while; he was yelling and running toward me.

  “We’ve got to go!”

  What?

  As I watched, Newt spun around and picked fire out of the air: purple fire streaming toward the two of us. He grabbed it and winced as it touched him. The flames faded very slowly. Newt panted heavily by the time the fire disappeared and sweat streamed down his face.

  “Back to the cars! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  I tried to stand up and staggered. Newt moved to catch me, but a whirring mass of dark fur rushed near my face and Tony grabbed me as I collapsed. The world swooshed dizzily as he swung me into his arms and held me close to his chest, as if I weighed nothing at all. I heard Tony command, “Guard the rear!” as he set off quickly through the woods. Everything bounced: a confused play of light and shapes, which made me shut my eyes in the hope I wouldn’t vomit again.

  Tony said, “You’re going to be okay. Julie! Hang on.”

  I felt the words as a deep rumble against me as much as I heard them, and I allowed myself to be comforted by his voice.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We regrouped miles away in a pull-off leading to someone’s pasture. My whole body felt boneless and bruised; I’d been barely conscious as Tony piled me into the backseat of the car. When Eliza and Newt pulled up, I roused myself enough to focus.

  “What happened?” I asked and winced at the way my voice sounded: rough and croaky. Then I bolted upright in my seat and gasped. “Newt? You’re bleeding!”

  Newt had wrapped his t-shirt, now soaked with blood, around his left arm. His arms and chest were red around his freckles with what looked like deep sunburn.

  “I’ll be okay, but I need to see a medic. I got grazed by a bullet.”

  “By…by me?” I asked.

  “No. One of the Salamanders had a gun, too.”

  “We definitely need medical care, for both you and Julie,” Eliza said. She studied me and moved to hold my chin, tilting my head this way and that to look in my eyes. Because she was my friend, I did my best and managed not to puke on her. Eliza’s face and arms were covered with scratch marks that healed as I watched; after a moment,
I realized she must have fought in the midst of blackberry bushes, which, for some reason, struck me as extremely funny.

  Eliza looked at me like I was crazy when I started to giggle. “Julie?” she asked.

  I waved my hand to say I was okay. When my laughing fit didn’t subside, Newt said, “I thought I was supposed to be the comic relief.”

  “Julie?” Eliza frowned at me and I tried to stop giggling—I really did—but laughter seemed to well out of me in convulsions, until my eyes watered and I had a really, really hard time breathing. “Julie! Settle down, take a deep breath.”

  I couldn’t. The laughter turned to strange hiccupping sounds and my whole body shook. I went to wipe the tears from my eyes, but then stopped in horror, staring at my hands, covered in blood. Mike Hollis’s blood. The nails on my left hand were black with dirt and one was ripped off to the quick. That must have happened while I scrabbled for the rock.

  I dimly heard Eliza say, “Should I slap her?”

  “That can’t be a good idea with her concussion.” Newt sounded worried.

  Tony twisted in the driver’s seat and took hold of both my shoulders, his touch running through me like electricity, giving me something to focus on.

  “Julie.” A note in his voice reached me and I caught my breath. His amber eyes fixed on mine, imposing some sort of calm on the sea of emotion that tossed me back and forth. I took several breaths in and out, staring at his wolf eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I finally said and meant it, at least partially.

  “Well, you’re not okay, exactly.” Newt was in the backseat now, leaning close to me while Eliza hung through my window. “You have a concussion and burns on your leg, you were nearly choked to death, and you’re probably covered in other bruises and scrapes. But at least you’re not hysterical anymore.”

  I took another quick breath to stave off more giggles. “What happened back there? We…lost?”

  “We strategically retreated,” said Eliza.

  I snorted and barely controlled the impulse to laugh again.

  “We were outnumbered,” Eliza continued. “I thought we had the upper hand, but then three more Salamanders poured out of the fire—out of the fire itself; they’d been in the blaze which messed up their scents, I think. We accounted for several of them. Newt?”

  “Julie shot one, and uh, killed Mike Hollis. I dueled with another Eclipser when we pulled out. He was strong, really strong. I think I could have taken him, though.”

  Tony’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I hamstrung another. Took her out of the fight.”

  Without meaning to, I glanced at his mouth, at his lips. Tony caught my gaze and smiled, causing my stomach to flip as a surge of heat ran through me.

  God, I really was in shock.

  “How bad is your leg, Julie?” Eliza asked. She opened the car door and motioned for me to swing my feet out. She pulled up my pants and I peered down at my leg, scorched red with a wide swath of blisters.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s too bad. I was lucky.”

  “Lucky and brave, I’d say, Jules.” I heard the grin in Newt’s voice and reflexively smiled back.

  “Oh my God, I lost my gun,” I said, as I remembered.

  “I picked it up. Here.” Newt pulled the gun out of the waistband of his jeans and handed it up to me. I frowned at his arms, noticing how his skin looked sunburned.

  “Did you get burned?” I asked.

  Newt looked down at himself, at his arms and shirtless torso, and I did, too. He was quite muscular, especially considering clothed he looked lanky. Freckles covered his shoulders and scattered across his chest. He shrugged.

  “I absorbed an awful lot of heat out there, drained it from the fire aimed at you and the others. I’ll be fine; it’s just superficial. Could get worse from a day at the beach. Well, I couldn’t, but you humans could.”

  I remembered how easily he sucked the heat out of the flesh-searing flames in the past, thought about the way he drew down the wildfire in Ashland earlier today, and wondered just how much energy he used during our fight. Everything swam fuzzily in my memory; I didn’t even know how many Eclipsers we fought.

  “I’m more worried about the bullet wound,” said Eliza.

  “Let me take a look at it,” Tony said, and got out of the car to go to Newt. “Do we have a Were-friendly doctor in the area? Or, I guess, a Salamander-friendly doctor? Someone we can trust?”

  “No packs close by.” Eliza tapped her forehead in thought. “I’m calling the council.” She walked a few steps away and took out her phone.

  I had nothing to offer. My family doctor was fantastic, but I’m not sure she was up to dealing with burns, bullet wounds, and paranormal creatures, and Newt certainly couldn’t waltz into a hospital with an unexplained gunshot injury.

  “Why don’t you heal quickly like a Were?” I asked.

  Tony unwound the shirt from Newt’s arm. Newt winced as the shirt caught on some clotted blood.

  “Because I’m not a Were. I’m a Salamander. That’s not one of our powers.”

  When Tony reached the wound, fresh blood started oozing out, startlingly bright against Newt’s skin, and I had to look away.

  “The bullet just clipped you. You’re lucky. I think you’ll be fine if we can get it cleaned out and bandaged properly. You should probably have some antibiotics. Painkillers, too.” Tony said.

  His voice seemed to come from far away and I realized I was fading out again. I made the effort to keep my eyes open, but everything around me moved jerkily, like bad film editing. Tony wrapped Newt’s arm; Eliza yelled into her phone; Tony had his hand on Eliza’s shoulder, as if to shake her; Newt stared at me; the car engine revved, reminiscent of the fire’s roar.

  ****

  I tried to jerk away from the light shining in my eye, but my head spun. Adrenaline surged through me, yet my body wouldn’t respond. The light moved and my left eye tracked it as the rest of me groggily came to grips with the situation. I lay on a bed. Someone held my eyelid open, even as I winced against the brightness. The warm, dry hand moved to my other eye and the light—it must be a flashlight—followed. I licked parched lips so I could voice a protest.

  “Julie? Are you awake?”

  Tony.

  Both my eyes opened and I searched for him in the middling darkness beyond the flashlight. The light clicked off and I sighed in relief, blinking several times to flush away the bluish afterimage and bring the room into focus.

  The guy leaning over me, flashlight in his hand, was not Tony. Close cropped hair, deadpan blue eyes, square face framed equally by cheekbones and jaw. His short-sleeved white t-shirt perfectly set off bulging arms. Even his neck had muscles.

  I knew this guy.

  Who the hell was he?

  “Ms. Hall,” he said, in a voice so courteous I couldn’t be sure I read the irony correctly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you make trouble for real Werewolves on purpose.”

  Oh.

  “Chris Usher.” I tried to coax more moisture in my mouth. “Guess you’re just sorry the council didn’t decide to ‘silence us’ after our work in Las Vegas. So sorry to trouble you.”

  Tony growled. Literally.

  Chris Usher the council goon snorted. He glanced over his shoulder at Tony, who stood with his whole body canted toward our exchange. Tony’s eyes gleamed in the dim room and his hair was loose. My body, which possessed a world of aches and pains, felt alive to see him. Looking around, I learned we were in some mid-grade hotel room: two queen beds, one of which I lay on, a large flat screen television, prints of generic pastoral paintings spotting the otherwise bare yellow walls. On the other bed sat a woman with red-highlighted, black spiky hair and dark eyes. She wore a plain blank tank top and what looked like army surplus shorts, complete with lace-up black boots. She studied me intently.

  “Always happy to do my job,” said Chris, standing up. “You’ll be fine. Should have iced that bump after you got it, though.”


  “Next time I run around after wildfires and Salamanders, I’ll remember to bring an ice pack.” Good. If my attitude was intact, I must be fine.

  “Does she need to stay awake?” Tony asked. “After a concussion like that?”

  “No, we don’t give that advice anymore.”

  “You’re…a doctor?” I looked at Chris in doubt.

  He scowled at me. “Medic. Trained in the Navy. Embedded with the Marines for eight years.”

  Ah, now that made more sense than medical school. “Is Newt okay? Where’s Eliza?”

  Tony answered me. “Newt’s fine; Chris saw him first and bandaged his arm. Eliza and Newt are in the next room arguing with James, who’s in charge of this council group.”

  Arguing? My gaze flicked back to Chris. I’d assumed he was in charge, since that had been the case when his squad of council Weres swept into Las Vegas a few months ago. From the look on his face, he didn’t much enjoy not being head honcho.

  I turned my head, wincing a bit when the movement put pressure on the lovely goose egg behind my ear. “And who are you?” I asked the female Were on the other bed.

  She leaned closer. “Yuko Kinashita. Council Special Ops.”

  “Special Ops?” I echoed.

  She nodded. “Yep, we’re here to deal with the Salamanders and take custody of your son.”

  Like hell they were.

  My spine stiffened and I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I shot a look at Tony, noted his grim face. My leg, bandaged in gauze, hurt as the burns slid against the bed, but didn’t seem too bad. Considering. Actually, when I thought about some of the alternatives, I felt positively dandy. Someone had even washed the blood off my hands. I wondered if Chris had done that, or Tony. I tried to focus my whirling thoughts, suddenly sure I needed all my reserves to deal with this so-called Special Ops force who expected to take my son into their “custody.”