Thunder Moon

by Lori Handeland

  From the beginning a more unlikely pair could not be imagined—the mayor and the Gypsy horse trainer, the First Lady of Lake Bluff and the hired help. I could go on and on, making comparisons directly out of historical fiction. But the truth was, they’d been destined to meet, fated to fall in love, and they were the happiest couple I’d ever seen. I guess Claire had forgiven, if not forgotten, that Malachi had come here to kill her.

  Claire set two mugs on the table, and we each took a chair. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Quickly I told her about the previous night. The strange, flickering light. The fire that wasn’t. The crater and the wolf.

  “I’m not certain I really saw it. When I checked for tracks, there weren’t any.”

  “You expected to find tracks in a storm like the one we had last night?”

  I shrugged. “You never know.”

  “Did you hear a howl?”

  “Nothing but thunder and wind.” And the rhythmic beat of the giant wings of an invisible bird.

  I decided to keep that to myself.

  “There was also a man. He came from nowhere.”

  “As in now you see him, now you don’t?”

  “Not sure. He was in the woods. I couldn’t make out his face clearly, but he was Indian. For a second I thought—” I broke off, remembering. “Grandmother used to tell a story about a band of Cherokee who’d hidden in the mountains to escape the Trail of Tears. They hid so well that eventually they become both immortal and invisible.”

  “I guess you had hit your head.”

  Though I’d thought the same thing, I couldn’t resist needling her. I could rarely resist needling anyone. “This from a woman who saw people turn into animals.”

  She toasted me with her mug. “Got me there.”

  I tapped my own mug against hers, then drank. “After my head cleared, it occurred to me that a wolf had gone into those trees and, not too long after, a man had popped out.”

  “Did the wolf have the eyes of the man?” Claire asked.

  We’d discovered last summer that a werewolf resembled a real wolf in every way—except for the human eyes.

  I tried to remember the eyes of the wolf, the eyes of the man, but I couldn’t. I would think I’d recall something as bizarre as human eyes in the face of a wolf, but with the residual effects of the concussion ...

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have certain gaps in the gray matter since the air-bag incident.”

  Concern washed over her face. “You want an aspirin?”

  “No, Mom, but thanks.”

  “Watch it, or I won’t let you hold Noah when he gets up.”

  I had a serious weakness for Noah Cartwright. Who’d have thought that rough, tough, gun-toting, order-giving Grace McDaniel would go gooey over a baby? Certainly not me.

  “Sadly, I’m not going to be able to wait for His Highness to get out of the crib.” I stood, draining the rest of my coffee in one gulp.

  “I’ll mention what you told me to Mal.” Claire followed me to the front door. “He’s pretty good at spotting the unusual.”

  Considering Mal had been cursed to wander the earth for centuries, he’d had his share of experience with shape-shifters.

  “That’d be great,” I said.

  I’d tell him myself, but considering the storm I’d be a little busy with the human inhabitants of Lake Bluff for the next several days. Having never actually seen a werewolf, I was at a disadvantage. Not that I didn’t believe they were real. Long before they’d shown up, I’d seen other equally amazing things, which had eventually made me a convert.

  “I’ll be in and out this week.” I stepped onto the porch, marveling at the bright sunshine after such a terrible storm. “I’m going to have to check on all the people in outlying areas.”

  There were still quite a few old-timers who insisted on living in the mountains without a phone or even electricity. There were a few new-timers who thought it was all the rage too. I thought they were nuts. Probably because every time a natural disaster occurred I had to check on them.

  “Feel free to rack up the overtime,” Claire said.

  “Oh, I’d planned on it.”

  I headed down the hill where the sheriff’s department shared a square of land with town hall. Instead of turning into the parking lot, I continued on to where the moving van had been parked earlier but was no longer. The front door of the store stood open, so I walked in.

  I probably should have called out, but the place was empty. Had the moving van been taking things away rather than delivering them?

  Smart thieves usually pretended they belonged somewhere, that what they were taking was theirs by right, and few people questioned them. What better way to clean out a place than to hire a moving van and dress like a mover?

  I’d just turned, determined to find out if anyone had bought this place, when a floorboard creaked upstairs. Slowly I lifted my head. I’d forgotten an apartment occupied the second floor.

  Through the back door of the shop, in a small space that used to be a called a mudroom, lay a staircase. The stairs led up to a long, shadowed hallway full of closed doors, except for the last one at the opposite end, which gaped open. As I headed in that direction, I had the sudden sensation of being watched. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed nothing.

  One door, two, three doors, four—I opened my mouth to announce myself and a whisper of air brushed the back of my neck.

  Impatiently I turned, trying to stop my overactive imagination from harassing me by giving it a full view of an empty hallway.

  The man was so close my breasts brushed his chest.

  Chapter 4

  Instinct took over, and I reached for my gun. He grabbed my wrist before I was halfway there. My left hand swung for his head, and he caught that one, too. Then we stared at each other, him grasping my wrists tight enough to bruise, our bodies so close every breath skimmed the front of me against the front of him.

  He wore a black suit and tie with a shirt so white it glowed even in the dim light. But the suit wasn’t what threw me—it was the long hair adorned with a single braid and an eagle feather.

  At least I hadn’t imagined him.

  He didn’t look Indian in this light, except for the feather. His skin was much fairer than mine, and his eyes were an oddly light shade—not brown, not green, not gray, but a swirling combination of all three.

  “Hey!” I tugged on my hands.

  He didn’t budge; he didn’t speak as his gaze wandered over my face. I struggled; I couldn’t help it. Ever since my oldest brother, George, had held me down while Greg painted my face with maple syrup, I got a little wiggy when trapped.

  I continued to thrash. He continued to ignore me. The friction created by all that rubbing started to feel better than it should. My nipples, despite the protection of a padded bra, responded, which only made my breathing and the subsequent friction increase.

  I considered kicking him in the shin, but from the strength of his grip and the expression on his face, he’d continue to hold me anyway.

  “You often sneak into private property and pull a gun on people?” he asked.

  “Only when I see a previously abandoned storefront with an open door and then someone creeps up on me. You’re asking for trouble.”

  “I hear that a lot.”

  “You’re gonna hear more than that if you don’t let me go. Catchy phrases like ‘assaulting an officer’ and ‘held without bond.’ “

  His only response was a smile that flashed his slightly crooked but very white teeth. However, he did release his hold. I backed up, absently rubbing first one wrist and then the other.

  My gaze caught on the eagle feather. In Cherokee tradition, only great warriors dared to wear the trappings of the sacred bird. Did he know that? Did he care?

  “How’s your head?” he asked.

  “About to explode.”

  “It shouldn’t hurt that badly still.”

  He moved so quickly I co
uldn’t think, let alone escape, yanking me so close my nose scraped against his shirt as he began to probe my skull.

  “Ow!” I shoved him away, even though he’d smelled really good, as if he’d rubbed fresh mint leaves all over his skin.

  He stared at me with a combination of bemusement and concern.

  “My head’s fine,” I said. “Why’d you sneak up on me?”

  “I didn’t sneak.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I’ve always been quiet.”

  He was a lot more than quiet. I was quiet. My father had trained me to track both man and beast in complete silence, but this guy had tracked me. Something about him set my instincts humming.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I told you last night, or don’t you remember?”

  “You said you were a doctor, yet I find you creeping around abandoned storefronts manhandling women.”

  His lips curved. “You didn’t mind.”

  If I could blush I’d have been beet red. As it was, my blood pressure went up so fast my pulse seemed to pound out a painful song behind my blackened eyes.

  “I should take you in for squatting in an abandoned building.”

  “Do I look like a squatter?”

  I took the opportunity to give him the once-over. In contrast to his expensive tailored suit, he wore sandals. His right ring finger sported the band I’d noticed last night, glaringly gold in the sunlight. I’d think it was a wedding ring, except he wore it on the wrong hand.

  He wasn’t exactly handsome. The bones of his face were too sharp for that. But his hair was dark, his eyes light, and his skin just tan enough to make him memorable.

  “Officer?”

  “Sheriff,” I corrected.

  His gaze lowered to my chest, and my pulse quickened again.

  “ ‘Sheriff McDaniel,’ “ he read from my name tag. “I’m Ian Walker, from Oklahoma.”

  Which explained the accent—not South, not North, but West, where most of the Cherokee had gone long ago.

  “What brings you here?”

  “To Lake Bluff or this building?”

  “Both.”

  “I’ll be opening an office as soon as I can get the place ready, and I chose Lake Bluff because...” His voice drifted off.

  “Because?” I prompted.

  “I traced my ancestors to this town. From the time before our people suffered on the Trail Where We Wept.”

  He used the Cherokee version of the historical term “Trail of Tears.” They meant the same thing. Another example of the U.S. government’s treatment of those whose only crimes had been to be here first and then arrogantly refuse to give up what was theirs just because they were told to.

  “How do you know we’re the same people?” I asked.

  I could easily be descended from any tribe in the country. For all he knew I might not be Native American at all but African, Asian, Italian, Hispanic, or any combination of the above.

  “I ran across the McDaniels when I was researching my own family. You’ve been here since the beginning of time.”

  “Not quite that long.” But close enough.

  Legends say the Aniyvwiya, or the principal people, came from a land of sea snakes and water monsters near the place where the sun was born. In other words ... east. But we’d been in these mountains so long that no one really knew when the first Cherokee had arrived.

  “What clan are you?” Walker asked.

  In ancient times, the question would have been unforgivably rude. Clan membership was a secret passed down from the mother to the children in a matrilineal society. To be without a clan was to be without rights, without protection, without family. Clan membership was everything.

  Very few Cherokee knew their clan affiliation these days—partly because of the extreme secrecy that had been involved and partly because people no longer cared.

  I was one of the few who knew and who cared.

  “Panther clan,” I answered.

  “A ni sa ho ni,” he murmured. “Clan of blue.”

  Each of the seven clans had worn feathers of a different color to delineate them from the others. Panther, or the wildcat clan, was the clan of blue, referring to a certain medicine they’d made for their children.

  When I was little and sick, my great-grandmother had often forced a disgusting blue concoction down my throat, and it always worked. I wished again that I could read her notes and discover what she’d put in that stuff.

  “I’m A ni wo di,” he said.

  At my blank expression he frowned. “You don’t speak the language of our mothers?”

  I bristled at his tone. “I’m more Scottish than Cherokee.”

  I didn’t bother to mention the African since no one really knew that for certain. Just because the Cherokee had once kept slaves didn’t mean they broadcast the identities of the children they’d had with them. If secrecy was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it was good enough for us.

  “That’s no excuse,” he said.

  “Who died and made you head of the Cherokee Nation?”

  He contemplated me for several seconds, then dipped his head, the feather swinging past his ear along with the braid. “You’re right. I just thought that someone descended from Rose Scott, one of the most powerful medicine women—”

  “How do you know that?”

  His lips quirked. “It’s classified?”

  “No.” Although it wasn’t exactly written about in the Lake Bluff Gazette, either. This guy knew an awful lot about me for someone who claimed to have been looking for his family tree.

  “Your great-grandmother taught you nothing of the old ways?”

  She’d tried, but my father had been adamant that there be no hocus-pocus or I’d lose my time with her. Since I’d known he was serious and that time meant the world to me, I’d balked at many of her teachings. Instead, she’d told me stories—legends of the origin of the clans, tales of the principal people being descended from animals.

  As panther clan, we carried the spirit of the big cat within us. Some of us more than others.

  Fascinated, I’d not only collected every stuffed and glass image of panthers that I could find, but I’d often pretended I was a panther, too. Slinking through the woods and the mountains, I’d dreamed of actually becoming one.

  However, I didn’t want to talk about that, especially with him, so I flicked a finger at the feather in his hair. “You’re bird clan?”

  “That would be A ni tsi s kwa,” he said. “Not A ni wo di.”

  “I don’t speak the language,” I said between my teeth. He’d better not be wolf clan, or I just might rethink shooting him. At least I’d had the sense to load my gun with silver before I left home.

  “I’m paint clan,” he said.

  “Medicine men. How convenient.”

  “I thought so.”

  My bad attitude didn’t seem to faze him. He was a very calm guy.

  “Too bad you had to give up the old ways when you became a doctor.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I wouldn’t think the AMA would be too happy about an M.D. who prescribes roots, berries, and bathing in a cool mountain stream.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “You do that?”

  “If the illness warrants it.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Do you have a medical license?”

  “Of course.”

  “From a real medical school?”

  “Does Baylor College of Medicine suffice?”

  Even I knew that was a good one.

  “I also studied at the British Institute of Homeopathy in Canada.”

  “Sounds like hoodoo to me.”

  “It’s not.”

  I grunted, unconvinced. I enjoyed studying my heritage as much as the next guy. I was interested in the cures my great-grandmother had used. I might use them on myself, if I could figure them out, but I’d never presume to prescribe them to others. I considered a doctor who�
�d do so nothing less than a quack. People like Walker gave Native Americans a bad name.

  I didn’t trust him. I didn’t much like him, although I did kind of like the way he smelled. I rubbed my forehead, wincing when I touched a bruise.

  “Let me give you something for that.” He inched past me and through the open door.

  I caught a whiff of him again and had to bite back a sigh. I needed to get laid, then maybe this obsession would go away, but that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

  In Lake Bluff everyone knew everyone and their mother, father, sister, and brother, too. I’d dated a few guys, slept with a few more. Every one had been a disaster of epic proportion. If they hadn’t expected special privileges from the sheriff’s daughter, they’d definitely expected them from the sheriff. When they hadn’t gotten them, each and every guy had turned into a whining child.

  I’d sworn off locals, which meant the only sex I’d had in years had been during the festival when we were overrun with tourists. Sadly, I’d missed any kind of action last year due to our werewolf problem. No wonder I was so on edge.

  Walker reappeared with a jar in his hand, unscrewing the top as he approached. The balm was pale yellow and carried a scent I didn’t recognize. He dipped a finger into the muck and spread some down my nose before I could protest.

  “Hey!” I began, but he ignored me, smoothing the medicine over my bulbous nose and the bruised area beneath my eyes. The pain faded on contact.

  “Close.” He spread one thumb over my brow bone.

  What the hell? I thought. The stuff was already all over my skin. I let my eyes drift shut.

  His fingers were gentle but firm. Everywhere he touched, the pain went away. He chanted words I couldn’t understand, in the language of our ancestors.

  Outside I heard again the low, rhythmic beat of wings. My eyes snapped open. His face was so close his breath puffed against the moisture on my face, and I shivered.

  His eyes, eerily light, seemed to darken as his pupils expanded. I could see myself in them as he leaned closer. My chest hurt; I wasn’t breathing. He was going to kiss me, and I was going to let him.

  My eyes fluttered closed again. I waited for him to take me in his arms, but the only place he touched me was in the light, feathery skate of his lips across mine.