All Hallows' Moon (2 page)

She threw her head back as she screamed and dug her nails into his dashboard. They weren’t fingernails anymore.

He threw the brake even though they weren’t on the shoulder of the road. They weren’t even on the correct side, for that matter. He didn’t care.

Something snapped and cracked. Rylie’s jaw unhinged and slid forward. She spit blood onto her jeans.

The trucker’s hand fumbled for the door. Locked.

“Oh no—oh
God
—”

She flung herself against the dashboard, and then arched in the other direction, straining her feet and head back like a bow. Something was wrong with her knees.

Yeah, but what isn’t wrong with this thing?

“Get out!” she shrieked, and flecks of bloody spit slapped against his face.

Rylie lunged for him, claws flashing.

His finger caught the lock. The door fell open.

He fell onto the pavement and slammed the door behind him. The trucker couldn’t think straight, because every time he tried to broach the idea that some poor hitchhiking kid had turned into
something
—something not human—he felt a level of panic very close to insanity.

The cab rocked back and forth. He couldn’t see what was inside from this angle, but he could hear shrieking and howling. Those noises couldn’t come from a human mouth.

Because she’s not human.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” he said.

Fear wheeled through his skull. Management would have everything from the neck up if they found out he abandoned his truck. And the goods, the electronics he was supposed to be getting to that warehouse—

Something slammed into the windshield. The safety glass spiderwebbed.

Forget management.

The trucker ran as fast as he could, rolling his tubby body along at a speed he hadn’t managed since he was two hundred pounds lighter and twenty years younger.

Howls followed him into the night.

Rylie awoke to a cool breeze playing across her skin and a feeling of dread.

Oh no. Not again.

She opened her eyes. A tiny black bug crawled along the grass by her head, and a thin layer of mist hovered over the ground. Her skin felt soggy.

Shutting her eyes, Rylie tried to force memories of the previous evening to emerge. As usual, she couldn’t remember what happened after she... changed. But she remembered a trucker. Nice guy. Smelled like gas station bathrooms and tobacco, but nice.

Her mouth was sticky, and there was a warm, sated feeling in her stomach that she recognized. It was the same way she had felt after killing a deer over the summer.

She wiped a hand over her mouth, and her fingers came away bloody.

Was the trucker... alive?

Rylie sat up, scrubbing a hand over her chin to clean it. The damp grass made her shiver. Ants marched along her knee.

She lifted her head and sniffed. The smells of the pasture splashed through her mind: meat and blood, soil and grass, honey in the comb, and a musky, chemical scent meant to mimic flowers. It was her own smell. She had picked the weirdest perfume she could find at the drug store so it would be easy to track.

Trailing the perfume down the hill, she found shreds of cloth tangled in the barbed wire fence. She suddenly recalled agonizing pain scraping down her back as her fur stuck on something—but it was gone as soon as it came. She never remembered her time as a wolf once she turned back.

Rylie picked the remains of her clothes out of the wire. There were more holes than cloth in her t-shirt, and the seams had burst when she changed, too. But it covered the important parts. It was better than nothing.

Her jeans were a little further down the hill, and in even worse condition. Rylie had to hold them over her hips as she plodded toward the road. She had no idea how to explain this to her aunt. She needed to buy new clothes before showing up at her door.

She stopped at the bottom of the hill. There were lumps all over the pasture in front of her, but it was too dark to make out any detail. Rylie approached the closest one with fear twisting in her stomach.

It was—or at least, it used to be—a cow. But the only way Rylie could tell was because of its distinctive odor, like manure and hay. The thing on the ground didn’t look much like a cow. Neither did the other three carcasses, either. She had a feeling she knew what had happened.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Something clicked twice,
chick-chuck
. Rylie had seen enough action movies to know the sound of a shotgun being pumped.

“Hands up. Turn around. Slowly now—nothing sudden.”

Rylie obeyed. Her heart skipped a beat.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been at gunpoint, but it was just as scary this time as it had been the last time, so it took her a moment to realize who was aiming at her. A gray-haired woman with hard lines framing her mouth braced the butt of the shotgun against her shoulder, and a cowboy hat hung down her back by a bolero tie.

“Aunt Gwyneth?” she gasped.

The shotgun dropped. “
Rylie
?”

Two

The Suspect

“I’d say you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, but I hate to state the obvious.”

Aunt Gwyneth sat on the edge of the kitchen table with her shotgun leaning against the counter. Rylie cupped a mug of coffee between her hands. She didn’t like coffee, but it was all her aunt had to drink other than dirty well water, and she desperately wanted the heat.

She pulled her feet under her on the chair and wrapped the blanket around her legs like a protective shield. She was wearing sweat pants and a shirt borrowed from her aunt, but she still felt exposed.

I got bitten by a werewolf at summer camp and now I’m a monster that goes into murderous rages on every new and full moon. How are you doing, Aunt Gwyn?

Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over well.

“Coyotes,” Rylie said.

Gwyn raised an eyebrow. “Coyotes?”

“They attacked the cows.” Her voice was tiny.

“Coyotes are cowards, honey. They eat rabbits and house cats. They don’t go after the herd.”

Rylie smiled feebly. “Crazy rabid coyotes?”

Her aunt’s eyes narrowed. “I might buy an animal going nuts and killing my cows, but that doesn’t explain how you ended up in my field this morning with your clothes shredded. What the heck is going on? You told me you had a ride here.”

“I did. I caught a ride with Frank.”

“Frank?”

“He drives a semi,” Rylie said.

“
What
?” It looked like Gwyn was in pain. “Let me get this straight. You told me you had a ride here, but you hitchhiked instead? Babe, you could have been seriously hurt. You could have been
killed
. Is this ‘Frank’ why your clothes are torn?”

“No! No, Aunt Gwyn, it wasn’t like that at all. He was really nice.”

“Then what happened?”

Rylie braced herself for the lie. She sucked at lying. “He let me off on your road. I thought I’d get in earlier, but I ended up walking late last night. I saw some coyotes go after the cows. They came after me too, but I jumped through the fence and escaped. I fell down the hill, though. That’s why everything is torn.”

“And then you went back to look at the cows,” Gwyn said.

“I was lost.”

“So you’re telling me you didn’t bring anything with you? Not even another outfit?”

She took a sip of coffee to give herself time to think. “I forgot my backpack in Frank’s truck.”

Her aunt pinched the bridge of her nose. “You can tell me the truth, Rylie. I know you didn’t kill my cows—I saw the wounds. It was some kind of animal. So whatever you did that you’re not telling me, I’m not going to get mad at you.”

“That
is
the truth,” she said.

“It’s a pretty tall tale you expect me to believe.” Gwyn shook her head. “Are you okay?”

Okay? No. Definitely not okay. “I’m not injured.”

“I guess that’s something.” She refilled Rylie’s empty coffee mug. “I thought Jessica was going to bring you out here.”

“My mom’s been busy since I let her take over dad’s business.” The mention of Rylie’s dead father—her aunt’s brother—was enough to kill the conversation.

“All right. Follow me.”

Gwyn led her from the kitchen. The ranch house was small. There was no formal dining room, and the three bedrooms were lined up on one side with a single bathroom. It was much more modest than her aunt’s last place, which had always been filled with workers and friends. Everything here was lonely and quiet. Rylie wondered what changed, but was too afraid to ask.

They went to the second bedroom on the left. Gwyn’s room was at the end—Rylie could tell by the bed covered in silky red sheets. Her night stand was covered in orange pill bottles.

She shut her door. “That one’s mine. This one’s yours.”

Rylie’s bedroom was a white box with wood floors and a bay window. It looked like it used to be wallpapered, but it had since been torn down, leaving glue stains. An old corkboard was hung on one wall.

“I haven’t dragged the dresser in from the garage. That’s your job,” Gwyn said. “You can do whatever you want in here: new paint, new carpet, furniture, whatever. Anything short of setting it on fire. I’ll go into the town hardware store to get paint for the kitchen tomorrow after school, so maybe you’ll want some too?”

“School?” Rylie asked, startled.

“Yes, school. What did you expect?”

“I thought I was coming here to help around the ranch.”

Her aunt grinned, and it wasn’t a pleasant expression at all. “You’re fifteen. You can’t become jaded and give up on society until you’re at least seventeen. Jessica helped me enroll you at the high school in town.”

Her heart dropped. “But...”

“You can paint lime polka dots on the walls of my house, but you can’t sit around all day. You’re going to school tomorrow. Got it?”

She kicked the door frame. “Okay. Fine. Can I have a minute alone?”

“You going to kill more of my cows if I turn my back on you?” Gwyn asked. Rylie’s jaw dropped. “I’m kidding, girl. Don’t be such an easy mark. I’ll be picking fruit in the orchard if you want to find me.”

She left. Rylie sank to the bed and buried her face in her hands. The empty room felt like it was crowding in around her.

Nothing had been the same since camp. After her first real change, Rylie had woken up to find herself naked in the forest with no company but the squirrels, who weren’t too keen on having her around, either. It wasn’t until a park ranger found her and dragged her back to civilization that Rylie learned she had lost two full weeks of her life.

She still didn’t know what happened during that time. Rylie suspected she must have transformed again since the moon was waning when the ranger found her. She wasn’t sure if she had become human again between the moons or if she had been a wolf for weeks.

They declared her healthy but dehydrated at the town hospital, where Jessica picked her up. The city was even worse after her change. Rylie barely tolerated three days in her mom’s condo before calling Aunt Gwyneth.

She had been sure she could make it to the ranch before changing again, even if she hitchhiked. But obviously she hadn’t.

Rylie remembered riding with the trucker. She also remembered waking up with the cows.

But between that... nothing.

Was this her life now? A series of moments between blackouts? Rylie had floated through the last month in a dreamlike haze. The entire summer felt like a nightmare. Her dad’s death, almost getting mugged, Jericho and Cassidy’s attack on the camp, Seth...

No, not Seth. He could never be a nightmare.

The last time she remembered seeing him, he had been dragged off by the werewolf who changed her. When she woke up in the forest two weeks later, all traces of him were gone. She still didn’t know if he was dead or not.