Moon Dance (12 page)

Piper smiled. “How
much?”

Dana stretched out her arms
as far as they would go. “This much.”

Piper giggled. “You love
Daddy that much too?”

“
Yes.” Dana kissed Piper’s
forehead. “Now go to sleep.” She got up from the bed.

“
Mommy?”

“
Mmm hmm?”

“
I love you too.”

Dana’s chest felt tight. She
went back and kissed Piper again.

When she left the little
girl’s room, she started to cry. How had she let herself get so out
of control out there? How had she managed to
kill
people?

It was too awful. The two
campers hadn’t deserved it. They were young, practically still
kids. They had been out for fun together. Probably romance. And now
they were gone.

Somewhere out there, they
both had mothers, mothers who would never see them again, never
kiss them, never hold them, never hear their children say that they
loved them.

Dana had taken those campers away from
their mothers.

She imagined Piper being
killed by a rampaging wolf—the wrong place in the wrong
time.

The despair that flooded her made her
feel ill.

She curled up on the couch in the
living room and gave in to her sobs, crying with
abandon.

But she didn’t cry for very
long. As much as she wanted to feel the guilt of this, to despise
herself for what she’d done, she didn’t seem to be able to muster
it. When she thought about it, she kept remembering how joyous it
had been for the wolf. The wolf had gloried in the hunt and the
kill. The meat.

And that was still her sharpest emotion
when she thought about it.

She was ashamed, but she
wasn’t ashamed enough.

She stayed awake, waiting
for Avery to come home, debating on whether or not to tell him. She
didn’t think that Avery would want her locked up. He’d probably
agree with the idea of covering the incident up and not telling
anyone about it. But she was positive that Avery would demand she
didn’t go running in wolf form anymore.

Part of her thought that she should
stop doing it as well.

But she couldn’t.

She wouldn’t.

Shifting into the wolf and
running was the best part of her life. If she lost that, she felt
like she’d lose her own soul, and she didn’t think she wanted to be
alive if her existence was nothing more than cleaning up after
Piper and cooking meals. Running as the wolf was the one thing that
belonged to her, and she wasn’t going to give it up.

That meant she couldn’t tell
Avery about it, and she couldn’t get him to comfort her.

And it meant that the only person who
did know was Cole Randall.

So, now she and Cole had a secret
together.

She felt like she’d already
betrayed Avery.

But she didn’t know what
else to do. She couldn’t surrender herself over to Avery. Not
completely. She needed some part of her being that belonged to her
and her alone. The wolf was that. She wasn’t going to give it
up.

She sat up waiting for him
just the same. Maybe she couldn’t tell him what happened, but she
could still try to speak to him about the rest of the evening.
They’d had such a doozy of conflict that night. Maybe, now that
they’d both had time to cool down, they could sort through it
together.

But Avery didn’t come
home.

The hours ticked by, and she
waited. He never showed up. She still didn’t have her cell phone,
so she called him from the land line. He didn’t pick up. She
listened to his recorded voice telling her to leave a message, and
she wondered if she should say something.

When she couldn’t think of
anything, she hung up.

And then she went to bed.

She slept fitfully, dreaming of being
the wolf, of killing and running and eating. And blood.

In the morning, she was
awakened by the sound of drawers opening.

She sat up in bed to see Avery
frantically digging through his clothes.

“
Avery, where were you last
night?”

He yanked out a shirt.
“Sorry. I needed some time to be alone. I mostly drove around. I
might have had a few beers.”

“
Well, do you feel better
now? Can we talk?”

“
I’m late for work, Dana.”
He snatched a pair of pants out of the drawer. “We’ll talk later,
okay?”

He swept out of the room, and he was
gone.

She felt deflated. He was avoiding
her.

But she didn’t have much
time to think about it, because Piper was awake soon, scampering
through the house and yelling about how today she wanted to pretend
to be an airplane.

Dana dragged herself out of
bed. She was groggy because she’d sat up so late the night before
waiting for Avery. She settled on something easy for breakfast and
made instant oatmeal for Piper.

When she served it to her daughter,
Piper wrinkled up her nose and declared it gross.

Dana told her that it wasn’t
gross, and that she liked it very much.

She fought with Piper until
the little girl ate about five bites—each one a struggle. After
that, she decided to give up and let Piper go back to being an
airplane. Piper scampered away, spread her arms, and began running
all through the living room, making whirring noises.

“
Watch the lamps, little
airplane,” Dana called after her.

“
I not a little airplane. I
a big airplane,” Piper replied.

Of course.

By the time Dana had
breakfast cleared up, Piper was done being an airplane anyway. She
was now playing with blocks on the floor, which was a relief,
because it was less likely that she’d destroy the world.

What Dana really wanted was a
nap.

Instead, the phone rang.

“
Hello?”

“
Dana?” It was
Cole.

Her heart picked up. “Yes,
it’s me.”

“
Can we meet somewhere to
talk?” he asked.

“
You’re still around? I
would have thought you’d take off last night. I mean, you’ve been
pardoned, right?” Then she had another thought. “Or did something
go wrong with the… with the campers?”

“
No, that’s fine,” said
Cole. “Don’t think about that anymore. I’m still around because I
told King I’d come talk to her about finding Enoch and the others.
But I wanted to talk to you before I did. I’d need your help, and I
think you should understand what I’d be asking you to do before I
go to see her.”

“
You were serious about
that.” It wasn’t a question. She was turning the thought over
instead. Cole had changed, hadn’t he? He’d never had any interest
in helping others before, but now he was different. She remembered
the way he’d helped the children from Hunter’s Moon Farm, and she
knew she’d seen this in him before.

“
I might be serious about
it,” he said. “I can’t do it without you. So, can you meet
me?”

“
I…” She peered down at
Piper, who was building a tall block tower. “I can’t leave my
daughter.”

“
Oh, right. Of course.” He
paused. “Well, then can I come to you?”

“
Here? To my
apartment?”

“
If that’s where you are,
then yes.”

She hesitated. If Avery knew
that Cole had been here, he’d probably lose his mind. On the other
hand, it seemed like Cole’s crazy scheme to catch Enoch might
actually become a reality, and, if that was the case, having Cole
in the apartment was surely the lesser of two evils. “All right. I
guess so.”

She told him where she was
and how to get in. She and Avery had an apartment on the ground
floor of headquarters now, and that meant they had a back door and
a porch that was accessible from outside. Cole wouldn’t have to
bother with going into the offices. Then she hung up the
phone.

She stood in the middle of
the living room, checking to see that everything was fairly clean.
Piper’s blocks were everywhere, but beyond that, the day was too
early for things to have gotten messy. No, the apartment looked
okay.

Then she realized she was still in her
pajamas.

She darted back to her bedroom to get
dressed.

She wanted to take more time
putting on clothes, but she didn’t have it, so she ended up
throwing on jeans and a t-shirt. Nothing glamorous, but at least
her clothes weren’t stained.

She went back into the
hallway. “Pipers?”

“
What?” Piper sounded
annoyed at having been interrupted.

“
We’re having a visitor, and
I want you to—”

“
Visitor?” Piper rushed down
the hallway, really excited. “Who, who, who?”

“
No one you know,”
said Dana.
Just your biological
father.
“Anyway, he wants to talk to Mommy,
so don’t expect him to play with you or
anything.”

Piper jumped up and down.
She began saying, “Visitor, visitor,” over and over in a sing-song
voice.

Knock-knock.

Dana jumped. Her heart
stuttered in her chest. And then she went back the hall to the back
door to let Cole into the house.

He’d shaved. His long beard
was gone and so was his mane of untamed hair. He’d cut that
too—buzzed it close to his head with clippers, from the looks of
it. He looked more like himself, but with all of his face
uncovered, she could see that there were more lines on his face. He
was older. She’d known Cole since high school, and she could still
see the teenage boy in him. But now he was more mature, and there
was something compelling about that as well.

Piper raced forward. “Hi,
visitor!” She ran right up to him and stopped short, peering up at
his face.

Cole knelt down so that he
was eye level with her. “Hi. I’m Cole.” He offered her his hand.
“What’s your name?”

Piper just stared at his
proffered hand. “Piper.”

“
That’s a pretty name,” he
said. “Pretty name for a pretty little girl.”

Piper smiled. She started to
chew on her fingernail. “I’m making a tower.”

“
With blocks,” Dana
explained.

“
That sounds fun.” He cocked
his head to one side, taking the toddler in.

“
Yeah.” Piper was staring at
him too.

“
Um,” said Dana. “Pipers,
why don’t you head back to the living room, and we’ll be right
behind you.”

Neither of them moved.

“
Cole,” Dana
said.

He looked up at her. His
brow was furrowed.

Then Piper took off back down the
hallway.

Cole slowly got to his feet.
“She’s beautiful,” he said quietly.

Dana never knew how to
respond to that. Was the prettiness of her daughter really a
compliment for anyone besides Piper? “Thank you,” she said anyway.
She started after Piper, unable to look at Cole. She went into the
kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”

“
I’m fine.” Cole stood at
the edge of the living room, still staring at Piper.

“
Cole…”

He looked up. “This is a
mistake, Dana. I can’t take you away from… I should go.”

“
No, wait.” She didn’t want
him to leave.

“
You don’t understand. What
I’d need you to do… you’d have to pretend to be my prisoner. Enoch
made it pretty clear to me that I had to choose between you and the
cause. I’d have to show him that I hadn’t chosen you. We’d have to
make him believe that I’d kidnapped you. Just long enough until we
found out where they were, of course, but I think it’s too
dangerous. And I think I… I should go.”

“
Don’t go.” She went to him.
“Listen, I think I could handle that. I think I could pretend to be
a prisoner.”

He shook his head. He looked
her over, and there was something in his expression that she’d
never quite seen before. “You’re a mother, Dana. You have a… I knew
that you did, but now I’m looking at her, I… You belong here. You
belong with her. You belong with her father.”

He didn’t suspect, then.
She’d thought… from the way he was looking at her, that maybe he
could tell. Sometimes Piper made certain expressions, and she
looked exactly like Cole. Dana sometimes worried that Avery noticed
them. But if he did, he never said anything.

Or maybe Cole did notice.
Maybe he was very aware of the fact that Piper was his, and he was
deliberately saying that Avery was Piper’s father because he didn’t
want anything to do with the little girl.

Dana twined her fingers
together. Cole was going to leave, then. He was going to walk out
of her life, and she was never going to see him again. That was the
way things should be. She wasn’t meant to be with a man like
him.

She swallowed. “Yeah, okay.
I guess you’re right.”