Moon Shadows (6 page)

“I think there was a rabbit in your waiting room.”

“Oh, yeah. Muffy. Why do people give animals such embarrassing names? All right, we'll be adult and responsible.” But he nipped her earlobe first. “Office hours end today at five. I can be at your place by five-fifteen. Then we'll run into the woods and make love like Muffy.”

“That sounds close to perfect, but I need a couple of days.”

“Well, I'll have to take some vitamins, but I'll do my best.”

He made her laugh, and for that alone she might have loved him. “I applaud your optimism, but I meant I need a couple of days before I see you again. I need you to give me until Saturday.”

“How about lunch today? Hold the sexual marathon. Just lunch.”

“Saturday. Around four. No later than four-thirty. Please.”

“Okay. But—”

“I need until Saturday. And I need you to tell me if you love me. Or if this is just physical for you. And it's all right if it is—just physical. I'll sleep with you, because I want you. No strings, no promises. I don't need them. But if it's more, I want to know. Not now.” She touched her fingers to his lips before he could speak. “Not now either way. Saturday.”

“You're a strange and fascinating creature, Simone.”

She picked up Amico's leash. “I really am. How's the German shepherd?”

“Beanie? See what I mean about names? He's a lucky dog. Contusions, lacerations, and a broken tibia. He'll be fine.”

“I'm glad to hear it. You're keeping patients waiting, I should go. I'll see you Saturday.”

“Don't cook.” Reluctant to let her go, he took her hand again. “We'll order pizza or something.”

“Or something,” she repeated, and drawing her hand free, walked away.

S
HE
locked her doors, set her alarms, turned off the phone. For two days, she lived in the lab, snatching sleep only when her body refused to function, even on the stimulants she risked taking.

She boosted the dose of burdock, added blue flag, and though she knew it was dangerous to ingest untested mixtures, pumped more of the black market drugs into her system.

When the result made her ill, she dragged herself back to work and tried a different formula.

She felt a little mad.

And why not, she thought, as she crushed hawthorn with mortar and pestle. She wished she were mad, that all of this was in her mind. She bombarded her system with echinachea, drinking it as a cold tea, following the advice in the Nei Jing, that hot diseases should be cooled.

And still she felt heated, a furnace burning inside her, as she studied her own blood under the microscope, as she ran endless tests.

But the cycle was upon her. She didn't need a window,
didn't need to see the sky to know the sun was going down. She felt that pull, the inescapable grip of the moon, inside her as strongly, as surely as hands digging into her belly.

She took the final steps, steps she'd taken three times a month, every month for more than a decade. The restlessness, the tingling rush was already crawling over her skin, creeping under it, like little demons lighting torches in her blood.

She locked the cage door behind her. Sat on the floor as Amico took his place by the basement steps. There she meditated for the time she had left, struggling with her mind against the monster that crouched inside her, waiting to become.

When the change started, she fought it, battled against the pain while sweat sprang hot over her. Discipline. Control. She sat, quivering, her eyes shut, her mind and body as still as she could manage.

Then she was being ripped to pieces. Torn out of herself; torn into herself, with the hideous sounds of her own bones snapping, mutating, lengthening while her flesh stretched to accommodate the impossible.

Her vision sharpened. She couldn't stop it. So she looked down in horror with eyes now more yellow than green as her fingers extended, until gold fur coated them, and the lethal claws protruded.

She screamed, with no one to hear, she screamed against the pain and the fury. Screamed again when the fury became a dark and horrible thrill.

Screamed until the scream became a ululant howl.

 

H
E
'
D
never known days to be so long, or nights to be so dark and lonely. He'd called her a dozen times—maybe more—but she hadn't answered. All he'd gotten for his trouble was that smooth and cool voice of hers telling him to leave a message.

So he'd left them—nonsense ones and urgent ones, frustrated ones and silly ones. Anything, he'd thought, to nudge her into calling him back.

He was a crazy man, he could admit it. Crazy to see her again, to touch her again. To have a damn conversation. Was that too much to ask?

But no, she had to be all mysterious and unreachable.

And more fascinating to him than ever.

Probably part of her master plan, he decided as he drove through the rainy Saturday afternoon. Make the man a lunatic so he'd promise anything.

And well, maybe he would.

He felt lightning-struck.

There were flowers on the seat beside him. Yellow daisies this time. She just didn't strike him as the red rose variety of female. And a bottle of champagne. The real thing.

He was already imagining them sitting on the floor in front of the fire drinking it, making love, talking, making love again, dozing off together only to wake and slide into love and murmurs once more.

He'd turned his schedule upside down to get off midafternoon on a Saturday. And he'd pay for it with extra bookings through the following week. But all that mattered was that she was waiting for him.

He pulled up beside her truck, grabbed the champagne and the flowers, then ran through the rain to her front door.

She opened it before he could knock, but his smile of greeting faded when he saw her face. There were bruises of fatigue under her eyes, dark against the pallor of her skin. And her eyes looked over-bright, feverish.

“Baby, you're sick.” Even as he lifted a hand to check her forehead for fever, she stepped back.

“No, just tired. Come in. I've been waiting for you.”

“Listen to Dr. Gabe. Lie down on the couch there. I'll make you some soup.”

“I'm not hungry.” But she would be. Soon. “Those need water.”

“I'll take care of it. You should've told me you weren't feeling well. I'd have come out to check on you. Have you seen the doctor—the people doctor?”

“No need.” Since he wanted to fuss, she let him. Gave him a vase when they reached the kitchen so he could fill it for the daisies. “I know what's wrong with me. I made you some coffee. Why don't you—”

“Simone.” He dumped the flowers in the vase and turned to
take her shoulders. “I can pour my own coffee. Go lie down. Whether you're hungry or not, you need to eat something, and then get some rest. Once you do the first, you're going upstairs to bed. I'll bunk on the couch.”

“Not much of a date.” She shifted to tap the bottle of champagne he'd set on the counter. “And what about this?”

“We'll put it in the fridge and we can open it when you're feeling better. And if that's not by tomorrow morning, I'm taking you to the doctor.”

“We need to talk.”

“You can talk when you're horizontal. Got any chicken noodle soup around here?”

He turned away to open cupboard doors in a search. There was rain in his hair, little beads that gleamed against the black. She could smell it on him, smell the freshness of him while he poked through her kitchen to find something to give her comfort.

He'd brought her champagne and flowers and wanted to make her soup.

She stood, pierced by something sweeter than pain. And threw her arms around him, pressed her cheek into his back.

“You're one in a million. Oh God, I hope you're my one in a million.”

“I want you flat on your back, and not so I can have my way with you. I'm going to ply you with condensed soup instead of French champagne, then tuck you safely into bed, while I keep watch on the couch.”

He turned around, touched his lips to her forehead in a way she knew meant he was checking for fever.

“If that's not love, Simone, I don't have a name for it.”

“Forget the soup for now, but thank you. Come in and sit down. There are things I have to tell you, and there isn't a lot of time.”

Now his face was nearly as pale as hers. “Are you seriously ill? Is something wrong with you?”

“I have . . . we'll call it a condition. It's nothing you can imagine, and it's not life-threatening. To me. Come sit down, you'll want to sit down, and I'll explain.”

“You're starting to scare me.”

“I know.” She kept her hand in his as she led him to the living room. Everything looked so cozy, so simple, she thought. But it wasn't, couldn't be.

It was the biggest risk she would ever take, but there he was, the most important prize she could ever hope to win, sitting on her sofa looking edgy and worried.

He would look worse than that when she finished. And when she finished, he would either be hers, or he'd be making tracks.

“It happened in Italy,” she began. “I was eighteen. Just. So happy to be on my own for the first time. Everything was ahead of me. You know how it is?”

“Yeah.” He reached for the throw over the arm of the sofa, and tucked it over her lap. “You think you own the world, and all you have to do is start collecting.”

“Yes. I was . . . stifled is the way to put it, I guess, with my aunt and uncle. I behaved as they wanted me to behave, was very careful to do what was expected. Otherwise, I didn't know what would happen to me. So I was quiet, studious, obedient. And I marked the days on my mental calendar until I could turn the key on that lock and run. There was money coming to me when I turned eighteen. Insurance money, a little trust. Not tons of money, but enough to see me through, to give me some freedom, to finance that trip to Europe I wanted so desperately. And I'd worked summers since I was sixteen, squirreling away as much money as I could. I was going to go to college, but I deferred for a year. At eighteen, it seemed I had all the time in the world, and the possibilities were endless.”

Her fingers were plucking at the edge of the throw. He took her hand in his, soothed it. “You said you went alone.”

“I wanted to be alone, more than anything.” How viciously ironic, she thought, that she'd gotten that wish. “To meet people, yes. To sit in cafes and have brilliant conversations with fascinating people. And I did, the way you do at that age—or think you do. I wanted to see Rome and Paris and London, and all the little villages in the countryside. I wanted to sit in a pub in Ireland and listen to music. I wanted a lot.”

He shook his head. “Not a lot. You wanted to be happy. To be yourself.”

“God, yes. I wanted to touch everything, see everything. Absorb everything. I'd dreamed of it for so long, and there I was, staring at the Duomo in Florence, drinking wine and flirting with the waiters in Rome, sitting on a hilltop in Tuscany. No structured tours for me. No structure at all. I was done with that. That's why I was hiking in a remote area of the Piedmont in the fall, a few months after my eighteenth birthday. Alone, watching a glorious sunset, walking as twilight came, soft and so lovely. It was incredibly romantic, and peaceful and exciting all at once. I was going to hike over to France.”

“Oh, baby.” Instinctively he squeezed her hands. Someone had hurt her, she'd said. And she'd never known him. “Were you raped?”

“No.” Not quite true, she realized. What else to call the invasion of her body, the horror? “Not . . . not sexually.” She paused a moment. She was stalling when she needed to get through it all quickly. And yet, didn't he have to know the whole of it? Didn't she need to make him see it, believe it?

“I should've camped near one of the villages, or gone to a house or farm. Something. But I was eighteen and immortal, and I wanted to experience the night in the mountains, alone. The full moon. I heard something, and I thought, Oh Christ, is that a wolf? Are there wolves up here? But a wolf wouldn't be interested in me. Then I heard it howl. I felt the fear strike across my neck like an axe, even when I told myself wolves didn't bother people. People weren't their prey.”

She tossed the throw aside, pushed to her feet, moved to the fire to poke at the logs, even though she knew the flame wouldn't warm her. “It was all very quick. I walked faster. I could hear my boots ring on the rock. I had my Swiss Army knife in my pocket. I remember digging for it. I saw it—the shape of it—and I ran. It came at me from behind. My backpack saved me. It knocked me flat, and I could feel it tearing at the pack, and its breath on the back of my neck.”

She rubbed her arms, rubbed them hard, and kept her eyes
focused on the leaping flames. “The sounds it made—hungry, wild. Inhuman. I screamed. I think I screamed. I lost my knife. It wouldn't have helped me anyway.”

She turned back, knew she had to face him with the rest. His eyes were riveted on her. “I must've fought, but I remember it clawing me, and the pain was beyond belief. Beyond that when it got its teeth into my shoulder. It might've killed me then, and it would've been over. But I had this.”

She drew the cross out from under her shirt, let it dangle from the chain. “I stabbed at it with this cross, out of panic and pain and desperation. I only saw it for an instant, and then not clearly, but I hacked the point of this cross into it, and it screamed. I lay there alone, looking up at the moon. I don't remember after that, I must've passed out. They told me hikers found me in the morning, and carried me out of the mountains. They told me I was lucky I hadn't bled to death. Luckier, they said, than the man they found dead. But the strange thing about him was he was smeared with blood, but only had two small wounds. A puncture wound in his cheek, another in the jugular.”

“Self-defense, Simone. You had to—”

“No, wait. I have to get it all out. He was a hermit, they said. This man they found dead and smeared with blood. A strange, strange man who lived alone in the hills. It must've been he who attacked me, but wasn't it odd that my wounds looked to have been inflicted by some sort of beast? The claw marks, the bite in my shoulder. But look how quickly they were healing. Yes, I was a very lucky girl.”

“Simone.” He got up slowly to go to her, took her shoulders in gentle hands. “Was he HIV-positive? Did he have AIDS?”

“No. But you're on the track. It's about blood. I stayed in Europe, I went on to France. In a couple of weeks I felt better, better than I ever had in my life. A month after the attack, I was camping again. Alone. Thank God, alone. As the sun went down, I started to feel restless, hot and feverish. Too much energy. Nerves sparking under my skin. There was a tearing pain, like something was ripping me from the inside out. I felt it come, felt it claw through me, out of me. Become
me. And I hunted, I smelled the flesh, the blood. Only a deer. I fed on it, and the kill was as thrilling as the feast.”