Moon Shadows (8 page)

Before he realized what she was doing, she laid her hand against the side of the skillet. He was on her in one leap, yanking her hand clear.

“What's wrong with you? Let me see. Where's the first aid kit?” He tried to drag her to the sink and couldn't budge her an inch.

“Stronger than I look, especially in cycle. Just like I heal very quickly, abnormally. Look.” She held her palm up. “Just give it a minute.”

He watched, fascinated, as the ugly burn, fiery red from fingertip to wrist, turned healing pink, shrank, and disappeared.

“Nice trick.” He breathed in, breathed out. “Don't do it again.”

“I've thought of killing myself,” she said calmly. “But that's giving up, and I'm not ready to give up. There's a cure, and I have to find it.”

He turned her healed hand over, kissed her palm. “We'll find it.”

She turned back to the stove, scooping eggs out before they burned, and struggled to curb her emotions. “Why are you so willing to accept, and more than accept, to help me? To stand here this morning, talking about this, what should be horrifying and revolting to you while I fix bacon and eggs?”

“A lot of reasons. One? The bacon and eggs is because I'm hungry. Another is it's tough not to accept what you see with your own eyes. Then, the scientist in me is pretty damn
fascinated—then add a little irony. I mean, wow, the vet and the werewolf. Sorry,
lycan
. The vet and the lycan. It's like kismet.”

“If I could have gotten out of that cage last night, I'd have ripped you to pieces. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” He thought he did understand, quite a bit. “You tried to get out for a while. Threw yourself against the bars. Without your amazing super healing powers, you'd be black and blue this morning. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit I was scared shitless, even when you settled down to pace the cage, snarl and howl. You know what else I felt?”

She shook her head, kept her eyes averted as she dished out breakfast.

“Staggered, humbled, moved beyond words that you would trust me that much. Even honored, Simone, that you'd share with me something you'd kept from everyone else for more than a third of your life. You had that much faith in me. Then we come to the big, overall reason I'm standing here this morning talking about this and hoping we're going to be digging into those eggs in a second. That would be because I love you.”

F
OR
the first time in days she slept easy. Maybe it was hope, or love, or having Gabe dozing beside her for a long Sunday morning nap, but the changing dreams didn't follow her.

Before he'd opened this door inside her, she would have considered sleep during the cycle a waste of valuable time. Now it was a renewal of energies and strength, and she woke rippling with both.

She was surprised to find him gone, and like a love-struck moron raced to the window, sighed with relief when she saw his truck still in the drive.

“Well, Amico, look at me.” She patted her chest so the dog could happily leap up, plant his paws on her shoulders while she scrubbed her hands over his head. “A lycan in love. Broke a big promise to myself, didn't I? Never get emotionally involved, never get emotionally attached. Not with anything, not with anyone. Broke it with you, too, though, and that's worked out, right? God, don't let me ruin his life.”

She danced with the dog, one of his favorite games, then
dropped down to wrestle with him before going downstairs to let him out for a run.

Fall was biting at the air, and its nip had turned the trees to gold and red, pumpkin orange and burnt yellow. Fall meant the sun set sooner, and the nights stretched longer and longer. Soon her hours as a wolf would rival her hours as a woman.

She would have less and less time to work, to be, and more time trapped inside the beast.

She wished for summer, endless summer with its long, bright days and short nights. How she dreaded the coming of winter, and its bleak, white moons.

She closed the door, closed it out. And followed Gabe's scent to her lab.

“Hey.” He took a long look at her, the sort that seemed to drift casually over her face but measured every inch. “I'd hoped you'd sleep longer.”

“I don't sleep much during cycle. I generally have dreams. They're disturbing.” He was surrounded by books, hard-copy files, and the computer screen was filled with an analysis of one of her blood samples. “What are you doing?”

“Boning up. Got to go a ways to get current here. Did you ever consider going into medicine? Your case notes are excellent.”

“I've done some lab work here and there, but it was self-serving. I'm happier making herbal soaps and skin cream. I like the smells and textures. Labs are cold, and sterile. If I—when I,” she corrected, “find a cure, I never want to look through a microscope again.”

“I guess that scratches any idea of you working with me.” He pushed back in the chair, and however light his tone had been, she saw something darker on his face. “I need to talk to you about some of your experiments, and the fact that you have, with some regularity, ingested poisonous substances.”

“I'm careful with the amounts and the combinations. Cancer patients are routinely bombarded with poisons.”

“Simone—”

“I have to kill what's inside me. I can't do that with aspirin, for God's sake.”

“And from your notes,” he continued in that same steely
tone, “I'm aware you've considered the possibility that if you kill what's inside you, you go right along with it.”

“I don't want to die. I don't have a death wish. I got over that. On my twentieth birthday I drew myself a hot bath. I drank three glasses of cheap white wine. I got the razor blades. I had Sarah McLachlan on the stereo. I was ready to do it, to end it.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Because I realized it's bullshit. What happened to me isn't fair, it isn't right, it isn't even natural. But so what? I'm not just going to lie down and die because of it. But if I die fighting it, fine.”

“I'm completely crazy about you,” he stated calmly. “Terminally in love. And being a selfish sort, I'm not going to have you die on me and leave me shattered, heart and mind, over the loss of the love of my life. So let's eliminate poisons and untested drugs for the moment, and focus on less radical solutions. I see that you tried a rabies course in 1999.”

“Obviously, it failed.”

“Yeah, but there's a lessening of manic behavior, of violence in the tapes following the course. You noted it yourself.”

She cocked her head, arched her eyebrows. “Funny thing, though, I'm just not content to be a friendlier sort of lycan. And if you studied the tapes and notes, you'll see while less agitated, I wouldn't have sat politely and offered my paw to you if you'd offered me a nice treat. I'd have bitten your hand off and eaten it along with the Milk-Bone.”

“It's still something to pursue. And while you've been dealing and studying and living with this, you haven't spent years studying veterinary medicine, or practicing it. I'm going to do some homework with the Center of Veterinary Biologics. See if I can get an angle there. And I want a sample of blood after the change.”

“Just how do you propose to do that? You get within a foot of the cage, I'd be the one drawing blood. Yours.”

“Not if you're sedated. I've got a tranquilizer gun out in the car.”

“You're going to
shoot
me?”

“Yeah.” He pushed back enough to prop a foot on the
table. The casual position, the hair tousled around his face, made him look like a man discussing where they might have dinner later. “I'm hoping you'll get on board with that. But if not, I'll do it anyway. You won't be able to object once you're locked up.”

“Amico would—”

“Be sedated, too, if necessary.” And there was that steel again, she noted. “You can either give him the command to obey me, or I'll give him a nice nap while I do the work. We need a sample from you, Simone, in lycan form. For comparison, for study. You've never taken one. Just as you've never been able to try any of the drugs or serums on the lycan.”

“Well, I could hardly—”

“No, you could hardly.” He nodded, and his face was set. “But I can. It's time you let Dr. Gabe take a swing.”

 

S
HE
was terrified. Not for herself; she'd long since become immune to fear for herself. But for him. What if the tranquilizer only appeared to work, or wore off while he was still in the cage with her?

They'd argued over it, over every objection she had. But the sun was setting, she was in the cage, and he was coolly loading the tranquilizer. “Use a double dose,” she told him.

“Who's the doctor here, Blondie? You ever tranquilized a werewolf?”

“Have you?” she shot back.

“Nope, but I've done my share of dogs. Horses. Cats. Cows. Pigs. All manner of reptiles, including a python. Why in the name of all that's holy and right would anyone want a python for a pet?”

“A lycan's not a pet, or a damn farm animal. Up the dose, Gabe. Please.”

He looked over at her, and his face went tight with worry. “It's starting,” he said, softly.

Did he think she had to be
told
? Did he think she couldn't
feel
? It was burning through her, fever bright, scorching her bone and blood. He would look at her with pity now? In
minutes she'd be strong enough to tear him to pieces, to rip out his throat and drink his blood. And he dared feel sorry for her?

Come closer. Yes, closer. She would take him, not for the kill, but for the change. That's what she wanted, wanted most, deep in the belly of what lived in her. Deep in what she was she wanted him. Like her.

To mate madly.

“No! Oh God, no!” Hands clamped on the bars, she reared back, twisted with pain and terrible desire. She heard herself shouting, until the words became snarls.

He had to wait, wait until the change was complete. And made himself watch it—heart thudding, hands trembling. He heard her begging him not to come near her, not to unlock the cage, until her words became thick and garbled. Until they weren't words at all.

And she was
it
. The thing that paced the cage, claws clicking on concrete, fangs gleaming in the hard lights. This time it didn't throw itself against the bars, but watched him, with a calculating patience in those mad eyes.

He stepped closer, as close as he dared, with Amico at his side, growling low. “Sorry, baby,” Gabe mumbled and fired the dart.

It struck the lycan low on the right side. It went wild then, leaping, spinning as it tried to reach the source of the sting. As its movements became sluggish, Gabe walked over to pick up a sterilized syringe for taking blood, and another filled with the serum he'd helped Simone mix that afternoon. He gathered other vials, a scalpel, a stethoscope, then noted the time.

On the floor of the cage, the lycan lay unconscious. Just another patient, Gabe told himself as he approached the door. Using the combinations Simone had given him, he opened each lock. Sweat was pooling at the base of his spine as he eased the door open.

He took its pulse. Its fur was soft, silky, like her hair. He listened to its heart rate. Strong and steady. Recording it all for the tape. He took the blood next, automatically pinching a fold of skin before sliding the needle in. He watched its
face—fierce and strangely beautiful—and when he saw no reaction, breathed a little easier.

Briskly now, he took skin samples, hair samples. He measured its length, and wished fleetingly he'd thought of a scale to get its weight. But he wasn't certain he would've been able to lift the dead weight of a full-grown female lycan onto a scale in any case.

He injected the serum, and because he loved her, stroked his hand, once, down the length of its body.

“Maybe you'll sleep through the rest. Give you a little peace.” Rising, he stepped back, closed the cage. Locked it. He took his samples to the worktable, prepared slides.

For an hour he studied them, made notes, and entertained theories.

When he glanced back at the cage, it hadn't moved. It should be coming around by now, he thought. He couldn't have been that far off in the dose, in his gauge of its weight. He thought of the serum, and had a moment's panic that Simone had added something to the formula while he'd been upstairs.

He was at the cage door again, his hands on the first lock, when he checked himself. It was breathing, he could see that. He'd wait another thirty minutes, then if he had to go in, he'd take the tranquilizer gun with him.

He turned away again, hesitated.

It was Amico's ringing bark that had him spinning.

It moved like lightning. From prone to crouch to leap, all in one blurry move of speed and power. He saw its eyes, bright, alert. Yellow rimmed in red. He stumbled back. The claws that speared through the bars raked his biceps before he fell and rolled out of reach.

Barks, snarls, growls, bounced off the walls as he lay panting, his hand gripped on the wound. In the cage, it rose on its hind legs, spread out on the bars, and howled in rage.

 

“H
OW
could you be so careless?”

Because she was on a tear, Gabe sat while Simone
removed the bandage and examined the wound he'd already treated. She'd smelled his blood, and the antiseptic, before she'd been out of the cage at sunup.

“I wasn't careless.” Nearly was, he thought as he remembered that he'd nearly unlocked the cage. “And it's far from the first scratch I've had in the line of duty. You should've seen the chunk this toy poodle took out of me my first year in practice.”

“It's not a joke.”

“Who's joking?” He shoved up his other sleeve, pointed to the mark just under his elbow. “Look at that scar. Little son of a bitch had teeth like a shark.”

“You turned your back on me.”

“It.” He'd decided it was best all around to make that distinction clear. “Yes, I did. My mistake. But between Amico, and my own catlike reflexes, all I got was a couple of scratches.”

“Gouges.”

“Semantics. Either way, no permanent damage, right?”

It was a question, and one she was sure he'd wrestled with for hours. Alone. “No. It takes a bite. Teeth into flesh, saliva and blood. This will hurt.” She examined the wounds—four long gashes—and decided she couldn't doctor it any better than he had. Foolish of her to think otherwise. “It'll probably scar.”

“Just add it to my collection.”

“It could have been much, much worse.”

“I'm aware.”

“No, you're not. And that's my fault.” She turned away, going to the kitchen door to fling it open. Autumn mists made the trees look as though they were floating in a low-riding river. Winter, she thought, creeping closer.

“I wouldn't have killed you. I knew, from the minute I saw you, I knew what . . . and I should've told you. What's in me is primal. And blood—to hunt and feed—isn't the only primal need. I wouldn't have killed you,” she repeated, and turned back to him. “I would have changed you. I would have made you like me. I wanted that.”

He rose himself, walked to the stove for more coffee. She could see she'd shaken him, given him something to consider that hadn't crossed his mind. “You think telling me that is going to have me heading out the door?”