Moon Shadows (9 page)

“No. You have feelings for me, and you're invested in this now. But you can't trust me.”

“Right on one and two, wrong on three.” He set the mug down with an impatient snap. “I can't imagine what you've been through, what you cope with every hour of every day. It's beyond imagining. I've watched you, I've watched the tapes, and I'm looking at you right now wondering if I have half the guts you do. Primal, you said. It's primal, and its instincts are to survive, to feed, to mate. It's not to blame for that, and neither are you.”

“I should've told you.”

“You just did. Things are moving fast between us,” he said before she could speak. “But the fact is we haven't been in this situation very long. This very intense and strange situation. I haven't told you I once had a one-night stand with a woman for no other reason than she was there. Actually, it didn't qualify as a night, just a couple hours of serious banging. I didn't care about her, forgot her name the next morning. It was primal. Going to hold it against me?”

“Men are pigs. Everyone knows that.” She stepped to him. “I've never loved anyone before. I don't know what to do about it.”

“We'll figure it out along the way.” He leaned down to brush his lips with hers, then sank in, held on when her arms came around him hard. “We'll figure it all out. We've got four weeks before the next full moon. Let's see where it takes us.”

Hope hurt, but how could she tell him?

“I've got to get back to my place, clean up, get to work.” He kissed her again before easing away. “But I'll be back, right after office hours. I'll bring pizza.”

“Pizza's good.”

“And we'll get started on some serious figuring out.”

S
HE
hadn't known what it would be like to have someone in her life. Someone to share with—the little things, the huge ones. To have someone who made her laugh or think, who shrugged off her bad moods or slapped her back with moods of his own, was all a kind of miracle.

She'd told him once she hadn't been happy since she'd stood in the mountains of Italy and watched the sun set. He'd just smiled in that slow, pleased way of his, and told her they'd go back, to that exact spot one day.

He brought the puppy, a rambunctious bundle of fur and energy he named Butch. Initially Amico was too dignified and territorial to acknowledge the presence of another dog, much less a scrambling puppy. But within a week, he was romping and playing with the pup as if Butch was his personal pet.

Normal, Simone thought, all so normal with dinner on the stove and dogs in the yard. Nights making lazy love, or desperate love. Conversations over wine with music on the stereo. Candles she'd made herself flickering while they
danced, and a low fire in the hearth while the October wind moaned at the windows like a lonely woman.

Normal, if you forgot the hours they spent working in the lab, in a room with a cell and the smell of wild animal in the air that nothing could quite disguise.

If she ignored the dreams that began to chase her as the moon waxed toward full.

She saw a raven one morning, sleek and black, pecking away at the seeds in her feeder. The sky was painfully blue overhead, and though the trees were long past their peak, some leaves clung stubbornly on, so they flamed in the sun. It was beautiful, the sort of scene that deserved to be captured by lens or canvas. The bold colors of those last dying leaves against the pure and harsh blue of the sky.

But she watched the raven, glossy black wings, and when she felt what was in her stir, as greedy as the bird, she knew the past weeks of work had made no difference.

“You change with the moon,” Gabe said as he prepared another sample on a slide. “Which has some logic. Body chemistry, tides, the lunar cycle. But that doesn't explain why you have these sensations, the heightened senses and so forth outside the three-day cycle.”

“It's always there. It's part of me, in the blood.”

“In the blood,” he agreed. “An infection, and one that, so far, resists the cell-cell interactions that produce antibodies. We've gone—or you had before I came along—a long way toward identifying that infection. A mutant form of rabies.”

“That's too simple a term.”

He could hear the fatigue, the discouragement in her voice. “Sometimes simple is best. This infection has altered your blood chemistry, your DNA. And when you change, that chemistry, that DNA is altered again—slightly, subtly, but when we put the samples side by side, scanning the incredibly cool electron micrograph, the change is apparent.”

“Not that earth-shattering. The DNA is more distinctly canine when I'm in lycan form.”

“Think, Simone, don't react. Think.” He picked up a mug, taking it for his coffee, and drank down her herbal tea.
“Ugh,” was his opinion before he put it down, and grabbed the other mug.

“
Any
change in DNA is earth-shattering. It should be frigging impossible. But yours changes every month. And look here.” Sipping his coffee, he went to the computer to bring up an analysis. “Look what happens when we dose the blood with the antidote. The cells mutate again. They're not just fighting off the antibiotic, they're morphing, just enough to make it useless. What we have to do is fool them.”

“How?”

He reached over to stroke her hair. “Working on it.”

But she was following him. “If the cells thought they were being attacked by one thing, and reacted—or tried to react—then a secondary antidote could be administered. Sort of like catching them in the cross fire.”

“That's the idea. We need to find two, not one.”

“It's a good idea.” She liked the way his hand ran casually over her butt when she stood. “I've tried something similar before, mixing a mild sedative in with antibiotics. Valerian and skullcap, wolfsbane—”

“No wolfsbane,” he interrupted. “No poisons.”

Scowling, she gulped down tea. “I know what I'm doing with herbs.”

“No question about it.” To keep her off balance, he yanked her onto his lap. “God, you smell good. You always do, then there's that skin. Relax a minute. What herbs do you take to relax?”

She struggled not to sigh. “Chamomile's good. Lavender.”

“How about for an aphrodisiac?”

“Fenugreek.”

He laughed so hard he nearly dumped her on the floor. “You're making that up.”

“What do you think I've been putting in your coffee every morning?”

With another laugh, he squeezed his arms around her. “Well, keep it up. That way we'll never be a bored old married couple.”

She jumped away as if he'd jabbed her with a poker. “Married? What are you talking about?”

He stayed where he was, that same easy smile on his face. “Didn't I ask you yet? Where's my to-do list?” He patted his pockets.

“I can't get married, Gabe. It's not possible for me.”

“Sure it is. We fly to Vegas, find a tacky chapel—a personal fantasy of mine—and do it while an Elvis impersonator sings “Love Me Tender” off-key.”

“No.”

“All right, scratch the Elvis impersonator, but I insist on the tacky chapel. A boy can't give up all his dreams.”

“I can't marry you, anyone. I can't even consider it as long as I'm like this.”

“Try a little optimism, Simone. We're going to find the cure. Whether it takes a month, a year, ten years. While we're looking, I want a life with you. I want to live here with you, and say things like, oh yeah, my wife has that great shop a couple blocks from here.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest. “It could take ten years. It could take twenty.”

“And if it does, we'll have our lives, we'll live them and for three nights a month, we'll adjust them.”

“I can't have children. Well, I don't know if I
can't
,” she said before he could respond. “But I couldn't risk it, couldn't risk passing on what's in me to a child. Blood to blood.”

He sat back, and she could see he hadn't thought of it, not yet. “Okay, you're right. There's adoption.”

“Oh,
think
, Gabriel! How do you explain to a child that Mom's got to go lock herself in a cage now, so she doesn't kill anyone. How could you chance the possibility that something could go wrong, some slip, and I'd hurt an innocent child?”

“I think there might be ways to manage all that, but I understand what you're saying. There are a lot of happy couples, Simone, who can't have children, or choose not to.”

“Gabe.” Her voice, her heart, her eyes softened as she moved to him, touched his cheek. “You've got kids and white picket fence all over you. I can't give you that, and I won't put you in a position where you're unable to have them.”

“There's something you're not factoring in, and it's
starting to piss me off.” He shoved to his feet, took her arms under the elbows and brought her up sharply to her toes. “I
love
you. Love means you stick when things are hard, when they're weird, when they're sad, when they're painful. I'm with you; get used to it. You're scared of marriage, fine.”

“I'm not scared, it's—”

“I'll talk you into it eventually.” He jerked her forward so their bodies bumped, so his mouth clamped over hers and muffled her curse. “I can wait.”

“You're living in a fantasy world.”

“I'm sleeping with a werewolf, what do you expect?”

She wouldn't smile. She wouldn't laugh. “Try this. Just how would you introduce me to your family? Your mother?”

“I'd say: Mom, this is Simone, the woman I love. Isn't she beautiful? Smart, too, and enterprising. Damn good cook. I'd skip the part about you being a—ha ha—animal in bed, because moms don't need to know everything. What else? Oh yeah. She speaks Italian and has a great dog. Three nights a month, she isn't fit to live with, but other than that she's perfect.”

“I may be the lycan,” she said after a moment, “but you're the lunatic.”

“We're all victims of the moonlight.” The computer alarm pinged. “Time for your next dose.”

He walked over to pick up a vial and fresh syringe. Saying nothing, Simone rolled up her sleeve. There was no mark from the morning injection. The tiny puncture had closed less than a minute after the shot.

He banded her arm, flicked the vein. “No, don't look at the needle, look at me. I told you it hurts less.”

“It doesn't hurt when you do it.”

He smiled as he slid the needle under her skin. “Just take a minute. I love your eyes, have I told you that? The way the gold flecks over the green, like little spots of sunlight. When we make love, when I'm inside you, the green gets deeper, the gold brighter. I'm going to spend my life making your eyes change, Simone.”

“Sometimes I think I'm imagining you, making you up inside my head so I don't go crazy.”

“I am too good to be true.” He disposed of the needle, slid his hand down her arm to take her pulse. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. The same.”

“No dizziness, nausea.”

“No, nothing.”

He bent over the table to make notes. “No urge to chase your tail, hump my leg?”

“Ha ha.”

“We'll give it another thirty minutes, then check your vitals, take another sample.” He walked back to her, rolled down her sleeve himself, buttoned the cuff, then pecked a kiss on her wrist. “Let's go walk our dogs.”

 

T
HE
wolf came with the October moon. The Hunter's Moon. It came again, howling in with the Beaver Moon of November, pacing its cage, yearning for blood though for the three nights clouds covered the light and left the sky black as death.

December came, bringing snow, and its long, cold nights.

They adjusted the serum, and within ten minutes, Simone was shaking with chills and fever.

“I was crazy to let you pressure me into upping the dose before we tested it.”

“I'd have injected myself when you weren't here.”

“I know. You're burning up.” He tucked the blanket around her more securely as she lay on the cot he'd brought down so he could sleep during the cycle. “You're up to a hundred and six. You need a hospital.”

“I can't. You know I can't. One test, and it's over for me. You know what they'll do to me.” Her restless hand gripped his, and felt like burning sticks. “I'll be a freak. It'll pass, Gabe. It'll pass.”

“It's too high. We'll get you upstairs, into the tub. Cool you down.”

“I dream.” Her head lolled on his shoulder even as her body shook. “I can smell you when I dream. Smell you in the dream.”

“It's all right,” he soothed as he carried her up the first flight of stairs.

“Dreams? Are they dreams? You can't run fast enough. I love when you run, and I smell the fear. It's delicious.”

“Ssh.” He gathered her closer, both dogs trailing behind, whining as he carried her through the house, up to the second floor.

“Stalking, hunting. I can taste your blood before I bite. It fills my throat. I want to drown in it.”

He laid her on the bed, hurried into the bath to fill the tub with cool water. She was writhing on the bed when he came back, like a woman aroused by a lover.

“Like me. Finally like me.”

He stripped her, and she began to convulse. He had to strap down every instinct not to gather her close, to wait—and pray—while the seizure ran its course.

The dogs knew, he noted. Young Butch quivered as he growled and backed away; Amico snarled low as his hackles rose. They knew what he could see.

Her eyes were wrong. Not just gold flecks now. The gold was spreading, taking over the green. He dragged her up, caging her against his body as she flailed. He could
hear
the change, the shifting of bones.

Prayers for both of them raced through his mind as he laid her in the cool water. “Simone, listen to me. Simone. You can fight this. It's not time. It's the fever. You have to hold on, hold it off, until we get the fever down.”

“I can't. I want. It wants. Get out. Run.”

“Look at me, you look at me.” There were claws under the water, clicking against the porcelain. “Fight back. You're stronger, you're still stronger.”

“The knife. The silver knife. In the dresser, I showed you.” Her hand, tipped with sharp black claws, clamped over his arm. Drew blood. “Get it. Use it.”

“Not now. Not ever.” His blood dripped into the water, stained it. “I love you.
Fight
.”

Her head reared back, her face, narrowing, lengthening, was a mask of pain and struggle. Then she went limp, would have slid under the water if he hadn't steadied her.