Red Moon Rising (23 page)

I
'm on my back. Hard floor is under me, cold against my shoulder blades. It's dark. No, my eyes are closed. I open them and I'm staring straight up into a light.

Weird paneling on the ceiling and the walls. The floor feels like concrete.

Right. I'm in the chamber.

It's completely silent in here. I'm tired and I don't even want to sit up. How did I get here? What happened?

I was in the woods. Maybe during the Change?

It
was
during the Change. I remember the full moon. The moon was red.

Gunther was there.

Right. He shot me. Then he got caught in a trap or something.

I carried him. There was an electric fence or something.

Somehow, I picked him up and ran to the house.

And now I remember. It comes back to me like seeing a movie again after a long time. It's coming back….

I got the inner doors open and burst into the family room. I was holding Gunther Hoering, unconscious, up by the front of his shirt. I lowered him to the floor, slowly, so his head wouldn't crack on the tile.

We weren't alone in the room. Mom was standing there, with red-rimmed eyes. Dr. Mellin was standing next to her with a medical bag in his hand. Troy was on the other side of Mom with a worried look on his face. And Kevin Baker was standing in front of them with a huge pistol stuck in the waist of his pants and a Taser rifle aimed right at me.

“What the…?” Kevin said, still aiming the Taser right at my chest.

Mom's hands went to her mouth, and tears ran down her cheeks. Troy put his arms around her shoulders and whispered something to her.

I started to raise my hands, and Kevin instantly put the stock of the Taser rifle against his shoulder.

My hands were up high and I waved them to say,
don't shoot
.

“What's going on?” Mom said. “He doesn't look like…” She trailed off. “What's happening?”

“I…I don't know,” Dr. Mellin says.

“He just came in from the sun,” Troy said, “but he didn't burn.”

Kevin kept the Taser rifle aimed at my chest. He said, “I don't know what's going on here, but the first thing we need to do is get him secured.”

“I need to examine him,” Dr. Mellin said.

“Nobody's going near him until he's restrained. If I could get him to lie down, after we get cuffs on him and move him downstairs, you can sedate him and do your exam. I don't know how to get him to comply, so I might have to stun him with the Taser.”

I got to my knees, then lay prone on the floor. I put my hands behind my back.

“He understood you,” Mom said. “What is this?”

I heard Kevin take a few steps, then pick something up, then the
ka-shuck
sound of a shotgun being racked. I felt the heel of a workboot over my spine, right below shoulder-blade level. Just enough pressure so it took some effort to breathe. Then I felt the twin metal circles press firmly behind my ear. “Just relax, buddy,” he said, almost under his breath.

“Please be careful,” Mom said.

“Troy, give me a hand here,” Kevin said. “Right there in my bag's a pair of handcuffs. Grab them for me?”

“These? Are they strong enough?” Troy asked.

“Those are extra-heavy LycanoLock handcuffs. Believe me, they're strong enough. Now you're gonna have to put them on him. Don't worry. If he so much as moves one muscle fiber, this'll take his head off.”

The shotgun barrels pressed a little harder against me, and I started to breathe heavier.

“I think he really does understand us,” Dr. Mellin said.

“That's fine with me,” Kevin said. “If he understands, then he knows what'll happen if he moves. Go ahead, Troy. Just like bracelets. Ratchet them nice and tight.”

The cold steel tightens around my wrists. Kevin says, “Nice job, Troy. He's not getting out of those.”

“While you have him immobilized, let me give him the sedative,” Dr. Mellin says.

“What are you giving him?” Mom asked.

“Ketamine. It's a tranquilizer,” Dr. Mellin said.

“Make sure you give him enough,” Kevin said. “Cuffs or not, I don't want him going wild on us.”

“The dose I'm giving him? It would put two grizzly bears to sleep for days. Okay, Danny. If you can understand, you're going to feel a pinch in your leg. Nothing to worry about. You just have a good sleep.”

And that's the last thing I remember.

Wait, hang on. I'm thinking clearly. Perfectly rational. Werewulves can't think like that.

Which means I've been asleep here for a couple more days and passed completely through the Change.

Relief floods through me. I'm alive. I'm back to normal.

I hear the metal door bar sliding, and the door opens. Kevin is standing there. “Good morning, sunshine. Looks like Sleeping Beauty has awakened, or whatever. Feel like coming upstairs?”

Music to my ears. Now if I can just get the energy to sit up.

I scratch an itch on my chest. And a small tuft of fur floats through the air.

Fur?

I look at my hand.

Tips of black claws poke through the nails. But they should have fallen out when I reverted back.

“Come on, you lazy bastard,” Kevin says. “You've been sleeping down here for a solid ten hours.”

Ten hours.
Ten hours?
But that would mean that I
didn't
sleep through the whole Change, that I'm still—

Wait. I'm thinking clearly. So then why do I still…?

I touch my face and—

What the hell is going on?

M
y legs are achy and my balance is off from the sedative, so it takes both Kevin and Troy to help me walk upstairs.

First thing I want to do is get a look at myself and see what's going on, and the hallway mirror happens to be right outside the basement door.

Whoa.
Not
what I was expecting.

I have two dark purple streaks under my eyes, probably from my nose breaking. My eyes are golden with big black pupils. That's pretty freaky. My nose is not its usual shape, but it's not completely deformed or anything. I move the hair away from the top halves of my ears, so I can get a look. Weird. They're definitely elongated and come to dull points. But with my hair down, it's not easy to see.

My mouth looks fine closed, but I can feel the pointy tips of werewulf teeth poking out from my gums, all the way around.

At least there are no facial ridges or bumps. My cheekbones do look sharper and more prominent. I move my fingers to touch them.

Dr. Mellin waves his hand back and forth. “No, no. Don't touch. Your facial bones aren't fused yet. They broke perfectly along the seams I created, but right now they're still mobile. If you touch them, they could shift, and we'll have some severe ridging to fix.”

There's still a lot of the dark hair—or fur, I guess—on my chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. But I shed it really easily. All I have to do is rub or scratch. And now there are tufts of fur on the floor. Mom's going to love that.

My legs look weird. The bones between my toes and my ankles are longer than usual and angled up, so my heels are a couple of inches off the floor. There are scars forming on my thigh and on the shoulder where Dr. Mellin took out the second bullet. My regen is already at work healing the wounds.

Jess and Paige look scared, but relieved that I'm more or less okay.

We figure out pretty quickly that nothing I say is understandable. It takes a little work for me to grip a pen, but I write a note asking where we are in the full-moon cycle, where I am in the Change.

“You got through the first night and most of a day,” Dr. Mellin says. “You have two more nights to go.”

Two more nights? I'm in the middle of the Change right now? I write on the pad,
Confused. Thinking is clear—writ
ing!!!—but I look like this. Why?

“We'll get to that,” he says. “But you should sit. You don't look too steady.”

They help me to a chair. I write a note asking what happened to Gunther. Troy explains that he drove Gunther to the hospital while I was unconscious. Troy told the ER staff that he'd been driving and saw this kid in the street, smoking from the first rays of morning sun. On the way, Troy reminded Gunther that I saved his life when I could have let him fry, and that between my rescuing him and the fact that Gunther had tried to kill me—on federally preserved property—it would be a good idea to keep his knowledge of my condition to himself. Gunther agreed.

We're all anxious to understand what's happening to me. Dr. Mellin clears his throat. “Let me first say that almost all the conclusions I've drawn about Danny are only educated guesses. Based on initial results from blood, cerebrospinal fluid, skin and muscle biopsies, and physical examination, this is what I believe is happening.” Dr. Mellin explains his theory.

He goes into a lot of scientific detail, but I think it boils down to this: because of my failed genetic treatments, I had a severe gene mutation that made everything—to use the technical term—go haywire.

I didn't have a complete Change. My vampyre traits and my wulf traits are fighting it out—a raging cage match, the cage being me.

We start firing questions at him—me writing, and everyone else calling out.

Which is stronger: the wulf side or the vamp side? Dr. Mellin says, “It could change month to month. But I don't know.”

Why did I have so much regular human thinking, and why did I think it at the same time as the primitive werewolf thoughts? Dr. Mellin's answer: “I've never heard of that phenomenon before, but I suspect that because you didn't have a complete Change, some of the reasoning and language centers of your brain didn't degenerate.”

Since I didn't have a complete Change, will my future Changes be more extreme? “They could be, but I don't know,” he says.

When this full moon is over, will I revert completely to normal? “I don't know.”

Why am I not violent and feral right now? “The hormone lychancholomine, which causes werewulf aggression, is below typical levels.” Why? “I don't know.”

Since I didn't burn in the sun this time, does that mean I never will? “Maybe. I don't know.”

Will I have to be in the chamber the whole time during every Change? “I would think so. But I don't really know.”

In the end, will either the wulf side or vamp side take over completely? “It's possible. But I don't know.”

This goes on for a while. There's a silence and then Kevin says, “So, when it comes to how this whole thing works, you just don't know.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Mellin says. “Look. This is incredibly rare. I can't even find cases of it in the medical literature. Everything about this is abn—” He stops and glances at me. “Unusual. Danny is a complete specian anomaly.”

Which, I figure, is a polite way of saying I'm a total freak of nature—something Claire has been telling me for a long time.

I have one more question, which I write on the pad, but this one I pass to Mom.

She reads it, then smiles, her lips tight and her eyes crinkling.

“What'd he write?” Paige asks.

Mom reads, “
Not to be demanding, but I'm starving!!! What're the odds of a werewulf getting something to eat around here?
”

She smiles. Her eyes shine with tears. “I'd say the odds are pretty good.”

A
fter I finish an enormous meal, Jess says, “By the way, Claire called about five times during the night and earlier today.”

I still have some time before sundown. I go up to the computer in my room and IM Claire.

i'm fine
, I type when she finally signs on.

it's the middle of the day
, she types.
u couldn't wait? u had to wake me up?

Nice try. I'd bet a million bucks that she wasn't sleeping.

I type,
u do need your beauty sleep—desperately—but i thought i'd check in

so. anything new?

not much
, I type.
just the usual

There's a lag of almost a minute before she types again:
u ok?

That's a really good question, and I don't know how to answer it fully. The best I can do for now is type,
more or less, yeah…a lot happened, a lot going on

wait—it's still the full moon…how can you be chatting?

I type,
long story. can't put it all down right now

u'll have to tell me all about it

promise i'll give you every detail

u better. hey. so where are things between u and miss juliet?

not sure. up in the air, i guess

There's a rap on the door, and Kevin pokes his head in. “Sorry, chief. It's getting to be that time. You need to go downstairs.”

I give him an okay sign. He nods and leaves.

gtg
, I type.

take care. i'll see you soon, right?

definitely

and you better not im and wake me up again!

or what???

or you'll see
. Claire signs off. I get up from my chair to go down to the chamber.

They're all waiting for me downstairs. Kevin stands by the door that leads down to the basement.

“If all goes right,” he says, “we'll be able to bring you back out tomorrow when the sun is up. But for now…”

I hold up one finger, like
I need a minute
.

“We're already cutting it pretty close,” Kevin says.

“Go ahead,” Mom says to me. “But hurry.”

I go to the back door so I can do something I've never done before.

Coming out of the Sol-Blok doors, I step out onto the back deck.

I come outside into the light of the sun, and for the first time in my life, I have nothing to fear. I don't have to cover up, run, or hide. I'm perfectly safe out here.

I look directly into the sunset, then close my eyes and let the last rays of sunlight bathe my face.

It feels warm.

It feels good.