Kissed by Moonlight

Chapter Seventeen





I was lying on the hood of the car, face turned so that I could watch the way the horizon burst with colors as the sun made its slow ponderous climb into the sky. The world was all yellow and pinks, oranges with streaks of midnight blue. I watched the sun until my vision went white beneath its brilliance, and then I closed my eyes and admitted a truth I had known for hours already.

He wasn’t coming back.

I’d kept track of him most of the night through our link. But it was different understanding the information I was receiving when he was in wolf form. The visions, the emotions that I knew came from Gabriel were all jumbled and strange. I felt a spike of some sort around four in the morning, and then everything went muted. It was like he’d shut down things on his end so that all I felt were spurts of him.

It was enough to tell me he lived, but that was it.

“I should probably leave,” I thought. Gabriel had been captured along with the other members of the pack. I should do what he said and get Asrai. Ask for sanctuary from the other Alphas.


Or better yet, we should just leave town.

Run away while we still could and let the wolves deal with their own enemies. What could we do anyway?

Correction: What could I do?

Asrai was some sort of mega-Sidhe. A mini Queen. If I left her with the Alphas they’d have their savior. The Lightbringer who would one day defeat the Hunt.

Arai the Lightbringer.

Gabriel Evans the Werewolf.

I was just Phaedra Conners.

Human.

Powerless.

I wouldn’t be able to save anyone. Not against what they would be facing.

“I should leave.”

Only this time, I was thinking Briarcliff and not just the immediate area.

But one obstacle at a time.

Getting to my feet, I got into the car, cranked it, and drove away.

* * * *

I don’t know how or why, but an hour later I pulled into the parking lot of the Oracle. I sat in the car, fingers clenching on the steering wheel, and just stared at nothing. Just as I hadn’t made a conscious decision to drive there, I got out of the car and hurried into the building without really thinking about what I was doing

I stepped into the newsroom and was nearly bowled over by the amount of noise and activity. It was much different than the last time I’d been there. For one thing, the room was nearly full to bursting with Weres. There weren’t wolves digging through the trashcans or anything, but I could recognize the signs. It was in the way they stalked through the room, the way they crouched on the balls of their feet in the middle of the room and eyed the interns like they were walking bags of meat.

The glowing yellow eyes in their human faces was also a pretty big clue.

“What the hell?” I whispered. Immediately every Were in the room turned to look at me, as if my muttered words had been some sort of signal only they could hear. The humans in the room didn’t notice anything at first, despite the marked drop in the noise level. But then, one by one, they turned to follow the unflinching gaze of the Weres.

“Phaedra?” It was Sonya. Dressed in jeans and a simple button down, she hurried through the room to stand before me. Her face was flushed and her now short hair was as messy as it could get, random strands sticking up like porcupine quills all over her head.

“Thank God you’re all right.”

I was still looking at the wolves over her shoulder. Was it just my imagination or had some of them begun to come closer?

“What’s going on?”

Sonya’s face closed down. “You don’t know.”

It was a statement, so I didn’t bother nodding. I simply looked at her.

“It’s all over the news.”

“Sonya.” It was hard to stay patient with her, but somehow I managed it. “What happened?”

“In my defense, you don’t have a cell. It’s hard to keep people updated when they don’t have cell phones. You should look into that.”

“Maybe the Feds will reimburse me for the one I lost when they kidnapped me. Now spill it.”

She bit her lip. “It might be easier if you saw for yourself.”

There were several televisions scattered around the room. Each one was usually tuned into CNN or whatever local news channel was on at the moment. Since the televisions were always on silent, it was easy to forget they were there.

Sonya led me towards the closest wall mount. We stayed close together as the Weres around us began to form a path to clear our way, muttering amongst themselves as I passed. Grabbing the remote from an empty desk, she turned up the volume until the announcer’s voice filled the room. I knew everyone must have already seen it, but the room settled down as others stopped whatever it was they were doing to watch the national broadcast.

“…the slaughter of dozens of innocent people? Who is Gabriel Evans? Why would officials just turn a blind eye to his crimes?”

The camera panned over to zoom in on the face of the man the anchor was interviewing, and the floor seemed to drop out from under my feet. I clutched Sonya’s arm and tried not to snarl right along with the rest of the Weres when Marcus shook his head sadly on camera.

“Money may not be able to buy happiness, Robert, but it can certainly buy clemency. Gabriel Evans is a mob boss in a pressed suit. There are dozens of accounts of murder, kidnapping, and human trafficking, but not once has the Briarcliff Police Department investigated any of the allegations. It may have something to do with the half a million dollars Gabriel ‘donated’ to the police force.”

“Judge Jensen, you and your wife were victims of Evans. What do you have to say about this recent turn of events?”

The camera panned again, and I was looking into the faces of Judge Joseph Jensen and his wife Penelope. Unlike when I’d first met her in Gabriel’s office, Penelope wasn’t running the show today. Instead, she tried her damnedest to look old and fragile in her seat next to her husband. Joseph, meanwhile, was every inch the respectable Judge. Clean cut and radiating offended disapproval.

I didn’t know if I wanted to give the couple an Oscar or choke them with one.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not surprised,” Joseph said. “The man tried to blackmail my wife and me just to close a business deal. We’ve suspected for a long time about what sort of man Evans truly was, so the fact that he murdered all of those people…” The judge shook his head, and his mouth worked as if he wanted to spit the taste of Evans’s name out of his mouth.

Penelope sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the table, wiping away the tears that appeared like magic in the laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.

“Those poor people.”

Joseph patted her hand in a show of comfort.

“Werewolves are a danger. A menace. They caught the massacre on tape for Christ’s sake. What more proof do we need before the politicians in Washington get off their asses long enough to take action?”

“The debate the last few weeks has been that Werewolves are just like the rest of us,” Robert, the anchor, countered. “Are you saying that we need to eradicate them all because of the actions of just one man?”

“Of course not,” Marcus said, “Gabriel is an Alpha. The pack, the men and women who follow him, do so out of fear and necessity. They can’t survive in this world without a strong hand to keep them under control. But if the Alpha is corrupt, then that affects the entire hierarchy. It’s like cutting the head off a snake. We don’t need to punish the many because of one person. We just need to erase the threats and appoint men and women we can trust to act as replacements. It’s the only way to coexist.”

“Who do you consider threats?”

“It’s the Alphas that make up the current regime. The only reason there’s been so much violence and public panic this past month is because the Alphas who lead the packs just aren’t doing their jobs. Or worse, they’re encouraging and even rewarding the bad behavior of their packmates. Gabriel Evans may have been the first Alpha to get caught, but I promise you he isn’t the only one out there getting his hands bloody.”

“Wouldn’t undoing their current system cause even more chaos? And how do we, as humans, choose the right people to lead a bunch of bloodthirsty Weres?”

Marcus opened his mouth as if about to drop a name, and then shook his head in self doubt. “That isn’t for me to say. It would be a job for the government. Once the bill goes through to have any confirmed or suspected Weres contained and tagged, the powers that be will be able to take the time they’ll need to choose appropriate leaders to keep them in line.”


I didn’t hear anything else after that. I lowered myself to the ground, my fingers a punishment as I fisted my hair in my hands. Burying my face between my knees I began to rock.

This was because we’d broken our end of the deal. This was how Liam retaliated.

We should have run.

I should have let us run.

Though, none of this would have ever happened if I’d stayed away from Gabriel in the first place. One thought kept spiraling through my head, over and over and over again.

“My fault,” it wailed, “this is all my fault.”

* * * *

“You all right?”

I shook my head and Dawson snorted.

“I told you, you should have added more brandy. Who the hell drinks coffee straight anymore?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Sonya snipped. “Non-alcoholics?”

“You’re this close to getting fired.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

I stared down into the dark recesses of my mug, enjoying the steam that caressed my face. After my breakdown earlier, the Weres in the room had surrounded me. For a while they wouldn’t allow anyone, even Sonya to touch me at all. It was only when Georgette and Mark brought Asrai back in from breakfast that the Weres made way.

The little Sidhe calmed me with cool hands and soft words spoken in a language I didn’t understand, but knew in my blood and bones. She got me up from the floor and into Dawson’s office.

Now I found myself drinking spiked coffee while a Sidhe, my sort-of boss, and a woman who was alarmingly close to being my one and only friend, filled me in on the latest news in Briarcliff.

When I was up for it, Dawson had Sonya show me the tape that had been mentioned on the broadcast. It showed a wolf, as big as a small pony, tearing through a group of Huntsmen like they were nothing. Then it shows the wolf changing, and the man who stood in his place was a panting and blood splattered Gabriel.

“He killed all of them,” Sonya said, mouth tight with disapproval. “Every last one. I can’t get in touch with any of my superiors or any of the recon team from last night.”

“It wasn’t him.”

It looked real enough, but the one and only reason I knew that Gabriel wasn’t the Were who’d killed all of those hunters was because of the size of the wolf. Gabriel in wolf form was impressive, but I’d noticed that first night that he was significantly smaller than the rest of his pack. Whether it had something to do with the finer distinction of being a Hell Hound was irrelevant. The fact was that someone had doctored the footage and released it. That meant that either the Feds had a Were who could shift in their employ and they’d had the Huntsmen killed for a reason, or that a member of Gabriel’s pack had gotten caught on video slaughtering the men who’d helped kidnap Gabriel.

Either way, it looked bad.

“How did they get this?” I asked finally.

“Ever since the big reveal, we’ve had wannabe Werewolf hunters pouring into town,” Dawson said.

Sonya smirked. “Only the term ‘Hunter’ has taken on a new meaning.”

“What do you mean?”

“If tourists aren’t trying to shoot a Were and mount their heads on their walls, they’re taking their pictures and asking for autographs.” Dawson rolled her eyes. “Not to mention the fact that Briarcliff now has a couple hundred more registered sex offenders.”

I gaped. “The Weres are assaulting humans?”

Sonya laughed. “Nope. It’s the other way around. We’ve got furries walking down main street, hookers with dog collars and leashes, and your random housewife looking for some wolfman lovin’.” She waved away my disbelief. “It gets better. There’s a dating site. Love Me by Moonlight.”

“Ew,” I deadpanned. “Is that the best they could come up with?”

“It was either that or ‘Fangs For You.’”

“I guess sounding sappy is better than sounding like vampire porn,” I conceded. The banter was doing more to settle me than the coffee had, and I found myself leaning forward as we talked. Asrai had fallen asleep in Dawson’s desk chair and I figured the kid deserved some rest after the sort of night we’d had.

“What’s this about a bill being passed?”

Sonya winced. “I forgot that you’ve been out of commission for a while. We learned about it two weeks ago. They’re saying that Weres are a danger to the human race and that they need to be quarantined and tagged for everyone’s safety.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Well, the Weres out there agree with you.” I turned to look at the wolves still roaming the office.

“Is that why they’re here?”

“They started showing up about an hour ago, when the broadcast first aired.” Sonya reached out and took my hand. “They came to defend Gabriel.”

Speechless, I could only look between her and Dawson in astonishment.

“They want to everyone to know the truth. Apparently everything that made Gabriel look like a member of the Sopranos was just him being Alpha. He wasn’t making people disappear, he was training newbies. Oh, and remember when we all thought he was running a drug cartel? It was Wolfsbane. He distributes it all over the country to help other Weres control themselves so they won’t flip out and start eating people.”

Dawson continued the explanation smoothly. “After they realized what was going on, they came straight over. They want to explain to the world what sort of man Gabriel is. How their Alphas aren’t monsters. If they can tell people their side of the story, prove that they aren’t animals, it may be enough to keep the bill from going through.”

“But why here?” It was all I could think to say. It was a good question though. The Oracle was by no means the biggest, or most influential paper. If the Weres wanted to speak for themselves why come to us?

Sonya and Dawson looked at one another, but it was Asrai who spoke.

“They came because of you,” she spoke on a yawn. “You’re Fiery Phaedra. The woman who thwarted the Hunters and saved his life. Now that they’ve scented you and know that you’re his mate, you’re the only one they’ll trust enough to talk to.”

“You know this how?” Sonya asked.

Asrai settled more comfortably in her impromptu bed, skinny legs curling beneath her and plump face already growing slack again with exhaustion.

“I can just tell,” she grumbled, eyes closing. “It’s how I knew Phaedra would help me. It’s why I showed her my secret.”

Thoughtful, Sonya stared at the child for a second longer before looking back to me.

I shrugged, pretending ignorance. I trusted Sonya, but I didn’t want anyone else but Gabriel and I to know just how important the child was. It was just safer that way.

Meanwhile, Dawson was looking at me and rubbing her hands together in glee.

“Exclusive interviews,” she said. “Conners, I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”





“Is the camera on? Are we rolling? OK. We’re rolling…Do I look all right?”

—Yvette Reed