Kissed by Moonlight

Chapter Nineteen





Leo Valentine didn’t like surprises. He also didn’t like humans. By definition, that meant that he shouldn’t have liked Phaedra Conners. The problem was that just like everyone else, he’d been keeping up with her antics ever since she’d earned the moniker “Fiery Phaedra.” He’d watched the news each time a grinning anchor told Briarcliff that Conners had been arrested yet again during some random human interest piece. He’d read her dramatically depressing obituaries in the Oracle, and had enjoyed the Bigfoot scandal as much as everyone else within the city limits.

Whether she knew it or not, Phaedra Conners had slowly become the quirky poster child of Briarcliff. Her name was in the stories they told newcomers and in the conversations held around dinner tables. No one in their right mind would hire her, but they liked to brag about the fact that she’d turned in an application. That she was now the mate of Gabriel Evans seemed right somehow. Two opposites made whole.

Usually he liked to stay out of the business of other Packs. If it had been anyone else he would have refused to send aid. He certainly wouldn’t have come himself. But it was Fiery Phaedra who had called him and he’d been fond of Gabriel for more years than he could count.

It was why he found himself wandering through Briarcliff National Park, four of his strongest wolves stalking beside him as they sniffed the air. Following the day old scent of Gabriel Evans as if it were the whispered promises of a woman and they were nothing but love struck men.

He could have waited for the human, for Phaedra, but had decided against it. It was one thing to like her; it was something else entirely to lead her on a hunt. Gabriel was still one of their own and Leo couldn’t afford to endanger their mission because of the clumsy fumbling of a human woman. He and his men could find and save Gabriel much more quickly by themselves. Leo was confident that when he finally met Phaedra face to face, he would do so with her Mate at his side.


They were close.

He could feel it in his bones.

That secret knowledge among carnivores that told them when prey was close. When it was trapped and screaming. A few more feet and he could even hear Gabriel. Hear his heartbeat, hear his breath, hear his power struggling against the leash he’d bound it with when he’d crossed out of the Sithin.

Leo had understood, but had refused to do the same. Instead, he’d cultivated his gifts as a Hound. Perfected them. Their old masters would be back one day, and when that time came he and the rest of the Hell Hounds would have to be ready to fight. Granted, it had been eons since he and the other Alphas had escaped from the Sithin. At first Leo had been vigilant, but somewhere along the line that vigilance had worn off. These days, he doubted he’d ever see another Sidhe again.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw something move beyond the trees. One of the wolves, Jeffery, froze misstep. His hackles raised, his lip curled back from gleaming teeth, and his eyes burned bright and yellow.

Slowly, Leo knelt beside his friend. Placing a placating hand on the back of the Were’s neck. His touch ordered silence, calm, and the Were struggled to obey. The other three were a little slower on the uptake. Which was to be expected, since half of his Pack had never hunted in the wild before. The world wasn’t like it used to be. There were so few places for a Pack to run these days, that most Weres were more used to living in the city than roughing it in woods. They had the instinct but not the experience, and it made the ones who had grown up fighting on rooftops and alleyways vulnerable to the danger that could lurk beyond the tree line.

What surprised him wasn’t that they hadn’t noticed the Specter, but that the Specter didn’t rip them limb from limb as a result. Instead, it stood directly in their path, watching the three Weres curiously until they noticed it and came to a startled standstill. There was something odd about this particular Specter. There was life in its eyes, femininity in the way it stalked towards them, careful and quick.

“Find the wolf,” it whispered and the three Weres closest to it convulsed like dying things. “Find the wolf,” it repeated gleefully, voice growing louder with each repetition and the black caves of its eyes shimmering like flames. “Find the wolf.”

There was only one lost wolf that Leo could think of.

“Gabriel?” He felt like an idiot the second the question left his mouth. You didn’t talk to Specters. You killed them before they could kill you. But Leo couldn’t place his finger on what made this one different from all the rest. He’d tried scenting the creature, but it smelled the same as every other Specter he’d ever come across. Like ice and something rotting.

To his surprise, it nodded in response.

“Gabriel.” Its voice went soft, almost…was that longing? “Find Gabriel.”

“I’ll be damned,” he breathed in wonder. “It talks.” He’d never met a talking Specter. Even when he’d Hunted with the Sidhe, the specters in their party had never spoken. It made the creature less alien to know that it understood the human tongue.

“Jeffery,” he said after a moment, “take point with our little friend here. Hernandez, Tony, and Quentin? Watch our rear.”

Jeffery wasn’t the only one who sent him a look of doubt before following his instructions. Leo knew what he was planning was insane, but figured that he could handle the Specter if the creature suddenly turned on him and his men. In the meantime, they now had some much needed help to bring back Gabriel.

Not that he and his wolves couldn’t infiltrate a high security government facility, he thought a few minutes later when they stepped into the clearing and saw the building in question.

But hey, a helping hand was always nice.

Leo wasn’t big on planning. With Weres, creatures that ran on pure instinct, planning was usually a waste of time. Their minds knew when to strengthen the ranks where they were weak and when to retreat when things looked bad.

Taking down an enemy as a unit was second nature. So he didn’t bother holding his men, or the Specter, back when they saw the building. He just sent them forward to enact their damage and hoped for the best. If nothing else, his second in command had clear instructions to contact their allies from the other packs and come for him if he didn’t return. He shouldn’t have come on this hunt in the first place, but found that he had grown tired of being stuck in a board room.

Ripping things apart was much more fun than talking business.

* * * *

Elijah Walker had been working with the paranormal division of the FBI for only two months before he was relocated to Briarcliff. He hadn’t expected to be using the training he’d received from Quantico for security detail, but he was determined to make the best of it. For almost a year he’d studied all he could about werewolves, vampires, selkies, and banshees. He’d perfected his skills as a sharpshooter and had practiced enough hand to hand combat to be considered the top of his class. Despite his qualifications, he and the other Agents had been overlooked in favor of the Huntsmen who had been partnering with the Feds to corral the paranormals in Briarcliff.

At least, that had been the case before the Huntsmen had all been executed.

According to Agent Benson, the Huntsmen had different goals than the FBI. They’d wanted to kill supernaturals, while the government wanted to capture them. That they could use the deaths of the group for the benefit of the government had just been a bonus.

Their search for supernaturals had started in Briarcliff, but it wouldn’t end here.

There was so much untapped power in the world and if they hoped to harness it all, then they needed to start off with some sort of advantage. The Weres would give them that.

Working as a glorified security guard may have been an insult to his training, but now that the Huntsmen were gone, Elijah could finally see the benefits. No longer was he reduced to watching security footage all day or patrolling the perimeter of the base. Now he was inside, in the holding cells below ground where all the action was. He would finally be allowed to meet his first Werewolf, and the excitement sent his heart racing.

Each cell was nothing more than a cage made of glass. Granted, the glass was strong enough to stand against tornados and bullets, but it was still glass. That was why, in addition to the cells themselves, the entire floor was equipped with a little device that the Huntsmen had been developing for when they’d wanted to keep their captives alive.

The device emitted a high pitched noise that only the Weres could hear. Depending on the key in which the frequency was set, the noise could drive the Weres to do almost anything. Elijah’s new job consisted of finding out which key generated what response. So for the last twenty-four hours he’d been experimenting with various members of Gabriel Evans’s captured pack.

He’d learned the following:





A—Unconsciousness.

A Sharp—A forced shift

B—Uncontrollable violence

B Flat—Fear

C—Hunger

C Sharp—Death





The results had been fascinating and he hadn’t even gone through all the keys yet. He wanted to see how the Weres would behave if he combined notes. He wondered if he could make them eat one another if he combined D minor with B. However, after the last note had killed off a Were who could have easily been mistaken someone’s grandmother, Agents Liam and Benson had told Elijah to take a break.


He was excited to begin again tomorrow. If he could perfect the use of the Huntsmen’s device, then they would no longer have to worry about how they would get the Weres they captured to cooperate with their demands.

Apparently Weres were big on sound. It was how they communicated with one another, and in the case of the Alphas, how they gave their Will, or power, physical manifestation. Elijah had heard stories in which a group of Alphas could howl for a star and bring it crashing down from the heavens. According to legend, they could sing the sun to sleep, the dead to rise, the oceans to walk like giants, and storms to rage across the lands. He wasn’t sure how much of the stories he actually believed, but figured that there must at least be a smidgen of truth to them. Especially considering the amount of funding the division had received in order to capture the Alphas of Briarcliff. Obviously the stories must not have been completely true if his superiors really believed that bulletproof glass was going to hold the infamous Gabriel Evans.

But Elijah supposed that’s where the device came in.

When the facility was locked down at night, it was set to play random notes if any of the Weres stepped from their cells. An agent had to enter his credentials in the pen pads outside of the cell he wished to enter in order to bypass this measure.

In short, nothing was getting out of this place without approval from the higher ups.

Getting in however, was another matter entirely.

It was around 10:00 p.m. when Elijah heard the first alarms go off.

At first he thought it was just another drill. They had them every now and again. It was supposed to prepare them in case the Weres decided to lay siege to the facility. None of the Agents had taken it very seriously though. According to the recon Agent Liam had done, the wolves of Briarcliff did most of their fighting in on Wall Street. They certainly weren’t the masters of the wood that urban legend had made them out to be. In fact, Elijah was pretty sure that as a former boy scout, he possessed more knowledge of how to survive in the outdoors than your average Were.

So while the sound of the alarms weren’t much of a surprise, learning that they were actually under attack certainly was. Unlike some of his fellow agents, he didn’t panic. Instead, he pulled out his standard issue side arm, and looked out across the rows of cells. He wanted the wolves to come. Craved it even. It was one thing to train to fight the supernatural. He wanted to put all that he had learned into practice.

And what better way than to put down the sniveling mutts coming to save their friends?

Chuckling, Elijah Walker turned to make his way up to the first floor, checking to make sure that there was already a silver bullet ready and waiting in the chamber of his gun as he went.

* * * *

Gabriel Evans was a big fan of silence.

Silence soothed his savage beast.

Silence is what made the world go round.

Most Weres would disagree. They were always talking, yapping, growling, howling. They were always making so much noise. “I am here” their useless prattling seemed to say. “Don’t forget me. I exist.”

He supposed that he could understand them on a certain level. He had spent so many years in the background, barely existing, that his own kind had nicknamed him “Ghost.” He may as well have been dead and gone. Gabriel had known for a long time that the other Hell Hounds who shared the title of Alpha thought of him as a bit strange. A bit off.

But it was like the humans said.

Never drag a book by its cover.

Or was it never judge a brook by its color?

He couldn’t remember.

Old adages weren’t exactly his strong suit.

What he did know, was that he was no ghost. He was not invisible. He was not unseen. He was not dead. Even when he’d been partially faded, when his abilities had made him shy away after attacking the Huntsman in his building that day, she had been able to see him.

To look him in the eye and feel him.

It had been like magic.

Like finding a home port when he’d been lost at sea for far too long. Even his adoptive mother, who had claimed to love him, had been unable to lay eyes on him when his magic had demanded otherwise. It wasn’t as if he’d been fully using his ability. If they had really wanted to, they could have seen past the shield of his glamour.

But they hadn’t.

Only Phaedra had ever been able to do so, and she’d pulled it off without even trying. As if she’d been searching for him long before they first laid eyes on one another. He’d seen many things in his life, both strange and wondrous, but Phaedra Conners was by far his favorite.

Shame that he’d had to go and get kidnapped.

He hoped she’d found his final farewell dashing.

Heroic.

When she wept over the memory of him, years from now as some old decrepit human, he hoped that their parting was cast in the soft glow of nostalgia. That to her age-addled mind, he appeared a golden Adonis or majestic Hercules bidding her the type of farewell best suited to star-crossed lovers.

Yes, he liked the thought of her being heartbroken and lovesick very much.

Not that he was going to continue to enjoy the company of Agent Liam.

He’d gotten what he’d come for after all.

Information.

Information about what the government wanted from his kind and whether or not his second in command and foster brother could truly be trusted.

Oh yes, he’d gotten all the information he could stomach on that front.

But even though he planned on leaving soon, and taking his Pack with him, that didn’t mean that he’d be seeing Phaedra again. It was why he was currently doing his best to kill their bond. She had been right. It was time to stop running. To fight. If he didn’t he’d spend the rest of his considerable lifespan hiding from the Fae. But standing up to the Mad Sidhe wouldn’t be easy.

He liked many things about Phaedra, the first and foremost being that she was alive.

If he could help it, he’d like to keep her that way. And staying with him, fighting his battles, would pretty much guarantee the opposite.

But he really, really wanted to see her again.

He whined, a low, sad sound in the back of his throat, and huddled against the walls of his prison. The collar at his neck dug deep and he had to fight away the urge to snarl and tear at his own skin in a bid to get the damn thing off.

No.

He had to stay calm.

Captivity could breed madness, and Gabriel couldn’t afford to lose control.

When he lost control things died, and he’d had his fill of screaming when he’d worked for the Sidhe. Though when he thought of Agent Liam, of Marcus, he couldn’t help but believe that adding a few more bloody notches to his belt couldn’t hurt. Just for old time’s sake.

Suddenly, he straightened in his shackles, eyes going to the ceiling and head cocking curiously to one side. It was faint at first, but there was no mistaking that sound.

Alarms. And beyond that? Howling.

One voice in particular rose up above the rest, and in his pleasure Gabriel found himself laughing out loud.

“Leo Valentine,” he whispered hoarsely into the dark confines of his cell. “You old bastard. What took you so long?”





“He was right, the woods are lovely. Dark. Deep. But I’m all out of promises. I have nothing left to keep.”

—Ruthy Jennings