Chapter Twelve Blood Moon #2
“You mean you never hit me with a closed fist? You hit me with words, and you left marks and bruises. You think ‘cause you don’t throw a punch that you’re some kind of hero?
That shaking me like a ragdoll and slamming me into a wall makes you better?
You’re not. And Jasper Wainwright is twice your size and gentle as a lamb with me—and no, I’m not his girlfriend, I’m just a houseguest and housekeeper.
I had to get a job after I left my home. ”
“A home you weren’t supposed to leave. We made vows!”
“Love, honor, and cherish!” I yank my arm away hard and unzip my top to show him the healing bruises on my arm.
“From a week ago. This isn’t love. There’s no honor in hurting people when you lose your temper.
There’s no cherishing in scaring the mother of your child until she runs away.
You get out of here now, Matthew Lane, and I won’t call the police.
I have an order of protection against you, and it’s in effect. ”
“Yeah, your rich boyfriend got you all set up to ruin me. But there’s no order that a man can’t get his baby from his whoring wife.”
The world cartwheels and goes white as I’m spun and slammed down on the ground. Mirror shards grind under my hands, cutting my palms.
“Where is she? She’s my daughter!” Matt roars.
I scream loud and long for all I’m worth. I ignore the broken glass that cuts my palms and crawl towards him, but he’s too fast. “Help!” I scream and keep screaming. I will take him on alone if I have to, but I want help.
Sarah’s words echo in my brain. Deadly force if he’s trying to hurt Ari.
Who knows what he’ll do, especially if he ever gets it into his head that I was cheating for a long time, if he wonders whether or not the baby is his?
I push myself to my knees, and the world wobbles. Matt’s already up the stairs. I don’t know where my phone went.
I don’t know how fast the police can get here, but it won’t be before Matt makes it to the second floor, where Ari is sleeping in our room.
MATE. IN TROUBLE.
Screams. Blood. Smell the blood from far away.
Scratching. Howling. Long, low howling.
Door won’t open when I claw. When I bite.
Pup in trouble.
Smell the fear, even this far away.
Think. Think like a man. Not a wolf.
Hard. Slippery thoughts. Not shaped right for this brain.
Muzzle meets lock. Slow. Careful.
Mate is everything.
Slow, careful.
Do not scare. Do not hurt.
Do not hurt mate or pup.
But whatever makes her scream and cry and beg?
Destroy.
ADRENALINE IS AMAZING. I know there are probably bits of glass in my palms and knees, but I don’t care. I can’t feel anything but speed.
“Matt!” I scream. I pick up the closest thing in the bedroom, the diaper bag slung over a chair, and I clobber him when he reaches the crib.
He staggers a second, then laughs and picks up the baby, startling her awake and making her cry, startled again. “It’s okay, Ari. Daddy’s back. Daddy’s taking you for a ride. Say bye-bye, Mommy.” He waves her fist at me, even as it’s balled up tight, her cries intensifying.
I place my body against the door. “You are not leaving this room with her, Matt. Put her down.”
Matt laughs. “Like that’d stop me? I’ll make it easy, though. You move, so Arianna and I can go down the stairs. Or,” he looks at the window, “she and I go out the window.”
My breath freezes in my lungs. “Matt, no.”
“What? Scared I’ll drop her? It could happen, couldn’t it?” he sneers. “All too easy. That’d be her fault! She wriggles and won’t shut up, just like her bitch of a mother.”
“I’ll go with you!” I put my hands up in surrender. “Give her to me, and we’ll go. We’ll go right now.”
“God! See, this is what’s wrong with you! I asked you to come home days ago, but no. You had to make me come here, drag you out. Everyone thinks I’m the bad guy, but it’s you! You make things hard!” he shouts, stomping towards me.
Ari screams louder. I can’t tell if he’s squeezing her or not, but I know she’s scared, and she sounds like she’s in pain. “Please. You’re right. I’m... I’m not making this easy. Give me Ari, and we’ll go.”
“I’m not stupid!”
“I know that. I never thought you were,” I say, genuinely believing that. Tears overflow my eyes, and I wipe them with my wrist. “I just think you’re upset, and stressed, and under a lot of pressure. I make it worse. Matt, you could start fresh, without us. When you’re ready—”
“No! You’re not sweet-talking me! You’re going to shut your mouth and come with me.”
“I will, I swear, I will. But please, please, please give me the baby, Matt. You’re hurting her. What if you drop her?” I plead.
“Start walking.” Matt comes over, Ari clumsily held in one arm, and shoves me into the hall. “I’ll decide when you hold her.”
“I’m not going to walk unless you hand her to me,” I declare. I have to be strong. Be brave. Get out of this. Get help. But Ari has to be safe first.
“Fine, I can throw you down the stairs. You’ll be faster that way,” he threatens.
“You hear yourself, right? Threatening to throw me down the stairs? Do you think I’d live? Are you a murderer?” I ask.
Another hard shove in the back. “You don’t talk until I say, Loretta.”
I whirl and kick Matt in the crotch as hard as I can, using all the cheerleading and ballet muscle memory I have stored up.
He drops Ari, and I snag her, turning to run. That was the plan.
Only I can’t run, because something huge is coming up the stairs. A big black and gray dog.
It looks at me. Looks past me, and the golden eyes flash.
I’m too startled to scream (and that’s saying something).
“Help,” I breathe out, holding Ari tight. I look at the monstrous dog as if it will understand me.
The dog, a wolf-dog hybrid by the size of it, does understand. He lunges at Matt with a snarl, and his jaws snap down. Bones crunch. Matt screams like someone is cutting off his leg—and honestly, I’m okay with it.
“911, 911,” I mutter, hobbling as fast as I can down the stairs.
“Hey, Loretta? Loretta, answer me!”
Alban Wymark is standing in the hall, wide-eyed, looking at me in panic.
“He tried to kill me. Throw me down the stairs. Call the police,” I babble over Arianna’s piercing wails.
“What?” he demands, voice fraught with fear, taking the stairs at double-time. He’s not reaching for his phone.
“He had the baby! He was going to go out the window. I kicked him and got her back.”
“Jasper had the baby and—”
“What? No, not Jasper, Matt! Jasper’s downstairs in the recording room!” I hiss, realizing that my hands are still bleeding, and blood is getting all over Ari’s pale pink sleepsuit. The sight of it makes me want to double up and vomit, but I can’t. “Please, call the police!”
“I...” Alban hesitates, then gasps. He pulls a stick out of his pocket.
A stick. Thin and tapered.
A wand? My lawyer is using a wand instead of a cell phone. Wonderful.
The big wolf-dog is coming slowly down the stairs. Something thumps behind it. Dragging. Hitting each step.
A bloody mass of flesh is in its mouth. Matt’s leg, or what used to be a leg. Something larger drags behind the beast.
Matt, or what’s left of him.
The thing that the wolf-dog lays at Alban’s feet is more bloody tissue than skin.
“Jasper, I don’t want to knock you out, but you come any closer and I will,” Alban says.
To the animal. The wolf-dog.
The animal lets out a low, soft howl and hangs its head. It dips its head once, like a nod, and pads back to the basement, leaving bloody pawprints in its wake.
I turn my eyes to what’s left behind. “Matt?” I whisper.
“Shit,” Alban whispers and turns to the still mess on the floor. “Okay, I’ll answer questions later. I have to send a text, and you’re about to have a couple of the neighbors over.”
“I am? Now?” I feel lightheaded. I can’t look at what used to be my husband. The father of my child.
My attacker.
I can’t look because I feel waves of relief slamming over the good memories we had. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be that way, but I can’t help it.
“You’re going to sit before you faint,” Alban says. The stick goes back in his pocket, and he just twitches his fingers.
A dining room chair is now under my butt. Without him carrying it in. Without me moving.
The “need to vomit” feeling intensifies.
“You have injuries?”
“Yes. Glass in my hands. My knees.”
“Eddie Hyde and Dr. Ellsworth are coming over then. Izzy and Ardy, too. Ian Kane. Shit, I might need more power than I have. I’m going to need Minegold and Madge.”
“Who are they? What are you?”
“Warlock and family and business lawyer. The werewolf is Jasper. Don’t faint, okay?”
“Trying.”
“I know I sound like I’m being unsympathetic, but I need to get this body and that truck out of here.”
I nod. Jasper is a werewolf? Well, no, obviously not.
But I don’t want him to go to jail. “He only did what he did to save us,” I whisper. “He even waited until I got the baby away from Matt.”
“I’m not surprised. Werewolves are still sentient. They can let themselves become fully animalistic, violent killers, but the ones in our town work hard to be responsible citizens. There are tonics and isolation procedures that are best practices.”
Werewolves. Isolating. Taking tonics.
Clues slip into place, even in the murk of my overtaxed mind. Clues like the little blue bottles that used to be in the kitchen and are now in Jasper’s bedroom, and the water and beef jerky in the “recording” room. The gray and black fur that’s only downstairs.
Alban runs and shuts the basement door. “He didn’t scratch or bite you? Not even a little?”
“Never touched me. He walked right past me, like he had a target in mind.”
“He probably did. He heard you scream. I didn’t hear you scream until the very end, but when I drove past and saw a strange truck in your driveway and the door hanging open, I thought I had better drop in. Glad I did.”
“What’s... What’s happening now?” I ask. “Why are people coming?”
“Damage control. Jasper killed an intruder, an attacker violating an order of protection. In court, it’d hold up, but the whole mauling him in werewolf form?
Nope. And you don’t need this drama. You’re a widow, Loretta, and I’m sorry if this is a lot to process.
We’ll help, I promise, but first, we have to help Jasper before Matt’s family reports him missing or someone who doesn’t know Pine Ridge is paranormal-friendly comes to investigate. ”
“Paranormal-friendly?” I ask, scooting forward. I wince as the glass in my knees makes itself known.
“Home to quote-unquote monsters. Humans, too, of course. Human minds are oblivious to most things that don’t make sense to them. Most people never see the monsters or magical beings. Or, they don’t see magic when it happens, when warlocks use it.”
“Warlocks like you?”
“And Alain. Or magical beings like Ardy Walsh.”
“What’s Ardy?”
“I’m a Pooka.”
Ardy Walsh slips into the house, eyes sweeping the area and settling on the body in the hall.
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“I used my horse form. Quicker than the car—I could go cross-country.”
“Horse form?” The words have no meaning. Ardy as a horse. Is he a werehorse? The room feels wobbly.
“Don’t show her now, Ardy, she’ll faint. Minegold and Madge are coming over. I want to send the truck back where it came from—with the body in it.”
“Wait, no. If he shows up in the suburbs looking like that, there are going to be so many questions,” the police officer says. “I think we can make it look like an accident. Well, a hunting accident. Loretta. Loretta, listen to me. Did Matt ever go hunting?”
I nod slowly, as if all the words are coming from underwater. “Sometimes. He wouldn’t go now. It’s not antlered deer hunting season.”
“Where did he hunt?”
“Upstate New York or back in Michigan.”
“Well, he’s going bear hunting.”
“He only hunts deer. He’s a bow hunter.”
“That was his first mistake. You don’t shoot a bear with a bow. Ardy, open the door of his truck.”
I watch in awe as Alban raises his hand, and Matt’s body lifts. Blood drips. I can’t look.
But when I open my eyes again, it’s gone. I hear the truck door slam. People are talking outside, and some are coming into the house.
I keep still, holding the baby, watching things unfold like I’m in the audience at a horror movie I didn’t want tickets for.
Izzy Walsh and Ian Kane are cleaning the floors and rugs. Sweeping up glass.
A blonde man in wire-rimmed glasses sits me down in the kitchen and pulls out a medical bag.
I have no memory of leaving the hall or rolling up my pant legs, but Izzy holds Arianna while the guy gets the glass out.
When it doesn’t work with the medical supplies the man has, Alban hurries in and pulls the air—and the last glittering bits leave my body.
“What’s happening?” I ask, sounding dull and drugged.
“The magic users are transporting the truck to a remote hunting location where there are bears. By the time someone finds him, there will be no questions asked. They’ll assume he fought the bear, lost, and staggered back to his truck, but it was too late,” Ardy says.
I look at the police officer. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“It’s on the line. He was doing something illegal.
Home defense, self-defense, and defense of a minor are legal.
Werewolves are not recognized in the state of New York, and my writing this evening up would lead to police trouble for me, you, and Jasper.
Well, hassle, maybe, not trouble. And I don’t think you deserve that.
If you’ll pardon the expression, your ex-husband effed around and found out.
The real question is, are you and the baby okay? ”
“Scared. Unable to comprehend. Sore. Sick. But okay.”
“We’ll stay the night with you,” Izzy offers.
I nod. “You’re a werehorse?” I look at the police officer.
“Pooka. Irish fae. Mythological and mischievous. Not a werehorse, but I can turn into a horse.”
“Or a really big rabbit,” Izzy laughs. He had to turn into one on our first date to prove I wasn’t losing my marbles.”
“Did you turn into a rabbit last night when you came over?” I demand.
“Busted,” Izzy sing-songs. “I told you that you sounded like a herd of bunnies running around upstairs when you did your ‘sweep.’”
I narrow my eyes. I can’t believe all this. I don’t. I won’t. Not unless I see it. “Show me.”
Ardy crosses his arms. “Alban said you’d faint.”
“I won’t faint.”
Ardy shrugs, and then a black rabbit the size of a corgi is sitting in front of me.
I don’t faint. I just have to close my eyes and lie down for a while...