Harvest Moon (13 page)

No,
she remembered.
There might be another
way.

Some movies, like the goofy sequel to
An American
Werewolf in London
, said if you killed the head of the werewolf bloodline,
any people he turned would be free of the curse. Whether that was true or not,
Dawn didn’t know. She didn’t even really have a way to know for sure that a
bite meant the man would turn at all, but somehow that part seemed all too
true. It was in all the lore, all the legends. For it to be fake seemed more
impossible than the actual existence of monsters.

Finally, it seemed a decision had been made. The
arguing between the men seemed to be dying down some.

“He doesn’t need an army to get to the hospital,” one
of the guys said, just about the only one without his cheeks flushed red with
anger. “Me and Merle will take him down to county. The rest of you find that
bear and shoot it for me.”

“Fine,” someone said. “Just don’t go changing yer mind
once we get out there.”

Mercifully, despite the chaos, Dawn watched as men
threw cash on the tables before they started to leave the bar. She could tell
by the way Jim’s nose whistled as he let out a sigh of relief that he was
worried about the exact same thing. Even though the bar hadn’t been as busy as
it had during the first couple days since the hunters arrived, it would still
be a lot of cash to lose out on if they took off running.

With their tabs mostly paid, Dawn moved around the
front of the bar to watch them depart. She was getting used to the line of
trucks lined up in front of the bar each night, but for some reason she
wanted—no, needed—to see them drive away in search of the monster in the woods.

Cold wind blew through the open door, and Dawn
shivered hard against it, but she didn’t bother with her coat. Goosebumps rose
on her arms, even though she was still wearing long sleeves to cover her bruises
and scrapes. The less questions she needed to answer, the better.

The trucks that the hunters had rolled into town in
ran the gamut from rusted old junkers to brand new behemoths with hemi engines
and four-wheel drive. Some of them were antiques, and some of them were shiny
and new, but there was one truck that caught her eye as the vehicles began to
back out of their spots.

It was a truck she’d seen once before, but only in
passing. An older model, for sure, burgundy with a thick white stripe around
the middle and a Ford logo on the front. The truck sat idling as it waited for
the others to back out of their spaces.

It was only when all the other vehicles started out
down the road that the red and white truck began to follow. Unlike the others,
tearing by at breakneck speeds, the last truck in the line went slower, careful
and deliberate.

When the truck slowly rolled by the front door, Dawn
saw why. It was no hunter, no ordinary one, at least, that was behind the
wheel. With only the light from Jim’s bar and the yellow-orange moon above to
illuminate him, Dawn locked eyes with Jase as his truck rolled by the front
door.

She wanted to call out to him, to storm after him and
demand to know where he’d been, but she never got the chance. His bright green
eyes broke their hold on her own, and he turned away from her, visibly sighing
as he did.

Before she could realize just what had happened,
Jase’s truck lurched forward and picked up speed, joining the queue of trucks
as they made for the woods.

With the commotion in the woods, Jim’s had cleared out
early, and after an hour, it had become quite apparent no one else was coming
in. Though nine was still early for a bar, Jim sent Dawn home for the night.

For once, she was glad to be home by herself. Seeing
the way Jase had looked at her from the truck had sent her stomach crashing to
her knees. Normally, she liked the distractions Jim’s provided, but with
nothing to do except listen to his remarks about how she and Gabe were drinking
him to the poorhouse each night, she was glad to be home.

At first, she was mostly just relieved to see he was
even still alive, but as she’d walked home, her relief turned into
apprehension, and then anger. She had been worried about him, honestly worried,
and he hadn’t even bothered to let her know that he hadn’t been eaten by some
horrible creature. Worse still, she worried he regretted their night together.

Don’t you regret it?
her mind asked as she
unlocked the door to her cozy little home.

Part of her had thought that she did, a noisy part
that told her sleeping with him had been a mistake, but she couldn’t bring
herself to really listen to that angry little voice. Jase was like no lover
she’d ever had, not that she’d had many. He was passionate, animalistic, rough,
and yet surprisingly gentle as he took her. There was no way she could regret
spending the night with a lover like him.

Once inside, Dawn was about to reach for the bottle of
whiskey that had taken up residence on her kitchen counter, its contents now
surprisingly low, but she stopped herself. Instead, she moved toward the
bathroom and finally unboxed the bottle of blonde hair dye she’d bought almost
a week ago.

Before she began to mix the chemicals together, Dawn
brought a finger to her eye and removed the colored contact that rested there.
When she’d first starting wearing them, the contacts had stung her eyes and
itched like crazy, but the longer she’d worn them, the easier they were to get
used to. Most of the time, she hardly ever remembered they were there.

Another curious thought began to rise up from within
her as she put her contacts away in their plain little case. It had been days
since she’d worried, really worried, about the wrong person looking into her
past. It wasn’t that she was beyond caring or past fear. She was still
concerned about the other two FBI agents, Hart and Connors, doing a little too
much digging while they were in town, but she had to force herself to think
about it before the constant anxiety she lived with came back again.

Her mind was too occupied with everything else to let
herself be concerned with that. Courtney was still missing, and as much as Dawn
hated to think about it, she was starting to admit that she would probably
never see her again. The fact that monsters could possibly be real took up so
much room in her mind that even her fears for her best friend took a backseat
to that thought.

And then, of course, there was Jase. She knew it was
wrong. She knew she should be out looking for Courtney she should be focusing
all her attention on that worry, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Jase
was at the forefront of her mind, and even though she was beyond mad at him for
making her worry, she couldn’t stop herself from remembering that night they’d
spent together.

“Stop it,” she said aloud before she began to section
out her hair. Her roots were nearing an inch long. She was cursed with healthy,
thick hair that grew incredibly fast. Everyone told her she should love that,
but having to dye it so much was no blessing.

Putting on the thin plastic gloves provided in the
box, Dawn began to empty the contents of one bottle into another. The smell
from the first bottle alone was overwhelming, but she had grown use to the
offending odours that came from a box of peroxide.

She’d been so lost in thought that the banging from
her door made her jump, and she dropped the bottle of dye into her sink. Dark
amber sludge poured out of the top and down the drain, and Dawn fished it back
out and put it on the counter before she pulled off the gloves and made for the
door.

Though she hadn’t seen who was outside, in her heart
she knew it was Jase. It had to be.

Even with her hopes up, Dawn was not beyond her own
carefully cultivated years of caution. She glanced out the front window and saw
the red and white truck sitting outside her house, and she craned her neck to
see Jase standing on her porch.

“Dawn?” his voice came through the door. “Let me in. I
know you’re home. I can see the lights on.”

With a sigh of relief that was cut short by a new
anxiety, Dawn relented and unlocked the door. The cloudy sky covered the moon,
and Jase was but a shadow until he stepped into the light of her living room.
It was once he was inside that Dawn finally saw the gash above his eyebrow.

“Oh my God,” she gasped. Blood was weeping from his
wound, and before he could say anything else, Dawn grabbed a towel from the
kitchen and pressed it to his forehead.

“What happened?” she asked as she closed the door
behind him. “Oh God, were you bit?” She might not have known if all the lore
was true, but a bite from a werewolf, that much she was starting to believe was
a curse.

“No,” Jase assured her as he sat on her couch. “Though
the damn thing took a pretty good swing at me.”

“You’re going to need stitches,” she said as she
pulled the towel away from his eye. The cut was deep, but thankfully had missed
his eye. “I can drive you to the hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Jase said. “I brought this.”

From his back pocket, Jase produced a small fabric
pouch with a faded red cross on it. His uncovered eye met hers, and suddenly
she realized what he wanted her to do.

“No,” she shook her head. “No, no, I can’t. I’d screw
it up.”

“It’s easy,” Jase said. “I’ll talk you through it. I’d
do it myself, but doing stitches in the mirror is a recipe for losing my eye.”

“Fine,” Dawn said, though she didn’t know how much
good she could possibly serve him.

“Get the whiskey first,” Jase told her, and she
suddenly realized what a good idea that was. A couple shots should steady her
hands and make her less likely to slip and poke out his eye.

When she returned, she had two glasses and the bottle
in hand, but Jase only laughed.

“What?” she asked, her brow furrowing at him.

“I meant get the whiskey so we can disinfect this,” he
said, laughing again. “But I could use a drink, and I’m sure you could too.”

“Oh,” Dawn sighed.

“It’s fine,” he assured her as he took her hand in
his. “And thank you. I owe you one.”

“I think I owed you,” she said as she took the towel
from him. His bleeding had already begun to slow, and she poured some of the
Johnnie Walker Red onto a clean part of the towel. Gently, she pressed it back
to his wound, but he didn’t gasp or hiss or cry out. He only sat stoically on
her couch and let her play nursemaid.

“So, what happened?” she asked as she dabbed at the
gash over his eyebrow.

“I followed those hunters into the mountains,” Jase
began as he opened up the antique medical kit he carried. Inside there wasn’t
much, just some gauze, some thread, and a needle. Once he threaded the needle,
he passed it to Dawn and then continued. “The wolf wasn’t going to be staying
put, not with that many guns out looking for it. I don’t know, I’ve tangled
with a lot of these things, but this one is different.”

“How is it different?” Dawn asked as she shifted in
her seat and leaned over her patient.

“It’s bigger, it’s smarter,” Jase said. “Most of these
things, they go wolf and they lose their humanity. All of it. This one is
smart, calculating. You can get started, by the way,” he said.

“Um…” Dawn hesitated.

“You’ll do fine,” Jase assured her. “It’s like putting
on a button.”

“Okay,” Dawn said as she took a deep breath. The
needle easily slid through Jase’s skin, and he didn’t even flinch. He only
continued to talk.

“I did shoot it, the other night, that is,” he said.
“By its tracks, I can see it’s limping just a little. I thought I could get the
drop on it, but it was waiting for me. Dawn, I think it set a trap for me.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him as she began her
second stitch.

“I found... something,” he said. “Remains. The other
hunters must have seen them, too.”

“Oh my God,” Dawn paused. “It’s not...?”

“Your friend?” he said. “I doubt it. She was a
redhead, right? Well, the hair was blonde, but there was enough to know that
the person it belonged to was no longer alive.”

As much as Dawn felt for whoever the poor soul that
Jase found, she couldn’t help but be relieved to hear that her friend wasn’t
the one mangled in the woods. Despite her own fears that she would never see
Courtney again, there was still a chance, and she clung to it.

“Well,” he started again. “I was examining the
remains, seeing if there was anything I could use to track the bastard when it
sprang on me. I hate to say it, but if some of those other idiots hadn’t shown
up when they did, I might not have made it.”

“What about…,” Dawn began. “What about the other guy,
the one that was bit?”

That was when Jase finally showed some remorse. Just a
hint of it flashed over his eyes while Dawn made another stitch.

“I have to put him down,” he sighed. “Another werewolf
out here? It would be chaos, more than there is now. He hasn’t turned yet, but
he will. The first change is always on the full moon, but as he learns to
control it, he’ll be able to change any time the moon is out.”

“But what about if you kill the werewolf that bit
him?” Dawn asked as she finished her final stitch. “Like, the alpha, or
whatever.”

“The alpha and the one that bit him are two different
things,” Jase said. “The movies don’t get everything right, I’m afraid. If this
wolf we’ve got here is the head of the lineage, then killing him will end the
curse over his entire line. It doesn’t work if it’s just some werewolf.”

“How can you tell they’re the head of a line?” Dawn
asked as she cut the end of the thread. All said and done, her stitches, all
five of them, looked pretty damn good.

“They’re bigger,” Jase said. “This one is big, but
they’re bigger. And they’re all female. Kind of like a queen bee, I guess.”

“Have you ever seen one?” Dawn asked as she poured two
more glasses of whiskey.

“No.” Jase shook his head. “But I know hunters who
have. Not many have taken on an alpha and lived to talk about it. Either way,
that guy who got bit is a dead man. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Damn,” Dawn sighed. “I just... I can’t believe the
world is this crazy.”

“I’ve seen crazier,” Jase said. She knew it was meant
as some weird form of reassurance or comfort, but it only served to worry her
more.

“Enough with that,” Jase said as he gently took Dawn’s
chin in his strong hand. She thought, she hoped, that he was going to move to
kiss her as he pulled her closer to him, but he stopped and stared into her
eyes. “So, you took out your contacts,” he said before he released her.

“Yeah,” Dawn said as she forced herself to turn away.
Just that simple touch had sent her heart soaring, but then there was nothing
but disappointment. “I, uh, was about to dye my hair before you showed up.”

“Colored contacts, dyed hair,” Jase said as he looked
her over. “Sounds like I’m not the only one with secrets to share.”

“No,” Dawn shot back. “I just like how I look this
way.”

“Bullshit,” Jase said. “I’ve spent enough time
pretending to be people I’m not to know when I see someone else doing it. Who
are you hiding from?”

“No one,” Dawn lied. “And screw you. You take off for
three days after screwing me, and then don’t even call, and now you think
you’re entitled to know all about me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jase argued, his voice turning to
a low growl. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Like hell you do,” she hissed at him. “If you cared,
you would have called. Instead, you just show up here and expect me to play
nurse and then call me a liar.”

“It’s not like you called me, either!” he shot back.
“God, I don’t have time to play stupid games. Is this really what you want? Or
do you want me to go kill the monster that murdered your friend?”

“Screw you,” Dawn said. His words cut deep. Though
she’d begun to accept that very fact, hearing it from someone else shattered
her.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Jase said as he pulled her into
his arms. “I didn’t mean... Goddamn it.”

“She’s not dead,” Dawn argued as she fought off his
embrace. “She can’t be.”

“Stop,” he said as he only tried harder to control
her, but Dawn wasn’t having it. Fury and hurt rippled through her as she pushed
against his muscular chest, but he was stronger than her and didn’t give in.
Still, she fought like a caged cat and twisted in his arms until his lips found
hers and he kissed her deeply.

His kiss calmed her, but only for a moment. As her
senses came back to her, she pushed against him again. “Damn it,” she hissed,
but his answer was another kiss, this time deeper and hungrier, and she found
herself falling into it rather than resisting.

With his tongue, Jase parted Dawn’s lips and began to
explore her mouth. His kisses were hungry and passionate, and his fingers found
her blonde hair and took hold of it.

Their kisses deepened, and Dawn lost sight of the last
of her protests. All that mattered to her now was the taste of Jase on her
tongue, the feeling of his hands as they explored her body, and how much she
wanted him. With their lips never parting, Dawn fumbled with the buttons of his
shirt as she worked to undo them.

The buttons seemed to take an eternity to open, but it
was worth it to view what was hiding underneath. It was once she got his shirt
open that she broke their kiss, but only so that she could begin to trace her
lips down his muscular chest.