Howling Moon (7 page)

Cat glanced at
the clock on the bedside table. Twelve thirty. Afternoon sunlight poured through the bedroom windows. There was no hint of a breeze. The furnace clicked on, and the warmth of the central air felt surprisingly good.

She started to stretch, stopping abruptly. She hurt
everywhere.
Her entire body ached.

She lifted the sheet and looking at herself. She was naked. Her body was marked with livid bruises in black, red, and purple. Red cuts traced her torso, hardly scabbed over. The shape of the cuts was familiar. She’d had similar marks after the attack – claw marks. Cat’s heart raced with panic. What had happened last night? She remembered a gorgeous Latino man with a gentle voice and a duffel bag of… of…
raw meat.
And she’d eaten it, and it tasted good.

Well,
that
part at least had to have been a dream, because, well…
eww.

But the bruises weren’t a dream. They were real. Where had they come from?

“Violet?” Cat called. Her voice held an edge of panic. She rolled out of bed. There was no answer from her aunt, but Cat could hear movement and muted voices coming from the kitchen. Cat took a deep breath and sneezed. The air was heavy with the scent of pine cleaner combined with the aroma of cooking meat and coffee.

That did it. Something was
definitely
wrong. There was no way Violet Wildethorne would allow meat or coffee in her kitchen, let alone both!

Cat grabbed the burgundy robe draped across the top of the dresser. Touching the satin fabric brought to mind something… an image of Mrs. Zabatos and the police. It was gone as quickly as it came. Cat shook her head, and instantly regretted it.
“Ow,”
she moaned. She slid into the robe before tentatively running her fingers over a large lump on the side of her head.

Cat’s throat tightened, her stomach fluttering with nerves. She tied the robe’s belt around her waist as she padded down the carpeted hallway. The sounds were coming up the back stairwell from the kitchen. Cat paused on the top step, listening. Both voices, male and female, sounded vaguely familiar. She didn’t hear Violet.

She sniffed the air, searching for her aunt’s signature perfume. She smelled it all right, coming faintly from Violet’s bedroom. She tapped lightly on the door and listened. She could hear her aunt’s soft snores, but there was a second set of breaths as well. Catherine opened the door. There was Violet, curled up on the navy bedroom carpet, a comforter tucked around her. She looked fine.

A woman Catherine didn’t recognize lay on her aunt’s bed. She was pale, her skin nearly as white as the cotton sheet that covered her up to her chest. It obviously wasn’t a natural pallor. Her skin was almost gray, as were her lips. She lay very still. The only clue that she even lived was the slight rise and fall of her chest beneath the sheet and the soft whistle of breath through her slightly parted lips.

Cat stood next to the bed for a long moment. Something… something about the woman was familiar, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. She struggled, trying to grab onto the wisp of memory, but it was frustratingly elusive.

“Good morning, Catherine.”

She turned toward the voice coming from the doorway. Her breath caught in her throat. It was him: the man from the restaurant, and from last night’s dream.

This morning he wore a pair of faded and worn blue jeans with a hole torn through one knee and no shirt. He looked perfectly comfortable, and breathtakingly gorgeous. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on that perfectly muscled body, and his skin was a warm brown. Dark stubble traced the outline of his jaw, not quite hiding the cleft of his chin.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Cat pulled the robe more tightly around her body and lowered her head a fraction. The words were hostile, suspicious.

He didn’t act angry at her tone. “My name is Raphael Ramirez. Your godfather sent me here to help you and your aunt.”

Cat wanted to believe him. It sounded like Uncle Chuck. Somehow he always seemed to know just the right thing to do and the perfect time to do it.

“How much of last night do you remember?” the man asked softly – his gaze was intense.

She hesitated, unsure what to do. He wasn’t acting threatening. But there was no proof that he really was sent here by Uncle Chuck, and nothing made
sense.

“Tell me the
name
of the person who sent you!”

“Charles Wingate. You can call him to confirm, if you think it’s necessary. But I don’t think you do. I think you know what happened last night. I know it might be frightening to remember, but that’s okay. We met the
second
time in the park, if you remember. You could see me from above. I was carrying a – “

His voice trailed off and he raised his brows, encouraging her to continue the story. Cat struggled to put the fragmented pieces of her memory into a coherent whole. She remembered shopping and lunch with Violet, with this man smiling across the room at her. The drive home had been fine. Violet had gone into the study to write. Cat had gone upstairs. She must have fallen asleep, because she’d had the weirdest dreams: dreams of moving like a shadow through the night, every sight and scent intense. Dreams of the man in front of her, speaking softly and caressing her shoulder gently. There was blood and violence as well, and she fought the cat that had attacked and killed her parents. But she hadn’t been human. In the dreams she, too, had been a cat: a huge black panther. She’d fought, struggling to kill the larger male, taking bruising blows and slices from vicious claws.

Cat shuddered, feeling the pull of the marks on her body.
Claw
marks. Cat pulled the lapel of her robe open slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of a nasty-looking cut, right where the panther had received a blow.

“It isn’t possible.” She whispered the words softly. Then, louder, with a barely controlled edge of hysteria. “It isn’t
possible!”

He looked at her with sympathy, as though he wished somehow things were different. “Why don’t you come down and have some breakfast? We need to talk. After all, I
did
promise you an explanation.”

Cat started at his words, and a scene opened in front of her eyes, on top of what she could see in the here and now. He was standing at the doorway, looking up. She was wearing this same robe and another woman, a blonde woman, was supporting her. He promised to explain and she’d trusted him. She felt her hand go to her mouth in near-terror and Raphael looked stricken at her reaction. He started to walk toward her, but then stopped and waited. But she wanted him to move closer. She wanted – No! She
didn’t
know him. She
couldn’t
know him. There was no reason to trust him. But a deep instinctive part of her
did.
In the dreams of last night he had been die one constant.

That first scene triggered a memory, then another, and another. The events of the night before unwound in her mind like a ball of twine. She remembered it all, and die shock of it made her sway, nearly faint. He cleared the distance between them in an instant, supporting her weight. He helped her sit on the edge of Violet’s bed, careful not to jostle either her or the other woman on the bed. “Put your head between your knees.”

“I don’t believe it,” Cat whispered. “It isn’t
possible.”

“Easy now.” Raphael crouched down in front of her. He whispered, stroking her back in gentle circles. She felt warmth flow from his fingertips as though he were creating his own heat. “Take it easy. It’s going to be all right.”

She looked up then, glaring at him in utter disbelief. “It was a
dream.
It
had
to be.”

“I’m afraid not.” A woman appeared in the doorway – the blonde woman from her dream. Her voice was a sultry alto that was nearly as beautiful as her looks. She was exquisite. Even Violet’s ill-fitting navy-blue sweat suit didn’t conceal the perfect curves of her body, and hair that was the natural silver-blonde screen sirens try unsuccessfully to imitate. Her clothes smelled of Violet’s lilac perfume.

She
smelled like a dog. No, Catherine corrected herself. She smelled like a…
wolf.

Catherine’s eyes were drawn back to the man kneeling in front of her. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to appear calm. It wasn’t easy. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to get a deep breath.

“Who are you?
What
are you?”

“We,
Catherine.” The woman corrected her. “What are
we.
We are shapeshifters, and you’re one of us now.”

“
I
am not an animal! There are no such things as shape-shifters!” Catherine protested. It wasn’t true, and somehow she knew it. She began to tremble. Raphael reached for her and she let him. As he drew her close she began to cry, deep, wracking sobs that tore at her body. She cried – partly for the loss of her parents, but mostly for the loss of
herself.

“I’m so sorry.”
Raphael tightened his hold, pressing her against his chest as she wept. “I’m so very, very sorry.” He murmured the words gently into her thick, golden hair.

A sudden burst of jealousy scent poured across the room. It was thick enough to walk on and he knew the source. Burned metal and roasted pepper oil was an unforgettable combination that always made his eyes burn and water. Raphael turned his head and gave Tatya a look of utter weariness. She had no
right
to be jealous. He was just comforting a woman whose entire life had been shaken to its foundations. Besides which, Tatya had chosen
Lucas.
Being Alpha Female had been more important to her than her love for Raphael, more important than her mating bond. He let all of that show in his angry gaze, sparing her nothing.

Their eyes locked over Catherine’s bent head. A dark flush crept up Tatya’s neck. Her jaw thrust forward as she fought to control an unreasoning rage. Whether it was at him, herself, the woman, or the world in general, Raphael neither knew nor cared. He simply stayed as he was, holding the woman, waiting for Boulder’s alpha female to get a grip on herself.

“Why don’t I go tell Holly to bring the cat some breakfast?” Tatya said bitterly. She turned on her heel and left. Raphael heard her stomp into the kitchen, heard the few terse words of her orders, followed by the slamming of the kitchen door and the sound of glass breaking.

She’d left.

It was probably better that she had, considering her emotional state. But Betty still needed to be taken to the pack hospital, and someone needed to give the woman breakfast and her initial orientation lecture.

“Why is she so angry?” Catherine asked with a soft sniffle.

“Long story. It has nothing to do with you.” Raphael answered. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a clean handkerchief, which she gratefully accepted. “But you need breakfast. After that, there are important things we need to discuss.”

Cat sat on
the couch. Someone had closed the living room drapes. The room was dim and shadowed, despite the bright sunshine she could glimpse streaming into the kitchen over the top of the swinging doors. Raphael sat down beside her, close enough that the length of his thigh pressed against hers. Her throat went dry; Cat swallowed convulsively. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. Common sense said she should be, but she just wasn’t. No, this was a deeper, and much more primal reaction.

He raised his hand to cup her cheek. With gentle pressure, he turned her face until her eyes locked with his. As she watched they changed subtly, the color shifting from a hazel-brown to intense gold. She felt the power building between them. The hairs on her body raised in reaction. It didn’t hurt, but it felt strange. The temperature in the room rose as well.

When he spoke, his voice was deeper, rougher than it had been with the edge of a growl. “Since the dark beginnings when man and animal began roaming the earth there have been stories – tales of blood and magic that spoke of those who could shift their skins and become their totem animals. Some were worshiped as gods. Your godfather was one of them. He is the most powerful Sazi of us all. For years beyond count we have coexisted with the wandering tribes of humans.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the power pressed against her like a living thing, cutting off her ability to utter so much as a sound. Uncle Chuck was one of them? The
leader!
How could she have never guessed?

Raphael’s harsh voice brought her back to listen. “But humans fear that which they can’t understand. And they kill what they fear.”

The living room where they sat vanished in a rush of power. Catherine blinked, gasping in shock and fear.

She was a small, brown-skinned girl of nine or so, her black hair pulled back in a tight braid. She ran desperately across uneven d
e
sert ground, cactus thorns and sharp rocks tearing at her bare feet and legs as she fled the screams of the dying.

She heard the thunder of footsteps, felt the ground shudder b
e
neath her feet. She risked a glance back, and saw her mother’s brother drawing ever closer, a club drawn back to swing.

She felt the club strike home, hard enough to lift her small body from the ground before slamming face forward into the sand.

He ran on, leaving her for dead. She very nearly was. But slowly, she began to heal, enough to move her head, to see the fate of her kind.

Scenes of blood and violence assaulted her senses as the killers moved like a scythe through the village, slaughtering anyone, even pregnant women, they suspected might carry the contamination.

The adults they beheaded, to make sure there would be no return, no magical healing.

Then, suddenly, it was over. There were no more screams. A f
a
miliar voice barked orders, and the attackers disappeared, back to the neighboring village from whence they came.

She lay, listening, hoping to hear the sound of some other surv
i
vor. But the silence was only broken by the harsh caws of the carrion birds, eager to feast.

One or two of the birds were bold enough to try to attack her, but they ‘d waited too long. She ‘d regained enough strength to change forms and fight them off. And when the moon rose, and it was cool enough to travel, she began the painful journey to see if any others had survived.

The images faded and Catherine was once again in her own body. Raphael’s hand was still on her cheek, wet now with her tears. She heard his voice inside her head.

Only a tattered remnant of the Sazi escaped to start over, hiding who and what they were until all that was left was the rumor of skinwalkers, evil witches who could take the form of animals. Eventually even that faded to the point of myth, becoming the fodder of B movies. The Sazi survive by hiding in the shadows. We live among the humans, but apart, with our own laws, our own customs. But the first and greatest law is
always
to keep the secret.

She heard Raphael’s voice come to her as though from a distance. “We lost 90 percent of our people in six days of systematic slaughter. Men, women, children… even infants at the breast. The Ravaging wiped out entire bloodlines.”

“But, this was before mass communication…
how?”

Raphael’s expression was grim. “We don’t know. But they did.”

“I understand.” And she did. She remembered Uncle Chuck talking to her father about prejudice once. She always seemed to think that there was something in her godfather’s past… someone he’d lost. But if Uncle Chuck was like Raphael, like the little girl in the vision, then he’d lost more than she could grasp.

Raphael’s voice brought her back to the comfortable living room. His voice was flat, without emotion, but she could tell that there was something deadly serious about his words. “Do you? Do you really? Can you even imagine how desperate our people are
never
to risk another Ravaging?”

He spoke the word
Ravaging
in the same tone that Cat had heard Jewish survivors spoke the word
Holocaust.
Horror, mixed with rage and sorrow.

“If you give me your word right now and pledge your
life
to keep our secret, I will help you adjust to the changes you face. I’ll teach you our ways, our history. But I have to make sure you can be trusted to keep our secret. The humans are not as powerful as we are…
individually.
But collectively, they could destroy us. They outnumber us by the billions. Secrecy keeps us alive, keeps us safe.”

“And if I don’t agree? What will you do?”

He looked at her, and his eyes were filled with sorrow, but determination. “I think you know the answer to that. And if I refuse, then another will take my place, and your godfather will have
me
put down alongside you.”

Somehow she had known the answer, and that she should be afraid. But she wasn’t. “I know. I promise.” She said it softly.

He stared at her for a long, silent moment. His eyes shifted back to their normal color, the heat in the room faded. But the electric sensation against her skin didn’t diminish. When he spoke his voice was normal, human, with none of the animal undertone it had carried before.

“We call ourselves the Sazi, the cave dwellers. We’re
not
all , evil – any more than any human is. But we’re not all good, either. We have our criminals and killers, and, like the humans, we have law enforcement. Wolven is the name of our police force. But the agents cannot always be everywhere they are needed. They were not there for your parents, Violet, or you. For that I am sorry.”

“Violet?” Catherine stared at Raphael in horror and her hand clutched around his arm, fingernails digging in with panic.

He smiled and shook his head. But she noticed he didn’t remove her hand from his skin. “She wasn’t hurt, thanks to Betty.”

“Betty?”

“The woman on the bed. The one Jack gutted in the kitchen.”

Catherine felt dizzy, faint, and a little nauseous. “You’re telling me – “

“The jaguar who attacked you and killed your parents was one of us. He is a serial killer named Jack Simpson.”

“You used his name.” She could barely get the words out. “You
know
him.”

Raphael nodded, and fury filled his gaze. “I do.”

Catherine pulled her hand from his arm. Her green eyes narrowed, and a low growl crawled from between her lips as she glared at him. “Why haven’t you done something? Why is he still on the loose?”

Raphael’s gaze never wavered, but Catherine saw the tightening of his jaw muscles, heard the controlled anger that belied his calm words. “Jack has protected himself from our laws very carefully. He’s placed himself in a political position – he’s a U.S. senator, protected by the Secret Service. If he dies under even
remotely
suspicious circumstances, his attorneys have been instructed to release a file to the press that contains not only absolute scientific proof of our existence, but a list of names, addresses, and identifying information about virtually every powerful Sazi in existence. He was one of our leaders once. He knows ways of determining who is and isn’t of our blood and how to kill us. In other words, he has set in place the threat of a second Ravaging.”

She watched him take a deep breath and swallow back what seemed to be a violent curse. “The leaders of our people are not willing to risk releasing that information and the total annihilation of our kind in order to bring Jack to the justice he deserves.”

Catherine’s rage was overwhelming. Her body quivered with the need to
do
something. She wanted him dead, wanted to kill him, but the images of the vision she’d had, the moments she’d lived with the little dark-haired girl, would not be denied.

Raphael spoke slowly, choosing each word with utmost care. “Anyone who wants to take down Jack Simpson will have to neutralize that file first. Otherwise they’d be assassinated without so much as a second’s hesitation before they could get anywhere near him.”

“And if someone
were
to neutralize the file?” Catherine’s eyes burned with inhuman intensity. The heat in the room increased enough that the air conditioner whooshed to life.

Raphael’s smile was a baring of sharp teeth. “Manage that, and, baby, it’s huntin’ season.”