Midnight Moonlight (17 page)

At any rate, she wanted Leroy to shut up. So she went back to the campsite. She took everything out of one of the fast food bags, which consisted of a sandwich for Ryder and some hash browns, and she balled up the bag. Then she approached Leroy.

He leered at her. “Oh couldn’t stay away could you, button? Come over here and give us a kiss.”

Calla stuffed the bag of trash into his mouth.

Leroy coughed, making sputtering sounds.

“Don’t choke on that now,” said Calla. Right at that moment, she’d never hated anyone more in her life. Maybe it was horrible to be violent to someone, but if anyone deserved it, it might very well be Leroy. She was finding it harder and harder to be very angry with Ryder for doing what he’d done last night.

There. Now he was quiet. Calla stepped back, folding her arms over her chest and surveying her handiwork. Not bad.

She turned her back on Leroy to see to Ryder. She spread Ryder’s sandwich out on the ground on the wrapper, breaking it into pieces for him so that it would be easier for him to eat it since he refused to use his hands. She whispered to him. “Where are you? Are you in there?”

But instead of going after his food, Ryder went after her. He put his hands on her, one hand cupping her breast and one hand caressing her waist. He tried to kiss her.

She pushed him away. “Stop that.” She couldn’t understand. He was a wolf, wasn’t he? Right now he was acting like an animal, so why was he trying to make out with her? It didn’t make any sense.

Ryder tried again.

She kicked at him. “I mean it.”

Leroy was laughing again, laughing around the ball of paper in his mouth. And then, to her horror, he spit it out. Damn it. What she wouldn’t give for some tape.

“Now I’m going to
have
to take you with me, button. Do you have any idea what Enoch will do when he finds out the way you treated me? He’ll make sure that you serve the cause.”

Calla stalked over to him. She put her hands on her hips. “What the hell is this ‘cause’ you keep going on about?”

“Oh, Ryder knows all about it. Or at least he did before he turned into a wolf trapped in a man’s body. He wanted to devote himself to the cause.”

She rolled her eyes. She really ought to just ignore Leroy. She knew that. She was making him worse by interacting with him.

He leaned forward. “You see, the SF has destroyed the natural order of things. Wolves need to be free to do what comes naturally. There are too many humans on earth, and they’re using up all the resources and polluting the planet. Humans are a disease. Werewolves are the cure.”

Calla drew back in horror. “You can’t be serious.”

Leroy snickered. “Save the earth. Kill the humans.”

That was it. She was finding some way to keep a gag in his mouth. What could she use? Maybe if she tied something around his head. Too bad she didn’t have any more pieces of her leggings. Was there something else she could use?

“The Sullivan Foundation is stopping the wolves from killing, and so we’re going to stop the SF,” said Leroy. “We’re going to attack all the branches of the SF and wipe those suckers out. Then the wolves will be free to—”

“Shut up!” She was so angry that she was shaking. “You’re horrible.”

Leroy shrugged. “You’re just not really that important to me, little human girl. Werewolves are obviously the next stage of evolution. We don’t behave the way you humans do. We don’t have to tame nature. We can work within it. We’re superior to you. We deserve to survive, that’s why nature created us to hunt you down.”

She hit him. She hauled back and punched him right in the nose.

Leroy grunted.

Tears started to stream down her face. “Fuck you.” After what had happened to her that day all those years ago, after the things she’d seen… Well, hearing him say the things he was saying was too much for her. She needed to get away. She turned her back on him and started for the freight container. She’d go there and lock herself in, away from Leroy, away from Ryder. Away from both of them. She couldn’t handle it.

She stumbled on her way, her vision blurred from the tears that she shed.

Behind her, Leroy was laughing again.

* * *

It was hot inside the freight container, but it was better than being out there with Leroy. She hadn’t slept much the night before, so after being inside, shut away from them both in the darkness, she began to feel drowsy. She curled up in a ball and let sleep take her.

When she woke up, there was noise from outside.

Male voices yelling. The sounds of scuffling.

She got up as quickly as she could, pulling up the door.

Leroy had gotten free.

Well, sort of. His legs were free from the chair, but his hands were still tied tightly to it. He was standing over Ryder, bringing the chair down over and over on the other man’s head.

Calla screamed, fumbling to find the gun. She pointed it into the air and squeezed the trigger.

Bang!

Both Leroy and Ryder turned to look at her.

She leveled the gun at Leroy. She was going to pull the trigger again. She was going to shoot Leroy dead.

Leroy sneered at her. And then he started beating Ryder with the chair again.

“Stop!” said Calla. She was going to shoot him. She was. Except for the fact that she didn’t know. Killing someone, even someone like Leroy—one second he’d be breathing and the next…

Oh, besides, her aim wasn’t very good, and what if she hit Ryder instead?

“Stop!” she said again. “I’ll shoot.”

Leroy laughed. He clubbed Ryder over the head with the chair again, and Ryder went still. He stopped moving completely.

Calla shrieked.

Leroy took off into the woods, holding the chair above his head as he crashed into the underbrush.

Calla fired after him, but she didn’t hit anything.

She pulled the trigger again.

And again.

Bang! Bang!

Leroy was getting away. He was inside the leaves, covered over by foliage, and she couldn’t see him anymore.

She pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Oh. No more bullets. She flung it down on the ground and ran for Ryder.

“Ryder.” She skidded down next to him, landing on her knees. She shook him. “Ryder.”

He wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed. He was unconscious.

CHAPTER NINE

Ryder was dreaming about being a wolf. He was running and jumping through the woods, chasing after something tiny—a raccoon that was skittering ahead of him. He wasn’t starving, but he thought that the raccoon would make a nice snack. He was enjoying the hunt.

But something made him stop.

He had a funny memory, a feeling that was nagging at him.

He wasn’t really a wolf. He was a man. And when he looked down at his body, he realized that it wasn’t the body of a wolf after all, but instead the weak and hairless body of a human. He put his hands in front of his face and stared at them in horror.

He didn’t belong in this skin.

He gazed longingly at the raccoon, which was getting away from him, ducking under the foliage and disappearing into the distance.

No snack for him.

“Ryder,” said a voice.

He turned.

It was his father. “Wolves are not superior, boy. Wolves are just wolves. There’s no reason that we’ve been made this way. We just are, like that raccoon just is. I won’t hear any more of this nonsense.”

Ryder glared at him.

His head hurt. He swam close to consciousness for a second. He heard a woman calling his name. She sounded worried.

But then that faded, and he was watching his father walk away, glaring at the back of the man’s head.

“Don’t worry about him.”

Ryder whirled.

Enoch was standing there, grinning at him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Ryder could see his big tattoo on his shoulder—a wolf tackling a deer with antlers. “You don’t need your father to agree with you.”

“But I wanted to bring them in to the cause.”

“In time, Ryder,” said Enoch. “For now, let’s run.” He unzipped his pants and the change flowed over him. He was a wolf in one second, bounding off into the forest.

Ryder tried to do it too, to shift into a wolf. He used to know how, but now he… he couldn’t.

“Be the wolf,” whispered another voice, this one silky and urgent, right at his ear. “Surrender to the wolf. It is your true nature. Let it happen, Ryder.”

He turned again, and there was Cole Randall, the man who’d trained him to shift back and forth so easily, the man who’d shown him that there was no separation between himself and the wolf.

“I thought you left,” said Ryder, feeling confused. “I thought you left. I thought you stopped spending your time with Enoch.”

“You were always the best at this, Ryder,” said Cole. “You were always the only one who could lose himself in the change. You can do it now.
Be
the wolf.”

Ryder,
screamed a female voice far, far away.
Ryder, wake up.

* * *

Calla was afraid that Ryder had a concussion, and she knew that she needed to wake him up. She couldn’t remember exactly why people needed to be awakened when they had concussions, but she knew it was bad for him to sleep for too long.

If
he had a concussion. She wasn’t sure. Maybe he didn’t.

But he’d been hit over the head with a chair, and it had knocked him out. That couldn’t be good.

She shook him violently, so violently that his teeth knocked together.

Abruptly, his eyes opened. He struggled away from her, turning over on one side and vomiting.

She sat back, unsure of what to do. Was it her fault that he’d thrown up?

He turned back to her, wiping his mouth. “Who are you?” he said.

“I’m Calla,” she said. “You’re talking again.”

“Where’s my father?” said Ryder.

“What?” she said.

CHAPTER TEN

Ryder had never seen this woman before in his life. He had no idea where he was. He was outside somewhere, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt and…

Hell, was that his body? It didn’t look quite right. It was too big. His shoulders weren’t that broad, and he seemed to have sprouted more hair everywhere. He’d never been an exactly hairy guy, and he wasn’t sure that he’d qualify for that description now, but there was more of it on his chest and stomach. He touched it, feeling panic rising inside him.

“Where am I?”

“I don’t know,” said the woman. “Jasper brought us out here, and he won’t tell me where we are, and he won’t let me live.”

“Jasper? Is he here?” He sat up, looking for his brother. But the sudden movement sent shards of pain through his head and neck. He cried out, clutching his temples.

“Shh… careful.” The woman touched him. “I don’t think you should move too fast. You got hit over the head. You might have a concussion.”

His head did ache miserably. He groaned. He let the woman help him lie down on his back, but further away from the place where he’d vomited all over the ground.

“Jasper will be back this evening,” said the woman. “Hopefully before Leroy comes back.”

“Leroy? Leroy Foster?”

“I… I don’t know.” She hugged herself. “I never got his last name. But he was horrible, and he said that you owed him money or service or… something.”

Ryder groaned. So Enoch had sent Leroy to collect, had he? “But… it shouldn’t be so soon. I had years to pay back the debt. Ten years.”

The woman chewed on her lip. “Ryder? What year is it?”

He told her.

She swallowed. “No. It’s not. That was ten years ago.”

“What?”

“I think you have a concussion,” she said. “I think you’ve lost your memory. It happens sometimes with concussions.” She paused. “I think.”

Ryder couldn’t fathom what she was saying. His head hurt, and he didn’t know where he was, and his last clear memory of this was… was… “I changed,” he muttered. “I shifted into a wolf. I was going to stay a wolf forever. Cole taught me how to do it. If you fall deep enough inside the animal, then it’s like you’re not even a man anymore. It was the only way to protect myself from Enoch.” He furrowed his brow. “Did you say Leroy was here?”

“Well, he hit you over the head and then he ran into the woods.”

“Shit.” He tried to sit up again.

But she stopped him. “Lie down. It’s better if you don’t move. I think.”

“Are you a nurse or something?”

“No, I’m a high school English teacher.”

“Great,” he muttered. He eyed her. “Man, I wish my high school teachers were as hot as you.” She was just the kind of woman he found attractive. Maybe she was a little old for him, but she was all tits and ass and soft curves. He could just imagine what it would be like to be pressed between her legs.