Moon Dance (22 page)

He nodded.
“Probably.”

“
When we were running
before, you weren’t thinking about mating with me,
right?”

“
No.”

“
So, if we’re
hunting…?”

“
It’ll be all
right.”

She smiled. Hunting in wolf
form. That sounded amazing. She was excited, eager for it. “After
we eat, though, we need to find some way to contact the
SF.”

“
Of course,” he
said.

She rearranged the blankets
on the bed, feeling a little guilty that she’d sweat all over them.
But there wasn’t any way to wash the blankets, so she couldn’t do
anything about it.

They left the hunting cabin.
The minute they were outside, they both shifted, and Dana was
overtaken by the simple sweetness of the wolf. She and Cole capered
in the mature sunlight, nipping playfully at each other.

And then they dove into the woods,
creeping, looking.

She’d never hunted with
another wolf before, but she was pleasantly surprised at how well
she and Cole seemed to work together. They moved according to the
same rhythm, something inside the earth directing their movements.
When a tree branch cracked, they both heard it. They both moved
towards it together, stalking quietly, their senses on high
alert.

Most of the noises were
false alarms—the breeze made them or some creature too small to be
worth their while.

But soon they were rewarded
by the scent and sight of a deer. It seemed to be alone, which was
unusual. Not that a group of deer was any challenge for the two of
them, but it did make it easier to stalk the animal if it was
alone.

Dana usually stayed away
from bigger prey on her own. It never made sense to take down an
entire deer when she was the only one eating. Furthermore, most of
her hunting happened outside her normal human meals, so she was
never truly, truly hungry.

This was different, though.
She and Cole together could consume that much meat, and besides—it
had been quite some time since they’d eaten.

The deer noticed them, ahead, nearly
obscured by leaves and branches.

But they could smell the deer. It
hardly mattered how invisible it was.

And the deer was quite
noticeable in a moment, because it sprang forward, running for its
life, shaking the branches and bushes.

She and Cole gave chase, delight and
joy bursting through her as they ran. She loved this part. This was
what life was all about. Running and chasing and killing and
eating. It was magnificent.

Together they tore through
the woods after the deer.

The deer was fast. They were
faster.

She could smell its fear, and that only
spurred her on, made the chase even sweeter.

Cole lunged, leaping into the air to
tackle the deer.

She hung back. She’d let him
take the first swipe. There was an unspoken communication between
him that he was slightly stronger and faster than her, that he
would have a better chance of taking it down. This didn’t diminish
her. There were no emotions like jealousy and insecurity in the
wolf.

Cole’s jaws were wide, and
he was inches from sinking them into the deer’s neck.

And a gunshot rent the air.

Cole whimpered, freezing in
midair.

And then he crumpled to the
ground.

The deer skittered away.

Dana ran for Cole.

He lay on his side. There was blood
pouring out of a hole in his flank. It stained his fur.

Cole let out a whimper. Then a
gasp.

And then the change went
through him, his fur receding, his paws expanding, fingers pushing
their way out, muzzle tucking into his face.

He was human.

He was still bleeding.

Dana licked the wound. She
didn’t know what else to do. She supposed she should shift back
too.

But then there were voices.

“
Fucking wolves. Don’t want
‘em out here. They’re dangerous.”

“
There’s another one. You
better shoot it, too.”

Two men were coming through the forest.
They had beards, and they wore dirty baseball caps on their heads.
They were both carrying shotguns.

“
Ah, shit, you’re right,”
said one of them—he had a dark beard. He lifted his gun.

She should shift. She should
shift right now.

But she was confused, and
Cole was wounded, and there were guns, and she was afraid, and she
was hungry and—

She lunged instead.

He shot at her, but he
missed—probably startled by a wolf leaping right on him.

She tackled Dark
Beard.

The other man screamed. He had a red
beard.

Dana pinned Dark Beard down,
growling at him. She wanted to rip out his throat, but she held
herself in check. This was a person, and she knew that she wasn’t
supposed to hurt humans.

Red Beard raised his gun.
“Get the fuck off him!”

“
Don’t talk to it,” said
Dark Beard. “Shoot it.”

Dana bared her teeth, turning to Red
Beard, staring down the barrel of his gun.

“
Dana!” came Cole’s voice,
straining from effort. “Shift.”

Both men turned to look at Cole, who
was trying to pick himself up. But he was too hurt to
stand.

“
What the fuck?” said Red
Beard.

“
Shift, Dana,” said
Cole.

And so she did. Finally. She let the
shift roll over her, let her human form back out.

“
Holy shit,” said Red Beard,
dropping his shot gun.

Dark Beard gazed up at her
with wide eyes. “Werewolves,” he said.

“
Naked chick werewolves,”
said Red Beard.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The two bearded men had cell
phones, and they called the SF. Dana was relieved. She needed to
talk to the SF. But she was worried about Cole, who was badly hurt.
The shot had gone into his side, right underneath his ribs. She
couldn
’t tell if it had hit any of his
major organs. The shot had gone in when he was a wolf and the
wolf’s body was different than the human body. Dana didn’t know if
her wolf stomach shifted back into a human stomach—if a wounded
wolf stomach was a wounded human stomach. She’d never dealt with
this before.

“
He needs help,” she said to
the men. “He’s been shot. He needs a hospital.”

“
We called the SF,” said
Dark Beard. “SF deals with wolves.”

Where the hell were they?
Arkansas? That meant they were in the southwest region. Well, at
least they were fairly close to the headquarters here. Depending on
where they were in Arkansas. The southwest region stretched all the
way from Louisiana to New Mexico. It was vast and wide, and it
could be hours before the SF arrived. A small regional branch like
this probably would only have one set of trackers, and they’d be
deployed to pick up any rogue werewolves—not that she and Cole were
rogues, but they’d be categorized that way.

“
Please,” she said. “It
might take a long time for them to arrive. He needs first aid. We
need to clean the wound. We need bandages.”

“
Why don’t you shut up,
furry?” said Red Beard.

Cole grunted. “Dana, you
should just go. Shift back and leave me.”

“
No,” she said. “Are you
crazy? The SF is coming.” They’d fix everything.

Red Beard and Dark Beard kept watch
over them for quite a long time. They never dropped their guns.
They refused to speak to her.

Cole kept bleeding. She
didn’t have anything to stanch the wound. She put her fingers over
it, but the blood was coming out so fast, it didn’t make any
difference.

She cried, begging for the men to do
something, but they were stone.

Eventually, Cole lost consciousness.
His face had turned white, and his lips were a strange bloodless
blue.

Dana was terrified that he
was dying. She was huddled next to him, his blood smeared all over
her naked body, while the two men with guns stared down at her,
both of them looking disgusted.

She listened to them talking
to each other about werewolves as a menace, about how all the furs
should be rounded up and shot anyway.

“
You did the world a favor
shooting that one,” said Red Beard. “Less werewolves there are, the
safer it is for the rest of us.”

“
Yeah,” said Dark
Beard.

The more time that passed,
the antsier they got. They began to question where the SF was, and
they didn’t think they should have to hang around and wait for
them.

“
Fine,” said Dana. “Go,
then.” The men were no help.

They ignored her.

“
Well, you probably killed
that one,” said Red Beard. “But if we leave, what’s to say that one
won’t go out and start eating people.”

“
True,” said Dark Beard. “If
we were going to go, we should probably shoot her too.”

Dana couldn’t believe this.
She couldn’t be hearing two men matter-of-factly discussing
shooting her. She glared up at them. “I can hear you, you know. I’m
right here.”

“
You might be able to hear
us,” said Red Beard, “but that don’t mean nothing. I’m sorry,
honey, but you’re a monster. If we’re going to shoot you, it’s
going to be to protect ourselves and our families.”

“
It ain’t like you’re a real
person, you know,” said Dark Beard.

Dana was hungry. She was terrified. She
was angry.

And it felt like the shift
came over her involuntarily, almost the way it used to before she
could control it, when she was at the whim of the full moon. It
flowed through her body, and she was on the two men before she
could think.

She went straight for Red
Beard’s throat, ripping into it, glorious blood on her
tongue.

Dark Beard started yelling.
He was trying to get his gun up, but he couldn’t believe what had
just happened to his friend, and he wasn’t moving
quickly.

Dana was faster.

She killed him too.

And then she ate.

She’d been very, very
hungry.

* * *

Dana awoke on a concrete
floor. She was still naked, and she was covered in blood.
Cole
’s blood, the mens’ blood. She could
smell it, but now that she was in human form, it smelled bad—not
delicious and wonderful the way it did when she was the
wolf.

How had she gotten here? The
last thing she remembered was the blood and flesh, her teeth
sinking into it…

No. There was something
else. She’d been so intent on her meal that she hadn’t noticed the
SF trackers come upon her. She’d only been alerted by the sharp
punch of the tranq dart in her body, and it had been followed by
several more.

She was pretty sure that
they’d shot her four times, which was a little bit excessive. That
many darts would have knocked her out for a long, long
time.

She sat up, surveying her
surroundings. She was in a large room. The walls were bare. There
was a toilet hanging on one wall, a sink next to it. Benches lined
the walls. What was this place? It looked like a drunk tank in a
prison.

Oh, wait. Wait, maybe she
knew this. She remembered that a couple of the SF headquarters out
in the middle of the country were old prisons. There hadn’t been
enough money for new buildings, and the government had moved the SF
into these abandoned places instead. There was always money for new
prisons, after all. That was a thriving economy. But
werewolves—well, they were a public menace. At least that was how
everyone thought about it.

She craned her neck around the room.
This was a big holding cell, and it was nothing like the SF back
home, which might be institutional and bland, but was at least
modern and comfortable.

Cole!

He was lying on his back on
one of the benches. He was still naked too. She went to
him.

Well, at least they’d
bandaged his wound. She touched him. He was warm. He was
breathing.

She put a hand to her mouth.

Next to Cole, there were two
jumpsuits—the same kinds that they used back east.

So, at least they’d provided
them clothes, even if they hadn’t dressed them.

Dana reached for one but saw the blood
all over her hands.

She went across the room to the sink
and turned it on.

Only cold water, and a
trickle at that. The faucet was dull and there was rust in the bowl
of the sink. It was better than nothing. She washed herself as best
she could, but there was blood all over her body, and she didn’t
have any soap.

It took a long time.