Moon of the Terrible (Seasons of the Moon) (2 page)

And then he hung up.

Scott stared at the phone in his hand as Seth’s name blinked and vanished from the screen.

“Nice,” Levi said. “Good leadership skills.” Bekah slapped his arm.

“Something is wrong,” Abel said, ignoring the twins.

Scott turned his chair around again. “Rylie and Seth are both adults now. They’re entitled to make their own decisions.”

Abel shook his head. “No. You don’t get it.
Something is wrong
.”

“I can see why you think that Rylie getting married is wrong, but that doesn’t mean you have to freak out about it,” Levi said.

He gritted his teeth. “I know my brother. I know when something’s off. Seth never,
ever
says that he loves me.”
And Rylie wouldn’t run off to get married without warning.

“Well.” Scott pushed his chair back and stood. “It’s a lot to think about. Maybe we should—”

“Get a search party together,” Abel said. “We can track them down.”

“I don’t think they want to be found,” Bekah said. She had a dreamy look in her eyes.

“Fine. I’ll go alone.” Abel turned to leave the office.

“Stop right there,” Scott said sharply. “We need you here. You’re an integral part of the pack.” When that didn’t stop Abel, he went on to add, “I understand you’re angry and dismayed—I would be too, but it’s late. Why don’t you at least think about it for the night?”

He stopped with one hand on the doorknob. His knuckles were pale from gripping it too hard.

Think about it for the night? When for all he knew, Rylie could be getting married the next morning?

Abel flung the door open and left.

Many miles away, Seth turned
off the satellite phone, and a gray-skinned hand snatched it out of his fingers before he could react.

Eleanor pocketed the device and stepped back. “Good boy. Did it sound like they believed you?”

“Probably,” Seth said dully.

She laughed. She seriously
laughed
.

Seth tugged on his wrist experimentally. His captors had left one arm free so that he could use the phone, but his other was shackled. The chain looped through a hook on the wall and connected to Rylie’s wrist on the other end. She was still unconscious and didn’t stir at the motion.

The cell was better than being stuck in the crawlspace beneath a mobile home, which was what Eleanor had done one of the last times she held Seth captive. It was a broad, dusty room, like someone had dug into the dirt with a shovel. Roots jutted out of the crumbling walls. But there was a solid base of rock behind him, reinforced with cement bricks, and that was what Seth and Rylie had been tethered to.

It was almost laughable to think that his mother had captured him often enough to compare the quality of the lodgings. Almost.

“Well,” Seth said. “This is fun.”

Eleanor gave a thin-lipped smile. “We’ve been overdue for a family reunion.” Her ankle was ragged, baring the bone underneath, but there was no blood. It didn’t look like she was in any pain, either. The skin was dusty and dry.

“Are you a…?”

He wanted to ask her,
Are you a zombie?
But the words wouldn’t seem to come out. It felt ridiculous to say it. And yet there she was, standing in front of him as angry and alive as she had ever been.

“Am I dead?” Eleanor prompted. Her hand smoothed down his cheek, and the skin was cool and spongy. The exposed bone of her fingertips scraped his chin. “What do you think, son?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re right. I’m dead.” She straightened and spun with her arms out, like she was enjoying the sunshine in summer. “I’m dead!” Her voice echoed off of the cell.

So she wasn’t just dead. She was probably crazy, too.

“How?” Seth asked.

“Consider it a temporary loan,” Eleanor said. “There are ways to reanimate the dead, but it doesn’t last long. It’s… flawed.” She parted the filmy dress over her stomach. There was a hole where her intestines should have been, and he could see all the way through to her spine. “But giving an old body new life? That’s much more difficult. It requires a much more powerful sacrifice.” She turned her black eyes on Rylie. “Like a werewolf.”

Seth didn’t even think before reacting. He leaned forward, straining against the chains.

“Don’t touch her!”

“I can’t believe you came out of my womb.” Her hand trailed down her stomach, and for a horrifying moment, he thought that she was about to show him the aforementioned organ. But then she let the cloth fall closed again. “You and that waste of breath known as Abel.”

There it was again—that all-too-familiar feeling of rejection, and being hated by his own mother, and the nauseating sense of defeat. He had thought he was done with that.

“Abel is twice the man you ever would have let him become,” he said.

Eleanor sniffed. It whistled down her dry nasal cavity like wind through an abandoned house. “I don’t need either of you now. I have a son. A
better
son.”

The dread sank even deeper in Seth’s gut.

“Cain,” he said.

She nodded with a triumphant smile. “Cain.”

“You had a son with Aden, didn’t you? The werewolf?”

Her smile slipped. “How did you know about that?”

“I read your diary,” Seth said.

Eleanor paced, and her feet left tracks in the dust. “Did you see the part where he started screwing another woman? Or the part where I tortured him with silver and ripped out his cheating heart?”

“I didn’t read that far,” Seth said. But he was not even a little bit surprised.

“He thought that he could love me and leave me.” She gave a short sniff. “I guess he was right, in the end. But he left me a present first.” She ran her hand over her hollow stomach again.

“So I have another brother.”

“A better brother. A loyal brother. A brother who learned that I died, and harnessed the forces of Hell to bring me back. Not an idiot boy who ran off to college and is planning to marry a werewolf,” Eleanor said.

The shock must have shown on his face, because she laughed riotously at him.

“Yes, I know! Cain is watching. Cain is
always
watching. You would be shocked at how much I know.” Eleanor shoved her face close to his. “Cain is with the pack, even now. Before anyone realizes that he’s there…”

She snapped her bony fingers. Seth jumped at the sharp sound of it.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“First, Cain is going to kill the entire pack. Then he’s going to come back, and he’s going to kill your girlfriend to give me life.” Eleanor smoothed her hand down Seth’s cheek again. It was only then that he noticed the mark on the inside of her wrist: the tattoo of a bleeding apple. “As for you? We’ll have to see.”

A raspy, rattling cough rose out of her chest, and she hacked into her hand. Black fluid splattered on her fingers.

She backed away, stumbling a little.

Pagan must have been listening, because she immediately opened the door to the cell. She was wearing a hip holster weighed down by a handgun, like a cowgirl in black leather about to meet another shooter at high noon.

“Can I have fun with them?” Pagan asked, giving Eleanor a hand up the stairs. She wasn’t too steady on her destroyed ankle.

All of Eleanor’s mirth was suddenly gone. “Maybe later. I’m feeling a bit under the weather now.”

The demon supported Eleanor under the elbow as she passed through the door.

“See you soon,” Pagan said.

She blew a kiss at Seth and shut the door with a very solid
clang
.

T
HREE

Versus

Getting married.
Abel glared his
fury at the grassy fields, which were dotted with Union tents. It felt like he had swallowed a jagged boulder.

“Whatever,” he muttered, stalking to one end of the patio, and then the other. “Forget them. Who cares? It’s not like I wanted to be best man or something. Screw weddings.”

So maybe they were eloping. He wouldn’t put anything past Seth after that moronic proposal in some stupid cow field.

Abel never would have proposed in a field.

He growled at the train of his own thoughts. “What am I thinking? Shut
up
.” Marriage was never an option for him in the first place.

But that didn’t mean he wanted Rylie to marry Seth, either.

Levi strolled out of the kitchen, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Talking to yourself is a sign of schizophrenia. You’re at the age where that starts kicking in. Maybe you should talk to my dad about it.”

Abel fumed in silence. His muscles vibrated with tension.

Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him.

But Levi kept talking.

“If Rylie bailed, I guess there
is
plenty of room for a new Alpha now. And I thought I was going to have to fight for it.”

Don’t hit him…

“You know what I’m going to do as soon as I become Alpha?”

“No, but I bet you’re going to tell me,” Abel said through clenched teeth.

Levi strolled over to him at the edge of the patio. His golden eyes were gleaming. “I’m going to get rid of you. That’s what I’m going to do. You’re like a poison in the pack. And I’m going to excise that poison.”

Abel’s fists clenched.

He glanced in the kitchen. Empty. He looked out at the grassy property. Also empty. Everyone was inside their tents for the moment.

No witnesses.

He hauled back and punched Levi across the face.

After wanting to do it for hours—actually, for months—all of the energy captive in his muscles was unleashed in a single blow. Levi was flung backwards off of the porch. He sprawled on the grass.

Abel stalked toward the other man, grabbed his shirt, and lifted him off of the ground.

“I am sick of listening to you talk,” he growled, preparing to throw Levi.

There was commotion in the house. A door opening.

“Wait! Stop!” Bekah shouted.

Levi used the distraction to pull the silver pentacle out of his shirt. It was enchanted to keep from hurting him, and let him transform between moons. But Abel had no protection from it.

Levi rammed the silver pentacle into his face. Abel roared and dropped him, twisting away from the burn.

The sting of silver was even more sickening when he was still recovering from the recent gunshot wound. It made his ears ring and his eyes blur.

A fist appeared in his vision the instant before it struck.

Levi punched Abel in the face, and when he staggered, Levi struck again in the gut. He doubled over as all of the breath rushed out of him.

He used his momentum to pile-drive into Levi, sending them both to the ground.

“Stop it!” Bekah cried.

It was more of a wrestle than an actual boxing match, but Levi fought dirty, jabbing his fingers into Abel’s face and biting down on whatever limbs he could reach. He was full of jabbing elbows and clawed fingers.

The fight made Abel’s wolf side wake up. He growled as he fought back, snapping his teeth and fighting to stay on top.

Levi’s hands closed on his throat and squeezed.

He was already short on breath. Black fuzz crossed Abel’s vision.

It took all of his strength to flip Levi onto his back, pin him down with his knees, and rip the hands off of his neck. Abel roared as he punched one more time—the
last
time.

He snapped Levi’s head to the side so hard that something snapped.

Blood trickled out of Levi’s nose and down his lip.

He didn’t try to fight back. His eyes were dazed and unfocused.

Abel’s wolf was satisfied.

“What did you
do
?” Bekah shrieked, grabbing his arm and pulling him off of Levi.

“He started it,” Abel said.

“Oh my God!”

She dropped beside her twin brother and shook him. “Levi? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Abel glowered at Levi’s semi-conscious form. “You don’t have what it takes to be Alpha, asshole. Think about that next time you pick a fight with someone who’s twice your size and twice as mean.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Bekah said. There were tears in her eyes.

“I know where I’m not wanted,” Abel said. “When Levi stops seeing stars, tell him he can have what he wants. I’m gone. I’m not sticking around wherever he is.”

“Where are you going?” she called after him as he strode into the kitchen.

“I’m going to find Rylie,” Abel said. “And I’m going to bring the
real
Alpha back to take care of her pack.”

Abel randomly selected a set
of car keys from the drawer in the kitchen and then headed out to the vehicles parked on the lawn.

A group of people was already waiting for him: Trevin, one of the werewolves from the Gresham sanctuary, the girl with the pixie cut, and Vanthe. “Took you long enough,” Trevin said.

Abel frowned. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We heard that Seth and Rylie are in trouble, and that you’re going to go save them. Trevin and I thought you might want some backup.” Vanthe puffed up his chest, as if to show off how impressive his stature could be. He was pretty tall, but he wasn’t very muscular.

Well, it
was
going to be a long drive. Company wouldn’t hurt. And it would go a lot faster if they could take shifts behind the wheel.

“Whatever,” Abel said, pressing the “unlock” button on the keychain dongle. The headlights on one of the vans flashed. “What about you? What do you want?” He addressed the girl with the pixie cut directly. What was her name? Crystal? She already had a backpack on one shoulder.

“Levi’s already made it pretty clear that I’m not wanted here,” she said with a shrug. “Us east wingers have to stick together, right?”

“No,” Abel said.

She smiled brightly. “So where are we going?”

“Hunting.” He popped the trunk on the van and threw his bag inside. “There’s a good chance we’re going to come across bad guys. People will die.”

It didn’t faze Vanthe at all, but Crystal missed a step as she approached the van.