Moonburn (37 page)

“Please,” I said, “it’s not even a full moon.”

“That didn’t stop you from nearly biting my head off a few weeks ago!”

“Marlene,” said Emmet in his steady, John Wayne drawl, “I think you’re letting your emotions get the better of you.”

Marlene’s leathery face creased with displeasure. “Sheriff, you’re okay, of course. But there isn’t enough food and air down here for everybody.”

It was hard to tell, but I thought Emmet might be amused. “How about I only breathe once every other minute,” he said, “just to make up for Abra.”

“Very funny, but who knows how long this storm is going to last? And look at the town. By the time we get out of here, it’s probably going to be a jungle.” Marlene shook her shopping network turquoise bracelet watch farther down on her wrist and assumed the manner of a bank officer refusing a loan. “I’m afraid we need to husband our resources.”

“She’s right,” said one of the waitstaff.

“No, she’s not,” said Kayla, as the wind rattled the cellar doors. “She can’t go out in that.”

The doors rattled again, this time harder.

“She has to go now,” shrieked Marlene, pointing her dragon lady nail in my direction. “Before she turns on us!”

With a whimper, Baby scurried over to my side and cowered between my legs.

There were murmurs of agreement and others of dissent, and I instinctively stepped a little closer to the sheriff.

The doors banged this time, and someone gave a startled shriek. “Oh, my God, we’re all going to die!” It was one of the waiters: Kayla slapped him.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she said, and then put an arm around his shoulders as he started to cry.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “that’s not the storm—that’s
somebody trying to get inside.” I could hear it now, the sound of someone’s fist pounding against the door.

“Don’t let them in,” bellowed Marlene, and Kayla told her to shut up and sit down. I was liking the waitress better all the time.

“All right, listen up, everyone,” I said. “I’m going to open these doors, because we are not just going to let someone die out there.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Marlene, of course.

“This isn’t just about survival,” I said. “This is about surviving with our humanity intact.” Granted, I was probably not the best person to lecture anybody about intact humanity, since mine had been showing some definite wear and tear of late. But for some reason, nobody called me on it. “Okay,” I said, trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible, “everybody grab hold of something and brace yourselves.” I turned to Emmet. “Sheriff, can you help me with the door?”

Emmet gave me a little tip of his hat, which I thought might have been ironic. Then he grabbed the door handles, and I grabbed on to him, and we pulled hard.

Just like in the cartoons, the door opened with no resistance whatsoever, sending us both flying backward.

And as I looked up into the clear, warm summer night outside, Magda stepped out of the shadows. She was dressed in black commando gear, with a knife strapped to her thigh, a gun at her waist, and a rifle slung over her shoulder.

“The storm is over,” she said in a low, authoritative voice. “But that was just a burst of fireworks intended to shock and awe us. Now the enemy is going to send in the ground troops.” She surveyed us, as if sizing up our willingness to fight. “Some of you may have heard about bear attacks. Some of you may have heard about a new kind of rabies. The truth is that our town is being invaded by creatures that don’t belong in this dimension.”
Magda’s Romanian accent made this speech sound uncannily like one of my mother’s less successful movies. In the dramatic pause following this last remark, Marlene and Kayla began to chatter until Magda silenced them with one upraised hand. “There is no time for debate. The threat is real. And you may think you’re safe down here, but once you step out of this cellar, you’re just collateral damage.”

Of course, once Magda had said it, it seemed perfectly clear to me. The Manitou were trying to take over our reality, and the storm had just been their first salvo. I stood up. “Magda’s right,” I said, about to launch into a little spiel about banding together against a common enemy. Unfortunately, no one paid the least attention to me: instead, they all streamed up the ladder, peppering Magda with questions and suggestions. The sheriff tried to wait for me, but Magda beckoned him over and told him she needed his advice about the layout of the town.

I should have been glad that we were all teaming up. But as I climbed up out of the cellar, I couldn’t help thinking that my delusion that I was going to be a kick-ass heroine had just been cured. I was being relegated to bit player, and once again, Magda was taking the lead.

“So what are you supposed to be,” Magda said as we trudged along Route eighty-two. “Little Red Riding Hood?”

“Very funny.” I’d taken the slicker off and shoved it into the cloth bag, which was slung over my back. I had to stay pretty close to Magda or one of her group, since they had all the flashlights, and without them, the sidewalks were so dark I could hardly see my feet.

I tripped and Grigore caught me by the elbow. “I thought you looked cute in it,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Please keep up and try to be careful,” said Magda, sounding exasperated. I wasn’t living up to her vision of werewolves as a kind of superior race. She had a lot of rather unpleasant theories about how humans had weakened the species by introducing antibiotics and messing with the survival of the fittest. Well, I might be a weaker specimen, but I was the one who had come up with the idea of where to find the manitous.

Magda had wanted to climb up Old Scolder Mountain, where most of the manitou sightings had originated. I’d said that the cavern that ran underneath the cornfields to the east of town was a more logical choice. According to Red, there was a nexus of power formed by the mountain, the cavern, and the woods just behind
our cabin. If I were a big spirit bear, and I was leading an attack on a town, I know where I’d put my headquarters. So we voted: Magda, Vasile, and the sycophantic Hunter had raised their hands for the mountain, while Emmet, Kayla, and I had argued for the cavern. Grigore, to Magda’s annoyance, had broken the tie by siding with us.

“How far away are we now?” asked Grigore, who looked more like a graduate student than a warrior, despite the rifle at his waist.

“Not far. I think. I’m a little directionally challenged. And I was only there once, last summer.” The truth was, I wasn’t sure exactly how to find the cavern on my own; we were all following Emmet.

“By the way, I like the necklace.” He gave me a raffish smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Moonstone, yes? A powerful tool. But doesn’t the silver pain you?”

“Not so much now.” I touched the pendant at my neck, realizing that the silver had stopped irritating my skin, but I didn’t know if that meant I had gotten used to it, or if it had just burned away my nerve endings.

“And how is your boyfriend?” asked Grigore. “The one who collapsed in the cafe.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I began, and then I heard heavy footsteps coming up beside us.

“Grigore,” said Vasile, the older brother, chidingly. I wouldn’t have needed to ask if this one was related to Magda; he looked like the masculine version of his sister, down to the streak of white in his black hair. There was a thin scar bisecting his left cheek that lifted the corner of his mouth, making him appear as though he were half sneering. “Flirtation is not appropriate. While we fight the common enemy, we are allies. Afterward, we will have to sort out our own differences.” He gave me a look that suggested that he would be the one doing the sorting.

Grigore protested, saying something in Romanian that probably translated as, You’re not the boss of me. Vasile responded in the same language, and with a curt nod, Grigore turned to Emmet.

“Will you come with me to scout ahead?”

Emmet looked at me. I guess he figured he was my only reliable ally. “That okay with you, Abra?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Go as silently as you can,” instructed Magda, as the two men headed off into the tree line that separated the road from the cornfield. Earlier today, the corn had been nothing but snow-covered stubble; now it stood nearly shoulder high. “And the rest of you, remember, when I give the signal, we must stop talking entirely.” I wasn’t sure how, but she’d wound up taking charge of our combined bands, even though the sheriff seemed a more logical choice.

Who was I kidding. Growing up, she’d probably played Resistance while the other kids were playing house.

“So, what exactly is the plan?” Kayla asked, quickening her pace to catch up to me. There was a fine sheen of sweat on her face, and she was struggling with the pace. It was petty of me, but I was glad that there was someone here more out of shape than I was. I got most of my exercise as a wolf. As a person, I’d been neglecting my cardio.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “I think we’re probably going to try to get the drop on them.” I felt silly, saying it, but it was hard not to get swept up in the whole adventure film feel of this thing. Even if I wasn’t a kick-ass heroine, I was a guerrilla fighter, wearing a bandoleer and marching off to save my boyfriend and my friend and the town.

“We’re probably going to get killed, then,” said Kayla, with surprising matter-of-factness.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “Magda and her brothers look like they know what they’re doing.”

“I didn’t say
they
were going to get killed. They have guns and rifles. But I’ve got a kitchen knife, and you’ve got hypodermics.”

“And a scissors.”

Kayla gave me a sidelong look before going on. “I’m assuming that none of you can change—oh, stop, of course I know about all of you having lycanthropy, I had to have a test myself after, you know.” She didn’t mention Hunter’s name, but she self-consciously tucked a strand of fair hair behind one ear. “In any case, I don’t think the odds are stacked in our favor.”

I trudged along, not saying anything. I realized now why Magda was in charge instead of me. I was a coward.

“Hey, girls,” said Hunter, who was conspicuously on the outside of Magda’s inner circle. In his khakis and blue oxford shirt, he looked like he’d headed out for the country club and accidentally grabbed a scythe instead of a golf club. “Never thought I’d see you two getting so chummy.”

Kayla just gave him a withering look and strode on in her white tailored shirt, little black miniskirt, and sensible shoes, a zaftig waitress on the warpath.

When all this was over, if we were both still alive, I was going to buy that girl a drink.

I indicated Hunter’s scythe. “What are you planning on doing with that, anyway? Going to landscape something to death?”

“Something like that,” said Hunter, with a grin. “I figure we might need to hack our way out through the undergrowth.”

Actually, that made sense. “I have to admit,” I began, but Magda held up her hand and shushed me. Grigore had returned, and he gave his report in breathless Romanian.
In the hushed silence, I could hear all the night insects and frogs trilling and chirping. What do you have to be so happy about, I thought.

“They are at the cavern,” Magda said, without acknowledging that I had been correct. “All right. I think we have to have a plan. The best fighters—Vasile, Grigore, Emmet, and myself—will circle around through the woods. The rest of you should approach directly through the corn. Abra, perhaps you can make a diversion?”

I looked over at Kayla, remembering her estimation of our chances for surviving this night. “I have sedatives,” I said, “but they’re only good at close range. And all Kayla has is a knife. Maybe you want to give us at least one gun?”

“We can’t waste the ammo,” said Magda brusquely.

“Wait a damn minute,” Hunter broke in. He looked as though he were about to throw a major fit, and I thought, He isn’t a total prick, he’s going to argue against leaving Kayla and me defenseless.

“What’s all this about the best fighters?” Hunter moved the scythe from his shoulder and planted it firmly in the ground. “Magda, I think you and I need to have a little talk about what exactly my role is in this relationship.”

For a moment, I was so pissed off that I really thought about stabbing Hunter with one of my needles. The rush of anger gave me a strange pang; I missed my wolf. I hated these dark, moonless nights when my sense of hearing and smell were at their poorest.

But we ought to be able to see the moon tonight, I thought, as Magda launched into Hunter, telling him that he was not working as a team player.

The moon should have been just past full, and Hunter and Magda and her brothers and I should have still been feeling its pull. Of course, it was also supposed to be
winter, so I hadn’t been paying attention to the particular way reality had been distorted.

“Kayla,” I said, “do me a favor.”

“Sure.” She looked at me a little suspiciously. “Unless you’re going to tell me to drop dead or something.”

“Come on, Kayla, really.”

“You have to admit, you’ve been pretty harsh. And I’ve been trying to show you that I’m sorry for how I was with you.”