Moonburn (9 page)

“Good morning, Doc.”

I groaned, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head. Red, who was clearly not suffering from whatever was ailing me, was now kissing his way up my instep and calf. I made a little flailing motion, trying to shake him off, but it was a pretty weak effort.

“I know how to make you happy.” Now Red was nipping his way toward the back of my knees. I made a sort of convulsive hand and foot movement, trying to communicate the fact that I was in real distress here. The nips were climbing my inner thigh, at almost the same pace as the nausea was climbing my esophagus.

I curled up into a fetal ball before looking over my shoulder. Red was looking feral and happy: He liked a bit of a chase. He was wearing jeans and a shirt, and he smelled of pine and sandalwood and smoke, with a faint undertone of musk. It was that delicious woodsy aftershave again. Except that he had said he wasn’t wearing
any fragrance. “What time is it?” My voice was hoarse, as though I’d been shouting at the top of my lungs. Or howling.

“Nearly eleven. Malachy said to let you sleep in. I told him you had to let off a bit of steam last night.”

A bit of steam. I wasn’t sure exactly what that had entailed. I had a vague memory of going to Moondoggie’s, of drinking the Tuesday apple martini special, and not eating the chicken surprise. There might have been a second martini in there somewhere, but nothing to account for the class-five hangover that was steadily building in strength and intensity. “I need to get up.”

“Mal said not to worry about coming in today.” Red curled himself around me, his clothing rough against my bare skin. “You didn’t want to talk about it last night, but I got the impression it was a pretty rough day at work.”

Suddenly the musky scent of him felt overwhelming, and I grunted as the pain in my head battled for precedence with the bile in my throat. Funny to think that I’d once fantasized about having a man who would spoon with me and pay attention to my moods and feelings, back in the days when I’d been married to a narcissistic lout. Now all I wanted was some breathing space. And possibly some throwing-up space, as well.

“That was some run last night, huh?” Red lifted the hair off the back of my neck, which felt good, and then starting kissing my nape.

“We ran?”

“Oh, God, yeah. I couldn’t keep up with you.” He inhaled deeply, and I knew he was drawing in the scent of my hair and skin.

“Stop. I smell awful.”

“Not to me. Not to any shifter, for that matter. And considering last night, I’m thinking we should be calling you a shifter, Girl.”

I threw the covers off my head, needing cooler air. “What happened last night?”

“Yeah, good question. Let me think: dinner, drive home, something out of the ordinary, but what was it, again?”

I punched him. “Red, I’m not feeling up to this.”

Red smiled at me, quizzical and fond. “You don’t remember?”

“My head hurts. I’d like to throw up, but I’m worried that my head might split open. My body feels like I was hauling rocks, or maybe getting hit by them.”

Red’s smile faded. “You really don’t remember.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, then bumped my head on a lamp. “Oh, Jesus, I hate living in this damn cabin.”

There was a momentary silence, like a vacuum of sound, as we both heard what I’d said. “Sorry, I’m just … I feel lousy, that’s all.”

“No, it’s me who’s sorry. Too caught up in my own good mood, I guess.” I felt the bed dip as Red stood up. He walked away, opened the freezer, and came back with a bag of frozen peas. “Here, put that on your head.”

“Thanks.” I couldn’t look at him, so I didn’t try. “So, Red, what did happen last night?”

“You shifted.”

Now I did turn to him, but he was looking away, measuring coffee into the pot. “I went furry before the moon was even half full?”

“Yep.” I watched Red pour the water, all the excitement and pleasure gone from his face and posture. There was something else that had happened, I was sure of it, something that had revved him up and filled him with happiness. But before I could inquire further, the competition between pounding head and roiling stomach came to an abrupt conclusion. I bolted for the toilet with my hand clapped over my mouth.

*    *    *

The next day I decided that I couldn’t put off talking to Red any longer. Nearly thirty hours had passed since my lost night, and we still hadn’t discussed it, just as we hadn’t discussed the strange moment with Malachy.

It was mainly my fault. Wanting to escape the tension at home, I’d taken two Alka-Seltzer and shambled off to work, where Malachy didn’t ask me how I felt, or try to comfort me about Queenie. In return, I didn’t confront him about his nameless illness. Neither of us acknowledged our strange moment of intimacy, which was a relief. Maybe if we pretended it hadn’t happened, it would just go away.

To be honest, I didn’t even like thinking about me lying underneath my boss on my front lawn in broad daylight. I wasn’t sure what was worse: the knowledge that Malachy hadn’t been interested in taking what I was offering, or the realization that I’d been offering. It wasn’t that I’d just discovered a secret attraction to my boss—way, deep down, I knew I wasn’t attracted. It was like having some sort of strange sex dream about some nerdy, bow-tied high school teacher you didn’t even like. Which had happened to me, back in the tenth grade. Maybe in my wolf form I was still unformed and curious. Just what I needed, another adolescence to endure.

So, as much as I would have liked to tell Malachy about my latest episode, I decided that it was better to leave that Pandora’s box unopened.

I had been steeling myself all day for a serious conversation with Red, but he’d been out when I got home. He must have come back after I’d gone to sleep, which was a relief, really. I’d figured we’d talk in the morning.

But when I’d just started waking up, Red had placed his hand on the curve of my hip, a question. Before I’d had a chance to think about it, I’d rolled away. A moment later, I had turned over to see him lying on his
back, his hands under his head. His sharp cheekbones had cast dark shadows over his eyes, showing me the wolf in his face, and for a moment, I had wished for him to shift so there would be no need for words. That faint, delicious odor of forest and musk still clung to him—it might even have grown a shade more intense. If he had been in wolf form, I thought, he wouldn’t have been so tentative and I’d have wanted to touch him.

But, a little voice intruded, you can’t conduct an entire relationship out of just one aspect of yourself. As usual, the little voice sounded like my mother. I’ve never been sure, however, whether this is because, deep down, I recognize my mother’s innate wisdom on such matters, or whether the sheer force of her personality has colored the tone of my conscience. In any case, I’m not at all sure that a B movie star turned animal rescuer is really the best source of relationship wisdom.

So I pushed aside my doubts. I loved Red, and I felt lousy about a bunch of things: yesterday’s outburst, not noticing that he’d been injured, the whole rolling around on the ground with Malachy thing. So I did what most American women probably do when they want to please their men. I went shopping for steak.

Before my change, I’d been a vegetarian, and even now, I only ate meat at certain times of the month, and I preferred it to arrive on my plate fully cooked and sauced and as unlike a living, breathing cow as possible. At least, that’s what I liked in my human form. When I was furry and four-legged, I would happily have torn a chunk out of a cow’s chest, were the opportunity to arise.

But right now I was as human as I’d ever be, and shopping for raw meat, touching it and washing it and sloshing it around in marinade, well, that was a sacrifice I would have made only for love. I stared at the porterhouse, trying to remember if lots of little flabby white
veins of fat running through the meat was desirable or not.

“Excuse me, but you’re blocking the aisle.”

I turned around, my muscles tightening at the sound of that familiar, sultry, accented voice. “Hello, Magda.” I glared up at the woman who was living with my soon-to-be ex in the home we’d shared. She was wearing a fitted red wool coat and had a new, short haircut that showcased the dramatic streak of white in her dark hair. She had fifteen years on me, but I felt like a gnome standing beside her in unflattering jeans and a puffy vest from the Tractor Supply store.

“Oh, hello, Abra,” said Magda, as if she hadn’t known perfectly well it was me. Besides being a werewolf, Magdalena Ionescu was a senior wolf researcher and an experienced tracker—not the type to let her mind drift while meandering around the supermarket. I had no idea why she was playing coy with me, but it was making me bristle. We weren’t friends, and I saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

“Oh, don’t these look delicious.” Magda plucked the other four porterhouse steaks out of the display and smiled at me. “Are you taking that one, or not? I don’t mean to seem greedy, but my brothers are coming to visit.”

Belatedly, I comprehended that her fake friendliness was a form of aggression. If we’d been in wolf form, she’d have marched on over to sniff me before knocking me to the ground.

“I’m sorry, but I’m making a special dinner for Red.” I threw the last porterhouse into my own wagon.

“You know, I’m very happy for the two of you,” Magda murmured, leaning forward as if confiding in an intimate. “I know that you and Hunter were never right for each other, and I think it’s marvelous that you’ve found someone who suits you. And I’ve always liked
coyotes—they’re very crafty, and they do make up in trickiness what they lack in size and strength.”

I felt my right eyelid begin to twitch. “First of all, Red’s not a coyote, he’s a red wolf. Second of all, I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

Magda gave a low, husky laugh. “My goodness, I seem to have hit a nerve. I’m sorry, I have nothing against Red being Coyote. In fact, considering that you can’t have children, I think choosing someone from a different group makes a lot of sense.”

Belatedly, I glanced around to see if anyone was listening to our conversation. Northsiders were experts at ignoring the supernatural weirdness all around them, and we were speaking very softly, but a small town is a small town: People care deeply about other people’s business.

I waited till two women had pushed their shopping carts around a corner, then said, “What do you mean, since I can’t have children? Just because I didn’t get pregnant last time doesn’t mean I can’t have children.”

Magda bared her teeth in a smile. “Poor Abra. You really don’t have a clue, do you? And yet you are a veterinarian, so you must know about breeding cycles in wolves and dogs.” In case I still hadn’t made the connection, she said, “False pregnancies, my dear. A nondominant female hardly ever whelps a litter.”

The moment she said it, I realized that I never really thought of myself as being half wolf. The way I saw it, I only moonlighted as a wolf; human was my day job.

But what Magda was implying was that I couldn’t get pregnant because I wasn’t assertive or alpha enough. In the wild, nondominant wolf females cycle with the alpha. Even if they don’t breed, they go through the symptoms of pregnancy along with the lead bitch, and after the leader’s pups are born, the other females produce milk, so they can nurse the pups when the mother is off on a hunt.

But even when lower-ranking females do become pregnant, they tend not to carry to term. It’s not like a human miscarriage—there’s no blood, no outward sign at all. Veterinarians don’t really understand it, but the body seems to just reabsorb the pregnancy with no ill effects.

My face must have revealed some of what I was feeling, because Magda said, “Oh, now I’ve upset you.” She leaned over the meat counter and absently pressed her finger into a package of liver so that blood pooled beneath the plastic. “But you wouldn’t really want to start a family with someone like Red, would you, now?” Adding the liver to her cart, Magda met my eyes. “In Romania, we have two kinds of unwolf—vârcolac and pricolici. But Red, he says he is shapeshifter, yes? What is his word for it—Limmikin. He told me about it when I stayed with him.”

Now that was rubbing salt in my wounds. I still hadn’t gotten over the fact that Red had allowed Magda to stay at his cabin when she’d first arrived in Northside. Sure, he’d had his reasons—Hunter was new to his change, and Red had been scared that he’d tear me apart. Magda was supposed to step in as his mentor, helping him through the mindless violence of his early transformations. But part of mentoring him involved screwing his brains out, which was how he’d gotten infected with the virus in the first place.

So I wasn’t exactly grateful to Red for putting Magda up. I wasn’t actively angry, though—at least not unless I thought about it.

“I know all about the Limmikin,” I said stiffly. “It’s the Mohawk term for a shapeshifter.”

“So you know that the term is not a complimentary one. Ah, I see you did not hear this. The Limmikin are—How do I explain this? They are like the gypsies of the human world. Thieves. Fortune-tellers. Con artists.”

I gritted my teeth. “You forgot the part where they invented flamenco and suffered centuries of persecution. And before you say anything else, you should know that my father is Gitano. From Barcelona.”

“How charming. Yet another thing you have in common with Red.” Magda leaned down, emphasizing the difference in our heights. “But you should know that you are different kinds of therians. The strain you carry, the strain that comes from me, this is pricolici. There is also vârcolac,” she added, making the motion of spitting over her left shoulder. “Those disgusting dabblers in dark arts. But at least we both have the sacred link to the moon. But your man, he is not lycanthrope at all. He is a lesser kind of thing, which is why I allow you to remain in our territory.”

Sometimes I wondered if Magda had learned her English from my mother’s old movies. “Lady, you have issues.” I was aware of people openly watching us now, some of them clients, but the anger was pulsing through me now, pushing at my ribs, snapping my knuckles, making each hair on my head feel as if it were electric with fury.