The Moon Tells Secrets (23 page)

Destiny! Do you even know what the word means?

I know close enough.

You never knew your father, he would not say that! You can't do it alone.

Don't you understand? I don't have a choice. And if it kills me, I don't care. I'd rather die than live like the kind of freak I am. Kill me if it doesn't. Promise me you will!

Davey! Don't say that. Don't you dare say that!

But that's how I feel.

How do you know it will come?

Because tonight is when it's supposed to come, and it has been here before and it knows I'll be waiting for it.

*   *   *

Davey was gone by the time I ran through the bushes to Cade's house. He'd left the back door open, getting away as fast as he could. I wondered if those would be the last words he would say to me, about wanting me to kill him, and that tore into my heart as nothing ever had before.

He must have known it from the beginning, from the day he walked into that room with Pinto carrying on like he had that he would meet the thing again, that something evil had happened there, as Luna had put, and sooner or later that evil would come back for him.

Cade was in the living room when I rushed into the house. He met me in the kitchen, taking me in his arms.

“I heard what Davey said, but you've got to remember that he's just a kid, and kids say dumb things. They think they're stronger than they are.” The way he held me and spoke to me made me remember the first time I saw him, how I'd known he was the kind of man who could carry any kind of bags you brought with you; he'd already picked up mine.

“He says he has to fight it on his own,” I said, still not believing him. “But he's not strong enough yet—even Anna with all her craziness wouldn't want that to happen. You saw what it did to Dennie, I know what it did to Elan—I can't let that happen to my son, Cade, no matter what he thinks he has to do.”

“And we won't,” Cade said, leading me back to the couch, and I fell back onto it, not sure if I could stand up again. “We won't let it kill him.”

But even though his words were bravely spoken, I knew he was as scared as me.

“How did he look? What did he say?”

“He ate a lot. I gave him some clothes.”

“Clothes? He needed clothes?”

“Well—” He glanced away, not meeting my eyes. “—when he changes, shifts … he goes down to his skin. Other than that, sitting around naked in my kitchen, he was the same kid. Joking around, easy to talk to.”

“He shifted?” It surprised yet also eased my fears; he trusted Cade enough for that, and I knew with certainty that Cade believed me now; he knew what I was up against.

“Told me how it felt, what scared him about it, but I didn't see him do it. He said he needed to shift back so he could…” He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what it was. In order to fight what he had to fight. In order to meet his “destiny.”

“Tonight?”

“That's what he said.”

It had come down to this. All my running and hiding and looking for ways to keep us safe. All those days of not being able to catch my breath out of fear, of keeping secrets I didn't want to keep. Destiny, as Anna had called it, the one she had predicted and he now embraced. I didn't know I was crying until Cade wiped the tears off my face, holding my hands until they stopped. It was then that he went into Dennie's office and brought back an old book with a tattered cover and a manila envelope with a gun and three bullets tucked inside.

*   *   *

At four, I went through the bushes into Luna's backyard to get white ash from the gardening supplies she kept under the porch. Luna came into the yard as I was opening the jar.

“Did you actually think I would forget what tonight is, what that child is facing?” she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

I spooned the ash into a cup, avoiding her eyes.

“So what is it, white ash? Will that do it?”

“White ash and silver bullets.”

“Yeah, silver is good for every damn thing, and I've heard white ash can be handy, too. Mama used to toss it around every now and then, but it was never one of her basics. I keep it on hand to sprinkle outside just in case it works—like a good luck charm when you fly on a plane.”

I nodded and kept on spooning.

“You think I'm going to let you face that damn thing on your own?”

I stopped spooning and faced her. “We'll need you to be there after it's over one way or the other—that's when I will really need you,” I said as gently as I could. “This is between me, Davey, and the creature. It always has been. Cade is there because it picked his home, killed his wife, but this is my battle, Luna, mine and Davey's. Just like you said it was.”

“When did I say that?”

I softened my voice and reminded her. “Don't you remember that first night I stayed with you? What you said about standing my ground? About not running for the rest of my life?” Her lips parted in what couldn't be called a smile, but I knew that she did remember. “It's Davey's fight, but it's mine, too, I'm making it mine because I'm his mother, and it killed the one person in my life I loved as much as him.”

We stood there, me knowing this might be the last moment of peace I ever had. I wondered if I should thank her for all she'd done for me, what she'd given us without even realizing it.

“I'll be there when you need me,” she said, hugging me to her like she had that first day in the church, giving me her strength, allowing me to take as much as I needed.

When I came back, Cade stood by the kitchen door, uneasy and anxious. His face was tight with tension, fear, but loosened as we read aloud the passages from the book that Dennie had left us, and I thought of it like that now. Her gift to him, to us.

Dennie had underlined certain things with pink highlighter, and I tried to memorize each word about how to kill it, and I felt close to Dennie then, too, this woman who had left the clues that might save my son's life. But I was frightened by the sentence, about the evil running too deep to cure, and how he could remain unchanged. I tried not to let those words into my head.

We sat down at the kitchen table and he got out the bullets and the gun. I'd never seen silver bullets, and I was struck by their beauty—as shiny and heavy as good jewelry. Use enough ash to coat them well, Cade reminded me, make sure they're completely covered.

Cade had spent most of the morning at gun shops, buying bullets and a silencer from a dealer he knew so I could practice and nobody would report us to the cops. I remembered some of what my grandfather had told me all those years ago. About how to hold it, how to point, but this was bigger and heavier than the gun my grandfather had owned. My hand shook when I held it. Cade showed me how to center it in the web of my right hand, use the left to hold it steady, he told me, thumbs relaxed, find your stance, then aim. Breathe to relax, to control it. Don't squeeze it like a piece of fruit, hold it light, lock it light. And shoot.

He'd loaded it with the bullets he'd bought, put the silencer on, and I practiced in the backyard, hitting garbage bags packed with rags and newspapers stacked against the garage door. I was a good shot, my grandfather used to say, and Cade said it now, too, better than he was when he'd started. I believed him because I had to.

“Do you want me to take care of this for you? Please let me do it,” he begged again and again, and each time I told him no. It was my fight, not his. I didn't tell him the real reason I didn't want him to be in the room with me. If the thing killed Davey, I would go for it myself, let it kill me along with my son. I didn't want to live if it took my boy; it was as simple as that. I thought I might be in love with Cade—I was pretty sure he was with me—but I'd had too much grief for one lifetime. I would shoot until I ran out of bullets, then throw my body at it.

“Are you sure you know its name?” Cade asked when we took a break. I was too nervous to drink a sip of water. “That's the most important thing. Dennie didn't, and—”

“I think I do.”

“Think isn't good enough, Raine. You need to be sure. Dennie—”

“Doba. Its name is Doba.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded like I was, but I wasn't. Could it be her father, the uncle whose name nobody would say? Maybe it was him, not her. No. It was her. It had to be. She'd been at the carnival, hadn't she? She'd waited for us in Luna's backyard. It was she who knew where we were, who had shown up at Mack's that time. She was the strongest because she was the youngest, and Davey was younger than she; she feared him because of that.

Yet there was still a shade of doubt.

We went back outside to practice some more. Aim. Say the name. Shoot. He must have told me that a hundred times, and I did, until there were no more bullets, and it was too dark to see, until I could hold the gun without trembling, fire it without thinking. Until I remembered to say Doba's name each time I shot.

But my thoughts were on the last thing I'd read in the book, the last thing Davey had said about promising to kill him, that he didn't want to live like he was.

At eleven forty-five, we sat in the kitchen and Cade loaded the gun. We turned off the lights in the house, so my eyes could grow accustomed to the dark like a predator's would, like those of the animal I would shoot.

Sitting silently across from each other, we waited for the creature to come. And for Davey.

 

17

raine

The blue moon was full and bright, shining through Cade's kitchen windows, bathing everything in light. It seemed an omen, this brightness. No more lies. No more secrets. Nowhere else to hide.

The better to see you with, my dear.

Those lines from Little Red Riding Hood popped into my head, and I remembered how Davey would bug his eyes and giggle when I'd read them, me the wolf, him Little Red Riding Hood for just that instant.

I was the hunter tonight.

I'd asked Luna earlier why she thought it had gone to Cade's home instead of ours when it searched for Davey. Maybe it was because of that white ash I spread around, she'd said. It wouldn't bother it in human form, Doba had come into the yard without any fear, but after it shifted, the ash would have kept it away, not kill it, just make it wary. It had killed Dennie in Cade's home—gone there in both human and animal form, so it knew the surroundings, and like all beasts of prey, it liked to kill in familiar surroundings. Davey must have known that, too. The white ash may have kept him from coming home after he'd shifted. But I didn't want to think about that now.

Some things are impossible to face. They can kill you.

I remembered the words I'd said to Cade that day in Starbucks, and silently I repeated his words to me.

Not if you kill it first. Not if you kill it first. Not if you kill it first.

“You okay?” Cade whispered, bringing me back. I nodded that I was. Surprise would be the best way to shoot it, we'd decided. The moment we heard it break into Dennie's office, I'd go in and shoot immediately, not give it time to think, attack, or shift—because it certainly would. There were three bullets in the gun, and any one of them could kill it—as long as I said its name.

But was I sure of its name?

“Raine, I need to tell you something.” Cade's voice was strained and tense. He was as afraid as I was, and yet he stayed with me. “You know how I feel about you, right?”

I nodded, my throat too tight to answer.

“I just wanted you to know, before…” He didn't need to finish, because we both knew what would happen. If this didn't work, it would kill all three of us the same way it had killed Dennie and Mack, without thought or mercy.

The growl came loud and deep from outside the house. I closed my eyes, steadying myself, holding my breath.

Slow down, Mom. Slow down, Mom. Take a breath.

“Davey.” Saying his name helped me push the air from the pit of my stomach through my chest and from my lips.

A shimmering crash of shattered glass was followed by a growl and a moan as it crashed through the office window; then came the mewling whine of another animal, something small and in trouble, something as frightened as I was. I was only conscious of my stomach squeezing so hard, I thought I would be sick—of my heart beating so loud, I thought it might hear me. Davey was in that room, too.

“He's come here to draw it to him,” Cade whispered in a voice heavy with fear. “I was afraid he might do that. He must have come in when I was out. I should have checked the room when I came back. I'm sorry, Raine. I should have—” He stopped short, and we sat motionless, listening to the sound of something being thrown against the wall followed by the high-pitched squeal of a wounded animal.

Cade reached for the gun. “Let me do it, Raine. I know how to shoot, I've done it before. Let me shoot the goddamn thing before it's too late.”

“It's for me to do, not you,” I said. Davey was mine. I had to face down what wanted to kill him. It was my life that should be risked, not Cade's. I picked up the gun that lay between us, my palms sweating so hard, I was sure I would drop it, but I held it tight, too tightly. I tried to loosen my grip, like Cade had told me to do, almost like you're shaking hands, he'd said, but I couldn't do it. I counted instead—one, two, three, four—and tried to relax each muscle in my hand as I remembered how my grandfather would count for me before I aimed his gun.

In a dream state, I stepped away from Cade in slow motion into that room, hardly feeling the door as I opened and closed it behind me, knowing I had to keep in whatever wanted to get out. Breathe like Davey tells you to, I said to myself—then hold it light, aim, shoot, anywhere it hits will be good, but don't forget to say its name. Don't forget to say its name.