BloodMoon (12 page)

We went into the pool house and down into the basement. I ditched my dirty clothes onto the washer and pulled a robe around myself, and then I showed her the cage with water dispenser and food bowls and the bedding, and the secret panel that opened up to the tunnel leading to the duck blind. “There are chains. But I don’t leave them lying out.”

“I’ve stayed in worse,” she said.

“Where are you staying now anyway? I mean, if you’re coming here to live.”

“Oh, I’m over at the lodge on the lake, but they’re talking about moving up to the ridge in the ranch house. I mean, Master Shelby hired a caretaker for the place, but Sully wants to bring some of his livestock and horses in from Montana. I love to ride.”

“I’m surprised the horses let you ride them.”

“They’re special horses.”

My brain took a leap of imagination and I watched a naked Jackson riding off into the sunset on horseback, but what I said was, “Boy, am I out of the loop.” I determined to rectify that situation after the doggie delegation was gone.

We went back upstairs and I made some coffee. We sat down at my kitchenette table.

“It must be weird being the only one of your kind,” Colby said.

“I’m not the only one of my kind. Otherwise no one would know anything about me.”
I can’t be,
I thought. A girl could die of terminal uniqueness.

“The only documented one, then. That we know of in modern times.”

“Oh, I have documents now? I’d like to see those. Am I pure-bred?” I sighed and wondered if I were getting too comfortable. Letting others make a lot of decisions for me. I mean, I thought that I’d regained a modicum of control when Will took the bite and became a lycanthrope. But the pack itself still needed to reproduce in its own way. “So, how’d you get here?”

“Master Shelby has several cars, and I borrowed one with a driver. He’ll come pick me up when I call or text him, although I think he’s parked near the irrigation ditch down the street listening to an audiobook. He’s kind of cute, for an intimate, and he says it’s a great way to pass the time.”

“What, being an intimate?”

“No, audiobooks. Duh.”

Funny that sex-mad teens still missed the sex jokes. I guess I was too subtle.

I heard a knock at my door, and then my sister turned the knob and stuck her head in the crack. “Ashlee, why don’t you and your guest come to the main house for dinner?” She suggested this in that tone where you knew it wasn’t a suggestion.

“Sure,” I said, glancing at Colby.

That seemed to be the signal for my sister to enter. “I’m Amber,” she said and stuck out her hand. “Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you earlier. My son John Robert was the one who met you at the door.”

“Colby Rio.” She clasped my sister’s hand, looking back and forth from me to her as if to compare.

“I’m assuming chicken is okay.”

“Uh, sure.”

“As long as I don’t have to chase it down,” I said.

Amber shot me
the look
. “Colby, why don’t you come with me while Ashlee showers and we can get to know each other? I’ll introduce you to Spanky and Siegfried.”
And for God’s sake Ashlee, put on some clothes. I don’t have your wolf’s hearing and even I can hear Colby’s heart palpitations. It’s not fair to dangle red meat in front of a hungry wolf and then say no, so unless you want to go there, stop teasing the girl.

Hey, feel free to make her fantasies come true,
I shot back.

Amber made a strangled sound in her throat and led the child out the door.

I applied myself to the three S’s – shower, shampoo, and shave the legs – and forced myself to dress like a grown-up.

Sigh. I’d rather be naked.

“You’re going to live up on the hill with a couple of gay men and a pack of werewolves?” my sister exclaimed at Colby over dinner. “Absolutely not! You should stay with us.”

I looked at my twin sister in shock. This was
so
not normal. I pinged on the twin bond to get her attention, which was something I was only lately learning to do. Though I sometimes resented his being in my head, Siegfried was proving to be quite the teacher in spite of his silly poodle ways.

Amber looked at me slyly but shook her head. Elle was even looking at her like she’d grown a second one. Obviously, she was up to something and I guess I’d just have to wait to find out.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“Um. I’m flattered,” Colby mumbled over the corn on the cob she was gnawing on. My sister put another napkin down next to her and she grabbed at it like a life preserver. “But, I’ll have to ask my father and get permission from the pack.”

“Why do you have to ask your father?” I said.

“Because I just do, all right? At least while he’s still in town.”

This girl really needed to grow a pair.

Siegfried stuck his nose in my crotch and I grabbed his muzzle underneath the table, which is what he wanted as he began licking the butter juice off my fingers.

The child doesn’t know it yet, but she just became interference for when your stepmother is here,
Siegfried commented. Okay, maybe talking to my sister’s familiar wasn’t all bad. I looked at Amber with a new appreciation.

She smirked at me. “Siegfried. Don’t beg,” she said, for Colby’s benefit. “I’m sure they’ll say its fine. We girls need to stick together. And we’ve got plenty of room. Have you thought about a job? We could always use a live-in kid-sitter.”

You do know that Colby’s a lycanthrope, right?
I thought at her.

She shrugged.
What’s another werewolf in the family?

You were all twisted up about me living across the lawn from JR and now you want Colby to stay inside the house?

I just said that. I know you’d never hurt JR.

I shook my head at Amber’s contradictions.
You sure Elle is going to be on board with this?

She will be.

I always assumed that a mature relationship would be manifest in compromise, but ever since I can remember it felt like my sister always got her way. Maybe they compromised in the bedroom, I thought, and then shut the twin bond down. My sister gave me a look that said
Seriously? You went there?

Colby and I started clearing the table while Elle and Amber retired to their bedroom to “have a talk.”

At dinner up at the ranch house on Friday night I presented the scarves, wrapped in foil gift boxes, to the ladies of the delegation. I even gave one to Sierra. It would have been déclassé to do otherwise.

She looked like she didn’t know what to do with it, but followed suit as the rest of the women put the packages in their purses. I wasn’t good at small talk, but the scarves gave me a chance to tell them a little bit about my hobby. They were gracious and my estimation of the doggie dignitaries rose, with the one obvious exception.

Most expressed regrets that Colby wouldn’t be with them during MoonFall, but secretly all envied her the chance to pioneer a new kind of regime. They may have convinced themselves that they were satisfied with pack status quo, but everyone wanted something unique and, presumably, better, for their daughters and sons.

As the newest and lowest in established status, Sierra mostly stayed silent among these bitches. When she did try to speak, they verbally wolf-packed her until she bared her metaphorical throat and slunk away. Danika even pulled me aside and let me know that as far as they were concerned, I was the wounded party to Sierra’s prior shenanigans.

My impression of these women went up a couple of notches and I found myself grateful and humbled by their perceptiveness. It was like we were the Astronaut Wives Club and I was Annie Glenn, the one with the invisible stutter.

Oh, well. If different meant special, I was riding the short bus and happy to do it.

The evening waned and we all looked toward the waxing moon, itching to shed our human skins and run free. The menfolk had left us to it and we took advantage of the night to shift and hunt rabbits that had been released before we’d gotten there.

“Hi,” Amber said in my head, and I realized something was different.

“This ain’t the twin bond.”

“I did the ride-along spell, just for a little while.”

“On me?”

“No, on myself, silly. You’re just the target.”

Exasperation. “That’s what I meant. This is really rude, you know, jumping into my head without permission.”

“You can always block me out.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure.”

I stuck my fingers in my ears. “Om mani padme hum…om mani padme hum…”

“It’s not working.”

“So you lied about me being able to block you?”

“No, that’s just what Siegfried told me.”

“Guess I’ll have to get him to teach me how to do it.” I sighed. “It’s okay for now.”

She gave me a running commentary on the experience of turning and being a wolf for the first time – for her – until she realized that we actually were going to kill and eat the bunnies. Then she blinked out with a final “Ew,” and good riddance.

This made me think of a traumatic episode from when we were little, maybe three or four years old. Mornings we went to Happy Tyme Day Care and Preschool to give my mother a break from toting around four children – Amber, me, Adam and Whelan. They had gentle angora rabbits there, pets for the kids.

One morning we arrived to the horrific sight of rabbit parts and broken cages and bright red blood on earth tone fur. They said it was wild dogs, but now I wondered.

It didn’t bother me as much as it had Amber. I was always the tomboy, she the girly-girl.

Afterward, we shifted back and used the rough open showers installed in the back of the barn. Lots of good naked woman flesh. Amber would be disappointed she’d cut out so quickly.

Colby looked like she’d seen it all before and she wasn’t staring at me anymore. I guess it’s true what they say, that a little bit of strategically placed clothing is far more arousing than simple nudity.

We rinsed and soaped off the dirt, blood and grime and though some of the women stayed up and hit the hot tub and the pool, Colby headed for bed and I jogged home in the moonlight.
Maybe everything will work out after all,
I thought as I finally slipped into my own bed at about two.

I slept until noon.

He stared at me with a wicked grin on his face. “Tonight’s the night,” he began to sing. “For the sinners and the saints. When the worlds collide, in a beautiful display.” He was singing Toby Mac,
City on our Knees
and I wondered at his choice, but I did love the song and he rarely sang. Will had been in choir with us at school, but he rarely sang out loud anymore. I guess he was self-conscious.

I closed my eyes and let him serenade me awake.

We spent the afternoon lounging around the pool. Elle had taken JR to the city while Amber and the Street Witches prepared for the ritual that evening. Adam had arrived with a bunch of hard-looking men and women in black SWAT gear, kissed my cheek hello, told me we’d catch up later, and went to set up a perimeter on Mt. Rettig. He said he was using motion sensors and his team was loaded up with tranq darts for batshit crazy werewolves or any other threat.

I hoped he wouldn’t have to use them. The lycanthropes, nonconformists that they were, were pooh-poohing the whole Blood Moon warning, but I wasn’t so sure. It seems like tempting fate to even do it. Why not just skip the whole thing and everyone stay indoors? But in the end, they persuaded me to join in. It was hard to resist pack peer pressure, and wolves gotta howl, I guess.

Besides, Will wanted to get the party started with the pups, and I’d already agreed. If I was going to start acting more like a grownup, sticking to what I’d promised seemed like a good start. At least the pack had agreed not to go running all over the place, to stay in one area like we were camping, only with pelts and paws.

At sunset, we locked Colby in the cage as she insisted. Maybe the youngest of us was the only wise one. Then we went up to the crest of Mt. Rettig where at least a hundred witches surrounded the delegation while Master Shelby and his group of intimates presided.

This spell they had arranged was another layer of protection against the theoretical consequences of turning and mating during the Blood Moon. It was supposed to reroute any violent energies into the usual wolfish activities – running, hunting, playing, mating.

The whole thing seemed simple and innocuous except for the corpse flower, which they had to rub all over the shifters’ foreheads. It attracted the most disgusting nocturnal zombie flies, but we endured.

The witches sang chants that sounded old as the heavens and finally ended with the incantation:

Blood Moon fever

Fears abate

To escape thy violent fate

Sublimate, sublimate

Make werewolf love to thy chosen mate

Well, that seemed unsubtle enough. Bring on the orgy? Or not, if that “chosen mate” line was supposed to ensure the wolves were monogamous tonight. I guess this was the compromise between lycanthrope laissez-faire and uptight witchiness.

When it was done, Amber and the witches disappeared off the mountain and the doggie delegation stripped and sat waiting. The moon rose and bled from orange to rust as the shadow of Earth crossed its face. It was a sight to behold, and the tension to shift built and built. I could tell this one was going to be different.

I just didn’t know how different.

Normally I stayed conscious throughout the turning, but this time was reminiscent of the first time when I lost all control and most of the memories, so overwhelmed by the lunar energies was I. This time, I felt as if the moon were pouring its light into me, making me glow, filling me and my seven chakras with its primal essence.