BloodMoon (16 page)

We all sat around the ranch house dining room table in a formal meeting: Constantine Shelby, Master of Knightsbridge, Jackson and Sully as pack-masters; Sister Lena and Sister Nayala as representative of the witches; my brother Adam, and Will and me.

“And the weird thing is,” Will finished. “When she sent that probe of dark magick or whatever it was into me, I didn’t see Abbess Potter’s face anymore. I saw Jeanetta Macdonald.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Sister Lena erupted.

The irony got me, so of course I snickered. Okay, I snorted. Are you happy now? I know, I know, were-pig, that’s me.

Sister Lena continued, “I don’t know how she managed to infiltrate the inner circle. But that explains why Abbess Layolin is in a coma. I hope we can find a thread of her astral form and call it back from wherever it went when Jeanetta took over. Usually the trauma from the violation of possession sends the main personality into hiding, gathering resources to return and overthrow the possessor.”

“You know, I hate to have to rely on it,” Adam interrupted. “But I’m thinking we need some extra magical protection for Amber and Ash. Sister Lena, can you have the witches ward the grounds? Maybe something like an invitation-only spell?”

“What would that look like?” Sister Nayala turned to Adam and he beamed back at her. Did my brother have a bit of a crush? Mental note to ask him later.

“Just like how vampires can’t enter a private residence without being invited. Can’t we extend the same mojo to all supernaturals? I got the humans covered, but maybe all magical beings have to be invited past the threshold as well.”

“Well, that would protect them while on the property, but we should get them some mobile protection also,” Sister Lena said.

“I could whip up some charms that will protect them from psychic intrusion,” Sister Nayala mused. “Maybe magical dog collars for when the pack is turned.”

“Make sure you make mine large enough, with rainbow sparkles. And Sully would prefer a hot pink with spangles,” Jackson deadpanned.

“Are you sure this isn’t a bit of overkill?” Con asked.

I narrowed my eyes at him. I think he was afraid he was going to lose his tenuous hold over the werewolves as his servants to call.

“Better safe than sorry, vampire,” my brother said, and Con shrugged, picking an imaginary something out of his perfect fingernails.

“Do you have any better ideas?” I asked, willing to give Con the benefit of the doubt.

“We could just kill Jeanetta in prison where she sleeps.” He looked at the skeptical faces and amended, “Or we could give her a partial lobotomy. Throw some electrodes on her, kill a few brain cells. Or a long needle up the nostril would…” he trailed off at the looks of horror on our faces.

“You are seriously beginning to worry me,” I told Con. “Why do your solutions always involve hurting people?”

“We’re monsters, Ashlee,” Con replied.

“Speak for yourself,” I muttered.

“Don’t deny you thought of it yourself.”

I didn’t deny it, because I had. “I rejected outright murder and hoped you’d have a better idea.”

He put a finger to his temple. “I’m still up for lobotomy.”

“Moving on.” Damn, if I didn’t sound just like Amber there for a moment.

“Then again, the witches could just do a binding spell,” he said reasonably. “A permanent one.”

So, that was his game. Lead with crazy and follow up with sensible. I mean, John the Baptist helped make Jesus look acceptable. Malcolm X did the same thing for Martin Luther King.

Then again, look what happened to
those
two.

“You have no idea what you’re asking, fang,” Sister Lena looked affronted.

“Why? Can you do it? Bind her magic permanently?” I said, remembering the scene in
The Craft
where Robin Tunney tries to bind Fairuza Balk when her lust for power got out of hand.

“Having your powers bound is one of the most isolating things you can do to a witch. With the drugs, at least she can still sense the elements even if she can’t influence or command them. To bind a witch is like crippling a child so he won’t ever run away. We only do it as a last resort,” Sister Lena explained. “Imagine if someone took away your sense of smell, Ashlee. All of a sudden the world wouldn’t make sense anymore. Most bound witches take their lives if we let them, or they end up in mental hospitals. If a witch doesn’t want to rehabilitate, you get someone like Jeanetta Macdonald. Believe it or not, the drugs we use, herbal remedies, are more humane. Antidepressant drugs can have the same effect.”

“Which would explain why the streets aren’t covered with witches, as many of their powers are suppressed,” Sister Nayala added. “I did my graduate work on the effects of dopamine and serotonin on a witch’s magical disposition.”

Adam seemed entranced, and Sister Nayala beamed back at him. The level of arousal in the room went up a notch and I growled at him.

Adam winked at me. “I think we’ve got this covered.” He rose as if to leave. “Ashlee?” he held out his hand as if beckoning me to come with him. My brother, the Knight Errant. “Nayala, would you like a ride back home after I drop off Ash?”

I noted his dropping the title “Sister.” Sister Nayala had come with Lena, but my brother was offering her a ride. I hoped she wouldn’t be just another of his conquests. Did Templars take vows of celibacy? I didn’t actually know.

“I need to stay and talk to Jackson and Will,” I told him.

Once Adam and Nayala had left, I turned to the guys. “Take a walk?”

Reluctantly, as if they knew something bad was coming, they followed me.

I walked past the corral. The horses were all in the barn bedded down for the night and we climbed up onto the rails of the corral, hooked our feet in the slats and stared up at the waning moon.

“So, I bet you’ve wondered why I’ve called you all here tonight.”

“Christ, Ashlee. Just get it over with,” Will said. “I can you feel you vibrating with tension all through the fenceposts.”

“Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” I said, not so much defending my intermittent faith as taking the cheap out by being a petty bitch.

Jackson cut that argument off at the pass. “I assume this is about what happened during the Blood Moon.”

“So, what do you remember?” I asked Jackson.

“More than you, I suspect. Why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the details.”

“What are you two talking about? I can’t remember a thing,” Will said.

Oh joy
, I thought.
Here goes nothing.

I told them about the street preacher’s invasion of my home. I told them about Colby trying to join us during the Blood Moon orgy. I told them how Amber rode Colby and watched what happened. How Will and I mated, and how Jackson and I…

You know.

I didn’t even have to look at him to know that tears were filling Will’s eyes. I could feel the vibration of his rage, and anger, and impotence.

Will hopped off the fence. Jackson followed.

“Um, Jackson,” I began, meaning to beg him off. Will always needed alone time to process things, but eventually he came back around.

I hoped. I prayed. Lord, don’t let it be this time that pushes him away.

“This is men’s business, Ashlee. Stay and watch if you must, but don’t say a word and for the love of the moon, don’t interfere,” Jackson said.

For once, I did as I was told.

Will sank to his knees and began to howl, and I sensed the beginning of the shift.

Jackson joined him, cradling the smaller man as both raised their faces to the sky.

As one they grappled, rising from their knees as if locked in combat. Arms rippled with muscle and fur, clothes split at chest, calf and thigh. Their claws lengthened as they held tight to each other, blood welling from the wounds until finally Will kicked his legs into Jackson’s stomach and they broke away.

The hybrid Anubis form was frightening on the least of lycanthropes, but these two huge males were positively terrifying. I couldn’t imagine interfering. You can say
rah-rah, girl power
all you want, but when it came to a physical contest, well…this was what nature designed males for: vicious fighting, win or die.

On a good day, such brutality worked to protect the pack. On a bad day, it turned against itself. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what kind of a day this was at all.

Like gladiators in the arena, they circled each other. A feint here, a touch there, they paced out a round and wove back and forth, looking for an opening. Moving forward to kick and slash, one scoring here, one scoring there. So fast, the wounds seemed to appear as if by magic, healing soon after.

Blood spurted on Jackson from a roundhouse to the jaw and I cheered Will on. I couldn’t help it. Then Jackson ripped a gash in Will’s thigh and I groaned.

Bruises and wounds came and went in the wake of the lycanthropic magic. I was spellbound and exhausted just watching the two of them. For fully half an hour they went at it, cleaving each other with their pain and anguish at the situation I’d put them in.

I don’t know why what happened next came as a surprise to me, but it did. Ghost Mom sat down next to me and I felt her marshmallow softness and inhaled her scent.
They both love you very much.

They both loved me. In different ways, of course, and with different privileges and expressions, but I belonged to them. They both had hold of my heart. And I realized, this wasn’t a fight for dominance I was watching. It was two alpha males bleeding out the violence within themselves, clearing the way for a new version of family.

It was a battle for respect from each other, a battle that needed no winner.

It was a battle for love.

When the men were finally spent and their Anubis forms slipped away, Jackson held Will in his arms as if he were his son instead of his rival, memorizing his scent and helping him become one with his pack once again. The older male cocked his head as if just now noticing me and beckoned with his hand.

Ghost Mom gave me a push and I stumbled forward off the railing I’d been sitting on, not sure what to expect. Until then I’d never been privileged to bear witness to such a powerful display of raw male passion and gentility. Luckily, my wolf knew what to do, and I dropped to all fours, turned wolf and curled my silky fur into the man-beasts’ arms.

We lay that way, the three of us, until the waning moon hung low in the sky.

But it appeared to have worked. No supernatural being could cross onto our property without an invitation. Once invited, they could come and go as they pleased unless that invitation was revoked.

Sister Nayala also gave all of us humans bracelets to wear to keep out Jeanetta. And yes, collars to wear while we were turned. They were made out of nondescript leather, thank God. It would have served Jackson right if they’d given him a sparkly rainbow one, but then, he probably would have worn it with pride. Or at Pride. Whatever. Anyway, they were supposed to protect us from any of Jeanetta’s attempts at possession. I wondered why they didn’t just give us a charm that made all spells against us null and void, to which I got a fifteen-minute speech on the impossibilities of such a thing. And Adam lapped it up. He really did like Nayala!

Things seemed to settle after that and I was starting to feel like maybe we were out of the woods and in the clear. It was a week before Halloween and we were putting the decorations up. Halloween had become an ever-expanding tradition in the Gordon-Scott household ever since JR got old enough to trick-or-treat. Amber bought a wicker man and even a wicker witch on a broom and Elle wired them with lights to create a whimsical tableau on the front lawn.

Adam and his team created a huge blue symbol like a medicine wheel on the slope above and behind our houses. He said it was some kind of Templar thing, containing the cross and other mystical protections. The rest of Knightsbridge followed suit with decorations galore. Imagine Tim Burton designing a new part of Disneyland and you’ve got Knightsbridge at Halloween. No plastic knockoff decorations from those fly-by-night franchise stores that appeared in derelict malls in October. Knightsbridge’s downtown looked like it had been done by the set decorator of Hocus Pocus, so much so that I kept looking for Bette Midler, Kathy Najimi and Sarah Jessica Parker to come sweeping by on brooms. It was disturbingly beautiful, what with the leaves beginning to turn and drop and a slight nip in the air. It was California, after all, not upstate New York.

Time to layer up,
I thought at Amber and began pulling the sweaters and boots out of storage.

I could have told you that weeks ago,
she answered.

Oh hey, can I borrow some candles? I’m making an altar and I know you have that PartyLite stuff from those parties you used to throw.

Amber had spent a short time as a consultant for PartyLite Candles and Gifts, but she ate up all her profits by buying her own products. Her loss, my gain.

You break it, you buy it,
she said.

What?

You know what I mean.

And of course I did.

I was rummaging through boxes with the garage door open, the bright white light of the garage interior beaming out into the night and drawing in the moths, much to my sister’s dismay, when I heard a car door slam shut, and then the sound of heels came up the walk. I looked up from a pumpkin candleholder that looked a little like the carriage from Cinderella and saw my stepmom Rhonda standing just outside the garage, watching what I was doing with a smile.

“Amber! So good to see you.”

“It’s Ashlee,” I sighed. The woman mixed us up half the time, and I half-believed she did so on purpose.