BloodMoon (2 page)

Flipping the door sign to
OPEN
, Constantine Shelby took a deep, unnecessary but contented breath, and prepared for his usual short morning’s presence before returning to his abode to sleep away the greater part of the day.

Amber was bundled up in a grey and pink bebe number on the outdoor sofa while I looked more like Old Navy crossed with Girls Fight Club in green plaid boxers and a black wife-beater on the chaise lounge.

Hey, I was at home. Who was I supposed to impress? Besides, it felt really good to hang out with my twin sister, no more than the usual tension between us, like a return to old times. I guess it was because the biggest secret between us, about me being a lupine, was no longer hidden.

“How did you know I was thinking about…?” My voice trailed off. “Never mind.”

We were doing that thing we often do when we’re alone together, talking but not looking at each other. Because frankly, watching the emotions that played across my sister’s face during a conversation, the downside of being an identical twin and knowing each other so well, made me pick up and subconsciously assume her state of being. I had enough of my own crazy to deal with without adding Amber’s to the mix.

“Ashlee, it makes no sense to keep paying rent on a place you haven’t been to in how many months?”

“I have a friend staying there,” I said. True, my friend Xiana was only paying half the rent, but I was
so
not going to tell Amber that or I’d get a lecture on money management and how not to get taken advantage of. “And it’s only till my lease is up and then I can walk away free and clear.”

“I still think you could have gotten out of there sooner.”

I quoted Dad at her. “Yeah, well hindsight is better than foresight.”

She growled, but said nothing. I was seriously starting to wonder who was the werewolf around here. Before you know it the whole family was going to be barking at each other. Hell, we were already barking mad.

“And, how’s Peg doing?” Amber asked. “Last time I saw her she was looking fairly fragile. You said it was what, stage four cancer? That poor family.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you.” I began, but she interrupted.

“So, is she? Like, dying?”

“No, she’s in remission.”

“How’d that happen?” My sister turned to gaze directly at me.

I watched what I call her “mind-reading frown lines” appear. I wanted to tell her to please stop making me look like that, but she wouldn’t find it funny, so I gave her the short version on Con and Peg.

“Wow, you
have
been keeping secrets,” my twin said and pursed her lips in disapproval. “So is she going all vamp on us, or what?”

“Not as far as I know. As long as she continues to take Con’s blood, regular ingestion keeps her suspended in a sort of half-life, but without a bunch of mumbo jumbo she doesn’t turn into a vampire either. I don’t know. I couldn’t do it.”

“You’re not a mother.”

Amber bit her lip as I flared up at her. “You know, I’m getting really sick of you throwing that in my face, considering…”

“Upside, at least now you don’t have to cheat on Will with a gay guy to make your super-pups and save the planet,” she interrupted, throwing me off my game.

“I’m not saving the planet,” I growled at her and finished to myself,
just this little part of it.

“So, how’s Will holding up?”

“Besides a lot of anxiety, at least when I’m around, I think he’s enjoying his bromance with Jackson and Sully. Maybe too much. If he’s not growling at the straight guys he’s woofing at the gay ones. I know it’s something that even canines do, but I am
so
going to beat Jackson down for teaching him that one.”

“Yeah, make sure he chills out before the holidays arrive. Elle and I do have straight friends you know, with husbands.”

“Believe me, if he doesn’t, I’m going alpha on his ass and he’d better bare his throat to me.”

“Next MoonFall’s what? A week away?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about heading up to Harbin or maybe the city, I don’t know. Darla and Twyla are doing Laguna Del Sol.”

Amber made a face and I smelled her displeasure. She was so not into nudist resorts like the rest of us. But when you’re a werewolf, do as werewolves do.

“We all thought it would be better if there were no bitches around during Will’s first turn,” I continued. “Hopefully he’ll get whatever he needs to out of his system because the following MoonFall we’re installing Jackson as Alpha of the Knightsbridge Canyon territory. Doggie dignitaries, yea.”

“How’s that going to work anyway? Since Will’s going to father the wolf pups, you would think he would take over as Alpha, but I can’t see that happening.”

“Oh, well, Jackson is going to forego his right for the night of the Blood Moon and when the cubs are born we’ll be turning them over to the ulv to raise.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“You
so
do not get to shrink me on this one.”

“Well, if it’s not me, I hope you’re talking to someone.”

I was. But I was talking to Ghost Mom and I didn’t want to rub in the fact that Amber couldn’t see her and I could. We still hadn’t resolved our last debacle of an argument over mom’s presence in our lives, but I think Amber caught it anyway, because she got this pained look on her face. “You would think with your kind of crazy you would be trying to simplify your life, not complicate it. So, when do you think you’re going to have them? The pups, I mean.”

“I was thinking about sticking to a normal schedule. Wolves generally breed during the winter so they can give birth in the early spring.”

“Really? That’s like, right around the corner.”

“But Blood Moons only happen once or twice a year. There’s about six months between. So, I was thinking about waiting a year. Give Will time to get acclimated to his new lifestyle.”

“Lifestyle? Ugh. I hate that word. Dad used to use that term to describe Elle and me. A lifestyle is about what kind of wine you like, not about sexual preference. Otherwise I’d have to ask when the all shifters around here are coming out of the closet. Because that’s gotta be a new minority frontier. Puts a new L in LBGTQIA…are there any more letters lately?”

I stuck my tongue out at her and she reached over with her pointer finger and touched it, zapping me.

“Ow!” I said around a mouthful of numb-tongue. “How’dyoudothath?”

“It’s a secret,” she said and she left me silent as she answered her phone, which had begun to ring.

When she came back, Amber said, “Well, that was weird.”

I gave her the “continue” sign.

“Rhonda wants to come visit over Halloween.”

“That’s not like Dad. He hates Halloween. Especially Halloween in Knightsbridge.”

“No, not Dad. Just Rhonda.”

“Really, what for?”

“She swore me not to tell Dad, but she’s coming for a convention.”

“Huh.”

My sister momentarily put on her City Manager’s Department hat. “Ashlee, the only convention in Knightsbridge over Halloween is for the Street Witches.”

“Since when is Rhonda interested in small town neighborhood watches led by people who want to keep downtown tourism viable and cruising Main Street safe for their teenagers?”

“You might as well know.” Amber looked around as if making sure nobody could hear us. “Though the Street Witches is a real community organization, a number of them are also real witches. The charity work happens, but it’s also a cover for the Wiccans, the Goddess Worshippers and the Magick practitioners in our midst. Elle and I have been assigned to provide oversight. We’re bringing in Adam’s firm for security, too.”

“But that means?”

“Our stepmother’s straying from the party line, which would be to have nothing to do with people like that.”

“What? No, really? ” No wonder she wants to keep her interest from my Dad. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

Now, let me tell you about our father’s wife.

Rhonda came into our lives after all the kids were grown. It was eight or nine years after Mom’s death and Dad had begun dating again, to mixed results I might add, after year five.

So, when he went looking for a new life-mate while Amber went to college and I bummed around Europe for a year, he wasn’t looking for a mom for his children. He was looking for a help-meet, as the Bible says. Which is great, because Rhonda loves him and wants to make him happy. Us? Not so much. While she has exquisite taste for her demographic and despite the overabundant love for all things pueblo, she isn’t the easiest person to be around.

And…up until this point, I’d never seen her take any initiative. She usually followed my father’s lead – and in Dad’s world, God is a dude, all three pieces. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not
The Dude
, of course.

Back in high school I’d once postulated that the Holy Spirit must be the feminine part of the Trinity and if humans were truly made in the image of God, “Male and Female created He them,” then it was just as valid to call God “Mother” as it was to call him “Father.” That didn’t fly any farther at the dinner table than it did in my evangelical Christian school, but I thought I’d made a good argument.

Anyway, back to Rhonda. To think that she was interested in pagan religions at best, or mastering the dark arts of wicked witchery at worst…well, this was the type of situation us supernatural siblings needed to keep an eye on.

“Halloween, huh?” I said. “That’ll make for an interesting holiday. Or, you could say no.”

“And lose this one chance to win the wicked step-witch of the Southwest over when I have it? Oh, hell no.”

“You know it’s a losing game you’re playing there.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” my sister finished for me, and then turned away, mumbling, “At least she and I will have something in common to talk about for once.”

I wondered at this, but I figured I’d find out later. Not my circus, not my show.

Darla and Twyla were going out of town but I’d have Luken and Elka with me, or Elka at least. Since Luken was male, he might be included in the run.

Anyway, Elle actually offered to sit with me during my change. Of course if she did, she would most likely have the boys bring her La-Z-Boy and a widescreen down into the pool house basement. While we wouldn’t be having any heart-to-hearts, she was good for ear scratches and tummy rubs, I figured.

Don’t ask me how that works, my sister’s partner and my wolf, but it did. I guess it was because she was a dog person. She seemed to find my lupine form easier to get along with than my human.

You know, I never thought about how it might be difficult seeing another version of her partner running around, but Elle was so shut down, I usually couldn’t get a read on her at all. Best poker face on the planet; probably comes from her days as a trial lawyer. It must be unnerving to have Amber in her head all the time. I know it is for me.

It didn’t end up mattering, though; I waved her offer to sit with me off, saying I had it handled. As expected, she just shrugged and went back to her ESPN.

Luken and Elka showed up after sunset. I’d made the change out on the hill behind the pool house and before the moon crested the horizon, and we’d settled in the basement cage. And no, I didn’t lock us in. After a decade of changes I was pretty much in control of what I did when I was wolfed out, which also meant I was totally to blame when I slipped out on the sleeping ulv to go watch my boyfriend on his first turn. I’d fed them well, so they were sated and logy, which made it easy.

I know it was wrong to get near them, but I swore I’d stay downwind of the pack and it only took me about an hour to reach the top of Mt. Rettig and lay down on top of a rock overlooking the men as they stood in a circle in the meadow below me, above the crest of the falls. As they did, Paula, the river goddess who guarded Rettig Falls, sang a Stephen Schwartz number from Godspell,
Turn Back, Oh Man
, but I was a woman so didn’t think it applied to me.

I know, I know. Talk about ignoring the obvious.

I don’t care what some people say; I love looking at the human form naked in all its glory. Jackson Wolfe, tall and handsome, with dark hair and a natural pelt that matched his fur, reminded me of Hugh Jackman, only he wasn’t as pretty and had more Native American in him. Don’t know how well that translates, but that’s what I’ve got.

Sullivan Kearney, on the other hand, is a much older silver fox, at least in human form. Sully made me think of Sam Elliott, compact form and lean muscles showing his years more than the rest of the brood as he changed.

Small and beefy Dex Watley – I have no one famous to compare – had cocoa-butter skin covered with black curly hair, reminding me of a Latin soccer player until he slipped into his camouflage covering as a wolf. Oh, and the Welsh brothers, Geoff and Neal Blalock, both smaller than Jackson, but built like beasts, with blue-black hair and fair skin, solid in flesh and fur.

And then there was Will, my Will Stenfield, younger than all of them and looking even more out of place with his pale English skin and farmer’s tan. Since he’d taken the bite, he’d sprouted more fur, but he was still the least hairy of all of them. Even so, they were beautiful specimens, human and wolf alike – though I had yet to see Will slip the bonds of mundanity and show us his new nature.

They had told me that there might be some danger, it being his first turning, but Sully assured me that the pack magic should protect Will from the worst of it.