BloodMoon (7 page)

I wasn’t quite sure how he connected cruising with the apocalypse, and if he really knew his Bible he might have run across “by their fruits shall ye know them.” And I’m pretty sure there’s no mention of a Blood Moon anywhere in Holy Scripture. I googled the phrase and “Bible” just to be sure.

Nope, no Blood Moon, not even in the Book of Revelation, though at least once the moon turns red as blood.

Ya think?

Naw.

Still, his words seemed to resonate. As I pondered the incoherent rambling of the street preacher and the excess of Polo cologne covering his sweaty skin, I decided I’d better find out more about this Blood Moon prophecy. Maybe he’d tapped into something. I’m pretty sure Aleister Crowley had said, “The spiritual is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Or something like that.

Meanwhile, Amber looked like she was having a heated argument with Elle, who was holding on to her elbow keeping her from tackling the preacher. The last thing we need here in Knightsbridge is a fanatic calling us all sinners and scaring away the tourists.

I think everyone knows deep down they are sinners, after all. I mean, who hasn’t done something wrong, even mean and nasty? But it was kind of like “everybody poops.” We don’t need to have the details thrust in our faces when we’re trying to have a nice evening out. There’s a time and place for a life-changing epiphany of guilt, usually right after hitting rock bottom and right before deciding to enter a twelve-step program, but this wasn’t it.

I’m only partway being facetious on that one. I know there are those who believe that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, but I choose to believe that the Eternal Divine still has His and Her hand on humanity, hoping we’ll one day sort ourselves out, with a little help from above, I suppose.

Anyway, Ghost Mom had her insubstantial arms around JR, who in turn had his hands full with Spanky, who was barking like mad at the street preacher. He was also juggling the pull of Siegfried’s leash around his wrist, though how he ended up with both dogs, I don’t know. Ghost Mom was losing the fight to help, and JR got dragged away from the Street Witches’ encampment to stand in front of the missionary.

Will and I hurried to cut him off at the pass, but it was too late. The street preacher stopped speaking to look at the child, nonplussed. Okay, not such a bad thing, I guess. “This is no place for good young men,” he said, wiping his forehead. He was
so
not dressed for an evening in the high eighties.

“My dog doesn’t like you,” JR said with perfect, nonjudgmental sincerity, like he was merely conveying indisputable fact.

Siegfried agreed by baring his teeth at the sweaty man.

“My other dog doesn’t seem to like you either,” he went on.

“I’m more of a cat person,” the street preacher said and grinned. He actually had a little bit of charm if you could get past the cologne. But cats? Hell, no.

So, maybe I’m prejudiced, but I don’t trust cat people. Never had, never will. Anyone who could put up with the manipulative, coy, fickle personalities that typically come with cats makes my inner wolf sit up and take notice. Unless it was a lion or a tiger, I think she thought that the word cat meant
prey
. I, me the human, just thought they were nuisances. Maybe you know more than I do, but if cats are an acquired taste, then I was sensory-deficient in that area. Although they might taste good, I mused.

And we don’t play with our food
, Siegfried commented.
Most of the time
. And then he bit the man. Okay, actually he merely closed his mouth gently on the man’s hand as he had with mine. It wasn’t Siegfried’s fault the guy yanked it out of the poodle’s jaws, catching a ring on the dog’s teeth and drawing blood.

“Siegfried, No!” Elle grabbed Siegfried’s collar and pulled him away.

Mmm, tasty,
Siegfried said in my head.

“Oh my gosh, sir. Are you hurt?” Amber asked, putting on her most polite customer-service solicitousness and hiding any of her usual intolerance for children and fools.

Oh, yeah, that was me. Amber is much better at soothing ruffled feathers than I. Me, I was enjoying the smell of fresh blood in the air. But Will was growling, and that wasn’t good. I dug my nails in his arm and pulled him away from the crowd and into an alleyway.

“I’m losing it, Ash,” he said, his eyes glazing over with bloodlust.

“Just breathe, babe. Take long, deep breaths.”

“I don’t wanna take deep long breaths. I wanna take my claws and –”

I cut him off there. “And what? Rip the guy limb from limb?” I raised my voice and got into his face, my alpha against his whatever. I knew it was a power play and normally I wouldn’t do it, but somebody was going to have to get this under control and since the pack wasn’t here, I guess it was going to have to be me. “Because I’ve done that, Will. And it’s not pretty!”

That got through to him, I guess, enough so he calmed down. His eyes turned human again and he laughed ruefully. “Okay. I got it.”

And though I wanted to be mad at him, I just couldn’t. You’ve got to have a morbid sense of humor as a werewolf, otherwise you’d be crying all the time. So, to take all the sting out, I kissed him.

We turned back to see how the scene was playing out, and I noticed Con Shelby, in his usual suit, hat and walking stick, stepping up behind the agitated street preacher. Hey, I didn’t really blame him for being agitated, what with a big white daemon dog appearing to bite him.

Anyway, I got that itchy feeling in my sinuses just as Shelby tried some kind of fang magic on the guy. I said “tried” because whatever it was, he botched it miserably, or at least it failed.

Worse than failed, it seemed to backfire. The man spun around and pointed with his Bible like a gun, yelling, “I see you, Spawn of Satan! I feel your presence! Get thee back to thy grave and stay there!”

I’d thought this guy was all talk, but when Shelby reeled back and had to be caught by several members of the watching crowd, I knew something more was going on. Whatever mojo he had, it was enough to take a vampire off guard.

Shelby staggered to his feet and straightened his lapels, giving the man a shrewd, though not particularly angry, glare. “I’m no more familiar with the grave than you, Mister Willoughby, and I’ll trouble you to cease your assaults upon my person.”

I wondered how Shelby knew his name. Maybe magic, maybe he’d just seen the man around before.

Willoughby said, “So it is always with the evil ones, attacking first and then claiming offense when they are defeated by righteousness.”

The guy had a point. Con Shelby had tried his magic first, and I was enjoying him getting the best of the vampire, really. Jackson insisted Shelby was a necessary evil – okay, he said necessary
part
– of the supernatural order, but I still didn’t like him. Maybe a bit of discomfiture and comeuppance would teach the fang some humility, which was something he could dearly use. Even a lion could get gored by a wildebeest now and then.

Shelby raised his voice. “Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.”

“I cast only the second stone. Get thee behind me, Satan.”

The crowd was growing. If Shelby wanted to de-escalate, he was going about it the wrong way. He seemed to realize that, so he saved what face he could by tipping his hat, turning on his heel and striding off.

I saw Elle talking on her cell phone, and it wasn’t more than a minute before two bicycle cops showed up and got Willoughby to leave, first on the basis that he was on private property and the First Amendment didn’t apply, and secondly that he was creating a public nuisance. It’s nice to be part of the government at times like these, but the whole thing still made me uncomfortable. People should have a right to protest, even if we didn’t like what they said. But it was out of my hands. Whatever the cops told him, he eventually packed up and left.

With the crowd dispersing, Will started kissing me again, and okay, I kissed back. It looked like it was going to be an athletic night for both of us. That was one thing about Will’s new status that I had to adjust to – boundless energy in bed. And I mean boundless. Good thing I was a were-girl, or I’d never have been able to keep up.

A cough brought us back to ourselves as we realized that the SUV had pulled up beside us, and Elle and JR were grinning out the window. Amber just looked annoyed. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re in a high-visibility position in the local government. No PDA in front of the unwashed masses.

“So, what did you think of cruising Main Street?” Elle asked JR as we buckled up and headed for home.

“I think it’s cool. It’s just like American Graffiti, only not in ancient times,” JR pronounced with the pompous gravity only a child can muster, to which the whole car erupted in laughter.

From the mouths of babes, I thought, and though I was still a bit miffed at Will’s lack of control, I scooted into his arms and wrapped myself in his newfound passion, trying not to worry about what the future would hold.

Though I did tell myself to have a conversation with the Con-man later.

I have to admit her feet looked perfect, and I do have the worst calluses that build up on my paws and I didn’t have the money for a weekly pedicure right now, so hell, spell away. “Yeah, sure, why not. Oh and how are you doing with that familiar communication spell? Siegfried’s bugging the crap out of me because you won’t talk to him.”

“I won’t talk to him because he’s supposed to be a gosh-darned poodle. And I’m afraid if I start hearing him in my head I won’t know how to block it, and won’t that be kinda creepy hearing his voice all the time, just another one to add to the peanut gallery, and before you know it I’ll be looking like a crazy person talking to my dog. Oh, and then I’ll have to tell Elle, and she really likes that dog, but I think this one might tip her right over the edge.”

Amber’s verbal vomit ran on and on, and I just gave her space and let her rant. Hey, it was the least I could do. Especially since a part of me wanted to dance around pointing fingers. I already told her that the sooner she tells Elle about Siegfried the better. Better she deal with reality as it is than get caught in a big fat lie when the illusion shatters. I thought she’d learned that with Mervin, but hey, we all do stupid things.

Who am I to judge, right? I had my own sins to atone for and I was sure I’d be eating my words soon enough. Make a pronouncement about who you are and the universe gives you the opportunity to show what you’re made of.

“Not to mention that I keep having these recurring nightmares where everywhere I turn I see Jeanetta Macdonald staring back at me.”

“What, like that Denzel Washington movie where he was up against that demon who kept jumping from person to person?”

“Exactly.”

“Have you looked in that cookbook for a potion against nightmares?” I asked.

“Like that’s not the first place I tried. I may have to break down and go to Bell, Book and Candle. Oh, and if anybody sees me and asks, I’m going to pretend to be you.”

Bell, Book and Candle was a mystical shop that stocked herbs, crystals, incense and a whole slew of books on obscure religions. I’d tried to go in a few times, but between magick allergies and the myriad bouquet of essential oils that made my eyes water, I’d had to escape the overstimulation of my senses before it left me hacking up a fur ball on the manicured lawn. Like many of the downtown shops in Knightsbridge, it was once somebody’s home, from the time when people didn’t mind living their whole lives on the main thoroughfare. Privacy wasn’t such an issue back then, I guess, and people used to sit on their front porches and socialize.

“Why am I going to BBC again? We ought to keep our stories straight.”

“I don’t know. I’ll make something up.”

“Christ, Amber. I have enough of my own sins to atone for; don’t make me responsible for yours.”

And my twin sister did it. That’s right, she snorted. Wish I could have captured it on video.

Anyway, we sat down on the edge of her garden tub and Amber slathered this fishy-herbal-flowery smelling stuff on my feet. She bent over with a pumice stone doing something I normally wouldn’t think to do myself, and I realized that this was what family was all about. The simple things – moments together full of resonance. Where even the tiniest deed like a foot rub can make me tear up, or maybe that was the fish scales. Or the enchantment.

Still, when the pack came back I was deliriously happy. It appeared that not only could Siegfried communicate with me, but the lycanthropes understood him as well. I had no idea why. I gathered that neither magic nor magick was always logical.

So when Amber decided to hold an afternoon tea and registration-packet-stuffing party for the Street Witches, my offer to help was in hopes that I could figure out how to move Amber forward with her familiar communication spell, and also see if there was a way to get Siegfried out of my head. After all, daemon though he might be, there was something about him that didn’t always scream dog. And that was just freaky.

Amber decided on a cream silk blouse and pressed linen trousers for the event, and for once let me raid her closet. I decided on a summer-slipping-to-fall-toned lapel vest over a coral tube top and white cotton culottes with matching boat shoes. The Street Witches wore everything from Stevie Nicks black flowing numbers to peasant skirts and pirate shirts to spandex, denim, daisy dukes and straw cowboy hats.

Now, even though we saw men as part of the Street Witches on Main Street, it soon became apparent that this gathering was entirely of females, or at least it appeared so. I wasn’t about to check everyone for Adam’s apples. Amber didn’t seem to have much use for men in her everyday life.

Anyway, all the scents and excess magic dust swirling off of the Street Witches made my normally sensitive nose unreliable. Even Amber had a moment of distress and had to go retreat to the bedroom for her inhaler, while I did the unthinkable and opened all of the windows in the house and I ran the air conditioning at the same time. But hey, asthma and allergy attacks are no fun.