Dueling Moons: A Pat Wyatt Novel (The Pat Wyatt Series Book 2) (9 page)

I was shocked at first as she walked through the mist. But when she gave me a gentle, fanged smile, I couldn’t help but smile back. Her dark brown hair was in waves down her back, while her
puppy
-
dog
brown eyes were filled with kindness, which was so unlike Samuel’s icy cold stare.

“Hello, Patricia,” she said with her Transylvanian accent.

I walked up to her, giving her the biggest hug. “Hi, Kathryn.”

We both pulled back from the each other, and she placed her hands on my shoulders. “My sweet girl. Let me get a good look at you.” Kathryn was taller than I was, so she had to look down as she checked me over carefully.

I noticed that she was wearing a flowing red dress and a white shawl around her shoulders. She was as beautiful as ever, and with her perfectly symmetrical face, Kathryn looked like an angel. But I knew better. I knew what she was capable of. Hell, I knew what they were all capable of.

“You look fantastic,” I blurted before she could collect her thoughts.

“And you as well,” she said, and I believed her. I always believed her. “Nevertheless, I am afraid that there is no time to chat, my dear. He might be here any minute, and my powers are not as strong as they once were.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, concerned by the almost scared look on her face.

“They think I have gone home,” she explained, “but I have not. I am trapped. However,” she smiled at something I didn’t quite understand, “I will not be for long.

“Anyhow,” she said, placing her arm around my shoulders, “we must talk.”

“About what?”

“About you and Mr. Wolf.”

“What about us?” I asked, as we began to walk amongst graves.

“Michael is good for you, but even he cannot protect you from the monster that follows you around like a dark shadow.”

“Are we talking about Samuel?”

She laughed. “No,” she answered, her eyes becoming sad. “This is a different kind of monster. One that is not supposed to exist in this world or any other. It is a danger to both werewolf and vampire, and it is especially dangerous to human beings. One bite from this creature can create a new species of monster, a species that is unpredictable, and will kill anything or anyone that crosses its path.”

Now that she had scared me out of my mind, I asked, “What’s this monster called?”

“It has no distinct name, Patricia. It is not supposed to exist. Although there is a name that is very old, and not often used in this day and age:
Lamia quod lupus
. Vampire and wolf.”

My eyes widened. “How can that be?”

She shrugged. “I do not know. However, I do know that it was the one that set fire to your car.”

Mike was right; Samuel didn’t torch the Mustang. “So what does this have to do with Mike and me?”

“Michael will most certainly protest what you must do, but it must be done for the greater good.”

“Me?” I asked confused. “What do I have to do with anything?”

She frowned. “You have to vanquish it.”

“Vanquish it?” I repeated, panicked. “In case you didn’t notice, Kathryn, I’m only human. I don’t have the strength to kill something that even you’re afraid of.”

“But you must,” she insisted. “It is the only way to save the world from devastation.”

“Ha,” I laughed without humor. “No pressure, right?” I took a deep breath, still not quite understanding why I (of all people) had to kill this creature. But if it had to be done, I guess I might as well just suck it up and do it. That’s what my logic told me, but my instincts said that this was a
bad
idea. “All right,” I agreed reluctantly. “Who is it? Just lay it on me.”

She frowned at me. “I do not know.”
Well, that’s just
wonderful.
“The only thing I know is how to kill it.”

“Great,” I said quietly, shaking my head. “Okay,” I spoke louder. “Tell me how to kill it.”

“You must cut off its head with a silver blade, and then you must cut out its heart and feed it to a werewolf. This is the only way to assure the beast will truly be dead.”

“Oh, is that all?” Sarcasm.

“I understand your need to be cynical, but this is a serious matter, Patricia. You must be as careful as you can. This thing is dangerous and it could be anyone. A friend, a neighbor, or even a lover.” When she said that I thought about Mike, and she laughed. “No, my dear, I do not think it is him.” I forgot that she could read minds, and it gave me the creeps.

We stopped walking, and she faced me. “There is another thing that you must do.”

I nodded. “Anything. You name it.”

“There must be a vampire present when you kill this beast.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “I cannot explain it now, but it has to be that way.”

“Samuel?” I asked, my voice shaking with anger and fear.

“No,” she comforted me. “Not Samuel.”

“Then who?”

She smiled. “When the time comes, you will see.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you,
Obi
-
Wan
.”

She cocked her head. “Who is that?”

I smiled to myself. “Never mind.”

Kathryn turned her head to the side, looking into the mist as if someone was calling her. “I have to go.” She told me, as she began to walk away.

I glanced around to see if anyone was coming, but could see no one. “Why?”

She looked back at me and smiled. “I have overstayed my welcome. I will see you soon, my sweet girl.”

“
Good
-
bye
, Kathryn.” I waved as she floated into the mist.

“
Good
-
bye
, Patricia,” her voice echoed in my dream, and then vanished.

When I was finally alone in the middle of the graveyard, I closed my eyes, and drifted back into the Louisiana woods. I wanted to wake up, but something pulled me back into dreaming.

“Shit,” I said when I opened my eyes and saw that I was standing in the woods.

“Miss me?” Samuel’s voice was right by my ear, and I jumped.

I turned around, narrowing my eyes at him. “What do you want?”

He smirked down at me. “To apologize. My behavior was abominable tonight.”

I shook my head. “You know what? I don’t give a shit anymore about you and this stupid fucking back and forth. Do with me what you will. Bite me. Kill me. Hang me from a treetop. I don’t care.” I took a breath and anger boiled in the pit of my stomach.

“You know what else? Marry my sister. See if I care! Become Mike and have your way with me every night. What do I care? But I swear to God that you will never get to me like you got to me tonight, asshole! You want to know why?” I screamed at him, poking him in the chest. “Because I am smarter than you are, I am nicer than you are, and you are just a pathetic excuse for a vampire who doesn’t know what to do with his eternity and has serious fucking issues!

“Okay? All right! You want me? Come and get me!” I flung my arms wide, and he stood there for a second in disbelief. Then he charged, pinning me up against a tree, his hand clasped around my throat.

I didn’t panic, I just glared up at him as his grip tightened. “Go ahead,” I said calmly. “End this.”

He hissed at me, fangs out. But I didn’t flinch; I just stood there, waiting to die. His grip tightened once more, and then he let go, slowly backing away.

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. And when I opened them, he was leaning against a tree. We stood there for a moment in silence, until he broke it. “You meant that, didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” I answered just as quiet. “I did.”

“You really hate me, don’t you?”

My mother always taught me never to hate another being, but the truth was, “Yes, I do. Can you blame me? You slaughtered Charlie, who was one of the nicest people I have ever met.” Technically, he was a golem, but I continued. “You tried to kill me, violated me, and then you tried to kill me again. So yes, I hate you.”

“I see,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “I shall go now.”

What just happened?
“Is that it? No trickery? No telling me that if you can’t have me, no one will?”

“No,” he shook his head, sounding defeated. “None of that, my love.”

“Are you…” I paused, regretting what I was about to ask. “Are you okay?”

He smirked at me. “Do you really care?”

I thought about that for a second. “A little,” I answered.

“You are right,” he admitted. “You are nicer than I am.” With that, he disappeared, leaving me alone in the woods.

I didn’t know if what just happened was good or bad, and some small part of me wanted to know if Samuel was going to bounce back from what I had just done. But what had I just done?

After all, it wasn’t the first time that I had yelled at him like that, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last. So why did he act that way?

A part of me wanted to know. And if I was being honest with myself, it was the same small part of me that still had feelings for him. After everything he had done to me, I still cared.

Even realizing that I felt something for
him
—
however
infinitesimal it
was
—
scared
me to death.

chapter

NINE

Mike woke up the next morning with me looking at him. I was only up ten minutes before him, and I tried not to wake him. But it was almost as if he had sensed it.

“Mornin’,” he yawned, rubbing his eyes.

I kissed his forehead. “Morning.”

“What day is it?”

“Saturday,” I replied. “Why?”

“Because now I can do this.” He rolled on top of me, and when he looked down at my neck, he lifted my chin to get a better look. “What the hell happened?” he asked, taking a deep breath. He had discovered the beautiful bruise on my neck from where Samuel had tried to choke me. I, myself, had seen the
hand
-
shaped
mark in the mirror when I had gone to the bathroom, and I was hoping that Mike would just let it go. But as my mother used to say, “Wishful thinking gets you nowhere.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, taking his hand away from my chin.

He nodded. “Okay, bébé. You don’t have to if ya don’t want to.”

I sighed. “Good. Because I have worse news than the handprint on my neck.”

He rolled off me, leaning on his elbow. “Tell me,” he said calmly. I knew the calm wasn’t going to last very long.

I took a deep breath, dreading the reaction I was going to get. “Well, Kathryn visited me last night, and she told me that Samuel didn’t blow up my car.”

“See,” he said with his sparkly,
green
-
eyed
grin, “I told ya.”

“You did,” I agreed with a forced smile. “And you were right.”

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

“How complicated?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“She told me that the creature that set fire to my car has been following me around. It’s a very dangerous creature, and if it’s not killed, it can create a new species of monster.”

Mike looked at me with his mouth open for a minute, before asking, “What kinda creature?”

I grimaced. “I really wish you wouldn’t have asked that.”

“Why?”

“It’s a creature that’s not supposed to exist.”

“Patricia Anne Wyatt,” he said my whole name with frustration, “what is it?”

“Promise you won’t freak out?” I asked, and he nodded. “It’s something called
Lamia quod lupus
. Vampire and wolf.”

For such a tan man, he went ghostly white, almost gray. His eyes widened, and his lips were set in a tight line. “That’s impossible.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. And it gets worse.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple doing a little dance in his throat. “How much worse?”

“Funny story,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I have to kill it.”

“What?” he screamed, jumping off the bed. “Is she insane? Does she have any…? What’s she…? How…? Ugh!” Mike usually cut off his sentences when he was nervous or angry. The latter was definitely the reason why he was doing it now.

Before I could open my mouth to calm him, the buzzer to the front door went off. I got out of bed, grabbed my bathrobe, and went to the door, while Mike paced back and forth in the bedroom.

When I finally pressed the intercom button, I sighed, “Hello.”

“Patty,” Tina wailed over the speaker. “It’s me.”

I pressed the button to let her in and ran into the bedroom. “Stop pacing and get dressed.”

“Why?” Mike asked confused.

“Tina’s here.”

His face scrunched up. “What the hell…?”

Before he finished, I was back in the living room, opening the door. There she stood, two of her Louis Vuittons on her
shoulders
—
and
probably four more in the
car
—, with her mascara streaked down her face. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her beautiful face was scrunched up in sadness.

I frowned. “Oh, Tina.”

“I dumped Herb,” she cried, dropping her bags in the hall and flinging herself into my outstretched arms. Her tears soaked through my robe almost instantly, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to know what happened.

After Mike had gotten dressed, he put her bags in our room and then went to go get the rest out of the car, strategically leaving us alone so we could talk.

“All right,” I said as I wiped her eyes with a tissue, “what happened?”

“He…” she hiccupped. “He proposed to me.”

I laughed. “Is that why you broke up with him?”

She shook her head solemnly. “No. We had a fight.”

I patted her shoulder. “About what, sweetie?”

“You,” she said with her pouty lower lip quivering.

“Me? What about me?”

She blew her
now
-
red
nose. “Some ridiculous story about you and Samuel. How he tried to turn you into a…” her voice faded away. “I don’t even wanna say it. And then he told me you ran away with Mike who’s a…” her voice faded again, but this time she rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous!”

I took a deep breath, becoming very serious. “Was it about Samuel trying to make me a vampire, and Mike being a werewolf?”

Her eyes widened. “How’d you know that?”

I tried to smile, but I knew it came off as a grimace. “Because it’s true.” Her mouth dropped open, and I sighed. “Oh, come on, Tina. I already told you about Samuel. You wouldn’t listen, remember? You said that it was all in my head. And I tried to tell you about Mike a million times, but I just couldn’t. You were so happy, and I didn’t want to ruin it by making you worry.”

“I don’t
under
—” Her sentence was cut off when Mike walked in with her bags. I stood up, walked over to
him
—
after
he shut that
door
—, took a deep breath and smacked him across the face.

In an instant, his teeth sharpened and his eyes yellowed.

I turned just in time to see Tina’s eyes go wide, and then Mike hurried into the bedroom with her bags.

“Tina, sweetie, you okay?”

“That was…” she paused. “Awesome! Oh my God! You were like whack, and he went all grrr, and then you were all calm, cool, and collected.” She took a breath. “So it’s true?” she finally asked, and I nodded. But there was something in the back of my mind telling me that Tina already knew all of this.

I pushed that aside, when she asked, “How’d you figure all this out?”

“It’s a very long story.” I told her, and she gave me the Tina stare: one
perfectly
-
waxed
black eyebrow cocked, a pursing of the lips, and a folding of the arms. I’ve seen grown men crumble under that stare. “All right,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll shorten it.”

I explained everything to her. I told her about Kathryn, about
Samuel
trying to kill me, the fact that Mike saved me from being turned into a vampire, and then about how Samuel had desecrated me in ways that I would never forget. I ended with telling her about Elliot saving my life. The only thing I didn’t tell her was that Kathryn asked me to “vanquish” the monster that was following me around.

When I finished, she sat there for a second, silently staring at me.

“Well,” I said cautiously, “what do you think?”

“What about Charlie?” she asked, and just the name made me frown.

“He was a golem,” I said solemnly.

“Wow,” she breathed.

“
Uh
-
huh
.”

“So all of the creatures in the legends are real?”

I nodded. “Pretty much.”

She grimaced. “Sorry about not believing you before.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay.” As soon as those words were out of my mouth, it hit me. “Wait a minute. How did he know about them?”

“Who’s he?”

“Herb,” I explained. “How did he know about Samuel and Mike?”

The buzzer to the front door went off again and Mike came out of the bedroom to get it. In a matter of minutes, he was back with Mr. Herbert Morris by his side.

Tina’s eyes went wide, while I looked at Mike with a cocked eyebrow. He shrugged, and Tina got up off the couch, flinging herself into Herb’s arms. “Oh, Herbie,” she managed to say through fresh tears, “I am so sorry for not believing you! Will you ever forgive me?”

“Of course,
meine Liebe
.” He told her with smile.

My heart skipped a beat when I looked into his eyes. “Oh, dear Lord,” I breathed, trying not to pass out. “You’re a vampire.” I got up off the couch, looking out the window at the now
darkly
-
clouded
sky. “But how…?” The question faded as I turned to see Tina pulling away from him, and Herb’s smile wavered.

“You’re a vampire?” Tina’s Brooklyn accent was almost gone when she asked, so I knew she was serious.

As soon as those words were spoken, Herb’s smile vanished. “Please,
meine Liebe
,” he begged her. “Do not cringe away from me.” Finally, he reached out to touch her, but she backed away, almost tripping over the coffee table, before sitting back down on the couch.

When he tried to move forward, Mike caught him by the shoulder, shaking his head. That’s when it hit me. “You’re the vampire that’s supposed to help me, aren’t you?”

Herb looked at me for a minute, then turned his attention back to Tina again. “What are you talking about?”

I shook my head, forgetting about it for now. “I’ll tell you later.”

When I looked over at Tina, she was just sitting there staring at Herb, as if he was going to hurt her at any moment. I walked over to her, placing my hand on her shoulder. She jumped a mile, and when she looked up at me, I could see the confusion in her deep brown eyes. “Tina,” I said her name softly, “it’s all right. Herb loves you, I can tell. And I’m sure you two will be so happy for the rest of eternity.”

“Eternity?” Herb asked confused, and when I got a good look at him, I noticed that he was rather handsome. His face held only a minimum amount of
wrinkles
—
just
around his beautiful honey colored eyes and his
thin
-
lipped
mouth
—, his jaw was perfectly square, and he had a
straight
-
as
-
an
-
arrow
nose. Herbert was lean with just a hint of muscle, and believe it or not, he was only a little taller than Tina, who is
five
-
seven
without the heels she always seems to be wearing. Finally, I noticed his hair was stark white, not even a hint of color in it, and I wondered how old he was when someone decided to make him into a
blood
-
sucking
monster.

“Well, according to Mariah,” I said after a moment’s thought, “like must marry like.” Mariah is Samuel’s “maker” and the main reason why I was sure my
ex
-
husband
was the way he was.

He laughed a little. “The new rules do not apply to me.”

“Why not?” I asked, confused.

“Because I am over a thousand years old and those things do not apply to us. They are for the younger generation.”

“How much younger?”

“
Five
-
hundred
years or so.” As soon as he said that, I sighed, and he smiled at me. “Yes, Mariah was telling the truth.”

“I was kind of hoping she wasn’t,” I replied, as Tina stood up. She looked from me to Herb, walked over to him without a word, and then slapped him right across the face.

I flung myself between the two of them, so he wouldn’t be tempted to hurt her, but his strong arms pushed me gently out of the way. “Chrissie,” he said her name with longing. “I know how you must feel, but please find it in your heart to forgive me for deceiving you.”

“Never,” she hissed, smacking him again. He closed his eyes, speeding out of the apartment and into the cold rain that was now coming down in buckets. I didn’t know how he was able to stand the outside, even with the cloud cover. “Mike,” I said, hearing the urgency in my own voice, “go after him before he gets himself killed.”

“Will do.” He nodded, running as fast as he could after Herb.

I turned to face Tina, shaking my head. She fell to the floor, and I knelt beside her. “What have I done?” she sobbed into my shoulder as I wrapped my arms around her. I couldn’t blame her for reacting that way. Hell, I knew how she felt. But Herb seemed like a nice guy…vampire…whatever…and even though I’d only just met him, I liked him. You know, for a bloodsucker.

“He’s gone, and I couldn’t pick up his scent,” Mike said from the doorway. It was the first time he had ever spoken like a werewolf, and it disturbed me a little. However, I needed to focus on finding Herb, so I let it go.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do?” I asked, and he shook his head. Tina wailed, and I’d had just about enough. “I’m not accepting that, Wolf. Tina,” I said, pushing back on her shoulders. I almost shook her, I was so frustrated. “It is
not
over. Do you hear me? We will find him. Now get up.” As I stood I helped her to stand, wiping her eyes with my robe.

“You listen to me; I will find him. Do you understand?” my voice was stern, and she nodded as I pushed her blonde hair out of her face. “Now, go in the bathroom and wash up. We have a vampire to find.”

She nodded again, walking into the bathroom, sniffling the whole way. Once the bathroom door and the front door were closed, it was my cue to get dressed.

Mike followed me, and when I took off my robe, he said, “What’re you doin’, Pat? You don’t even know this vamp and you wanna go lookin’ for ’em?”

I quickly put on a pair of panties and a bra, making my way over to the closet before I answered. “It’s not a matter of want to, Mike. It’s a matter of have to.” I pulled my striped sweater over my head, pulling out a pair of black skinny jeans to go with it.

“Why?”

“Because,” I said, as I sat on the bed, putting on my pants, “Kathryn told me that I needed to find a vampire to be in attendance when I kill this monster thing. And I just have a feeling that Herb is that vampire.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked, as I stood up to get my new
knee
-
high
, black,
lace
-
up
boots.