Shadow on the Moon Read online

  He closed and bolted the door against her, against the entire nightmare of his life, for all the good it did, and stared at it for a long while. Then he walked to his bedside table, which held a basin. Dipping a cloth into the cool water within, he washed Lily's blood-mixed saliva off his neck.

  If only he could wash away his curse so easily.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dana was still keeping vigilance over the peculiar man at the kitchen table when the woman came bursting through Morgan's door with blazing eyes and streaming hair. For a brief instant, she caught a glimpse of Morgan, who looked angrier than she had yet seen him. Then he slammed the door and bolted it.

  "We go, Lily?" asked the man, who apparently was undaunted by the angry display.

  "In a moment, Jorje," she replied crossly, fixing Dana with a malevolent stare.

  With a toss of her long hair, Lily crouched in front of Dana, leaning forward until their faces were only inches apart. Dana felt the woman's breath burning her skin, felt the hatred stab at her psyche, and couldn't fathom what had provoked it.

  "Do not think Morgan is yours, she-whelp. I will be back for him . . . and for you."

  "She-whelp?" Dana meant to issue a scoffing challenge, but her question came out like a whimper. Her body vibrated with alarm. Weak, uncoordinated muscles hampered her attempts to put steel in her spine.

  "Do not backtalk. And mind what I say."

  Lily turned her face away, then rose and gestured to Jorje, who sprang from his chair. Amid another icy flurry, the pair returned to the storm from which they'd come, leaving Dana feeling as if she'd just tumbled into a rabbit's hole.

  She let out a heavy sigh and looked around. Except for Fenris, who moved restlessly to the door and sniffed nervously, everything was now as it had been. The stew bubbled on the stove. The fire danced brightly. If not for the puddles on the floor, no one would guess Lily and Jorje had even been there.

  Dana followed Fenris's lead and began roaming the cabin, too. She touched the kitchen table, the bed, the door, feeling almost as if she were re-marking her territory after a violation.

  Finally, she gave another sigh and went to get the mop.

  While cleaning up the second mini-flood of the day, her legs unexpectedly turned to jelly. She wobbled to the rocking chair and sat down, trying to catch her now erratic breath. What had she done to earn such animosity? In Dana's admittedly inexpert opinion, Lily's behavior appeared almost psychotic, which probably explained why she seemed so frightening.

  Unfortunately, the explanation did nothing to ease Dana's fear. The small room suddenly looked huge and empty. Silly, she knew. After all, everything was light and warm inside, despite the sub-zero fingers scraping at the windows. But the chill from the bizarre couple's unexpected appearance lingered, and she felt it in her bones.

  She turned to the fire, rubbed her hands in front of it. Would she ever be warm again? Or away from this windswept, storm-battered place? And how had Lily and Jorje forged their way here? Where had they come from?

  Even more frightening was the rapid healing of Morgan's feet. She'd seen frostbite before. It took days, sometimes weeks, to heal, with blood-starved skin peeling off in ugly gray sheets. Maybe she'd blown the damage out of proportion. After all, his feet had been bare only a short time; but when she'd taken them in her hands, they'd been as white and cold and hard as ice cubes. Surely there should have been some aftereffect.

  Yet when he'd taken off his boots by the fire and she had seen his feet clearly before he'd hidden them in the slippers—even the tips of his toes glowed with perfect health.

  Strength began returning to Dana's muscles, but not warmth. Firelight reflected in the small pools of water on the floor, but she went to the bed, collected a blanket, and took it to the rocker. She'd just gathered it around her when a groan permeated the room.

  She shivered and sank deeper into the blanket.

  How odd could a man's music be?

  She laughed bitterly. She'd asked herself that question often lately, always with the same answer.

  How odd? It could drive a person mad, that's how odd. God, there was no melody, no harmony, and it sounded like the cries of a doomed soul standing at the gates of hell. She could barely listen without wanting to scream.

  All the rumors about Ebony Canyon rushed into her mind. It was, some said, a land lost in time and inhabited by Indians never exposed to society, who performed rituals to conjure up spirits of old to do their bidding. Supposedly, mutant creatures and evolution holdovers roamed free in its rugged, unexplored acres. Unspeakable monsters, invincible specters, bleached bones, lost graves . . .

  Her eyes drifted to The Lycanthropy Reader. She stared in ghoulish fascination. The best thing she could do for her sanity was to stop reading that book. The supernatural forces and magical powers it described were making her imagination run wild.

  She continued staring, drawn like an addict to an obsession, then trudged hypnotically to the bed and picked up the book. Wrapping herself in the bedclothes, as if they could protect her, she opened it.

  In creature form, the wer-wolf is impervious to weather. Neither heat nor cold can pierce its lush coat. For hours it can lope through temperatures that soon cause mortal man to perish. Choose your time wisely, brave hunter, choose wisely, lest by the limitations of your own flesh you become fodder for the beast's insatiable hunger.

  Was that how Lily and Jorje had forded the storm? By shape-shifting? Could these creatures actually exist?

  Dana gasped and swept the book off her lap.

  No! She was a scientist, for God's sake. She lived in a real world with known creatures. With reasonable explanations that she needed now.

  Only Morgan could provide them.

  She glanced at his locked door, then realized she'd so thoroughly blocked out his music she hadn't noticed when it stopped. The quiet behind that fortification now seemed as ominous as the music itself. After hesitating a moment, she put down the book and left the protection of her bed.

  Upon reaching Morgan's room, she rapped tentatively, starting when the noise ricocheted through the still room.

  "Morgan," she called, frightened even by the echo of her own voice.

  When a few seconds passed and he didn't answer, she paused, then rapped a second time. No response.

  She knew that, despite the metal plate, sound traveled in and out of there. Morgan's music always came through clearly enough, and she'd also caught unintelligible snippets of his quarrel with Lily. She leaned against the cool metal, straining to hear signs that he was up and moving around.

  "Morgan?" she called, louder.

  She heard a shuffle on the other side, a noise that hinted of something scratching. A guttural rasp slid beneath the door. Dana's heart skipped a beat and she jerked back.

  "Morgan!"

  Still he did not answer, but the sounds subsided.

  Dana wanted to dash back to the illusionary safety of the daybed, but her fear and irrational suspicions angered her. She felt sure that as soon as she talked to Morgan, she'd receive the explanations she needed. Then she heard a latch click. Moving back in relief, she waited for Morgan to come out.

  Her wait went unrewarded.

  She raised her hand and knocked again, this time hard and long, but still he didn't answer. Soon her eyes began to burn with team and her throat thickened. She continued to pound ever more frantically.

  "Morgan! Morgan! Where are you? Come out!"

  The storm outside intensified; the wind hammered at the panes and eaves, nearly drowning out her calls. She fought back by pounding harder, screaming louder. Finally, she could barely lift her arm and her voice gave out. Stumbling to the bed, she collapsed into a huddle and stared blankly at the flames. She hadn't felt so lost, alone, or helpless since

  Since just before she'd found her first wolf cub in that vale in Montana. Now her pack was hundreds of miles away and she was alone, all alone, on the brink of hell.

  * * *

&nb
sp; Oh, the smells of the forest, the bite of the fierce wind, the softness of fresh snow beneath his pads. Morgan ran and ran and ran through a swirl of gray and white, devouring miles with his long, powerful legs.

  He was running from it all. Lily's ceaseless demands. His guilt over deceiving Dana. His grim half-world existence. He wanted to keep running till he dropped from exhaustion, panting, gasping, dying, leaving every ounce of pain behind.

  Which, he knew, was not possible. He was tireless, inexhaustible, invincible. And hungry, always hungry. The need curled in his belly like a snake waiting to strike.

  Yet even as he ran, he felt a familiar glory in his mutant state. The subtle variety of colors, the vivid contrasts of light and dark, so intense they were unknown to both humans and wolves. He inhaled the scents, so many, each gloriously different from the next. Sounds of all vibrations caressed his ears. He could actually hear and feel the thrum of Earth turning on its axis, the thrust of plants, growing, reaching up.

  New York had emitted different sensations. Myriad lights that assailed his pupils, blurred his vision. The whine of tires on wet pavement, the coos of pigeons perching high, the cacophony of voices, laughing, crying, wailing, cheering. Life's blood, throbbing through veins, emitting a coppery scent that lured him to stalk, to . . .

  Kill.

  The sheer glut of feeling had almost overwhelmed him. He'd fled the city in terror of his own emotions, his own horrible urges.

  As a mortal, he'd hardly noticed the city's activity. He'd grown numb in his plush Fifth Avenue office, listening to privileged people grouse about petty problems, viewing them with a contempt he concealed even from himself.

  His mother had died when he was a child, and though he'd always sensed his investment-banker father loved him, the man had been so harried and preoccupied, Morgan never really knew him. His only sister was ten years older than he and had left home before Morgan entered high school. He hadn't seen her since their father's funeral several years before.

  After that, Morgan had felt strangely adrift in the world. His personal relationships became distant, ritualistic, mechanical. At night he amused himself with plays and sporting events, parties and unfulfilling sex, and when that paled he'd stare at the city below from the balcony of his luxurious, professionally decorated Central Park apartment and wonder what had happened to the young psychiatrist who'd wanted to eliminate mankind's woes. At these times, he studied books about the awesome possibilities of the human mind and asked himself why no one had reliably tapped into it. He'd dream of one day doing so, then the next morning he'd return to his lackluster practice.

  Then a colleague invited him to interview an unusual patient: a Balkan immigrant who'd fled Romania during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The man actually believed he was a werewolf and had rushed into the colleague's office, alarmed at the impending fill moon, begging to be locked up for everyone’s protection.

  Morgan had, of course, been incredulous, but the man's sincere conviction was fascinating, so he'd agreed to take the case. During one late-day appointment, as the city lights began reflecting in the window of Morgan's high-rise office, his attention began to wander. Nearly an hour of hearing about Transylvania and enchanted mountains was stretching his patience.

  Lucid, he scribbled onto a yellow legal pad. Obsessive need for attention. By this point, he was certain the patient was an unmitigated fake.

  "She was a woman of few years," the man was saying. "Her skin still fresh and dewy, tender to the teeth. When she saw me, I could smell the very fear in her. Ah, it was so tantalizing. I could not resist."

  "Where was this again, Boris?" Morgan asked, not really caring, but wanting his notes to be correct.

  "In Bucharest, in the rotten heart of the city." The man paused for a moment. "I stalked her for many blocks and she began walking faster, faster, until she nearly stumbled over her own feet. Finally she turned a dark corner. A key was in her hand. I saw my chance. . . ."

  Morgan fought back a grimace of disbelief as tears gathered in the corner of his patient's eyes.

  "She was at her door . . . . safety near, so near. . . . I saw terror . . . terror in her face when she turned to fight me. Then she looked into my eyes and I had her in my will. She fought no more. I said a small prayer for her soul." Another dramatic pause, a poignant hitch in the voice. "I tore out her throat before the scream had left it."

  Morgan involuntarily cleared his own throat. "Umm . . . This is a good time to, uh, address control of the imagination. Can you tell me what occurred before you had this delusion?"

  "Delusion?" This was stated sharply. "Are you a fool like the rest, Doctor? A skeptic who will not admit the existence of what you cannot understand?"

  "Your anger is understandable; let's start with that." Leaning back in his chair, Morgan nibbled on the tip of his pen. "What angered you that day?"

  "I was not angry!" Boris gave an awkward jerk of his head. "Why can you not believe? It is truth I tell you."

  He jerked his head again. His arms and legs began to twitch. Spasms ran through his jaw. Clearly fighting the movements, he arched his neck backward. His mouth snapped opened. A high keening sound arose from his throat, reverberated off the window glass, and filled the room. With a moan, he lurched to the floor and curled up.

  Morgan made a quick call for emergency assistance, then rushed to kneel beside the fallen man, whose joints had already swelled to twice their normal size. The man's moans sounded more like whimpers and snarls than human cries of pain, and his wide eyes contained a plea.

  Unable to believe what he was seeing, Morgan watched Boris's cranium plate shift. Bones and joints twitched, wobbled, reassembled themselves into larger, sturdier structures. The patient's skin thickened; hair appeared on his gnarled knuckles. His eyes glazed and Morgan sensed he was no longer aware of his surroundings.

  Morgan stared in denial and terror as Boris clenched his eyes shut, wrapped himself into a fetal position, and rocked onto his side. His groans grew increasingly agonized, his respiration rapid and shallow. Morgan reached to check his pulse, snatching his hand back when Boris snapped at it.

  He called the man's name, but the patient was lost in his own agonized world and didn't hear. His vital signs were getting weak.

  Morgan sprang to his feet and yanked open a desk drawer that held a small first-aid kit he'd never had to use. No longer sure what it contained, he fought to still his trembling fingers and scattered the contents of the kit, searching for a paper vial he hoped was there.

  While he hunted, he asked himself if Boris's tale might be true. Although the man's body retained human proportions, the changes were irrefutably wolflike.

  He refused to believe in such superstitious nonsense, and his studies came back to him. What was at work inside this man that could cause such physical manifestations? Shape-shifting, shamanism, werewolves, and vampires were all nonsense. But who knew what the human mind could do?

  Nineteenth-century psychiatric papers suggested that hysterical psychosomatic reactions were once quite common, although few modern psychiatrists had ever witnessed one. Yet even now, people frequently died from psychosomatic illnesses. Could man also use his will to change his body? By harnessing this power, might man finally defeat illness and the inevitable decline of old age? Learn to control thought, thereby eliminating mental and behavioral disorders?

  Morgan's fear vanished, but now his heart raced with excitement. The possibilities were limitless.

  At that moment, his hand touched the ammonia inhalant. He rushed back and cracked it open beneath Boris's nose, recoiling himself as the heavy, acrid odor filled the room.

  When the inhalant reached Boris's lungs, he gasped and choked. A cough rattled in his chest. Tension subsided. He relaxed his arms. Soon his breathing slowed and he straightened his rigidly drawn up legs.

  "Boris?"

  With a heavy sigh, Boris rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, which were now bloodshot.

  "They say the pr
ocess is easier if you don't fight it," he said, so softly Morgan had to strain to hear the words.

  "Who says?"

  "The alphas," came the whispered reply. "Do they tell you to do things, these alphas?"

  "No one tells me. It's my nature now. And, oh, sweet God, I despise it."

  Morgan's mind whirred as he tried to categorize Boris's experience. A disassociative disorder? Schizophrenia, perhaps? He had to know what had brought about these physical changes. But the psychiatrist in him knew he shouldn't probe at this time. Boris needed stabilizing first.

  "What thoughts preceded these symptoms?" he asked, ignoring professional protocol to satisfy personal curiosity.

  "I told you. The moon is waxing." Then he laughed so bitterly, with such despair, it sent a chill down Morgan's spine. "You had a lucky escape, Doctor. Now lock me up. If I cannot persuade you to do it for your own protection, then do it for mine."

  Morgan continued with questions for a while, but got no reasonable answers. When the paramedics arrived, he did as Boris requested and had him committed. For several days he visited the patient, reading reports of physical manifestations similar to those that occurred in his office. Always Boris exhibited extreme pain; always the ammonia inhalant relieved the symptoms; and always he failed to give Morgan a rational explanation.

  Late on the night of the full moon, a phone call disturbed Morgan's sleep. Boris had been found hanging by his neck in his room, apparently preferring death to the miserable existence he'd created.

  The next morning, Morgan cleared his appointments and booked a flight to Europe, where he hoped to find answers to Boris's anomalous manifestations and disprove his claims of a werewolf curse. A scientific reason existed, and Morgan felt certain it lay in uncovering the power of thought. Perhaps the tragedy of poor Boris's life would help unlock those secrets and provide everlasting benefit.

  In Paris, he found the beautiful Lily. Sultry and fey — or so he'd thought at the time — she'd offered to take him to remote villages in the various Balkan mountain ranges where the inhabitants still defended themselves against evil night creatures. Although retaining his skepticism about their beliefs, Morgan hoped to gain insight into the social paradigms that could influence a man's mind enough to cause rapid and profound body changes. The fervor of youthful idealism returned.