Dark Guardian #2: Full Moon Read online

  I raced over, sat on the ground, and put his head on my lap. He was bleeding near his shoulder and his hind-quarters. As he tried to lift his head, I pushed it back down, gently stroking his fur. “Shh, shh, just relax. You need to heal. You’ll be all right.”

  Holding his gaze, I thought I’d never been so grateful for anyone’s arrival, but it was more than the fact that he’d saved me from a cougar attack. I was just so glad to see him. I wanted to know what he’d been doing, how he was doing. I had a hundred questions for him, but mostly I just wanted to hold him. He licked my bare knee, as though he wanted to communicate that he was feeling the same. I didn’t scold him for sneaking in a kiss.

  I heard a twig snap and jerked my head up to see the guy who’d played pool with Brittany—Dallas—standing there.

  “So what are you—the wolf whisperer?” he asked.

  “I’m really trying not to freak out here,” Dallas said. “But this is just…it’s wild, man, it’s totally unbelievable. Werewolves. They exist.”

  I hadn’t seen any point in trying to lie my way out of a situation that couldn’t get much worse. Rafe’s clothes had been in a heap on the forest floor—explain that. His gaping, bleeding wounds had healed right before Dallas’s eyes—again, explain that. I was holding a wolf in my lap and talking tenderly to him—yeah, normal people do that all the time.

  So I’d led Dallas back to our camp. We’d been only a few minutes into the journey when Rafe had silently joined us in human form, fully clothed. Seeing him again like that was like a kick to the gut that almost made me giddy. I hadn’t realized that I’d actually missed him, probably a lot more than I should have. I had the sense that he’d missed me too when he silently handed me my container of blackberries. It was full, which meant he’d taken the time to pick some before catching up with us.

  Now we were sitting beside the fire, where two rabbits were cooking. I wasn’t certain I’d be able to eat. Disaster seemed a heartbeat away.

  “We prefer the term ‘shapeshifters,’” Lucas said. “Werewolf is so…Hollywood.”

  “Didn’t mean to offend, but God. Mason kept talking about werewolves, and I just thought he was insane, that his brain power was too much for him. I mean, his IQ is off the charts.”

  “You know Mason Keane?” I blurted.

  “Hard not to when I work—worked—for Bio-Chrome.”

  “‘Worked’?” Lucas repeated, suspicion in his voice.

  “Yeah. I quit about ten days ago. Decided to take a long-overdue vacation. And—okay, I was curious. I wanted to discover for myself if you really existed.”

  “And you decided to do that by following us?” Connor asked.

  “Don’t sound so offended, man. He was following me.” He jerked his thumb toward Rafe. “Not that I ever spotted him or anything. It was just a sixth-sense kind of thing, you know?”

  Yeah, I knew. So the odds were that when I had felt that sensation of being watched, it had been Dallas doing the watching. Or maybe it had been Rafe, slipping in to keep an eye on us.

  “So why follow us?” Kayla asked.

  “I’m a scientist. I need proof. So are all of you…” Dallas’s voice trailed off as he glanced around.

  “If we tell you that, then we’ll have to kill you,” Rafe said, and I thought he was only half joking.

  “Look, dude, I’m not here with evil intentions. Like I said, I just wanted proof. And I was trying to figure out if I could trust you. For all I knew, you’d get rabid and slobber.”

  “And now you know we don’t,” Lucas said. “What’s it to you?”

  Kayla put her hand over his. I wondered if she was aware that Lucas was trying to decide what to do with the human. Worst case scenario involved death, but I didn’t think we’d go there. We could take him to Wolford and let the elders deal with him. Or we could take our chances and just let him go. Who would believe him anyway?

  “Look, I can feel the tension mounting so let’s all relax, okay? I’m on your side. I figured if you really existed I should tell you what I know. And if you didn’t exist, then I was working for some crazies and shouldn’t even bother to ask them for a job reference.”

  “So what exactly do you know?” Connor asked.

  “Right at the edge of the forest, just before you get to the part that’s designated national park land, there’s a wooded area that’s still private property. Last year Bio-Chrome started building a lab there. Seemed an odd choice, you know? Because it’s away from everything, in the middle of nowhere. Helicopters bring in our supplies. We live there; we work there. It’s almost a prison. To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure they were going to let me leave.

  “Anyway, they’re very secretive about what’s going on at the facility. When I applied for the job, all I knew was that it involved studying what they were calling the ‘L-factor gene.’ Stupid me, I thought maybe it referred to love…something to help geeky guys get dates. I really had no clue. It wasn’t until I was working there that I discovered the L stood for lycanthropy. I thought it was a joke.”

  He stared into the fire. Whether he was trying to determine what more to tell us or still dealing with the fact that we actually existed, I didn’t know.

  “But Dr. Keane and Mason, they were so obsessed. They kept talking about how they wanted to capture a lycanthrope and study him. It sounded barbaric. I mean, if these beings did exist, locking them up would be taking away their rights. When I pointed that out, Mason said that lycanthropes weren’t human, so they didn’t have any rights. It just sounded so wrong.”

  But sounded so much like Mason, I thought. I glanced over at Kayla. She looked incredibly sad, and I knew it was because she didn’t understand why everyone didn’t accept our existence as gracefully as she had.

  “Why didn’t you tell us all this the other night?” Lucas asked.

  Dallas met his gaze. “I was going to, but the more I talked, the more the idea of werewolves—sorry, I mean ‘shapeshifters’—it just sounded so…out there.” He studied his hands again, the way he had at the Sly Fox: as though he could figure out how we did it.

  “So you thought spying on us was a better solution?” Connor asked.

  “Look, I’ve never done this James Bond stuff before, okay? So shoot me. Besides, I saw what he’s capable of.” He pointed at Rafe. “You could kill me, but I stepped forward and here I am.”

  “Which brings us back to—exactly why are you here?” Lucas asked.

  “I just thought you should know what they were planning.”

  “You said the lab was near the national forest. Where exactly?”

  “Far northeast corner.”

  “Why don’t you show us?” Lucas asked.

  “What? Like on a map?”

  Lucas was wearing his don’t-mess-with-me expression. In it, I could see the ferocity that marked him as the leader of our pack. Judging by the way Dallas’s eyes widened slightly, I suspected he recognized it, too.

  “I was thinking you could show us in person,” Lucas said.

  “You don’t trust me,” Dallas said, his voice slightly petulant.

  “Let’s just say we’ve dealt with Bio-Chrome before. The company is not exactly on our list as a friend of endangered species.”

  Suddenly appearing very nervous, Dallas glanced around. “They’ve hired mercenaries to guard the place. They look like they’d kill their grandmothers if the price was right.”

  “And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning earlier?” Rafe asked with a deadly calm that sent a shiver up my back, even though I knew he’d never hurt me. He was studiously avoiding looking at me—while I was having a hell of a time keeping my gaze from wandering over to him.

  “I was getting around to it. Look, I’m being a good samaritan here. And I’m feeling very unappreciated.”

  “You just have to show us the lab,” Lucas reassured him. “We may have some questions once we see it.”

  Reluctantly, Dallas nodded. “Yeah, okay, I guess that makes s