Call of the Highland Moon (The MacInnes Werewolves #1)

Gideon had found he liked clean lines, and an uncluttered feel to his space. When he walked in his front door now, that was exactly what he saw. It had been Gideon’s vision, and this place, the blending of the old and the new, had brought him peace. He’d been going to start on the upstairs when he came back, he thought with a touch of regret, remembering the joy he’d taken in the planning of it, the options he’d thoroughly enjoyed mulling over.

Now, unless his final vision included Carly to share it with, children to clutter up the expanded bedrooms, his father to crash about like a bull in a china shop, irritating Gideon with his overstepping and delighting those children with what would no doubt be incredible spoiling … there would be neither peace nor joy in any future Gideon might have in this house.

Gideon grabbed a heavy ceramic mug from a cupboard of his shadowy kitchen, pouring himself some of the coffee that sat warming in the pot of his coffee maker. Gabriel hadn’t indulged himself, opting instead for tea, Gideon noted, from the looks of the still-steaming teapot on his stove. He might have done the same himself, on a normal day, Gideon reflected. But today was anything but normal, and he needed something stronger.

He lingered a moment before heading out into the living area and over to where Gabriel lay sprawled half on, half off his couch. His brother had obviously dozed off waiting for him to return from tending to Carly. His sleep was light, though, Gideon saw as Gabriel started, then straightened at his approach. They were all on edge, and none of them wanted to let his guard down for fear of who or what might be waiting for just that to happen.

“How is she?” Gabriel asked, his voice rough with sleep. Gideon had to smile, unable to help noticing the rumpled copy of Maxim still resting across his brother’s broad chest, the shirt buttoned wrong and just as rumpled as the magazine. Gabriel’s obstinately messy boyishness had irritated him plenty at different times over the years, but at this moment, everything about Gabriel’s presence was a comfort. Particularly, Gideon thought with a rush of affection, Gabriel’s firm and unwavering conviction that together, there was nothing the MacInnes brothers couldn’t set to rights.

He needed to borrow some of that faith.

“Sleeping again,” Gideon answered, sinking into the overstuffed chair opposite his brother with an audible groan. “She did wake, though. For a few minutes.” He shook his head at Gabriel’s questioning look. “She’s already started the Change.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. “So early? I thought she’d have until nightfall before it really started in earnest. That’s how it always was for us, after all, before we could control it.”

“We weren’t bitten. And certainly not by what got at her.” Gideon gritted his teeth against the memory and took a large swallow of his coffee. “No, she, ah … lost her temper with me, a bit. And her eyes changed.” He stared into his cup, remembering. “I don’t think the teeth were far behind. She looked like she wanted to take a good-sized chunk out of my hide.”

“Did she know?” His expression was unreadable, but Gideon had a feeling there was a fair amount of hope hiding behind it. He hated to quash it, but hope, in this case, was fairly pointless.

“No.” Gideon took another swig of the strong, black liquid in his mug before setting it on the long, heavy coffee table in front of him. “No. Just that short moment took so much out of her that she needed to rest again.” He stared into space, thinking of the way Carly’s beautiful blue eyes had gone to feral yellow in the space of a heartbeat, startling him into silence as she raged at him. He’d watched, assessed … and when she’d continued to cruise on the first small rush of that new power, he’d almost dared to consider the possibility …

Then she’d all but collapsed, and Gideon had started to prepare himself for the inevitable. I don’t want to be alone, she’d told him. And with all that was in him, he’d be damned if he broke his word on that.

“Well.” Gabriel looked as deflated as Gideon felt. “Well, we still won’t know until we know, I suppose.”

Gideon put the heels of his palms to his eyes and pressed, hard. He knew his fatigue would lessen as the day wore on, as the moon began to pulse in his veins like a heartbeat. Normally, that thought would have comforted him. But now, knowing what the night held in store for Carly, he was hard-pressed to wish the day away.

“No,” he finally allowed, though the words sounded false to him as he spoke them, “I suppose we won’t.”

Gabriel sighed and unfolded his long, lanky frame from the couch. Gideon was surprised when he walked over to clap him roughly on the shoulder. “If she can still give you hell, she’s a fighter, Gid. She’ll make it. Don’t think she won’t.”

Gabriel’s eyes were serious, dark, and Gideon could only give him a sharp nod. It was good that Gabriel was there to bolster his flagging spirits. Especially when Gideon contemplated that, no matter how much he tried to gird himself for what was to come, simply speaking of a world without Carly might break him apart.

A quick knock at the door had them both turning their heads then. Gabriel ambled toward it.

“Must be the rest of our merry crew,” he quipped, and indeed, when he opened the door to the cold, gray morning, Gideon could make out Malcolm’s brush of russet hair just outside.

“Come on in, Mal,” Gideon called, straightening in his chair and downing the rest of the bitter contents of his mug. “Join the party.”

Malcolm MacDonald, a tall, whipcord-thin man of fifty-eight whose slight build concealed a wiry strength that Gideon had been on the receiving end of many a time, moved quickly into the room. In one long-fingered hand, he clutched what looked to be a moldering bit of parchment, and his chocolate-brown eyes were ablaze with urgency.

“I’ve found something,” he stated in his usual clipped way, getting right to the point. “After we spoke last night, I got to thinking about what your creature said, your Drakkyn, as he called himself. It rang a bell, somehow, but I couldn’t think where. So I got to rummaging in the cellars.”

“Musty old place, that,” Gabriel interjected, wrinkling his nose. “Gideon and I must have ruined half of what was down there, all those old books and bits of paper, playing at pirates.”

Malcolm looked down his long blade of a nose at him, and Gideon bit back a smile. Some things, it seemed, never changed. “Fortunately for you, you missed a few things,” he said. “Including this.” He handed the crumbling document to Gideon.

“It’s a copy of the Dictates,” he said after scanning it quickly. “Quite old, from the looks of it.” He raised his questioning eyes to Malcolm’s expectant ones, wondering what he was missing. The Dictates were hardly full of deep inner meaning. Saint Columba had written them as simply and directly as possible, he knew, for a rough group of men completely devoid of most of the trappings of civilization. So that they could understand. And anyway, he’d been raised on the damned things. He needed no tutorial. He wished Malcolm would just spit out what he was getting at. But he’d learned, through the years, that he would be led to the answer in Mal’s sweet time, and that was all there was to it.

So when Malcolm simply continued to look at him, Gideon reached a little further. “I actually think this is the oldest copy I’ve seen.”

Malcolm nodded, pleased. “Exactly. The oldest I’ve seen, as well. Possibly the oldest we have, as the wording is a bit off of what we’ve come to use.” He kept his gaze locked with Gideon’s. “Have a look.”

Gideon frowned and looked more closely. The ink was faded on the small square of parchment, but he could still make out the writing. Gaelic, it was, but his rough knowledge of the language, as well as his familiarity with the Sacred Dictates themselves, enabled him to make out the words easily enough.

“First, no harm against thy brother wolf,” he read aloud.

“Not that one, no,” Malcolm interrupted, obviously impatient.

“Break no faith with the Pack, nor thy mate, but guard them well.”

“No, no, nor that.”

Gideon glared up at Malcolm, feeling suddenly as though he were back receiving lessons, he the ignorant student, Malcolm the omnipotent instructor. And the old man always had been a bit of a show-off in that area.

Malcolm’s eyes gleamed. “Continue.”

Gideon sighed, not bothering to conceal his exasperation. “Hold to the path of light, whether moon or sun. Fall not back on the ways of darkness …”

“Ah,” Malcolm said with a flash of triumph. “That’s how we know this particular Dictate now. But that’s not quite what this says. Read it again.”

Gideon squinted at the paper, then read again, his voice fading in shock as he saw what was actually written on this ancient scrap of paper.

“Fall not back on the ways of the Drakkyn,” he recited softly, then lowered the parchment to his lap to look up at his companions. Malcolm looked pleased, Gabriel stunned. “But … what can this mean, then? How was this lost?”

“Simple,” Malcolm replied, plucking the paper from Gideon’s hands and moving to settle himself in another chair. “The wording was changed because we, as a group, forgot what these Drakkyn, and their ways, even were. Lost in the passage of time. Or, more likely, I think, forgotten purposely.”

“Why? I mean, are you certain that isn’t simply an archaic way of saying ‘darkness’? Because what is a bloody Drakkyn?” Gabriel sounded incensed—not surprising since he and Malcolm had been at odds for years. It was a function of pitting sense without humor, Gideon had always thought, against humor without much sense.

Malcolm gave him a stony glare before dismissing him with a turn of his head. “Your father, Ian, and I have had many discussions,” he said, “about the origins of our Pack, of the werewolf in general, and all of us agree that there are some interesting discrepancies in the story we’ve all come to accept.”