Moon Sworn (Riley Jenson Guardian #9)

"How can you joke about something like this?" He motioned toward the body with a hand that appeared to be shaking. "Someone cut this man's nuts off!"

"And maybe they had a damn good reason." It was absently said. There was something here, something I couldn't quite catch or explain ...

"And there'd better be a damn good reason for you two being here." The voice was deep and authoritative, and not one that I knew. "Especially when Cathie's already warned you to stay away from the crime scene."

"Tell me about it," Evin muttered, then added, "Hanna thought we'd better check, just in case there was someone here who needed medical help."

"Hanna?" The other man's gaze seemed to rest on me. I could feel the weight of his annoyance. "Isn't she the sister that went missing?"

"Yeah. We just got back. I asked Cathie to let you know."

"Well, she didn't." He stepped up beside me, surrounding me with his scent - warm spices and musky wolf.

"You really need to step away."

"And you really need to know that there's something else here."

"What?"

I glanced at him then. He was several inches taller than me, with dark hair and well-defined, handsome features. His shoulders were broad, his body lithe - the build of an athlete, not a bodybuilder. Something within me leapt and my gaze jerked up to his face, searching for a reason for the tug of familiarity. He was wearing dark glasses, so I couldn't see if his eyes were as dark as his hair. But part of me wanted them to be - expected them to be.

Except that he was a werewolf.

That bit didn't fit with what I was expecting.

I tore my gaze away from his and motioned toward the body. "There's something else here. An odd sort of energy."

It was thick and strong, and it felt like fingers of ice caressing my flesh, cooling the heat of sunburn, sucking at my strength.

It was also something I'd felt before, back in the times I couldn't remember. I had no fear of it, even when the slivers of pain began to stab at my brain - a pain that was scarily similar to the pain that occurred when I'd tried to shift shape.

Something had obviously gone seriously wrong when I'd hit whatever it was I'd hit.

"I can't feel - "

I grabbed Harris's arm, stopping him. His muscles tensed under my fingertips, but he didn't pull away. I pointed with my other hand. "There."

"What?" His voice was patient, as if he were dealing with a crazy person. And who knew, maybe he was.

Except that I could see it. A faint wisp of white hovering just above the victim's head.

"A soul."

"A soul? Lady - "

"Damn it, it's there. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"Yeah, right. Evin, I think you'd better - "

"Sorry, Hanna," Evin said, and before I could react, something hit me over the head and the world went black.

I woke to darkness. I lay there for several seconds, staring upward but not really registering that there was a ceiling above me rather than sky and stars.

Then memory hit and I jerked upright. Only to wince in pain as my head protested the movement. I raised a hand and felt a bump the size of an egg on the side of my head. Evin. The bastard didn't have to hit me so hard.

I swung my legs off the bed. A dozen different aches awoke, and my skin felt like it was glowing. Obviously, the werewolf quick-healing thing wasn't working too well on my sunburn.

I was still wearing Evin's shirt, and his scent hung on the air. How could my own brother smell so familiar and yet so strange? It was weird, and I really didn't think it had anything to do with the lack of memory. It was something that went deeper.

Everything that was happening went far deeper than a lack of memory - of that I was sure. I just had to try to figure out the what and whys without raising anyone's suspicions in the process. I don't know why, but I had a bad feeling that would not be a good idea just yet.

There were voices in one of the rooms beyond mine, and it took me several minutes to realize it was probably the TV. I couldn't hear Evin moving about, but I could smell coffee, and my stomach rumbled a reminder that I hadn't had anything to eat or drink in a while.

I scrubbed a hand across my face. I felt grimy and achy, and I desperately needed a shower, food, and coffee. But more than anything, I needed to understand what was going on.

And first on that list was remembering me.

I rose and walked across to the mirror attached to the small dressing table. My reflection was thin and sunburned. My face was pleasant enough, and there was a sense of familiarity about it - though why this surprised me, I'm not entirely sure. I mean, it was my face. What did I expect? Surgical changes?

My hair was the same red-gold as Evin's and cut into a short, elfin style. That felt different. I touched it lightly, feeling oddly bereft. It should have been longer. Had been longer.

There were fading bruises and cuts over my cheeks and above my eyes, and one earlobe looked as if someone had taken a knife to it. Weirdly enough, that apparently didn't prevent me from wearing earrings. They were overly large stud earrings with a blue stone in the center, and really ugly. I tried to take them off, but the damn things seemed to be attached to my flesh and would not be budged.

I frowned and undid the shirt instead. The bruises over my torso were as bad as they'd felt, and the gunshot wound looked puckered and red. It wasn't infected, but it had been. If I'd been able to change before the accident with the roo, why hadn't that healed? Surely I would have taken steps to heal my own flesh?

But then, if I'd been depressed, maybe not.

Maybe not remembering anything was a good thing, not bad.

I stepped back, then caught sight of the wallet sitting on the bedside table. I opened it up and dragged out the driver's license tucked into the one of the side pockets. The picture was crappy - as they always were - but the face on the license matched the face in the mirror. And the name listed was Hanna London. I was who Evin said I was.

Even if I didn't feel like a Hanna.

I shoved the wallet back onto the dresser and headed out the door to find Evin.

It turned out the villa apartment wasn't very big. There was a second bedroom next to mine and, next to that, an average-looking bathroom. The main room was one big space comprised of a kitchen, a dining area, and a TV

area. The furnishings were a basic, durable pine, and the curtains and cushions consisted of an almost garish blue and yellow flower print. There wasn't much in the way of decorations, but I guess you didn't need them when one wall was glass, and the vista beyond was all white sand and blue ocean. Even at night, it was a sight to behold.

Evin was sitting at the table under the small front veranda reading a newspaper. I followed my nose to the coffee machine, made myself a drink, then grabbed an apple and headed outside to join him.

He looked up as I sat down, and there was a decided wariness in his gray eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"I'd be great if some uncaring bastard hadn't cracked my head open earlier tonight." I took a sip of coffee and winced at the sharp, bitter taste. Definitely not to my liking, but it was hot and strong and better than nothing.

"Hanna, you were acting rather weird - "

"You'd be weird if you could see souls, too." I glanced at him over the rim of my mug. "Why don't you know about that?"

"Maybe because it was never mentioned?" He shrugged. "We may spend a lot of time together, dearest sister, but we don't tell each other every single thing that goes on in our lives."

But we do ... Or at least, I thought we did. I bit into my apple, enjoying the juicy sweetness, then said, "So what secrets are you hiding from me? Aside from the fact you're apparently moon-sworn."

"That's not a secret. You just can't remember it." He picked up his cup, and I saw with surprise it was tea rather than coffee.

When did my brother start drinking tea?

"How long are we staying here? And how long was I out?"

He raised his eyebrows. "What, sick of the place already?"

Wary was more like it, but I didn't say that. I simply shrugged. He folded the paper and put it on the table. "You slept through the entire day. And we paid for seven days, and we won't get a refund if we leave early. Neither of us can afford to lose that sort of money, so we're stuck here until then."

So I'd wasted a day. An entire day.

"And after the seven days are up?" I couldn't help tensing as I said that, because the words of that stranger still echoed in my mind.

"After that, who knows?"

If he was a part of whatever was going on, why wouldn't he know? There again, if he did know and this was a plot rather than the imaginings of a sick mind, why would he tell me?

I munched on the apple and watched him watching me. It felt weird, like we were strangers rather than brother and sister.

"What happened to the doctor you were going to call?" I tossed the apple core into the tussock grass lining the veranda. The birds and the ants could feast on what remained.

"This town has only one doctor, and he doubles as a coroner when there's a murder. So, we're no longer his first priority." He hesitated, then said, "You better keep taking your tablets until we talk to him."

I raised an eyebrow. "They were for depression and I don't feel depressed."

He tapped his fingers on the table, a soft drumming that for some reason annoyed me. "Maybe you don't feel depressed, but you've lost your spark, Hanna. And you've already tried suicide once. So forgive me if I'm blunt here, but you'll fucking take your tablets even if I have to force them down your throat, because I do not want to lose anyone here."

The emotion in his voice, particularly when he said that last bit, had tears prickling my eyes. It was the truth -

the honest truth - in a sea of lies.

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Okay, I'll take the tablets. Where are they?"

"In the bathroom." He leaned back. "I think I'll go to the pub for a meal. You interested?"

I snorted softly. "Like this? Thanks, but no. I think I'll stay here and have a bath."

"Cool." He glanced at his watch. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

I shrugged. "Don't hurry on my account. Enjoy yourself."

"Like that's - " He caught the words, and shrugged. "I'll bring back some beer, if you like."

I nodded, wondering what the hell he'd been about to say, and why he'd checked it. I finished my coffee as he disappeared into the darkness, then I stood and made my way into the bathroom.

There was a pill bottle sitting on the ledge underneath the mirror. I picked it up and read the label - these were definitely my tablets, and they were dated several weeks ago. I frowned and tipped one out into my hand. They were large and brown - more like something you'd feed a horse. I contemplated the tablet in my hand for several seconds, then clenched my fingers around it.

I couldn't take it. I just couldn't.

I dropped it into the shower and crushed it underneath my heel, then turned on the taps, stripping off the shirt before stepping inside.

I kept the water cool because of my sunburned skin, but it still felt like bliss. For several minutes I did nothing more than stand there, letting the water sluice off me, washing away the worst of the blood and dirt even as the chill began to seep into my body and ease the fires burning there.

After I'd washed hair and skin, I turned off the taps, grabbed a towel, and stepped out to dry myself. Then I swung around and headed for my bedroom. There was a suitcase at the foot of the bed. The clothes in it were a mix of old and new - some of them smelled of me, but most didn't.

I grabbed a pair of faded denims and a low-cut T-shirt but didn't worry about a bra - the strap would have rubbed the half-healed wound.

Once dressed, I glanced at the time. Evin had been gone for twenty minutes. That left me an hour and forty minutes to do my investigations.

I grabbed my wallet and the apartment keys then headed out. The night was still crisp and a little on the cool side. The sigh of the waves washing up the shore mingled with the distant sound of laughter and music. All the nearby villas were silent - maybe everyone had gone into town. From the little I'd seen of this place earlier, there probably wasn't much else to do.

Once clear of both the villa area and the nearby caravan park, I broke into a run, cupping my breasts with my hands to compensate for my lack of a bra. The rubber soles of my shoes made little sound on the dusty road, but the little puffs of dirt that rose with each step meant I'd be noticed if there was actually anyone about to notice. But even though there were one or two houses that had their lights and TVs on, no one seemed to be paying any attention to what was going on in the street.

Interestingly, the air closer to town was thick with the musk of wolf. There were a lot of us here, and it made me wonder if Dunedan was a werewolf community. It was certainly remote enough - although it was unusual for such a community to also be a tourist destination.

I swung into a street just before the police station and headed for the paddock from the other side. There were fewer houses here, meaning less chance of being seen.

I slowed once I hit the grass. The thick scent of blood had faded - not surprising, given twenty-four hours had passed.

Yellow-and-black police tape fluttered in the slight breeze and I wondered if the body would be transferred elsewhere for the postmortem. If Dunedan was so small that the local doctor acted as coroner in an emergency, then I doubted they'd have a proper morgue. In fact, even the cops might have to call in specialists. They surely wouldn't have had to cope with many murder investigations in a community this size.