Rising Moon

Chapter Thirty-three

When Adam had said he was keeping Sullivan in his dungeon, he’d been exaggerating. Slightly.

The six of us tramped into the swamp. I wasn’t wild about the idea, but then again I wasn’t going to let John out of my sight. The way Adam kept glaring at him and Diana kept flinching whenever he came near, combined with Edward’s habit of pointing a gun in his direction, made me worry he wouldn’t come out of the swamp at all.

Why did I care? I wasn’t quite sure.

What I was certain of was that I wanted to see Sullivan cured and not just because I missed the man who’d been my friend; I wanted to see magic done. Who wouldn’t?

A cool breeze brushed the long grass, causing the tiny tendrils of moss hanging from the cypress trees to sway. The damage was more visible deeper within the swamp. One tree had been yanked from the earth by the wind, then driven back into the muck branches first, the roots reaching like emaciated arms toward the sky.

A heavy splash to the right made me skitter in the other direction, and my tennis shoe sank ankle deep in ooze. I tugged, but my leg was stuck.

“Was that an alligator?” Panic made my voice wobble.

“Most likely.” Diana paused to help me out.

“I—I thought a lot of the wildlife died in Katrina.”

“Some did. But there were plenty of alligators to go around.” She gave my leg a good yank and my foot came free with a wet, gloppy squelch. “Don’t worry; they won’t come near us.”

“You have a gris-gris?” I shook my foot, and globs of mud flew.

“No.” She glanced at John. “They don’t like wolves.”

She turned on her heel and hurried to catch up to her husband.

After half an hour of hoofing it through the swamp, we topped a slight rise and stared down at a dilapidated cabin that seemed to have sprung from the earth.

“Sullivan’s here?” I asked.

“You don’t think I’d keep him near my family, do you?” Adam headed down the hill.

Man, the guy was cranky. I guess I wouldn’t be too cheery either with the prospect of the crescent moon curse hanging over my head, and that of my young son; but he was starting to get on my nerves.

We filed into the cabin. The main room was dominated by a cage, and in that cage resided Conner Sullivan.

“Where are his clothes?” I whispered, staring in spite of myself at the thick muscled legs, the bulging arms, and flat, rippling belly.

“He shifted, which makes clothes garbage,” Diana explained. “There wasn’t any point in getting new ones until he was cured.”

“That’s kind of inhumane, isn’t it?”

“He isn’t human,” Diana answered.

Sullivan had been eyeing all of us with a sardonic smile. When his gaze reached me he licked his lips and his eyes flared. “Glad you’re here, Anne. That’ll save me time once I’ve killed them all.”

Why had I come again? Oh, yeah, to get my friend back. But I was starting to wonder if I’d ever be able to look at him and not remember what he’d done. I couldn’t stop remembering it now.

My thoughts must have shown on my face, because Sullivan laughed, the sound causing the hair on my arms to dance.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away,” he murmured. “Rodolfo’s cock isn’t big enough for you.” Reaching down, he began to stroke himself. “Mine will be. I promise.”

“If you’re going to fix him, do it,” John snapped.

“Hit a nerve?” Sullivan stopped masturbating—thank God. “Although now that I see you, really see you and him”—he j erked his head in Adam’s direction—”I don’t think your name is Rodolfo. It’s Ruelle, isn’t it?”

His lips pulled back in a sneer. “I always knew you were killing people. How many was it? Twenty?

Thirty? Do you like to fuck them as they die? Doesn’t the blood taste better when they’re scared? You must know all sorts of ways to make the experience better. Can we talk?”

The contrast between the previously proper and polite Sullivan and the disgusting animal before us now was astounding. If this was the way John had been when he was Henri, I could understand why no one in the room could stand to be near him. Even I inched farther away.

Sullivan grinned. “She knows you for what you are now. You’ll never get into her pants again. I’m surprised you managed it in the first place. But then, she doesn’t know what you did, does she?”

“Shut up,” John said. “It wasn’t me.”

“No? I bet your victims could pick you out of any lineup. But then, once they’re victims, they’d never betray you. They’re part of your pack. Under your control.” His eyes, darker than John’s with much scarier shadows beneath the surface, shifted to mine. “You know, I remembered where I saw the eyes of the wolf that bit me.”

“No,” John whispered.

“It took me a while to place them because I’d never seen them up close.”

Elise had moved nearer to the cage while Sullivan rambled on. He didn’t appear to be paying any attention to her, but with a movement so fast it blurred before my eyes Sullivan yanked her against the bars.

He roared and slapped his hands to his face. Elise doubled over and did the same.

I started forward, but John pulled me back. “Don’t go near him.”

“But she’s hurt. What happened?”

“Elise is a werewolf too.”

I didn’t know what to say to that except, “Huh?”

“When we touch skin to skin, we know,” he murmured.

Elise straightened, dropping her arms to her sides. “Extreme ice cream headache on contact.”

“But how can she… ?” I trailed off, uncertain how, or even what, to ask.

“Elise is different.” John let go of my arm, his gaze on Elise. “She was born a werewolf, although she was never evil.”

“Born?” I echoed, as horror rolled through me. “Is that possible?”

He caught my expression, immediately understood my concern. “Not the way you think. We can’t—” He took a deep breath. “Impregnate.”

I couldn’t help but wince at the word, and a flicker of sadness shone in John’s eyes before he continued.

“Elise is a special case. Her mother was Edward’s daughter.”

“She’s his grandchild?” I whispered, glancing back and forth between them.

“The werewolves turned his only child into a monster in vengeance for his killing so many of their kind.”

“What happened to her?”

“I did what had to be done,” Edward murmured.

“You killed your own child?”

“She wasn’t my child anymore.”

I couldn’t help but stare at the man. How could he have done such a thing? Then again—

My gaze went to Sullivan. Maybe it was understandable.

Sullivan dropped his hands and snarled at Elise. “That hurt, bitch.”

“Sticks and stones,” she murmured.

He bellowed with fury and she reached out, smacking her tattooed palm against his forehead. Sullivan stilled, his face gone slack, his eyes unfocused.

Elise closed her eyes; an expression of complete peace flickered over her face.

“What’s she doing?” I asked.

“Curing him.”

John stared at Elise with such longing, a shaft of unwelcome j ealousy burned in me. Something was between them, but what?

“She was given the gift to make us whole again in the Land of Souls,” he continued.

“Voodoo?”

“No. Oj ibwe heaven.”

My eyebrows lifted. “She doesn’t look Oj ibwe.”

“She isn’t.”

A tiny smile curved his lips, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

“There you are,” Elise said, and dropped her hand.

Sullivan’s eyes opened. He blinked, staring at Elise in confusion. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Hanover. You’ve been unwell, Detective. But you’ll be all right now.”

“I was sick? I don’t remember.”

“Some things are better forgotten.” She glanced at Edward, then took Sullivan’s hand. I braced for the outcry, but this time nothing happened.

Smiling, she released him. “He’s good.”

“I’m naked,” Sullivan said in shock.

“Here you go.” Elise handed him what appeared to be sweatpants and a T-shirt, socks and underwear, some shoes.

Sullivan frowned when he saw the rest of us. “What the hell?” He used the pile of clothes to cover his nether region. “What kind of hospital is this?”

“Private,” Elise said, unperturbed. “You needed special care. What you had was… contagious.”

A mild way of putting it.

Sullivan got dressed in a hurry. Elise glanced at the rest of us. “If you could step outside for a bit? I have a few tests to do.”

“Anne?” Sullivan called. “Why are you here?”

I glanced at Elise, uncertain, and she took over. “I asked Anne to come and take you home.”

“Oh. Great. Thanks.”

He seemed lost, almost childlike. I should feel sorry for him, maybe even protective of him. But I didn’t.

Every time he spoke, I heard him saying other, more hateful things. When he stared at me I had to fight not to run away.

John and I followed Adam and Diana outside. Edward remained with Elise.

The Ruelles moved off, heads together as they whispered. John stared after them. He knew they were talking about him as well as I did.

“Sullivan doesn’t remember anything about being a werewolf?” I asked.

“No,” John said. “When she touches them, everything that happened from right before they’re bitten until the moment they’re cured is gone. Otherwise we’d have a lot of screaming, crying, insane people instead of just confused ones.”

“You remembered,” I murmured, “and it drove you mad.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“What are they going to tell Sullivan about the time he lost?”

“They’ll be able to convince him he was sick.”

“How are they going to explain away a mortal throat wound that disappeared without a trace to all the people, besides me, who saw it?”

“I’m not sure, but they always do. Most choose to believe a logical explanation, however illogical it might be, rather than believe the unbelievable.”

Strangely enough, that made sense. I know I wanted to forget about Sullivan’s gaping throat and pretty much everything that had happened after it.

“The tough ones are those who’ve been around for several hundred years. How do you tell someone it’s the twenty-first century when their last memory is from seventeen fifty?”

“How do you?”

“That’s Edward’s j ob—or at least that of the Jäger-Suchers.”

Here was my opening. “What’s a Jäger-Sucher?”

“Hunter-searcher.”

That much I knew, and perhaps a little bit more.

“They hunt monsters, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And Edward is their leader.”

“He formed the group after World War Two. He was a spy, his mission to discover what Mengele was up to in his secret lab in the Black Forest.”

“Wasn’t Mengele the one who performed all those sick experiments on the Jews?”

“And anyone else Hitler didn’t care for. The Fuehrer ordered a werewolf army. Mengele made him
one.”

“But—” I broke off. “History might not have been my best subj ect, still… I’d have remembered a werewolf army.”

“The Allies landed; Mengele panicked and released what he’d made into the world. Edward got there too late to stop him.”

“So he formed the Jäger-Suchers to remedy that.”

“Exactly.”

The thought was disturbing on many levels. That such a group existed, and no one knew about them, that there were monsters everywhere, and no one knew about them either. Most of all—

“If he’s been hunting for over fifty years, why aren’t they all dead yet?”

“Monsters multiply, and from what I’ve gathered, the werewolves have been using magic, mysticism, drugs, to create new and better monsters.”

“You weren’t one of Mengele’s werewolves.”

“Obviously.”

“There were werewolves before he invented them.”

“Definitely. There are legends of humans becoming wolves as far back as the Bible and then some.”

“I guess that explains why the Jäger-Suchers are still in business.”

“Things that have been around since the beginning of time are hard to exterminate.”

“Henri,” Diana called.

John’s lips thinned. “My name is John.”

Diana stopped several feet away and eyed him warily. “Adam and I think you should stay with us.”

“No,” he said shortly, biting off the word with that snooty twist only the French seem capable of.

“But—”

“I have a place of my own. I have it for a reason.”

“What reason?” Her face creased. “To play j azz?”

“While that’s always enj oyable, and soothing to the savage beast”—his voice took on a sarcastic twist—

“that’s not why I do it.”

“You’re not making any sense, Grandpère.” Adam came up behind his wife and laid his hands on her shoulders. I was distracted momentarily by his long and elegant fingers, which looked exactly like John’s.

They were so alike it was downright creepy.

“He’s calling in his wolves.” Edward stood in the doorway. “The music is an extension of him—the human equivalent of a howl—although I’m sure he howls on the nights of the crescent moon as well.”

John spread his hands in a gesture that said, Of  course.

“A j azz club is busy,” Edward continued. “No one will notice people coming and going.”

“Except Sullivan,” I muttered.

Edward’s sharp blue eyes flicked to mine, and he dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“When he plays the saxophone, the wolves come to him,” Diana murmured, “but how did you get them to New Orleans in the first place?”

“That was my doing,” Edward said. “We recorded his howl, then I used new satellite technology to embed the sound in various satellite products.”

For a minute we were all silent, no doubt thinking of all the things satellites were used for in this day and age.

“Each wolf’s howl is distinct,” Edward explained, “and they howl for many reasons. For instance, to assemble a pack.”

“My wolves knew the sound, and they were compelled to come to me.”

“But how would they know where to come?” I pressed.

“You’ve heard legends of dogs traveling hundreds of miles to return home? Wolves are no different. My home is New Orleans, which makes it theirs too.”

“Didn’t they notice they were being picked off one by one?”

“I fought most of them in wolf form, then dumped the bodies in the swamp.”

“Sullivan is ready to leave.” Edward was staring at me.

Suddenly I was hyperventilating. I’d thought I could face Sullivan once he was “himself” again, but I couldn’t.

“I don’t want to see him,” I blurted.

Sympathy crossed the old man’s face. “Then you don’t have to.”