Steal the Moon(18)

I’d been wondering the same thing. Lee answered with a shrug. “If I kept my senses wide open all the time, I’d go crazy. Your men are subtle. A lesser wolf would miss it entirely.”

I was beginning to get the idea that pretty much all the wolves I had met before were less than Lee. It was a little hard to believe he’d been able to track me. I was a long way from Ether and I’d taken both a bus and a cab. I’d never seen a wolf run like that without the change. Neil had been quick and strong but not nearly as fast as Lee.

“As to your question, Zoey, I was ordered to find you as quickly as possible.” Lee confirmed my fears. “Quinn is out of his mind upset, and your husband won’t be awake for several hours. Quinn panicked. He really thought you were dead somewhere. I’m supposed to track you, find you, and hold you until Quinn can collect you himself. I would expect a fight out of this, Zoey. I swear he was ready to beat you when he realized you’d run off.”

“My brother would never beat a woman,” Declan replied, obviously horrified at the thought. “My brother is a priest. He is not a man of violence.”

Lee and I both laughed at that.

“It’s been a long time since you saw Dev last.” I didn’t know what Dev had been like in the sithein, but in this world he didn’t shrink from violence. I turned my attention back to my bodyguard. “So you’re just going to throw me over your shoulder and haul me back to Ether like a recalcitrant child? Let me tell you something, Lee. I get the distinct feeling that Devinshea is about to wash his hands of me.” The thought made me sick to my stomach, but Declan had really gotten to me. Why would Dev stay here and deal with all my shit when he had six women back home willing to do anything he asked? I was betting he didn’t yell at them. Of course, they probably didn’t cause as much trouble as I did. I looked at Lee with my hands on my hips, hoping to keep my pride intact. “If he’s going to turn me out then at least let me finish what I came out here to do.”

The wolf considered this for a moment. When I saw his eyes soften, I knew I was in. “Fine, we’ll do this your way. You’re wrong about Quinn if you think he’s going to let you go. He might seem softer than the vampire, but he isn’t where you’re concerned. He’s just as obsessed and he doesn’t even need your blood to survive. He might lock you up, but he won’t ever let you go.”

“That does not sound like my brother, either.” Declan huffed a little. “I need to speak with him because I feel there is something wrong. Let us hunt this creature so that I may assure myself my brother has not been possessed. I do not like this plane. It is filled with dangerous creatures.”

One of those creatures was opening his senses. Lee became still as he allowed the world around him to settle into different sounds and smells. Neil had described this process to me once. He said it was a lot like sorting through the mail. You went through it once and then separated the important stuff from the junk. After a long moment, he walked straight to the building I’d identified as the aswang’s home and stopped. He put his hands on the bricks and then laid his head against it, listening.

When he spun back to me, his eyes were distinctly wolflike. “It’s in there and it’s not alone. There’s another creature, a bird perhaps? I smell death. There’s an enormous amount of death in this building.”

“She’s undead,” I confirmed.

“I believe she’s hurt as well. I smell something like blood,” Lee added.

Declan’s shoulders squared and he nodded briefly. “Yes. I shot the creature last night. I would have pursued it had I not been distracted by Zoey’s breasts. Her shirt was wet and her nipples puckered so sweetly, I forgot about the beast.”

“Donovan’s going to love him,” Lee said sarcastically. “Seriously, he’s not going to be happy there are two of him.”

I let that go for the moment. Daniel knew Dev had a twin, but I don’t think it really registered that he would be so like Dev when it came to his libido. “I need information from the creature, Lee. I have questions for her and I may have to get nasty to get my answers. If this disturbs you, I’ll understand if you choose to remain behind.”

“Yes,” Lee said, sarcasm dripping. “I can’t stand violence. Just point me to the kill, sister. My only regret is there won’t be flesh or blood. I’m hungry, damn it, but I like my meat living when I begin to eat it. The bird thing smells pretty tasty, to tell you the truth.”

“Okay, ewww,” I said with a grimace. “Good to know. How about you, Your Highness? Are you up for a bit of ultra-violence?”

Declan bowed, a courtly gesture. “I am at your service. I will assist you in extracting the information you need from the creature and then, if the violence places you in a state of sexual need, I will aid with that as well. I will fight the wolf for the privilege if that would please you.”

Lee rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m not interested in hitting that, so feel free.”

“Some bodyguard you are,” I groused.

“Well, you shot me,” he returned lightly, but I could see his body tense with anticipation. He pulled a semi from its hiding place in the small of his back. I reached in my bag and pulled out my Ruger. Lee waited for my nod and then kicked in the door.

We rushed in and our assault had begun.





Chapter Eight





The aswang’s nest reeked of death. The building was utterly silent as we moved through the door, but there was nothing peaceful about the quiet. This was the silence that came with absence—absence of life, of hope, of love. This place was devoid of joy. I’d read that the aswang was considered by certain scholars of the arcane to be the Pacific Rim’s version of the vampire. Walking into its lair, it was clear those scholars had never actually met a vampire.

Even the oldest of vampires surround themselves with life. They’re obsessed with the vitality of humans, and while they might break their toys on occasion, they would never be able to live like this. The aswang was truly undead. Unlike the vampire, whose body merely survived the process of death, the aswang had no spark of life in it. Vampires lived. They had ambitions and made plans. They sought out entertainments and diversions. They had a multitude of desires and for the most part, sought pleasure.

The aswang was different. It existed only to feed, to turn life into death.

Lee entered first because his senses were far better than any Declan or I possessed. He moved with the odd grace of a wolf stalking its prey. His head was down and it swept the area, moving from side to side. He silently pointed up and I nodded. She was on the second floor.

It was dark though the sun was bright outside. The windows were coated with filth, allowing little of the day’s glow inside the gloom of the building. Lee stalked down the hall and into the storefront. Declan was at my back, moving as silently as a warrior of the sidhe could move.

I had the Ruger in a double-fisted hold. Being a somewhat small female, I had to worry about kick back, and I’d discovered I was better able to handle the recoil with two hands. I was sure Lee could do The Matrix, shoot-with-two-guns-blazing thing that Daniel and Dev could do, but I didn’t have preternatural strength. I also didn’t have the strongest of stomachs I learned as Lee led us into the part of the building where the aswang should have been doing her work. My stomach rolled at the stench of death in the kitchen.

I must have gagged a little because Lee gave me a look. It silently asked what the hell I was doing hunting undead crap if I couldn’t stand a little decomp. I sucked it up and forced the bile down. It was nice to know Lee wasn’t the type who was going to coddle me and try to hide me from the nasty parts of the world. He silently asked if I could proceed, and even without the use of his voice, I could hear the sarcastic “princess” he added at the end. I gave him my unfriendly middle finger and he was satisfied.

I found myself in the middle of the butchery. It was a good thing most of the people around here avoided this place like the plague. If this bitch did get customers, I wasn’t sure what she was going to sell them. Though it looked like there was a side of rotting beef hanging in the corner, the rest of the place was filled with nothing that vaguely resembled a cut of meat from a grocery store.

The scent of formaldehyde assaulted my nose, and I saw the pale flesh of a corpse on one of the tables. I shuddered, but forced myself to study it. The corpse was that of an elderly man still wearing the top half of his suit while the pants had been removed. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that his legs had been chewed on. This was the aswang’s way. She was an eater of the dead. As the corpse was still mostly together, I had to assume she hadn’t liked her meal. Modern funeral home practices had to be hell on the aswang. It might have been the reason she’d been taking so many babies.

I almost tripped over something, my feet skidding across the floor. When I glanced down, I saw a pile of what appeared to be small dolls. Even in the gloom I could see they were effigies. I leaned down and touched one. It was made from plants and without magic looked like a primitive doll, the kind that didn’t have a face. The aswang had made them. This was what she left behind when she took the babies. A doll like this was what the poor woman had been left with when she lost her child. She’d known what it was, her intuition telling her what her eyes could not. Once the aswang had the child, the doll she left behind would be a perfect copy. Only her mother had known it was an empty reflection of her lost baby.