kissed-by-moonlight by Rakhibul hasan (ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

Teaching me of the mad Fae and bloodthirsty hounds they’d trained. I learned that each of the hounds had a gift. A talent. Something the Sidhe would give their wolves when they were particularly pleased with them. Gabriel had originally belonged to the Master of the Hunt, which was why he’d been charged to lead the group on the nights they wished to run down their chosen prey.

 

I learned that others in the hunting party knew him as Ghost. He showed me how he could fade away, disappear like smoke only to reappear leagues from where he’d started. How it had been his duty to cloak the presence of the Wild Hunt on the nights that they ran so that they could disappear and reappear wherever they liked. Riding from the very skies like a host of rebel angels or all the riders of the apocalypse.

 

The most important information I learned, was that Gabriel had to avoid the full use of his power, because giving in to that part of himself would only call the Sidhe down on all of our heads. To me it explained why he hadn’t already escaped from this place, but not why he hadn’t gotten away while he still could have.

 

In his memories I saw Specters sucking the life from the innocent, the guilty begging for their souls, and all around him, me, us were the faces of screaming children.

 

Gabriel…Gabriel couldn’t stay here. With every day that he spent chained to that wall, he lost another piece of himself. Another piece he’s spent thousands of years trying to build after he’d escaped from the Sidhe. Eventually, the last of what made Gabriel human and real would disappear all together and then the Huntsmen and the Feds would have exactly what they’d been expecting when they’d captured him.

 

A monster.

 

* * * *

 

At first they kept me around for questioning.

 

“How many Werewolf Packs live in the San Francisco area?”

 

“Who are the Alphas?”

 

“How many people follow Gabriel Evans?”

 

“Can a werewolf be made?”

 

“How do you kill them?”

 

“What makes them weak?”

 

“How many of them have you met?”

 

“What are their names?”

 

“Where do they work?”

 

And on and on it went. I suspected that Marcus had already provided answers for the more intimate questions concerning the identity of his pack members. Which meant that they were probably tricks to see how much I knew, or if I could be counted on to tell the truth. But I wasn’t even inclined to lie. Instead I sat there, stone faced, until the round of questions was done for the day and the Agent left. Sometimes it lasted hours, sometimes it lasted only minutes.

 

But then they realized that I was better at acting as leverage than I was at playing twenty questions. The day started out like any other. I woke up in my cell, already mentally exhausted and shaking with nerves. Sleep was more of a fond memory in this place. There was too much

 

violence soaked into the air and walls for anything but nightmares to exist. So I usually slept in fits and bursts, checking on Gabriel whenever consciousness returned, if only to reassure myself that he was alive and well.

 

That he was still there.

 

I always expected him to disappear now. To fade away when I wasn’t looking and damn the consequences of alerting the Sidhe. It made me even more terrified of his deep silences than I had been. They were reminders that he was only around because he chose to be, though why was still a mystery.

 

Rolling off the cot they called a bed, I went over to the sink basin in the corner of the room and tried to wash my face. The water coming out of the faucet was cold enough that rinsing my face with it was enough to erase any lingering dreams of sleep. I was shivering over the sink, and was thinking fondly of my abandoned apartment, when the door to my cell opened and Marcus and Agent Liam walked in. It still threw me, seeing those two standing together, but I suppose eventually I’d have to get used to the idea that I’d been tricked.

 

Agent Benson and Liam hadn’t been tailing me because they thought I was a domestic terrorist. Like the Huntsmen, they’d thought I’d been working for Gabriel ever since I’d thwarted the attempt on his life with the car bomb. The Huntsmen had planned on capturing him that day and the contents of that van had held everything they’d needed to do so.

 

The only reason someone hadn’t been inside of the van was because they’d needed backup when Gabriel had realized he was under attack and had faded out of sight. He’d been right beside them the entire time of course, but thanks to his abilities as a Hound it had been like he’d disappeared into thin air. The Huntsmen had panicked, sending the rest of their team out to try and locate him, and in that small window of time I’d wandered in and pushed their Mystery Machine to its death.

 

I would have killed to see a group of men in tactical gear and camouflage paint walking back to their bad guy headquarters in disgrace, but alas, I’d been busy explaining myself to the police at the time.

 

Apparently the FBI had been suspicious about the presence of Weres for years now. They’d developed an interest in Gabriel, and while they hadn’t been working directly with the Huntsmen, they hadn’t disapproved of their methods either. Now, thanks to me and my camera, both sides had the evidence they needed to reveal Weres to the world, though I suspected that their motives for doing so were very different from one another.

 

The Huntsmen wanted them eradicated. They wanted to be heroes in a world united in the fight against the Big Bad Wolves. They were fanatics, pure and simple, and Marcus was just using them.

 

I had yet to figure him out.

 

The Feds meanwhile, were easy enough to understand. Based on the questions they’d asked me and the experiments they’d put Gabriel through, it seemed pretty obvious that they wanted what the Weres could offer. Hunting instincts, long lives, increased stamina and intelligence, loyalty, super reflexes and strength. Sounded to me like the recipe for the perfect soldier. Not to mention what it could do for the public at large if they could learn to reproduce a Were’s healing capabilities in humans.

 

Now that the Weres had been outed, it would only be a matter of time before people began reporting sightings of them all over the world. The ones that the government couldn’t hunt down would probably volunteer to have their stories heard, just like those poor shmucks that had been featured on the news. By refusing to keep something like this a secret, the government could say that they were handling the problem. Keeping the public safe, while all the while using the Weres to further their own goals. And any Werewolf who cooperated would simply be lifted up as an example to draw in other wolves.

 

“Look how convincing we can be. How kind, how benevolent, how forgiving.” They could say, “Look how great our country is, that even a monster can call himself a Patriot.”

 

Then of course, the little issue of dealing with Werewolves would work wonders when it came to distracting the country from all of its other problems. Wars, dirty politicians, gun control and increased violence? Pshaw honey, don’t you know we have Werewolves running amuck? They’ll eat our children, rape our women, turn our boys. They’re probably prowling around in our backyard right now. Health care reform and a recession? Please. Spare me. There are worse things to worry about. Scarier things. Things with sharp teeth and fur coats.

 

Oh yeah.

 

I could see the big picture, and it was plastered on the front page of every major newspaper in bold and italicized font. Give the country an enemy, a common fear, and see how quickly they unite against it.

 

This was the kind of thing I thought about during my captivity.

 

Conspiracy theories.

 

It was probably unhealthy, but it sure as hell helped the time pass more quickly.

 

Wiping my hands down the sides of my jeans to dry them, I grinned a greeting at the two men and shook my head in wonder.

 

“Well, don’t this beat all?” I said, laying it on thick. “Company. I haven’t had company in lord knows how long.” I glanced around my cell and shrugged sadly, making a big show of trying to fix my hair. “Sorry I’m such a mess, but I wasn’t expecting anyone to stop by. I would offer you

 

some coffee or something but,” I raised a brow in challenge, “I don’t have any. Or any cups for that matter. Or any shits to give, now that I think about it.”

 

“Cute,” Liam said, looking honestly amused as he came further into the room. Marcus stayed silent, instead stepping aside to lean against the frame of the now closed door.

 

“I try.”

 

I examined both men carefully, but there was no real way to tell why they’d come. They’d both perfected their own version of a poker face, and while one was smiling amiably and the other may as well have been carved from stone, both were unreadable. I didn’t like being in such close quarters with two men. Two dangerous men. At least when Jessica had come with Marcus there had been a female presence to mitigate his instinctive violence. Jessica was the devil I had grown to know; Liam was currently a mystery.

 

“What brings you boys here today?”

 

Marcus growled softly at being referred to as a “boy,” but Liam just kept on smiling.

 

I was beginning to not like that smile.

 

“Why, we came to see you of course,” he answered.

 

I shook my head, “But why?”

 

“The pleasure of your company,” Marcus deadpanned.

 

Shocked, I could only stare at him.

 

“Did you just make a joke?” I finally managed.

 

“I can be funny.”

 

“Uh, do you see anybody laughing? Making a joke and being funny are two entirely different things, sweet pea.”

 

Marcus was reduced to growling his displeasure once more.

 

“Actually,” Liam said, ignoring us both, “Marcus and I were hoping you could help us solve a little problem we’ve been having.”

 

My eyes narrowed. “What sort of problem?”

 

Agent Liam shrugged as if it were no big deal, but I felt the hair on my nape rise in trepidation.

 

“It’s your friend, Mr. Evans,” he began, sounding contrite. “He hasn’t been nearly as….forthcoming as we’d hoped. He seemed like a reasonable man, so we don’t understand why he isn’t cooperating.”

 

“Might have something to do with being chained to a wall and cut up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey,” I confided, but Liam merely tsked.

 

“Now, Now. None of that. You see, I thought the same thing at first, then I realized that you, Miss Conners, have been treated with the utmost respect.” His brow furrowed, “And yet you haven’t been very cooperative either.”

 

“How can I cooperate when I don’t know anything?”

 

“Oh, I think you know plenty. Marcus here tells me that his Alpha, excuse me, former Alpha, has gone through a lot of trouble to keep you safe.”

 

“And you believe everything that Marcus tells you?”

 

He laughed outright at that. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. But the thing is that I’ve seen proof of it, Miss Conners. You forget, I’ve been tailing you for a while now, and ever since you started working at Lumière, Gabriel has been following you nearly as closely as my partner and I have. In fact, we nearly tripped over him a time or two. And if I remember correctly, wasn’t it Evans that picked you up from the station the night the Huntsmen took a shot at you?

 

“Men don’t do that unless they’re trying to get something, or they’ve already got it.” He pointed a finger at me and then swung it over to where Gabriel was watching the proceedings on the other side of the wall, and then back again. Like a pendulum. “I’m guessing you two