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

us? Why would they tell us what we wanted to know about how to create your kind if force is out of the question?”

 

“You catch more flies with bees than honey.”

 

Liam blinked, and I shook my head. Damn. Things had been going so smoothly, too.

 

“What?” Liam asked, and I placed a hand on Gabriel’s arm as if he were a senile old man.

 

“What he meant to say was that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

 

“Of course,” Gabriel patted my hand in gratitude. “What she said. If you give the Sidhe something they want, something they can’t get on their own, then they’d be more than willing to tell you whatever you needed to know.”

 

“What could we possibly offer them in exchange?”

 

Gabriel fell silent, and his hand tightened almost painfully on my own. I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he thought, and even as I watched his eyes darkened. When he glanced over at me, I knew it was to reassure himself about whatever bomb he was about to drop.

 

“There are a number of fugitives of the Sidhe hidden away in your world,” he began. “The Sidhe can no longer hunt them down like they used to, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want them back. If you gave them just one of these fugitives…”

 

He let the sentence trail off, but Liam seemed to get the idea. Avarice made him ugly, and he took two quick steps towards us in his rising excitement. “Who are they? Where are they? How do we—”

 

“There’s only one way to hunt down an enemy of the Sidhe,” Gabriel interrupted him quietly, looking down at our joined hands as he continued. “Only one way that the Seelie and Unseelie courts would view as honorable.”

 

“What is it? What do we need to do?” Liam snapped when Gabriel had grown silent once again.

 

“You have to call for the Hunt.”

 

The Wild Hunt. Oh God.

 

I spoke without thinking. “But you can’t. They’ll—”

 

“I no longer recognize them as Leaders of the Hunt,” he told me, voice soothing. “And neither do the others. If we called a Hunt together in this world, we would be operating under our own authority.”

 

“Isn’t that just as dangerous?” I whispered, and he nodded.

 

“A Hunt without a Master to lead it can be…” he blew out a shaky breath, “a mistake.” I somehow got the impression that he had made the understatement of the century. He continued, “Which is why I’ll be the only one doing any actual hunting.”

 

There seemed to be a lot of holes in his plan. So many, in fact, that I wasn’t sure which one to pick at first.

 

“But-”

 

“You’ll be my rider,” he said, overriding whatever protest I’d been about to make. “One rider, one hound.” He said the words as if they were intimate. As if they were a promise. The rest of his words were aimed at Agent Liam, though he went back to staring at our hands. “We’ll track down our prey and hand them over to you and your men. That will give you the leverage you’ll need against the Sidhe.”

 

“What do you get out of it?” Agent Liam sounded suspicious and I was reminded that he was man of some intelligence. But only some. He was no match against the wide eyes of innocence that Gabriel leveled on him in response to his question.

 

“Why, our freedom. And of course, a promise that your government will sweep this entire Werewolf fiasco under the rug.”

 

“Why would we do that?”

 

“Because you won’t be needing the Huntsmen to search out and capture any more Weres. Your alliance will be with the Sidhe, in which case secrecy will be your friend. Don’t want people finding out that their government is turning innocent bystanders into Wereanimals. Make this disappear, lie low for a few years, until people forget about it, and during that time you can do whatever you damn well please in the privacy of your own backyard.”

 

When he still looked unconvinced I gently added, “Letting Werewolves exist will only make things more complicated for you in the long run.”

 

Gabriel and I were both tense as we awaited Agent Liam’s decision. But in the end, I suppose we didn’t have anything to worry about. Liam wasn’t an idiot and Gabriel and I were a hell of a team when it came to making deals.

 

There was really only one answer to what we offered, and Liam gave the right one.

 

“Get some rest. You’ll need it for the Hunt tonight.”

 

Kids are more wolf than human. They understand the basics. The essentials. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and fight when all else fails. I can really get behind that kind of mentality.

 

—Phaedra Conners

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

 

 

“Are we going to pick their names out of a hat or what?”

 

“I’m sure one day you’re going to make perfect sense to me.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “Who are we tracking down? Who’s the lucky bastard we’re going to be chasing through the woods?”

 

“We’re not going to chase anyone. There’re only two of us, not enough to flush anyone out or block off all the escape routes. No, if we’re lucky our prey won’t even know we’re there until it’s too late.”

 

I swallowed nervously, dancing from foot to foot as the cool night air brushed against me. I was wearing a military issue body suit. It was the only way I could describe the camouflaged tactical gear they’d provided for me back at the holding facility. In addition to my new threads, they’d also slapped some sort of metal device around my ankle. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to help track my movements during the course of the night. I hadn’t had a chance to try and pick it yet, but from the looks of it, it seemed pretty sturdy. Gabriel had a collar that was supposed to act the same way, and saw him fiddling with where it rested on his neck on more than one occasion.

 

Brushing a stray bit of hair from my eyes, I watched Gabriel crouch before me. They’d released us in the same park they’d abducted us from, and even now I could see the black van that had transported us idling in the parking lot. Waiting while Gabriel got his bearings and prepared to shift.

 

So far I still didn’t know the name of the person we were hunting, and suspected that it was likely to stay that way. The closer the time came to go after them, however, the more significant the change I sensed in myself. There was an element of excitement swimming just beneath my skin. It was like I could feel every cell, hear every nose, smell every scent in the world around us. I wasn’t just hopping from foot to foot because of the cold, but because I wanted to run. To chase something and bring it down with hands and teeth and instinct.

 

I felt like a live wire, something electric and dangerous, and I knew if I was close to bursting out of my skin that it must be ten times worse for Gabriel. You wouldn’t guess it just by looking at him however. He seemed calm, collected, even at peace. As if he were right at home and the thrill of the hunt was as familiar to him as breathing or shifting between forms.

 

I knew when he was ready. I could feel it in every cell of my body. I felt his bones begin to melt into one another, to lengthen, harden, and break. Even the feel of his skin melting away was a visceral sensation. As if it was happening to me personally. I felt, as much as saw, the fur sprout along his body, and soon I was looking into Gabriel’s wolfy form.

 

He huffed a greeting at me, shaking his coat as he settled into his new body. Hesitant, I reached out and touched him and let my hand rest against the crown of his head and enjoyed the banked warmth that caressed my skin. His eyes glowed bright and he pressed himself into my touch, enjoying the contact.

 

The van honked its horn and Gabriel pulled away. Nipping at my fingers without making actually contact. Taking that as a sign to get a move on, I followed in his wake as he took to the surrounding woods.

 

At first nothing happened. He just wandered in circles, sniffing the ground and investigating whatever caught his interest. He chased a chipmunk up a tree, tried to engage me in a game of fetch with a fallen branch that was too heavy for me to throw, and on more than one occasion I had to kick him away before he peed on my leg in a bid to mark his territory.

 

All of that, and not once did we engage in any activity that resembled a legendary hunting expedition. If anything, I felt like I was walking an annoying, albeit lovable, Doberman. Currently trying to dig a hole to the center of the earth and hacking up a clump of grass he’d just eaten, Gabriel seemed like the least dangerous mammal I’d ever met. I was probably better prepared for action than he was.

 

I wondered what sort of person we were going after. What sort of man or woman could have caught the attention of the Sidhe? What if they were female, young? Innocent. They probably had no idea what was happening or why they would be tracked down. In my mind, I gave them a gender, a face, a name, a history, and when next I blinked back into reality it was to realize that Gabriel had vanished. I could hear him crashing through the trees ahead and without thinking further I took off after him.

 

What on earth had gotten in to him?

 

One Rider, one hound.

 

Isn’t that what he’d said earlier in the day? As his “rider” if I couldn’t focus on our prey, maybe that meant that he couldn’t either. With that thought in mind, I allowed my earlier excitement

 

free reign. Our target was still an unknown, but now, as our intents linked, a name began to travel down the length of the bond connecting Gabriel and I. The name of the girl we hunted.

 

Asrai.

 

It thrummed in my blood, pounded away in my head like a second heartbeat, filled my lungs until all I could do was lift my head and sing it to the sky.

 

Asrai, Asrai, Asrai.

 

Gabriel’s answering howl met my ears and I laughed, jubilant and wild. Free.

 

I felt free.

 

I never wanted the Hunt to end.

 

I didn’t have to see Gabriel to know where he led. It was a call, a silent urging to choose this path over that one. A demand to move faster and faster still, to leap over logs, duck beneath branches and cobwebs, and skirt like a dancer around dips and holes in the ground that would have tripped me up. I could see the terrain through his eyes, so that it was like I was traversing the same area twice. Once as him and once as myself.

 

It made me blind to the fact that I was still human. That I had limitations and weaknesses.

 

When he finally let me pull up short, I collapsed on the ground. A convulsing, broken thing as my lungs fought to keep me breathing and my heart ticked away like a bomb ready to burst. My feet churned up the earth and my back arched. I wrapped my arms around myself, nails biting into my elbows as my own body fought me. For a moment I was afraid I was going to die, and to this day I don’t know how long I lay there trying to recover. Time was marked by how often I turned on my side to vomit and dry heave before exhaustion finally brought me to unconsciousness.

 

I awoke to Gabriel licking the side of my face and making low, worried canine sounds in the back of his throat. I reached a shaking hand up