The Mayfair Moon (The Darkwoods Trilogy 1)

Harry needed answers as desperately as I did.

“I told you,” I said. “It was a werewolf.”

“I know, but I thought you were screwing with me.”

I swung my head around to look at him. “Why would I joke about something like that?” I was shouting, but trying not to. “You saw what I saw. You know it wasn’t normal.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but dude could’ve been wearing contacts, or something. Anyone can look like that.”

I stared at him in that are-you-for-real sort of way. Nothing in any local costume shop could duplicate that nightmare. Harry knew it, too.

“Okay, so it was real,” he admitted, “but that didn’t look like any friggin’ werewolf I’ve ever seen.”

“And how many werewolves have you seen exactly?” I said.

The car slid a bit when he turned left at the end of the street.

“Well...none in person,” he said, “but like on the—damn, Adria, you know what I mean!”

He slapped the steering wheel. “How do you know so much anyway?”

“Because I’ve seen them Turn. Because I’ve been chased and attacked by them,” I snapped, “and because my sister is one of them!”

Harry shut up in an instant.

It was like telling him I just robbed a bank and shot someone, that look on his face.

“Yes, you heard me right,” I said. “Alex is a werewolf. That man you saw back there was a werewolf. There’s quite a few in this town, actually.”

I was steering too close to revealing the Mayfair’s secret. Sebastian’s secret. Zia’s secret.

“I can’t believe this,” he said and then shook himself free from the stun. “But why did he look like that? I thought werewolves were supposed to look like, well, like werewolves.”

“He was in-between his human and werewolf form,” I said.

Blue, red and yellow lights flashed on the road up ahead. As we got closer, I recognized the totaled car immediately.

“Jesus,” said Harry.

We crept along past the accident scene slowly. The yellow lights were coming from a wrecker, which already had the car halfway lifted onto it. It was nothing but a twisted heap of warped metal.

How Uncle Carl survived that crash was beyond me. I couldn’t get the reality of it out of my mind, how he might have survived. I felt guilty for thinking it, but I knew that Uncle Carl would be better off dead than one of them.

All the way to the hospital, I tried to prepare myself for the unthinkable, about losing my uncle the same way I lost my sister. Who would be next? Harry? Aunt Bev? Me?

The nurse at the desk directed me to the waiting room where Beverlee joined us. She hugged me so tight I thought she’d never let go. Her face was stained with tears where they had run down her cheeks and through her makeup. Her hair was wild and the butterfly barrette she always wore hung hopelessly on one side of her head. I reached up to fix it for her. She hardly noticed.

“I can’t lose him, Adria,” she cried. “I just can’t.”

I hugged her close to me. “You said he’s stable and that’s a great sign. Just try to be positive.”

Harry stood nervously off to the side. He probably wasn’t one for tragic family gatherings, but he was also giving us our space.

“I-I don’t know what happened to the dog,” Beverlee said, her voice trembling. “He’s probably out there in the cold.”

“What dog?” I said, pulling away from her.

“Carl adopted a German Shepherd from the animal shelter,” she said. “It was supposed to be a gift to you. He had just come back from Augusta. I was on the phone with him. The car. I heard him yell and the dog whimper. Oh God, I thought it happened because he was talking on the phone while driving.” She buried her face in her hands. “That still could’ve been why. Adria, oh God, it’s probably my fault!”

I held her close again, rubbing her back with my hands. “No, Aunt Bev, it wasn’t your fault.” I felt so awful for shouting at her earlier on the phone. Now I was the one trying to calm her down. “You said they think it was maybe a deer, remember? Why do they think that? Did they say why?”

Beverlee dried her eyes the best she could and began pacing; a tissue crushed in her fist.

“There was no other vehicle,” she began, “no second set of tire marks and his car was found on the side of the road, not against a tree so he didn’t lose control and drive into anything. That’s all I know.” She wiped her nose with the tissue.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything aloud about there not being a dead deer in the road. Beverlee would have gone back to the cell phone theory and blaming herself.

But Beverlee gave me hope that I didn’t have before. Maybe the blood was from the dog. It had to be. The werewolf’s only words indicated that it was a dog he attacked, not my uncle. Yes, that gave me hope, though very little.

A nurse opened the waiting room door.

“Mrs. Dawson, you can go back now,” she said, gesturing her back.

I took hold of Beverlee’s arm. “Can I go?”

Beverlee looked across at the nurse who nodded her approval. I went over to Harry. “Wait for me, okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m not leaving anywhere without you.”

To Harry, I was the one with all the answers. If I had actually wanted to get rid of him, I knew I couldn’t.

16

WE FOLLOWED THE NURSE down the sterile-white hallway. I never liked hospitals, the smell of them, the bright lights, the cruel atmosphere, the death. The last time I was actually in one, my great-grandma was recovering from heart surgery. She died two days later.

I held Beverlee’s hand the whole way.

The nurse stopped us at the door to Uncle Carl’s room before opening it. She held a lime green clipboard pressed against her br**sts.

“Dr. Derringer will be here in an hour,” she said. “Your husband is awake, but the pain medication will keep him from making much sense for a while.”

Beverlee listened carefully, tears glistening upon her cheeks.

“He’s conscious?” Beverlee’s face lit up.

The nurse smiled and pushed open the door slowly. I felt like I was taking a deep breath before jumping off a cliff into water. I expected to see flesh ripped from my uncle’s bones, maybe even an arm or leg missing. I wanted to shut my eyes and not look at all, but some invisible force locked them wide open.

Machines were hooked up to him on both sides: an IV taped to the top of his right hand, a blood pressure cuff resting around his bicep. An annoying little machine with flashy colors and lighted numbers displayed his heart rate and blood oxygen. One leg and one arm were in casts. Bandages wrapped around the upper part of his head with thick gauze taped over his left temple and eye. Blood was there, soaked up in the dressing. A long, clear tube hung from the left side of his chest as bloody fluids pumped through it into an ominous contraption that sat in the floor. It made such an eerie sucking noise that I wanted to plug my ears.

Uncle Carl’s head fell sideways onto the pillow so that he was facing us. A tiny clear tube rested in his nostrils, feeding him oxygen.

The nurse set the clipboard onto a table and began adjusting this and that, poking and prodding his tubes and needles.

Beverlee took the chair pressed close to the bedside, where I knew she had been sitting before.

I didn’t feel comfortable sitting down. I didn’t feel comfortable being in the room at all. My uncle looked horrible and technically, it was because of me. I choked back the tears and they made it only as far as the edges of my eyelids.

“I’ll be back in about half an hour,” the nurse said just before leaving.

I walked closer to the bed, every step more hesitant than the last. Uncle Carl’s eyes were partially closed; they were bruised and swollen.

“What is that?” I whispered to Beverlee about the machine on the floor.

“His left lung collapsed,” she said. “They had to insert a tube into his chest to help it inflate.”

An unpleasant shiver went up the back of my neck. I didn’t even notice when my hand went over my mouth, or how long it had been there.

Beverlee leaned in close to Uncle Carl’s face. She kissed his forehead where it was free of gauze. “Carl?” she said in a low voice. “Honey, can you hear me?”

His eyes opened a crack and he mumbled something neither of us understood.

“What was that, honey?” She was trying really hard not to cry anymore. It was a struggle for her.

“It...hit me,” he said. Still, his voice was so low I could barely make out the simplest of words.

Finally, I pulled a chair next to Beverlee’s. Leaning forward, I said to Uncle Carl, “What hit you?”

“An...animal,” he said weakly. “I-I don’t know...huge.”

The more he struggled to speak the worse he was in pain. His face tightened in agony. The heart rate numbers went up on the machine beside him.

“Shhh,” Beverlee said, brushing his eyebrow with her fingertip. “Just try to sleep.”

He took Beverlee’s advice; shutting his eyes and allowing his face to rest on the pillow.

“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Beverlee whispered aloud to herself.

Secretly, I began inspecting Uncle Carl’s visible wounds, though most were bandaged or covered by the hospital gown. I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway. A scratch? A deep cut? Bite marks? Any wound would look like any other wound to me, unless it was blatantly obvious. But I needed to know.

I thought of Isaac suddenly and then my heart sank.

If Uncle Carl was infected, Isaac and his family would want to kill him. I panicked inside.

My cell phone rang in my pocket and startled me. Beverlee looked up, motioning with her eyes to hurry and answer it. Uncle Carl barely stirred. I pressed the phone to my ear and stepped into the restroom to talk.

“I was at the store,” I said to Isaac, “but I, well, I had to leave in a hurry.”

“Nathan said he found the store keys in the parking lot,” Isaac said on the other end.

Harry must’ve dropped them, frantically trying to get into his car to come after me.

“Adria,” Isaac warned, “I know something’s wrong. What happened?”

I hesitated, peeking my head around the door to see Uncle Carl lying on the bed.

“My uncle was in a car accident,” I whispered.

“Is he alright? Are you at the hospital?”

“Yes and yes.”

Silence.

“Adria,” said Isaac. “Please don’t keep things from me.”

I hung up on him. Just like that, I shut the phone off and dropped it in my pocket. I couldn’t believe what I had done, what Isaac must be thinking. It tore me up inside.

But I couldn’t let them kill my uncle.

I wasn’t going to let them kill my sister, either.

I wanted to crawl inside a hole and die. How cruel life is to make a person choose between the people she loves most. I cursed the Powers That Be, God, or whoever was listening at that moment. I didn’t care. I pressed my back against the wall and slid down into the floor. The restroom was pitch dark, only a tiny slither of light beamed in through the cracked door. I buried my face in my hands and cried. I cried and cried until my throat felt closed up and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to keep Beverlee from hearing me; she didn’t need to console me of all people. It’s difficult to cry softly when your body wants to do exactly the opposite. But I managed to get through it in private.