Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

Yip.

I was starting to think one was for yes.

According to Ian, a wolf was a messenger from the spirit world. If so, I really wanted that message.

The animal whined, scratched at the ground, trotted to the tree line, then halfway back again.

I slipped my feet into the sandals on the porch, shut the back door, and followed my messenger into the mountains.

Chapter 12

The wolf led me through thick towering spruce, so close together the silver light of the moon barely penetrated their branches. I glanced back, but the trees had already swallowed the white gabled roof of my house. I did see a few of the bats that I couldn’t seem to oust from the attic flitting in front of the moon.

The night had cooled, but the air was muggy, hard to breathe, especially when we continued on for the better part of an hour.

I’d been this way before. My great-grandmother had lived at the foot of the mountain, preferring a remote cabin to putting up with my father, whom she’d never had much use for.

According to Rose, men were good for two things: providing children and hunting. Other than that, they could go to the Devil. I guess it was lucky for them both that my great-grandfather had died young. I didn’t think Rose had ever been easy to live with.

At first I wondered if we were going to her cabin— maybe someone was squatting. Why such a minor offense would warrant a messenger from the Darkening Land I had no idea, but when I took a step in that direction the wolf growled and kept on what appeared to be a straight arrow to someplace else.

My mind began to wander. Where were we and why? What possible message could there be for me up here where the mist began?

The sudden silence made me pause. I looked ahead, to the side, even behind me, but the wolf was gone. I rubbed my sweating palm against my thigh and took a better grip on the gun. This suddenly smelled very much like a trap.

The wind lifted my hair, which had dried once again into stiff-straight hanks, and slapped them against my face. The trees rattled like dry bones, and dead needles tumbled from the sky like spruce-scented rain. The underbrush moved, first here, then there. Ah hell, everywhere. I turned a slow circle, searching the darkness, twitching at every slinking shadow.

Something flew across the moon—a bat, a bird, a beast? I glanced up, but it was already gone, and when I lowered my head a human-shaped silhouette emerged from the night.

An old woman, bent but still strong, her hair long and black, with strands of silver lit by the moon. Clothed in what appeared to be traditional Cherokee dress, a sleeveless shift made of deer hide, belted at the waist and ending at midthigh, complemented by a knitted underskirt with beaded fringe tha

t fell to the ankles. Her feet were covered in soft moccasins to the knees.

I was again reminded of those who had disappeared into these mountains during the removal, hiding so well from the white soldiers that to this day no one had ever found them.

The woman lifted her head, and the outline of her face was familiar. “Grandmother?”

“Gracie?”

The voice wasn’t hers. How could it be?

“Quatie.” I stowed the gun and hurried forward to help the woman who’d been my great-grandmother’s best friend. “What are you doing out here in the dark?”

Quatie was a full-blooded Cherokee, very rare in this day and age. She’d lived in Lake Bluff her entire life, as had her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before her. She knew every tree, every trail, every stream and hill. But she was old, arthritic, and half-blind.

I took her arm. She was thinner than I remembered and less steady on her feet than I liked.

“I could ask the same of you,” she said.

My gaze flicked to the trees. “Did you see a wolf?”

Her laughter was more of a cackle before it turned into a long hacking cough. I supported her until she was able to straighten, then speak. “Messenger?”

I wasn’t surprised that Quatie knew what a wolf meant. The surprise would be if she hadn’t.

“What did she come to tell you?” Quatie asked.

“She?”