Marked by the Moon (Nightcreature 9)

“Friday.”

The frown deepened. “But you left on Thursday.”

“I’ve been gone over a week, Cade.”

Cade glanced at the calendar again, then shrugged and murmured, “Huh. Is it morning or is it night?”

“I told you to put a window in this place.”

The laboratory was more like a fortress. The single window in the entire building existed in Cade’s living quarters, and that only because Julian had gone behind his brother’s back with the builders. He wasn’t sure Cade had even noticed.

“It helps me to focus,” Cade said. “If there are no windows, my only world is this.”

“Your only world has always been this.”

“True,” Cade agreed, and returned to his work.

Julian’s brother was shorter than he—though at six feet Cade was by no means short. He was also slim instead of muscular, pale instead of tan, and his hair, which had once been as blond as Julian’s, had darkened to a dusty brown.

While Julian’s brushed his shoulders, straight and smooth, Cade’s reached halfway down his back, the length more because he forgot to cut it—hell, sometimes he forgot to wash it—than for any fashion statement. He’d attempted to confine it in a ponytail, but strands had come free and billowed, curling into his face.

“You never said where you were going or why,” Cade murmured as he mixed a bit of this and a tad of that.

With good reason. Alana had not made friends easily, but she’d made friends with Cade. Her loss had hit him hard. If his brother had known why Julian was going, there would have been no leaving him behind, and Julian had needed to do this alone.

“I went to LA to follow a lead on Alana’s killer.”

Cade knocked one of the test tubes onto the floor as he spun. “Did you find anything?”

Julian stared Cade directly in the eye. “No,” he said.

Cade sighed, then he began to clean up the mess on the floor.

“What did you drop?” Julian asked.

“Human blood derivative.”

Julian straightened away from the counter. “You found it?”

“Not yet.”

“You will.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

The need for human blood on the night of the full moon necessitated some fancy planning on Julian’s part. The amount of human blood necessary to satisfy the cravings of his entire village was copious, which was why Cade spent the majority of his time searching for a substitute. That and the fact that Alana had hated taking human blood. She’d said it made her feel ew-ky.

Julian smiled at the memory, but his smile faded as he recalled that her dislike of that basic need had eventually grown into a dislike of a whole lot more.

“You invented the serum that allows werewolves to touch in human form,” Julian blurted, doing his best to make the unpleasant memories go away.

And speaking of unpleasant memories.

“I brought a woman back with me.”

Cade, who had been choosing a new test tube from the shiny selection near the sink, nearly bobbled and broke another. “You what?”

“She was…dying,” Julian muttered.