Marked by the Moon (Nightcreature 9)

Julian’s heart seemed to stop as he heard his own thoughts. What was the matter with him?

He took several deep gulps of the clear, icy air. Unfortunately, the air didn’t smell clear—it smelled like her.

“He’s really your brother, right?” Alex murmured.

Julian, whose face had been tilted to the graying sky, now glared down at her. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“You don’t look that much alike.” She lifted a brow. “You certainly don’t share a personality.”

“What’s your point?”

“When you call him your brother do you mean brother in arms, blood brother—” She made a strange gesture with her hands that reminded him of something done by an LA gang member on the only episode of Cops he’d ever seen, and muttered, “Bro!” in a voice that was very LA. “My brotha from anotha motha.”

At his continuing blank expression she sighed, dropped her arms and continued, “Did you have the same mother, the same father? Did you grow up together? Is he really your brother or is it some kind of honorary title?”

“He’s my brother,” Julian said. They had not had the same mother, but back in the days of the Vikings, that wasn’t uncommon. Life was hard, and women did not live long, which meant Vikings often had more than one wife.

“You still think he’s the rogue?” Julian laughed. “All Cade ever cared about was healing. He wouldn’t hurt anyone—then or now. He definitely couldn’t kill them.”

Alex’s gaze went to the door that separated them from Cade. “I’ll have to take your word for it since I wasn’t around when he was completely human.”

“You weren’t around when any of us were completely human,” Julian pointed out.

Which was going to make it damn difficult for her to discover who’d enjoyed spilling human blood even before he’d grown fangs.

“If someone were a crazed killer,” Barlow continued, “wouldn’t he have killed before now?”

“Yo

u’d think,” Alex agreed. “Maybe he went somewhere else to do his dirty deeds. Anyone leave the village periodically?”

“Everyone leaves now and then. They aren’t prisoners.”

“They aren’t,” she muttered.

Julian sighed. “If that were the case, why start killing the Inuit when they were doing just fine somewhere else?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re the expert.”

“I don’t deal in theories, I deal in…” Alex’s voice trailed off and she frowned, seeming to search for a word.

Julian supplied one. “Death?”

Her eyes narrowed; then she shrugged. “Okay. I deal in death. I find them; then I kill them.”

“Find us,” he corrected. “Kill us.”

“Whatever. Do you want me to help you or not?”

Julian was very tempted to say not. But he wasn’t stupid. The quicker they discovered, then eliminated, the rogue, the fewer people would die. If it meant sleeping with the enemy, literally and figuratively, then…

“So be it.”

Chapter 20

“We need bait,” Alex muttered.