By the Pale Moonlight (Book One of the Moonlight Series) Read online

  "Ty..."

  His cool green eyes met mine. "Don't ask anything you're not prepared to hear."

  "But..." My words were cut off as the shrill sound of the warning bell rang above our heads.

  "Later." He pulled me to my feet.

  I felt numb when I took a seat in Biology a few minutes later. When David sat down beside me, I ignored the glare he threw in my direction.

  "Bitch," he whispered.

  I stared at him, shocked.

  His blue eyes skimmed over me, his upper lip curled into a sneer. "Don't know why I bothered with you. I can get better from someone else." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "But when you get the urge, Mac. You know where I am." His hand slipped between my legs.

  Anger welled up in my chest and I jerked away. I slapped him—hard.

  His head reeled from the blow and red splotches stood out against his cheek. Murmured conversations stopped all around us as everyone turned in their chairs to watch. Mr. Varner was nowhere in sight and no one jumped in to stop our argument.

  He smiled. "Hey, we had a good time and I'm sorry you regret it now."

  Several of his friends exchanged knowing looks in the background.

  "You know nothing happened." I spoke through a clenched jaw.

  "Baby."

  "Don't call me that. You and I both know what happened out there." Feeling a sudden surge of bravado, I leaned in and whispered, "If you'll recall, there was a full moon last night. It gave me a pretty good view of your equipment." I paused and raised my voice for effect. "Just remember, size actually does matter."

  Several girls broke into giggles behind me, and with one last backward glance at David's reddened face, I grabbed my things and took off down the hall. I passed Mr. Varner on my way out the side exit.

  "Ms. Wilhelm, w-where are you going?"

  "I'm not feeling well, sir. I'll have my mom write a note."

  o0o

  Leaning against Ty's tank of a car, I watched as he approached. His height guaranteed he'd always stand out in a crowd, and I had spotted him as soon as he stepped foot outside the school building.

  "I heard you really laid into my good friend, Dave," he said in way of greeting.

  I kicked a small stone on the ground and shrugged. "It's no big deal."

  He pulled on a strand of my hair until I looked up at him.

  "I'm proud of you," he said.

  I don't know what came over me, but I threw myself into his arms, overcome with a sudden sense of freedom. He hugged me back, and for a second I felt the urge to press my lips up to his. Our eyes locked and my breath caught.

  "So what have you been doing since the slap heard round the world?" he said, breaking the spell.

  "Nothing in particular. I walked around, thinking about you mostly." I ducked my head, the heat in my cheeks firing up again. "About your problem, that is. I've decided first things first. We need to find out all we can about werewolves."

  "I've scoured the internet already." A slight edge crept into his voice.

  "Yeah, but research is my middle name. I say we hit the library first."

  He opened his passenger door and shut it soundly behind me before sliding into the driver's seat. "You're the boss." He paused before putting the car in gear. It rumbled beneath us. "Thanks, Mac. I can't tell you how much it means to have someone to talk to about this."

  "Anytime."

  "I want you to make me one promise." His gaze shifted to some students piling into a mini-van across from us.

  I swallowed, not caring for the direction of this conversation.

  His eyes looked tired and haunted as he watched the group laughing and carrying on. The sound of their light-hearted banter seemed to draw him further inside himself. Just what had he experienced in the last three months? I wondered if I would ever know the entire truth.

  "I shouldn't have brought you into this, Mac. But I guess I had no other choice at the time." He said the last quietly, almost to himself. "Promise me that if things get bad you'll walk away—our friendship be damned."

  "We're going to the library. I think we'll be safe." Making light of the situation made me feel like a complete ass, but I couldn't help myself. I'd say anything to erase his troubled expression.

  "That's not what I mean." He clenched his jaw. "Never forget what I am, Mac. Never let your guard down."

  The hair on my scalp prickled. Was he saying I might be in danger from him? The memory of the presence in the school corridor came back to me with terrifying clarity. Had it been him? It didn't matter what I thought because, in that moment, I knew he believed he had killed Kim. Every fiber of my being revolted against the thought.

  "November fifth, Ty. Until then, we're both safe." Until then, I had a chance to prove his innocence—to myself, but more importantly, to him.

  Finally, he looked at me.

  "Am I right?" I asked, my breath caught in my throat.

  "If I have anything to say about it."

  "Then I'll be safe. Because if nothing else, I trust you."

  His expression didn't change. "Do you promise?"

  "Yes." I nodded slowly, disappointment hitting me when this didn't dispel the tension in his body.

  He put the car in gear. The mini-van had gone by then, and he pulled forward into their spot before turning out of the parking lot.

  As we drove in silence, I concentrated hard on breathing in and out as I studied his profile. His mouth turned down slightly at the corners, and he gripped the steering wheel hard. He couldn't have killed Kim.

  Despite my resolve, a sliver of doubt crept into my mind.

  Chapter 7

  With a grunt of exasperation, Ty threw a heavy volume across the table. A small dust cloud rose off the worn leather jacket as it skirted the edge and nearly fell off the table. We sat in the middle of the stacks located in the basement of the library and thankfully no other visitors were in the area. He groaned loudly as he popped his neck. "This is useless."

  "We've only been searching a short time." I tried to remain positive, but even I had grown doubtful in our ability to turn up anything useful. The stuff we'd found suggested only one way out of Ty's predicament. I cringed just thinking about it. Silver bullet—that was the solution. Right.

  "Maybe I should be spending my time finishing those restraints," he said. "It seems I'm going to need them—for the rest of my life. That is until someone stumbles across me with a shotgun. Think what they say is true? Think they'll find me naked in the woods, a bullet through the brain?" His attempt at wry humor failed miserably.

  "Don't talk like that, Ty." I frowned at his slumped shoulders. "We've only just begun."

  "If you start to sing, I'm going to knock you upside the head with this book." He shook a thick volume in my direction and laughed when I stuck my tongue out at him.

  "You love my voice."

  "Mac, I hate to break it to you, but no, I really don't."

  "Whatever." I stared at the many books piled around us, flipping through a few pages. I felt just as overwhelmed by the task before us. "There has to be something useful here."

  He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  "You never did say when it happened exactly," I said.

  He shrugged. "I told you, I don't remember it."

  I didn't believe him for one minute. In our search, I'd stumbled across a small booklet about moon phases. It detailed every full moon over recent years.

  I could remember one full moon in particular, not that long ago. On that night it had hung in the sky, bright as the sun. I could remember the play of its light across Ty's face as we sat on my front porch.

  That had been the night he broke things off with Carrie.

  We talked for hours. Reminiscing, joking around—anything to distract him from his thoughts. Out of nowhere, he paused. Sober.

  "I guess I always expected her to be more like you."

  My breath had left me in that moment. And that's when it happened. He leaned in to kiss
me. And he would have if the light on my porch hadn't flicked on.

  The untimely appearance of my father had sent Ty on his way and me inside to spend a restless night thinking about what might have happened.

  The next day he had walked right past me at school as if he didn't know who I was. Only now did I understand why.

  That was three months ago. The timing fit.

  That covered the 'when'. Now we just had to figure out the 'why' and the 'who'.

  "Maybe we've been going about this the wrong way," I said. "Maybe we need to focus on trying to figure out who attacked you—there has to be some way of doing that."

  "Short of waiting until there's a full moon, I don't see how."

  "This is going to sound really weird, but what about a dog whistle?" Before he could protest, I continued. "You heard me whisper to you above the noise of your dad's tools. If you heard that, what's to say a dog whistle wouldn't work—hurt even?"

  He cracked his lids. "When you put it that way, I'm dying to try it."

  I grinned, pulling my knees up to my chest. "You know, this could be fun. Perhaps a little payback for the time you cut off my pigtail."

  "You're still holding that against me?"

  "Oh yeah." I flipped through the book before me, happy to hear a touch of humor enter his voice again. "In fact, it'll probably take a lot more to..."

  With a silencing sweep of his hand, Ty made the words die on my lips. He cocked his head and listened. I didn't hear anything. When his nostrils flared slightly, I realized he was sniffing the air. I watched in fascinated horror as he silently crept down one of the book-lined aisles and disappeared around the corner.

  I didn't know whether I should stay put, but the longer he was gone, the more nervous I became. I felt like a sitting duck out in the open, the dim lights above my head spotlighting me in the musty room. Swinging my head from side to side, I scraped my chair back and pushed against the wall. At least no one could sneak up behind me that way.

  The sounds of a scuffle came from the stacks where Ty had disappeared. I charged after him. As I weaved through the aisles, a muffled scream pierced through the area and then I heard Ty cry out in pain. Panic rushed through me. "Ty!"

  I came across them a moment later. With her hair in complete disarray, Melanie Hoffs leaned against a shelf, her chest heaving as she sucked in deep breaths. Ty stood a couple of feet away, cradling his hand against his stomach. I grabbed it. The outline of teeth showed clearly against his skin.

  My mouth dropped open as I turned to Melanie. "Did you do this?"

  She exhaled sharply, dark hair flying out of her face. "He's lucky I didn't do worse. How dare you sneak up behind me like that! You scared me to death!"

  "You were eavesdropping on us," Ty seethed.

  "I was not."

  Oh, crap. "What exactly did you hear?" I demanded.

  "Jesus," she said. "I didn't hear anything. I work here. Get over yourselves." With that, she bent to pick up a small pile of books lying at her feet. I exchanged a glance with Ty. We were some distance from where we had been sitting. He had heard her, but that didn't mean she would've been able to pick up on the exact thread of our conversation.

  Ty bent to help her. "I'm sorry—I thought..."

  His words trailed off. It wasn't like he could explain.

  "Whatever," she said. With her books collected, she continued down the aisle. We watched as she shelved a volume at the end of the row then turned to go up the next.

  I shot him a what the hell? look. I'll give him credit for looking properly chastised. Grabbing his hand, I studied the injury. The marks were already fading. I rubbed my thumb across the area. "Looks like you'll be fine."

  "Think I should be worried about rabies?"

  I glared at him. "You're terrible and, I might add, not very funny."

  "Sorry," he said.

  Despite everything, I felt a smile tugging at my lips. "Idiot."

  "Thanks, Mac."

  I froze in the process of trying to straighten the shelf of books Melanie had upset during their struggle.

  "I don't know what I'd do without you." His hand brushed my cheek. My breath left me as our eyes locked. His gaze lingered on my lips and, as if pulled by a magnet, we started to drift closer.

  A loud thud sounded next to us and we both jumped. Several books had tumbled over on the metal shelf. We both let out nervous laughter that broke the spell over the moment.

  With a feeble wave of my hand, I motioned back to our table. "We better get back to work."

  Seated again, I pulled a large volume in front of me and tried to ignore the prickly sensations coursing through me. Eventually, my heart returned to its steady pace.

  Getting back to work proved a bit difficult. Despite the seriousness of what we faced, our eyes kept meeting over the tops of our books. Small butterflies danced around in my belly with this new found tension in the air.

  The slow turning of pages and the occasional scratching of a pencil filled the silence between us. When Ty suddenly sat forward, I knew someone approached. In a way, his abilities were reassuring. With him I'd be safe.

  "It's me." Melanie said as she rolled a cart of books into view. "Not listening, working."

  The corner of Ty's mouth tipped up. We continued to work in silence as she moved along the aisle replacing books. I tried to give her the courtesy of ignoring her presence, but my eyes were drawn to her regardless.

  I suppose it's only natural to want to dissect and examine why a person dislikes you. Friends throughout grade school, we had slowly begun to drift apart in junior high. We went from seeing each other every day to only the occasional get together. Once we entered high school, the distance between our circles had grown to a chasm—Kim and Melanie on one side, Jenna, Carrie, and me on the other.

  We never spoke but for the rare occasion we were thrust together by happenstance. I knew nothing about her now, and she knew nothing about me. How could that equate to us becoming enemies? I didn't think I would ever understand it.

  She moved down the aisle to where Ty was seated. He caught me watching her, and I forced myself to focus on the book in front of me. The creak of her cart stopped near his side of the table and she unloaded several books, setting to work on returning them to their proper places. Ty tapped a pencil against the page of his book, and I dropped my eyes, having been caught studying her yet again.

  A laugh threatened to bubble out of me, and I started to make a face at him. Froze. Melanie had turned to stand behind Ty. Arms raised, something metallic glinted in her hands.

  Oh God. She had a knife.

  "Ty!" Time seemed to move slowly; it took an eternity for the word to leave my mouth.

  He jerked away just as Melanie's aim swept downward. I screamed when the metal made contact.

  Ty stumbled away from the table, his hand pressed to his side. Bright red drops of blood fell on the floor and my vision blurred out of focus. Biting my lip hard, I scrambled out of my chair and stepped between him and Melanie.

  "Put it down!" A slight tremor went through my voice when Ty moaned behind me.

  "He deserves to die for what he did to Kim." Melanie's eyes were wild and the blade shook in her hands. Scissors. It was a pair of scissors.

  She lunged at him.

  I jumped in front of her. "You can't do this."

  "Get out of my way!" Tears rolled down her cheeks. "You didn't see her. You didn't see him!"

  She tried to dodge around me, but I jerked her back. In a flurry of limbs, she spun out of my grasp. Although I outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, her size was working in her favor and panic shot through me at the dawning realization that eventually she might get away.

  I rammed her with my shoulder, knocking her off balance and into one of the metal bookshelves. She recovered too quickly, though, and scrambled past me to where Ty sat slumped against the wall.

  In a panic, I grasped at anything I could get a hold of. My fingers dug into her flesh as I used all of m
y strength to fend her off. I yanked her backwards and she went down hard. The scissors slid out of her reach. I kicked them away. They grated across the floor and disappeared somewhere in the stacks, a trail of blood following in their wake.

  She lay in a heap on the floor, violent sobs shaking her entire body.

  I stumbled away from her and fell to my knees in front of Ty. "Let me see." I pried his hands away.

  His face was white. A deep gash to his side oozed blood, the flesh torn away in a two-inch cut. I pulled off my cardigan and bunched it into a ball. Pressing hard against it, I willed the pressure to stop the bleeding. The warmth soon soaked through the thick material.

  "Hold on, Ty."

  His hand covered mine.

  "Oh God." It was cold. He needed help, and he needed it now.

  Sobs continued behind me. I craned my neck around.

  "Melanie. I need you to go get help." I applied even more pressure, ignoring the tremor in my hands.

  She pushed up on her elbow, her face streaked with grime. "I'm so sorry."

  "I need you to get help. Can you do that?" Her face swam out of focus as tears flooded my eyes. "Please."

  She stood up and froze. Her eyes widened slightly as she took in the sight before her. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I don't know... Oh God, I think he's dead."

  I whipped back around. Ty's eyes were closed, his face slack. His hands lay limp on the floor. My own fell away before I pressed sticky fingers against his neck, praying for a pulse. When I didn't detect one, I laid my ear against his chest. I couldn't make out a heartbeat.

  "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Melanie's voice echoed behind me.

  I turned to face her, disbelief coursing through me.

  Her frightened eyes met mine. "K-Kim and I were together the night she died. I saw...that thing and h-heard her cry out for help. By the time I reached her, s-she was dead. It tore her apart." Her voice broke and she sank to her knees. "Oh God. I'm so sorry."

  My chin trembled out of control. "It wasn't him. I know it."