Moon - New Moon Part 55

"Yes. I'm protecting the house."

How could she be at home and with him, too? It didn't make sense. He couldn't see her. But he could hear her voice in his mind. And he thought that maybe he was only remembering what she had told him.

He said her name again, then imagined her smiling at him, reaching for him, pulling him down to a soft bed of leaves in the forest.

Wait! That was wrong. He couldn't make love to her now. He had to go to Lance's.

No. He had to go home. Quickly.

"Go to Lance's. Go to Lance's and get help."

He started the engine again and began to drive. And after a few minutes, he began thinking again that he might be doing the wrong thing. But every time he thought about stopping and turning around, Rinna's voice echoed in his mind. She had told him to go to Lance. She had told him to get help. And he knew that was what he must do.

So his hands gripped the wheel as he drove south, speeding through the early morning. At first there were hardly any cars on the road. But as dawn approached, commuters began clogging the road.

He was on an urgent mission, and he wanted to pound on his horn and get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to move out of the way. But he knew it wouldn't do any good, so he suffered through the traffic, feeling a great swell of relief when he turned onto the road that led to the house where his brother lived with his wife, Savannah Carpenter.

They had been married only a few months. She was an artist, so she had kept her own name. And she had been at the thick of it when they had defeated the monster from another universe. It had been lurking in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a D.C. S & M club called the Castle, feeding off the emotions of the patrons.

Savannah and Lance had gone there to find out who had pushed her sister off a cliff in Rock Creek Park. She and the other women had fought the monster. And the wolves had protected them.

Savannah and Lance knew about the parallel universe, and they would understand when he explained why Rinna needed their help.

He pulled into the driveway and jumped out of the car-in time to meet a gray wolf coming out of the woods.

It was Lance, and the wolf stopped short, his face questioning his brother's unexpected visit.

Logan bounced on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. "Hurry up and change. I need your help."

Lance disappeared back into the woods.

He seemed to take forever, and Logan pawed the ground with his bare feet.

Bare feet? He'd driven over here with no shoes on? He hadn't thought about that until this instant.

Finally, Lance was back, bare-chested but wearing a pair of sweatpants.

Lance looked him up and down-from the bare feet to the hair he hadn't bothered to comb that morning.

"You look like the devil is chasing you. What's wrong?"

The pressure of getting the message out made Logan shout out the first thing that came to his mind. "It's Rinna. Falcone is coming for her."

But Logan had been much too busy to tell his brother what had been going on in his life, so Lance didn't know any of those names or anything about what had been happening over the past week and a half.

"Rinna?"

Logan flapped his arm in exasperation. "You saw her at the castle. She's the woman from the other side of the portal."

Lance tipped his head to one side. "Maybe you'd better slow down and fill in some of the blanks."

Logan wanted to hurl a string of curses at his brother. But he ordered himself to hold on to his temper. Dragging in a deep breath, he let it out slowly, then said, "Remember when we fought Boralas?"

"Of course. The thing was after me and Savannah."

"Remember that we could see a woman helping us from the other side?"

Lance nodded, watching him with an intent expression.

Logan didn't like that look. "What?" he growled.

"Nothing. Go on."

"Well, Rinna saved my life."

"Did something happen at the Castle that I don't know about?"

Logan's exasperation had reached boiling point. "Jesus! You're not listening. I'm talking about last week. I was on an expedition gathering native plants that are going to be bulldozed. And I was running in the woods. In wolf form. Falcone had set a trap for her, but I walked into it-because it was tuned to catch a shape-s.h.i.+fter."

"And Falcone is?" Lance asked, his voice maddeningly reasonable.

"He's one of the bigwigs on the council at Sun Acres. He went to school with Rinna, and he knew her psychic potential. He wants to control her. And he wants her to give him children who will run the city."

Lance shook his head. "Sorry, but you're losing me. Am I supposed to know about Sun Acres?"

Frustrated by his brother's lack of understanding, Logan could no longer hold his anger in check. He'd come here because Rinna had sent him to get help, and all Lance was doing was asking stupid questions. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'm trying to explain, but you're not listening."

Lance raised his hand.

Even if the gesture was innocent, ingrained werewolf behavior took over. Through the generations, the men of the Marshall clan had fought for dominance among themselves. It was like a conditioned reflex, until their cousin Ross had proved to them that they could work together if they curbed their more aggressive impulses.

But Ross wasn't here now to act as a mediator between these two particular werewolves. And Logan saw the upraised hand as a threatening gesture. Raising his own hand, he hauled off and socked his brother on the jaw.

Lance snarled and struck out at him.

Logan reached out and pulled his brother off his feet, landing on the ground on top of him.

Neither one of them was crazed enough to go for the other's throat. But they rolled across the gra.s.sy area between the woods and the house, trading punches and howling at each other.

"Stop it!"

A sharp voice cut through the fog of battle, but neither one of them paid any attention-until a stream of icy cold water struck Logan in the face. Sputtering, he jerked his head up, searching for the source of the new enemy, ready to redirect his attack.

Lance got in one more punch before the water landed solidly in his face.

"Hey!"

They both looked toward the house, and saw Savannah, wearing a bathrobe and standing on the lawn, the garden hose in her hand.