Marked by the Moon Read Free Page B

she lay beneath a blanket on the cot where she’d so recently been tied. The trussed man was gone. Unfortunately, Edward wasn’t.
    Tall, thin, pale, Edward Mandenauer, the leader of the Jäger-Suchers, didn’t appear concerned to be in a small room with a woman able to sprout fangs and a tail. Probably because such things had been happening to him for more than sixty years.
    With the rifle slung over his back, a pistol in hand, and a bandolier of bullets across his cadaverous chest, Edward was, as usual, ready for Armageddon.
    â€œIt has been a long time,” he murmured.
    You’d think that after residing in the United States for better than half a century, his heavy German accent would have faded. Everything else about him had. His once-blond hair was now white, his eyes pale blue, his skin paper-fine. It never ceased to amaze Alex that the man’s kill count was twice her own. Or at least it had been when she’d still been required to count.
    She sat up, uncaring when the blanket pooled at her waist.A few hours ago she would have been mortified, which only proved she’d changed in more ways than one.
    She felt damn good. Any minor aches and pains were gone. Energy pulsed within her, the buzz reminiscent of the one time she’d tried to unplug a cheap motel hair dryer while still sopping wet from the shower. Zap! She’d never done that again.
    The world seemed so much more there . Alex could feel the air on her skin, hear every breath Edward took; if she listened she could probably distinguish the dull thud of his ancient heart and the slow flow of blood through his veins. She bet she could smell it.
    Lifting her nose, Alex sniffed, then licked her lips. Edward lifted his gun.
    So it was going to be like that.
    â€œLet’s get this over with.” Alex repeated the same words to Edward that she’d so recently used with the wolf man, even as her gaze slid to the left, the right, searching for a way out. Though her mind had accepted the inevitability of her death, her body quivered with the possibility of escape.
    â€œGet what over with?” Edward asked.
    â€œMy unavoidable demise. I suppose you want me to grow pointy ears and a snout again so you have less to explain after you shoot me in the head.” Although Edward never had much of a problem explaining anything—one of his many talents.
    â€œI’m not going to shoot you in the head, Alex.”
    â€œChest then. Whatever.”
    â€œIf I was going to shoot you with silver, I wouldn’t have bothered with the tranquilizer dart.”
    Then why had he?
    For that matter, why had she shape-shifted again? A werewolf must ingest human blood under the full moon before morphing back into a person, and after the initial change only a kill would do. Otherwise madness was the result.
    Alex ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She probably had a raging case of halitosis but no blood breath. She was also way too calm for a just-made wolf, and while she did feel different, she didn’t feel crazy or evil. Sure, if she had a chance to get away, she’d take it, and if that meant going through Edward, she wouldn’t cry about it. But that was simply survival.
    Alex studied the old man, who lifted his bushy white brows as if waiting for her to catch up. Eventually, she did. “What did you do to me?”
    He held up an empty syringe.
    Ah-ha!
    Edward had his very own Dr. Frankenstein on the payroll—a virologist who’d spent a lot of time trying to cure lycanthropy. The main reason Alex had left the Jäger-Suchers was their edict that agents give werewolves a choice of being cured or being killed. In her book they didn’t deserve a second chance. Her father hadn’t gotten one. Hell, her mother hadn’t, either.
    â€œYou cured me?” she asked. Alex didn’t feel cured; she felt a little wolfy.
    Edward shook his head. “I gave you a serum that removes the