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  FALLING SILVER

  Book One

  of the

  Rising Bloodlines series

  A.M. ROSS

  Copyright © 2018 by Anne Maclachlan (A.M. Ross)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The author can be contacted via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/annemaclachlan/

  About Anne Maclachlan

  Anne Maclachlan is a grownup who always wanted a pet werewolf. Eventually she created this relationship on the page in the form of Falling Silver, which has never been published but has met with acclaim from beta readers who love the urban fantasy genre. She is a product of Scotland, a lover of history, and a published children's book author (hence the pen name) with several years' background in newspaper and magazine publishing, writing, and editing. Currently living in Santa Fe, NM, she is a freelance writer and editor who has a great deal of respect for both deadlines and the creative arts.

  This book was begun on a dare.

  Dedicated to my fellow writers, who in the midst of suffering rejection after rejection, encouraged — no, actually dared — one another to write something completely out of our respective comfort zones. Each of us has subsequently been a beta reader for each others' projects, and all have found success in our various endeavors. Therefore, to Nicole Villacres, fantasy writer; Emma Scott (a.k.a. Jennifer Ripley), international-romance star; Karen Fayeth, blogger, journalist, author; and Jocelyn Rish, independent filmmaker, all of whose names I dreaded to see in each year in the finals of the annual New York Midnight Madness 48-hour Flash Fiction competition: thank you.

  And ...

  To my family, who have nurtured my imagination.

  Myth of the Hunters

  “If I ever come to kill you, call my name three times.”

  Karina dived blindly into the brush, Simon’s warning howling through her mind as she raced through the deep Minnesota woods with the thing at her back. She slid down a muddy slope and grabbed a low pine branch to break her fall.

  The black beast snapped viciously.

  “Simon!”

  A horrific crunch shuddered through Karina’s exhausted body. She clung to the freshly severed branch, its jagged end only inches from her whitened knuckles.

  “Simon!” Karina’s voice sounded strange and high. Did that count as one of three? She shot one last panicked look at the enraged creature’s blue-ringed eyes as she tumbled further, the wolf nearly on top of her before she skidded away. She shouted his name for the third and final time, just as he’d taught her.

  Everything stopped.

  At the top of the slope, the werewolf’s eyes narrowed, and its shaggy head rose to sniff the air. Karina didn’t dare breathe. Had it worked? The glowing eyes returned to her direction. As she slid further, the thing’s ears perked up and it began to move toward her.

  In a moment, a low snuffling sound came closer … closer … She could hear the awful creature slipping down the hill after her, crushing branches along the way. She buried her head in the damp moss and linked her fingers at the back of her neck in a rigid grip. And there it was, the hot, horrible breath on her collar. Something dripped onto her fingers, and Karina braced for a swift oncoming metamorphosis at the instant the wetness reached her bloodstream. Her stomach flipped and dropped; her heart pounded. Were there any cuts on her hands from the chase? Had a comb scratched her scalp this morning? But there was only stillness, with the sounds of ragged breathing, the hot exhalations on her neck and hands, and cool pine-scented mist.

  The enormous man-beast collapsed next to her, nuzzling her shoulder, taking in her scent, almost comforting her. Karina shuddered at the touch.

  The night’s events crowded her mind: racing to her car, revving it down the dirt road that led to the woods as she tried to chase wolf-Simon away from the danger he was facing; the massive black creature turning on her and raging against her car’s windshield; her desperate flight through the backseat passenger window, with the spiderwebbing of the front glass reflecting shards of the full moon, shielding her for a moment.

  For that single, guilt-wracked moment, she had wished there really were such a thing as the Hunters, with their rumored silver bullets.

  They now lay quietly side by side, the wolf-thing calm but Karina still paralyzed with fear, until just before daybreak when it heaved itself away instinctively and crawled into the undergrowth.

  Presently, Simon’s human form found Karina again. She had managed to sit up against a tree, but her head was bent to her knees, and her hands were once again clasped tightly behind her neck. ”Karina,” he whispered. Her muscles were so stiff that she could hardly move in response. Though she cherished Simon’s exhausted voice, she could not force her eyes to open to the cold, watery light of dawn.

  “It’s all right, Karina, you can look at me. I’m decent,” he offered with a half-laugh, stroking her hair for a moment before she pulled away.

  “Three times; it worked,” she responded hoarsely. Simon nodded.

  In a few minutes he tugged Karina to her feet. “Come on, you’re soaked. You’ll freeze to death.”

  “I’m fine,” she responded, her teeth chattering.

  “Sure. Come on. I left my moon bag up in that big tree a little way back. There’s some dry clothing in it.” Simon, in his shredded sweatpants, put an arm around Karina’s shoulders and led her through the woods. By the time they reached the big pine where Simon had tossed his belongings, she was numb.

  They half-limped the rest of the long and mucky way to Karina's sprawling stone cottage, moving quickly past the murdered car with its slashed tires, its bleeding fluid, and the shattered windshield. Karina knew that as the light grew, Simon’s impatience with her was deepening, and that he would demand a detailed explanation about her being out in the woods under the full moon. She shakily offered that the damage to the car was from hitting a rock and a tree, and then running off the road, but Simon’s patchy nocturnal memory already knew the truth very well.

  Within two hours, Simon and Karina were attempting to make everything in the growing morning feel almost normal. Simon jogged over to his quarters, the small log cabin that served as a guest house, and Karina, emotionally spent, headed to her own brightly lit bathroom for half an hour under a steady stream of hot, soapy water, washing the night away.

  The sunlight was still weak when they reunited in Karina’s kitchen. A second pot of coffee was slowly disappearing into their oversized mugs, and a plate of lavishly buttered toast lay untouched on the kitchen table. Their usual banter was gone, along with their appetites.

  Now, as she filled Simon’s mug again, Karina took his hand in silent apology.

  It was killing Simon that she was the one comforting him, insisting that everything was all right and that she was just fine. His throat constricted with each attempt to address the horrors she had faced last night, and her understanding and acceptance of his condition only deepened his pain.

  For a change this morning, Karina had permitted Simon’s company in the kitchen to let him grind the coffee beans and set out the mugs on the wooden table. It was now two months since his arrival back in Karina’s life; he was finally allowed just a little more access to this dominion, since she’d “Simon-proofed” it by selling off the silverware. Karina had ignored his protests that silver was a problem only after he’d turned shape around the full moon. For her sake, he’d managed to rescue some heirlooms such as sugar tongs and a
pastry serving set that had belonged to her great-grandmother. He’d gone with her to the bank to be sure they were locked away in a safe-deposit box.

  Eventually, when the coffeepot was once more brewing happily, Simon took a deep breath to broach the subject he had been avoiding. “So, it did work.”

  “Yes. Third time. You were right.” Karina paused the brewer and filled his mug for perhaps his fifth dose of caffeine.

  Simon leaned forward, arms on his knees, knotting his fingers until his shoulders strained. “I can’t even remember where I heard that. Maybe I read it, I don’t know.”

  “It was the looking into the eyes that was the hard part. You wouldn’t stop dashing around.” Her smile was watercolored. “Calling you by name three times was easy.”

  They were startled by the roar of two or three SUVs pulling up on the tree-lined dirt road that led from the two-lane highway to Karina’s stone cottage. Heavy footsteps sounded outside in the front yard, and several men’s voices called out briskly to one another. A familiar tone squeak-barked above the rest, its owner tromping up the front porch steps as if he owned the place.

  Simon knew exactly who this was, and in the meager sunlight, there was still enough wolf in him that he could have snarled and struck his latent claws through the door.

  “Oh, no! Let me,” Karina caught him by the shirt as they headed through the living room toward the front door. “I want to look him in those beady eyes, and hear him explain to me exactly why the Hunters are coming.”

  Deputy sheriff Bill Moore was standing on the broad porch, jimmying the screen door and calling out authoritatively to someone behind him. Quietly Karina unlatched the inner lock, waiting an instant, timing it beautifully. Bill shouldered the main door, fell across the threshold and skidded into the living room on his sizable belly. Karina’s stockinged foot appeared under his nose. “Get up,” she intoned.

  Winded, the deputy made no move.

  Taken by spritish impulse, she knelt on one knee and hissed into his ear, “Get up, or I’ll bite you.”

  Deputy Moore had never moved so fast in his adult life. “We thought,” he panted, tongue reaching out for the words, “We thought you were … that the …”

  Simon’s temper remained at its edge. “That the maniac had got her? What the … ” he finished with a string of epithets and snatched out at Bill's collar.

  “She’s here, she’s … fine!” squealed the little deputy as he shot to his feet, fled out the door and headed down the steps with the bowlegged stagger of a toddler needing his diaper changed.

  “You’ll do what to him?” Simon turned to Karina, who returned his amused gaze with a startling coldness.

  He squinted out the window, shading his eyes in the still-gloomy midmorning. “Sounds as if he has brought along a couple of spooky-werewolf-tale believers. I’ll go and talk to them.”

  “Sounds like it, doesn’t it? Wonder where he dug these ones up,” Karina grinned at him for the first time that day. “Look, don’t dignify them. They’re just self-important touro-thugs who have seen too many horror movies. I mean, most people are convinced it’s just a crazy homeless guy rooting through the trash and hunting rabbits,” Karina jutted her chin toward the intruders. “They’ll probably leave with Big Bill anyway. Hey, maybe I should get a pet werewolf to ward off trespassers,” she mused. “Now, where could I find a really good one?”

  Simon grinned, beginning to feel relieved, until out in the yard a new shape caught his eye. Long and lean, it carried a modified rifle that glinted with silver inlay in the morning sun. The figure spoke softly to two companions, each dressed the same way, all of them wearing what looked like pairs of large wolf ears attached to their belts.

  Simon edged closer to the window. The three men circled the fenced yard by the woods, picking up signs and conferring in a close knot. One pointed towards the broad dirt path leading into the woods, and his silver patch caught the light, stinging Simon’s eyes.

  These weren’t the usual local yokels that Bill usually rounded up. He could hear them arguing with Bill about wanting to talk to “the girl in the house,” but the deputy was saying something about her not being dressed, and that she hadn’t seen anything, and babbling a string of other nonsensical excuses.

  Simon heard Karina’s quiet footsteps behind him. She had put up her long black hair in a ponytail, ready to begin work. "Are those who I … For real? With actual badges and uniforms?" she whispered sharply. Her eyes shadowed as she joined Simon at the window to watch the gray-clad men. “Simon, are you all right?”

  He hugged her shoulder, ignoring the question. “You’ll bite all of them, I suppose?”

  “I’ll get every single self-important arrogant one of them, starting with Big Bill. And then I’ll scratch your furry little head after that,” Karina smiled tightly.

  “Not behind the ears, remember.”

  "Simon, seriously, is that really them?"

  They watched the strangers climb into one of the heavy vehicles and drive off, Bill gingerly climbing up into another one with the sheriff’s shield on the door. Karina shook her head angrily. “Why can’t he just stick with the roving-lunatic story and let it go? It’s not as if anybody is getting hurt!”

  One last look at the now-empty yard confirmed a brief period of safety before Simon's new, daytime nightmare would begin.

  The Hunters were very real, and they had arrived.

  Meet Me

  in the Mirror

  “I don’t know what I look like,” began Simon, who had wandered towards Karina's well-lit art studio early in the afternoon, and was now leaning against the door, watching her step back from her enormous easel to critique her own work. “Hey, didn’t I put that shirt in the Goodwill bag for you?”

  “Well, yes, but it’s a bit ratty for them. Perfect for me,” Karina responded, wiping an oversized flannel sleeve across her paint-splattered brow. “As to your first question, you’re gorgeous, you look exhausted, and you need a shave,” she added. “But you mean … I guess I didn’t think about not ever seeing yourself in that shape. And I wish you’d talk to me about it more,” she shot him a disapproving but affectionate look.

  “Well … I do know — a little bit, anyway — how I look at First Night, but not what I was like last night, at Apex.” Simon stepped into the large studio, which was lined with canvasses, rags, and pots containing new and old brushes of all sizes. It smelled of water and paint and Karina. “First Night … there’s still some of your own nature that’s left, but … well, you’re different, that’s for sure, and you feel … you feel as if you could do anything, as if you were invincible. They call it the Rush.” He played with one of the large brushes stacked in a pot by the door. “It brings out the worst in you. I mean, if you scare a raccoon, you think it’s hilarious and you start howling. Literally, I mean.”

  “But you aren’t really dangerous then, right?”

  “I wish. The guy who got me was on the second-last night of the cycle. And I nearly killed him right there. Dropped my tire iron when he bit me and – wham – instant claws.” He shook his head. “Turned on him right away, no Rush, nothing. Just a rage.”

  A half-smile crossed his face as Karina waved him into her studio. “That was Carl … We’ve actually been friends ever since then. Poor guy was really upset about it next morning. He was a newbie himself, so he couldn’t control his impulses very well. A lot of people don’t make it past the first few moons, you know? They’re crazy with it. Most times they run afoul of another wolf, and it’s over. Depending on their bloodline, some even attack their own reflections in water, and they drown. And you know what silver does. That kind of end is rare, though.”

  Karina had paused her critiquing and was wearing a remarkably similar expression as she listened.

  “If you make it through,” he continued, “then after a while, you sense the differences in the cycle. All four nights except Apex you feel it, and it does take you over, but it’s still you. The animal you,
on mega-doses of steroids. And then Apex,” he paused, “at Apex you lose yourself completely. You’ll attack anything that moves.”

  “And if I’d cut my hands when you drooled on me? If I’d scratched myself on those branches …”

  “Any nicks at all and you would have turned on me in a flash. You could easily have killed me right there.”

  Noting Karina’s widened eyes, Simon went on, “But still, even at Apex, you know enough to avoid people, and houses — that whole thing about these outfits claiming to Silverize your property, it’s baloney. Nobody goes near a house — there’s nothing there for a werewolf to want. It’s the hunt, the chase, the struggle … That's why I went after your car. It wasn't you I was chasing at first.” He found himself reddening as Karina’s eyes fixed on his, and then she turned away.

  “You need to hear this, Rina.”

  Karina nodded but remained silent.

  “Nothing will bring me to this house to break in on a regular wolf night, unless I think you are in trouble. I’m not crashing through windows to ‘get’ you. I have your scent, and it’s embedded deep, as a friend’s scent.” Karina stiffened at that, but Simon’s gaze was distracted by a movement outside the studio. Just a rabbit. Nothing to worry about.

  “The problem is,” he continued, “at Apex, the one full-moon night, if you are outside I will come after you - maybe just to be near you, that is possible; but at that time, I lose so much control that it’s actually possible that you’d be a target. Then, if you run, you definitely become prey. And why the hell — ” Simon finally lost his composure “ — were you outside at full moon last night when you knew I was around! What were you thinking, Rina?”