Crying for the Moon (2 page)

“Don’t worry.” Nick’s voice was suddenly warm. “We’ll help you fix it up, if you like.”

“Thanks, but part of the reason I bought this place was to give me something to do.” Alex smiled thinly at him.

“You could always get a job like a normal person. Or you could go back to school.” No one commented on the fact that despite his various degrees, the best job Peter could get was at the local college.

“Nah, I think he should be a model,” Nick drawled. “Gotta tell you, Alex, I thought I liked you better as a blond, but going dark suits you. I like the edgy, razor-cut thing with the hair too.”

“You are such a fucking metrosexual,” Peter said, giving Nick a disbelieving glance. “Though why you show an interest in fashion when all you ever wear is black is beyond me.”

Nick pulled down his shades to peer over them at Peter. “Black is easier to coordinate. Nothing to think about. Reach down, grab it, and pull it on. You’re just jealous.”

“Jealous!” Peter’s voice jumped up an octave. “You couldn’t pay me to be you!”

Alex felt a rush of fondness for his friends. They were part of the reason that he’d chosen to come to this area again. He knew deep down that his choices here were not entirely rational. It was just that he was tired of living as he’d done for so long, and even if he couldn’t really belong to Nick’s circle, he was ready for a change, for something different.

The image of Tate’s dark auburn hair flashed into his mind, and his brain supplied the word “titian” to describe it. Yes, of course. Titian. He could picture Tate in a portrait by the artist whose name had come to describe the hair color of his subjects. He wiped the satisfied smile off his face. It was just a shade of hair, for crying out loud.

“I’m just glad we didn’t haul the coffin down to the basement first,” Nick said, and Alex realized he’d lost all thread of the conversation.

“Right,” he agreed belatedly. “Well, I guess you’d better bring it into the living room for now.”

Peter snorted, mouthing “living room” at Nick, and Alex rolled his eyes to show him that he’d recognized Peter’s infantile sense of humor.

“Did you notice anything odd about that guy?” Nick said thoughtfully, indicating the driveway with a tip of his head as the three of them headed back toward the moving van.

“Aside from the fact that he looks like he buys all his clothes at the local hardware store? No.” Alex was already bored with the subject and wished Nick would just let it go.

Peter snorted again.

“He wasn’t afraid.” Nick was serious now. “People tend to fall into a handful of categories when they meet us: instinctively frightened, instinctively suspicious, or stupidly oblivious. He didn’t strike me as any of those things.”

“What did he strike you as?” Alex asked curiously. He picked up a heavy carton labeled “books” and handed it to Peter, who heaved a dramatic sigh when Alex reached for a smaller box for himself.

“Amused.” Nick said it as if he wasn’t sure it was a good thing.

N
ICK
and his friends stayed until shortly after dark. Duncan got restless first, prowling around the empty rooms, the naked light bulbs in the overhead fixtures throwing his already impressive form into giant shadows on the walls. Of all the members of Nick’s group, Duncan was the one Alex felt he knew the least. The uneasy truce between him and Duncan was most evident when Nick wasn’t around, and Alex had often wondered what kept Duncan hanging about; it was so obvious the man was born to be an alpha himself.

Duncan had no other name that Alex knew. He spoke with a slight Scottish accent but, like Alex, years in the United States had blurred and smoothed his speech until the accent was only noticeable on certain words. He wore his light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and kept his beard neatly trimmed to frame his jaw line. Like the rest of Nick’s group, he never seemed to get cold, and even now, with the temperatures falling, he was in a sleeveless shirt. Tattoos marked his well-muscled arms; Alex was certain there was some symbolic meaning behind them. He had both ears pierced, as well as one eyebrow. An angry scar bisected the other eyebrow and curved around the left side of his face, narrowly missing his eye. Alex had gathered from Nick that Duncan was a bit of a brawler.

“I’m leaving,” Duncan said abruptly, catching Alex’s gaze upon him. Without waiting for his thanks, he turned to Tish. “You coming?”

The only woman in Nick’s group smiled at Duncan and checked her watch. “Yes, I should be leaving too. I’ll go with you.”

Leticia Howard came over to give Alex a hug. The easy contact made something contract inside of Alex and he felt an unusual sensation of tightness in his chest. Tish smelled both lightly floral and woodsy, reminding Alex suddenly of his mother. She smiled warmly at him when she released him from her embrace. Her sculptured cheekbones and rich, café au lait coloring gave her an exotic look that made her stand out among women in general, but among Nick’s friends, she was clearly the diamond in the rough.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come back later in the week and give you a hand? It would be my pleasure.” Tish’s suggestion made Alex smile.

“No. I’ll be fine. Thanks, anyway. Thank you, all of you. I know you didn’t have to come out here today, and I don’t know how I would have managed without your help.”

“Another way of killing time,” Duncan rumbled. He looked impatient to be off.

Tish shot a fondly tolerant glance in his direction. She gave Alex a quick squeeze on the shoulder. “If you change your mind, let Nick know.” Leaving Alex, she moved gracefully over to where Nick and Peter were now standing, giving each of them a brief hug goodbye.

Nick brought his hand up to the back of her neck, where her short, black hair curled at the nape. He cupped her head, bending to nip gently at her ear before she moved off with a smile.

Peter waved goodbye with the hand-flap gesture of a small child and took another swallow from his beer as Tish and Duncan left the house. A few minutes later, they heard the powerful roar of Duncan’s Harley as it rumbled up the driveway.

“We’ll help you clean up,” Peter offered. He and Nick helped Alex pick up the empty pizza boxes and plastic cups and place them in a garbage bag.

“We can hang around a bit longer, if you like,” Nick said when they were done. They stood in the kitchen, watching as Alex stepped out on the porch and quickly shoved the trash bag into the can outside. “Help you unpack, that sort of thing.”

“Speak for yourself,” Peter said with a snap. “I’ve got papers to grade.”

Nick leveled a long stare at him and Peter suddenly dropped his eyes to peel the label from his bottle of beer. “Fine. We’ll stay. No hurry whatsoever.” He sighed.

Alex took pity on him. “No thanks,” he said lightly. He took Peter’s empty bottle away from him as Peter grinned sheepishly and shoved the bits of label into his pocket. “You’ll put my stuff away with no logical order and then it will take me centuries to find it again.”

Nick chuckled. “You said you wanted something to do.”

Alex rolled his eyes and barely refrained from punching Nick in the shoulder. Nick smiled back as though he could read Alex’s mind. “Okay, but don’t be a stranger. You can come see us in town, you know. Or invite us back for something other than moving heavy furniture or hunting.”

Alex walked them to the door. Outside, the air was cool and crisp, tempting him to walk out into the night with them. Peter hesitated on the way out, standing in the light spilling out onto the porch. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? Seriously, the papers can wait. I didn’t mean—”

Alex waved him off. “I’ll be fine. Go home, Peter.”

He watched as Peter and Nick left, taking the moving van back to town as they had agreed. The house felt colder in their absence and, as he shut the door, he wondered about their lives. Nick’s little group seemed devoted to one another. Alex wondered what it was like to have those kinds of bonds. Alex’s people were solitary by nature. One day, he’d have to ask Nick how his friends had come together. None of them were typical of Nick’s kind and yet the misfit little band worked somehow. He found himself envying the solidarity and affection they shared.

With a little snort, he brushed aside such sentiments. Yeah, like he’d ever envy
werewolves
.

H
E
SEEMED
unable to settle down to any one task that evening. He would open one box and start to put the items within away, only to become sidetracked by something else. He quickly became annoyed at the fact that he was unable to complete a single objective.
What’s your hurry? You’ve got forever
. He shut the thought out as unproductive. That was half his problem. When you had all the time in the universe on your hands, it was difficult to stay on track. He was restless and bored and had felt this way for what seemed like centuries. It was why he sought out change, after all. He couldn’t get frustrated so soon. What happened to his sense of patience? His ability to work through a problem?

He wandered through the house, taking mental note of the things that needed repairs, and trying to decide how best to go about getting them done. Inexorably, his path led him to stand outside the small room upstairs that he had designated as a study. Turning the key in the handle, he opened the door to view his coffin.

He’d left the overhead light off, having enough light from the hallway to see the gleaming mahogany wood and ornate scrollwork on the coffin’s sides. He could feel the pull of the coffin from where he stood in the doorway, could feel the insidious tug of its call on his body and mind. He was so very tempted to give in and lie down; he felt suddenly weary and knew the delicious relief and renewal that such an act promised. If he stepped into the room and laid his hand on the wood, he’d be able to feel the warm pulse of Life it promised.

He closed and locked the door instead.

With a sigh, he headed back downstairs. The coffin wouldn’t solve his problems. It only made them worse. The more time he spent in it, the less he’d be able to move in the daytime world. It would have been easier if he could have stored it in the basement. Anything that put another small barrier between him and temptation was good. Upstairs, just down the hall from his bedroom, he could imagine it whispering to him. He thought about how very easy it would be to give in and use it again.

He paused at the foot of the stairs to stare at himself in the large mirror there.

Nick was right; the shorter, darker hair suited him. The razored edges, freed from their heavier length, stood up in careless disarray with only minimal effort on his part each morning. The cut also highlighted his features and accentuated his cheekbones. The rich, chocolate-brown color went well with his dark eyes and pale coloring. He leaned in, assessing his face carefully for signs of aging. He could pass for a guy in his early thirties. He knew if he wanted to maintain endless youth, he could sleep every night in the coffin, experiencing the renewal and regeneration of his body indefinitely.

Of course, he’d stop having a reflection in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow at himself in the glass as he moved on.

Yes, the coffin promised eternal youth, but those who spent a lot of time in it became less human and more vampire. Overall, Alex preferred being able to walk in both worlds.

Too bad Victor didn’t understand that.
He won’t let you go that easily, you know
. Like the siren call of the coffin, he pushed the thought of Victor showing up one day out of his head. No doubt, he hadn’t heard the last from Victor, but what could Vic really do to him anyway? It wasn’t as if he could force Alex to practice the Old Ways.

Stewing about Victor’s anger and disapproval was nonproductive. What Alex really needed to do right now was make a list of priority repairs and figure out what he needed from the local hardware store. He would ask around and find out who was the best person to get to fix the things he couldn’t tackle himself. Fortunately, he’d been planning this move for a long time and had the resources to see him through this cycle. His last role as a
primo uomo
had paid well and no one would recognize him now. He had time enough to decide what to do next; it would be years before his neighbors got suspicious of his perpetual youth and he had to move on again. He had too much fucking time; that was the problem.

He wandered into the kitchen, humming “Come to Me” from
Les Misérables
as he looked for a notepad and pen. Of course, he’d have to be careful. Maybe this time around, he should adopt for himself a persona that would keep him out of the public eye altogether. A reclusive artist, perhaps, or maybe a writer. He snorted at the thought of himself as a novelist. He’d heard that vampire fiction was very popular right now.

T
HE
brown tabby was sitting on the back porch again when Alex opened the door and headed for the trash can. It was just after dark; the temperature was deliciously cool with a hint of frost to come. Alex could feel the woods call to him in a way he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Maybe he’d take a walk later that evening, after the moon had risen. He recalled with a smile the advice given to him by the garrulous old man who worked at the little grocery at the foot of the mountain. Alex had stopped in to pick up some more light bulbs and the old man had warned him about walking the woods on the mountain at night.

“Something big and nasty out there,” he’d said, shifting his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other as he rang up Alex’s purchase. “Some say bear; others say cougar.”

He’d smiled at the old man, thinking he’d been playing up the role of Local Wise Man for his benefit, and suspected the man had rightly pegged him for being somewhat of a city slicker. He’d been secretly pleased that when the next full moon came, no one would be surprised at the reports of some deer being killed.

The cat stood up as Alex came out the door with his plate to scrape the remains of his meal into the trash can. The cat gave him a baleful stare as Alex moved past him toward the can. He had to juggle the plate and knife in one hand as he opened the raccoon-proof latch, and the plate tilted as he did so.