I’m very, very sorry for the long wait for this chapter. I have my reasons (work, stalker, computer virus, writer’s block) but I won’t go into details. On with the story!

Chapter Four: The Devil’s in the Moon

The devil's in the moon for mischief; they
Who call'd her chaste, methinks, began too soon
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business in a wicked way,
On which three single hours of moonshine smile -
And then she looks so modest all the while!
- George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan

For one tense, timeless moment, none of them moved or spoke. Then, as one, they exchanged uneasy looks and tore down the wooden stairs leading towards the ground, instinctively heading in the direction the gunshots had come from. All was silent now, save for the heavy bass of whatever song was playing inside; there were no more gunshots.

For Hannah, the sounds had conjured unpleasant memories of the events several months previously when she had been forced to shoot Sean the rogue after he had killed Jeffrey Sanderson and tried to kill her. She had lost her mentor and the last vestiges of her innocence that day, and she didn’t appreciate the reminder, but she pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind as she kept pace with the boys. Years of hunting on full moon nights made them able to track the direction of the shots despite no longer being able to hear them, and they found themselves heading towards the wood that bordered the golf course.

Hannah smelled the blood – that metallic, sickly sweet scent – before she saw the source. The three of them came to an abrupt halt a little inside the tree line and stared down at the corpse before them in horror.

It was an animal corpse, not a human one, which was some small comfort. The fox was quite large by its standards but still much smaller than, for instance, a werewolf in wolf form. It was sprawled on its side, its eyes closed and its russet fur matted with blood. Hannah felt sick. She might kill small animals on full moon nights – rabbits, squirrels, sometimes when she was especially fortunate a deer – but she ate her prey. Someone had shot the fox and simply left it where it lay. This was needless death.

“The poor thing,” she murmured.

“Did a hunter do this?” Andrew wondered aloud, sounding bewildered. It wasn’t uncommon for people visiting the Lake District to hunt rabbits and deer. “But why would a hunter be out at night? And why not take the body with him?” He raised his face to the slight breeze rustling through the trees, testing for a scent, but was left disappointed. Whomever had caused the disruption was long gone by now, and there was little point in searching the area for a scent to follow.

Adam strode towards the fox and crouched down beside it, as both Hannah and Andrew were reluctant to go any closer than necessary. He picked up a stick lying nearby and poked the corpse, causing bile to rise in Hannah’s throat. She turned away, and for the first time noticed a recent wound on the trunk of a nearby pine tree. Curious, she went to examine it, while Adam concluded his inspection of the corpse by saying, “I think the bullet went straight through the heart. The fox would have died instantly. Whoever did this is either a fucking fantastic shot, or bloody lucky.”

“Is that the only wound?” asked Andrew thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Because we heard two shots. So where’s the other bullet?”

Adam frowned. “Does it matter? Some weirdo with night vision goggles is responsible for this. Case closed.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Hannah absently. The tree’s wound was very recent; the lighter bark underneath hadn’t even begun to darken through exposure to the elements. Was it possible that whatever had caused the wound had only occurred in the last few minutes? She stuck her head only an inch from the gash and tried to peer inside. It might have been her imagination, but she was fairly certain there was something in there.

“Hannah?” She turned to regard Andrew, who was eying her with a mixture of concern and curiosity. “What are you doing?”

“There’s something stuck in here,” she said, returning her attention to the tree. She tried ripping the bark away with her fingers, but only succeeded in breaking her fingernails. Damn. There went the perfect manicure she had given herself earlier in honour of the dance. “I think it might be the other bullet, but I can’t get it out. Do you have a penknife on you?”

He shook his head and replied, “No,” at the same time as Adam straightened from his position beside the fox and said, “Yes.” He reached into his trouser pocket and extracted his penknife, which he always carried with him out of habit, and tossed it to Hannah. She caught it deftly, and began using it to cut away the bark around the bullet. The boys crowded around her, watching her work. A few minutes later she had carved away enough of the surrounding wood that she was able to prise the bullet out. She held it between her thumb and index finger and peered at it closely. It looked very much like an ordinary bullet – or at least how they always looked on TV; she had little experience with them – but there was something about it, something she recognised but couldn’t quite put her finger on…

The smell. The bullet smelt strange: metallic, obviously, but underlain with something far less pleasant. It was almost sour, and it sent warning bells ringing in Hannah’s head.

The others had caught it too. “Is that what I think it is?” asked Andrew, stunned.

“It’s silver,” Hannah confirmed softly. “This is a silver bullet.”

Despite the fact that simply touching a silver object didn’t harm a werewolf – one had to draw blood with it for it to do any damage – she could barely bring herself to keep holding the bullet. She opened her clutch and dropped it inside; out of sight, out of mind. If only that were the case.

“What does this mean?” she asked quietly.

None of them were willing to voice their fears. “It’s too premature to make any guesses yet,” said Adam carefully. “We’ll take the bullet to Stephen in the morning and see what he thinks.” He glanced down at the dead animal at his feet. “But I think we should bury the fox. It didn’t deserve to die that way, and besides – we don’t want anyone coming across it and asking awkward questions.” He quirked an eyebrow questioningly. “I don’t suppose anyone has a spade handy?”

Unsurprisingly no one did, so Adam and Andrew dug a small, shallow hole in the earth with their bare hands, covering the fox with soil and leaves, trying to make the grave look as natural as possible. Hannah kept watch in case anyone stumbled across them engaged in such a strange activity. The three of them walked back to the dinner dance slowly, their earlier happy, carefree mood gone. They all looked a little the worse for wear: Adam and Andrew’s tuxedos were ruined, stained with dirt from their digging, while Hannah’s shoes were splattered with soil and her hair was falling out of its elegant coiffure.

The Noisettes’ Don’t Upset the Rhythm was blasting when they re-entered the ballroom, but none of them were in the mood for dancing. A short search revealed Summer and Matthew getting off in a dark corner, and after collecting them, the five young werewolves retreated to the limo and made their slow way home. By an unspoken decision the happy couple weren’t told about the dead fox or the silver bullet; Hannah didn’t know about the boys’ reasoning but she didn’t want Summer and Matthew’s excitement at being engaged to be eclipsed by the possibility of a werewolf hunter in Fairfield. She was having enough trouble wrapping her mind around the thought as it was.

In the three and a half years since she had been turned into a werewolf, she had only ever encountered one werewolf hunter before: Jeffrey Sanderson, her mentor. As hunters went, he was one of the good guys; despite the fact that his wife and daughter had been murdered by a werewolf, he hadn’t allowed revenge to cloud his judgement and only eliminated werewolves who had killed people. He had been Hannah’s friend, almost an uncle to her, and he had sacrificed himself to save Hannah and stop the rogue werewolf that had terrorised Fairfield a few months ago.

Hannah had no way of knowing whether there really was another werewolf hunter in Fairfield, or whether she was simply jumping the gun, but she strongly suspected that any other hunters out there were unlikely to be as understanding as Jeffrey had been. Her stomach plummeted at the very thought of it.

“Hannah?”

She jumped, startled by Adam’s low voice interrupting her thoughts. She looked up at him and found they were the only two left in the limousine. “Where did everyone else go?” she asked, bewildered.

“Andrew’s gone home, and Summer and Matthew have gone back to his flat. I think they’re going to hold a private engagement party for each other.” His tone was dry, but it softened with his next words as he gently took her hands in his and leaned towards her. His thumb stroked circles on her palm absently. “Are you okay? You’ve been quiet for a long time.”

“I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “I’m just tired.”

“Are you sure?” His eyes as they regarded her held no small amount of concern. “You know that even if the worst is true, you don’t need to worry, don’t you? Stephen knows what he’s doing, and I won’t let anything happen to you – I swear my life on it.”

She frowned at him. Most girls would have been moved by his words, but Hannah was not most girls. The fact that Adam seemed to think she needed protecting had been a bone of contention between them from day one. She was a twenty-first-century girl, not a nineteenth-century damsel in distress – she was, for the most part, perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But now wasn’t the time or place to assert her independence, not when Adam was only trying to comfort her, so she remained silent and instead covered her mouth with his.

All rational thought fled. There was only touch and taste and smell: the exquisite feeling of Adam’s tongue teasing hers; the heady taste of his mouth, his lips; his familiar musky scent filling the interior of the limousine. She barely noticed that she had somehow ended up straddling his lap, her hands tangling in his hair and holding his head in place, preventing him from moving away from her, even should he want to. His were sliding slowly, tantalisingly up her legs, pushing her dress up her thighs...

The sound of the chauffeur clearing his throat from the front had them pulling apart, embarrassed. Hannah slid off Adam’s lap onto the seat beside him, surreptitiously pulling the hem of her dress down.

Adam peered out of the tinted windows into the night. “We’re outside your house. I don’t suppose you’d like to come back to mine instead and pick up where we left off?” He gave the expanse of the limo a considering look. “Actually, why wait? We’ve got all this room, so we might as well make the most of it.” He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively in an attempt to lighten the mood, which was beginning to grow dark again. It worked; she laughed and punched his arm playfully.

“Tempted as I am by your incredibly romantic and not at all pervy offer,” she retorted, “I think I’m going to have to pass. I reckon my parents are looking out their bedroom window waiting for me to go inside.” She put on a fair imitation of her mother’s voice: “‘Why is she still in the limo? What is she doing in there with That Boy? I hope the chauffeur isn’t condoning any lewd behaviour!’”

Adam chuckled. “I see your point.”

She grinned and leaned towards him to kiss him again – this time briefly, as anything longer than a second was bound to lead to the sequel of their previous encounter. “I promise that one day soon I won’t make any excuses for not having a sleepover. Thank you for being so patient.” She decided a little preview of the sequel wouldn’t hurt, and began to manoeuvre herself onto his lap again – only for Adam to give a sudden grunt of pain.

“Oh, holy Jesus,” he gasped.

“What?” she asked, startled. “What’s wrong?”

“Your knee got me in my crown jewels,” he groaned, doubling over in his seat and holding his crotch as though this would magically make it better.

Hannah was torn between wanting to giggle and feeling incredibly guilty; she decided the latter emotion was more appropriate and went with that one. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she cried. “Are you going to be all right?” She hovered over him anxiously.

“Give me a minute,” he choked out. He had turned red in the face. “That’s the second time you’ve kneed me in the balls. Do you have something against that particular part of my anatomy?”

“I’m really sorry,” she repeated. “Do you want me to run inside and get you an ice pack?”

He shook his head. “No, just go. I’d like to avoid further injury tonight,” he said, but he smiled weakly to show he wasn’t really angry with her.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”

“Well, you could kiss it better – ”

“Goodnight, Adam,” she said firmly, giving him a quick peck on the cheek and clambering out of the limousine. “I hope you feel better soon.” She closed the door on him and, after thanking the chauffeur, walked up the driveway to her house. Her joke about her parents watching at the window appeared to be more accurate than she’d realised; their bedroom light was still on, and as she glanced up at the window she saw the curtain twitch as though someone had just stepped away from it quickly. She rolled her eyes.

Inside, she went straight up to her parents’ room and tapped on the door softly before opening it. Her parents were lying in bed, both reading books, although her father was the only one who looked like he was genuinely reading his; in her mother’s hands it looked more like a prop.

“I’m back,” she said, stating the obvious.

“Did you have a good time?” asked her father genially, peering over the top of his book, at the same time as her mother demanded suspiciously, “Why are you covered in dirt?”

“Oh, Adam and I left the party and ended up having sex in the woods,” she replied sarcastically. “We didn’t use a condom either, so who knows – you might be grandparents in nine months time!” Her mother’s mouth dropped open in horror, missing the joke, so she amended quickly, “I’m joking! I fell over. Even werewolves have off days, you know. I had a great time tonight, Dad, thanks for asking.” Silver bullet and kneeing Adam in the balls aside. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” they both called, and as she shut the door gently behind her, she heard her mother mutter defensively, “I knew she was joking...”

Standing in her cartoon penguin pyjamas and flip-flops, surrounded on all sides by trees, Phoebe flailed her arms desperately as she tried to recover the signal on her mobile phone that had just disappeared. After being rudely awakened in the morning by her brother farting in her face, she’d set off on a hunt for a signal without bothering to get dressed. Having finally discovered one a distance into the wood at the end of the tiny garden, she had been mid-rant with her best friend, Poppy, when the signal had gone AWOL.

“Come on, come on!” she wailed dramatically. “Don’t do this to me, please!”

One miraculous bar appeared, and she hit redial. Poppy picked up a moment later, saying in voice tinged with laughter, “Let me guess: the signal died?”

“This isn’t funny, this is dire!” Phoebe complained, running a hand through her hair in frustration. She was fairly certain she already had a serious case of bed hair, so anything she might do could hardly make it worse. “You have no idea what this place is like, Poppy! I swear, Fairfield is stuck in the nineteenth bloody century. The hot water doesn’t work. I’m sharing a room with my brother. There’s no Internet connection, and I had to trek into the middle of an effing forest in order to speak to you.”

“How very I’m a Celebrity of you,” came the dry reply.

“Exactly. I’m a celebrity…get me the fuck out of here!”

“Are you lost?”

The voice startled her; she screeched and almost dropped her mobile before recovering her composure. She spun around to find a guy standing a few metres away. He was regarding her politely, a spark of curiosity in his unusual grey eyes. He was also completely gorgeous, but that was more or less beside the point. Phoebe suddenly became acutely aware of the fact she was wearing pyjamas and desperately needed to run a brush through her hair. She gaped at him, and felt herself blushing.

Without taking her eyes off him, she said into the phone in a breathless whisper, “Poppy? I have to go die of embarrassment now. I’ll talk to you later.” She thought she’d spoken quietly enough that the guy wouldn’t hear, but his bow lips quirked upwards in a smile at her words; he had definitely overheard. Bloody buggery hell.

“What – ” began Poppy in a confused tone.

“I’ll call you back, I’ll call you back,” Phoebe hissed into the phone, interrupting her friend, and hung up. “No, I’m not lost,” she said, belatedly answering the guy’s question. “I’m staying in a cottage that way.” She waved vaguely in what she was pretty sure was the direction of the house. “I was just trying to find a signal on my mobile.” She gestured with her phone for emphasis.

“Oh.” He was beginning to look embarrassed himself, and apologised, “I’m sorry for interrupting your conversation, then.”

He turned away, about to begin walking in the direction he had approached from, but something – most likely his extraordinarily good looks – made Phoebe call him back. “Wait!” When he glanced back at her questioningly, a lock of dark hair falling across his eyes charmingly, she said sheepishly, “Maybe I do need help getting back after all. I wasn’t paying much attention when I came this way. I’m staying in one of the cottages on Crescent Lane – do you know it?”

He smiled reassuringly. “Of course. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk this way.” He had a definite Cumbrian accent, and the southern snob in her was surprised to find that it was actually rather pleasant to listen to, not too rough or difficult to understand at all. “Follow me.”

She fell into step beside him, becoming aware of how tall he was compared to her – he wasn’t the tallest of guys, perhaps six feet, but she was quite petite. His stride was much longer but he matched it to hers, and he moved through the woodland with the ease of someone who’d been around it all his life. She, on the other hand, was stumbling along making enough noise to suggest a herd of elephants was marching through the wood. It was very unfair; but then, Phoebe didn’t plan in being around nature long enough to get used to it. A month in this backwater and then she was out of here, back to her concrete paradise. With any luck, she would find something – or someone – to make the time pass more quickly...

“What’s your name?” she asked the guy curiously, adopting a tone that was supposed to come off sexy and nonchalant, but mostly just sounded strained. She pushed an errant branch out of her way; she couldn’t believe how far she’d walked in her bid to find a signal.

“Andrew,” he replied easily. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Phoebe. So do you live here?”

“Yes. It’s not quite as much of a hellhole as you seem to think, I promise,” he laughed, and she blushed, not having realised he’d overheard so much of her phone conversation. “It can be pretty unpleasant during the winter, but at this time of year there’s nowhere I’d rather be.” He gestured towards the sun-dappled leaves above them, and then towards the expanse of the wood in general. “Look at it. You can’t tell me you’re unmoved by all this.”

She glanced around doubtfully. “Well, maybe not entirely unmoved...”

He laughed again. He had a nice laugh, she noticed; smooth and warm, like good hot chocolate. “I’ll take what I can get,” he said. “Where are you from, then? I’m going out on a limb and guessing a city.”

“The biggest city – London. There are parks and stuff there, of course, but I never really go to them. My mum and brother are huge nature fans, but the gene obviously skipped me.”

Andrew smiled at her. “Well, considering you don’t have the nature gene, you haven’t done too badly. Look, we’re back at the cottage – and you didn’t fall over or get attacked by a plant once.” Some people might have sounded patronising saying that, but he didn’t.

Phoebe realised with some surprise that he was right – she could just see the row of cottages through the trees. There was no fence or hedge separating the small back gardens from the woods: one minute it was grass; the next, shrubs and trees. It seemed to Phoebe that the forest was slowly encroaching on the gardens, and that one day, if the owners weren’t careful, they would take them over again.

She turned towards her companion, and was aware of a tinge of disappointment that their time together was at an end. She had enjoyed talking to him, and it was reassuring to know there was at least one person her age in Fairfield. “Thanks for helping me get back. I’d probably have headed in completely the wrong direction otherwise, to be honest.” She paused before adding, “I’m staying here for a month, so...maybe I’ll see you around?”

Andrew nodded seriously. “Probably. Fairfield is a small village,” he agreed, and she realised he’d completely missed the subtext of her words. But she didn’t mind when his next ones were: “Actually, if you want to meet some people while you’re here, my friends and I will be in the Blue Moon café later – you’re more than welcome to join us.”

Phoebe’s heart did a cartwheel in her chest. It wasn’t exactly a date, but it was a step in the right direction. She liked Andrew – she’d only known him about two seconds, but he seemed to be handsome and kind and funny, three big ticks on her mental list of what she looked for in a guy. She flushed with pleasure. “Really? I’d love to, thanks.”

“We’ll be there from about lunchtime onwards, probably. You can’t miss the café, it’s the only one in the village. I’ll see you then.”

He turned and left, disappearing back into the trees like some sort of mysterious woodland god, leaving Phoebe in a daze. As soon as she was certain he was gone, she did her happy dance around the garden several times before running inside to shriek her good news to her mum and brother.

I'd just like to quickly extend my sympathy towards the real residents of the Lake District, who are currently experiencing major flooding. I don't know if anyone from there reads my stories, but my thoughts are with you anyway!