Under a Rogue Moon

Chapter 2

Chapter 2She was relieved that the events at Rage were a singular occurrence during her brief stay in New York. The flight out of JFK was late to depart but thankfully boring once in the air, with a half-empty plane making it simple for Flanna to sleep most of the journey. By the time she landed at Gatwick the next morning, she was groggy but feeling more like her normal self, shedding the demonhunter skin she’d been wearing for the easier smile she kept reserved for her family.

Her father greeted her with open arms, blustering on about the shop before he could even take her bags, continuing his chatter all the way out to where he’d parked the delivery van. Flanna made the necessary responses, but let him go on without interruption, every minute spent in his company relaxing her even further. It felt so good to be home, or at least, on the way to it. When the scent of sugar and yeast drifted out from the rear of the van when she opened it to stow her bags, she paused just for a moment to breathe it in. Every time she came back, it got harder and harder to think about leaving the following month.

After the brilliant clarity of American skies, the more somber Kent County horizon greeted Flanna without apology, the lush countryside stretching for miles around as the van wound along the narrow roads leading home. Forests like those she had spent the past week battling came in patches along the way, but she had no desire to go exploring them. She already knew most of them by heart, and they were harmless. Demons had long given up Kent’s borders, choosing instead to make their homes elsewhere. It was why Flanna was forced to leave every month.

Colin McRae circumvented town to head straight for the house, navigating the ring road before pulling into the country lane that led away from Birley’s town center. It was mildly disappointing. Though she was tired, Flanna would have loved to get straight to work in her family’s bakery, burying the last vestiges of what had happened abroad in the normality of selling buns to the Birley populace.

“You’ll fancy some sleep,” her father said. “And I’ll be back to the shop in time to help your Nan with the lunch crowd. No need for you to fuss.”

She didn’t argue. There was no point. Once her father made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.

The late morning sun brought the house into sharp relief as they pulled into the drive. Colin had purchased the two-story chalet bungalow over twenty years earlier before property pricing started going mad in southeast England, and while she had grown up to stories about how it couldn’t hold a candle to Scottish housing, it was the only home Flanna could remember. She still had the tiny upstairs bedroom that she’d been given when they had first moved in. Occasionally, curiosity struck and she wondered what it would be like to live on her own, but those desires dissipated every time she was reminded of her duty. The McRaes had been demonhunters for over a millennia. She couldn’t turn her back on that, even if she wanted to.

Colin had her bags in hand before Flanna could get out of the van. “No problems with bringing the guns back then?” he asked, hefting the case holding her weapons.

“Not a one.”

“What about the new bullets? How’d they work out?”

He’d refrained from talking about her purpose in the States on the trip home, as if there was no place safe for such a discussion except on their own soil. Flanna regretted that he felt the need to talk about it at all, but since he had been the one to insist on taking the new ammunition with her to test it out, she knew she owed him the satisfaction of knowing how they’d worked.

“Clean kills,” she said. “One shot apiece. The first night was one of the easiest hunts I’ve ever had.”

She was halfway to the front door when he asked the question she’d been fearing.

“So, the three wolves are dead?”

It took every ounce of strength she had to admit to the truth. If she lied, he’d find out about it anyway.

“Just two,” Flanna said without looking back. “The third one…got away.”

She retreated to her bedroom then, unwilling to face the disappointment she knew she would see in his eyes if she waited to talk to him about it. He wouldn’t press; it wasn’t in his nature. He would just say, “Aye, well, better luck with the next time,” which was almost worse. Though he’d never said a word out loud about it, Flanna was more than aware that he much would have preferred passing along the family legacy to a son rather than a daughter. He would let her get by with failing until the time came for her to pass her hunting mantle along to her own child.

Of course, that meant having a relationship with someone other than her father or grandmother, and Flanna was fairly certain that would never happen. No man had ever stuck around after discovering the truth about what she did. It was wishful thinking to believe that might ever change.

* * * *

She fell back into her routine with the ease she always did. Sleeping through that first day and then through the night, Flanna woke up just before dawn to the sounds of her Nan bustling around in the kitchen downstairs. The faint click of the kettle turning itself off made her mouth water, and before she could stop to think, she was pushing the blankets back and padding down the narrow steps.

Time was only just starting to catch up to Helen McRae. With her back still strong and straight, she nearly matched Flanna in height, her steel-gray hair pulled back into a braid that fell between her shoulder blades. Only her hands revealed the truth of her nearly seventy years. Decades of working with them had left her knuckles gnarled and the skin dry. These were the hands of a woman who’d labored with them nearly every day of her life. Helen bared them with pride.

“Your father’s gone down to the shop already,” Helen said before Flanna had even crossed the kitchen threshold. “He said you’re to sleep as much as you need to get back to sorts.”

“I sleep any more and I’ll have skin ulcers,” Flanna joked. She stood behind her grandmother and watched the older woman stir the mushrooms in the frying pan, the enticing smell of breakfast cooking making her stomach rumble. “Do we have sausage, too?” she asked.

“Already done.”

Flanna stepped out of the way as Helen turned off the flame, then grabbed a towel before crouching down to the oven below. She pulled out two plates, already heaped with sausage, beans, eggs, and fried bread, and set them on the counter, dishing out the mushrooms without a glance back at her granddaughter.

“Don’t hover,” Helen scolded. “Pour the tea so we can have a proper breakfast.”

As the two women settled down to eat, it occurred to Flanna that nothing had been said yet about her latest trip. Usually when she returned, Helen was quick to quiz her on everything that happened, checking to find out what injuries she might have sustained, what interesting places she might have seen along the way. This morning, though…nothing. She wasn’t entirely sure if that was a blessing or not.

Regardless, they fell into their familiar patterns. Flanna washed up, while Helen set about gathering what would be necessary for business that day at the bakery the family ran in Birley’s town center. Then they were out the door, trundling down the country lane, before the sun could even think of peeking over the horizon. The comfort of the routine lulled her into forgetting, albeit temporarily, the events of the past week.

* * * *

Sometimes, when she was chatting with Mrs. Lange while filling her café’s daily roll order, or when she was helping old Mr. Simmons carry his parcels to his beat-up Skoda, Flanna forgot about what pulled her away from her home and family one week out of every month. Life was simple in Birley. Its citizens were more concerned about whether or not TV licenses were going to be more expensive in the coming year than if there were werewolves roaming the countryside. They still closed their shop doors on Wednesday afternoons, and they still looked down their noses at their neighbors north across the river. Little had changed in the twenty-plus years Flanna had lived there, and most of the time, she liked it that way.

It was harder to forget when she was at home. Beyond the bakery’s walls, there were other issues to contend with, weapons to be made, reports to be taken about monsters that walked amongst the human population. Colin’s network of contacts throughout the world had him busy well into the wee hours of the morning. Though it had been over five years since he’d last gone on a hunt, he was still a nocturnal animal. He kept Flanna updated about what needed to be done, told her anecdotes shared by others that were like themselves. She knew more about strangers on the other side of the world than she did about some of the people in her own town.

At home, she trained as well. While some demonhunters focused their energies on vampires or other creatures of the night, the McRaes had become specialists in werewolves. That didn’t mean Flanna didn’t fight other kinds of monsters, but when she was sent out specifically on her monthly missions, it was always with reports of werewolves in hand. They were the heart of her hunts, and it was for them that she spent so many hours making sure she was ready.

Her favorite weapon was the pistol her father had given her when she turned eighteen. She had the eye of a true marksman, rarely missing even in the throes of a heated fight. It also carried with it the advantage of being a long-range weapon. Shooting from a distance increased Flanna’s odds of returning home alive, which, as she’d been taught from an early age, was the most important part of what they did. You couldn’t fight evil if you were dead.

The days slipped into their regular patterns. Get up, go into the shop, work all day, and then come home to train. Repeat as necessary. A week had gone by before Flanna even realized it, and Colin started making noises about where she would need to go during the next full moon.

“Hong says there was a sighting on Paektu Mountain,” he said one night at the dinner table.

Flanna wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t this the rainy season in North Korea?” she asked.

“You think evil has issues with getting wet?” His joke fell flat, and Colin set down his knife and fork in order to rest his hand on his daughter’s arm. “Hong wouldn’t send you on a wild goose chase,” he said.

“I know, but—”

“Don’t think about it.” He returned to his meal, the issue already settled in his mind. “When the time comes, we’ll know where you need to go.”

She escaped the house as quickly as she could, waiting until her Nan had gone to bed before changing into sweats and a t-shirt for a run. Her father stopped Flanna at the door, pressing a sheathed silver blade into her hand without saying a word, and then went back to where he’d been poring over maps at the kitchen table. Even though there had been no reports of demonic activity in Kent for years, he still refused to let her go out at night without being prepared for a fight. It was, perhaps, the one thing that infuriated Flanna the most about him.

Her steps were a rhythmic pounding against the earth, the weight of the blade strapped to her calf a nagging reminder that this wasn’t completely a pleasure run. The sky was uncharacteristically clear for this time of year, and in spite of the chill, Flanna warmed quickly, her skin taking on a sweaty sheen that made her gleam in the moonlight. If she concentrated, she could pretend that the world didn’t exist, that it was just her and the stars and the damp grass beneath her feet.

Then she heard the snap of a branch. Stopping in her tracks was pure instinct.

Flanna scanned her surroundings, noting the gentle sway of the leaves caught in the night’s breeze. The road was nearby, but it led nowhere, with the only house along its stretch her own. Had her father come out for some reason? Unlikely. Since his retirement, he didn’t venture beyond his safe borders unless he was forced, and there had been no indication prior to her departure that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

There was always the possibility that it was a stray animal. A fox maybe, or a squirrel. But the sound had been loud enough to catch her attention. Any animal in this part of the country wouldn’t be heavy enough to create such a noise.

She was beginning to wish she had her gun instead of just a knife.

Flanna began the walk back to the house, her gaze always moving, on the alert for any type of movement. Twenty yards from the road, she saw the glint of moonlight off metal and froze at the sight of the car parked along the side. It had been a person. Normally that would relieve her worry, but she didn’t recognize the Nissan as belonging to anyone from town. Why would someone be out here? The only people in the near vicinity were her family.

Another crack came from behind her, this time even louder, and Flanna whirled to see a man walking toward her through the night shadows. He was lean and barely taller than she, but it wasn’t until he came out from beneath the curtain of trees that she could discern his features.

“You’re a hard woman to find, Flanna McRae,” he said, coming to a halt. Her eyes widened when Jason Randolph raised his hands as if in surrender. “And I’m really hoping you’re not planning on shooting me before I get a chance to talk to you.”