Half Moon Rising Excerpt

“What’s that for?” It wasn’t much larger than his hand, and the cover was dark with age.

“It’s an old collection of spells I found a few years ago in Spain. The not-so-smart antiques dealer said it was a medieval dictionary.” He carefully flipped the thin pages until he came to a page with a small poem printed neatly in the center of the sheet. “It’s actually a witch’s spell book.” He smiled and looked at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “If you believe in such nonsense.”

He turned the book so she could see the fine print. She didn’t want to read the spell, afraid of what might happen, but she saw a few words before she pushed it back toward him. “I’d rather you do the spells. It doesn’t look like any language I know.”

“It’s several languages actually, Spanish, French, Latin and several more I can find no record of. Probably this witch’s attempt to write an oral language that had never been recorded.”

“Wouldn’t that have been dangerous in Spain? I mean, isn’t that where they burned witches at the stake?” Terrible images of women bound to stakes, flames at their feet, flashed in her mind.

“That’s what I thought, but think about it. Witches, real and otherwise, burning at the stake in record numbers. If their knowledge and traditions had been handed down orally through the centuries there was a very good chance that these spells”—he lifted the book—“could have been lost forever. The woman who wrote this probably thought she had no choice.”

“Why do we need the spell of a dead Spanish witch?”

“Magic.” Trey said the word with dead seriousness.

“Do you need to say one to shift?” She didn’t remember him reciting a chant in the Jeep.

Trey shook his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean werewolf shifting isn’t magical. It’s a magic that I carry within me.” He traced a fingertip across the old writing. “I’ve come to think of it as my supernatural soul, something that exists outside of the physical world, but yet is very much a part of me.”

CJ wondered if this special soul Trey spoke of was a part of her as well. “You don’t think it’s just a trait you inherited? Like the salamander that changes color, or like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly?”

“I think part of it is in my DNA, but the power I’ve glimpsed using this book, and other magic objects, tells me there is more to me than some coding in my genes. And no matter what the modern world insists, or Doc Vogel, or Lazlo…werewolves are magical creatures. I know it. I feel it in here.” Trey placed her hand on his chest. “I may be flesh and bones, but there is another force at play. This unknown, this magic lets me ignore the usual rules of nature. And the same goes for you. You are magical, too, CJ. You know it in your heart.”

He was right. She had never set foot in a gym, yet could send a full-grown man to the ground with one punch. She took physics in high school. Energy didn’t work that way. Her strength couldn’t be explained by a simple genetic quirk.

She was either magical or on one hell of a delusional trip.

Years of denial fell away. Her mother had never let her ask the questions she needed to ask. Maybe her visions were her own mind crying for answers. Maybe magic had led her to Seattle. To the werewolves. To Trey.

CJ felt soft, salty tears reach her lips. She swiped them away from her face before Trey could comfort her. He looked down at the book a few heartbeats, not commenting on her momentary lapse of self-control.

Fear danced on the edge of her control, but she was ready.