Author's Note #1: Midnight Moon was originally supposed to be a couple chapters in my other Garrett story, Forever Night. But I became absolutely fascinated by the possibilities of the Children of the Moon, and I could no longer make the story work as part of the whole. So I spun it off. It takes place between Chapters 22 (Foolhardy 1948) and 24 (Villain 1954) of Forever Night, and does not follow that story's non-linear style. I would highly recommend that a new reader first read that story up through Chapter 22 before starting this story, in order to understand the Garrett character that I created, his motivations, and his background. This story is really for me as a writer and for those that enjoy Forever Night, and it doesn't "stand alone". Thank you to those of you who have joined this story who were already reading Forever Night, and I apologize for any confusion. Starting this story was a spur of the moment decision. I love my Forever Night readers.
Author's Note # 2: Dialogue that is italicized but not part of a memory is translated from another language. No way was I translating everything with the deeply flawed Altavista, and then having to explain the translations as part of the text. I'm too lazy for that.
1. INNOCENCE
The beast was horrible. It was as Danny had described. No hair, just a naked and deformed body, human flesh, stretched and distorted over the skeleton of a strange dog. It was thin and yet muscular at once, for all of the exposed flesh was muscle and tendons. The face of it was like nothing I had ever seen, as if it was a human whose jaw had grown too large, whose whole face contorted, the flesh stretched over elongated bone. The only hair on the beast was on it head, a long mane of brown hair, and between its legs, black instead of brown. Its torso was too long, more than half the length of its body. The only area where the flesh was not stretched along bone or muscle was at the chest, where the skin was not fully extended over bone.
Danny screamed, but the beast turned that scream into a more horrible gurgling sound as it ripped the flesh from his neck.
The scent, as before, was strange to my vampire sense. It was both the scent of a dog and the scent of a human. The human scent was rather appealing, except that it was very hard to separate from the dog's scent. Still, far better than how it had smelled as a wolf.
The creature was human now, a woman, and I doubted it, or she, could get very far. But was it really human? Of that I was not so sure. The semantics of a Child of the Moon were beyond me. I increased my velocity, wanting simply to finish this.
Danny's death stung deeply, to my very core. I had killed so much, lost so much, in my past, but this loss was distinctively bitter from the rest. He had trusted me so implicitly. Had been so pleasant, open, and honest from the moment I'd met him. He may have been a vampire, but the best word I could use to describe Danny was innocent. And I had taken advantage.
He was young and gullible, he had seen nothing of the world but his own little corner of it. I had told him tales, true tales, which made what I did seem fun and exciting, when in reality my past was filled with pain and suffering. Jonathan had accused me of being a suicidal vampire. I longed for death, certainly, but what I truly loved was the sense of danger, to feel the rush and the excitement of the possibility that I might actually be killed. No, I never intended to die by what I did, but I didn't intend to survive, either. I just wanted to feel something. And that was what I should have told Danny from the outset.
My hunt now was not for the danger, not for the rush. This was a hunt for vengeance. Vengeance and I were old friends, and we'd known each other for years, but I had not felt the emotion, the longing, inside of me for quite a long time. Vengeance used to be a natural thing for me, but it felt unfamiliar. It was not as comfortable a feeling as it once was. I had a strange sense of unease.
The Child of the Moon moved more quickly than I'd expected. I'd assumed I would catch it well before it could reach Warsaw, but soon I was upon the capital. And I pulled up in shock.
What had happened here? I had, of course, heard of the many German atrocities in the East during my time in the army, but I had overheard little since we'd come to Poland, for I did not know the language. This was not a city. Barely a single building stood as far as the eye could see, and my eyes saw very far. Everywhere I looked, buildings were collapsed upon themselves, debris and rubble lay unmoved in the streets. I was aware of how hard-hit some of these places had been, but still, I expected to see a city, not a ruins. I knew not whether the Russians or the Germans had done this, but I could not imagine how anyone could actually live in this place.
And, truly I did not see very many people, so I supposed I was correct in that assessment. But I was not there to decry the atrocities that humans committed upon themselves. I had a mission. I tracked the Child into the city, staying to the shadows of the building and pulling the collar of my jacket up so that it covered much of my face. If I moved fast enough, I hoped no one would notice the occasional glint of sun off of my skin.
It had moved deep into the eastern portion of the city, and I was almost to the Vistula, when the sent suddenly turned from its westerly direction towards the north. It turned again, into a cramped alleyway filled with more debris, refuse, and pieces of the adjacent buildings, and I saw it.
No, I saw…her.
She was huddled in a corner, curled into a ball, and she was completely naked. How had she come this far into the city without causing an uproar? Her hair was matted on her head, and she clutched her face in her hands. Her body was covered in dirt and filth from head to toe.
She looked up as I approached. That was surprise. Humans never heard me until I was upon them, even when I wasn't trying to be quiet. Tears streaked the dirt on her cheeks, and her eyes were wide as they beheld me. And those eyes were green. Strikingly, wonderfully, green.
My anger about what the beast had done to Danny, my desire for vengeance, was gone. There was no malice in her eyes, no sign of the black eyed monster I'd encountered only an hour before. Only fear, and confusion, and pain.
The wound on her shoulder was still open and fresh, and I saw the bruises covering her body as well. Time to try out my Polish.
"Są wy w bólu?" I asked. Was she in pain? It appeared that she was. But her face only became more confused.
"Są wy Polerujecie?" She still seemed confused. So she was not Polish. Time to try Russian. Good, I knew a little more Russian than Polish.
"Вы понимаете русский язык?" She shook her head. She seemed to have some understanding of what I was trying to convey.
"Do you speak English?" Now that would be convenient. She shook her head again, but this time she spoke.
"My…English…bad. Je parle français." Ah, French, I knew the language well.
"Êtes-vous en douleur ?" I asked again.
"It hurts…all over," she replied. "I don't know what happened to me."
"Take my jacket," I said, and, glancing upward to be sure that the sun would not find its way into the alley, I unbuttoned it quickly and stepped toward her. She cringed away from me.
How strange that only a moment ago I had turned the corner of this alley to kill a monster, and now I was trying to help a human. But she had to be cold. Though I could not feel it, I knew that April in Warsaw was a brutal month. Although she did not look cold, just scared. I held the jacket out to her, standing a few feet away. When she did not move towards me, I tossed it to her feet.
She stared at it, and tentatively reached for it, pulling it around herself while keeping her knees tight to her chest.
"My name is Garrett," I tried, hoping that this knowledge might put her at ease. It did not. She was still frightened.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I said, but she still looked fearful. Was it my appearance? I certainly did not find her dog-human scent appealing, so I doubted I looked hungry. Perhaps my strange features. Or the lilting, sometimes menacing voice. I tried to remember interacting with humans as a soldier, how I'd spoken and held myself during the war.
"What happened to you?" I asked. The question seemed natural, and though I already knew the answer, I hoped that it would help her let down her guard.
"I woke up…like this, and I ran. Something smelled bad, and I had to get away." sniffed the coat, the air around her, and then she was trying to get away from me, lurching deeper into the alley. So it was the smell. Neither of us appealed to the other.
"Stop! Please, I'm trying to help!" But she was on her feet, moving backward, trying to get the coat off of herself. I caught flashes of her body. She was quite…lovely, even covered in dirt. She had the coat partially removed when her heal hit a large piece of stone, and she pitched backwards, her skull cracking hard against another piece of debris. I smelled the blood flowing from the wound, but again, it held very little appeal. Her body was not moving.
I scooped her into my arms without thinking, and then I was moving, too fast for the human eye to see. But where would I find a hospital in a place so devastated? I did the only thing that I could do. I opened my senses, and searched for blood. And then I was moving again.
It was an infirmary, for Russian soldiers from the look of it. There was no roof, only cloth covering the patients from the elements. But a tent stood in front with a cross on it, and I entered quickly. I passed the two Russian soldiers standing guard without a noise, flitted past them and inside. I saw a patch with a cross on it on the uniform of a man inside, huddled against the cold, crouched over an injured body. I sucked in a breath through my mouth, and though I felt the burning of the blood, the desire, I could not smell it. I was next to the man in less than a second, and he started. I supposed to him I'd appeared from nowhere.
"Please help her!" I rasped, trying to stretch my air supply. He looked at me quizzically, and I repeated my request in Russian. His eyes were still shocked, so I placed her on one of the empty cots. He looked me over, saw my American uniform, my strange appearance, and shouted in Russian, The guards were through the door immediately, and I simply disappeared.
XXX
My teeth connected with its shoulder, ripping flesh from its body, as I threw everything I had the monster. I could only hope that the force of my tackle could drive it away from Danny.
The beast released him and struck me, its claws dug into the flesh of my shoulder as it tossed me away. I tasted its flesh in my mouth, its blood. The taste was disgusting. I spat and turned toward it, only to find that the beast was upon me.
The medic walked out of the tent in front and into the street beside the infirmary. The city was completely dark in the night, lit only by fire, candles, and kerosene. I had watched the building all day, and the medic had come out at regular intervals to enjoy a cigarette, but this was the first time he'd left at night. I'd listened to the building, heard him working on the girl, the werewolf, and others, but I had not heard her speak again. Only moans and occasional cries, distinctive from the men in the infirmary.
He was in the process of lighting his cigarette, the light up to his face, when I stepped forward and spoke.
"How is she?" I said in Russian.
The medic dropped the lighter and the cigarette and lurched away from me, his mouth opening to scream. I put my hand over it quickly, and held him firmly.
I waited for him to calm himself, and then released him. His was breathing hard.
"She will be fine," he whispered.
"Tell me everything." It was not a request.
"There is something…strange about her. Almost all of her wounds have healed. When you brought her in, she was bruised all over, and she had the cut to her shoulder and the blow to the head. Only the wound to her shoulder remains. I sutured that. But her other injuries…it's as if they were never there. If I hadn't seen them myself, I would think she was perfectly healthy but for her shoulder."
I waited. There was more.
"She is strong. During one bout of pain, she threw one of the guards into the wall, nearly five meters. And her skin is tough. I broke a dozen needles when I stitched her up." How very interesting.
"When does she leave?"
"In the morning. We were going to transfer her to a regular hospital, but when her wounds healed, there was no need."
"Give her whatever you can provide. Clothes, food. She has nothing and no one." I lifted the cigarette to his mouth, lit it for him, and then I faded into the shadows again. I needed a change of clothes. This GI uniform would get me in trouble.
Why was I so concerned for this girl, this girl who had it in her to become a monster, a monster that had killed my best friend? Was it the eyes? They were so much like Susan's. I remembered again, when she'd first looked up at me, and I saw those eyes, and I had an overwhelming sense that I needed to protect her. Protect a human that became a deadly beast. What was I thinking?
And yet, I traded my uniform for peasant clothes, and waited through the night, listening to her sleep in the distance. I watched her leave the hospital, in tattered, ill fitting clothes, clothes meant for a man, and was strangely glad that she still wore the jacket I had given her. And I wanted very much to talk to her again.
I remembered Danny's last words. The pain on his face, the wound at his neck. This beast had killed the only friend I had left.
"Garr..," Danny rasped, and I was by his side.
"Nnnnn…worth…it…"
I should have killed this thing already. But it was not a thing anymore. It was a girl. A scared and vulnerable girl. I hated killing women. I tried to tell myself that this explained my behavior. But it was something more. I wanted to protect her.
What the devil was wrong with me?
