Moon of the Terrible (Seasons of the Moon) Read Online Free PDF Page B

very small part.
    “I guess,” he said, even though it had been too long since Vanthe spoke.
    The other werewolf lifted an eyebrow. “You guess?”
    Abel shrugged. He kicked a pile of snow. “Things were tough between us. We had problems, but… she was my mom.” He gave a stiff shrug. “You know?”
    “Yeah. I know.”
    They shared a long moment of understanding silence.
    Trevin and Crystal came back out. She attracted stares in her micro-shorts and midriff in the falling snow. She grinned at Abel. He didn’t smile back.
    “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    Abel’s childhood home looked exactly the way he remembered it: run down, crappy, and miserable. He could smell Rylie and Seth as soon as he stepped out of the van, and he could also smell that they hadn’t been there in days. It was enough to make him want to get back behind the wheel and leave immediately.
    “What is this place?” Crystal asked, coming to stand beside him. He could feel the heat radiating off of her exposed skin.
    He glared at the windows, the curtains, the dead garden, the surrounding trees. Everything was covered in an inch of snow. It reminded him of the time that Seth and Abel had built a snowman in the yard—and how Eleanor had told them they were morons for wasting the afternoon like that.
    “Nowhere important,” he said.
    The snowfall would have muted the freshest trails, and he was suddenly a lot less optimistic about finding anything at the house. But Vanthe and Trevin circled around the back anyway, noses lifted to the air.
    “I smell gunpowder and leather,” Crystal said. “Who is that?”
    Abel drifted behind her, making no effort to sniff around. “My brother.”
    Her nose wrinkled. “And I smell… perfume?”
    That was weird. Rylie didn’t wear perfume anymore.
    Abel took a deep breath in.
    Crystal was right. The smell of perfume drifted through the air, thick and flowery. “Guess a woman must have been here recently,” he said with a frown.
    “Hey!” Trevin called from the back of the house. “I think I found something!”
    He was kneeling on a patch of snowy ground when Abel sprinted to his side. He was still eating the gigantic burrito from their last pit stop, and one of his cheeks bulged with a mouthful of beans and tortilla.
    “What are you talking about?” Abel asked. He didn’t see anything weird.
    Trevin used his ungloved fingers to scoop up a handful of snow and expose the ground underneath. The soil was stained with dried blood.
    Abel felt like the ground had vanished beneath his feet.
    Was that Rylie’s blood? Or an enemy’s?
    He muttered a curse and bent low to smell the earth. “Good find,” he told Trevin. “Where’s Vanthe?”
    The other werewolf took another big bite of burrito and jerked his head toward the trees. “He ran off into the forest.”
    “Why?” Crystal asked.
    “Maybe he needed to pee. I don’t know.” Trevin held his food toward her. “Hungry?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “No.”
    Abel ignored them as he cleared away more snow to inspect the blood. It was a small splatter, so it must not have come from a very big injury. Trevin’s nose was good for picking it up under all of the moisture.
    But he did smell more of that sticky-sweet perfume.
    “You picking that up?” Abel asked Trevin as he swallowed the last of his burrito and wadded the aluminum foil.
    Both Trevin and Crystal sniffed.
    “That perfume,” she said.
    It smelled familiar, but Abel couldn’t place the odor—it was too faint to get a good read. He got to his feet and started following it.
    “Stay with the van,” he yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
    Abel left the other werewolves behind. As soon as he disappeared into the trees, he drew the handguns he had in the shoulder rig under his jacket. They felt satisfyingly solid in his hands.
    The smell of perfume grew stronger as he delved deeper into the forest. The ground sloped toward a river.
    An old cabin squatted on the