Page 21 of Moonlight's Mate
“My name’s Eldon. Doctor Eldon Nally.” The loner spoke mostly to the whiskey. “From Portland. I came…I just needed to get away for a while.”
When Beck took another prowling step closer, the man raised one hand in an appeasing gesture. His pale palm was bruised and laced with scratches.
Beck circled the camp but found no scent of others, wereling, imp or otherwise. He nosed a wereling-styled satchel, rigged to stay on during the shift that allowed wolf-kind to carry a few belongings. The pack held only a handful of energy bars and a pair of loafers that wouldn’t fit Nally’s swollen feet.
If this was a holiday, he’d come woefully underprepared, and from the dismal expression on his face, he wasn’t enjoying his stay.
Merrilee watched Beck’s exploration then returned her attention to Nally. “City wolf you might be, but certainly you haven’t forgotten pack courtesy. You should have introduced yourself when you crossed into our territory.”
Beck paused. Did she realize she’d spoken of their territory as one? He angled closer to her.
Nally nodded, his mouth downturned. “Sorry, yes. I was…distracted.”
“By the imp following you?”
He glanced up sharply, and Beck caught a glimpse of something hard and cold in the man’s otherwise unremarkable brown eyes: a mix of fear and fortitude. A look of desperation, the sort that drove men—and wolf-kind—to strange acts.
Beck moved closer to Merrilee. If Nally made one wrong twitch… He breathed out a low sound, a subliminal warning that the other male would feel in his skull.
Nally ducked his head. “I don’t know what you mean. Imp?”
“A kind of fae,” Merrilee said. “Not something I’m sure I would’ve believed in if I hadn’t smelled it myself, dead by an iron stake. So I’ll ask again in a slightly different way, and please don’t pretend that the words themselves make any difference, because I’m wanting the truth here. Why were you being followed by the fae?”
Nally swiped his lips nervously. “I didn’t know it had a name. I just knew it was bad.” He took a hit off the whiskey. “And I needed to get away from it.”
“So you thought you could scrape it off on us.”
“No! Well…I hoped it might lose my track. And I thought maybe you’d kill it.”
“He did.” Merrilee put her hand on Beck’s neck. He couldn’t help but puff up a bit.
Nally let out a long breath that collapsed his chest within his tattered coat. “I can’t even kill a squirrel.”
That explained the energy bars.
Implacably, Merrilee continued, “Andwhywas it following you?”
“Because the fae want this.” Nally fumbled in his pocket.
Beck stepped forward with a snarl.
Merrilee trailed her hand down his spine, soothing his hackles. “Slowly, Doctor Nally.”
With a wary look, Nally displayed a small vial clutched in his fingers. The glass looked too fragile to be out amidst tree roots and rocks. “This is what they want.”
Merrilee tilted her head, following the angle of the purplish powder that sifted within the glass. “This and they? Rather vague.”
“The fae queen sent emissaries to my lab to offer me riches in exchange for my discovery, a unique subspecies of psilocybe spore with the undifferentiated potential to…” He tilted the vial the other direction, and tiny sparkles flashed inside the purple powder. “Well, to take us anywhere we want to go.”
“Magic mushrooms,” Merrilee said flatly. “It sounds like you’ve been sampling your own wares, Doctor.”
Another glint of that dire light flared in his eyes. “My doctorates are in psychiatry and mycology, not liberal arts. I sought a cure for some of the worst disorders plaguing our times: depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, violence.”
She crossed her arms suspiciously. “You can cure those by getting people high?”
“Getting high is an excuse to avoid one’s problems. I created a therapy to take us deeper, through our problems and out the other side.”
Beck let out a huff.
