Page 123 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
For fuck’s sake, Theodore,I chastised myself.There’s an unconscious man on the ground.
I moved forward, dropping to my knees beside Dev to check for signs of life and put him in the recovery position. The professional thing to do.
Pressing two fingers against Dev’s neck, I searched for a pulse. There—faint but steady. His breathing was shallow but regular. What was he doing out here? How long had he been unconscious?
“Dev?” Rory’s voice cracked with emotion. “Dev, can you hear me?”
Without warning, Dev’s eyes snapped open—not the gentle awakening of someone returning to consciousness, but the violent alertness of a predator. His hand shot out with inhuman speed, fingers wrapping around Rory’s throat as he launched himself upright and hauled Rory off the ground entirely, Rory’s feet kicking uselessly in the air as his hands scrabbled desperately at the iron grip.
What the actual—
Freddy launched himself from Rory’s shoulder with a furious chittering battle cry, tiny claws extended as he went for Dev’s eyes in a kamikaze dive. Dev’s free hand shot out, catching the ferret by his tail mid-flight and flinging him through the air like a discarded toy. Freddy’s pained squeak echoed across the moorland as he disappeared into the darkness.
“Dev,” Rory managed to choke out, around a strangled wheeze.
Molten fury boiled within me.
We might have found Devraj Bassi alive, but he wasn’t going to remain alive for very long at this rate.
“Get your hands off him!” I roared, reaching to fist his grey jumper. “Now!”
Dev turned towards me with cold, empty eyes that held no recognition, no humanity. His free hand slammed into my chest with the force of a sledgehammer, ribs creaking under the impact as I was lifted clean off my feet.
The world became a sickening carousel of sky and earth as I flew backwards through the air: sky and earth trading places, stars scattering like broken glass. Time stretched like toffee—the moon spinning overhead, the distant lights of the village wheeling past my vision, the ground rushing up to meet me with malicious intent.
I crashed down hard, shoulder blades slamming into the unforgiving moorland with a bone-jarring impact that drove the air from my lungs. My skull connected with something sharp and jagged—a half-buried stone. Pain exploded through my head like a firework, white-hot and blinding, as warmth began trickling down my neck in sticky rivulets.
Through the haze of concussion and rage, I sensed rather than saw Rory’s transformation beginning—the agony of his shift tearing through my own nervous system like shared lightning as fury poured off him in waves so intense they made my teeth ache. I tried to push myself upright, but my arms wouldn’t cooperate properly—everything felt disconnected, like my brain was sending signals through treacle.
Through the ringing in my ears and the pounding in my skull, sounds filtered through the haze. Then, a low, rumbling snarl that raised every hair on my body.
Please, please don’t let him get himself killed.
A sudden thud echoed across the moorland—bodies colliding with brutal force. Then another. The wet slap of flesh meeting flesh, accompanied by grunts of effort and the dull crack of bone against bone.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision enough to see what was happening. Shadows moved in the moonlight, a violent dance of tooth and claw that my concussed brain couldn’t quite process.
A sharp yelp of pain cut through the night—unmistakably Rory. The sound stole what little breath I had, more agonising than my owninjuries. I tried again to force myself upright, but the world tilted sickeningly, bile rising in my throat.
Get up, you useless bastard. Get up and help him.
More sounds now—the wet, tearing noise of claws ripping through fabric and flesh. A horrible whining whimper. My own helplessness pressed down on me like a weight, every instinct screaming at me to move, to act, to do something other than lie here bleeding into the heather whilst Rory fought for his life.
The violence reached a crescendo—a final, bone-deep growl that spoke of triumph or defeat, I couldn’t tell which.
Footsteps followed—the heavy thud of human feet pounding against the earth. Running. The sound grew fainter and fainter until it disappeared entirely into the night, leaving only the whisper of wind through the gorse and my own ragged breathing.
Rory?
I tried to call his name, but only managed a hoarse croak that barely carried beyond my own lips.
When my vision finally cleared enough to focus properly, Dev was gone, swallowed by the darkness as if he’d never been there at all. Rory knelt beside me in human form, naked and shaking, blood coating his lips and chin in a crimson smear that looked black in the moonlight.
“Shouldn’t you… be chasing after him?” I managed to say. “We’ll lose him again.”
…God, what little he thinks of me…as if I’d just leave him here like this…
Oh.
