The Tattooed Luna

The ninth mark came at 2:14 in the morning.

Sera knew the exact time because she'd been staring at the clock on the microwave, counting the minutes until her shift at the all-night laundromat ended. She'd been doing that a lot lately… counting things. Minutes. Exits. Steps between her and the nearest door.

Then the burn started.

It wasn't like the others. The first eight had come slow … a warmth that built over hours, like a fever finding its peak. This one hit fast and mean, right below her left collarbone, and she had to grip the edge of the folding counter and breathe through her teeth until the room stopped tilting.

"Hey. You okay?"

The old man in the corner… Mr. Hatch, who came every Tuesday with three garbage bags of laundry and always fell asleep in the plastic chair had one eye open.

"Fine," Sera said. "Muscle cramp."

He closed his eye again.

She waited until his breathing went slow and even. Then she pulled the collar of her long-sleeve shirt aside and looked.

The mark was already there. Fully formed, like it had always been under her skin and the burning had just been it waking up. A rune … angular at the edges but curved at the center, like all the others. It sat directly below her collarbone and glowed faintly silver in the bad fluorescent light.

She pulled her collar back up.

Eight had been manageable. Nine felt like a crossing of something she couldn't name.

She locked up at three, walked the six blocks to her apartment building with her hands in her pockets and her eyes moving the way she'd trained them to checking corners, checking parked cars, checking the space between buildings.

The city was quiet. That particular kind of quiet that belonged to the hours between the bars closing and the delivery trucks starting. She'd always liked it before. It felt like the city was hers alone.

Tonight it felt wrong.

She noticed it halfway down the second block. The feeling of being followed wasn't something she could explain. It wasn't a sound or a sight. It was the air changing. A weight behind her eyes that said something knows you're here.

She didn't speed up. That was the first thing she'd learned … you don't run until you know where you're running to.

She turned at the corner instead of going straight. Took the long way. Ducked through the alley beside the Vietnamese place that always left its back door propped open for the cats.

She came out the other side and stopped.

Two men stood at the end of the alley.

Not men, exactly. She'd been around enough of the world to know the difference. They stood too still. They took up space in a way that didn't belong to people who'd grown up soft. The taller one had his hands loose at his sides. The shorter one had his head slightly tilted, like he was listening to something she couldn't hear.

She turned to go back the way she came.

A third one was already behind her.

"We're not here to hurt you," the tall one said.

"That's what people say right before they hurt you," Sera said.

She kept her voice flat. Her marks were warm under her sleeves … all nine of them, a heat that moved up her arms like something waking up.

"Seraphina Vale," the tall one said.

"Wrong person."

"You have marks." He said it like it settled something. "We've been looking for you for three weeks."

"Good for you." She glanced at the third one behind her. He hadn't moved. "What do you want?"

"The Alpha wants to see you."

The shorter one said it, and something about the way he said it was quiet, certain, like the statement needed no support and made the back of her neck prickle. The tall one's jaw tightened slightly when he heard it. Like the words meant more than she understood.

"Which Alpha," she said.

"Caelum Ashveil," the tall one said. "Of Silvermoon."

She'd never heard the name before. But the way they both shifted when he said it … a kind of reflexive straightening, shoulders back, chins up told her enough. They were afraid of him. Or close enough to afraid that the difference didn't matter.

She filed it away.

"Not interested," she said. "Move."

"We can't do that."

She looked at the tall one. "Can't or won't?"

He met her eyes. His were a flat, cold gray. "Both."

Later, she would not be able to explain what happened next.

The shorter one moved first toward her, not fast, more like he was going to take her arm. Like he thought she'd let him. Her marks went from warm to burning in the space of a single second and she didn't think, didn't plan, didn't do anything that felt like a decision.

She just moved.

Her right hand came up and she pushed, not at him, exactly, more at the air between them and the burning in her marks blazed white-hot through her whole body and he went flying. Six feet. Maybe more. He hit the alley wall and slid down it and sat there blinking.

Everything stopped.

The tall one had gone very still. The one behind her had gone very still. Sera stood in the center of the alley with her chest heaving and her arms shaking and every mark on her body burning like she'd pressed them against a hot iron.

She looked at her hands.

She had not touched him.

"What," she said. It wasn't really a question.

The shorter one was getting up. He moved carefully, like he was checking to make sure everything still worked. He looked at her with an expression she hadn't seen on a person before not fear exactly, more like the thing that lives just past fear, when the fear has been confirmed.

The tall one hadn't moved.

"Who trained you," he said.

"No one trained me."

"That's not possible."

"Apparently it is." She looked at her hands again, then up at him. "I'm going to leave now. Don't follow me."

She walked toward him.

He stepped aside.

She didn't run. She walked, her back straight, her steps even, until she turned the corner and he couldn't see her anymore. Then she pressed herself against the nearest building wall and stood there until the shaking in her arms stopped.

The marks were cooling slowly. Like coals after the fire.

Nine of them.

She hadn't known she could do that.

She hadn't known she could do any of it.

She was a block from her apartment when she heard the footsteps behind her.

She turned fast.

It was the tall one. Alone. His hands were up, palms out, which was either honest or the best trick she'd ever seen.

"I'm not following you," he said. "I just need to say one thing."

She waited.

He walked closer and stopped when he was still a distance away. Far enough that she could run. He'd calculated that and she could see it. Like he knew she'd clock it and he wanted her to.

"Whatever you think this is," he said, "it's not. We were sent to bring you in. That's true." He paused. "But someone else sent a second team. Before us. They didn't come back. We found them two days ago."

The air between them was very still.

"What does that mean," she said.

"It means someone else knows about you. And whoever sent that second team—" He stopped. His jaw worked once. "They weren't sent to bring you anywhere."

The marks on her arms pulsed once. Slow. Like a warning knock on a door.

"So you're saying someone wants me dead," she said.

"I'm saying the Alpha will keep you safer than you can keep yourself. That's all I'm saying."

"You don't know anything about what I can do."

Something moved in his face. "No," he said. "I'm starting to see that."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"What's his name again," she said. "The Alpha."

"Caelum Ashveil."

She said nothing. But she put the name somewhere she'd remember it, turned it over once, and decided she didn't like the sound of it.

"Go back to your Alpha," she said. "Tell him I'm not interested."

She turned and walked away.

She heard him say something behind her — quiet, not meant for her — and when she glanced back the second before she turned the corner, he was crouched beside the shorter man, who had apparently followed despite everything.

The shorter one was looking at her.

His lip was split. His back was against the alley wall.

She hadn't touched him.

He looked up at her from the ground, blood on his lip, eyes wide with something she hadn't expected.

"You're not supposed to exist," he whispered.

She stared at him.

Then she turned the corner.

She did not sleep that night.