Red Moon: Chapter 5
#10 of Red Moon
Red Moon
Chapter 5
Dmitri had some calls he needed to make. Being shot wasn't a new thing, but being shot in the middle of the city when he should have been covered by the snow storm wasn't. Someone knew where he was going to be and ambushed him which was troubling. What was more troubling was the silver in the bullet. It wasn't enough to kill him, but it would have incapacitated him after some time if the accursed metal had continued to leach into his blood for a few days.
Silver, it was the bane of all werewolves and it was their worst kept secret. Everyone knew about it, at some point in the past someone had figured out their weakness and spread it to the masses. In small quantities, it would slowly poison a werewolf until it became too sick to defend itself, making it an easier target. Larger quantities had more violent effects, it put the wolf into a state of shock as the body became overwhelmed. The mind would begin to completely lose it and the wolf would go on an insane rampage before just falling over and dying from the stress its body was in.
The bullet hadn't been inside Dmitri long enough to weaken him too much, but he did feel weaker. His senses were dull, everything was muddled, like when waking up from a bad night's sleep.
He found Trevor's cellphone on the floor by the bed where the man was laid out. Being passed out on once was cute, twice was just rude in Dmitri's opinion. Cute? Did he think of him that way?
The man who had a peaceful look on his face was indeed cute to Dmitri. He had a trim body, not skinny, but not that muscular either. Trevor was someone who just stayed fit and that was it. He had ragged dark brown hair that was nearly black. It sat on his head like a mop, uncared for most of its life, but clean and washed. Then there was his smell.
Dmitri, not being the most olfactorally gifted, savored the smells that he did experience. It had been sometime since he had met or even gotten close to a modern American. He had heard about their "addiction" to fried foods and expected to smell nothing but that. Trevor didn't smell oily at all, his musk was more... he wasn't sure. It was natural, not affected by his diet in the slightest and that Dmitri like that.
Not wanting to end up spending the rest of the day just sniffing an unconscious man, Dmitri made his call.
"Anno." A man of the same size and build as Dmitri answered his buzzing phone as he walked down a snowy street. It was from a number he didn't recognize so he assumed that it was most likely some teleprompter that was going to try and sell him some useless appliance.
"Sergei." Dmitri said, recognizing the voice as the person who he was trying to contact. He was glad that it wasn't one of Sergei's sisters, he hated the twins.
"Dmitri?" Sergei stopped walking, nearly causing a French couple behind him to walk right into him. They cursed at him in French and he ignored them.
"Da" Dmitri answered and nodded in real life.
"Dmitri!" Sergei bellowed joyfully. Those walking around him gave him some distance since the large man was taking up the entire sidewalk. "It has been too long. Did you finally make it to Moscow? I know that you do not like to ride the trains, but it just takes you so long when you insist on running back home all the way from Siberia. Yeesh, that was three weeks ago." He was elated to hear from Dmitri since he had a tendency to just disappear and it was entirely unlike him to call.
"Yes, I made it Moscow."
"Good!" He bellowed again, too loudly for a public place and people were glaring at him. He was a disturbance where ever he went, always loud and generally uncaring about what others thought of him. "I should come and visit. You don't let anyone close." He walked over to the edge of the sidewalk to finally let the people behind him pass. He was on an overpass that overlooked a highway. He watched the cars below, eyes tracing them instinctively.
Dimitri sighted, Sergei sound like his grandmother. She always fretted over him to come and visit, she ruled the pack with an iron fist, but a fist that would rather pat her grandson on the head and have him over along with the rest of the family. Too bad he only ended up visiting when she died.
"You still there?" Sergei asked though he could still here Dimitri breathing into the receiver. A light breeze began to kick up and he began to walk again, towards where he lived. Another storm was due to arrive soon and even though the snow and the cold had little effect on him, he still dislike being caught out in it.
"What? Oh Yeah, I'm still here." Dmitri snapped out of his thoughts. "Actually, having you over would be better. There have been complications." Dimitri drew circles around the bullet hole that was already growing smaller. It would be fully healed with nothing but a small scar by the end of the day.
"There are always complications." Sergei laughed too loudly for talking on the phone in public again. "Ok, where are you at?"
"The Swiss hotel. Room..." He needed to get up and walk out the door to look at the room number on the door. "One oh twenty five."
"Ok." Sergei memorized the numbers. "I should be able to get here by tomorrow, I'm in Volgograd." He stopped for a moment when he got a text. He read it over while still having Dimitri on the other line and then began to walk to the cemetery.
"I thought you lived in St. Petersburg."
"I moved. Goodbye Dimitri, it was good talking to you." He hung up without waiting for Dimitri to reply.
The walk to the cemetery was a long one and it was one that was made in silence. When he did get there, he stopped by the statue of a woman holding a bell over her head. Instead of walking into the Russian cemetery, he crossed the road and went into the German one where the bodies of 55,000 Germans who died during World War II laid. He walked by the stone makers that held the names of those who were missing, running his fingers along them when he got close.
He eventually stopped in front of one. It looked exactly the same as all of the other ones, but it held a name on it. Franz Lehmann. It sat near the middle of a long list of names, those who were never found and identified.
"Ghosts from the past." A man walked up next to him and looked down at the list, he too focused on the one name. "Or not ghosts at all, but still alive and kicking." He grinned, a silver canine visible.
Back in Moscow, after he got hung up on, Dimitri decided to clean up the place a bit. When he had gone out to look at the room number, he had noticed the cleaning cart making its way down the hall. What he didn't notice was that he was still naked until he went back inside. No one had saw him, thank god, but he needed to be more careful. He spent more time as a wolf than a man which made him completely comfortable going around in the nude.
He didn't have any clothes and he was sure that Trevor's wouldn't fit. The clothes he had on the previous night were all torn up so he ended up with a bathrobe, more in the name of decency than in anything else. He looked rather queer in the white Egyptian cotton robe that only went to his knees, but it would have to do.
Throwing the rags of his own clothes into a bag to get it out of sight and attempting to cover up the blood stains, the room ended up looking rather passable upon a quick inspection. Happy with his work that he did with what was now going to be his temporary den, he sat next to Trevor and waited for him to come to since that was all he could do at the time, wait.
Gingerly opening his eyes, Trevor came to with thought that he had just woken up from the strangest dream he had ever had. Only if he were so lucky. He groaned when he saw Dimitri in the bathrobe watching him.
"Why couldn't it have just been a dream?" He rubbed his dry eyes, just hoping that he would disappear or at least be fully dressed. Not that he didn't like the look, a fully dressed Dmitri would simply mean that the whole wolf thing didn't happen.
"Because it wasn't a dream." Dmitri set a hand on Trevor's shoulder to prove it and he rubbed it down his arm. His skin was a nice tan versus the pale skin that most Russians had from living in the constant cold. The more he looked at him, the more he felt an attraction. It was an odd feeling. He had just met him and yet he didn't want to leave him.
"Riiiight." Trevor plucked the heavy hand off his arm and set it aside so he could get out of the bed. Swinging his legs over the side, he stretched his arms above his head and gave a great yawn. Only slightest bits of jet lag were lingering. Whatever happened next, he just wanted to get to his vacation. There was still six days before his flight back home. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Dimitri was still looking at him. "Look, I don't know what's going on, but I just want to be left out of it. You've been nice and all, but..." Was he about to just kick him to the curb? Part of him wanted to, it would be the easier way, but Dmitri hadn't really betrayed his trust, just shocked him is all.
"But?" Dmitri brightened up at Trevor's hesitation.
"I don't know." He looked down at his fingers. There was small bits of dried blood under the fingernails where it had collected when he extracted the bullet that was somewhere on the bathroom floor where it had been forgotten.
"You wanted to see Moscow, right?" Dimitri asked.
"Of course, it was the whole reason why I came here." He said quickly. "The history, the culture, there's so much to see and explore. The good, the bad and I guess the interesting." He peaked over to Dimitri. He admitted that seeing a werewolf had made this the most interesting vacation he had ever been on.
"Let me show you the city then." Dimitri offered. "You will need a guide that isn't working for the mob. They will kidnap tourists occasionally." He lied. The mob didn't kidnap tourists. It would drive away valuable business.
The mention of the mob reminded Trevor of the news about the mob members who were brutally torn apart. He kept it to himself though, it seemed like it would be a touchy topic. Another time perhaps, he thought to himself. When things were a bit settled.
"Ok." Trevor turned his body fully to face Dimitri. "But no funny business." He warned with a wag of the finger.
"Well there is some business." Dmitri put his hand back on Trevor's arm and rubbed the skin with his thumb. "I have a friend coming to the city."
"A friend." Trevor raised an eyebrow. "What kind of friend."
"Don't worry. It won't get in the way of your vacation." That was the hope. With Sergei, he'd have some help in looking for the man who shot him. If things went well, they'd either scare off the shooter or get rid of him quietly within the week.
"Alright then." Trevor took the hand and stood up, he looked the werewolf up and down. "You're going to need some clothes first."