Chapter 11
What the Moonlight Sees
Decker knocked on the parsonage door when he reckoned it was nine-thirty.
Laurie answered the door flustered, yanking on a pressed black shirt. “My apologies, I didn’t know you were coming already, I would have been prepared—”
“Clock’s broke,” Decker said easily, leaning against the doorframe. He followed Laurie’s fingers over the dip of his sternum and down the trail of hair dusting his stomach as he buttoned his shirt. “Why’re you getting dressed all fancy?”
Laurie faltered, glancing up as he neatly tucked it in. “I wasn’t sure where you were taking me. Clergy have to be prepared for anything. Oh—apologies, where are my manners? Come in,” he said, holding the door.
Decker stepped through with the clear invitation.
His parsonage was little more than a box with a bed and a tacked-up wrinkled quilt in place of a door, separating it from the rest of the chapel. His Bible lay on the single nightstand crouched next to the bed, its leather cover lovingly worn smooth, and a clean set of clothes draped neatly over the back of a ricketychair.
The machine-stitched hems wrinkled where they brushed the rotting floor.
“Watch your step…I haven’t had a chance to repair much,” Laurie said, toeing around the edge of a soft spot, as if it could break like his voice.
“The hills don’t care if you look all proper.” Decker smiled at the fastidiousness of it all.
“We’re going into the hills? I don’t have a horse.” Under the white collar Laurie fastened around his flushed neck, his throat bobbed.
“Sitara won’t mind an extra rider.” His smile grew wider at Laurie’s apprehension.
Untapped power coiled in her haunches, and she yanked against leather reins when Decker led her from the barn. The ghostly cremello mare shone in the moonlight and her snorted breaths from her delicately dished face hung in the chilled air.
Sitara’s maker chose her to be his only fledgling—as their kind could turn only one—just to lose her on the last battlefield of the last war. The officer whipped her to the bone, and she trampled him until he became one with the bloody muck of the battlefield. Decker hadn’t known her name when he found her, so he chose a practical one that suited her starry coat and reminded him of home.
The change affected species differently. It manifested in Sitara with sharp, flashing teeth and steely hooves when hunger struck her, turning her to pure power, untouched by the sun. She was vicious and beautiful, and they found a partnership in their secrecy. Thomas never asked why Decker let her go free every night, nor why she came back streaked in blood.
One more thing left unsaid between them.
Laurie considered his offered hand. Finally, he took it and fit his boot in the stirrup, finding his seat behind the saddle.
“Horses can sense your fear, Mr. Lane.” Decker twisted to look at him over his shoulder. “Relax.”
“I’ll manage,” he said, words honed to a sharp edge.
Decker’s gaze traced over Laurie’s face in their closeness.
His lips tightened, eyes darting away.
Is it me or her making you nervous? Which beast are you more frightened of, preacher?
“You’ll fall if you don’t hold on.”
The tension coiling Laurie’s body seeped into his own when his arms hesitantly crept around his waist, tightening as Sitara danced in place and pawed sharply at the ground.
Leather reins slid through Decker’s bare palm as he released her.
Sitara snorted, her fine lines leaping into a fluid gait past the back of the chapel to the foothills. Wind whipped at her pale mane and Decker’s hair, yanking strands free from where he’d pulled half back and filling his lungs with fresh air off the mountains far in the distance.
Most nights he spent behind the bar or swindling cards as an idle pastime. Only when Sitara craved a hunt did he allow himself to give in to the night, with the brush of cool air against his skin and her near-silent hoofbeats eating up the ground.
Laurie’s breath whispered hot against Decker’s ear as he pressed against him while Sitara pinned her ears back and darted around the greyed conical stripes of a hill. Veering off the cattle path, she dodged through fragrant sagebrush thickets and around clumps of prickly cactus hidden in the darkness.
Hares scattered, bristled white tails disappearing through scrubby bushes and under long grass that brushed the men’s boots as the foothills rose beneath them. Sitara’s muscular hindquarters bunched under them, her hooves digging into the crumbling rock as she bounded forward and upward until scraggly pines straightened and towered over them.