Moonshifted by Cassie Alexander

 

Check in to County Hospital’s secret ward—where paranormal activities lead to medical emergencies for one tireless nurse…

After surviving a brutal vampire attack, Nurse Edie Spence is ready to get back to work—attending to supernatural creatures in need of medical help. But her nursing skills are put to the test when she witnesses a hit-and-run on her lunch break. The injured pedestrian is not only a werewolf, he’s the pack leader. And now Edie’s stuck in the middle of an all-out were-war…

With two rival packs fighting tooth and nail, Eide has no intention of crossing enemy lines. But when she meets her patient’s nephew—a tattooed werewolf named Lucas with a predatory gleam in his eye that’s hard to resist—Edie can’t help but choose sides. The question is: can she trust this dangerous new ally? And can she trust her own instincts when she’s near him? Either way, Edie can’t seem to pull away—even if getting involved makes her easy prey…

 

Moonshifted (Edie Spence, book two) by Cassie Alexander

Start date: October 9, 2021

End date: October 10, 2021

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: mutilation

Nurses Edie Spence and Charles witness a hit-and-run accident in front of the hospital they work at. The professionals spring into action to save the life of the middle-aged man quickly bleeding out on the street. It becomes obvious to them that the man is a werewolf but luckily his rescuers work on the supernatural floor of the hospital. What unravels from then is a mystery Edie is forced to solve to save her own life.

The man she rescued is none other than Karl Winter, the king of the werewolves, the de facto head of the were packs in the area. Winter’s condition is deteriorating—he’s lost a leg and his limbs are slowly necrotizing—but everyone must wait until the full moon to decide if his predicament is irreversible. His daughter, Helen, and the rest of the pack seem resigned to Winter’s death and vehemently blame Viktor, an outcast of the pack.

On Christmas morning, Edie’s mother, stepfather, and brother, Jake, show up for Christmas breakfast/dinner because Edie is working that night for the much-needed holiday pay. The entire scene is hilarious as we get to see the family dynamics and learn a bit more about Edie’s family. Peter, Edie’s stepfather, is a dad joke in person form.

My mother saved her gift for last. It was big and fluffy in that way that was always disappointing as a kid: a pillow from your least favorite grandmother, or a stuffed animal from your aunt. I ripped into the wrapping paper with trepidation and found—a lovely new winter coat. It was teal with large gold buttons.

“She got it last spring when they were on sale,” Peter said, so I would know. (Alexander 66)

I steeled myself, picked up the box, and shook it. Something heavy thunked inside, and I sighed with relief. The wrapping came off quickly, revealing a simple silver cuff. I had no doubt it was real silver, and the look in Asher’s eyes confirmed it.

“For just in case,” he said. In case I needed to burn something that was allergic to silver.

“How sweet!” my mother cooed.

“It is. Thanks.” I set the cuff on my wrist.

Peter looked to Asher. “I bet Edie doesn’t have a single jar of silver polish in this house.” (Alexander 73)

Edie’s mother is overly concerned about her daughter’s love life and worries she won’t ever have grandchildren. Asher, Edie’s former shapeshifter fling, unexpectedly arrives in a new-to-Edie body and introduces himself to her family as Kevin, her boyfriend. I died during the interaction between Asher and Edie’s mother.

“She’s always been concerned with her career, Kevin,” my mother began, apologizing for me. “But I’m sure if she ever met a good man, she’d settle down. She could work a normal job—there are nursing jobs during the daytime, my friend Frances has one, and her hospital even provides day care, she told me a few months ago at church. Do you attend church, Kevin?” (Alexander 70)

[M]y mother squinted at him, taking his measure, then she glanced at two-hours sleep me. “Well. As long as you practice some sort of religion…” At this late stage in the baby game, as I crested twenty-five and slid down toward thirty, she apparently couldn’t afford to be too picky. (Alexander 71)

Anna, the nochnaya or living vampire, that Edie saved in Nightshifted is having an initiation ceremony into the Sanguine, the ruling council for the Rose Thorne, and she asks Edie to be her Ambassador to the Sun. With the role comes a ceremonial knife filled with Anna’s blood that must be presented at the ceremony unharmed. The temptation would be breaking the knife and drinking Anna’s blood, which Edie has no desire to do, and that’s exactly why Anna chooses her versus another human. Edie believes it’s this knife and the role in the ceremony that causes the future attacks on her life.

Anna’s daytimer, Gideon, is mutilated but left alive by a group of vampires as part of Anna’s trials prior to the initiation ceremony. He’s left in Edie’s care unbeknownst to her.

Gideon waved a fingerless hand at me. My eyes slid up to his face, empty of eyes, ears, and lips, and I wanted to throw up, only I was too fucking tired. (Alexander 123)

While in her apartment, Gideon fuses with Grandfather, the disembodied spirit living in a stereo Edie got from a patient previously, inserting electronics of all sorts (her toaster oven, laptop webcam, etc.) under his skin to be his eyes, ears, and fingers. At the same time, Gideon’s girlfriend, Veronica, is turned into a vampire by Anna and hidden in Edie’s bedroom closet because Anna isn’t allowed to make vampires until after her ceremony. Sike, another daytimer who is semi-friendly/semi-antagonistic with Edie, says she’ll come for them both once Veronica’s transformation is complete.

Edie goes to the mall to return the garish belt with a silver buckle that Peter gifted her when two were women attack her. Dren the Husker rescues her; the women appear as if coming out of a stupor and leave. Dren presses Edie for retribution for the hand she severed from him in Nightshifted. Dren demands Edie bring him a drop of Winter’s blood, which she accomplishes in the form of a blood glucose test strip. Later on, Edie finds out that Anna sent Dren to protect Edie (meaning she didn’t need to procure Winter’s blood) and then Anna suggests that Edie ask for sanctuary from the highest-ranking were she knows to further protect her when Dren is asleep during the day.

Another were woman attempts to attack Edie on Floor Y4, and the Shadows stop the woman after Edie asks Helen for sanctuary, which Helen grants her. Lucas, Winter’s nephew, acts as Edie’s bodyguard. He offers for her to stay at his house when her apartment is ransacked by a were man who is killed by Veronica when he accidentally wakes her up. Lucas and Edie have a wild night of sex that involves said garish belt and includes this steamy exchange.

“I’m going to take you like I own you, Edie,” he said, and his eyes almost weren’t his own.

“Just for tonight,” I amended…He laughed at my clarification—or maybe the fact that I thought I could clarify—and the wolf in him disappeared, leaving only Lucas behind. (Alexander 235)

It’s finally New Year’s Eve, the night of Anna’s ceremony. The limo driver that arrives to take Edie is killed by Jorgen, a bitten member of Winter’s pack, and Jorgen attacks Edie as well, revealing that he was the person who hit Winter with his truck and that he’s been behind the attacks on her life. Edie manages to seriously maim Jorgen and then drives the limo to the ceremony. Afterwards, Edie goes to the hospital because in her scuffle with Jorgen, he bit her and now she needs a shot so she doesn’t turn into a werewolf herself.

Jake helped Edie after she was injured by vampires in Nightshifted, and she was willing to look the other way when she lent him money during that time knowing it likely went to buying drugs. Now he appears clean, which isn’t a first for the relapsing junkie, but he tells Edie he’s got a job selling an energy supplement called Luna Lobos MLM-style that’s paying off lucratively. Edie is suspicious of the “supplement,” believing that it’s sort some of drug he’s selling. As it turns out, the supplement is water taken from a werewolf pawprint, which when ingested by a human is an old school way of becoming a werewolf. Jorgen provided the water to Jake to create an army of weres.

Winter was secretly a daytimer, ingesting vampire blood to continue to live past the normal life expectancy for a were. Helen’s husband, Fenris Sr., and Viktor’s father discovered Winter’s secret and were killed to keep it. Viktor tried to convince the pack of what he knew and was outcast. Helen decided to keep quiet, but when she realized that pack leadership upon her father’s death would go to Lucas, not her son, Fenris Jr., she decided on retribution by contacting the vampires giving her father blood and making a pact with them. If she raised an army to storm County Hospital and take the vampire blood supply, they would stop giving Winter blood and instead give it to her people, prolonging their lives instead. Jorgen, who is in love with Helen, hits Winter with his truck to kill the man but wasn’t successful.

The army of weres storm County Hospital, and Edie dumps all the blood she can find before they’re able to get inside. Sike dies in a fight against Helen to save Edie. Anna confronts Helen outside the hospital where Edie and the rest of her crew have escaped. Lucas arrives, and Anna demands Helen’s life for Sike’s life. Lucas offers Jorgen instead, wishing to punish Helen himself, and Anna accepts, giving Jorgen to Dren to make into a Hound. Edie stops Lucas from killing Fenris Jr. who wishes to protect his mother. Viktor appears and ridicules Lucas for not killing the boy while also asserting that he is the rightful heir to the pack. Lucas gravely wounds Viktor and lets him go with the advice to never give him counsel again.

For the crime of depleting the hospital’s blood supply, Edie is shunned.

Anna smiled at her approvingly, then looked to me. “We will shun you, Edie. No one will contact you, on pain of death. This world will be closed to you now.”

“Wait—what?” It was what I had wanted, to get away from all this. But I was still surprised. (Alexander 331)

            Asher, who disguised himself as Jake to protect him from the weres and vampires, takes this news in the worst way, informing Edie that her shunning involves all supernatural creatures, including himself. They leave on bittersweet terms, sharing a rough kiss that ends too soon for Edie.

Lucas and Edie leave on good terms. Based on that, Lucas’s possessive language, and the following scene that takes place in Winter’s hospital room after he died, I believe Lucas may be a recurring character in the next book despite Edie’s shunning.

He kissed me like he owned me. My head was pressed against the wall behind me, and his tongue ran deep inside my mouth. He only pulled back to tease, his hot breath gentle on my lips, before kissing me again.

Half of me wanted to leap outside my skin and run away, or scream. The other half wanted everything else from him, here, now, forget propriety, forget the disgusting hospital floor.

He planted his hand against my mouth so I couldn’t scream, and licked up the side of my face. His other hand trailed down my body outside my thin cotton scrubs, stroking my breast, diving between my legs.

“You still want me,” he said, finally letting me go.

I wiped his spit off my cheek. “People often want what they can’t have.”

“Sometimes it makes them want it all the more.” (Alexander 248-249)

I really enjoyed the plot of this book, more than the plot of the previous book which had some unsavory bits. Also, it feels apropos to be reading a book about a health care worker while the pandemic is still ongoing, although this book had nothing to do with the global viral infection. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in this series, specifically to see if my hunches are true and to find out what a shunning of all things paranormal looks like for a nurse who is forced to work on Floor Y4 by the Shadows to keep her brother clean.

Sources

Alexander, Cassie. Moonshifted. St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2012.