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The Killing Moon

  by V. J. Chambers

  Six months ago, werewolf tracker Dana Gray barely escaped from Cole Randall, the wolf serial killer who kept her in his basement torturing her. Toying with her. He almost killed her, but he couldn’t. He let her live.

  Now, she finds herself obsessed with Cole. His voice haunts her, hypnotic and liquid, flowing through her, both horrifying and arousing. She can’t shut him up.

  At her job, she struggles with a bewildering case in which rehabilitated werewolves are going astray and killing again. From his maximum security cell, Cole claims he has all the answers. But he'll only talk to Dana.

  Maybe Cole knows something. Maybe he doesn’t. Dana doesn’t know. She only knows she’s grateful for the excuse to go to him. And once she hears his voice again, she’ll do anything to see him, whether it helps the case or not.

  THE KILLING MOON

  © copyright 2013 by V. J. Chambers

  https://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  The Killing Moon

  by V. J. Chambers

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dana Gray swallowed hard and averted her eyes from the blood-streaked pool table. A man, or what was left of him, was lying on his stomach on the green felt, head turned to the side, eyes glassy and gaping. Four long red furrows streaked down his back, parting his flesh. His throat had been ripped out. He was nothing more than glistening red meat. Dana wasn’t looking anymore, but the image of the mauled man seemed engraved onto the back of her eyelids.

  She felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder, and she turned to see the grinning face of her partner, Avery Brooks. “Can’t stand to look, Gray?” he teased. “I know it’s been six months, but you used to have the strongest stomach in the Sullivan Foundation.”

  “It’s not that.” Dana forced her gaze back to the body. She drew in steady, even breaths, and let them back out again. She could handle this. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have even blinked at a body, even one in worse shape than this. She’d seen people ripped up so bad they weren’t recognizably human, just piles of gore—glistening organs mixed with blood and clumps of hair. She was a werewolf tracker for the northeastern branch of the Sullivan Foundation, and inspecting bodies like this was her job. She got paid to find whatever werewolf had done this, to track him or her down, and to bring the wolf in to the SF.

  “No shame in it.” Avery’s eyes were dancing. “You be the little woman and stand back. Let me get a closer look.”

  Six months ago, teasing like that would have been par for the course. She would have tongue-lashed Avery into submission, and the both of them would have been laughing. But things were different now. So Dana only nodded. “Maybe that would be wise.”

  She turned away from the body and took a few steps in the opposite direction. But she was greeted by another body. A woman, flung over the back of a chair. Her neck had been broken, and she resembled a rag doll. A rag doll with its guts strewn out all over the table, anyway.

  Dana twitched. She made fists and dug her fingernails into her palms. Six months ago, this crime scene wouldn’t have disgusted her.

  Not that she was disgusted now. She was excited.

  She could feel the tickle of her wolf at the base of her spine, a hungry, eager itch. It wanted her to let it out. The wolf liked the carnage. It gloried in it.

  She slammed her eyes shut, focused on her breathing. I am in control, she thought. I am stronger than the animal.

  Avery’s hand on her shoulder again. This time, his touch was gentle. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t push. I know it’s your first case back.”

  She’d been on leave for six months, ever since she’d brought in Cole Randall, the first werewolf serial killer that anyone knew of. Cole had nearly killed her. He’d kept her in his basement, torturing her, toying with her. Talking to her. It was the voice she couldn’t shake. His voice found her no matter how hard she tried to block it out. Cole’s voice was rich and seductive. He murmured suggestions to her that made her feel both disgusted and aroused. And no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to shut him up.

  She’d begged to come back to work in the hopes that having something to occupy her would drown out the memory of Cole. Her psychiatrist, Chantal Hernandez, had expressed concern that she was moving too fast. Standing here, the wolf clamoring to be let out, Dana wondered if Chantal hadn’t been right.

  She forced herself to smile at Avery. “I’m fine.”

  Avery shifted from one foot to the other. “Gray, no one wants you back more than me, you know that. But if you’re not up to it yet, then I don’t want to push it.”

  Dana reached under the hem of her shirt and fingered the scar tissue on her belly, where Cole had used his claws to tear into her. Deeper inside you than any man’s ever been, he’d whispered, his voice like velvet. Touching the scar always made her think of him, but it steadied her as well. It reminded her of pain, and pain drove the wolf off.

  “You’re sweet, Brooks,” she said. “But I’m back, and I’m fine.” She rolled her shoulders, and found she was able to let just a little of the wolf out again, the way she usually did. Her training had taught her how to suppress the beast, and when she’d mastered that, she’d learned how to let out certain small aspects of it, without letting the entire brutal animal control her. Now, she let out just her heightened sense of wolf smell. She sniffed the air. “One wolf. Male.”

  Avery folded his arms over his chest. “You’re skipping ahead, Gray. We haven’t checked all the bodies. We could have a live one.”

  She sniffed the air again. “Nope. They’re all dead.” After a wolf attack, it was standard procedure to investigate the victims and see if any had survived. Survivors were almost certainly infected with the lupine virus and would have to be quarantined at the SF until they’d completed training and learned to suppress their wolves. If not, they’d be a danger to everyone at the next full moon.

  Once, Gray had been one of those survivors. She’d stayed with the SF after her training was over, wanting to help others the same way she’d been helped. That was how she’d become a tracker.

  Avery raised his nose as well. “I think you’re right. But let’s do this by the book. Eyeballs on every victim before we move on.”

  She nodded. “Sure. By the book.”

  Avery stepped around the dead woman hanging over the chair. “One wolf. He tore this place apart. There are so many bodies.”

  Dana followed him. “One wolf’s capable of this much destruction.”

  “Why didn’t anyone get out?” said Avery. “Usually, when a rogue starts tearing people up, someone runs for help, don’t they?”

  Dana made a tsk tsk noise. “Someone didn’t listen to the emergency call that sent us up here, did he?”

  Avery turned to her.

  “Doors were locked,” she said. “People inside called for help, but no one could get in until the wolf jumped out that window over there.” She pointed at a shattered window at the front of the bar. “By then, everyone was already dead.”

  “You don’t think...”

  “That the rogue locked them in? That he did this on purpose?” Most werewolves killed on instinct. They couldn’t help what they did. But werewolves were human too, and that meant they were capable of murder. Generally, a rogue werewolf could be rehabilitated, taught to control his or her wolf, and released from the SF to continue a normal life. But murderous wolves? They got locked up, and they never came out. Dana laughed shakily. “That would be one hell of a first case back, wouldn’t it?”

 
Avery grimaced.

  The Cole Randall case had been a murder case. It was only the second murder case that Dana had ever worked. If this were one too, well, then she had rotten luck.

  * * *

  The first time Dana met Cole Randall, she was sixteen years old. It was a warm June afternoon. The last bell had rung ten minutes ago at Brockway High School, and Dana was taking her time walking across the quad to the auditorium, where the results from jazz band auditions were posted.

  Dana played the saxophone. She’d been a band geek since middle school, and she had to admit she didn’t think of herself as a geek. The kids in band were her friends. Sure, they were all in honors classes, and they all actually did their homework, but near as she could tell, that didn’t really confer geek status on them. In her rural school, there were kids who lived in trailers, kids who lived on farms, and kids whose parents actually had enough money to buy musical instruments and new clothes. Near as she could tell, the bank geeks were the popular kids. But things here were so polarized that there might as well have been three “popular” crowds—one for the scuzzies, one for the rednecks, and one for the preps, which was essentially where she fell in the social spectrum. In an economically depressed area, she was one of the “haves.” Not one of the “have-nots.”

  She’d been planning to audition for jazz band for years. Only juniors and seniors could be in the band, and they got to go to several competitions throughout the year. They got days out of school, traveling, staying in hotels. Dana thought it sounded fun. She fully expected to get a spot in the band. Several of the senior saxophone players were leaving, and she thought her chances were good. But on the way over to check the results, she was seized by sudden panic. What if she hadn’t gotten in?

  She imagined the following year of school, sitting in class while the rest of the jazz band was gallivanting at regionals. She didn’t like the thought of it. And so she was walking slowly, because she was terrified about what the pieces of paper taped to the glass doors of the auditorium might tell her. She felt as if her happiness was bound up in it. She wasn’t sure she could handle how she’d feel if her dreams were shattered.

  She climbed the concrete steps to the auditorium, gripping the metal railing, steeling herself. In the distance, she could hear the sounds of chatter and laughter from the student parking lot, the place she’d be headed in just a few minutes, heady with accomplishment or dejected and rejected. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on the back of her neck. She told herself it was only because it was ninety degrees outside, not because of her nervousness.

  A guy raced up the steps next to her, taking them two at a time. He wasn’t anyone she knew, but she’d seen him around. They didn’t have any classes together. He was one of the scuzzies—trailer trash. He had greasy, shoulder-length hair. His jeans were baggy and ripped at the bottom. He had on a stained t-shirt.

  She watched as he skidded to a stop at the top of the steps and turned around, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  Why had he run up the steps only to stop?

  “Hey,” he said to her as she caught up to him. “Would you do me a favor?”

  Dana turned to see if there was someone behind her. He wasn’t talking to her, was he? People like him did not usually converse with people like her. There was no one else around. “A favor?”

  He nodded. He was a little out of breath. “Would you go look at the jazz band results they posted? Tell me if my name’s there? I can’t look.”

  “You tried out for jazz band?” She couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. The jazz band was always made up of people from the marching band. The same teacher directed both. This guy had never been in the marching band.

  “Yeah,” he said. He stuck out his hand. “Cole Randall. I play bass guitar.”

  She shook with him. “Um, I’m Dana Gray. I tried out too.” She was having one of those strange sensations, in which she realized that she understood some cliché she’d heard her whole life. Maybe she’d always intellectually understood that people were the same, regardless of how much money they had or what kind of clothes they wore, but she had never really understood it on a practical level. Now, shaking this scuzzie’s hand, witnessing how nervous he was, she realized that she’d been judging him unfairly. He was just like her. He was a kid. He couldn’t help where his parents lived. Dana felt a crushing load of shame settle on her shoulders, thinking of the way she’d behaved for her entire life. She’d been a snob.

  Realizations like this were becoming more and more frequent as her teenage years were wearing on. But whenever she tried to explain her revelations to others, they always sounded so obvious that she felt like an idiot for not understanding them before. She wondered if she had stunted emotional growth or something. Maybe everyone else had figured this out when they were ten years old.

  Dana tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled at Cole shyly. “You want to look together? I’m really nervous too.”

  “Okay.” He grinned back. They started over to the door. “What instrument do you play?”

  “Saxophone.”

  “Should have figured.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have...” He stopped walking, and she did too, finding that she was interested in what he had to say. “It’s only that I guess you seem sort of like a... I don’t know, a type of person?”

  She studied her shoes. “You can say it. I know I’m a prep.”

  He put his hands in his pockets again. “Yeah, maybe. But I just sort of had this realization... It’s going to sound stupid, but I realized that I was stereotyping you, even though I don’t know anything about you, and you seem cool, you know, so maybe I shouldn’t do that.”

  Dana’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God, seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “Because, no lie, I was thinking pretty much the same thing a minute ago, when we shook hands. And I even thought it would sound stupid.”

  He was smiling again. “Right? Because it’s totally obvious. Everyone knows that.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But just because you know it doesn’t mean you do it.”

  “Exactly.”

  She was smiling too. “I hope we both made it. Into the band, I mean. We can hang out next year.”

  “Me too.” He shifted on his feet. “I guess we should look, right?”

  They turned together and walked up to the door. At first, Dana couldn’t make out any of the names, but as they got closer, she could see the headings. Saxophones. Trombones. Clarinets. She gulped.

  And then she was close enough, and she was scanning the list of names...

  Until she found hers.

  She let out a little whoop. “I’m in!”

  Cole had his hands in his pockets again. “I’m not.”

  Disappointment coursed through her. She looked back at the list, read the name under bass guitar. “David English? He doesn’t even know how to play bass. He’s a drummer.”

  Cole shrugged. “It was a long shot anyway. I know that people like me don’t usually get to be in school bands and stuff.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Dana.

  He was already backing away. “It’s no big deal. Congratulations, though.”

  She bit her lip. “Maybe we can hang out next year anyway?” “Sure,” he said. He grinned again. And then he turned away to jog back down the stairs.

  But they didn’t hang out. She didn’t speak to Cole Randall again until they were both trying to get out of a locked gymnasium, running from werewolves that were attacking everyone inside.

  * * *

  Dana paused with her hand on the exit door of the bar. “I think it’s a murder.”

  Avery spread his hands. “This just come to you?”

  “You know who else locked people inside while they slaughtered them? Chase Klebold and Adam White.”

  Avery pushed the door open. “You’re jumpy. This is your first c
ase back. It’s a little on the weird side. But not everything is connected to Cole Randall and your past.”

  Dana took a deep breath before following him outside. Logically, he had to be right. Not everything could be connected to Cole. The locked door was a coincidence, not something meant to awaken within her memories of the day in which both she and Cole had been turned to werewolves at the hands of their crazed classmates. But she felt so damned connected to Cole now. All the time. The bastard had wormed his way inside her, curled up, and made himself at home. Chantal said that eventually she’d break free of his influence. Dana wanted to so badly. That’s why she was back at work.

  There was a ring of police officers and paramedics waiting outside. They almost all had their arms folded over their chests. The ones who weren’t so outwardly hostile still looked angry.

  “Took you long enough in there,” spoke up a man in a gray suit, his badge hanging around his neck.

  “No survivors,” said Avery, lifting his chin.

  Dana sighed. Avery had a chip on his shoulder when it came to cops, and that meant she was going to have to play nice and try to smooth things over. She thrust herself in between Avery and the suit, plastering a huge smile on her face. “Hi there, sir, I’m Dana Gray. What’s your name?” She offered her hand.

  The suit just stared at it. “Detective Sutton. You two done contaminating our crime scene? You sure this was a wolf?”

  Cops didn’t like the SF. No one liked the SF, not the media, the school system, or the government. Political candidates routinely ran campaigns claiming they’d change laws and get the furs all executed, no questions asked. Thus far, no one had been successful, maybe because deep down people recognized that werewolves were just sick people that needed treatment, not monsters. Dana hoped that anyway. More likely, the SF stayed around because people were scared, and werewolves were better at stopping other werewolves than normal humans.

  “We’ve picked up a scent,” said Dana. “We should have the rogue in custody within the hour.”

  “As long as your people haven’t contaminated our trail,” said Avery over Dana’s shoulder. He let his voice get deep and gravelly, almost an animal growl.