He said, “The key is love.”

  “And cow blood.”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  “So how do you love yourself when you’ve hated yourself for so long?”

  Fang reached over and took both my hands. He held my gaze for a long, long time, then finally shook his head. “Only you can answer that, Sam. But I think you might be better at it than you give yourself credit for.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Fang was gone, and I was restless.

  After much pacing and running my fingers through my hair, I decided it was time that I got real answers, and it was time that I started caring that real people might be getting killed in the worst way imaginable: being eaten alive.

  Jesus.

  With my kids now staying over with my sister—God bless her—I grabbed my car keys and hit the road.

  ***

  I was parked in front of Gunther’s house.

  It was the middle of the night, with dawn still hours away. The street was quiet and Gunther’s two-story home looked empty. I shouldn’t have left his house this evening. I should have stayed here, watching it, then followed him. But I had let my hunger get the best of me, and now, he was gone. I was sure of it. After all, tomorrow was the full moon, and there was a very good chance Gunther was, even now, looking for his next victim.

  Up in the San Bernardino Mountains, perhaps along a hiking trail.

  Or, more likely, he was setting up on a carefully chosen trail. Come morning, he would wait for the perfect victim. He was fairly indiscriminate. Men and women alike...although he leaned toward women.

  No, this wasn’t a paying gig. I had no dog in this fight. And up until now, the idea of something hunting humans in the woods didn’t seem entirely horrible.

  It had seemed right. Natural.

  The strong shall live, and all of that.

  But now that my hunger had been satiated, and now that I had begun the process of removing the hate and anger from my thoughts...something interesting was happening.

  Something Fang had predicted, that smart little bugger.

  I started caring. I started feeling like my old self. I started realizing that killing the innocent wasn’t right, no matter what, and if I could do something about it, then dammit, I would.

  A simple shift in focus had been all that was needed.

  A shift from hate to love.

  “Self-love,” I whispered and laughed lightly.

  I needed to do something, and that something was to find his damn cabin in the woods. A cabin that was, I suspected, off the grid or owned by someone else. Or even owned by one of his victims.

  So I closed my eyes and projected my mind out.

  A neat trick and one that every investigator should be so lucky to have the ability to do. Anyway, as my consciousness expanded, I focused on the house before me, and soon, I was pushing through the front door. My projected mind now stood in his foyer. From there, I scanned the house. Empty. Lights out, except for a single lamp near the camelback couch. The view before me flickered and wavered, like a TV going on the fritz. I was stretching my mental scanning abilities to the limit. I pushed on down the hallway, scanning into each room. The downstairs was empty. Back in the living room, I noticed a camera sitting on his mantel, pointed at the front door. It was the only such camera I saw. I also saw a home security system that seemed pretty elaborate. Motion detectors in all the living room corners.

  I headed upstairs and confirmed the same, then took a quick peek in the garage. The Challenger was still here.

  Someone picked him up, I realized, and returned to my body.

  I stepped out of my minivan...and slipped into the shadows around Gunther’s home, searching for a way in. I ignored the downstairs windows; most would be wired. I continued around the house, reaching over and opening a side gate. No dog, but I knew that. I scanned the upper stories.

  There, high up, was a circular vent that would lead, I assumed, into the attic. I would take my chances.

  I leaped up onto the stone fence separating his property from his neighbor’s. Now the neighbor might have a dog...but it turned out they didn’t. Either way, I wasn’t on the fence for long. From there, I gathered myself and sprang as high as I could. Turns out I can spring with the best of them. A moment later, I landed smoothly on the roof.

  I dashed along the crest of the roof and leaped onto the second-story tiles. A moment later, using brute force, I had the attic vent off.

  Once inside, I began removing my clothing.

  All in a night’s work.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I was naked. In someone else’s house.

  Lucky for me, without clothing, the camera and motion sensors wouldn’t pick me up. Still, I was naked. In someone else’s house.

  Feeling more than self-conscious, I headed down his stairs, careful not to touch anything. I might be undead and a supernatural badass, but I still left fingerprints.

  The house was large, but not exceptionally so. I didn’t see a basement entrance outside, nor did I expect there to be. Few homes in Southern California had basements. Anyway, the first floor consisted of a large living room with a black lacquer Steinway piano in one corner. The fireplace with its mantel and camera. The mantel had a few candles on it, which I thought was overkill. The living room was immaculate. Freshly vacuumed. Furniture polished. Magazines spread neatly over the coffee table. I looked but didn’t see a copy of The Werewolf Times or Furry Illustrated.

  I did see, however, an abundance of moon paraphernalia. What was the deal with that anyway? Okay, I get that their lives revolve around the damn thing, but did they also need to collect moon crap, too?

  Apparently so.

  Kingsley’s office was adorned with the stuff, and so was Gunther’s home. A full moon painting above the black leather camelback couch. A crescent moon painting over the piano. A supermoon photograph over the fireplace. Moon statues inside an inset glass display case. The statues ranged from the very elegant to the surreal to the absurd. A Dali-like moon, made of clay, in mid-dissolve, was seemingly spilling onto the glass shelf. Actually, I kinda liked that one.

  I moved on.

  The kitchen was behind the living room, around a central set of stairs that led to the upstairs bedrooms. The kitchen was modern and industrial and looked like it had never been used. There was, yes, a moon potholder hanging from a hook near the refrigerator. Moon magnets on the fridge. I was beginning to hate the moon. Which was sad, considering my cool last name.

  So far, I hadn’t set off any alarms.

  I headed upstairs and into the master bedroom. Freshly cleaned and freshly vacuumed. Yes, Gunther had been busy tonight. Maybe he preferred coming home to a clean house after his monthly killings. Call it a quirk.

  As I stood in his bedroom, hands on hips and leaving nothing to the imagination, I noted a distinct lack of new spirit energy. Sure, there were a couple of older energies, so old that they were barely recognizable as human. They ignored me completely, which most older energy did. No one had died here recently, I was certain of it. Gunther Kessler wasn’t shitting where he eats, as the saying goes.

  That’s what the kill cabin was for.

  I noted the motion detectors were reserved for downstairs, so I freely rummaged through drawers and closets upstairs. I checked pockets and inside shoes and behind dressers. I checked under his bed and under his mattress. I lifted paintings and flipped through books. No tell-tale receipts. No photographs. Other than being a closet E.L. James fan, he’d left no clues that I could discern. I next checked the guest room. Nothing.

  I left the guest bedroom and headed down the short hall to his office, where I hoped to hit pay dirt. No such luck. Or dirt. The computers were password protected, and I barely remembered my own passwords. His filing cabinet would have been my best bet, except he didn’t have one.

  As I stood there in his office, naked as the day I was born, feeling foolish and oddly liberated, I realized I only took Nancy Pearson’s word for it that Gunther was a killer.

  The truth was, outside of a ridiculous amount of moon paraphernalia, I wasn’t even entirely sure the man was a werewolf. Even Kingsley hadn’t known him. And Kingsley’s wolfie friends weren’t talking either. I still hadn’t gotten close enough to ciAnd the no-aura-thing wasn’t proof either... although it was proof so some

  Maybe Gunther had gone on a short trip. Maybe a taxi had picked him up. Or the airport shuttle. Or maybe he was hunting his next victim even now, in the woods, all while I stood naked in his house like an idiot.

  I shouldn’t have left the surveillance of his house.

  But I had. I had let my hunger get the best of me.

  It didn’t have to be that way. I could have satiated it with a packet of animal blood. A cooler in the van, maybe. Fill it with a few emergency packets. I had convinced myself that I wanted—no, needed—human blood. Perhaps Fang was right. Perhaps that was a false belief. Perhaps giving her human blood only made her stronger, and me—the real me—weaker.

  Most of all, she fed off my own self-hatred.

  “No more,” I thought.

  Now, as I stood there in his office, hands on hips and thinking hard, I was certain of one thing: someone had picked him up. Whether it was a taxi or a shuttle or a fellow creature of the night, I didn’t know.

  But if I could figure out who picked him up...then I would find Gunther and his kill cabin in the woods.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The call came the next morning.

  These days, I tended to sleep lighter. Before, it would take a lot more than a phone call at 10 a.m. to wake me up. Especially after the night I’d had.

  The phone number was restricted, which didn’t surprise me. At least not on today, of all days.

  The full moon.

  It was all I could do to sound coherent, when I clicked on the call. “Moon Investigations,” I said. At least, I think I said it.

  “Rough night, Samantha?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Ranger Ted with the California State Parks.”

  It took a moment for that information to sink in. I was still lying on my side in bed, with my pillow mostly over my head.

  “Got a minute?”

  I sat up and yawned. “Sure, what’s going on?”

  “We have another hiker missing.”

  “Shit.”

  “You can say that again. You mentioned you met Sheriff Stanley the other day, right?”

  “I did,” I said, and nearly added that I’d helped save his marriage, but decided that might come off as unprofessional and a little egocentric...and a little off-topic. “Is he overseeing the case?”

  “You could say that,” said Ranger Ted. “It’s his wife, Elise, who’s missing.”

  “No,” I said, and might have shouted it and sat a little straighter. “No, no, no.”

  I had seen the unborn children. I had felt his love for this woman. I had helped save the marriage, off-topic or not.

  “Exactly. This isn’t good, Sam. Not good at all. People know the two of them have been fighting. People even know that she cheated on him. We live in a small town. People talk. Speaking of which, there’s already whispers that there might be foul play.”

  “Foul play, how?”

  “Sheriff Stanley has a temper. He’s been reprimanded in the past.”

  “No way,” I said. “He would never have touched his wife. Not like that.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Just trust me on that.”

  “I wish I could, Sam. Either way, this doesn’t look good for him, and it’s looking worse and worse for her.”

  “When did she go missing?”

  “This morning. She went on an early hike. At daybreak. She’s usually home for breakfast at 7:30 at the latest.”

  I checked the time again. 10:10 a.m. “She’s been missing for a little over two and a half hours,” I said. “That’s hardly a reason—”

  “You don’t understand, Sam. This is a small community. She told her husband she would be back in an hour. The word is out that Elise Stanley is missing. If someone had seen her, they would have reported her. I don’t have a good feeling about this, Sam.”

  Neither did I. Try as I might to play devil’s advocate, I knew full well that there might very well be a missing hiker today. Damn well. After all, Gunther was gone and tonight was the full moon.

  “We have all available manpower on the case. We’ve even called in some boys from San Diego and Los Angeles counties. It’s a sheriff’s wife, after all. One of our own, in a way. Anyway, I thought you should have a heads up, since you were just here asking about missing hikers. By the way, Sheriff Stanley didn’t recall meeting you the other day.”

  “Oh, I have one of those forgettable faces.”

  He paused briefly, then said he had to go.

  We clicked off, and for the next few minutes I thought about Sheriff Stanley and his three unborn children.

  I got dressed, grabbed my keys, and hit the road.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Master Kingsley is terribly indisposed—”

  “I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” I said, and pushed past the tall butler and into the house.

  He caught up behind me. Not hard for him to do with those long legs of his. His mismatched long legs, I might add. “Master Kingsley has given me strict orders—”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  I was through Kingsley’s big house and in his kitchen, and over to a nondescript side door that led, I knew, to his basement of horrors.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you go down there—”

  He had tried to bar the door down into the basement. Tried being the operative word here. I pulled it open, even while he had pressed it shut. I sensed that Franklin wasn’t using all of his great strength. I also sensed that, despite perhaps not liking me very much—for reasons I still didn’t understand—he would never use all of his strength against me. I sensed his restraint. Smart man.

  Now, as I headed down the narrow flight of stone stairs, I might as well have been a half a world away, heading down into the dungeon of a forgotten castle along a mist-shrouded hillside. Dracula’s castle.

  “Master Kingsley will not be happy,” said Franklin, following behind.

  “Master Kingsley can bite me.”

  “No truer words have been spoken, I’m afraid.”

  I was about to reply when I paused in mid-step. I paused because something deep and rumbling seemed to emanate up through the stone steps themselves. Hell penetrated through the surrounding walls and ceiling.

  “What the devil was that?”

  “Again, no truer words have been spoken.”

  On that ominous note, I continued down the dimly lit stairs. As I neared the landing, a hand fell onto my shoulder. “Madam, please. Kingsley will not want you to see him like this. Please stop.”

  I stopped in mid-step and looked back. Franklin’s pale face hovered in the darkness. Gone was his usual look of distaste for me. Why the man didn’t like me, I may never know.

  “Has he turned?” I asked.

  Franklin shook his head. As he did so, I could see the scars that stitched his right ear on. The stitching wasn’t done with very much care. “It’s still early, but the process has begun.”

  “Because it’s a full moon somewhere,” I said.

  “Perhaps. You must turn back. I must insist on this.”

  “I know you’re just doing your job, but so am I.”

  Strange energy flitted in the hallway below. Small, amorphous energy. Animal energy, I realized. Lots of it. The place might as well have been a slaughterhouse.

  Lots of killing in here, I thought.

  I had a vague idea what I was in for. I had, in fact, seen Kingsley completely transformed a few years ago. It was then that I had been introduced to the entity within him...and the realization that something was, in fact, in me as well.

  “Please, Sam,” said Franklin, and it was, I was certain, the first time he had used my first name. “I beg you. This will not be pretty.”

  “I’m not here for pretty,” I said. “I’m here for help.”

  And with that, I turned my back on Franklin and continued down.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I found myself in a narrow corridor, with a stone wall to the left, and a long metal wall to my right. I could have been walking along the hull of a great battleship. Halogen lighting flickered overhead, giving the impression of torchlight. You’d think Kingsley, with all of his bucks, would dish out some of it for better lighting.

  Somewhere, water dripped.

  And since we weren’t anywhere near a Scottish loch, or under a medieval moat, I could only assume that Kingsley’s sprinkler system was on the fritz.

  No, I had never been down here before. But not for a lack of trying. Kingsley had been firm about keeping me away. Even to the point of being kind of a dick.

  I heard Franklin stop behind me, felt him watching me, felt his disapproval, his concern.

  I continued forward.

  Before me, set into the steel wall, was a heavy-looking metal door that looked like it belonged on the space shuttle. As I walked, I heard...something on the other side of the metal wall. Breathing, perhaps.

  As I continued, something thudded loudly on the other side of the wall, so loudly that the ground beneath me shook. I stopped and swallowed. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I really didn’t want to see Kingsley like this.

  No, I thought. I had to talk with him...and now. A talk he and I had never had before, but it was time.

  Another thud from the other side of the wall. This one louder, sounding as if something meaty and big had been slammed against the wall. There was only one thing meaty and big on the other side of that wall. That thing happened to be Orange County’s most prominent defense attorney...

  And my boyfriend.

  Still another thunderous slam, and now, the wall next to me shook as well. Dust sifted down from above, and the light flickered, went out briefly, and then flickered back on again. I continued down the cement corridor.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131