Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Shadow of the Moon Box Set (Werewolf / Shifter Romance)
MAC FLYNN
Text copyright 2016 by Mac Flynn
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission in writing from the author.
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CHAPTER 1
I was a pretty average police detective until he claimed me as his own. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I should hate or love him for that. It doesn't matter now. It's done and I have to live with it.
My story starts on the night of my big change. I worked in a large city of a couple million. We had our usual skyscrapers in the financial district, the industrial with its black smoke, and the wrong side of the tracks with its gang violence. The whole place was ringed by suburbia for those who could afford the commute, and apartments in the older neighborhoods for those who couldn't. I couldn't, so my place was uptown in an old apartment building built before my grandparents were born.
At that moment I wished I was back in that dreary place. Instead I sat in my parked police car. At my side was a grande coffee, cold and lacking in taste, but not the precious caffeine I needed to keep myself awake.
"Maria, you read me?" a male voice called over my car's intercom.
I rolled my eyes and picked up the receiver. "That's Detective Marie Selena, Randy," I reminded him.
"And that's Officer Randy to you, but why are we being formal at this hour? Nobody's listening," he pointed out.
He was probably right. The hour was near midnight, and the night was a Tuesday. Nothing ever happened on Tuesdays, even in a big city like this one. The criminals almost had an unwritten rule that Tuesdays were the days to lay their feet back and enjoy their ill-gotten loot and plan their next law breaking scheme.
As a detective I should have had a cushioned desk job in the department where I worked a nine-to-five shift, but the precinct was short on cash at that time. Well, it was always short on cash. That meant I had to do double-duty as a street cop.
I rolled my eyes. "Because somebody might be, now what do you have for me?"
"Nothing much. Got a call in a minute ago about some suspicious behavior around one of the clubs in your area."
"Which one?"
"The Wolf's Den."
I snorted. "Sounds like something from a bad horror movie. Is it a strip club?"
"Nope, that's the funny thing. It's one of those hush-hush places where the place is always crowded but most of the people don't come in through the front door. The clientele's pretty rich, too, or so my sources tell me," he informed me.
"Did your source tell you how I can get into this place without alerting these suspicious guys?" I asked him.
"Nope. He knows a lot, but not even he can figure that out. As for the call, they were in the alley behind the place. Got dropped off by a black car that sped away."
"This the club owners reporting it?"
"Nope. A passerby on the street waiting in line to get inside noticed it and called us. Said he thought we ought to know."
I sighed and started the engine. "I guess I'll go check it out. You got that address?"
"Yep, 11 Lupine Street," he told me.
"Got it. Don't leave the lights on for me," I quipped.
He chuckled. "I won't. Good luck."
"Over and out."
I hung up the receiver and pulled out of the parking spot. Lupine street was two blocks down in the red-light district of the city. People went there for a smoke of something more than tobacco and stayed for the illegal commercial moonshine. Both sides of the long, colorful street were lined with ads touting beautiful women, drinks, and oftentimes both. The doors to the establishments were wide open, and some of the wares called down from the second story windows to the prospective patrons below. Music drifted from one building to the next and mixed into something not even dub-step could create. The streets were crowded with pedestrians and cars. People shouted at each other and the single-finger salute flew high above some of the less patient taxi drivers.
I drove down the road I spotted my objective at the far end of the street on the left side. It was a three-floor building with the usual blackened windows. The front doors were shut, but the lights were on over them and in some of the upper floor rooms. An alley separated its right side from the neighboring establishment, a classy place that forked out boos to anyone willing to drink their gut-rot.
I couldn't tell what kind of a place was this Wolf's Den. No music blared past the windows and the doors opened only long enough to let the sleek, beautiful patrons slip through. A long line stood outside the building, but it didn't look like it was moving very fast.
I turned around at the end of the street and parked my car block down from the place. If there was trouble, I didn't want my car's body paint to warn the troublemakers.
I walked past the line and to the double doors at the front. A goon the size of a bus stood on one side of the doors. He wore a white wife-beater shirt with matching pants. In his large, fat-fingered hands was a clipboard and a thick pen. He sneered at a teenage couple who stood in front of him.
"Scram, kids. This isn't for you," he told them.
"Oh, come on!" the boy whined. "We've been waiting months to get into this place!"
"And you'll have to wait months longer because you're not getting in." He tapped his pen against the clipboard. "No name, no invite, no dough, no getting in. Got it?"
"Will this get me in?" I spoke up. I held up my badge to him.
The goon leaned in close and squinted. A sneer slid onto his lips. "Yer gonna have to show more than that, lady. Where's the warrant?"
I pocketed my badge into my inner coat pocket and glanced past him at the closed doors. "I left it in my squad car, but I didn't come here to have a nice chat with you. We got a call there was some suspicious people wandering around the place. You seem 'em?"
"I ain't seen nobody but who I'm supposed to see," he quipped.
"Shame. I'm just going to have to look around the place. Is there a back door?" I asked him.
He snarled. "Why won't you just get? There's no trouble around here, so why don't you take your badge and-"
The sound of a gunshot echoed down the street. People screamed and threw themselves onto the ground. The goon rushed inside and slammed the door behind himself. I heard him draw a large bolt over the door.
I drew my gun and looked for the perp. It was
n't easy discerning panicked, running people from a prospective shooter. Cars drove past at illegal speeds and people scurried out of the other businesses to see what all the fuss was about. The situation needed another twenty cops to get this wild place under control.
"Stay down and stay back!" I shouted at the gaping onlookers.
"The sound came from there!" one of the people at the rear of the line yelled. They lay on the ground, but pointed a finger down the alley that ran along the side of the Wolf's Den.
I rushed down the line and hit the corner of the Wolf's Den. I peeked around the edge and saw nothing but the usual dark, suspicious alley. There were garbage cans, bins, cardboard boxes, and the typical clapboard fence at the far end. The alley ran for thirty yards before it hit the fence and separated, going left and right. The only light came from a single bulb over the side door of the opposite building.
I slipped into the alley with my gun against my chest and my heart beating a tune a heavy-metal band would appreciate. The screaming and panic behind me receded into the background. My eyes swept over the multitude of shadows. Nothing moved. My feet crunched softly on the loose gravel and dirt.
I reached the point where the alley separated. Darkness reigned over both paths and the ten-foot tall fence loomed in front of me. I decided on the left and leaned my back against the wall of the Wolf's Den. I chanced a glimpse around the corner. That way was a dead end that stopped at an outcropping of the Wolf's Den building. The rear of the place was shaped like an L and made a small little square. The back door stood ten feet from me and had a single flickering bulb over it.
The back door wasn't what had my attention, though. My eyes fell on a form on the ground. The person wasn't moving, and they didn't have any clothes on.
I rushed over to the person. They lay face-down, and there was a gun beside them. It wasn't a typical gun. This one had an ivory handle with a long barrel like a magnum. I rolled the person onto their back. It was a man of about forty with short brown hair. His lifeless eyes stared at me. There was a gunshot in his chest over his heart. Blood still oozed out.
I stepped over him and touched the barrel of the gun. Still warm. I had the weapon, but I couldn't tell if this was murder or suicide. I turned around and studied the dead man. There was just a faint hint of gunpowder on the chest, meaning the range of the gun was farther than his arm. That pointed to murder.
CHAPTER 2
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I whipped my head to and fro, but there was nothing there. It wasn't so much I heard or saw something was wrong as I felt something was wrong. It was one of those times where all the modern tricks of humans were thrown out the window in favor of pure primal instinct.
I stood and pointed my gun at the ground with my hands wrapped tightly around the grip. My quick breathing was the only noise I heard. My heart thumped against my chest. I stepped towards the back door. The entrance was metal and windowless. I raised my gun.
The door swung open and a large shadow flew out the entrance. It landed between me and the dead man and rolled until it hit the fence. Part of the shadow sat up, and it was then I realized the shadow was two men joined in combat. The man on top had his back to me. He lifted his hand above his foe and I could see something sharp glistened on his long fingers. Claws. Impossibly long claws.
I swung towards him and pointed the barrel of my gun at his back. "Freeze!"
He spun around and snarled at me. My mouth fell agape as I saw the outside of his face was covered in fur and his ears were pointed. He had long, sharp teeth and yellow eyes. His nostrils were overly large and constantly sniffed the air.
The man on the bottom took advantage of the distraction. He pushed his feet against the snarling thing's chest and shoved him away. The man flew past me and into the brick wall. He left an outline in the bricks that would have crushed a normal man's rib cage, but he pulled himself out of the hole. The creature-man dove at me. I got off a shot into his chest, but that didn't slow him down. He wrapped his furry arms around me and crushed me against his chest. My gun dropped to the ground at my feet.
"Give me the moonstone or she dies," he growled at his foe.
The man in front of us was a man. In the weak light I could see he wore a black business shirt and matching dark pants. He was tall, almost a head taller than me, with short, sandy-brown hair. His eyes were a shimmering red and he stood straight with an air of confidence around him that made the guy in back of me quiver. There was a sly, confident grin on her face that would've made me swoon if I was the swooning type.
"Let her go and return what you stole," the fancy man demanded.
The thing that held me laughed. "You really think I'm that stupid?"
"You are if you don't let her go and give back what you've taken," the other man countered.
The man who held me shifted his weight. "Well, I'm not that stupid and I'm not letting her go! Now just let me pass with the girl and the moonstone or-"
I didn't get to find out what 'or' represented. The 'man' in front of us used dug his toes into the ground and pushed off towards us. His speed was incredible. He covered ten yards in two seconds, an enviable speed for us cops. The well-dressed man tackled the one who held me, but not before he was able to get off a long scratch across my neck.
I cried out and fell to the ground. Something wet and sticky coursed down my neck. My blood. He'd cut deep into me. I rolled over and looked behind me in time to see the suited man pick the other one up by his neck. My attacker squirmed and garbled for mercy.
"Please! Please!" he choked out.
The man pulled a gun from his pants and pressed it against his captive's temple. "No mercy for the weak. You know that."
He pulled back on the trigger. I shut my eyes. This gun had a suppressor so the sound was muffled, but not the effect. I opened my eyes and winced at all the blood and brain matter that was splattered against the brick wall. The living man dropped the other to the ground in a crumple of dead limbs.
He turned to me.
My eyes widened and I looked around for my gun. It lay a foot away from me. I dove for it and snatched it off the ground. The man walked towards me and I lifted the gun and pointed it at him. My hand shook so hard I could hardly keep the sight on his chest.
"D-don't come any closer," I gasped.
He kept coming. I fired two shots into his chest. Like the other man, they had no effect on him. I aimed again, but by this time the blood loss was too much. My arms fell useless to the ground and I rolled over to cough out some dark, sticky blood.
The man knelt beside me and grasped my chin between his fingers. He lifted my head so we faced each other. I saw a softness in his eyes that calmed me. An idle thought of a soothing death flitted through my mind.
He smiled and shook his head. "You won't die. You're weak, but you don't live within our rules. Not yet." He leaned forward and caught my blood-stained lips in a soft, teasing kiss. The man pulled away and I blinked at him. He chuckled. "Don't fear the future, or the night. I protect my own."
He leaned down, but not for a kiss. His lips passed my face and pressed against the wound over the front of my throat. I winced at the stinging sensation of contact, but the pain wasn't as horrible as the agony I felt when he opened his jaws and bit into me. His teeth sank deep into my flesh, so deep that I wondered if he'd reached my wind pipe. I gasped when I felt his tongue flick out and stroke the deep wounds made by the other man.
A burning sensation originated from my throat and swept over me. I squirmed and thrashed on the ground beneath him. Every limb, every molecule of my being felt as though it was on fire. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer to him, allowing him to push his teeth and tongue deeper and harder into me.
The pain sapped what little energy I had left. He pulled away from me and I could see his face was covered in my blood. The man lay my back on the hard, cold ground. I heard the distant call of police sirens as they approached our position. Backup. Randy must have wor
ried when I didn't report in.
The man stood and his shadow loomed over me. The light behind him hid all his features but his glowing eyes.
"If you wish to live, don't seek me out," he warned me.
He strode past me. I tilted my head and watched him sling the naked body slung over one shoulder. He walked past me and did the same with the other dead man. The stranger gave one last glance at me over his shoulder before he trudged down the alley in the direction I'd come. I couldn't move my head far enough to follow him past the intersection. He disappeared, but my solitary existence was short.
Heavy boots raced up the alley and the light from multiple flashlights danced across the ground. Four of my fellow officers raced around the corner. They saw me and hurried over. One of them, a young officer named Baldwin, knelt beside me.
"Jesus. . ." I heard him whisper.
"She okay?" one of the others asked him.
He shone his flashlight on my wound and shook his head. "I don't know, but we'd better call an ambulance ASAP." He turned his attention to my face and grasped my shoulder. "Hold still. Help's on the way," he promised. I opened my mouth to tell him about the man, but nothing would come out. "Save your strength," he insisted.
My strength saved itself. My head grew woozy and the world spun around me.
"Detective Selena? Stay with me! Don't fall asleep!" Baldwin yelled.
I would have been to keep awake, but this time I couldn't help but disobey the commands of an officer. My eyes closed and I slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep.
CHAPTER 3
"Maria? Maria, you there? Come on, Maria, open your eyes."
I groaned and forced open my eyes. I lay in a white room on a white bed. It didn't take my detective training to tell me I was in a hospital room and in one of those stupid gowns. Close beside me sat Officer Randy in the flesh. He was a middle-aged guy with a graying mustache Tom Selleck would have envied and a heart that was pure gold. In his hands was a bouquet of flowers, and on his face was an expression of surprise and happiness.
"That's Detective Maria Selena," I scolded him.
"When I heard how they found you I thought it was going to be deceased Detective Maria Selena," he told me. He shoved the flowers in my face. "My wife thought you'd like to have these."
I wrinkled my nose. "I'm not much of a flower person." I tried to sit up, but my arms felt as heavy as a police cruiser.