A Killing Moon

A Killing Moon

  Copyright © 2014 Anna Harrow

   

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A Killing Moon:

  The Outsiders, Part One

   

  Anna Harrow

  THE STRANGER

   

  Sara Moon never thought she’d spend her life working at Bubba’s Chik’n Hut. She thought she might write poems, or act in movies, or travel the world as a secret agent. But she never finished any poems, and she heard there was no money in it, anyway; she acted in a school play, and they booed her; and she didn’t know how to get her foot in the door as a globe-trotting spy. But here she was, twenty-two, living in southern Indiana and serving Bubba’s famous chik’n sandwiches to whoever walked in the door. And she was fine with it.

  “Welcome to Bubba’s, how may I take your order?” The words came natural to Sara, now. She didn’t even have to think about them.

  The man had curly brown hair and skin so dark it looked like he’d spent a week in the tanning bed. He had a leather jacket on with a little red demon insignia that Sara instantly recognized—the symbol of the Devil’s Children biker gang. When he spoke, he reeked of cigarettes: “Are you Sara Moon?”

  That was the first time someone asked for something other than chik’n. “Uh.” She wondered what to say. Surely the nametag HI, MY NAME’S SARA gave it all away. “Uh-huh,” was what came out of her mouth.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Wha— Why?”

  He had a gun in his hand.

  “I—Why?”

  She hit the emergency button under the desk. Thank God, her manager Jeff had been so afraid of the Devil’s Children that he installed it. The police would be here in less than a minute.

  “Don’t try anything,” the biker said.

  Sara walked over, around the desk and into the lobby. Sitting in a booth, Mrs. Smith, “everyone’s grandma,” was staring at them in shock. When Sara looked back at the counter, manager Jeff was aiming a pistol at the biker.

  The biker fired first. The noise rattled Sara’s ears. He had blown a hole through Jeff. Sara went cold.

   

  Shell-shocked, she followed the biker out into the parking lot, still trying to make sense of what she had seen. What should I do, now? God knows, she’d seen a lot of crime shows. She and her ex-boyfriend Jason used to sit back and spend whole days watching. It never ended on a happy note, at least for the target in the murderer’s sights.

  Jeff. Jeff is dead. The best manager she ever had at Bubba’s Chik’n Hut. She had gone numb. The biker forced her onto the motorcycle. She’d never ridden one before.

  Police lights flashed and sirens blared. Three cops stepped out of three different cars, each with a gun. They aimed them at the biker. One shouted, “Hands up!”

  The guns went off. The noise ached in Sara’s ears. She ran for the woods just outside Bubba’s Chik’n. When she gave a last look before diving into the bushes, all three cops were dead.

   

   

  In the woods near Bubba’s Chik’n Hut, the kids of Grayson High School like to do drugs. Sara Moon tried it once and never did it again. Try everything once, she had heard someone say.

  In the sticky summer air she stepped down into the forest. She could hear the biker shouting her name: “Sara! Sara! You’ll be damn sorry if you don’t get back here!”

  One summer, Sara swam in the creek here and got covered in leeches. She thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to her. Now she knew better.

  She stepped through the wet earth, trying to make no noise but failing. She tried not to think about manager Jeff with a hole through him.

  The crickets were loud, but the biker’s voice was getting closer. She decided to run.

   

   

  Only ten steps into the woods, a silhouette stopped her. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. She wondered if it was working with the biker. She wondered…

  “Sara Moon,” it said. “If you don’t escape from Father Damion, you will realize there are things worse than death.”

  It fled into the woods. The biker’s smoker breath overwhelmed her, and his hand was around her chest.

   

   

  THE PRIEST

   

  The buildings of downtown Grayson passed her by. The lights of the Save-N-Go grocery store seemed like paradise when you were about to die. Two kids her age were walking out with twelve-packs of beer, and Sara envied them like she’d never envied anyone before.

  Soon Save-N-Go was gone, and so were the gas station and Dollar Video. They were headed into the country, toward the grain silos and the corn.

  The wind whipped her face. No one would look for her. Not since the night her mother and father disappeared. She lived alone… there was no roommate that depended on her. And her best friend Lauren was used to calling, and having Sara not answer. It would be weeks before Lauren started looking.

  Sometimes, she wished she hadn’t told Jason to get lost. Jason had enough guns and bullets to win World War III if it happened. But Jason had joined a doomsday cult out in Albuquerque and told Sara she had to come with him. Sara told him to get lost, and he went by himself… she still remembered the newsreels about the mass suicide. Maybe Sara could have convinced him…

  No.

  A driveway led to the lights of a farmhouse. The biker turned and started that way. Sara remembered who lived here… Paul Jensen, the science teacher she had for eighth period all those years ago. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Jensen having anything to do with these Devil’s Children creeps.

  Maybe they killed him, too. She felt sick at the thought.

  Eventually, the biker stopped.

  “What are we doing?” Sara said. She sounded much calmer than she felt.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” the biker said. “Father Damion says he has great plans for you.”

  She remembered the silhouette in the forest that warned her about Father Damion. She told herself that she’d listen.

  She stepped off the bike. If she ran, she had no doubt he’d catch her. At gunpoint she followed her into Paul Jensen’s house. She wondered what had happened to everyone’s favorite science teacher.

   

   

  Inside, what looked like a dozen clones of the biker had hunched around Paul Jensen’s shag-carpeted living room: dark skin, curly black hair, and all forming a miasma of smoke. I’ve got to get out of here. Sara Moon’s heart began to pick up pace. She had a life to live. She had plans…

  Against the wall, someone spoke to the Devil’s Children bikers and it could only be Father Damion. He wore a long robe the color of blood, threaded with gold, and had white, spindly-fingered hands. A headpiece with two goat horns scraped the low ceiling, and the face that looked toward Sara—bloodless and green-eyed—was Paul Jensen’s.

  “Sara Moon,” he said. The voice that called her to the front of class or told her which chemicals to mix with what, had taken on a much creepier tone.

  Sara’s entire body had gone cold. She didn’t know what to do. She bit her lip and waited for Father Damion to speak again.

  He did not disappoint. “I have danced with the Devil and his children.”

  Sara eyed the bikers, who now stared at her with their glazed, ruthless eyes.

  “I mixed the most potent drug possible. I have gone to Hell, looked into Beelzebub’s eyes, and won. I have taken on a new name. I am no longer Paul Jensen. Now I am Damion. I
am destined to fight the Outsiders and all they stand for. And you, Sara Moon, will be my greatest champion.”

  He’s gone crazy.

  “Six years ago the first Outsider arrived on our world. It took over the body of the president. The very night he was elected, the Outsider took over his body. Is it any wonder that he backed out on his campaign promises?”

  Don’t they all? Sara didn’t voice the thought. She bit her lip and looked for an exit. She didn’t see one, only walls and tiny windows.

  “It’s grown into an epidemic, now. The Outsiders have opened a door from another dimension. They’re assuming human hosts left and right. Sara, I had a dream about you. An Outsider tried to inhabit you but couldn’t do it. You didn’t have the help of wards and magic circles and the occult like I do. That means only one thing, Sara Moon. You’re immune, and you are our only hope to stop the Outsiders. You are the Guardian, Sara. You need to close the Waygate. Things worse than Outsiders have begun to cross over. Monsters that have taken physical form. Creatures from a dimension worse than Hell…”

  I’m in a madhouse. Sara bit her lip harder. Maybe if I play along, I can get out of here. “I will… help you.” She didn’t sound convincing, not even to herself. “I will do my best to close the Waygate.” I sound crazy. Oh well.

  “Oh, Sara Moon.” Father Damion gave her a smile that chilled her to the bone. “When I stared into Beelzebub’s eyes, I saw the Father of Lies and all his deception. Now I can detect all deceit. And I know you’re lying. You don’t believe a word of what I’ve said. I guess it will take convincing.”

  Sara’s stomach churned.

  “The Creatures of the Night mean you harm, Sara Moon, even more than you can imagine. Did you know that Mr. Bubba himself is an Outsider now? His mansion in Nashville is staffed with chefs and cleaning ladies and chauffeurs… and they’re all Creatures of the Night.”

  He’s really gone off the deep end. Colonel Bubba got filthy rich on his recipe for chik’n. Calling him an Outsider was crazy. The whole thing was crazy.

  The moon shone through the small window. Sara fixed her eyes back on Father Damion. “Mr. Damion,” she started, “what do you want me to do?”

  “The Waygate is in New Mexico…”

  Through the window, a shadow obscured the moon. It had the same shape of the thing she’d seen in the woods. Her stomach dropped. How did it get up there? She wondered if, despite all the craziness, the whole thing was true. Most of all she wondered what had happened to the logical, well-adjusted Paul Jensen she’d always known, and how he’d turned into an occult priest.

  “Father Damion” had stopped talking. Tension now hung heavy in the air. A pot rattled in a nearby kitchen. A few Devil’s Children bikers drew their pistols. Cold flooded in from an open doorway.

  “A wyrdolak.” Damion spoke the words like they meant certain doom. “Bikers, you have sworn by magical oath to give your lives to me. I command you by the power of magic, by the transcendent power of the stars, to remain. Sacrifice yourselves that your dark Father might live.”

  The tension was growing, palpable, tangible, and it did not just come from what Sara saw. The pots continued to clatter from beyond the doorway, from the kitchen that Sara did not see. When she looked up at the window, the moon shone bright again, without any trace of the shadowy figure.

  Damion took off, bolting across the room and shoving Sara to the side. So much for all that talk of the Guardian. Sara turned to follow him. The Devil’s Children biker gang stood there, alert but immobile, willing sacrifices for Father Damion—Mr. Jensen’s new identity—like lambs for the slaughter. The clattering of the pots reached an almost earthquake-like rattle, then a huge hiss tore through the house—like a predator finally catching wind of his prey—and, before Sara could fully turn to face the exit, it all unraveled before her.

  In the second that her peripheral vision still took in the room, Sara viewed far more than she wished. A wizened, wrinkled corpse of a man darted in, no more than four feet tall, its fingernails grown to long yellow sabers. A handful of long white hairs dangled from its pitted, warped scalp. Its eyes were hollow, its fangs yellow, and its feet far too large for its body. At once, it let out a scream—like a whining teakettle except a thousand times louder—and as the sonic reverberations shook the house, the flesh of the Devil’s Children bikers hardened, yellowed, and fell off like discarded onion paper.

  Sara was bolting for the door now. The blood-red hem of Father Damion’s robe vanished through the front door. Sara was running, running, running, as the scream pierced her ears and stole her breath.

  By the time she reached the door, putting her bloodless hand on the knob, she was crawling. The scream stopped but its memory still rang in her ears. The stench from the wyrdolak now lay heavy in her nose and on her tongue.

  Her hand fumbled at the knob.

  “I warned you about Father Damion.” The voice that spoke was the same as the one she’d heard in the woods. Sara could feel the creeping cold of the shadow. She had a feeling that the wyrdolak and the shadow in the woods were not the same, but she could not be sure. She refused to look. Her hand kept fumbling at the knob. The wyrdolak’s shrill scream had weakened her, stolen all her breath and energy.

  A sharp pain in her back brought everything to a fore. She stood up with a gasp and opened the door. As the wound throbbed she ran out into the night. Father Damion’s red car peeled off down the road, toward the highway. The muggy air hit her like a blanket.

  The Outsider shouted at her as she ran: “Make up your mind, Guardian! Whom do you serve?”

  Neither, Sara Moon thought as she half-ran, half-crawled to the street.

   

  THE OUTSIDER

   

  What is going on, Sara Moon wondered. Mr. Jensen had turned into an occult priest. Strange things had come to Grayson, Indiana, and weirdest of all, it seemed she was at the center of it. As she walked through the muggy summer air, shivering despite the horrid heat, trembling all over, she realized she had to get out of Grayson. It seemed like one of Jason’s pranks, but Jason was dead, and there was no one else in Grayson who could pull off something this elaborate.

  No headlights appeared behind her as she staggered down the street. It began to rain. The droplets of water pelted her skin. She lived in the rattiest apartment complex in Grayson. The walk from outside the “city” limits never seemed this long, but the knowledge that the wyrdolak and Father Damion were out there stretched time to its limits.

  Step by step, minute by minute, the lights of Grayson’s tiny downtown grew larger. But the closer she got, the worse the pain in her back grew until it was throbbing, hard and burning.

  The headlights of the approaching car hurt her eyes. But in the front seat, Lauren had her hands on the wheel. She rolled down the window and stuck her head out. Her blonde hair looked white under the moon. “Hey! I’ve been looking for you! Your shift ended a couple hours ago.”

  “Thank God!” Sara had never been happier to see Lauren.

   

   

  Back at the apartment, Sara Moon began gathering her things.

  “Where are you going, chica?” Lauren asked as Sara Moon tossed clothes in her duffel bag.

  Sara hated the word chica. She’d once thought that only stupid girls use it. That was when she met Lauren—a smart girl, for the most part—but as Sara looked into her shallow green eyes she wondered if Lauren was dumber than she once thought.

  “Where are you going?” Lauren repeated.

  “I don’t know. Away.”

  “Away? Where?”

  “Away from Grayson.”

  “How am I going to pay for rent?”

  “I’ll send you some money.” As she zipped up the bag and looked up, she noticed that Lauren’s cheeks had turned that familiar pink color. That always happened when Lauren was angry.

  “Why are you going?” Her voice was caustic. “You can’t just leave me here.”

  “
Watch me.” Sara failed to hide the bitter edge. Everyone in Grayson thought she was harsh, and she’d lost more friends than she could count. Lauren was her only friend left, and she expected to lose her right now. But Sara had nothing here in Grayson except flipping chik’n sandwiches, and after what happened with Jeff and the Devil’s Children gang, she never wanted to touch that fake meat ever again.

  “You can’t use my car,” Lauren growled.

  “Then I’ll find some other way.”

  “The bus?”

  Yes. She didn’t say it aloud. “Some way.”

  “At least tell me where you’re going, so I know where to find you. You aren’t getting away without paying rent.” Every word dripped with acid. “You better tell me, Sara, or I swear—”

  “I’m staying with my uncle in L.A.” Sara didn’t have an uncle in Los Angeles. She wanted to go west, where no one would expect to find her. She might go to Los Angeles. In fact, she probably would go. Whatever happened, she would get out of Grayson forever.

  Lauren’s cheeks were redder than Sara ever remembered seeing them. “I swear to God, Sara, if you don’t pay, I will find you. I’ll get the police to track your cell phone. I’ll…”

  “Shut up, Lauren. I’ll pay.” This is why I never keep friends. She snatched her duffel bag and headed downstairs. As she headed down the stairwell toward the street, she turned off her cell phone and threw it in the trash. “Try to track me now,” she whispered, and headed out into the rain.