Moon Dragon (12 page)

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.

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.”

“Thank you,” I said, and we clicked off. 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.

The closer I got to the metal door, the more I could smell it: death.

Putrid death, too.

Something that been dead for many, many days. Perhaps even a week.

I looked back and saw Franklin staring out at me from the shadows of the stairway. I was beginning to understand why they had tried so hard to keep me away...

The entity within me perked up at the smell, but I had been doing a pretty damned good job of keep her locked up, so I wrapped a few more mental iron bars around the cage I imagined her in.

A few years ago, I would have gagged at the smell of death. Now, not so much. Now, I was intrigued by it. What had died? How had it died? Perhaps I could never truly go back to who I had been. Perhaps I’d done too many things, seen too many things.

Still, I tried to find a neutral feeling about the smell. In fact, I tried to not have any feeling about the smell at all. My new goal these days was to not give the entity within me any hope. Or any escape.

With each step I took, the pounding on the other side of the wall seemed to keep pace with me, but as I reached the door, the sound stopped altogether, and a deathly silence followed.

More nervous than I thought I would be, I stood just to the side of the door. There was a small, square opening in the door, no bigger than a small fist. Certainly not big enough for Kingsley to reach through. Most important, I could see that the door itself was at least six inches thick.

Jesus.

Now, from the other side of the door, I heard the breathing. Deep and ragged. Something was just off to the side of the door, listening to me. That something was, of course, Kingsley.

At least, I hoped it was.

I held my breath; after all, the putrid stench was pouring through the opening in the door. Muted light came through, too. The light was high up, casting a squarish light on the floor before me.

“Kingsley,” I said hesitantly. “It’s Sam—”

A face suddenly appeared in the small opening. A very hairy and sweating face...wild and contorted and in obvious pain. I squeaked and took a step back.

“Sam!” Kingsley gasped, pressing his face into the square opening. “What...what are you doing here?”

Now that I saw him like this—desperate, wild, angry, shocked, and in mid-transformation—I wanted to
un
see it. I also wanted to
un
smell what I was smelling. Maybe this was a bad idea.

But it wasn’t. I needed him. I needed help.

“I...I have to speak to you—”

“Leave, Sam!” he growled, and turned away from the square, I could see him pacing through the opening, passing back and forth behind it. God, he looked massive, the few glimpses I saw.

“I’m sorry, Kingsley, but I can’t.”

“I’m warning you, Sam...”

He wasn’t himself. I could see that. Or, rather, he was tapping into a very, very angry and primal and hate-filled part of him.

The demon,
I thought.
It’s the demon coming through.

I powered on, “How do I stop a werewolf?”

I knew all the stories. I’d
heard all the rumors. The truth was, I really didn’t know. It wasn’t a question I’d ever needed to ask Kingsley. I suspected Fang would know the answer. But I didn’t feed into rumors or legends. I needed to know facts, and I needed to stop Gunther tonight.

“Why, Sam?” he growled, pacing behind the small opening, each footfall shaking the ground beneath me. If I had to guess, I would guess that he was easily a foot taller, and maybe another hundred pounds heavier.

And he would only get bigger.

And stronger.

“Gunther has another hiker. A woman this time. A woman I know, well, kind of, long story—”

“Enough!” he roared, and I shrank back. And it took a godawful lot to get me to shrink back. But never, never had I heard such force and powerful volume from a human.

Because he isn’t human,
I thought.
At least, not now.

I knew Kingsley could transform into a wolf—as in an actual wolf—at will. Few werewolves had this ability to shapeshift. But on the night of the full moon, he didn’t turn into a wolf. No, he turned into a hulking, hybrid monster. A true wolfman.

We were still hours from dusk and already he’d changed so much. I knew his transformation was a slow, painful process for him. Unlike the wolf that he could conjure quickly—which, I suspected, was closer to what I did with the winged Talos—his monthly transformation into a hulking beast was nearly unbearable for him. After all, this was when the entity within made a full appearance and, while doing so, apparently delighted in torturing Kingsley along the way.

“I don’t care about the hiker, Sam...” His voice rattled, rumbled, like an idling Harley.

“You do, Kingsley,” I said. I almost said ‘Wolfie,’ which was my term of endearment for him, although he didn’t much like it...unless, of course, we were in his bedroom.

He yanked his head away from the square opening and stretched his neck to and fro, and I saw what was happening. His neck was getting bigger. Muscle mass was appearing before my eyes. Muscle mass and fur. He grunted and might have whimpered.

“Leave, Sam. Leave, goddammit.”

This wasn’t the Kingsley I knew. The man I knew was attentive and playful, even if a little stubborn. This creature, stalking behind the door, was only a semblance of the man I now loved. The immortal I loved.

“Kingsley, please—”

He growled as he paced behind the door. I could only see flashes of him behind the small window. The flashes that I saw were horrific at best. With each passing minute, I would lose more and more of him. I doggedly asked my question.

“How do I stop a werewolf, Kingsley?”

I saw him shaking his head as he paced. “Too strong,” he was saying, mumbling. “Too strong, even for you.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wasn’t going to argue the point.

Kingsley went on: “Kill and destroy and feed, and will fight to the death once engaged.”

“Then tell me how to defeat him, Kingsley.”

“Don’t do it, Sam. Wait...for me.”

“He has to be stopped. Tonight.”

He didn’t like my answer and pulled away angrily. His heavy footfalls seemed heavier than just a few minutes earlier. His great head and beefy shoulders appeared and disappeared through the square opening.

Now, I pressed my face into the square opening. “Tell me, Kingsley. Tell me what you know.”

I sensed his hesitation. After all, once I knew how to defeat a werewolf, I would know how to defeat him, too. A small, protective side of him was keeping that information from me. Or not. But that was my guess.

Suddenly, Kingsley’s thick, sweating, panting face appeared just inches from mine. I saw the fangs pushing through his gums, which bled profusely. It was only noon and he was suffering so much. I had no idea he went through such a prolonged, hellish transformation. And he still had many hours to go. How many hours, exactly, I didn’t know. When did a werewolf turn into a full-blown werewolf? At sunset? At dusk? At midnight? At the first sign of the full moon? I didn’t know exactly. But looking at Kingsley now, it looked like the transformation wasn’t very far away.

And I still had to find Gunther.

Shit...

“We are not so different, Sam,” he said, gasping. Blood bubbled between his lips. “The same silver that kills you, kills me.”

“A silver dagger—”

“No, Sam. You’ll never get close enough with a dagger. He’ll be too fast, too powerful. You’ve never seen anything like this, Sam.”

“Then what?”

“A silver bullet.”

“But where...”

“Franklin...” he gasped. “Franklin has them. Just in case...”

He held my gaze, although his bloodshot eyes wavered. I got his meaning: just in case he ever got out and needed to be put down. Of course, he had gotten out a few years ago. Where was Franklin then? A question for another time.

“Go, Sam! Leave me be!”

With that, he slammed his huge hands against the door, and kept slamming them until I gulped and skittered off down the hallway, back to where Franklin was still waiting in the shadows. The thick, metal wall vibrated. More dust and dirt sifted down.

* * *

Upstairs in the oversized kitchen, as Franklin locked the door that led down into the cellar, I said, “That smell...”

“A deer carcass,” said Franklin, turning to look down at me as he pocketed the key. “I hunted it last week.”

I nodded, sickened and relieved...relieved that it wasn’t a human corpse. Sickened that I kiss that mouth of his. “And it’s been rotting down here ever since, I presume.”

“You presume correctly. Master Kingsley prefers them...putrid. The more putrid, the better.”

I felt my stomach turn, which in itself was a good sign for me. It meant that I was keeping the bitch at bay. The crazy, crazy bitch. Far below, the earth shook violently, as did the kitchen walls around us.

“When will Kingsley fully turn?”

“At sundown, of course,” said Franklin. “Like all true creatures of the night.”

I almost asked what kind of creature he was...except I thought I just might know. Not so much a creature as a
creation
.

I had six hours, at most. Five, if I wanted to play it safe.

“I need those silver bullets, Franklin.”

He looked at me long and hard, then nodded. “This way, Ms. Moon.”