kissed-by-moonlight by Rakhibul hasan (ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

soon my toes grew numb against the continued abuse of slapping against cracked concrete. My lips felt numb, but I suspected that had to do with the amount of blood I’d lost.

 

Under the streetlamps and glaring headlights of oncoming cars I saw that there were two deep punctures, and several long lines of torn skin to commemorate my first werewolf attack. I wondered if I’d shift now, start howling at the moon, and chasing cars and postmen in my free time. The thought earned me a hysterical giggle and I stumbled drunkenly on the sidewalk. I bumped shoulders with another passing pedestrian and he shoved me away. I stumbled, hitting the wall of a nearby bookstore and laughing as I sank down beside it.

 

In the back of my mind I knew I was probably going into shock, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care. Sure my arm was mauled, but I was alive. I’d met a fucking werewolf. How many people could say the same?

 

I was still chuckling when shadow loomed over me. Bleary eyed, I looked up into the familiar faces of Agent Liam and Agent Benson.

 

“Have you ever met a werewolf?” I demanded, and the two men glanced at one another. Agent Benson frowned.

 

“Hairy beast, goes on a rampage once a month, preys on the weak and innocent?”

 

I nodded and he shrugged, holding up his hand to show off a simple gold wedding band.

 

“Married one.”

 

Well I’ll be damned.

 

“Cut that out, Patrice is an Angel for putting up with you for as long as she has.” Liam snapped. He reached down and I flinched as he wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me to my

 

feet. My head lolled against his shoulder and the world spun. “There you go. That’s it. Now let’s get you to a hospital.”

 

“That,” I slurred, my finger poking him in the chest for emphasis, “is an excellent idea.”

 

* * * *

 

Almost two weeks passed before I finally found myself standing in my old, and previously underappreciated, apartment. I’d spent a few agonizing days in the hospital. Other than stitches and a few shots, they’d also had to give me a blood transfusion to replace all I’d lost. I’d been really weak afterwards, so they’d allowed me some time to recuperate before they gave me a clean bill of health. None of my blood work had screamed “future lycanthrope,” so I’d pronounced myself in the clear for that as well. The reason it had taken me so long to get back home was because the police wouldn’t allow it until I’d given a statement, and I refused to return to the company apartment Gabriel had given me.

 

So I ended up staying in a hotel, until finally I broke down and agreed to talk.

 

“What happened the night my partner and I found you, Miss Conners?”

 

“I got attacked by a dog.”

 

“We found traces of your blood in Lumière. Care to explain that?”

 

I shrugged and had to bite back a curse when the once automatic movement sent agony shooting through my bad arm.

 

“Some people can’t control their pets,” I finally managed, and Liam just looked at me in rising disappointment.

 

“Why would someone bring their dog into a place like that?” Benson barked, exasperated. I shook my head in mutual confusion.

 

“Rich people,” I said, as if that explained everything. As if some society matron’s purse poodle had leapt from her Louis Vuitton and almost severed the bone in my arm in a fit of wild puppy angst.

 

Liam reached out and wrapped my hand in both of his.

 

“We know you’re protecting him,” he said, “and, believe me, you don’t have to.”

 

“I’m not protecting him,” I said stubbornly, even though, technically, I was.

 

Liam shook his head. “Then you don’t have to be afraid of him.”

 

I scoffed. “Afraid? Of him? Never.” True. Why was that true?

 

Liam made a strange garbled sound, like he wanted to yell at me but stopped himself just in time. “Then why can’t you just tell the truth?”

 

My brow rose and I massaged my aching arm with my free hand, wishing desperately that I was back in my shitty little hotel so that I could pop a few pain pills and go to sleep.

 

“Why are you so convinced that I’m not?”

 

A few hours later they released me, and a few days after that they declared my apartment safe once again. I knew they didn’t believe that any more than I did, but they also had no evidence that I was still in any danger. They had other cases to work and none of the manpower to dedicate to some has-been reporter with a dog bite.

 

Now, standing in the middle of my living room once more and breathing in the scent of cheap potpourri, I wondered what I was supposed to do with myself now. I couldn’t go around crying wolf. They’d put me in a straight jacket and lock me away. If I was going to reveal what I’d seen, I’d need proof. Hard, irrefutable proof, and the only way I was going to get it was if I waltzed back in to Lumière and got my hidden cameras back. Remembering the lost necklace, my hand rose to brush against my throat.

 

Even if they hadn’t found the cameras and destroyed them by now, how was I going to face anyone in that building? I wasn’t sure how many of the wolves in the lobby that night had been employees out “hunting” those shadow monsters (or specters), and how many had been Gabriel’s special task force. Every time I passed someone in the halls or went to another department to collect paperwork, I’d have to wonder if they had been there that night, hungering for blood. My blood.

 

Talk about stressful work environment.

 

No, I couldn’t go back. Not even to pick up the cameras. It was one of the reasons why I’d been avoiding phone calls from Sonya. I knew that eventually, I’d have to tell her that I was done with the investigation. The problem was that I’d yet to come up with a good enough reason as to why she should let it drop too.

 

Now, head aching, I dropped my purse in the middle of the floor and wandered back into my bedroom. Pain killers and my favorite pillow were whispering my name and promising a night without dreams.

 

* * * *

 

A few days later, there was a banging at my door.

 

I’d told Dawson and Sonya that I’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be able to help with the case for a while. It had given me a temporary reprieve while I searched for an excuse to call the investigation off. When I wasn’t racking my brain or eating in front of the television, I was

 

sleeping and nursing my poor abused arm. None of the bones or ligaments had been broken or torn, thank god, so mostly I was just dealing with a lot of muscle pain. I’d had no idea how often I used the muscles in my left arm without ever thinking about it. Thank god for pain killers, otherwise I’d never be able to do the exercises the physical therapist had insisted on for a full recovery.

 

I was doing one of the said exercises, my muscles spasming as I worked to curl my hand into a fist around some dumb stress ball, when the banging started. I flinched, a lot jumpier these days, and dropped the ball.

 

I watched, irate, as it rolled beneath my sofa.

 

“Shit,” I said, to the remains of my television.

 

Then I got up and shuffled to the door. I don’t know who I expected to see on the other side of it. Sonya maybe, or even one of the ever so charming federal agents. I did not, however, expect to look up to see a pair of amber eyes and charmingly tousled blond hair.

 

I went to slam the door in his face, but he ducked through the opening before I could finish the move. I found him standing behind me and eyeing my living room in blatant distaste.

 

“You live here?”

 

“What do you want?”

 

I found myself taking a step back when he turned to look down at me and I saw the anger in him.

 

“I came to see for myself.”

 

“See what?” I asked, hesitant.

 

“If it was true.” He stepped closer and his head canted to one side as he examined me. A scientist with a bug beneath a lens. “If you really…” A muscle in his jaw worked and he turned away. Examined my apartment once more with unabashed criticism.

 

“Why haven’t you bought a new TV? Don’t I pay you enough?” He did, but that was neither here nor there.

 

“It’s ‘paid’ not ‘pay’. As in past tense. As in I don’t work for you anymore,” I told him. Then, “Gabriel,” I said, coming up behind him and clutching his arm before I could consider what I was doing. “What’s going on?” I asked softly, somehow unsurprised when he failed to brush off my touch as I’d half expected him to.

 

Instead he stood, back to me, for a long, breathless moment, and then sighed.

 

“Where’s your laptop?”

 

“I’ll get it,” I told him, feeling as if a storm was brewing and I was standing beneath a tree with a lightening rod and neon sign that read “Hit Me.”

 

I brought my laptop back into the room and set it on the kitchen counter. I watched, tense, as Gabriel sat down at one of my barstools and typed an address into the search engine, fingers flying over the keys. Then the webpage was opening, and I watched in growing horror as the newscast played out in high definition.

 

It was a video of what had happened the night I’d been bitten. From the angle I knew it had to be the necklace camera. First, it showed Gabriel hovering over the camera when he’d pulled me from beneath the conference table. Then it cut to my mad dash down the stairs only to run into the task force member and the wolf at his side. Any of the footage containing the shadow men had been cut out, so while the viewers could clearly see Gabriel Evans changing from wolf to man, they didn’t see him save my life beforehand. The last clip, was the most chilling. It showed the lobby as I’d seen it that night. Filled to bursting with ravenous wolves, eyes shining eerily in the dark.

 

When the footage was done, it switched to an anchorman who looked appropriately serious.

 

“Is this proof that werewolves exist or just a clever parlor trick? This video, shot by an unnamed source, has gone viral literally overnight. Experts have yet to be able to debunk the footage and in just a matter of days, millions of people from all over the world have begun to flood the area in hopes of either proving or disproving the presence of werewolves. While half of the city is stocking up on silver bullets and wolfsbane, the rest are crying foul.”

 

The scene shifted and suddenly I was watching Governor Harris shake his head in disgust at the camera. “Werewolves?” he snorted, “What next? Bigfoot? The Loch Ness monster? If I got worked up every time some kid with a camera said they’d found the missing link, my last two heart attacks would have killed me already.”

 

Back to the anchorman. “But others have a very…different take on things.”

 

The scene shifted again and now I was looking at the anchorman sitting beside a nervous looking young woman.

 

“You say you’re a werewolf? Is that correct?”

 

She nodded robotically, eyes flashing at the camera and wrung her hands together in her lap.

 

“What’s it like being a werewolf, Gina?”

 

She calmed visibly. “Safe.”

 

“How so?”

 

“It’s because, as a wolf, you have Pack. You don’t need family or friends when you have Pack. Pack is family. We keep each other safe. Keep each other human. Pack is all.”

 

And on it went, the scene changing as the anchorman interviewed one self-proclaimed werewolf after another:

 

“I didn’t always howl at the moon. I used to