Moon Dragon (13 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

I was sitting in my minivan, along Kingsley’s crushed-shell driveway, weeping.

To think that my boyfriend would be feasting on something dead and rotting...in just a few hours...was a little upsetting.

I shouldn’t have seen him. Perhaps Franklin would have told me how to stop a werewolf. Or perhaps not. His loyalty to Kingsley ran deep...and for reasons I didn’t quite understand. Yes, I had suspected it would be silver. The same silver that removed the entity from me would remove it from him, too.

Except, I would have gone into the fight with a silver dagger, and I might not have returned. Yes, I had known a werewolf would be powerful...but I hadn’t quite grasped just how powerful. The silver bullet was the key, of course.

And not getting too close.

I looked at the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum sitting on the seat next to me, chambered with the six silver bullets.

It would take a helluva shot. Especially at a charging werewolf.

I was risking my life, I knew. I was risking everything that I held dear. I was risking, most of all, being a mother to my children. No, I didn’t think a werewolf needed to use silver to kill me. Ripping me from limb to limb, and then devouring me, would probably do the job, too.

I looked at Kingsley’s sprawling estate before me. I was certain I could hear his roars from here, and feel a slight rumbling beneath me. He was angry. He was turning. What happened to him each month wasn’t very fair either.

I wiped my eyes and considered my next move. I had to find Gunther, of course. He was up there, in the woods, changing throughout the day, much like Kingsley was. And nearby was a woman. A live woman. Waiting to be consumed by him, no doubt watching his transformation in complete and utter horror.

Some preferred them dead and rotted, others preferred them fresh and alive. I was happy to see that I remained repulsed by both notions.

I drummed my fingernails on the steering wheel, knowing my time was slipping through, well, these very fingers.

On a whim, I pulled out my cell phone and typed in “cars and mustaches.”

What came up next was very intriguing.

Very, very intriguing.

Chapter Thirty-three

I was back in the city of Orange, parked this time in Gunther’s driveway.

He wouldn’t be using it anytime soon. After all, I had no doubt he was in the midst of a full-blown transformation. And in the company of one woman—the wife of my new friend, Sheriff Stanley—who was, no doubt, witnessing all of it. Then again, if this script played out, she would be doing far more than witnessing. She would be an unwilling participant.

So, I did what any normal investigator would do under the circumstances: I downloaded an app to my iPhone, the Lyft app to be precise. An app that was, in fact, pure genius.

According to the website, with a simple touch of a button, the Lyft driver closest in proximity to me (thanks to my phone’s GPS) would get pinged that I needed a ride. The app also connected our Facebook pages, apparently for safety reasons. My Facebook page sported an outdated picture of me from nine years ago, back when I was camera-friendly. Luckily, I didn’t look much different now.

Which wasn’t a good thing, I suspected. Soon, I would be getting to the point where my friends and colleagues were clearly looking older than me...by nearly a decade.

Worry about that later,
I thought, when the app had finished downloading.

I was almost giddy with excitement.

When the app opened, I pressed the “pick me up” button and waited. While I waited, I sweated. The day was sweltering. I might be immortal but I got hot—and sweated—with the best of them. Which is why I had the A/C running in the minivan while I waited.

A moment later, my phone chirped.

A driver had locked onto me and was en route. Okay, now I was definitely giddy. In fact, there he was on Facebook. A youngish-looking Latino with a round face and wide-set eyes. I scanned Paulo’s profile because I had nothing better to do. Married. A writer on the side. I checked out the links to his books, too. A vampire series, of all things. A witch series, too. And something about gods in Los Angeles.

“This should be interesting,” I said.

According to the app, he was only two minutes away. I looked at the time on my cell: 1:38. According to my weather app, sunset was at 6:19 p.m.

I did some serviceable math. I had five-and-a-half hours before a woman would be consumed alive by a real werewolf.

And, yeah, I cared, dammit. I cared a lot. I had met her husband. I had met her unborn kids. They needed her, dammit. They needed her alive. They had a family to build. Not to mention, I had given Sheriff Stanley some of my best marital advice. I didn’t want to see that advice go down the drain.

Not funny, I know. But try as I might, my new morbid sense of humor didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“Choose your battles,” I said to myself.

After all, a morbid sense of humor I could live with. Not giving a shit about death—and feasting on my neighbor’s cat because I couldn’t control myself—wasn’t something I could live with.

Quite frankly, I was better than that. I lived to fight the bad guys. I lived to protect the innocent. I was not a bad guy myself. I was one of the good ones, dammit, and I was going to do everything I could think of to ensure just that.

That I stayed as good as possible.

Further down the block, a white Toyota Prius turned onto the street. As it approached, I could see the driver through the windshield, sort of leaning forward, forearms wrapped around the steering wheel, scanning. Yup, it was the same guy in the Facebook page—Paulo, the vampire/witch/demigod writer. Most telling was the furry mustache attached to the front grill of the Prius. My Lyft ride had appeared.

I stepped out of my minivan, waving. He frowned, thick eyebrows bunching up, then pulled into the driveway, next to my minivan. He jumped out, smiling, but also looking confused as hell.

“I’m sorry,” he said, talking fast, eyes scanning somewhat wildly. He either had a serious case of A.D.D., or something else was going on. “But I’m a little confused. You need a ride, right?”

“Maybe. Mostly, I need some information.”

“Okay, now I’m a lot confused.” Paulo gave me an easy laugh, although his eyes never stopped scanning.

A.D.D.,
I thought.
And bad.

“First,” I said, “why are you confused?”

“Because I usually pick up Gunther at this address.”

“Only Gunther?”

“Yes. What’s going on here? Do you need a ride or—”

I stepped forward and reached out to his mind. Holy sweet hell, that was a scrambled, nearly incoherent mind. I reached deeper, through the chaotic miasma of thought streams, and found his core and told him to relax and to answer my questions, and that I was a friend.

He nodded, and for the first time, his eyes settled down, and settled on me. He exhaled. I suspected this was the first break his mind had had in years. Decades, perhaps.

“First question,” I said. “Why do so many Lyft cars come down this street?”

“It’s because Gunther tips so well. Usually $200.”

“But I thought the app summoned drivers, not the other way around.”

He nodded, smiling easily. He was good-looking, in a round-faced, wide-eyed sort of way. “It does work that way, in theory. But some Lyft drivers will game the system. After all, the system pings the closest driver, so we’ll sometimes patrol areas where known big tippers live or work, hoping to get pinged. With Gunther, we know we can make an easy $200, especially when it starts getting close to the full moon.”

I blinked. “What do you know about the full moon?”

The driver shrugged, still looking at me, eyelids dropping a little. Now that his rapidly-running mind had shut off, he was getting sleepy.

“We Lyft drivers sort of figured it out, since he’d been doing this for so long.”

“Doing what for so long?”

“Grabbing a lift up to Big Bear. Turns out, it’s every full moon.”

“Has he told you why he leaves every full moon?”

“He told me he’s an amateur astronomer. That he has a cabin in the woods where he has a telescope.”

My heart thumped once, twice, loudly, excitedly.

“And why does he tip so much?”

Here, the Latino driver paused and fought against my control, but I silently encouraged him to continue and he finally nodded. “He pays us to keep quiet about the location.”

“Have you seen the cabin?”

“No, but I drop him off at the same spot every time.”

“Why don’t you take him to the cabin?”

“I dunno. I just do what he says.”

“Did you take him this last time?”

“No, but I kinda hoped I hadn’t missed him.”

“Which was why you were patrolling nearby,” I said.

“Right.”

“When do you usually take him up to the cabin?”

“Usually two days before, sometimes three.”

“Will you take me to the cabin, too?”

His eyes flicked over me and he smiled. “Of course, Samantha Moon.”

“And after you take me to the woods, I want you to forget we had this conversation.”

He gave me an easy smile. “I’ll do my best.”

And with that, I slipped into the front passenger seat of the Prius and we were off.

Chapter Thirty-four

I checked the time: just past 2 p.m.

Sunset was in four hours, and it was a two-hour drive up to Big Bear, which was higher and further back than Arrowhead. I thought about that as we drove, then nodded. Yes, Gunther kidnapped them in Arrowhead...and then brought them back to Big Bear.

He has a vehicle up there,
I thought.

Why he left his car in Orange County, I didn’t know. I suspected it was an attempt to cover his tracks. Of course, the Lyft drivers themselves might start getting suspicious. I had a thought.

“Are you aware of any Lyft drivers disappearing?”

Paulo was still feeling the effects of my earlier mental prompting, and so he answered easily enough. “Two of them over the past few months, actually. Both were found killed in their cars. Both in Orange County. There’s a running joke that being a Lyft driver in Orange is the new most dangerous job.”

I nodded. The bastard was covering his tracks there, too.

As my own Lyft ride commenced, he drove through Orange and headed for the 22 Freeway. I imagined Gunther standing on, say, a boulder, overlooking a popular—or perhaps not-so-popular—hiking trail, and hunting his next target.

Perhaps he used a tranquilizer gun. Or perhaps he used a real gun, and shot them in, say, the foot. Or perhaps he ambushed them or trapped them or lured them into his car.

I didn’t know, and it wasn’t important how he found them. Since none had survived, I might never know. What mattered was stopping him from preying on the innocent. From killing tonight.

And ever again.

My own entity, of course, would prefer me to kill and maim and torture and to control. And, if I gave her half a chance, she would possess me fully and do it for me.

It did take some fortitude to take on these entities, to fight against them...and to not give in.

Had Kingsley given in? Was he weak by allowing the thing within him to feast on the rotted deer carcass? Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t know just how far Kingsley had let the entity out. Maybe they had come to some agreement: if Kingsley feeds it what it most wants, perhaps it lets him live a normal enough life. Not feasting on a human corpse was, perhaps, Kingsley drawing the line.
Maybe.

I didn’t know, but what I did know was this: there would be no agreement between myself and Elizabeth, the woman inside me, the woman who fueled me, the highly evolved dark master...and perhaps the highest evolved of them all.

No compromise. No getting out, ever.

The bitch picked the wrong person.

Moving on. Admittedly, I was nervous as hell to confront Gunther, even if he was half the size of Kingsley. Either way, he was going to be trouble. Perhaps more trouble than I was ready for. I patted my purse next to me, which concealed the Smith & Wesson. This gave me some comfort. Not much, but enough.

I considered calling Allison for backup. She might be needy as hell sometimes—even dingy—but man, oh man, was that girl a force to be reckoned with.

Still, I thought, chewing my lip as we eased onto the freeway, there was no way in hell I was going to expose her to the ferociousness of a werewolf. No, she was out. Fang could be of help—a lot of help. I pulled out my phone and clicked on the messenger and nearly sent him a text.

No,
I thought. He would be weak all the way up to sundown. Truth was, I was weak, too, although not as weak as before, back when I didn’t own the ring. I was operating, I suspected, at about eighty percent, which wasn’t that bad. The problem being, of course, when I got to full strength at sundown, Gunther would be fully turned, too. And he would be at full strength, as well.

And a full-blown werewolf.

Another thing: I was feeling a tad guilty about my time with Fang the other night. Yes, he had talked me down and given me the world’s best advice on how to beat the thing within me, but I was still feeling some guilt about us in my bedroom, holding hands.

I would tell Kingsley about it. He would understand. I hoped.

With all of that settled in my mind, I planned to get to Big Bear well before Gunther turned. Of course, I still had to find his kill cabin, which I highly doubted doubled as an observatory, as purported.

So, I settled back for the two-hour drive, mentally going through how I would face a partially-turned werewolf, when my phone rang.

Restricted number. These days, that was never a good sign.

“Moon Investigations,” I said.

“Sam, it’s Sherbet.”

“Do you always refer to yourself by your last name, Detective?”

“Almost always. We have your daughter.”

I sat up. “What do you mean?”

“We found her in the park, drunk as a skunk. You need to come get her.”