Shadows of the Moon (Black Wolf Agency Book 2) (2 page)

When Marcus and Lucius returned to
Black Wolf Agency
, they were glad to see Yvonne was still the only one there and they were spared having to explain where they were to any of the others.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“It went well,” answered Lucius. “We got her in her apartment safely and without being noticed.”

“Good, and with all that powerful shit I pumped into her earlier, she should be out for a while, probably until late tonight or early tomorrow morning.”

“That’s perfect, thank you, Yvonne,” said Marcus.

“You’re welcome, Marcus. I just hope we did the right thing, though.”

“Well, if not, we’ll be seeing her again soon,” added Lucius.

Just then, Marcus’ phone rang. He answered, not bothering to look at the caller ID.

“Hello, Detective Marcus Anderson speaking.”

“Hey, Marcus, it’s Johnny. I know you’re on vacation, but I thought you’d want to see this. I know you’re into all the freaky murder cases like this.”

Marcus’ heart sank in his chest. Was it Selene? Had the werewolf come back to finish the job? With baited breath, he asked his partner, “Who is it, Johnny?”

“I don’t know, some guy, but the way he was killed was, well, strange.”

Marcus let out a sigh of relief. Good, it wasn’t her. “I’ll come down right away.”

Johnny gave Marcus the address of the crime scene and he hung up, rushing toward the door.

“Yvonne, Lucius, I’ve got to go to a crime scene. Can you hold up the fort until I get back?”

“I couldn’t help but overhear what you two were talking about,” said Lucius. “I’ll go with you. You might need help.”

“Alright, but should anyone ask you, you’re my uncle and I dragged you along for the ride. Cause’ God knows we don’t need the damn questions that cops can ask.” Marcus rolled his eyes.

“Works for me,” said Lucius grinning.

By the time they arrived at the crime scene, it was 5:30am and still dark out. The darkness didn’t bother Marcus and Lucius, or any other werewolf for that matter, but it was a real drag for everyone else who had to be at the crime scene so early in the morning.

As soon as they got there, Johnny spotted Marcus and went up to him, spouting out some facts about the victim, “Okay, so, we found an ID on the vic. His name is Michael Jones. He’s a lawyer, forty-two years old, lives just a few blocks away.”

“Wait, how do you know he’s a lawyer?” asked Marcus.

“See that briefcase over there?” Johnny pointed to a briefcase several yards away that was splayed out across the ground, its contents scattered. “That was his, and those papers scattered everywhere are his work papers.”

“So, when are you gonna show me the vic?” asked Marcus patiently.

“I hope you’re ready for this.” Johnny cringed as he spoke.

They approached a mass on the ground, covered by a sheet. Johnny bent down and pulled the sheet off for a moment, letting Marcus and Lucius take a good look. Not only did the victim have a brutal bite mark on his neck, but his face also had claw and tear marks all over it, as well as his chest and arms. They guessed the tear marks were from where the attacker had bitten him repeatedly and tore at his skin. Johnny re-covered the body. Normally he didn’t get grossed out by seeing stuff like this. In fact, he thought he had seen it all. That is, until today.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” asked Johnny.

Marcus and Lucius looked at each other and then back at Johnny. Lucius shook his head ‘no’ and Marcus simply replied, “No, I haven’t.” He hated to lie to his partner, but he had to, for so many reasons he couldn’t even begin to name them.

Marcus knew he and the others at
Black Wolf Agency
would have to set out and find the murderous werewolf before he killed again.

Selene woke very slowly from her comatose state. She must have been lying there for about twenty minutes, thinking about everything that had happened to her; walking home in the rain, taking that awful shortcut, being attacked and bitten by that man, and then being hit by a car. That was the last thing she remembered until now. She finally opened her eyes.

“What the hell?” she said, noticing she was in her apartment. She sat up, rubbing her eyes groggily.
‘What am I doing in my apartment?’
she thought.
‘Am I somehow still sleeping? Am I
dead
?’

Selene slowly got up out of bed. As she stood up, she noticed she felt strange. She wasn’t in pain, but she somehow felt different; she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It was almost as if she felt lighter; every movement seemed quicker and easier than it had before.

Curious, next she quickly headed to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. Surely if she really had been bitten in reality there would be a horrendous wound on her neck. She stared at her reflection, amazed; there was no wound at all and no sign of her being hit by a car.

‘That’s strange,’
she thought.
‘Everything felt so real. How could I have been dreaming?’

She rushed over to her purse, which was on the nightstand beside her bed, and checked her phone for a date and time. The battery was dead. She plugged it in the charger right next to her and booted it up, impatiently muttering, “Come on, come on!” At that moment, she hated herself for not having some other way of quickly checking the date. There was, of course, her computer but that would take even longer to boot up.

Finally, her smart phone booted and displayed the date in the top left corner of the screen.

“Sunday?! What the hell?! Where did Saturday go?”

She plopped down on her bed again and stared at her phone, not believing her own eyes. How could she have skipped Saturday? Had she been so drunk Friday night that she somehow hallucinated the whole incident, and then came home, passed out on her bed, and slept the entire day Saturday? It seemed very unlikely. She remembered everything that had happened at the club Friday night. She only had a couple beers and a mixed drink; not nearly enough to get her that drunk.

‘Did someone put something in my drink?’
she asked herself. At that point, every single possibility was crossing through her mind. That was another one that seemed unlikely, though. She had her eye on every drink she had had at all times. No one put anything in it.

‘Something very strange is going on. I need to get to the bottom of this,’
she thought, but first, she had to get some coffee and a little something to eat.

When she sat down at the kitchen table with her coffee and cereal, she first took a sip of coffee, thinking how odd it tasted. Had she mixed it right? Then she took a bite of cereal and spit it out.

“Yuck!” she cringed. She went over to the fridge, determined to find something better to eat. She eyed the steak on the second shelf and her mouth watered. Against her normal judgment, she took the steak out and cooked it. Normally, she would eat her steak well done, but this time, she felt like eating it rare.
‘Another odd thing,’
she noted as she sat down with the steak and began wolfing it down.
‘What’s wrong with me? Now I’m eating steak in the morning. This is so weird.’

Within five minutes, the steak was gone, and she felt refreshed. Abandoning the coffee, she drank about a pint of water, got dressed and headed out. For some reason, she felt like going for a run in Central Park today.

Marcus spotted Selene leaving her apartment from where he was standing just down the street. Since it was Sunday, he didn’t have to go to work, so he decided to spend the day keeping an eye on Selene. He was glad to see she had made a full recovery. He wondered how she had reacted when she woke up in her apartment after her near death experience Friday night and having slept through ‘til Sunday.

As he began to follow her, he came across a familiar scent. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he had smelled the scent before; it was on Selene when she had been brought into the agency, but it wasn’t her scent. He could clearly tell her scent apart from this one he smelled now.

Then he realized what it was; it was the killer, and he was somewhere nearby, or had been recently. Panic overwhelmed him. The killer had probably tracked down Selene and was waiting for the perfect time to attack her. That was the only explanation as to why he was so close to her apartment.

Marcus followed Selene for a few blocks until they reached Central Park. He was nervous; he suspected her reason for coming here was to run. What if she exposed her supernatural abilities? He continued to follow her, but moved closer to keep a better eye on her.

As soon as Selene entered the park, she broke into a run. Within the first few seconds, she noticed how light her body felt with each stride. It felt as if she was gently gliding across the ground. She had no idea how fast she was really running until she flew by several other people who were running at the normal pace in which she used to run. They stopped and gawked at her in awe.

As she ran, she heard the footsteps of another, and they were gaining on her. She ran into the brush nearby and hid. No matter how fast she ran or how invincible she would ever feel, the thought of what had happened to her Friday night, or what she thought had happened to her, would continue to haunt her. What if that same man was following her? What if he tried to kill her again?

After hiding in the brush for a moment, she stood up, looked around to see if her stalker was possibly around. Seeing that no one was there, she stepped out of the brush, and gasped as she felt someone’s hand on her shoulder. She turned around and came face to face with Marcus.

“You! Are you the one who bit me?! Get away from me!” she said, backing away from him.

Marcus was glad no one was in the general vicinity; they would think she was crazy, or worse, they might think he was trying to attack her.

“No, Selene, listen–”

“How the hell do you know my name?!” Selene yelled at him.

“It’s a long story, but I assure you, you can trust me.”

As she looked into his gentle green eyes, somehow, perhaps by instinct, she felt she could trust him. As she stepped closer to him again, she could smell his scent, as strange as that sounded to her, and it was unfamiliar. She had never come in contact with this man before. ‘
How do I even know that? What is going on with me?
’

“What’s your name?” she asked calmly.

“Marcus, and I’m an NYPD detective. Well, at least for now.”

“What do you mean,
for now
?” Selene asked, frowning at Marcus.

“It’s a long, complicated story.”

“Why don’t you try me?” she said, staring him down. “Believe me, the shit I’ve been through since Friday night would blow your mind.”

“Um, let me guess. You were walking home and got attacked by a strange man. You don’t know who or what he was, just that he bit you on the neck. You broke free and ran into the road, getting hit by a car. Then, the next thing you knew, you were in your apartment and had no idea whether what had happened really happened or not.”

“What the hell? How do you know all this?” She was freaking out.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have said all that so soon. Sometimes Marcus cursed his own big mouth. The look on her face and how she was acting, yep, he probably spoke to soon. He realized he was going to have to go into detail and explain what happened to her.

“Because my friends picked you up off the side of the road and took care of you before we brought you back to your apartment. Whoever hit you, apparently just kept driving.”

“People suck like that sometimes.” She was hurt. How could someone hit her with their car and just ignore the fact that she could be dead, or seriously injured and in need of help. Some people were assholes, no doubt about it.

“They sure do. I’m sorry for that; because they make the ones who try to do the right thing get looked over.”

“So, do you have any idea who that was who bit me?” She sounded so hopeful.

“No, I don’t know who it was.” He wished he did. He felt the need to know, especially since the werewolf who bit her was most likely the one responsible for the murder of Michael Jones.

“Well, do you know what he was at least? He sure didn’t seem human to me. I don’t know, this may sound crazy, but I’ve been feeling very different today, like I’ve changed somehow.”

“No, it doesn’t sound crazy.” Marcus didn’t want to get into all of this, not yet.

They walked in silence for a moment before Selene said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which question?” He played dumb. He was hoping she would drop the topic.

“Do you know what that thing was that bit me?” she asked again.

“Um, I don’t know if you’re ready for me to tell you that just yet.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She stopped walking and glared at him, her hands on her hips. She was growing impatient and irritated. Why couldn’t this man answer her question?

“I’ll just say this. There are things in this world that you don’t understand. Things you have no idea exist or even could exist. Things that would haunt your thoughts, day and night.”

“Well, I’ve got news for you. The memories of what happened to
me
Friday night are haunting me now. Not knowing what that creature was is killing me. Wouldn’t that bother you, too if you were in my place?”

He considered what she said, and yes, he knew how she felt. In fact, that was exactly how he felt when he was bitten. He wished there had been someone there to tell him what had happened. Someone to tell him not to worry and that it wasn’t the end of the world. With his mind made up, he faced her.

“He was a werewolf.”