Swallow the Moon (2 page)

That explained why the bike was for sale. Eric tore his eyes from the plaque to look at the covered motorcycle. He eased the tarp away from it.

The ‘Busa was a bike to die for.

"Hello, beautiful," Eric murmured.

She was curvaceous, fast and sexy. From the fanged cobra head painted on the fairing to the back fender, there was an intricate yellow, brown and white snake-scale pattern on every surface. The scaled pattern looked so real he had to touch it. His fingers expected warm, rough leather, but touched cool, sleek metal.

Airbrushed on the gas tank, the black-haired woman's sultry, poison-green eyes promised to fulfill his wildest desires. A chill fluttered across the back of his neck. Eric rubbed the feeling away. Something tickled his ear, he waved his hand. Must be a bug. He looked around, saw nothing. It came again, he ignored it.

He ran his fingers over the gas tank, touching the face of the fierce-looking woman. He traced the name: Cora Cobra.

Was that a scratch on the other side? He peered over the seat at the other side of the bike.

Pain lanced through his finger. Tiny beads of blood welled on his fingertip. He sucked his finger, tasting grit, ignoring the tiny wound.  

Those
were
scratches! Two steps brought him to the other side.

"Damn," Eric shook his head. "What happened to you, girl?"

The damage on the right side tore his gut like a physical blow. There were several long scratches on the plastic ground effects. The fairing and the side covers were covered with rusty smears of mud or blood.

It was blood. He just knew it was blood.

Creepy.

He took several pictures with his cell phone.  

"If you have any sense, you'll walk away from that bitch." The beautiful, sweat-clad blonde showed signs of a hard life that had aged her fast. He was disappointed she wasn’t the woman on the bike. It must have showed on his face.

"You expected Cora Cobra?" The sarcasm in her voice was un-mistakable. "Well, bucko, Cora is dead." She pointed an unlit cigarette at the bike. "All that’s left of her is right there."

"I'm Eric Macmillan; I came to look at the bike."

"Mary Patterson." She didn't offer to shake hands.

"There it is." Her face twisted into bitter lines. "If you want it, get it the hell out of my garage."

Not very friendly, Eric thought. Not much of a salesman either.

"If I didn’t need the money, I’d burn the evil bitch. She killed my husband."

"I’m sorry about your loss." It sounded lame, but it seemed to mollify her. "What happened?"

"He was gone for six months; he came back with that bike. He was supposed to keep a low profile, but he wouldn't get rid of it." She gave him a sharp, knowing look. "He took it out for a ride to Cleveland and missed a curve. He wasn't wearing a helmet." She shook her head and lit the cigarette.

"I want ten grand in cash," she said. "No checks, no money orders, just cash."

"That’s a lot of money for a scratched up bike."

"You’ll pay," she snickered. "I've seen that look before."

Yeah, Eric thought as he looked at the one-of-a-kind bike, golden and gleaming; he was going to buy it. Tension climbed up the back of his neck. Where was he going to get ten thousand on a Sunday afternoon?

"I need a couple days to get the money."

"Well, call me when you get it." The woman closed the door, dismissing him.

She might be grieving for her dead husband, but did she have to be bitchy about it?

He carefully covered the 'Busa.

Eric drove home, thinking of ways to raise the money. He could take out a signature loan or a bike loan. He got home, cracked open another beer before he sat down at the computer to bring up the pictures he'd taken of the bike.

Sweat broke from his forehead at the thought of owning that incredible machine. He could take her to bike shows. It was a complete departure from being a lab rat. The guys in the lab were going to absolutely shit themselves when they saw her.

He wanted a new start and Cora Cobra was it.

Beer didn't work fast enough to suit him. Eric reached for the nearly empty bottle of Tequila, poured the remainder in a glass. The dead worm floated to the bottom of the glass. Knocking it back in one long throw, worm and all, he shuddered as it hit his stomach like a body blow. A couple of hours later, he shut the computer down to get some sleep.

His dreams were troubled.

The woman, draped in sheer black veils, had her back to him as the thin keyboard music slowly swelled. Soft light on either side of her left her in shadow. She lifted her hands sensuously in time with the music. The soaring keyboard solo suddenly became a blasting bass riff. The lights came on with a snap. She danced with the bass, with the drums, the rhythms hard and fast in an acid-rock standard. The woman's feet kept time as her body writhed like a snake. The guitars roared. She dropped to the floor as the drums took over, ripping her veils off one by one, until she was all but naked at his feet. The music changed, the soft keyboards lifted with a back beat.

Her hands came up his calves, until she was on her knees in front of him. Her black hair covered her face, a coiled veil that revealed poison-green eyes. The music hit another crescendo – she threw her head back, revealing a beautifully chiseled face. She hissed at him, showing snakelike fangs. She swung her hair back over her face. Swaying to the music for a moment, she changed into a white snake. She reared, towering over him, mouth open, fangs dripping poison. Eric leapt back as the snake struck. He fell, screaming, as the snake sank her fangs into the meat of his thigh.

Eric woke up with a shout. He was wringing sweat and disoriented. The pain in his leg was sharp, stabbing. Whipping the sheet back, he found a raw, angry semi-circle on his thigh.

He'd had some crazy dreams in the last six months; that was one for the record books. He groaned as he clutched his aching head – it must have been the worm.

~^~

September 19
^th
, 2005 – Ashtabula, Ohio

June parked her car in the parking lot at seven-thirty a.m. on the dot. Walking towards the building, she ran her thumb along the worry stone in her pocket. The smooth alabaster soothed her frantic desire to escape this building and her bleak, boring job.

The small plant made plastic auto parts in an ever-shrinking market. It had been on the brink of closing for years, yet they limped on from month to month, barely keeping one step ahead of the bill collectors.

June made her way into the accounting department without a hitch and she fired up her computer. A glance at the clock confirmed she was twenty minutes early. The office was empty for another ten minutes; she had just enough time to check her eBay account.

When Aunt Lizzie died, June inherited the house and the uncounted boxes that filled the garage, attic and basement. Last spring, June started auctioning off odd items to pay her heating bill. Now, she was good at uploading pictures and checking email on the fly, using the company's fast internet connection. All she needed was a few minutes before anyone else came into the office.

Finally, thanks to Aunt Lizzie's packrat tendencies, June had a nice little nest egg.

That task taken care of, she attacked her inbox just as the others arrived. She shuffled through invoices, posting to various accounts. Eventually, she came to a couple of invoices that weren't right.

What was anhydrous ammonia and why did they need two 55-gallon drums of it? Then there was a shipment from Brazil. Cherry flooring? Why did they need cherry flooring?

She put the invoice on her clipboard and she went down to Receiving. The department was a hopeless mess and stank worse than the press room.

Tony Avon, who ran the receiving department, was a skinny, twitchy man with the worst case of bad breath she'd ever encountered. She hated running into him, so she went in the back way. There were cases and crates all over, without any discernible rhyme or reason. In spite of the clutter, she did find a few cases of flooring. Goddess knew where the rest went. She also found the two drums of anhydrous ammonia.

"What are you doing?"

Jerking upright, June shot a glance over her shoulder. Tony Avon stood behind her, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

"I'm checking invoices." Annoyed, June gave him a frosty look down her nose.

"Well?"

She tapped the drum with her pen.

"I need to know what this stuff is."

He gave her an insolent sweep with his eyes.

"Fertilizer for the lawn."

"Who ordered it?" June resisted the urge to grit her teeth.

"Mr. Phillips, I'd imagine." Tony shrugged. "I don't ask no questions. Maybe you shouldn't either." He gave her a narrow, threatening look as he hefted a box of flooring over his shoulder.

"It's my job." Her bravado was running out.

"There ain't nothing here that Phillips didn't order. That good enough for you?" He spat at her feet, making her jump back to save her shoes.

"I'll check with Mr. Phillips."

"Go ahead, it's your funeral."

June fled back to her desk. With shaking hands, she typed up an email, asking if Mr. Phillips knew about the order for anhydrous ammonia and cherry flooring.

It only took a minute for the reply. Tiffany McGovern, the General Manager's Assistant, always wore high-heeled shoes that made a loud clack-clack as she walked down the hallway. She ran the office with an iron fist and blood red talons.

A sinking feeling hit her stomach when June heard the unmistakable cadence of heels approach the accounting department. People peered over their cubicles to see who was in trouble this time. Tiffany stopped at June's cube.

"I saw that email you sent to Ryan." Tiffany used a polite voice, that didn't match her angry eyes.

"I'm supposed to check the invoices."

"You are not to bother Ryan with your silly little spats with Tony." Frost edged her words this time.

"What am I supposed to do with questionable invoices?" June replied in an equally frosty tone. "Just let the company's money float out the door?"

"Ryan's signature on it should be good enough for you." Tiffany drummed her long nails on the metal rim of June's cubicle.

"Since when do we make car parts with cherry flooring?" June looked down at the invoice. "Is somebody getting their house remodeled with company money?"

Tiffany gave her a flat stare.

"You're supposed to do your work. If you want to keep your job do
not
make any waves." Tiffany raised an eyebrow to put June in her place before pivoting on her heel. More heads popped over the top of the cubes as her heels clacked all the way back to the office.  

June gnashed her teeth. The place was mortgaged to the roof. Phillips took out short-term loans to make payroll. Using plant funds to buy things for himself was a new low. There were a hundred people dependent on the plant, people with families, who wouldn't get a job anywhere else. The way he mismanaged the plant was disgraceful.

June took her thumb drive out of her purse and scanned the invoices to a password protected file. If nothing else, her ass was covered if the shit hit the fan.

At lunch, June sat with Melissa from Sales. June did more listening than talking as Melissa gossiped about everyone, equally. Having her religion be the 'hot topic' of conversation didn't appeal to June; it was better to gossip about everyone else.

Tiffany came in the lunch room carrying an armload of slick, colorful catalogs, causing Melissa to stop in the middle of her latest tidbit of hot gossip.

"Here comes the pop tart," Melissa snickered. "Time to bribe the boss for a better evaluation. Aren't we lucky?"

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," June muttered. "Everyone can hear you."

"It isn't fair," Melissa said in a lower voice. "We have to buy over-priced junk to make his precious son top in sales just to keep our crappy jobs."

They watched Tiffany teeter on her four-inch heels from table to table, handing out brochures. Her artfully streaked hair was swept into a clip behind her head. As always, her cleavage was on display, leaving little to the imagination.

June sighed. Life wasn't fair. There was no proof that Phillips actually kept track of who bought and who didn't, but the rumor was prevalent. June didn't press her luck. She always spent more than she should, just in case.

Tiffany finished working the other tables and came to them. "The Church fund-raiser committee has really picked a great product this year. Look at this."

"Bath products?" Melissa flipped through the book.

"All hand made with organic ingredients." Tiffany smiled, showing off perfect pearly teeth and crimson lipstick. "Look, handmade soap, beeswax candles, all aromatherapy scented."

"Nine dollars for a bar of soap?" June gasped.

"Not just any soap." Tiffany pointed out. "That's goat's milk soap with organic oatmeal and lavender. Ryan ordered three bars."