Night Creatures Short Stories

  Table of Contents

  Shadow of the Moon

  Boxen Moon

  Charmed by the Moon

  Red Moon Rising

  *

  SHADOW OF THE MOON

  a Nightcreature Short Story

  Lori Handeland

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 Lori Handeland

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  ***

  As a child I didn’t believe in the bogeyman. There was no monster in the closet. No dragon under the bed. When I was twenty-six I learned differently. The bogeyman was real. The monsters popped up in my own backyard. I haven’t seen a dragon yet, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.

  I was just a small town cop, doing my job—a little bored, a little lonely. Then the wolves went berserk and the people did, too. Once the dust settled, and I figured out who was good, who was bad and who was a psychotically evil werewolf, I was no longer Officer Jessie McQuade but a Jager-Sucher.

  My whole world changed, in more ways than one. I swapped the relative safety of cop-hood in small town Miniwa, Wisconsin for extreme danger as a member of a secret group of government funded operatives. The trade-off was sleeping with Will Cadotte. The man was a sex god.

  Oh, not literally. But in my new world, you never know. As I had to kill my best friend after she turned into a wolf god, it isn’t too much of a stretch that my boyfriend could be an actual sex god. Stranger things have happened in the past few months. You don’t believe me, watch a person turn into a wolf and back again, then we’ll talk.

  After the wolf god incident, Will and I became Jager-Suchers, or Hunter-Searchers. I was the hunter, while Will was more the searcher. Though he was accomplished in tai chi and had kicked my ass on occasion, when it came time to kill things, he usually left that to me.

  Late one night, not long after the previously mentioned incident the doorbell rang. I was uneasy. My mother always said that nothing good happened after midnight. Lately, nothing good happened after sundown.

  I retrieved my weapon and checked the load—silver from this point forward. Once I’d taken a quick peep through the peephole, I opened the door.

  “Jessie.” The leader of the Jager-Suchers, Edward Mandenauer, stepped inside without being invited. “We must talk.”

  Will was asleep. He wasn’t a night person. However I’d been working third shift throughout my career as a cop, which worked out well now that I’d taken to hunting werewolves. They tended to come out under the moon and run around until the sun came back. Go figure.

  “Now?” I asked, and followed him down the hall into my living room.

  The lines in his face deepened on a frown. “What is wrong with now?”

  “Besides it being … “ I glanced at my watch. “One in the morning?”

  “Monsters do not care about the time.”

  “I bet they don’t. However I have a life.”

  He stared down his long, bony nose at me. This didn’t happen often, since I was a solid five-ten. But Mandenauer topped out at over six feet of tough, skeletal old man. He’d spent his youth in Nazi Germany, spying for the good guys, which was how he’d discovered the monsters.

  “Any life you have, you must give up to serve me.”

  “Not likely, pal. I work for you. I live for Will.”

  It felt strange to say that. Me, who’d never had a boyfriend. Dates? Sure. Relationships? Never. And to have a relationship, a life, with Will … I was still getting used to the concept, still waiting for him to wake up one morning, look at me and wonder: What in hell was I thinking?

  “Spare me the nonsense,” Mandenauer said. “I allow you to work together because—“

  “We’re stronger together than apart.”

  Will stood in bedroom doorway. My throat went tight just looking at him.

  Short, black hair all tousled, his equally dark eyes were still heavy with sleep. He’d yanked on his jeans but left the button open; the buttons on his shirt were open too, revealing his honed and toned chest.

  He was the same bronze shade all over. I’d looked. Will liked to walk around at his place—several acres in the north woods outside of town—completely nude. He says it’s an Ojibwe thing. Did I mention he’s a member of the wolf clan? One of the reasons Edward shot him, but let’s not get into that.

  The combination of beauty, grace and his great big … brain— How was a girl supposed to think when a guy looked like that?

  Will gave me a lazy smile and strolled over to join me. As soon as he was close enough, he took my hand. He was very touchy-feely. For a girl whose dad had taken off before she’d known what the word “father” meant and whose mom’s idea of affection was not telling her daughter she was an unfeminine embarrassment for one whole day, Will’s openness had been more of a puzzlement than a revelation.

  “Why are you here, Edward?” Will was very good at getting to the point. He was also one of the few people who’d dared to call our boss Edward right out of the gate and get away with it.

  “We have a problem.”

  “We meaning Jessie, me and you? Or we the Jager-Suchers?”

  “We in the universal sense. Humankind may be in dire trouble.”

  “Isn’t it always?” I asked. “Foil the werewolves, save the world. That should be our motto.”

  Except mottos aren’t too common in the secret agency biz.

  “I do not have time for your humor, Jessie.”

  I guess that meant I should lay off the sarcasm. But then what would I have to say?

  “I had a call from headquarters,” Mandenauer continued. “I need the two of you to pack your things. And he—“ Mandenauer waved his hand vaguely in Will’s direction. “Should bring his computer.”

  “He has a name,” I said.

  Though Will had no trouble calling Edward … Edward, the old man couldn’t seem to get his tight lips around the word Will. I wasn’t sure if that was because Mandenauer really didn’t like him, or because he didn’t know how to be anything other than cranky.

  I suspect having your world turned upside down when you were still a young man wasn’t easy. Devoting your life to killing the monsters Hitler had ordered his insane pal Mengele to make meant Edward had been on the hunt for over sixty years. I didn’t know if he’d ever been married; the idea of him dating was scary enough.

  Mandenauer grunted but didn’t bother to apologize, and Will didn’t seem to care. He was the least likely person to take offense I’d ever met, which I guess was a good thing considering how annoying I could be. There were also a lot of people in small towns all over the north who didn’t much care for Indians, and weren’t shy about saying so. It didn’t take fur, claws and teeth to make some folks into monsters.

  Will went into the bedroom and returned with his laptop. Then he sat at the table, booted up the computer and started searching for his glasses.

  “Here.” I snatched them off the end table where he’d left them earlier.

  Will was forever misplacing the things, sometimes right on top of his head. I don’t know why I found that absentminded professor stuff both sexy and endearing. The combination of that face, the body and his wire rimmed glasses … Let’s just say I asked him to wear those glasses a lot.

  Glasses and nothing else.<
br />
  “Where, when and what?” Will’s long clever fingers skated over the keyboard.

  “The village is called Riverview,” Edward continued. “For the past several months citizens have been going insane at an alarming rate.”

  “When you say insane … “ I let my voice trail off. In our world, insane covered a whole lot of a territory.

  There were those who believed they were werewolves and those who actually were. Both were nuts, but the latter had enough supernatural power to cause major death and destruction, not to mention turn normal, everyday nice people into murdering evil beasts.

  And that was only the werewolves. According to Edward, there were a whole host of other things out there we didn’t even know about yet.

  “In this case,” Mandenauer answered, “I am talking about normal insanity.”

  “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” Will murmured, still staring at his computer.

  Edward ignored him. “The afflicted degenerate into gibbering fools. Nothing medical science has at its disposal will stop them.”

  Will glanced up from the screen. “Has medical science been able to determine what sent them over the edge?”

  Edward shook his head. “They have tested the air, the water, the soil, the very buildings in which they live and the food that they eat.”

  Will frowned and went back to his computer.

  “I understand why this is a concern,” I said, “but why is it our concern?”

  Mandenauer’s influence was far-flung. Having the U.S. government behind him, albeit secretly, meant he not only had access to a lot of resources but also to a lot of funding. His spidery webs reached all over the place. Every odd report was tagged and sent to Jager-Sucher headquarters in Montana, where Edward’s right hand woman, Elise, would dispatch agents to check out what was happening and, if necessary, eliminate it.

  “I can’t find anything on the internet about this,” Will murmured.

  “Do you think I would let it become common knowledge?”

  Not only was Edward sent any odd report, but he possessed the resources to squash the information. All we needed was for a town to be taken over by werewolves and have the media show up. This would not only generate a panic but some very nasty news reporters.

  Come to think of it, maybe Edward had slipped up a time or two already.

  “What is it about Riverview that rated a notice being sent to headquarters?” I asked.

  Edward gave a nod of approval at my question that would have had me preening, if I was the type to preen.

  “Though the insane gibber madly, there is one word that makes sense.” Edward glanced from me to Will and back again before continuing. “Boxenwolf.”

  He said the word with a German twist. I still knew what it meant. “Werewolf.”

  “Ja.”

  Considering a great portion of the population in Wisconsin was of German extraction, I didn’t find it surprising that the term boxenwolf might be bandied about. But by those who’d lost their minds, and all in the same town … That begged a few more questions.

  “Has anyone gotten up and walked out of the morgue after a horrific and bloody death? Torn out a few throats, drank some blood, started baying at the full moon through their brand new snout?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You said this has been going on for months.”

  Mandenauer dipped his chin. “Several full moons have come and gone, but none of the afflicted have become a demon werewolf.”

  Though a lot of werewolf lore was B.S., that stuff about shifting beneath the full moon was not.

  “Perhaps the gibbering people only saw a werewolf, they weren’t turned into one,” Will suggested.

  I’d seen plenty of werewolves; sure they were scary, especially when they gazed at you with the eyes of someone you knew, someone you loved. But just seeing them shouldn’t turn a normal human being into an insane inmate of a little white room.

  “The two of you must go to Riverview and discover what is happening,” Edward said.

  “And when we do?”

  His faded blue eyes met mine; not a spec of emotion shone through. “Need you ask?”

  Not really. The rules of Edward’s world, and now my own, were simple.

  Monsters are shot with silver. Human beings are not.

  Determine which is which before shooting.

  *

  Riverview was a three-hour drive northeast from Miniwa, which put us very close to Upper Michigan.

  What Edward had referred to as a village was, in reality, a town the size of Miniwa, maybe a little larger, which made it a decent-sized town. To sport a psychiatric facility with enough rooms to accommodate over half the residents it would have to be.

  We’d been told to go straight to the clinic, and it wasn’t hard to find. On a ridge at the center, Riverview Psychiatric dominated the town.

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about the homicidally crazy wandering into the maternity ward,” I murmured.

  A load off my mind. I hated it when the beasties got too close to small, helpless things. Nothing ever went very well after that.

  But while I was glad the facility was psych only, I also found it odd such a hospital existed way out in the wilderness. Before the sudden outbreak of the crazies, who had inhabited all those beds?

  The building was surrounded by thickset evergreens, not unusual in this part of the country. Smaller towns were often the remnants of lumber camps, which had sprung up in the middle of mammoth forests.

  Such forests were where the wolves lived, and because of that isolation oftentimes no one noticed the beasts were becoming more numerous, more aggressive and a helluva lot smarter until it was too late.

  The parking lot was full of cars, but there was no one at the reception desk to greet us. Weird. Places like this always had a receptionist, if not a security guard or two.

  “Hello?” Will called.

  No one answered.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “A little help here?”

  Still nothing.

  We frowned at each other, and I jerked my chin to the right, indicating Will should go one way. I went the other.

  Only empty offices lay down my corridor. I guess that made sense. The patients wouldn’t be easily accessible to anyone walking in off the street. Like me. They also shouldn’t be able to walk out the front entrance, just by walking a few feet down the hall, although I was starting to wonder if they had.

  I glanced at Will. He’d reached the end of his corridor. He lifted his hands then lowered them. Nothing on his side either. We met again at the receptionist desk.

  “What do you think?” I peered at the glass door straight ahead.

  The entrance held a huge lock that appeared to need both a key card and a code to open. The glass was tinted. We couldn’t see anything in there. I wondered if they could see us out here. If they were even in there at all.

  “Doesn’t hurt to try.” Will skirted the reception desk and bent over, squinting at the security box. Apparently he’d left his glasses in the car. “I can probably figure this out.” He straightened. “I’ll need my computer.”

  “How about I just break the glass.”

  He tapped his knuckle against it. “Appears a little bulletproof.”

  “Why on earth would they have tinted, bulletproof glass for a clinic in Tiny Town, USA?”

  “I have a feeling they don’t want what’s on the other side to get out.”

  “Or maybe they don’t want any of us to get in.” My fingers itched. “That just makes me want to.”

  Will grinned. “One of the things I love about you,” he said, then ran a hand over my short, non-descript hair—neither blond nor brown but something in between

  “Uh, yeah.” I still wasn’t used to his easy and numerous declarations of love. Maybe someday I would be, but I’d never been loved before, and I knew instinctively I never would be again in the way that Will loved me.

  Utterly. Completely. No matter what. For alway
s.

  “Why don’t you get your computer? I’ll wait here.”

  Leaning over, he brushed his lips across mine. In our business, we never knew when simple chores, such as retrieving a computer from the car, might separate us forever.

  He didn’t bother saying be right back. We tried not to make promises we weren’t sure we could keep.

  With Will gone I got antsy. I’d never been very good at waiting, was even less adept at keeping my hands to myself. I searched the papers on the desk and found nothing interesting—schedules, insurance info, not a word about boxenwolves anywhere. A tap on the computer keyboard did not bring the screen to life. I would leave that for Will.

  Wandering back to the tinted glass door, I shrugged and tried the knob. It twisted.

  “Uh-oh.” I set my free hand on my gun.

  “What are you doing?”

  I jumped then scowled at Will. “What did I tell you about sneaking up on me? Make noise like a normal person would.”

  “Normal white person. Indians move like the wind.”

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue, because he did. “We forgot the first rule of breaking and entering.”

  “Which is?”

  “Try the knob first.” I pushed, and the door swung open.

  The corridor beyond was brilliantly white and glaringly empty. Every door gaped wide. I didn’t like it, but I took a deep breath, drew my weapon—who knows how fast whatever we might encounter could move—and said, “Let’s go.”

  Will set his computer under the receptionist’s desk and followed. He left his weapon in its holster. He’d never been very good with it. Will Cadotte was much better at hand-to-hand.

  As we moved down the corridor, every room not only appeared empty but, upon further checking, was empty.

  “Maybe everyone got better,” Will murmured.

  “Then where are the doctors, the nurses, the janitors? Whose cars are those in the lot?”

  “Got me.”

  I liked this place less and less the longer we were there. Each room had been lived in, if you could call being incarcerated in the equivalent of a padded room “living.”

  I pointed to the camera in the corner of the hallway. “There has to be a security office somewhere.” The red light was on. Tape was rolling.