Hi, everyone! Wow, just one more day until Halloween! Are you ready?  🙂

Time for our fourth installment of BAD MOON RISING. Today, the round robin author is talented Jess Granger (a real sweetheart of a lady).

(Part One by Cynthia Eden)

(Part Two by Shelli Stevens)

(Part Three by Juliana Stone)

BAD MOON RISING, PART 4

BY: JESS GRANGER

Karen raced down the strip, dodging through the bewildered pedestrians and drunk frat boys with long plastic tubes of neon colored drinks hanging around their necks.  A pair of Degatto’s thugs on sleek black bikes peeled out of one of the service entrances to the casino.

The engines roared as the lights from the strip reflected off the black visors covering their faces.

Damn it.

Karen switched direction, doubling back toward the casino.  The bikes couldn’t turn around for another block and it would give her time.  Ahead two more black clad morons ran out from the casino, wearing sunglasses at night.  Perfect.  What was it about frickin’ vampires and their sunglasses?  Honestly?

And why the hell was a werewolf mixed up with the bloodsuckers?  In the history of all things unnatural, that never happened.  Ever.

Karen took a deep breath and centered herself.  She still had a trick or two up her sleeve.  She just hated exposing herself on the Strip.

Unlike half the other drunks in the city.

“Degatto wants a word with you.”  One of the vamps held out his hands, and she could feel the power draw toward him, a rush like air being pulled into a tornado.

“Tell your boss, he’s going to have to do better than that.”  She let her true form blaze, shining as brightly as the sun.  The Vampires hissed, covering their faces like cheap leather-clad imitations of Bela Lugosi.

She smiled.  Someone had to put the fairy in fairy tales.  She transformed, shrinking into an insubstantial point of light, no more conspicuous than a firefly.  In the lights of Vegas, she was as good as invisible.  She floated above the Strip, drifting over the sound of the tourist’s applause.

Yeah, well, when she returned, she’d really put on a show.  It had been too long since someone imploded a casino on the Strip.

***

The stars above the desert stretched overhead as Karen trudged through the sage and twisted Joshua trees of the high desert.  The journey would have taken her maybe an hour and a half by car, but on foot, she’d been walking all night.  The first gray light of dawn nearly broke on the horizon.  There was only one place she could go.

Karen stumbled up the long gravel drive of a patched together little stucco house with a red tile roof and a scraggly cactus garden in the front.  She let her fairy light out, burning with the glow as she inspected the outside of the house.  Nothing seemed disturbed, except the fresh scuff of tire treads through the gravel.

A knot twisted deep inside Karen.  She rubbed the mark at her neck.

Had she killed him?

She shouldn’t have felt guilt.  She never felt guilt.  She was a physical embodiment of the light.  It was her duty to destroy the darkness, wasn’t it?

She couldn’t stop thinking about Jon’s eyes, the way he closed them in the grips of passion.  Passion for her.  There was no hiding it, no masking it.

Her fingertips trailed just beneath his mark, and she felt the slight touch shoot through her body, a white-hot lance of pleasure and pain that shimmered inside her as brightly as the light.

He couldn’t fake what she’d seen in his eyes.

Karen swallowed the lump in her throat and knocked on the scuffed up door.  “Is anyone home?” she choked out, her voice catching.  She tried to convince herself it was only the dust caught there, and not her clawing guilt.

Karen opened the door.  It was unlocked.

“Hello?”  She gripped her knife, easing into the familiar living room.  The worn rust-orange shag caught on the heel of her boot.  After forty years, it was about time to redecorate.  Something stirred in the back.

Karen crept down the hall, the faded pictures of a lifetime of memories closed in on either side of the narrow passage.

“Grandma, is that you?”  Apprehension slithered up her spine as she pushed open the door to her Grandma’s bedroom.

A pair of glowing green eyes stared at her in malice.

Her heart leapt, relief coursing through her blood before she fought the annoying sensation with every ticked off bone in her body.  “Why wolf, what big eyes you have.”

He huffed as he struggled to raise himself on an elbow.  His chest had been neatly bandaged.  “I’d love to say I’m happy to see you too, angel face, but under the circumstances…”  He pulled out his piece and aimed it between her eyes.

“What did you do to Grandma?”  She gripped the knife tighter, ready to throw it at his heart should the need arise.

“Well, I didn’t eat her, if that’s what you’re implying.”  He gave her a wolfish grin as his burning gaze drifted down her body.

“Enough, both of you!” The iron-like voice of Grandma Harvey shot through the dark. Karen jumped and wheeled around to face the awesome power of the elder fairy.  “You’ve both screwed this up bad enough as is.”

***

Before you head out trick-or-treating tomorrow, be sure to come back by to read the story’s conclusion! My Brava buddy Rebecca Zanetti will give us an ending you won’t soon forget!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2010 at 6:02 am and is filed under Romance. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.