Dark Vessel: An Urban Fantasy Series (Meredith Bale Book 3)

by DC Malone

  Which reminded me.

  “You want a drink or something? I think I have some peach schnapps around here that may or may not have been here when I moved in.”

  “Nah, I’m not a schnapps kind of guy.”

  “No one is, Carter. That’s the point of peach schnapps. The taste is part of the challenge.”

  He laughed. “I’ll have to take a raincheck, then. I really do have to be somewhere.”

  “Work related?”

  “Yeah, work.”

  “Well, look on the bright side. At least it’s not demons this time.”

  “A definite plus.”

  “And I’m guessing you’re going to walk in the opposite direction if another case like that falls in your lap.”

  Carter shrugged, and a sheepish expression flashed across his face. It made him look like a teenager.

  “Wait, why are you here again?”

  “Um, well.” Carter tugged at the corner of his hat, causing a small torrent of rainwater to spill down to the floor. “Do you happen to know anything about poltergeists?”

  Keep reading for the opening scenes of:

  Stolen Moon

  Meredith Bale Mysteries Book Four

  Chapter 1

  It was starting to look like one of those nights.

  The air was cold and held the metallic scent of snow or sleet or some sullen combination of the two that would inevitably coat everything in a brittle crust of white. It wasn’t just cold cold, either. It was that spiteful kind of chill that could only creep into the late night or early morning air. The kind that burned the sinuses with every breath and sent little spikes of pain into the chest.

  Some kinds of weather seem to have emotions or, at least, a kind of innate personality to them. Most are easy to read. Storms can be angry. Rain is sad or melancholy. And a bright sunny day is—well, you get the point.

  But the weather tonight was cruel. Not the mother nature doesn’t care if you live or die kind of cruel, either. It was malicious with intent. Its knife-blade gusts of wind hammered at me just long enough to get me to turn away, pulling my leather jacket as tight to my frame as possible, only to immediately swirl back from the opposite direction and start in again. That weather was alive. And it hated my guts.

  It was also the kind of weather that made a woman question her life choices.

  Specifically, the life choices that led her to be perched beneath a lone tree on the edge of a shadowy expanse of empty field at almost four in the morning. In the subarctic cold. With a hangover.

  Alright, the hangover was my fault, but the rest was just mean-spirited happenstance.

  Even the promised full moon didn’t do anything to relieve the murk and gloom of the grim night. In theory, I knew it was up there shining somewhere in its full silvery glory. But the roiling purple and black clouds left it a dull smudge of bruised light that did almost nothing for visibility and actually managed to make the night sky seem lower and more claustrophobic.

  But it wasn’t the time for regrets or vivid fantasies of switching lines of work and starting a cozy—and extremely well-heated—bookstore in some sleepy part of the city where everyone was friendly—or, at least, not downright hostile—and silly things like profits and expenses didn’t matter a whit.

  No, now was not the time for any of that.

  I was on a case.

  A real case. One sanctioned by the Congregation, with a promised bonus to pay upon completion, no less. And even more startling, no one had been murdered.

  Yet.

  At the end of the day, I suppose that was the entire point of the case, really. As usual, information and case details had only been delivered in bullet point—be here, do this, use this. But it was better than the typical half-truths and outright silence that was the usual for the Congregation.

  Plus, it was a straightforward case for once. Boiled down, all I had to do was find and retrieve a young woman. A sort of missing persons case, except the woman wasn’t really missing any longer.

  And she was a werewolf.

  But I wasn’t going to hold that against her. We all have our issues.

  Shannon Hadley was my missing werewolf girl’s name. The reason she was missing, I had been informed, was need to know. And, apparently, I didn’t. The same was true for why my best shot at her recovery was to stake out some random field on the outskirts of the city. I hadn’t even bothered to press for more details. I’d grown used to the Congregation’s clandestine ways—my working theory was that it made the bunch of old fogies who made up the group feel like they were a part of some kind of intelligence organization from the spy movies. It didn’t concern me how they got their kicks. I had a job to do.

  I shifted my weight to my other leg and squinted into the darkness, scanning the field of stunted brown grass for probably the hundredth time since I’d gotten there more than an hour ago. The result was the same as all the other times—a whole lot of nothing.

  I considered whipping my phone out to double-check the location but decided on patience instead. My instructions, delivered yesterday afternoon by a dour-faced older lady with a robotic voice, were fairly clear on one point. I was not to draw attention to myself until I was certain of my quarry’s exact position. So, no flashlights or phone screens until I had eyes on the little she-wolf. Apparently, werewolves were a volatile bunch, prone to violence and anger, and it wasn’t in my best interests to put a target on my chest until I had time to prepare.

  That part made a lot of sense.

  I was still a little fuzzy on the prepare part of the whole ordeal.

  I pulled the object I was given out of my jacket pocket and turned it over in my palm, letting the little moonlight that was available glint across the thing’s glossy surface. It was a pink plastic telephone for a child. It was quite a bit larger than any modern cellphone, looking more like one of those old cordless outfits from the late nineties than anything anyone had used in the last decade or so.

  “This better not be a cruel joke.” I muttered my words to the tree, as it was still my only companion.

  The toy phone was to serve as a talisman. That was my contact’s word for it, not mine. I was assured that the toy held a special significance for my lycanthropic target, and that, even in her altered mental state, she would recognize it and understand I was someone she could trust.

  And hopefully not eat.

  A shrill howl suddenly split the night air like a particularly aggressive air raid siren. It was loud and incredibly close, and it seemed to go on forever. After more than an hour of almost complete silence, the unexpected wail sent my adrenaline into overdrive, making me want to jump right out of my skin.

  Instead, I crouched lower and scanned the dark field for any signs of motion, squeezing the toy telephone in a death grip that caused the old plastic to groan and pop under the pressure.

  I strained my eyes until they began to blur with stinging tears in the frigid breeze. Nothing. There wasn’t anything moving out there. The highest patches of weeds were barely up to my knees, and even they were as still as stone, which was rather peculiar, given the wind's fondness for trying to freeze me to death.

  The howl came again. This time it was so loud it seemed to be coming from right on top of me.

  I spun in place, not wanting to leave any side unmonitored for more than a second or two. After about thirty seconds, my only reward was a bad case of the dizzies.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, turning back in the opposite direction. “An invisible werewolf?”

  No response and no more howling.

  I stopped turning and trained my eyes and ears back on the field before me. A cold night like this could do strange things with sounds. Maybe I had misjudged the distance. At least, I knew I had the right area.

  I crouched down again and leaned my back against the tree trunk, thinking it might at least provide some protection in that direction.

  I saw it the moment I started to move. Just a flash of movement at the extreme edge
of my vision. Something darker than my already dark surroundings. In the split second it took for my brain to try to convince me it was only a trick of the lighting, the blur grew larger. Much larger. And insanely fast.

  There was only enough time for me to turn my head in the thing’s general direction. I saw a flash of dark fur and understood it was moving on all fours and low to the ground.

  And then it hit me like a missile.

  There was a guttural growl and bright pain shot through my chest, but neither of those things had my full attention. I was literally airborne, watching my friendly tree companion grow ever more distant as I shot several yards in the opposite direction. I briefly considered waving my farewells, but one of my hands was still occupied with the toy phone and the other arm was clutched to my middle, bracing for the hard earth that was undoubtedly rushing up to greet me from behind.

  And greet me it did. But it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The ground was soft from the previous night’s rain, and I hit it at a low angle. Still, the impact was enough to rudely push the air from my lungs in a single, burning whoosh.

  I coughed and sucked a shuttering breath. That was the only action I had time for before the dark figure swept down over me.

  I had never seen a werewolf before, but television and movies had given me a pretty good idea of what I figured to encounter on my manhunt. And that image wasn’t all that far off. Shannon, in wolf form, stared down at me with yellow-gold eyes that seemed to glow like twin embers. There was an animal’s ferocity in those eyes, but there was a wary, human’s shrewdness there, too, and that made them even more terrifying.

  She had been on all fours when she first attacked, but now she stood over me on two legs, her shaggy, squat body leaning heavily forward like it longed to be back down in its natural stance. Her fur was dark gray, slightly lighter in the area of the belly and chest, and looked coarse and thick like roughed-up steel wool.

  There was nothing in the creature’s appearance that I could have pointed to that looked vaguely human or even female. Visually, she was an animal through and through. She stood like no wolf ever had, but there was no mistaking what she was. Her angular muzzle was blunter and wider than a real wolf’s, but as her mouth peeled slowly open, the rows of finger-long fangs glistening inside would have been at home in the mouth of any apex predator.

  Shannon let out a low growl as she stalked closer.

  For a moment, I only gaped at the beast. Then my senses slowly trickled back in. “Shannon? I’m Meredith. I’m here to, uh…” I didn’t know exactly what I was doing for her. Rescue her? Arrest her? Kidnap her? An old lady from the Congregation had given me a toy and pointed to a field. For all I knew, Shannon Hadley had no desire to be retrieved.

  That word would work. “Shannon, I’m here to retrieve you. For the Congregation…” I remembered the toy phone and thrust it up toward the half-snarling wolf-girl. When I did so, I had a vivid vision of her stooping down and snatching it with her dinnerplate-sized maw. Hand and all.

  Instead, she froze in place, her golden eyes latching onto the toy with a sudden intensity. She continued to stare down at the object like she was mesmerized by it.

  “That’s right,” I cooed. “See the shiny toy? That means I’m a friend.” I realized at that moment that I had no idea what she was supposed to do now. I’d sort of been hoping she would shift back into her human form, but for all I knew, that wasn’t even something she was in control of. So, what then? I was supposed to lead a werewolf back into the city with a plastic toy like the Pied Piper luring a bunch of snakes with his flute?

  “Serves you right for not thinking things through,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Mine.” The werewolf’s voice came out as a brutal and guttural imitation of a human’s. Even so, it sounded dreamy and far away.

  “Oh, you can talk.” For some reason, I was more surprised by that than anything else that had happened so far that night. I’d just assumed werewolves couldn’t speak.

  “Mine,” Shannon repeated in a voice that had grown in strength.

  “It sure is,” I said gently. “And if you follow me, I’ll give it back to you.”

  She cocked her head to one side. It gave her the universally quizzical look of a dog who had just heard an interesting sound.

  “That’s right. Just—”

  It happened again. Only faster and more violently. A dark, shaggy form blurred in from out of nowhere. It moved even faster than Shannon had and was at least twice as large.

  The new werewolf paused for only a second, staring first down at me with its pale silver eyes, then fixing its gaze on Shannon. Where Shannon had been a fearsome sight to behold, the new guy was downright awe-inspiring. At least ten feet tall and probably half as broad. Even through its thick fur, I could see boulder-like muscles ripple.

  Shannon reluctantly tore her eyes from the phone in my hand and turned just in time to see the much larger werewolf descend upon her.

  There was no fight. No struggle. No anything. There simply wasn’t time for it. The huge werewolf snatched Shannon from the ground with one impossibly large arm, then blurred off into the black depths of the night, not even bothering to cast a glance back down at me.

  Shannon only had time to offer a small yelp of surprise.

  About DC Malone

  DC Malone lives in a world filled with specters, vampires, and all the many other others that populate the fantastical vistas of imagination.

  When DC surfaces from the world of fantasy, it is to resume the cozy life in a tiny Midwest town with a family of furry critters, both of the feline and canine varieties.

  Other Books by DC Malone

  Meredith Bale Mysteries

  Grave Robber

  Tainted Blood

  Dark Vessel

  Stolen Moon