by Tess Grant
Cold Moon
The Full Moon Trilogy-Book 2
By Tess Grant
Digital ISBNs
EPUB 978-1-77362-517-1
Kindle 978-1-77362-518-8
WEB 978-1-77362-519-5
Print ISBN 978-1-77362-520-1
Amazon Print ISBN 978-1-77362-521-8
Copyright 2017 by Tess Grant
Cover Art by Michelle Lee
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Chapter One
Kitty set Phinney’s cabin on fire with his own Zippo. The battered lighter flared up on the first try, and she held it to the hem of the curtains. The fire caught, licking its way up the faded red and white plaid, growing as it went. It fed on the cooking oil Kitty had soaked into the threadbare cotton. Already, the heat made her cheeks tingle. She had to get out fast. The old cabin was as dry as sun-baked driftwood. Once the flames hit the wooden window frame and walls, things would get dicey. She scanned the countertops. Nothing out of place, nothing incriminating.
Phinney’s dented hot plate sat near the window, power switch flicked to on. Hopefully, anybody investigating the fire would assume the old man had forgotten to turn it off. That happened, didn’t it? Somebody left a pot on the stove or forgot to turn the oven off? It showed up all the time on TV, which meant it probably never happened at all. Still, it was all she had. He’d said burn the place, and she was going to.
Grabbing the plastic bottle of canola from the counter, Kitty started for the door, splashing the oil behind her as she went. Once the house heated up, the liquid would act as an accelerant. The two rickety kitchen chairs still lay tipped over near the window. Phinney’s chair had flown backward as he morphed into a werewolf and launched himself at her. Her own had been driven over by her reflex attempt to get away.
She grabbed the straps of the duffle bag and hauled it toward the porch. Even half full, it was still heavy. The hike into the woods to hide it would seem a lot longer with the extra weight on her back. Her skin prickled with the growing heat, and there was a soft whump as the flames grew exponentially. But those chairs bothered her. If the fire went out immediately after she left, which she doubted very much but say it did, those chairs made it look like something violent had happened in that corner. They didn’t fit the scene of an old man forgetting to shut off his hot
plate after making supper.
Kitty lugged the olive green bag closer to the steps. Those chairs. Gritting her teeth in frustration, she dropped the duffle and swung around. He said do it smart. That didn’t mean leaving kitchen chairs tipped over in the living room like a cyclone had gone through. She sucked in a deep breath of the night air and pushed her head in. Why hadn’t she moved them before she started the fire? Pulling her T-shirt up over her mouth and nose, she slipped into the room, keeping close to the outside wall. A glint of silver on the floor between the legs of the chair closest to the door caught her eye.
Phinney’s flask.
The flames were spreading faster than she’d thought, and the whole kitchen blazed. It had been stupid to come back inside. There was no way she’d be able to put the chairs right. The heat stung her skin even this far away. Forget the chairs, she thought, and started to turn away. But the flask? Images of Phinney whipped through her head—on the porch in his shellback chair, leaning against a tree in their safe zone, hovering over the maps spread out on the kitchen table. The flask showed up in every picture. She couldn’t bear to leave it. It would be a talisman to protect her—something to keep her sane when the hard memories came.
Her eyes watered and stung from the smoke, and she squinted into the flickering light. Reaching out a hand, she dove toward the container on the floor.
And missed.
The tips of her fingers grazed it. Kitty could feel it, smooth and hard, right before the force of her impact sent it skittering under the couch. Smoke hung thick in the air, and she could barely open her eyes. She needed to get out. Doing it smart meant not dying alongside him.
On hands and knees, she crawled back toward the door, a dark rectangle in the smoke. The night air hit her aching lungs like a balm. She pushed blindly ahead, eyes watering with pain. Her outstretched hand hit the duffle and she shoved, feeling it tip and topple down the stairs in front of her. She slid down the stairs on her belly, landing face first against the rough cloth of the bag. Here, six feet below the flames, the air felt cool against her skin, and she sucked in long breaths. A sharp crack of breaking wood from inside the cabin brought her to her senses. She could just as easily die here if she didn’t move.
Scrambling onto her knees, Kitty pulled the straps of the Army-issue duffle over her shoulders. The breath huffed out of her. How could two guns, bullet-making equipment, and some paperwork weigh this much? She wrapped a hand around the base of the stair railing and pulled herself to her feet.
The moon silvered the entire meadow, and between that and the orange cast of the flames, the field lit up like it was mid-day. Her feet found the path and she trudged head down toward the trees.
She stopped at the tree line, the place she always paused to look up at the cabin when coming through the woods. Turning, she faced the building on the knoll. The windows glowed brilliant, then pale as the flames leapt up and fell back. Smoke boiled out near the eaves in phantasmic gray waves.
Phinney wasn’t in there. He’d slipped through her hands, a fine dust whirled away on the night air. It had all happened so fast. She’d tried to hold him and he’d slipped away before she’d even had time to say the words.
“Goodbye.” Her voice rasped up her smoke-irritated throat, so quiet she barely heard it. She tried again. “Goodbye, Phinney.” That was better. It pushed out into the dark—maybe even loud enough that he heard it—wherever it was he’d melted away to. She raised her hand to her head. He deserved it, didn’t he?
Kitty Irish saluted Sergeant Daniel Phinney.
Facing back toward the woods, she tried to sort out her situation. Right now, she had to figure out what to do with this duffle. Phinney had said to bury it, but that was when they had both thought he was the last werewolf. The fact that he’d withered away into dust—that and the howling scream outside the door after the old man was gone—proved he wasn’t.
Put it in her room? In the barn? The trunk of the car? Kitty couldn’t think, couldn’t focus beyond moving her feet one step at a time. She swung the duffle from her shoulders. The .45 had slid to the bottom and she pawed through the plastic-wrapped contents to find it. A fat manila envelope sat near the top with Phinney’s block handwriting on it, “IN CASE YOU NEED IT.”
Maybe she wouldn’t. In her memory, the wolf outside Phinney’s cabin howled again. She thrust the sound along with the envelope aside. It was possible—wasn’t it?—that she wouldn’t need it.
Her hand brushed against the rough grip of the handgun, and she pulled it out. Experience told her that it was too far past midnight, that the werewolves would be moving out of the woods, changing back to their human skins, but it wouldn’t hurt to have it along. Zipping the bag shut, she hoisted it up on her back and started for the place where Phinney had told her to bury the equipment.
Kitty had reached the clearing in the woods with the granite outcropping when she heard the thin screech. It spiraled upward and for a heartbeat she thought it was the scream of a wolf. But then it settled into a pulsing rhythm and she recognized it. Sirens. Somebody must have seen the light of the flames and called the fire departm
ent.
The rock outcropping lay in front of her, and Kitty planted her hand against it, trying to draw some strength out of the rough surface. Phinney had saved her life here at the beginning of the summer. The entrenching tool—another of the veteran’s World War II relics—lay where he’d said it would be, tucked up near the base of the stone.
Kitty backed away a few steps and dropped the duffle off her shoulders where it landed with a thump. Placing the .45 on top of the bag, she picked up the tiny folded shovel and moved in closer to the rock, scraping at the mulch, trying to expose enough dirt to dig. The tip of the shovel snagged on something under a pile of leaves and she knelt down to examine it. A canvas tarp rolled into a tight shroud was half buried in the ground, half covered with deadfall. It contained the punji sticks—silver-tipped spears Phinney had made for extra protection from the werewolves. So he’d thought of that too. She covered it over again and backed up a few steps to find room to bury the bag.
Checking her watch, she saw it was already close to two. She needed to hurry but it wasn’t because of the werewolves. They wouldn’t be out prowling for another month. She needed to get home.
The dirt next to the rock was crisscrossed with roots and packed with smaller rocks. No wonder Phinney had only half-dug the punji sticks in. Sweat started trickling down the back of Kitty’s neck within minutes. She pried at a rock with the tip of the crappy little shovel. “I’m not digging some foxhole in France. Couldn’t you have picked a better spot?”
She quit griping after only a few minutes. It took too much energy. She needed everything going to her mouth rerouted to her arms and back. The hole got deeper by fractions.
Kitty smelled it when she was almost through digging the hole. For the last fifteen minutes, she’d breathed in only the rich earth smell of newly turned dirt, the smoke on her clothes, and the sweat she’d raised shoveling. Now, the stench of decaying meat filled her nostrils and she gagged.
Only one thing had a smell like that.
She spun around, pressing her back against the rock, raising the entrenching tool.
A huge werewolf stood in the middle of the clearing, watching her. Time slowed as she waited for it to charge. In the moonlight, a sickle-shaped patch of white fur arching above its left eye nearly glowed. Its lips pulled back over long curved fangs and the razor-sharp edges glinted.
Kitty tightened her grip on the entrenching tool. Phinney tipped everything with silver, but she didn’t think he’d done the shovel. Slacker. Rust was the only thing on the blade now. She lowered one hand to feel at her hips even though she knew it was useless. She’d set the .45 down on top of the duffle, and the Army bag was at least three feet away. What was she doing? Phinney had taught her to think—she was going to die before she could even use what he had passed on.
Carried on the night wind, a wail came faintly into the clearing. Kitty couldn’t tell what made it. Human, wolf, siren—her fear and shock-fogged brain couldn’t process it. The wolf could. It cocked its shaggy head and the small motion sent another wave of the horrific odor over Kitty. She struggled not to breathe any more of it in than she had to. It took one step forward, sending out a growl so low it seemed to vibrate her bones. Then it turned and in three leaps was out of the clearing.
Kitty made a grab for the .45, collapsing into the leaves and clasping it tightly between her shaking hands. Never again. It had been a one in a million chance—that something would call the wolf right at her weakest moment.
She couldn’t afford to be weak again.
She ran through the options in her head. The .45 was easy enough to hide, but she couldn’t bring the equipment in the bag home. Not tonight. Too much going on. Too big of a chance that her mother had been woken up by the sirens and had already realized she was missing. Kitty needed to figure out how and where and when. Think—the way Phinney taught her.
Scooting forward on her butt and using her feet, she thrust the duffle into the hole she’d dug. It slumped sideways and she raised a foot and mashed it in. She kicked dirt and leaves over it, too afraid to let go of the pistol. Kitty could feel something rising inside her—something that threatened to tear her apart. She had to get somewhere safe before she disintegrated.
Rolling to her hands and knees, Kitty pushed a few more leaves over the jumble in front of her. She didn’t know how well the duffle was buried. She stumbled up and out of the clearing and down the path, throwing the shovel away from her into a small concavity under a fallen limb. It was only as she neared the end of the trail that she realized what she’d done. She’d taken the wrong fork out of the clearing and she was back at the cabin, not home.
Staying under the shadows of the trees, Kitty checked the fire. The roof was down and seemed to be smothering the worst of it, but flames around the periphery still reached at least six feet high. Strobe lights from a police car pulsed, making her dizzy. Another car pulled up, flames reflecting off dark paint, and a tall black man got out.
Even in her stupor, she recognized him. He was one of two detectives with the Oakmont Sheriff’s Department. He looked at the conflagration for a minute then turned in a slow circle. As he swung her direction, he stopped.
Kitty drew back even farther into the shadows. He couldn’t see her. The detective took one step forward.
Could he?
He resumed his circle and Kitty took a deep breath.
She was going to be fine. There was nothing at the cabin that would point anywhere. She was fine.
As fine as she could be considering she was the one who had just killed Phinney.
Chapter Two
At least a dozen cars were parked to either side of Phinney’s Lane. Kitty’s head sagged back against the seat and she let it flop to the right, staring out at the troop of Boy Scouts walking by. They left footprints in the rain-darkened gravel.
“Why are they mounting a search for him?” Kitty asked as Anne pulled in behind the last car in line. “Didn’t he die in the fire?”
Her mother shrugged. “I guess they have reason to think he didn’t.” She grabbed a water bottle from the seat next to her and pulled the door handle. “C’mon. You need more community service for the honor society.”
Kitty nearly snorted. She’d been doing plenty of community service.
Sam jumped out of the backseat, slamming his door. “See you up there,” he yelled over his shoulder as he bolted in the direction of the Scouts. A dirt clod flew off the heel of his shoe and banged into Kitty’s side of the car.
“Lord,” her mother said, reaching over the seat and picking up Sam’s uniform scarf. “Good thing the Scouts are only running the food table. It would be a disaster if one of those boys found that poor man.”
“It probably will be fine, Mom. I mean, what are the odds?” Kitty knew the odds. Nobody was going to find Phinney. No search party in the world could find a man who had withered into dust and blown away on the night wind.
Kitty slid out of the car, pulling the door in close to make room for a van attempting to squeeze up the alley between the parked cars. Her mother chose to slip between the cars and the trees and after a minute Kitty followed her. Ducking her head beneath small branches, she focused on Anne’s hiking boots moving in front of her, putting her feet down in the same places. She didn’t want to see the ruins of Phinney’s cabin, didn’t want to be within a hundred miles of this place.
She never thought they’d mount a search of the national forest for Phinney. That hadn’t entered the scenario when she torched the place. She and Phinney had agreed—the police would look at the cabin, pronounce him dead, and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, the police had consulted neither Kitty nor Phinney before they came up with the scheme that included ten eager Boy Scouts handing out bags of chips and Kitty and her mom combing the recesses of the Manistee National Forest for a man who wasn’t there.
The view at the top of the rise hit Kitty like a fist to the gut. The wreckage sat twisted and charred off to the right, surrounded
by sagging yellow police tape. Even with last night’s rain, the smell of smoke lingered. The foundation was streaked with soot but still upright. Part of the rear wall balanced precariously on top of it, but the rest of the place was down in crazy lumps of fallen timber and strips of sheet metal. The porch steps ascended into nowhere.
Kitty’s heart gave a hard twist. No more sun tea on the porch.
Why had she agreed to come? She could have refused—should have refused—and her mother would have chalked it up to some teenage attitude. Kitty scanned the tree line. Out in those woods was a tarp filled with punji sticks and a duffle bag full of equipment. She’d been a mess the night she’d hidden it, and as a result the bag was barely covered. She needed it to stay out of sight—if only for a little while longer. Freshly turned earth would scream something was buried there, probably a body. When they dug it, they’d come up—not with a corpse—but with guns and bullets and maps spotted with dates and locations of werewolf kills. They’d also find a letter with Kitty’s name on it. It only took one overzealous searcher to tip the scales against her.
Thank God Phinney hadn’t been well liked in this town, and the turnout would be slim.
Then she looked at the meadow, and her eyes filled with tears.
Half the town of Oakmont must have been there. The ladies from the quilting store huddled next to a group of old guys who looked like they’d sprung themselves out of the VA home. The cross-country team clustered in the opposite corner. The Boy Scouts were setting up behind a plastic table covered with coffee thermoses and cookies.
Kitty scrubbed at her nose, which had suddenly begun to run. She didn’t know if she was crying because she was in such trouble or because everyone had shown up for Phinney, who had spent the last twenty-six years guarding them from something they couldn’t even name. If only
he could see what they were doing for him. Kitty smiled into her hand as her vision blurred and made the crowd size double. He would have hated it.