Waiting for the Wolf Moon Chapter

Waiting for the Wolf Moon- Shadows Waiting for the Wolf Moon - Dreamscape

A note about the prologue and first chapter: Normally I try to include the entire first chapter of each book on my website. However, I couldn't get a PC-compatible computer until after I sold this book, so the entire thing was done on a Commodore 128 and saved on 5-inch floppy disks. In other words, I had to type it all in again. So I stopped after the first big scene....

Prologue
Wort Moon

From Mississippi and points east, the full moon rose into the Louisiana sky. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi Delta captured her silver and scattered it in chuckling waves. Farther north, in a grove of cleared underbrush, in the woods north of Lake Pontchartrain, four women sat in pine-shadowed moonlight.

They had no altar, no candles, just a small campfire into which they took turns throwing bits of dried herbs. The wort incense filled the humid clearing as nature reclaimed a small portion of what she had yielded that year. A stalk of basil, a clump of marjoram, a large leaf of comfrey....

One woman, a slim brunette, paused, lost in thoughts of a previous moon and the death it had delivered. She tried to shudder the memory off; that was past. It hadn't been the moon's fault.

"You okay?" murmured the redhead beside her, her tone mixing genuine concern with hushed reverence.

"I'm fine." The brunette threw a sprig of mint into the crackling flame, resuming the ritual. But she wondered why she remembered now, after over a year.

Was there any such thing as coincidence?

And, farther east, under the moon, a young man--Dennis Gareaux, from nearby Slidell--hiked along the graveled edge of a two-lane blacktop road, his attention focused more on the dry-tanked Chevette he'd left a half mile behind him than on the celestial display above him. It was too damn hot, and Denny didn't have much interest in pretty nights.

Then he heard a whining in the woods.

He paused, intrigued--there had been trouble with wild dogs earlier in the summer. A group of hunters had gone into the swamp and killed them all off, but he'd missed the fun. Maybe a few pups or loners had survived.

The whining continued, hardly threatening. Denny judged the width of the ditch that bordered the road. Despite algae over the water, even the ditch reflected the moon's silver.

All the easier to jump. Denny did, regained his footing, and listened to the darkness beyond.

A whimper.

Underbrush knotted the close-set pines together; prickly vines of wild blackberry wove through thicker patches of honeysuckle, waist deep in some places, deeper next to dying trees. But, hell, he was wearing thick jeans. He waded his way out of the moonlight and into the woods, wincing as blackberry thorns tore into his hand. He hoped any local snakes could hear him coming.

The whimpering stopped.

"Hey," Denny whispered, crouching to retrieve a thick branch from the needle-carpeted ground. Vines scratched his hand again. "Hey, pooch." Crickets answered, and toads--what passed around here for silence.

"Hey, doggie!" Denny raised his rough voice, silencing some of the crickets. "Here, dog--"

A claw tore across his throat, turning his call into a hoarse scream. He heard a snarl he hadn't heard in almost twenty years of hunting. He fell, his weight yanking vines loose. Thorns bit his face and hands. His blood spattered brown pine needles before he landed on them. He tried to roll away, disoriented. A flash of fur--silver in the moonlight--caught his stunned attention. Then Denny felt teeth sinking into his shoulder, and he fainted.

And in the woods of Louisiana, a wolf raised its head to howl an unanswered call to its Lady Moon.

CHAPTER ONE (partial)

There was a hearse parked in front of her bookstore.

Waiting for an oncoming gravel truck to pass before turning left into the parking lot, Sylvie Peabody studied the vehicle. Long. Black. Shiny. Definitely a hearse. It even had red curtains--velvet?--with gold tassels.

She couldn't see the driver.

She wasn't sure she wanted to.

She hoped he was alone.

The gravel truck rumbled by, spattering pebbles against her scarred windshield, and she pulled up in front of her store. Chalky clamshells crunched beneath her tires as she braked the lemon-colored, '79 Pinto, yanked on the parking brake and cut the engine. Some jobs offered excitement regularly. Her former career as a reporter for an avant-garde weekly in Los Angeles, had been such a job--but she'd left it to open UnderCover. At the only bookstore in Stagwater, Louisiana, an exciting day was when a shipment from their wholesaler arrived.

Hearses registered way off the excitometer.

Sylvie slid her yellow scarf off her feathery brown hair and draped it on the parking brake for the open-windowed drive home, then selected a store key from her key ring. Most comfortable in observer mode, she casually glanced over at the vehicle several spaces down. It was empty. At least, the front end was.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to sense the hearse--or rather, to sense what self-defense teachers call an "uh-oh" feeling, which would be her cue to jam the Pinto into reverse and scatter clamshells.

She didn't feel anything, which was no surprise. Her instincts had stunk for some time now.

Oh, well. She rolled up the windows and climbed out of the pinto. Maybe some funeral-home worker had stopped at the Po-Boy next door for a sandwich before a pickup.

Or a delivery.

She paused, jiggling her keys in indecision.

Was it a delivery? It couldn't hurt to glance in the window, just to make sure there wasn't a casket in back. At least she would know.

The hearse, despite its shine, looked fairly old. It had fins on the back. Behind her own transparent reflection in the window, the curtains were indeed velvet. And beyond the curtains...

After glancing around self-consciously, she stepped forward and leaned closer to the long window.

"Boo!"

She flew back at the sudden appearance of a face opposite hers, replacing her own reflection. She was a parking space away, just beginning to breathe again, when the hearse's back door opened and the same face poked out. "Gotcha," it said with a wolfish grin.

Warily, she watched him. She would wait until her pulse rate dropped a few notches from critical to answer.

The dark-haired "corpse" clambered out of the hearse and shut the door behind him, then wiped his hands on his jeans, very much alive. She certainly couldn't imagine someone being caught dead dressed in those baggy jeans, and sockless. His faded, short-sleeved shirt hung open against the heat to reveal a nice expanse of lean, tanned stomach and chest. She couldn't imagine a corpse with a ponytail, either, and this man wore his ebony hair pulled back from his animated face in a neat queue. His mischievous grin and laughing gray eyes made her suddenly consider him attractive.

Dangerously attractive.

She suspected she would regret asking, but... "What were you doing back there?"

"Me?" He leaned easily against a black fender. "Merely stretching out until the bookstore opens. There aren't that many options in the back of a hearse." He appeared completely serious.

She had to tear her eyes off him to walk away and unlock the door to UnderCover. She'd read somewhere that everyone you met you had somehow drawn to you. A meeting like this threw the concept into a whole new--and weird--perspective.

"Nice," said the man, following her into the air-conditioned coolness of the shop. She'd renovated a gutted hardware store to open UnderCover. Now only a tremendous sense of space marked its past incarnation. Each of the tall, glossy wooden shelves had symbols cut out of the sides--hearts in the romance section, stars in the fantasy aisle, and so on. It was one benefit of having a sister-in-law with a jigsaw...and ulterior motives for hanging around the shop. The signs labeling each area had been crafted by a local amateur artist.

"Take your time looking around," she said, raising the window blinds--the old-fashioned cloth kind, dyed yellow--and flipping the sign on the door over to read Open.

"Oh, I've got plenty," he answered airily.

Did he mean books? Studying the back of his head and his sleek, dark ponytail, she suspected he meant time.

She wasn't used to having someone in the store while she opened. As she stepped onto the dais holding the counter area--"The better to see you with, my dear"--she had the unsettling sensation of being watched. She turned the cash register's power on, counted out her change three times before she got it to match the previous night's total, then finally gave in to discomfort and looked back toward her customer.

He didn't look like the sort of person who would drive a hearse. Then again, he was crouched in front of the horror section.

"The latest Bill Westbrook novel just came out in paperback," she offered, picking a bestselling horror author.

He smiled. Such a dangerously charming smile. It didn't fit his mode of transportation at all. "I've got it in hardcover. Good book."

She turned on the radio, flipped to a New Orleans New Age station and tried to relax to some perky dulcimer music. But the air felt charged, as it might before a storm.

He stood, wandered past the romance section, past the Westerns, past Erotica. He paused and backed up for a second glance.

She studied her selection of jar candles--there was something homey about an open flame--and chose the pink one. When she lit it, a rosy scent drifted into the shop.

He dragged himself away from a shelf of Victorian romps, glanced at his watch, and headed toward the back shelves.

She realized she was watching him too closely and turned her attention back to her work. As if she had dozens of unfinished tasks to choose from. A bookstore in small-town Louisiana wasn't exactly a busy place. No matter. It was a necessary place. She pulled some used books out from under her counter--they'd come in late the previous afternoon--and began sorting them into piles according to price. With a good deal of willpower she managed not to glance back at her intriguing customer for several minutes.

When she did, he was frowning at her display of books on magic and the occult, which was tucked in back, where only people who looked could find it. Uh-oh.

"Can I help you?"

He glanced her way. "I've been told I'm beyond help," he confessed solemnly. "But what do mothers know?" His gray eyes danced, and a dimple softened one cheek above his long, shadowed jaw.

Her lips twitched. "Are you looking for a certain book?"

"In fact..."

She recognized his pause. He was curious about a controversial subject, and worried that she'd be put off by it. She tried to look particularly nonthreatening.

"I'm trying to find some books about witches." Little did he know. Some of my best friends.... "The library doesn't have much on the subject," he added, by way of explanation.

"No kidding?" She descended from the dais and went to join him. "You've come to the right place. We've got Cunningham--" She had to reach particularly close to him to angle out the books. It felt like reaching through a warm draft, or an electrical current.

Just her imagination--lousy instincts, remember? She crouched to angle out Starhawk, Valiente, Weinstein. He crouched beside her.

Disturbance. Warmth. What an odd, silvery color his eyes were, framed by dark, blunt lashes.

"Are there any spells in these?" he asked, sinking back on his haunches for balance.

"Some."

His eyes widened, and he looked normal again.

"Think of them as the concentrated power of positive thinking, channeling natural energy and personal power." She felt the uneasy need to qualify what she'd said. "Assuming you believe in personal power." And if he didn't, what was he doing with so bloody much of it?

As he reached out to help her to her feet, his strong, callused fingers brushed the soft skin inside her elbow, and warm, tingling energy pulsed from him. She stepped back from the pleasant violation, unbalanced.

"Nothing like summoning demons?" he asked softly. "Hexes? Curses? Turning people into amphibious creatures of the four-legged persuasion?"

"Not in mass-market paperback," she whispered. Certainly not in anything she stocked.

"What about love spells?" He leaned a little closer, his shirt falling open to show more of his hair-shadowed chest. The teasing intimacy of his voice both lulled and aroused her, like hypnotism, giving her meaning to the term alpha male

"I think..." That's right, think Distance. "There are some spells to draw love, but not to target an individual person. That's considered manipulative."

"Damn." His regretful shrug brought back reality. "Could've come in handy."

You could try Voudun. No, she was not going to give someone that kind of lead, no matter how pleasant the image of him casting a love spell was.

He crouched again and extracted one of the books she'd indicated for closer examination. She retreated to the safe distance of the counter and her pricing. She started using yellow stickers, then had to redo them with the blue ones that indicated used books.

A dreamlike synthesizer piece replaced the dulcimer music. Then he was in front of her, laying four of the books she'd recommended on the counter. Conscious of his eyes on her, she rang them up. The thought of him practicing magic--perhaps nude, the way some witches did--tickled her imagination. She firmly ignored it.

"Would you like a bag?"

"No, but the IRS may want a receipt."

She handed it to him before the connection clicked. Business expense.

And he drove a hearse?

Her reporter's curiosity kicked in. "What exactly do you do?"

He folded his bare, tanned arms on the counter and leaned across them. "In what context?" he asked huskily. He had a point. The possibilities were, in fact, endless.

"In the context the IRS would care about," she replied, careful to keep her tone casual, controlled. "Officially."

"Oh! That!"

"If you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all." He glanced toward the shop's front windows, where she'd taped fliers for the community theater, an upcoming concert, a blood drive. "However... do you display ads for local businesses?"

Odd change of subject. "Depends on the business."

"Then why don't I surprise you? The copy shop is nearly open, and I've got an order to pick up." He winked at her. "I never underestimate the value of suspense." Heading toward the door, he paused and shifted his books.

"Not even any eye-of-newt, toe-of-frog stuff?" he asked plaintively, studying the paperbacks.

"Try Shakespeare. Macbeth."

His smile stayed with her long after the hearse had pulled out of the parking lot. There was something significant about him, something... she couldn't place it. Something to be wary of, though--especially since she responded so easily to whatever he had. Men with that much charm posed their own kind of danger.

She didn't need her old instincts to know that.

Top of Page