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  Bad Wolf

  Bad Moon Book Two

  Jackie Sexton

  All Rights Reserved ©2013 Jackie Sexton. First Printing: 2013.

  Author’s Note: all characters in this story that engage in adult situations are 18+ years of age.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Bad Wolf

  Bad Moon Book Two

  Jackie Sexton

  Chapter One

  I stared up into the wolf’s feral gray orbs, holding my breath in fear as he panted above me, growling lowly. His claws weighed down into my shoulder, shooting pain traveling up them as they bore his brutish weight. I was paralyzed, seized by the sight of his long fangs and the deadly snarl of his lips above it. I could see the line of his gums, black and glistening in the dim light from the porch.

  He was a monster.

  “Trent, please,” I finally managed, closing my eyes and preparing for the worst. I suddenly doubted every sense that had led me to believe that this was Trent. How in the world was this beast supposed to be my best friend? How in the world did this mangy brown coat, the tangled fur, the sinuous, canine limbs belong to a human being? Then again, what the hell was a wolf doing at a house party in Orlando…

  “Get off of her!” I heard someone yell viciously in our direction. It sounded like Aamir, but it also sounded distant, like it came from another world.

  I turned my head against the cool grass; my skin bristled against the blades, damp with sweat and tears. I was crying and I hadn’t even realized it. “Oh God,” I whispered, a small tremor in my voice. But before my life could flash before my eyes, before I could lament all the missed opportunities and all the failures, he was gone. The weight lifted off my chest and I took in a sharp breath, an icy pain filling my lungs. I rolled over onto my side and hugged my knees up towards my chin, unable to stop the torrent of drunken tears that ran down my face.

  Suddenly the rest of the world came rushing back to me. The sticky night wind pushing at my back, the buzzing of the crowd on the driveway, the sharp smell of hops and liquor. I could hear a gruff voice yell, “get him!” and a pattering of heavy footsteps that disappeared into the night.

  “Bailey!” Brandon’s voice was sharp, hovering several registers over the chatter of the large group of people behind me. I tried to say something in return, but I just continued to shake, pathetic and helpless on the ground.

  ‘Why are you so weak?’ I chided myself.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?” I felt a hand gently graze my cheek, pushing the hair up over my ear. I turned to see Brandon’s face, the lines on the corners of his mouth etched with concern.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “Come here,” he said, placing an arm beneath my shoulder to me help sit up. I immediately buried myself in his shoulder and threw my arms around his neck.

  “What...what was that?” I whispered between quiet sobs. Everything was muted again, the dull haze of alcohol clouding my senses.

  I could feel Brandon’s grip tense around me. He was silent for a moment.

  “Dude, can you fucking believe that?” I heard a deep voice call out from behind us.

  “Maybe she needs to go to the hospital,” a worried girl responded.

  “I’m fine,” I murmured, pulling away from Brandon’s embrace and pushing myself off the ground. Like a pathetic, little child, I turned away from everyone and used the skirt of my dress to dry my eyes. I didn’t want to worry anyone any more than I already had.

  “Come on,” I said to Brandon without making eye contact. He took my hand and we walked back to the house where a blur of unfamiliar faces stared at me in awe. I stumbled on my heels, trying to keep my balance as we weaved through the bodies.

  “Are you okay?” people kept asking me. I would nod and smile, still too shaken and ashamed to speak. Brandon squeezed my hand and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Someone should call animal control!” was the last thing I heard anyone say before we disappeared into the house.

  “Where’s your purse?” he asked me, setting me down on the couch for a moment.

  “In Aamir’s room, I think,” I said, putting my head in my hands to steady the tilting world.

  “Okay, I’ll be right back.” I looked around and caught sight of Nick and Martin on the couch adjacent to mine; Martin was white as a sheet, and Nick looked sufficiently disgruntled. I studied them for a moment, focusing on Nick’s knitted features until Brandon came back with my purse in his hand.

  “Where’s Trent?” I asked them, forcing the words from my lips. Nick gave Brandon a strange look.

  “Don’t know,” Martin managed.

  “He said he’d meet us back at the hotel,” Brandon said quickly. “We should go.”

  I resisted his pull as he tugged on my wrist. “What?” I slurred, “how the hell is he going to get to the hotel?” I shot a look to Nick and Martin to see if they knew something I didn’t, but Nick’s face was blank and Martin looked as baffled as I was.

  “A taxi,” Brandon said bluntly, pulling my arm and calling out, “let’s go,” to Nick and Martin.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demanded from Brandon as we parted the thick crowd of people on the lawn. Then, something dawned on me. “He’s not...with someone, is he?” I immediately felt bad upon saying it. There was no way that Trent would cheat on Lola. But I just couldn’t let myself consider the alternative; it was too obviously ridiculous.

  “I wasn’t drinking, so I’ll drive us back,” Brandon said, opening his palm expectantly for the keys.

  I knew he was telling the truth because, like me, he’s a lightweight. If he had so much as a drink of alcohol, he’d be crying and trembling like a little loser himself. I climbed into the passenger seat and buckled myself in before flipping my phone on to find Trent’s number. I hit the green call button and held the phone up to my ear, my heart sinking with each passing tone.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brandon muttered, giving me a quick side glance. I sat back in my chair and tried to steady my swimming head, the alcohol and the aftermath of panic running through my veins. I closed my eyes to block out the blinding headlights that were making me nauseous, but that only made it worse. The piercing, steel gray eyes burned on the back of my lids. I shoot up with a shiver, gripping my hands onto my arms. I looked over them and realized my skin was raised with goosebumps I couldn’t even feel thanks to the numbing fog of alcohol.

  “Are you alright?” Martin asked from behind me. I turned to see his face, heavy with concern.

  “Yeah, just drunk,” I murmured.

  “I feel you,” he said with a nod. “Did you see it?” I paused, the look on his face confirming that he was talking about the wolf. Clearly, they hadn’t seen what had happened to me.

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  “It just didn’t make any sense.” He looked bewildered, a wild frenzy in his normally sweet blue eyes. “It didn’t look like a real wolf, you know?”

  I knew all too well what he meant. The recognition in its eyes was eerily familiar. It was human.

  “And then what were those idiots doing, trying to stop it?” Brandon and Nick were silent. They continued to stare straight in front of themselves, like they had heard nothing. Something about their behavior made my skin crawl.

  “I don’t know,” I said hoarsely before turning back in my seat. I didn’t know, but something told me that Brandon did. I was tempted to bring up Trent again, but I stayed quiet. I don’t normally drop things so easi
ly, but part of me was afraid to know the truth.

  As I sat there, trying to force myself to sober up, the other parts of my night flooded my mind. ‘Crap,’ I thought, ‘I hooked up with Aamir.’ I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes, the image of his strong, bare chest clear in my mind. I just didn’t do things like that. I had been so dead-set on getting what I wanted that I didn’t have a single thought about the aftermath. I was the kind of girl to take things slow ever since that terrible make out session at a tailgating party my freshman year. The guy ended up being a thirty-six-year-old party crasher who was obsessed with My Little Ponies and lived in his mom’s basement.

  Needless to say, I have been very cautious when it comes to hooking up with guys ever since—meaning I don’t. Up until that moment, that is.

  I had no idea what kind of guy Aamir was. Except hot.

  ‘That’s good enough,’ the twisted, slutty side of me said. Great, now I had a slutty side. And apparently a delusional one that thought her best friend was a wolf that tried to kill her.

  Brandon turned on the radio and surfed through the channels until we heard the familiar croon of John Fogerty’s voice and the tinny bright jam of guitars. Though we all knew the words, none of us sang along.

  “I feel rivers overflowing,

  I hear the voice of rage and ruin,”

  I heard a soft pattering of rain, and I opened my eyes to see the drops explode on the windshield before me. They burst, small worlds of water colliding with the glass to form flowing streams, constantly disrupted, shifting to accommodate new explosions, new births of rivers and streams.

  “well don’t go around tonight,

  well it’s bound to take your life,”

  I looked out the window to my left, the full moon low in the night sky, large and ominous. A shiver ran down my spine.

  “there’s a bad moon on the rise.” Back at the hotel I sat outside with one of Martin’s cigarettes, sobering up with long steady draws of nicotine and leftover pizza from earlier that day. I hadn’t smoked in over a year, since some crazy party where I got far too drunk for my own good, but something seemed very appealing about it just then. It was making me light-headed, in some respects exacerbating the effects of alcohol, but it was soothing, calming. I was also drunk enough to believe anything I wanted.

  Nick had his back pressed against the wall, his eyes trained on the parking lot before us. Brandon wasn’t comfortable with me being out there alone, but insisted that he really needed to go the drugstore to pick up some things for the car ride tomorrow. Nick volunteered to go out with me, one of Martin’s cigarettes between his long, dark fingers. Martin was inside on the phone with his mother, probably just as shaken as I was, babbling on to her about the crazy night.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to break the silence between us. I looked up at Nick, who turned slowly to look at me. I must have looked pathetic, sitting there on the gum-covered floor in a dirt-stained dress, barefoot and smoking a cigarette with red-rimmed eyes. But I was still too drunk to really give a damn.

  “Hey,” Nick said back. He looked upset, like something heavy was brewing in his dark eyes. He furrowed his thick brows as he studied me for a moment. I could tell he was slightly inebriated. “Your shoulders...”

  I looked down at one, stupefied for a moment as I took in the dark, red clots, almost black in the dim lighting. I brought a finger to the wound and pressed. Wet, cool blood gleamed in the moonlight. “Holy crap,” I murmured.

  “He harmed you, didn’t he?” I turned to see a strange expression on his face. It was almost like he felt guilty.

  “Who?” I asked, unsure if maybe he had seen or heard about what had happened. I honestly hadn’t talked much to Nick before. It was disconcerting for me to see such a strong emotion on the face of the usually laid-back drummer.

  “Bailey, you might as well know what’s going on around you—”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I whipped my head around to see Trent standing at the other end of the hall by the staircase, shirtless and covered in mud. His hair was tossed in strange directions, swept up with dirt and small twigs. He looked furious, with the same look in his eye as that wolf—hell-bent on fury.

  “What are you telling her?” he demanded. My head bobbed in the other direction, swimming to my left hand side to see Nick’s calm, but firm expression. I could feel the tension mounting, and it lodged a queasy roll of fear inside of me.

  “She needs to know. It’s not safe for her if she doesn’t.” I moved my spinning head back to left. Trent was seething. It actually frightened me, and I took a long drag from the cigarette between my fingers, hoping to calm the raging nerves inside of me. I was horrified that my suspicions might be confirmed, right here in this rundown hotel corridor.

  ‘But it can’t be...’ I thought.

  “What, is she smoking now?” Trent growled.

  “Hi, I’m right here,” I snapped, my anxious nerves bubbling into rage. “I’m done with you guys...all talking about what I need to know and what I shouldn’t. I—I just got attacked by a wolf, a wolf and it’s Florida dammit, and that wolf looked like you, Trent and now you’re covered in dirt and it’s weird and...” I paused to take in a deep breath, calming my drunken rant. “And yeah,” I finished lamely.

  They stood their quietly for a moment, staring each other down like it was a Mexican stand-off, my words hanging awkwardly in the air. I had to give up looking between them because my head was getting too dizzy from all the movement. Finally, Nick flicked his cigarette to the ground, stomping the red blaze out with his foot. I was surprised—he didn’t strike me as the type to litter, more like a tree-hugging yogi.

  “Do what you want. But if you don’t tell her, I will,” was all he said before slipping the card key back into the door and shutting it behind him with a loud click. Trent took in a deep breath, the anger dissipating from his face.

  “Let’s just go to bed,” he said, avoiding eye contact with me.

  “I don’t have the card key,” I said, not budging from my position on the floor. “Plus...I want to know the truth. What was that Trent?” I stopped myself just short of saying, “was that you?”

  Again, there was a pause that seemed to take ages. Finally Trent looked at me and nodded, as if we had come to some sort of agreement. He didn’t look happy about it, though. He approached me and then turned, sliding his bare back down the wall to join me on the nasty concrete, facing out to the parking lot. He sighed.

  “How drunk are you?”

  “Not drunk enough,” I snorted. Trent laughed, a hard, genuine laugh, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  After a while the laughter faded, and so did the strong edge to the atmosphere. “Look,” he finally said. “There are some fucked up things about me you don’t know.”

  I turned to look at him, and his eyes were downcast, as though he were ashamed—scared even. I rarely saw him so vulnerable. I hadn’t seen him like this since he told me he was going to drop out of college. I could remember with sharp clarity the heavy air of sadness that hung around him when I opened my apartment door. I reached a hand out and covered my fingers over his, giving him a reassuring smile as he looked up to meet my gaze. I was sure I didn’t want to know. But I needed to understand, and I needed to face my fears.

  “You’re not going to believe me,” he mumbled. I could see fear in his eyes.

  “Try me,” I said, attempting to remain calm as the world turned and tilted. My heart leapt up in my throat at just the thought of what he might say.

  ‘That couldn’t have been him,’ I told myself. ‘You’re drunk and you imagined everything. He probably hooked up with one of those girls. He wants to get it off his chest.’

  “Um well—”

  “It’s okay, I hooked up with someone at the party too,” I blurted out. The news didn’t really seem to comfort him. His lips tensed and the worry on his face was replaced with something harder, meaner.

  “I didn’t hook up with anyone,
” he snapped, turning his head away from me so that I could only see his strong profile again. My heart sank.

  “I’m sorry...I just...I—”

  “That was me, back there,” he said, his face still stone cold as he looked out to the parking lot.

  “I don’t—”

  “Those gashes on your shoulders are my fault.” He swallowed, and I could make out the slow movement in his throat.

  “Please,” I said hoarsely. “Please don’t mess with me.”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  For a few moments I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t know what to believe, or what I wanted to believe. I opened my mouth, and then closed it, gaping like a fish.

  Finally, I said, “It looked like you, Trent. I knew it was you, but—”

  “But it’s crazy, right?” he finished for me.

  I nodded, meeting his gaze, and we exchanged a long glance.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not trying to convince you that it’s normal, or that anything that happened was something that was supposed to happen. I messed up. I messed up really bad.”

  “So, what happened, exactly?” I said, raising my eyes up to greet the full moon hovering over the trees and slabs of concrete buildings.

  “I...changed. And you can’t blame me really.”

  “Are you talking about the full moon?” I asked, bewildered. I kept my eyes on the fixed orb in the sky.

  “Yeah,” he said in a hushed whisper. Then he regained his composure. “Usually I can fight it off long enough. I didn’t want to be a drag about the party and—”

  “Wait, you don’t have to...you know, transform on a full moon? Aren’t you a...werewolf?”

  I could see him flinch at the word. “Well, it depends on the person...but usually, yeah, the full moon is what does it. But we all have different levels of control over it. I’m not going to pretend mine’s the best, but I’ve been at it for a while. Usually on the full moon I can hang back a few hours if I need too, but stress or any kind of really strong emotion can really do you in.”