“You presume correctly. Master Kingsley prefers them...putrid. The more putrid, the better.”
I felt my stomach turn, which in itself was a good sign for me. It meant that I was keeping the bitch at bay. The crazy, crazy bitch. Far below, the earth shook violently, as did the kitchen walls around us.
“When will Kingsley fully turn?”
“At sundown, of course,” said Franklin. “Like all true creatures of the night.”
I almost asked what kind of creature he was...except I thought I just might know. Not so much a creature as a creation.
I had six hours, at most. Five, if I wanted to play it safe.
“I need those silver bullets, Franklin.”
He looked at me long and hard, then nodded. “This way, Ms. Moon.”
Chapter Thirty-two
I was sitting in my minivan, along Kingsley’s crushed-shell driveway, weeping.
To think that my boyfriend would be feasting on something dead and rotting...in just a few hours...was a little upsetting.
I shouldn’t have seen him. Perhaps Franklin would have told me how to stop a werewolf. Or perhaps not. His loyalty to Kingsley ran deep...and for reasons I didn’t quite understand. Yes, I had suspected it would be silver. The same silver that removed the entity from me would remove it from him, too.
Except, I would have gone into the fight with a silver dagger, and I might not have returned. Yes, I had known a werewolf would be powerful...but I hadn’t quite grasped just how powerful. The silver bullet was the key, of course.
And not getting too close.
I looked at the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum sitting on the seat next to me, chambered with the six silver bullets.
It would take a helluva shot. Especially at a charging werewolf.
I was risking my life, I knew. I was risking everything that I held dear. I was risking, most of all, being a mother to my children. No, I didn’t think a werewolf needed to use silver to kill me. Ripping me from limb to limb, and then devouring me, would probably do the job, too.
I looked at Kingsley’s sprawling estate before me. I was certain I could hear his roars from here, and feel a slight rumbling beneath me. He was angry. He was turning. What happened to him each month wasn’t very fair either.
I wiped my eyes and considered my next move. I had to find Gunther, of course. He was up there, in the woods, changing throughout the day, much like Kingsley was. And nearby was a woman. A live woman. Waiting to be consumed by him, no doubt watching his transformation in complete and utter horror.
Some preferred them dead and rotted, others preferred them fresh and alive. I was happy to see that I remained repulsed by both notions.
I drummed my fingernails on the steering wheel, knowing my time was slipping through, well, these very fingers.
On a whim, I pulled out my cell phone and typed in “cars and mustaches.”
What came up next was very intriguing.
Very, very intriguing.
Chapter Thirty-three
I was back in the city of Orange, parked this time in Gunther’s driveway.
He wouldn’t be using it anytime soon. After all, I had no doubt he was in the midst of a full-blown transformation. And in the company of one woman—the wife of my new friend, Sheriff Stanley—who was, no doubt, witnessing all of it. Then again, if this script played out, she would be doing far more than witnessing. She would be an unwilling participant.
So, I did what any normal investigator would do under the circumstances: I downloaded an app to my iPhone, the Lyft app to be precise. An app that was, in fact, pure genius.
According to the website, with a simple touch of a button, the Lyft driver closest in proximity to me (thanks to my phone’s GPS) would get pinged that I needed a ride. The app also connected our Facebook pages, apparently for safety reasons. My Facebook page sported an outdated picture of me from nine years ago, back when I was camera-friendly. Luckily, I didn’t look much different now.
Which wasn’t a good thing, I suspected. Soon, I would be getting to the point where my friends and colleagues were clearly looking older than me...by nearly a decade.
Worry about that later, I thought, when the app had finished downloading.
I was almost giddy with excitement.
When the app opened, I pressed the “pick me up” button and waited. While I waited, I sweated. The day was sweltering. I might be immortal but I got hot—and sweated—with the best of them. Which is why I had the A/C running in the minivan while I waited.
A moment later, my phone chirped.
A driver had locked onto me and was en route. Okay, now I was definitely giddy. In fact, there he was on Facebook. A youngish-looking Latino with a round face and wide-set eyes. I scanned Paulo’s profile because I had nothing better to do. Married. A writer on the side. I checked out the links to his books, too. A vampire series, of all things. A witch series, too. And something about gods in Los Angeles.
“This should be interesting,” I said.
According to the app, he was only two minutes away. I looked at the time on my cell: 1:38. According to my weather app, sunset was at 6:19 p.m.
I did some serviceable math. I had five-and-a-half hours before a woman would be consumed alive by a real werewolf.
And, yeah, I cared, dammit. I cared a lot. I had met her husband. I had met her unborn kids. They needed her, dammit. They needed her alive. They had a family to build. Not to mention, I had given Sheriff Stanley some of my best marital advice. I didn’t want to see that advice go down the drain.
Not funny, I know. But try as I might, my new morbid sense of humor didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
“Choose your battles,” I said to myself.
After all, a morbid sense of humor I could live with. Not giving a shit about death—and feasting on my neighbor’s cat because I couldn’t control myself—wasn’t something I could live with.
Quite frankly, I was better than that. I lived to fight the bad guys. I lived to protect the innocent. I was not a bad guy myself. I was one of the good ones, dammit, and I was going to do everything I could think of to ensure just that.
That I stayed as good as possible.
Further down the block, a white Toyota Prius turned onto the street. As it approached, I could see the driver through the windshield, sort of leaning forward, forearms wrapped around the steering wheel, scanning. Yup, it was the same guy in the Facebook page—Paulo, the vampire/witch/demigod writer. Most telling was the furry mustache attached to the front grill of the Prius. My Lyft ride had appeared.
I stepped out of my minivan, waving. He frowned, thick eyebrows bunching up, then pulled into the driveway, next to my minivan. He jumped out, smiling, but also looking confused as hell.