Blood Moon

By

T. Lynne Tolles

Troll Publishing

Copyright © 2010 T. Lynne Tolles

Version 4.0K May 22, 2011

ISBN 978-0-9829876-1-2

All Rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews, is illegal and punishable by law

Publisher’s Note:

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, locals or events is coincidental.

T. Lynne Tolles

Cover Graphics:

“Spooky Moon” – Jennifer Reiswig

Edited by Erin Potter of Shamrock Editing

Dedication

To my son, Dane …. I’m so proud of you and I love you.

Chapter 1

Linda Danvers was putting on her sweater as she walked out of the door of Sam’s Restaurant.
 
She had turned twenty-two the night before and had stayed up all night with her girlfriends celebrating, only to be called to fill in for one of the gals at the restaurant who had gone into labor an hour before.
 
Her head was throbbing, her feet were killing her, and she felt she was about to drop from exhaustion, but she agreed.
 
She’d go home and sleep for about two hours and come back to pick up the shift.
 

She was renting a house with a girlfriend just around the corner from Sam’s.
 
It was perfect.
 
She hadn’t needed a car since hers had died a month back and there was no way she could afford a new engine for the clunker.
 
The car itself wasn’t worth the cost they quoted her for the repairs.
 

She was pulling her tips from her pocket, along with the paper straw wrappers she had accumulated, when she rounded the corner to her street. There stood a huge lilac bush. It always smelled so good to her and right now it was in full bloom.
 
She stuffed the money in her pocket and closed her eyes as she took a big whiff of the lilac bush, when she was hit from behind and everything went black.

Blake had been sitting on the couch petting Harry, Darby’s enormous cat, as he waited for Rowan, Devon and Darby to come home from Colorado.
 
The 25-pound cat purred at Blake as he continued to pet his long black fur and white tummy. Harry squinted his eyes as he looked up at the six-foot-four, handsome vampire with wild, chocolate brown eyes.
 
Blake had a devilish smile to go with those wild eyes that brought most women he encountered to their knees. But he wouldn’t be smiling anytime soon. He had really messed things up with Rowan, his girlfriend – maybe had even lost her for good.
 

While he waited, he reflected on his transgressions. A man named Terrence Paine had recently kidnapped Rowan. Up until then, Blake and his brother, Devon, had eluded Terrence’s attempts to kill them, but upon learning that Blake was romantically involved with someone, Terrence saw an opportunity to finally trap the boys.
 
Guessing that Blake had likely turned his love, Rowan, into a vampire, Terrence kidnapped Rowan, flew her to Maine, and injected her with werewolf blood in hopes of killing her. He knew that werewolf blood and vampire blood would fight to the death inside her, thereby causing her death.
 
But Rowan had not been turned into a vampire, and instead of dying she was turned into a werewolf.
 

This is when things really started to fall apart and Blake began making mistake after mistake.
 
He had grown up believing werewolves were horrible beasts that killed with no remorse or reason. As the reality of what Rowan would turn into solidified in Blake’s mind, he pulled away, scared and confused, from everyone. He wanted to help Rowan – fix the problem – cure her somehow, but when it became apparent that there was no cure, he ran from her and his brother.
 
Along the way he put Darby, Rowan’s sister and Devon’s girlfriend, in danger and left her for dead. He also hid pertinent information from his brother, and broke the law, but his worst act of lunacy was leaving Rowan when she most needed him.

Darby and Blake had gone to Colorado to seek out Dean Wolfe, a werewolf. They felt that if they could talk to Dean, he could give them all the information they needed about werewolves, and maybe help Rowan.
 

Dean, a strong, lean, shaggy brown-haired, hazel-eyed guy of six-foot-two, had a perpetually stern face. He didn’t much like being asked about his personal life by two strangers and he and Blake had had a terrible fight. Darby was accidentally wounded in their scuffle. Blake, wounded himself, thought Darby was dead and fled Colorado, heading for Connecticut. Devon had tried to talk him out of going, when he called to tell him they had found Darby and she was in surgery Darby had accidentally been ensnared in a brawl between Blake and Dean when they first met that left her with some internal injuries. What a mess Blake had made of things, leaving Rowan, his brother, and Darby too, for that matter. That’s why he was here sitting, waiting, and petting the purring Harry.
 

He had called the hospital and knew that Darby had been released that morning, which meant they would be home soon.
 
He had filled the living room with every rose he could rummage from the local florists. He knew it could never make up for his abandoning Rowan during her first full moon as a werewolf, but he had to do something to show her how sorry he was. He still couldn’t believe just how insane he had been.
 
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
 

Now he sat on the couch waiting for them to come home. He knew that not only did he have a lot of explaining to do to Rowan, but also to his brother.
 
Darby had written a letter to Devon, in apology for a fight they’d had, which Blake had kept from Devon. Blake still wasn’t sure why he had done that.
 
He guessed that if he had given the letter to Devon that he would have never let Darby go to Colorado with him to find Dean. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable to him, but now he wished he could take it all back.
 

Waiting, thumbing through the werewolf folklore books that Darby had brought home from her bookstore, Cauldron, Book and Candle, Blake felt much like a criminal awaiting the verdict from the jury.
 
Oh, sure he deserved it, but it didn’t make it any easier waiting. The anxiety and guilt were making him quite nauseous and the scent of all the roses was not helping.
 
The only thing that seemed to calm him a bit was the enormous cat, Harry, purring and taking up his lap and much of the cushion next to him.
 

That’s when Blake heard a car turn into the driveway and yet another into the driveway next door.
 
Here we go; they’re home.
 
Now it begins – or ends.
He wasn’t sure which direction the next few minutes would take him, but he knew he had to start somewhere.
 

He heard Rowan come in the back door and make her way down the hall to the living room.
 
She must have been headed to the front door to open it for Darby and Devon, when she caught a glimpse of him sitting on the couch amongst hundreds of roses and a very … big boned cat.
 
Darby would not allow any of them to use the word ‘fat’ around Harry as she felt it would hurt his feelings.
 

Rowan stopped dead in her tracks, obviously stunned by Blake’s presence. A few seconds later, there was a key in the door and two more stunned faces appeared.
And so it begins
, Blake thought. Devon said, “Blake, you’re back.”
 

Blake stood up, pushing Harry off his lap.
 
Of course, his first glance was to Rowan, who was now staring at the floor, and then he headed for Darby and Devon.
 

Darby wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight.
 

Devon had met Darby accidentally and had been in love with her probably from first sight. Blake couldn’t blame him, as she was a beautiful woman with the sweetest smile.
 
She had eyes the color of a summer sky and golden blonde hair down to the middle of her back.
 

“Are you okay?” she asked.
 
“Are you hurt? Last time I saw you, you were getting pretty pounded by Dean.”