Moon Shadow Read online

  MOON SHADOW

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  Vampire for Hire #11

  Acclaim for the novels of J.R. Rain:

  “Be prepared to lose sleep!”

  —James Rollins, bestselling author of Subterranean and The Sixth Extinction

  “I love this!”

  —Piers Anthony, bestselling author of A Spell for Chameleon and Five Portraits

  “J.R. Rain delivers a blend of action and wit that always entertains. Quick with the one-liners, but his characters are fully fleshed out (even the undead ones) and you’ll come back again and again.”

  —Scott Nicholson, bestselling author of The Red Church and After:Whiteout

  “Dark Horse is the best book I’ve read in a long time!”

  —Gemma Halliday, bestselling author of Spying in High Heels and Lethal Bond

  “Moon Dance is absolutely brilliant!”

  —Lisa Tenzin-Dolma, bestselling author of Understanding the Planetary Myths and The Heartbeat at Your Feet

  “Powerful stuff!”

  —Aiden James, bestselling author of Plague of Coins and Welcome to Denmark

  “Moon Dance is a must read. If you like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, be prepared to love J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, vampire private investigator.”

  —Eve Paludan, bestselling author of Witchy Business and Bigfoot Island

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Robotica

  Winter Wind

  Silent Echo

  The Body Departed

  The Grail Quest

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

  The Lost Ark

  The Accidental Superheroine

  The Worm Returns

  Lavabull

  Jack and the Giants

  Dolfin Tayle

  Dragon Assassin

  Lost Eden

  Judas Silver

  The Vampire Club

  Cursed

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Moon Magic

  JIM KNIGHTHORSE SERIES

  Dark Horse

  The Mummy Case

  Hail Mary

  Clean Slate

  Night Run

  THE WITCHES SERIES

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witch and the Englishman

  The Witch and the Huntsman

  The Witch and the Wolfman

  OPEN HEART SERIES

  The Dead Detective

  Deadbeat Dad

  NICK CAINE SERIES

  Temple of the Jaguar

  Treasure of the Deep

  Pyramid of the Gods

  THE SPINOZA TRILOGY

  The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

  The Vampire Who Played Dead

  The Vampire in the Iron Mask

  THE ALADDIN TRILOGY

  Aladdin Relighted

  Aladdin Sins Bad

  Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

  THE WALKING PLAGUE TRILOGY

  Zombie Patrol

  Zombie Rage

  Zombie Mountain

  THE SPIDER TRILOGY

  Bad Blood

  Spider Web

  Spider Bite

  THE PSI TRILOGY

  Hear No Evil

  See No Evil

  Speak No Evil

  Flight 12: A PSI Novella

  THE GHOST FILES

  Ghost College

  THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

  Bound By Blood

  THE ABNORM CHRONICLES

  Glimmer

  SHORT STORY SINGLES

  Skeleton Jim

  The Vampire on the Train

  Vampire Requiem

  Ghosts of Christmas Present

  Easy Rider

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Blue Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Dreams

  Vampire Blues

  Vampire Nights

  Teeth

  Vampire Rain

  The Santa Call

  The Bleeder

  For Young Readers

  (Writing as J.K. Drew)

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Spirit Mountain

  Little Wolf

  The Emerald River

  The Angel and the Gift

  Forever Silent

  THE ROBOT TWINS MYSTERIES

  The Mystery of the Walking Statue

  The Secret of Stonehead Island

  The Mystery of the Lightning Cave

  THE KID QUEST ADVENTURES

  The Secret of the Sphinx

  The Gateway of the Sun

  The Treasure of Oak Island

  THE DISTANT WORLD TRILOGY

  Dare to Enter a Distant World

  Dare to Rule a Distant World

  Dare to Escape a Distant World

  YOUR CHOICES ADVENTURES

  Deep Sea Danger

  The Legend of Eagle Eye Mountain

  Playoff Pressure

  Moon Shadow

  Published by J.R. Rain

  Copyright © 2016 by J.R. Rain

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To Jason and Alberto.

  You two clowns make life interesting.

  Acknowledgment

  A special thank you to Mariah! Welcome aboard!

  Moon Shadow

  Chapter One

  I was missing Judge Judy, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  Instead, I was being treated to a ninety-nine-cent cup of coffee at a McDonald’s in a city called Lake Elsinore, which boasts the biggest natural lake in Southern California. The problem with Lake Elsinore is that it’s in Lake Elsinore. One has to drive out of Orange County (where I happily live) through 60 miles of desert (where I had no business living), and there, shimmering like a mirage, is an honest-to-God lake. It sits at the foot of a mountain chain called, inexplicably, the Cleveland National Forest.

  The city of Lake Elsinore is rough around the edges. It sports a downtown that feels forgotten and dismal. It also sports a lot of homes that have beautiful views of the lake, homes that look just as dismal and forgotten. Which is strange. In Southern California, any home with any sort of water view, be it a beach, lake, pond, inlet, outlet, river, stream or reservoir, is worth, exactly, ten million dollars. Give or take.

  But not here. In Lake Elsinore, homes with a lake view seem to be an afterthought. In fact, one gets the impression that the residents of Lake Elsinore don’t fully appreciate the beauty of the lake—or the sheer unlikeliness that such a body of water would be out here anyway. Had this lake been in, say, Orange County, lakeside restaurants with shaded patios would abound, and so would storefronts boasting designer doggie treats. In no time flat, had this lake been in Orange County, few people would actually have access to the lake... unless they paid for it.

  The man sitting across from me was Roy Azul. He was the owner and operator of a group of vacation cabins along the west side of the lake. He was also friends with Detective Sherbet. When I asked how he knew Sherbet, Roy explained that he and the detective were part of a model aircraft flyi
ng club. I made a mental note to ridicule Sherbet about that. Then added a follow-up note to make sure I did so to no end.

  “Sherbet said you could help me.”

  “Sherbet is paid to say that—in greasy pink donuts, no less.”

  “He also said you could be sassy, and that you would mention the pink donuts.”

  “Maybe Sherbet is a mentalist,” I said. “Whatever that is.”

  Roy was dressed in cargo shorts and a black t-shirt, wearing one of those old-school paperboy, duck-billed caps that I think are actually cute. Roy looked good in the hat. Then again, most everyone did. In particular, Roy looked relaxed, calm, and excited to talk about whatever was on his mind. Sherbet wouldn’t tell me details. Sherbet had called yesterday and said he had a job for me, if I wanted it. He only told me that it wasn’t another cheating spouse case and that I should get a kick out of it. Sure, I could have plumbed Sherbet’s mind—even through a phone line—but I let him have his fun and his little secret.

  So, here I was, in the back of beyond, sitting across from a lake no one seemed to care about. His “fun” had cost me my afternoon and a half-tank of gas. Not to mention, I had to make arrangements with Mary Lou to pick up my kids. That is, if Tammy even finished school today. These days, she missed more classes than she attended, and was proving to be a major pain in my ass.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” he said. “I know you came from Orange County, but Sherbet thought it would be important for you to see the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

  “Sherbet seems to have this all figured out.”

  “Not exactly. When I told him about it, he only laughed. Most people laugh, which is why I quit talking about it. Except now, I’ve seen it twice—and both times after I’d seen it, someone in town went missing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “This just got a little more interesting.”

  “Sherbet says that you sort of specialize in the strange and the unusual. The Queen of Strange, he called you, actually.”

  “Did he now?”

  “I don’t think he meant any harm by it. He said it sort of, I dunno, endearingly.”

  “Well, as long as it was said endearingly. So, how can I help you, Mr. Azul?”

  “Please, call me Roy.”

  Yes, I could have dipped into his mind, but I decided not to. At least, not yet. These days, I dip into minds when needed, and, in turn, kept mine mostly locked up. No more accidental telepathy for me, thank you very much. In fact, the less often I used my powers, and the more often I embraced my humanity, the more the demon within me lay dormant. No, she wasn’t really a demon—more of a highly evolved dark master who’d been banished from Earth by forces much greater than her. Or me. Except she—and others like her—had figured out a loophole back into Earth. The loophole? The possession of others. And possession by such powerful forces led to vampirism, lycanthropy, and other supernatural oddities.

  And, yes, I was a supernatural oddity.

  Anyway, she liked for me to read the thoughts of others; she liked for me to control others, to use my great strength, to hurt and kill and destroy. Mostly, she liked when I fed on others. Oh, yes. She really, really liked when I fed on others. Human blood gave her strength and boldness. It gave her, in fact, the ability to control me, too. But no more. Now, I’d learned to use my powers sparingly. To fly sparingly. To use my telepathy sparingly.

  But most of all—which frustrated her to no end—I quit feeding on humans. Live humans, dead humans. Any human.

  All of which had weakened her and reduced her to nothing more than a very bad memory. But she was still there, waiting in the shadows of my mind, waiting for me to screw things up, waiting for me to let her in through that cracked door. What happened once she got in, I didn’t know. But Samantha Moon, as I know her to be, as I know myself to be, might just cease to exist altogether.

  “How can I help you, Roy?”

  He looked at me. I looked at him. He seemed about to speak, thought better of it, then shut his mouth. I nearly gave him a telepathic prompt to start speaking, but I waited. Patience was good for the soul.

  He nodded to himself, clearly conflicted, then steeled himself, looked at me, and said, “Do you believe in monsters, Ms. Moon?”

  Chapter Two

  “Call me Sam, and why do you ask?”

  His hesitancy returned. I might have shot him a “Go on” prompt, but I’d never admit to it. Finally, he said, “Well, if you laugh at me, you wouldn’t be the first. Even Sherbet had a chuckle or two. Or five.”

  I waited. McDonald’s smelled like McDonald’s: grease and potatoes and frying meat, coffee and recently mopped floors. Two kids were running in circles around their mother. One of the kids stopped and stared at me, then continued running, although flashing me furtive glances. I get that sometimes: kids who just somehow know.

  “Okay, here goes,” said Roy.

  “The anticipation is killing me,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “No. Spill the beans, unless you want me to wrestle it out of you. Be warned, I give wicked noogies.”

  He chuckled. “You’re right. I’m making it bigger than it is, I guess. Weirder than it has to be. Okay, here goes: I’m pretty sure—no, damn sure—that I saw a lake monster. Twice.”

  “Now,” I said, “that is pretty big and weird.”

  “I knew it!”

  “So, to clarify, you did say lake monster and not late mobster. As in the ghost of Al Capone?”

  “Correct, lake monsters. As in Loch Ness, I guess.”

  “I think I would have preferred you’d seen Al Capone.”

  “Honestly? Me, too. This thing has really rocked my world.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess we’re really doing this. Tell me about the lake monster.”

  And so he did, and somehow, kept a straight face while doing so. The first sighting had been two weeks ago, when the first young boy had disappeared. Yes, I’d heard about the missing boys. They had disappeared a week apart—and each was still missing. In fact, a part of me was not very surprised when Sherbet had sent me out to Lake Elsinore. The city had been in the news, and I would have bet good money that the case would have been tied to the missing boys. Not lake monsters.

  Moving on. Roy told me that he had just finished giving his cabin guests a tour of the lake—Roy, in fact, ran the only lake tour in town. Roy was busy tying up the boat for the evening... when the hair on the back of his neck stood on end... followed by a feeling of being watched. He turned, and spotted a strange ripple in the water. And there, just beneath the surface, was a dark shape. A shadow, he called it. A very, very long shadow. It circled around the prow of his boat, then went under the dock itself. He didn’t know for sure, but then he watched it turn to starboard. Then the shadow headed out for deeper water... and that was it.

  I studied his aura: bluish with splashes of yellow. He was telling the truth. Or, at least, what he believed was the truth.

  “How long?”

  “Longer than my boat. Maybe thirty feet.”

  “What time of day was this?”

  “Evening. It was the last tour. It was getting dark, but there was still enough light to see.”

  “How long would you say you saw it?”

  “Twenty... thirty seconds.”

  “And you’ve never seen anything like that before?”

  “Hell, no. And I’ve lived in Elsinore all my life. Been boating on it all my life, too. Seen nothing like it.”

  I nodded, picked up the McCup and took another McSip of the McCoffee. It tasted McHeavenly. I said, “Is that about when the first boy went missing?”

  He nodded, looking scared and foolish and desperate. “Disappeared that night.”

  I nodded. “Tell me about the second incident.”

  He did. The incident took place about the same time, early evening. This time Roy was out fishing with a longtime customer. The lake had been flat, like smoky glass, as he recalled. His customer had been digging around in
the cooler for a beer when the entire boat suddenly lurched, Roy nearly dropping his pole. He leaned forward, looking over the rail, just as the massive shadow rushed underneath. His guess: the thing was going about sixty knots.

  “I assume that’s fast?” I said.

  “Almost seventy miles an hour.”

  And I almost said he could have omitted the ‘almost’ and just said seventy miles an hour, but I kept my mouth shut. “And your friend didn’t see it?” I asked.

  “You blink and you miss it.”

  “Because it was going seventy knots.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you tell him about it?”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he felt the bump but saw nothing. He figured it was probably floating debris or the shadow of a passing cloud overhead.”

  “Were there clouds that evening?”

  “There were.”

  “And was there debris in the water?”

  He hesitated. “There was, actually. A long branch floated nearby.”

  I nodded, and decided not to point out the logic of his friend’s theory. Instead, I did what any good investigator would do who could read minds: I dipped into his thoughts. I didn’t have to go very far. Right there, front and center was the shadow moving under his boat. He was right. It was a damn big shadow, and it didn’t look like any tree branch or reflecting cloud formation. It looked, if anything, like a giant worm. He was telling the truth. Then again, how trustworthy was his own memory? We would see.

  Roy was saying, “Ms. Moon. This was no cloud shadow or tree branch. This was huge, and it was living, and—”

  “And I believe you.”

  “I’m not crazy, Ms. Moon. I—I’m sorry, you what?”

  “I believe you.”

  He took in some air, exhaled, then took in a lot more. “Wow. That’s... that’s refreshing to hear.”