Bad Wolf

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 easily, 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.