Howling Moon Read Free

stop the attack.”
    “Good God! If you’re right about this… but why wouldn’t Charles tell Lucas, Fiona, or one of the council? Why you?”
    “He asked for a personal favor. I’m hardly in a position to refuse. After all, it’s only thanks to him that I’m still alive right now.” Raphael’s chuckle had bitter overtones. This situation meant he was going to have to once again face the very thing that had nearly caused his death; the very same mistake that had made Jack Simpson his mortal enemy years ago.
    “Right.” Raven paused. “So, what do you need me to do?”
     

Catherine shut down the laptop she’d borrowed from her aunt and slid it back into the leather carrying case. She’d finally managed to fall asleep at 4:00 a.m. only to sit bolt upright, heart pounding in terror, less than an hour later from a nightmare reenactment of the animal attack that had killed her parents. So she’d tried to distract herself with business. It had worked. It was now 9:00 a.m. and she was wide awake. Unfortunately, she also had a whole laundry list of problems that needed to be taken care of.
    She stood and stretched until she heard the soft pop of vertebrae sliding into place, then bent to touch her palms to the floor. Stretching out always seemed to ease the muscles stiffened by sitting too long in one position at the computer keyboard. Funny how things changed: when she’d been in her late teens and early twenties the last thing she would’ve imagined herself doing was working with computers. That was her father’s bailiwick. He’d earned his fortune the hard way, coming up from nothing to become the “Bill Gates of computer hardware.” She’d simply enjoyed the fruits of his wealth and status as a local celebrity. She’d become a notorious “party girl.”
    But while her former friends never seemed to tire of the party circuit, she’d grown bored. She had gone away to college without regret, worked hard for her degrees, and settled down. When Brad had proposed after graduate school, she’d gladly accepted.
    Cat winced. Thinking about Brad would tense back up the muscles she’d just loosened. There had been e-mails from him today, the first in a very long while. Probably condolences, but she’d deliberately skipped over them. What would it prove, or solve? He’d been horrified to find out from the local press that his future mother-in-law was not a well-heeled, southern socialite, but rather a former high-end call girl. He’d dumped Cat before the ink was even dry on the newspapers.
    “Asshole.” She said it to her reflection in the vanity mirror and fought down a wave of anger and pain. She’d loved him so damned much and thought he loved her. Maybe he even had. More likely, he’d loved the notion of being married to a beautiful blonde who just happened to be the only heir to the Turner Computer Industries fortune.
    Was everyone this cynical when they closed in on their thirtieth birthday? She hoped not.
    “Aunt Violet, can I borrow the car?” Cat called downstairs to her aunt. She had deliberately waited until Violet had been happily writing for an hour or so before she interrupted to ask the favor – time enough for Violet to get over her irritation of yesterday.
    Cat sighed. She hadn’t meant to cause a problem. But yesterday morning she’d woken up craving meat. So she’d borrowed her aunt’s car before Violet awoke, and escaped the stifling confines of the organic, vegan household her aunt maintained. She’d found herself at Jake’s Burger Joint, a local restaurant just a few miles down the road. The infusion of steak, eggs, bacon, and strong black coffee had been a welcome relief from oatmeal and herbal tea. Cat had enjoyed the lively discussion about video games she’d gotten into with Holly Sanchez, her waitress, almost as much as the food itself. She’d like nothing more than to go back, but she was a guest in her aunt’s home and didn’t want to risk a repeat of the argument