by Shannon West
Blackwater Falls, Book One
DARK OF THE MOON
SHANNON WEST
SUSAN E SCOTT
Dark of the Moon
Copyright © 2020, Shannon West, Susan E Scott
Published by Painted Hearts Publishing
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Dark of the Moon
Copyright © 2020 Shannon West, Susan E Scott
Publication Date: May 2020, 2nd Edition
Authors: Shannon West, Susan E Scott
Editor: Ashley Kain
All cover art and logo copyright © 2020 by Painted Hearts Publishing
Cover design by E Keith
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Chapter One
Sheriff Hawke Sutherland sat at his desk looking down at the calendar in front of him and cursing out loud. Tonight the dark of the moon cycle began again, and he faced a tough three days until the New Moon came in. The mountain lion pride had several young ones that had come of age in the last twenty-eight days, and they could be hard to control until they had some experience in controlling themselves. All he could do was try to manage them with the help of the other pride members.
Feeling frustrated, he ran his hands through his straight black hair, a gift of his Native American great-grandfather, along with his name, Soaring Hawk. Hell of a name for a Scotsman.
Thank God, his parents dropped the Soaring off the name, and he’d added the ‘e’ himself in an effort to make the name marginally more modern. It hadn’t helped much, and he still got questions when he met someone for the first time, but whatever. He’d done the best he could with what he’d had to work with.
He closed his eyes for a moment in exhaustion, opening them to look at the framed family crest hanging on the wall. It was a mountain lion (called a cat-a-mount by some of his Scots ancestors) and the motto, Sans Peur, which meant without fear. He had sometimes wondered about that crest and whether some distant Scots ancestor was sending out an ironic message across the years to warn unsuspecting humans about the dangers of getting mixed up with the pride.
He’d scheduled a meeting of all the heads of households to discuss the issue of the young ones. All they could do was discuss it and worry it to death, because there could be no plan, really. That would mean some kind of human intelligence had to be involved in the plan’s execution, and one of the most troubling things about the shift—among so many—was that once they shifted into their beasts, most of their human reasoning and intelligence totally deserted them. Only with extreme focus and concentration could any of them hold onto a semblance of it.
At best, they could make sure they were all on the same page before the shift that night, anyway, and he could impress them again with the importance of secrecy and security prior to and during the change. He’d called a meeting for eleven o’clock that was in about ten minutes. He got up and left the office, locking the door. His deputy was out on patrol, and if anyone needed Hawke, they could find him easily enough in the café.
He walked across the street to the town café, spotting his cousin Spencer at the counter getting a cup of coffee. They were near the same age and had grown up together. Spencer was like a brother to him. Spencer’s younger brother, Travis, on the other hand, about ten years younger, was apt to be one of the problems they were here to talk about. Travis had just come of age at twenty-one and had a wild streak in him a mile wide. He was one of the problems they were here to talk about. Travis and the group of young punks he ran with were going to be an issue. Hawke could feel it in his bones.
Spencer looked up as Hawke came in the door. “Hey, Hawke. I was just ordering us both a cup of coffee for the meeting. Maybe when it’s over we can get lunch.” He picked up the coffee mugs and handed one to his cousin.
Hawke took it and they walked toward the back room where other men and women were already seated. “God, I dread the next three days, Spencer,” he said softly, turning toward his cousin.
Spencer nodded, but Hawke knew he thought he was overreacting. Most everybody in town thought he worried too much. Actually, they worried too damn little.
Six young members of the pride had turned twenty-one since the last dark moon, and tonight would be their first ever shift. It was pretty fucking unprecedented, and it was all because of what happened twenty-one years ago. The University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team had won some Southeastern Conference title or got into a bowl game or some such thing—Hawke wasn’t a football fan, which made him a definite minority in this town.
There were plenty of people in Alabama who loved Auburn and were undoubtedly diehard fans, but in Blackwater Falls, that was close to heresy. In their town, it was strictly Roll Tide, so the celebration on that day twenty-one years ago went on way past midnight, and nine months later, six children were born to the pride in Blackwater Falls. Several of the boys were given the name of the Alabama coach, a few boys got player names, and one of the girls was even named Crimson—middle name, Tyde. Folks in town generally called her Crimmy, and she actually still spoke to her parents, which said a lot about forgiveness in Hawke’s mind.
“Lighten up some, Hawke,” Spencer said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think it might be. Let’s just go over everything and hope for the best.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s about all we can do. I just don’t want anybody hurt, and I sure don’t want to attract any attention up here.”
Someone had shoved two of the tables together, so Hawke sat down at the head. Six local families were represented at the table, with all of them in the pride and all having children, both male and female, who had come of age after the last cycle.
A few of the parents looked mildly concerned, but others were drinking their coffees and chatting as if this was no big deal. Most of them thought Hawke was being overly cautious, though nobody had the nerve to say it to his face.
Well, the males anyway. The females of his pride never had any problem saying whatever the hell they wanted to. Most of them would fight a circle-saw and it a’runnin’, as his granddaddy used to say, although that expression had never made a lot of sense to him.
Anyway, pride females had a tendency to be wild and hard to handle, with godawful tempers. They had found it necessary to mate with human men, mostly, because the males of their own species were not interested in dealing with them. There were only two couples there who had females coming of age since the last cycle of the dark moon, and the pride males only mated with the females if absolutely necessary for breeding purposes. Some of them actually preferred other men. Some of the females preferred other women too—always human though. A same sex mating with two pride females would have probably resulted in bloodshed. At any rate, same sex matings were common eno
ugh that no one ever remarked on them or found them in any way unusual.
Everybody at the table was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to start the meeting. He cleared his throat and said, “Let’s get started. It looks like we’re only going to have a couple of females to shift for the first time tonight. What do you think? Can you talk to them? The males are a little wild, but the females…well, you’ll know them much better than I do,” he said, gazing over at their parents.
Bob Hamilton looked at his wife, Lynn, and said, “We’ve talked about it to Crimson and explained to her the importance of being careful. She seemed to understand the gravity of the situation, but Lynn is going with her tonight. Maybe her presence will calm her down a little.”
“That’s good, Bob, if Lynn will be able to focus enough.”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Lynn snapped, her dark eyes flashing across the table at him. “It’s not like I’m some damn man who can only focus on his dick for any length of time.”
Hawke cleared his throat and turned to the other couple there who had a daughter. “Okay, then, moving along.” Again, he spoke to the human male. “John, have you and Beth addressed the issue with your daughter?”
“Yeah, Hawke, we have, and we pretty much have the same plan as Bob and Lynn.”
Hawke glanced at Beth, who was glowering at him, daring him to question her abilities to care for her daughter. It would take a much braver man than he was, so he kept his tone brisk.
“Okay, sounds good. Now, let’s get to the males. This is their first shift and it can be overwhelming to them. A lot of these boys are wild anyway.” He held up a hand when one of the boys’ fathers started to protest. “Adam, you know as well as I do that I’ve had to bring your boy home to you on three different occasions after he drank too much beer over at MacKay’s Tavern with his buddies and tried to drive around town.”
Everyone at the table frowned at the name MacKay. There had been bad blood between the Sutherlands and the MacKays since the great pride wars in Scotland around the fourteenth century. One of their family’s habitual enemies had been the MacKays. The feud first came to a head in 1372, when a Sutherland murdered the head of the MacKay pride in his own bed—the incident always made Hawke think of that Macbeth play by Shakespeare that his English teacher had gone on and on about.
He still remembered the movie Mrs. Brewster made his class watch—some old creepy guy walking down a drafty looking castle corridor, wearing a kilt and carrying two big knives dripping in blood. He remembered snickering over that line with his friends as the old man ranted and raved about his unclean hands. Hell, he had a wash basin right in front of him—why hadn’t he just washed the damn things?
The Sutherlands must have been okay with their bloody hands, but the MacKays went seriously nuts, and began a series of retaliatory raids. When several of the Sutherland women were kidnapped, raped and held prisoner by the MacKays, it brought the cat strain into their family, along with the interesting ability to change into a big mountain lion on the dark of the moon. That must have been a shock. The joke was definitely on them.
The MacKays thought it was a deliberate curse the Sutherlands brought down on them by a witch—three witches? Chanting “Double, double, toil and trouble”? No one ever knew for sure, though Hawke wouldn’t put much past those Sutherland females. Conveniently, the McKays ignored their own role in the kidnappings and rapes of the women in the first place, and had loathed the Sutherlands ever since.
Later, when the Sutherlands and the MacKays and the other great clans were forced out of Scotland by the English, they brought their feud with them to America, along with what they deemed their “curse,” which was on both families by that time. Of course, a great deal of all this so-called history was just legend and myth, but the seemingly impossible fact remained that his family, along with the MacKays weren’t exactly human, and probably never had been.
Ironically, the MacKays had settled in the hills near the Sutherlands, and supposedly the feud remained even to the present day, though most of the time, no one bothered with it, except the older folks. Hawke even had a few buddies in high school who’d been MacKays. The guy who ran the towing service for the county was Camron MacKay, for example, and a good friend of Hawke’s. He, like Hawke, mostly didn’t give a damn about any feud.
Hawke came back to himself and noticed all the pride members glaring down the table at him. What was it that made all his family such assholes near the time of the change? It was at times like these when he pitied the poor humans who had to live with them.
“Okay, it’s going to be painful at first and these kids might get out of control. They’ll be feeling the power and freedom, and we can expect trouble. I remember the first time I shifted, and if my dad hadn’t stayed right with me, God knows what I would have done.”
All of the pride men at the table nodded, remembering their own first times. And though there were a few fond memories they must have also remembered their already out of control offspring, and their smiles slowly turned into frowns.
Hawke looked at his cousin Spencer and his human father. “Spencer, do you think you can control Travis? Maybe with your mother’s help? He’s one of their ringleaders and they’ll be looking to him to see how he acts.”
Hawke’s Uncle Jim looked a little worried, but Spencer rolled his eyes heavenward. “I don’t know, Hawke. I think he’s worse than you and me put together at that age. And that’s saying something.”
There was nervous laughter around the table. “But can you control him?” Hawke asked. “Remember, I’ll be out there, too, to help any of you, if you need it. I’ll try, anyway.”
Spencer got serious and said, “I’ll try to stay right with him every minute, so I should be able to watch out for him. I don’t know, really, if Mom will be all that big a help. She wouldn’t even come with us today.”
Hawke’s aunt Sophie was a typical pride female, and though willful, she wasn’t normally so obstinate. The dark moon must already be affecting her. Hawke nodded, knowing there was nothing Spencer or his father could do with her.
“What about the other three boys? Have y’all made your plans and talked to your boys? You know, they’re all Travis’ buddies and every one of them is wild as a buck.” He leveled a stern look at all of them and when they stared defiantly back at him, he held their gaze until they finally lowered it. Being the head of the pride was a job he inherited and had never wanted. It reminded him of herding chickens. As soon as you got one in line, another two or three would dart out and make a break for it, until you felt like wringing the necks of the whole damn bunch.
The other families assured Hawke that they had their sons under control, and the sheriff hoped that they knew what they were talking about, but he doubted it. He had a bad feeling the next three nights were going to be a fucking nightmare.
So, he had the plan, such as it was, in place. The families would try to stick with the young ones and monitor them as closely as they were able to, but Hawke didn’t hold out much hope that they could do it. It was just too damn hard to keep focus. The cat took over and pushed the human out, unless there was some very strong stimulus to hang onto. There really wasn’t much else they could do except hope for the best.
As the meeting broke up, Spencer came up next to him. “You hungry, Hawke?”
Hawke sighed. “Not really, but okay, since we’re here.”
There was an empty booth in the back of the little dining room, and they took a seat at one of the mismatched tables with the sticky red tablecloths.
“Good Lord, you think they’d run a wet cloth over these tables every once in a while,” Hawke grumbled as he pulled up the wooden straight back chair. As soon as they were settled in, the waitress slouched over to take their order. Her name was Marie, which Hawke had always thought to be a sweet, old-fashioned name, completely at odds with the surly woman standing in front of them, tapping her pen against the order pad in her hand.
“Well? Wh
at you want?” she asked, tossing her black hair back off her still attractive, ill-tempered face and glaring at them. Her patience, never abundant in the first place, finally gave up the ghost as they looked up at the chalkboard menu trying to decide.
“A meat and two vegetables, boys. It ain’t that hard. It’s mostly the same shit that’s up there every day, except today we got pork tenderloins. Make a decision, ’cause I ain’t got all day.”
Pork tenderloins were probably indigenous to the south, though Hawke had never traveled all that much and really didn’t know for sure. They were like pork chops, only without the bone, dredged in flour and fried in deep fat that spurted out of little pockets when you bit down in parts of them and burned your mouth. They were greasy and bad for you and disgustingly delicious, and Hawke nodded up at her.
“Okay, Marie, I’ll have the tenderloin. Some fried potatoes too, and let’s just make it a triple threat by throwing in the fried green tomatoes. Unclogged arteries are highly overrated anyway.” He smiled up at her hopefully, but she stared back down at him, unwilling to be amused. Spencer ordered a hamburger and fries, and she turned away and slanted a few more grudging words over her shoulder at them.
“Glasses and sweet tea’s on the counter. Pour it yourself. Your mamas don’t work here.”
“And neither do you,” Hawke mumbled, but he was careful to keep his voice low enough that she didn’t hear him. Hawke sent up a wordless prayer that she wouldn’t spit in his food. It was the best he could hope for at this place, but it was the only diner in town. She plunked two plates down in front of them a couple of minutes later. Hawke noticed her thumb in the fried potatoes, but decided to eat around that spot.
Hawke looked at Spencer with a frown as he sat back down with their teas and said, “I don’t feel good about this thing tonight. I know that there’s nothing else we can do to control the situation, but like I said, I got a bad feeling.”
