Moonlight Equilibrium: Book 3.5 of the Preternatural Chronicles

by Hunter Blain

  Isabel’s sister, Gloria, lived about eight hours north, close to the border near McAllen.

  Six hours into the drive, Jose was yawning from the monotony. Plus he was hungry, and no matter how many fast-food places they stopped at, he couldn’t curb his appetite.

  It was Isabel who suggested they pull over for the night. They could drive the rest of the way in the morning.

  Jose spotted the same chain motel with the red door and decided to pull in, preferring the familiarity over a nicer hotel.

  Isabel ordered a pizza while Jose showered and Julian watched TV, seemingly unaware of his night terrors.

  Water ran down Jose’s face, but it felt like he couldn’t get clean. The sweating, which had begun last night, had only intensified throughout the day. Isabel had had to grab a sweater from how cold Jose had kept the car as they drove. She had chosen not to say anything, as it was clear how uncomfortable he was.

  His gums and jaw ached while his nose throbbed where it connected to his cheeks. Even his joints seemed to burn like after a hard day’s work on the ranch.

  Jose gently moved the shower toward the cold setting, lowered his head, and let out a moan as the water cooled and ran down his back. His hands rubbed over one another without his conscious mind telling them to do so, trying to provide any relief. He tried stretching his muscles by opening his palm and pulling the fingers back toward his forearms. It seemed to provide a modicum of relief but was quickly replaced with growing pain when shifting to the other hand.

  The moan shifted to a groan as his bones began to hurt. To make matters worse, his rebellious stomach rumbled like a baby doing bicycle kicks inside the womb.

  Jose dropped to a knee while smacking the shower handle to full-blown freezing.

  His eyes became strained as everything shifted between crystal clear definition and a hazy blur. The light from above the sink seemed to pulse as a screwed-up face regarded the scene around him.

  Ice-cold water rained on Jose, bringing a quantum of relief to the growing change going on inside him.

  Knock knock knock came from the door, followed by his wife’s sweet voice asking, “Jose? Are you okay?”

  “Ye-yeah,” he responded, forcing a degree of normality into his strained voice. “Be right out.”

  Jose squeezed his eyes shut and focused on fighting whatever was happening inside him.

  In the darkness of his mind, twin yellow orbs stared from the abyss as lightning cracked in the distance.

  I don’t care who the fuck you think you are; this is my body, and you can’t have it! Jose screamed at the monster inside his mind.

  Thunder rolled, reverberating the very ground underneath Jose, until he realized it was coming from the monster.

  From the darkness of his mind came a drooling muzzle filled with razor-sharp fangs that gleamed in the light.

  The image of his family grew next to where he stood like an artist creating statues from sand. Color seeped into their features, and his wife looked upon her husband with loving, warm eyes.

  The beast took one step into the light, prompting Jose to take two aggressive lunges forward and scream, NO! Get back, demon! This is MY body!

  In answer, the paw and muzzle disappeared into the darkness, but the two yellow orbs remained fixed on Jose.

  Knock knock knock came again, bringing him back outside his mind.

  “Coming,” Jose answered with genuine happiness. The pain had receded, leaving Jose to shudder in the cold water. He turned off the shower, toweled himself dry, and put on his pajamas before stepping into the single room of the motel.

  Isabel sat on their bed, brushing her hair. The silver brooch rested on the nightstand next to her. As he stared at it, the thing seemed to almost hum.

  “Oooh pizza!” Jose exclaimed as he approached the table with the open box. Julian was almost done with his plate, and Jose thought about how his wife must have insisted the restaurant bring paper plates.

  Jose picked up a slice and began eating, relieved to find that it was both filling and delicious. The desire to eat [human] meat completely faded from his mind. At that moment, Jose knew he could beat this thing.

  Chapter 15

  D reams had never meant much to Jose, though his grandmother had given strong credence to their meaning.

  Tonight, however, was different.

  A full moon cut through thinning clouds as if Jose had pressed fast-forward. The light splashed over him and pierced his skin down to the bone. The vise on his bones that had briefly let up in the shower grew tighter, stealing his breath and forcing him to curl up into a fetal position on the ground in his dream.

  Sweat poured through his skin to coat his body like he was standing in an invisible rainstorm. His eyes hurt, and Jose’s hands shot to press the palms into his sockets in an attempt to alleviate the tearing he felt as his pupils split into slits. Tough hair sprang from his skin like tall grass in an unkempt field. Jose’s feet and hands elongated, stretching the tendons to the point where he wished they would just rip apart so he wouldn’t have to endure the pain anymore. His joints popped while his bones and tendons lengthened painfully.

  Jose screamed, but what came out was not his voice. A deep, dual tone filled the night and invaded his ears, temporarily shielding him from his pain with the confusion. Then his face started popping, and the noise was felt to the center of his skull. Teeth began to grow into fangs the size of AAA batteries, with the canines on his upper and lower jaw protruding past his lips. His snout, because that’s what it was now, jutted out, making Jose want to just die from the sheer agony of the transformation.

  Jose passed out from the unrelenting, growing pain.

  Chapter 16

  S unlight snuck through Jose’s eyelids, and he fluttered them as he brought his hand up to shield himself from the light. Julian must have opened the curtains. But shouldn’t it be night? Well, he had been tired. Maybe he had slept through until late morning and Isa’d let him, knowing how exhausted he was.

  The shielding hand dropped to his face, and he rubbed at his eyes while smacking his dry lips. They must have been cracked because he tasted blood on his breath. Or maybe he was getting sick. There was also a tremendous aching over his right eye.

  With his free hand, Jose pushed into the dirt and lifted himself to a seated position. As he did, he felt a rock under his buttock and quickly shifted to relieve the pressure. His eyes cleared, and shock promised to swallow him whole if he couldn’t figure out what was happening.

  Jose was in the middle of the desert and completely naked. Dried blood stained his hands in black flakes that had mixed with the dirt.

  Jose felt the rock under his butt try and pierce his skin, and he instinctively reached under and grabbed the surprisingly smooth stone. Jose brought the rock up to his face and saw that it was a tooth.

  “Huh?” Jose breathed, tumbling down the mountain of confusion, hitting every ledge on his way to the bottom.

  Jose looked down and saw several sharp teeth on the ground where he lay.

  The dream, which Jose hadn’t remembered, decided it was time to come out of hiding and flood his mind with flashes of fragmented images.

  As they shot across the theater in his mind, Jose’s hands went up to his mouth and tears welled in his eyes.

  “No,” he mouthed, unable to force air out of his constricted throat.

  He all but jumped to his feet, spinning around trying to find a landmark, and saw a semitruck several hundred yards in front of him. Without thinking, he began sprinting toward it, not even noticing how fast he was running.

  In short order, Jose arrived at the road. He skidded to a halt, out of breath from anxious hyperventilating rather than from exertion, and looked down the length it spanned in both directions. He went with his gut and began running in the direction the semi had traveled. Thankfully, there weren’t many cars as Jose ran completely naked toward the town.

  An hour and a half later, Jose entered the city limits. He ran down
backstreets and through yards to avoid the main roads as he made his way back to the motel.

  One yard contained an aggressive Doberman that barked ferociously until it smelled Jose. Then the fierce animal turned and leaped into its doghouse, whimpering while it trembled.

  Ten minutes more and Jose arrived to a scene that made his heart leap into his throat. Two ambulances and five police squad cars sat outside the motel with their lights flashing. The window to their room had been smashed, with glass littering the ground outside.

  Jose tried to cry out, “Isa!” but all that came out was an unintelligible moan as he reached with his hands. Jose looked like a zombie with blood coating his face and hands, arms outstretched, and eyes wide as he moaned while stumbling forward.

  “¡Por Dios!” the officer nearest to Jose cried out as he frantically reached for his sidearm. He failed to unclasp the holster and nearly tripped over his own feet as he stumbled backward.

  “ISSSAAAAA!” Jose shrieked as a stretcher was pulled out of the room. The once white sheet was plastered to the adult-sized body with thick blood. “NOOOOO! ISABEL!”

  Two more stretchers were carried out of the room with considerably smaller bloody lumps under the sheets.

  Jose tore his eyes away from his wife and latched onto the other bodies before the world began to tumble in his vision and the concrete of the parking lot rushed to embrace his face.

  Chapter 17

  J ose awoke on a cold tile floor that smelled strongly of industrial-strength chemicals. It burned his nose and he scrambled to get to his feet, only to be met with a blast of ice-cold water shooting from a hose. It smashed into Jose and planted him against the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  The water abruptly stopped and two men holding scrubbing brushes with some sort of red gel on them approached. They began scouring his body with the tough bristles and gel that stung his skin like alcohol on a paper cut. Jose screamed, but the men didn’t listen as they got every inch of his body with practiced efficiency. A spot above his right eye in particular demanded to be recognized and protected.

  A torrent of water began again, and Jose placed his hands against the slick wall in an attempt to hold himself against the force of the water. The image of crimson sheets plastered to bodies erupted in his mind like a volcano, and Jose felt no physical pain anymore. All of his focus was on his family . . . his . . . his wife, Isabel; son, Julian; and newborn daughter, Ana. The wolf had gotten them. He had let the wolf loose because he was weak.

  Jose’s eyes dropped from the tile to the metallic drain at his feet, and he saw the red swirl of the water disappearing into the darkness. The wolf hadn’t gotten them; Jose had.

  “Oh Dios,” was all he could say before the abyss of unconsciousness burst from the blackness and enveloped him.

  “Jose,” Isabel whispered in his ear.

  He snapped awake and was sitting, cold and naked, in a cell. An orange jumper sat next to him on the bed, and he scrambled to put it on. As he did, he fought with the budding realization that this was jail and he was putting on an inmate’s uniform. But it was that or remain naked in a strange place.

  As he slid the jumper on, he noticed the several abrasions on his skin from where the stiff brushes had explored his flesh. They looked a few days old already.

  After the orange jumper was on, he looked around and then up to see a camera. Jose stared at it for several seconds, confused and lost, as if the camera were a buoy in the churning ocean. It must have worked because less than a minute later, a guard was opening Jose’s cell — his cell, because he had killed his family. The thought made him want to faint again, but the desperate desire for information kept him upright.

  A man dressed in a cheap suit stood directly behind the guard, and Jose knew in an instant that he was some sort of administrative official or medical “professional.” As he got closer, seemingly unafraid of Jose, a name tag came into focus. “Dr. Julio Caracas” was stenciled on it. Jose hated the man immediately. How dare he have a name so similar to Julian’s own.

  Julian . . . his son . . .

  “Jose, I am Doctor Caracas. I work with the prison to help identify, let’s say, special cases.”

  He was a head doctor, Jose determined.

  “Is my family de . . . de . . .” The words caught in his throat, as if uttering them would make their implication a reality.

  The man closed his file and regarded Jose as if he had just said the moon was made of diamonds. Squinting eyes flicked and roamed over Jose, leaving him feeling vulnerable.

  “Doctor . . . please,” Jose pleaded.

  “Do you remember anything about last night?” the doctor asked, ignoring Jose’s pleas.

  Jose shook his head slowly while never taking his eyes off the pompous man. God, he even had the brown cardigan suit, complete with patches on the elbows.

  “Do you remember when we found you?”

  Jose nodded his head slowly. Though it was all a blur, he could remember coming up on the parking lot and seeing the flashing lights. His heart took a step up the ladder at the memory of how it had almost choked him when he had first seen the scene.

  “Do you know whose blood was on your hands and your,” he opened the file and scanned for a specific sentence, “mouth,” he drawled, as if unbelieving, then whispered to himself, “Oh dear, I really am going to make my career with you.”

  An asteroid of fury smashed at relativistic speed into the core of Jose’s already frayed sanity, and he erupted at the doctor. “IS MY FUCKING FAMILY DEAD, YOU PIECE OF SHIT?!” Jose lunged at the man, and a guard caught him in the ribs with a baton. Jose didn’t feel it as he lifted the doctor off his feet by his neck, and squeezed.

  Veins bulged along the doctor’s face, with a huge pipeline stemming from his hairline disappearing right where his nose met his left eye. His tongue lashed out of his mouth, as if all of a sudden too big for his mouth, while croaks of air slipped out.

  The guard was laying into Jose’s body using the baton, and Jose batted him away with the back of one hand as if he were nothing more than an annoying fly. Jose heard a crack from somewhere far away before his free hand returned to wrap around the throat of the purple-faced doctor.

  Something latched onto Jose’s calf and began violently shaking him, making all his muscles tighten in response. His grip faltered, and the good doctor dropped to his knees, gasping for sweet, life-giving air.

  Jose fell backward, unable to control his muscles, and his head collided with the edge of the metal bunk.

  The familiarity of darkness wrapped its arms around Jose, though he fought to stay conscious.

  After an eternity in the abyss, stars swarmed in his vision and his eyes began to flutter open. He was in a different room, with a mirror running along one wall. He could see from his reflection that he was sitting in a chair, leather straps holding him in place. There was a vicious-looking, scabbed-over gash over his right eye that started above his brow and went down into his cheek.

  A flash of Isabel grabbing the silver brooch next to the bed and slashing at him came to mind before flittering away as if his brain was trying to erase the memory for the sake of Jose’s sanity.

  Seeing that he was now conscious, the guard with the splinted, swollen nose reared his fist back and punched Jose right in the middle of his face. Jose felt and heard his nose crunch beneath the blow. Hot blood began to sputter out of his nose before the faucet opened and a steady stream poured out. With watering eyes, Jose looked at the guard’s face and then his name tag. Officer Gonzalez. Eyes flicked back to the officer, and an evil smile spread over Jose’s face that he hadn’t meant to project.

  Officer Gonzalez rocked his head back in surprise and took a tentative step backward.

  A throat was cleared and Jose slid his fierce gaze off of Officer Gonzalez to land on the good doctor, who was sitting at the table in front of the chair. A satisfying purple ring encircled his little neck. There was also a ring of red specks around both eyes �
�� like a mask — where the capillaries had burst.

  Doctor Caracas took a sip of water, gingerly touched his neck, and began to speak without making eye contact with the prisoner. Jose had to give it to the doc: his tenacity was admirable. He still hated him, though.

  “Jose Villalobos. Do you know where you are?” As he questioned Jose, the good doctor inspected a tape recorder sitting dead center on the table. Jose also noticed a perfectly positioned pen next to a pristine pack of paper.

  Jose answered the question by blowing a lungful of air in a blast at the table in front of him. The topmost paper rose and then settled back down, albeit slightly off-center. This made Jose smile.

  The doctor, for some unknown reason, was not amused. He skillfully rearranged the top page to fall back in pristine alignment with the others. He looked at Jose with a cocked eyebrow.

  “I shall repeat the question. Do you know where you are?”

  “Jail,” Jose answered curtly.

  “Correct,” Doctor Caracas said slowly, enunciating each syllable while he notated something on the top page.

  “Do you know why you are here?” His eyes flicked from the page to Jose, wanting not only an answer but to observe how it was given.

  “There is a beast that hungers from inside, desperate to escape,” Jose answered with a deadpan face. It almost made him want to smile, stating the truth and knowing it wouldn’t be believed.

  “Once again, I shall repeat the question. Jose, do you know why you are here?”

  “No,” Jose said reluctantly. He did want to know what had transpired.

  “You are being charged with the murder of,” he rustled the pages until he found the one he was searching for, “Isabela Fuent—”

  “Isabel,” Jose corrected between gritted teeth.

  “Right. Isabel Fuentes Garcia, twenty-six. Julian Villalobos Fuentes, five. And Ana Villalobos Fuentes, only six months old.” The doctor tsked after he spoke.

  Hearing the accusation out loud, and the doctor’s clinical indifference to the fact, made something inside Jose’s soul boil over in molten darkness. Internal pressure began to flush his skin with pulsating white-hot blood.