Hunter s Moon - By Lori Handeland Page 0,1

you are needed here."

"Why?"

"The usual reason."

"You've got werewolves. Shoot them yourself."

"I need you to train a new Juger-Sucher."

Since when? Edward had always done the training, and I...

"I work alone."

"It is time for that to change."

"No."

I was not a people person. Didn't want to be. I enjoyed being by myself. That way no one around me could get killed - again.

"I am not asking you, Leigh; I am telling you. Be here by tomorrow, or find another job."

He hung up.

Sitting on the edge of the bed in my underwear, I held the phone against my ear until the line started to buzz; then I replaced it in the cradle and stared into space awhile longer.

I couldn't believe this. I wasn't a teacher; I was a killer. What right did Edward have to order me around?

All the right in the world. He was my boss, my mentor, the closest thing to a friend that I allowed myself.

Which meant he should know better than to ask me to do something I'd given up along with my life.

I had been a teacher, once upon a time.

I flinched as the memory of children's voices lifted in song drifted through my head. Miss Leigh Tyler, kindergarten teacher, was as dead as the man I'd once planned to marry. And if she sometimes skipped through my dreams, well, what was I supposed to do, shoot her?

Though that might be my usual method for solving problems, it didn't work too well on the happy-go-lucky dream Leigh. More's the pity.

I dragged myself off the bed and into the shower, then packed my things and headed for the airport.

No one in Elk Snout - or wherever the hell it was I'd been hunting - would notice I was gone. As I did in every area I visited, I'd rented an isolated cabin, telling anyone who asked, and it was shocking how few people did, that I was with the Department of Natural Resources, studying a new strain of rabies in the wolf population.

This excuse conveniently explained my odd hours and my penchant for walking with a gun or three, as well as my cranky nature. The hunting and fishing police were not well liked by the common folk. Which got me left alone - my favorite thing to be.

I arrived at the airport, where I was informed only one plane a day flew to Minneapolis. Luckily, that single flight was scheduled late in the afternoon and there were plenty of seats.

I had ID from the J-S society, which established me as a warden and allowed me to ship my weapons -

a standard-issue twelve-gauge Remington shotgun, my personal hunting rifle, and a Glock forty-caliber semiautomatic, also standard DNR issue. An hour after touching down, I hit the road to Crow Valley.

I didn't bother to call ahead and announce my arrival. Mandenauer had known all along that I would come. No matter what he asked of me, I would agree. Not because I respected him, though I did, more than anyone I'd ever known, but because he let me do what I had to do. Kill the animals, the monsters, the werewolves. It was the only thing I had left to live for.
Chapter 2
By the time I reached the little town in the north woods, the moon was rising. Not that I could see more than half.

But the orb was out there - waiting, breathing, growing. I knew it and so did the werewolves. Just because the sky wasn't glowing with a silver sheen didn't mean the monsters weren't changing and running and killing.

As I slowed my rental car, which I swear was the same four-cylinder piece of shit I'd turned in at the airport in Canada, a flicker of movement from an alleyway caught my attention. I coasted to a stop at the curb and got out.

The place had a deserted air that all small towns get after the supper hour. However, I wasn't sure if this was the usual "rolling up the sidewalks" tradition or the populace had started to stay indoors after dark because of the wolves.

Edward had to have a more serious motive than the common werewolf outbreak for bringing me here.

Even if I was training a new guy, there had to be a reason to do it in Shit Heel. I mean Crow Valley.

The shuffle of a shoe against concrete drifted to me from the alleyway.

"Better safe than sorry," I murmured, and reached into the car for my sidearm.

The rifle or the shotgun would be better, but