Read Moonlight (By My Light, Book One) (Werewolf Shifter Romance) Page 2
I walked through the busy commercial streets and into one of the less fashionable residential districts. Those streets were places the city development department forgot, at least for the last seventy years. The ten-floor brick apartment buildings were so run down even the rats wouldn't live in them. They were up-to-code only on paper. Bribing the inspectors was all that kept the slumlords in business.
The streetlights flickered, if they lit up at all, as the setting sun finally finished its work for the day and went below the horizon to rest. The multitude of homeless gathered around burning barrels to warm their hands and swap news of the best shelters for grub. Others hunkered down on stoops with their grocery carts close beside them mumbling words no one else could understand.
I in my fancy work clothes stuck out like a sore thumb, but I didn't mind. My apartment was only a twenty-minute walk away from work, and the rent was cheap. Part of it was paid by my cockroach roommates. They were usually easy to deal with. The bugs would greet my coming in with a scurry of their feet into their dark holes, then wait for me to shut off the lights for bed to come out again.
I paused on a street corner to wait for traffic and caught a glisten of glass in the distance. The skyline of the city was dominated by a single capital I-shaped building of glass and steel that rose two hundred floors off the ground. That was the Indigo Towers. It housed the headquarters of Indigo Industries. Atop its steel frame was a stone castle and gardens, the extravagant residence of one of the richest men in the world, William A. Fox. It was rumored he had his hand in everything. Legal, illegal. Nothing was too dirty for him. My office had some lucrative contracts with one of his dozens of firms.
Standing on that dingy street corner among blaring car horns and shouting people, I wondered if it was quiet up there at the top. Maybe he was sitting there right then reading some boring paper and earning a million dollars an hour off his stock ventures. It must have been good to be a king of a small financial kingdom.
And did I mention he was the most eligible bachelor in the world? Men envied him, women adored him, and my best friend was one of the drooling masses who fawned over his pictures. Dakota's hobby was to collect any magazine that had his face on the cover and lock it away in her Drawer of Dreams. Seriously, that's what she called her filing cabinet full of memorabilia, all featuring the handsome Mr. Fox. Catchy name, I had to admit, but someone that available who wasn't married by thirty was definitely hiding something. Maybe he was gay, or maybe he was secretly married and kept his private life a secret. I'd once made that last suggestion to Dakota, and she'd nearly killed me for dashing her dreams.
The traffic subsided and I walked across the street to the next block. The sound of shouting and screams from behind me broke me from my reverie. I turned and yelped as something big and furry sped past me. The behemoth shoved against me and sent me tumbling into a mess of trash cans. Lids clattered in every direction and a box of used clothes fell onto my head. Through the thin cloth I glimpsed the large dog, or whatever it was, race down the street. A few seconds later two men sped by in hot pursuit of the drive-by canine.
My eyes widened when I recognized one of them as Mr. William Fox himself. If it wasn't him then the guy should've been out posing as him, not as some animal control officer. The guy with the Fox look-alike was a man of about thirty-five with black thick-framed glasses and a stylish blue business suit that looked horribly out of place among all the bums and my now-dirty attire. I couldn't ask them who they really were because they were gone as soon as I saw them.
I tossed the box and clothes off my head, and stumbled to my feet. I brushed off what I could of the garbage and looked down the street. Prey and predators were gone. The homeless and others like myself who were trying to get home went back to what they were doing.
I shook my head and proceeded down the street towards my apartment. There was half a block more and I needed to take a right into an alley. Then I'd be home free. My mind, however, went back to the run-in with the over-sized pound puppy and his pursuers. I was sure that was Fox himself. I'd seen him in the flesh.
"Dakota is going to be so jealous of me. . ." I murmured as I pulled out my phone. This was some juicy gossip that I couldn't keep to myself.
I turned right into the alley. Fifty yards straight ahead across a wide block was my street. I even had a slim view of the stoop of my apartment building, but my attention was on my phone. The buttons on my cellphone lit up in the darkness and I pressed in.
If I hadn't been paying so much attention to my phone I would have noticed the two shadows that rushed down the alley towards me. I heard a splash as something hit a puddle and looked up just as I pressed the Call button.
The giant dog from before leapt at me and opened his big mouth. I held up my arm and his sharp jaws clamped down on me. I let out a scream as his fangs broke through my frail flesh and sank deep into my arm. My cellphone flew somewhere into the dark edges of the alley. The dog dragged me to the ground and rung my arm in its teeth, raising the pain from terrible to excruciating.
The second shadow, who I barely recognized as Fox, was ten yards behind the dog and closing. He raised their arm and I heard a soft whoosh of air. The dog released me and jumped to the side. Something flew past it and over me, and bounced across the ground until it slid into a pile of garbage.
The dog turned to Fox, bared its teeth in a hideous growl, and jumped over me. I turned my head and watched it race out of the alley and across the road into the next alley. In a few seconds it disappeared. The only evidence it was ever there were my memories and the horrible bite mark on my arm. It burned like it was on fire. I grabbed the upper part of my arm and wished I could rip it off. Footsteps walked up to me, and I turned my head in the opposite direction.
Fox stood over me. He had dark brown hair and cold blue eyes that looked down on me with an interest I didn't like. The man knelt by my side and lifted my wounded arm. I let out a yelp and tried to pull it from him, but he kept a tight hold on it.
"Are you all right?" Fox asked me.
I grimaced and shook my head. "Does it look like I'm all right?" I growled. That got a smile off him.
I heard footsteps and the spectacled man came from the direction I'd entered the alley.
"I'm sorry, sir, but the beast appears to have gotten away," the man told Fox. "Did you want me to call for air surveillance of the area?"
"There's no need. I believe we've found what we were searching for," Fox replied.
The spectacled man looked down on me and raised an eyebrow. "A new one, sir?"
Fox pulled out a small, white handgun with a fat, round barrel. "She will have to do. And who knows? This may turn out to be more educational for us."
He pressed the barrel against my arm and I felt a needle prick me.
"What are. . .you. . ."
That was all I could get out before the world went black.