Lindsay Longford - Dark Moon

Lost in that darkness with her, he knew she was his anchor. Her hand brushed against his forehead willingly, even as she heard his terrible cry. Her fingers were warm in the zero cold of his agony, even while she trembled against him.

Her touch kept him from disappearing into that wild, whirling darkness. But her touch had also focused those images. Sharpened them into crystal pieces of pain that sliced through her, too. And while he sought rest in her green eyes, peace in her sturdy refusal to bend under the weight of her loss, he’d brought his darkness to her.

He’d thought to protect her, to find out the truth of what hovered around them, but he’d endangered her.With the last remnant of strength he had, he shoved her away.

Lindsay Longford, like most writers, is a reader. She even reads toothpaste labels in desperation! A former high school English teacher with an M.A. in literature, she began writing romances because she wanted to create stories that touched readers’ emotions by transporting them to a world where good things happened to good people and happily-ever-after was possible with a little work.

Her first book, Jake’s Child, was nominated for Best New Series Author, Best Silhouette Romance and received a Special Achievement Award from Romantic Times for Best First Series Book. It was also a finalist in the Romance Writers of America RITA Award contest for Best First Book. Her Silhouette Romance novel Annie and the Wise Men won the RITA Award for the Best Traditional Romance of 1993.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was the sudden silence that made her look up.

Struck by the stillness, Josie paused. Pebbles of dirt spattered from her trowel to the ground as she raised her chin. Dust spiraled up, gritty against her mouth.

She tilted her head, listening.

And heard nothing.

Her fingers tightened against the leaf of the tomato seedling. Uneasy, she rested her trowel on the ground.

All morning she’d been distantly aware of the occasional trill of a mockingbird or the squawks of a blue jay in the pines at the edge of her property, the bird noise a numbing background sound in the July heat.

But now, this silence.

Abrupt and absolute.

Only the stifling darkness of the woods in front of her. Darkness and stillness and the heavy drumming of her pulse in her ears.

Over the pungent scent of the bruised leaf in her hand came a musky scent mixing with the smell of dry soil.

Heat pressed in on her, trickled down her spine.

Something there, just at the edge of her vision. A shape, a form, unmoving in the shadows of the woods.

She blinked, clearing the haze of perspiration from her eyes. Shades of darkness slid into focus, and her heart stuttered and skipped a beat as she saw him.

Ears folded over and stub of a tail jutting out, the dog paused at the edge of the woods and stared at her. Heavy bodied and blunt nosed, he watched her, an intimidating intelligence in his unblinking yellow gaze.

Predator eyes.

Kneeling in front of the straggling tomato plants, Josie gripped the trowel stuck in the sandy soil of her garden and didn’t move.

The dog fixed her with his murky yellow eyes as he slowly lowered his muzzle.

Understanding pierced her heat-stunned brain. Rabid, heat-mad, whatever—the animal was readying himself for attack. Josie swallowed, the sound loud in her ears.

Balancing herself, she flattened her free hand in the dirt, dropping the seedling uprooted by the force of her grip. One broken leaf lay like a green arrowhead against the clumps of earth.

With her barely perceptible movement, the animal, a good two feet or more at the shoulder, stepped forward, his long, sloping shoulders moving with massive power.

Fear sharpening her senses, Josie studied him. He was almost 130 pounds of tight, hard muscle from shoulder to flank. But his eyes—Josie shivered.

His stubby tail, upright now, wagged once.

She might have thought it was a sign of friendly greeting.

She knew better.

Friendliness was not in those eyes.

Not friendliness at all. Something else entirely.

Threat glowed deep in their muddy depths.

An instinct she hesitated to trust whispered, Evil, evil. Another voice, one she knew damned good and well not to trust, murmured seductively, Run!

Sweat dripped down into her eyes as she edged back slowly on her heels, unthinking, reacting at a primal level. Keeping her gaze on the ground, avoiding direct eye contact, she kept the animal in peripheral view.

He lifted his snout, sniffing, and cocked his head, watchful, waiting. His front paws alternated in place, a curious, prancing dance, before he drifted out of view. She carefully turned her head, and through a blur saw the dog pace three steps east along her yard toward the clothesline where her sheets hung limp and still, and then three steps west, observing some boundary invisible to her, a boundary only yards away as he guarded her. His mouth was partially open, his tongue lolling to the side.

Her knees ached with the effort she made not to leap to her feet and run. Behind her, the house might as well have been miles away, light-years from where she knelt shaking and sweating in the dirt.

Smells rose to her nostrils, the salty smell of sweat on her arm, the dry tickle of dirt, the fetor of animal excitement heavy in the still air.

The only moving thing in her universe, the dog stalked slowly in front of her.

Emerging from the darkness of the woods like a shadow, another dog eased to his left. Then a third, both dogs staying slightly behind the lead dog, and all three fixing her with that stare that sent a slide of ice bone-deep.

The trowel was greasy with sweat—slick in her bare hand. Her vision hazy, she saw the first dog stop. Watching her steadily, intently, he closed his rust-colored muzzle.

In all that thick silence, Josie could have sworn she heard his powerful jaws snap. He was thinking, reaching a decision. That, too, she would swear.

If she could wipe the sweat from her eyes, she could—run! Deep in her brain Josie heard the treacherous voice growl.

She thought about it. Her muscles tensed, needing the release of action.

No.

She didn’t dare take off in a race for her house. At gut level, she knew the pack would be on her before she could reach the safety of the porch.

For seven days, the male and four companion animals, all with distinctive rust circles over their eyes, had appeared in the woods, each day moving closer to her yard, her house. Closer to her.

She’d seen them at night, too, their shadows slipping silently through the trees bordering her property, merging in and out of the deeper darkness of the woods before disappearing.