Free Sherrilyn Kenyon - Dark Side of the Moon by Sherrilyn Kenyon

to her delusional mind, she finally succumbed and headed for it.
    Susan really wished she knew what to think as she worked her way through the relatively light Seattle traffic. She could hear the cat moving around in her backseat from time to time, but for the most part, he was quiet.
    Until she finally reached Pioneer Square.
    “Pull around to the loading dock in back. ”
    Convinced she was utterly insane, she did as the disembodied voice said, then parked the car. Her nerves were pretty much shot by the time she opened the door and got out. She half-expected the cat to leap out, but instead it was lying on the backseat… completely covered in blood. Her heart clenched at the sight.
    Was it dead?
    Terrified, she opened the back door. She touched the cat’s shoulder only to have it hiss at her. “Easy,” she said, pulling back.
    The cat rose up slowly so that it could limp out of the car, toward the dock.
    “Hey!” a cute young man with short black hair snapped at her. “You can’t park…” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the cat.
    His face went instantly pale before he shouted inside the door. “Mom, we got Ravyn out here! Code Red.” He grabbed a coarse blanket from a stack of them that was piled on the edge of the dock, then jumped down to wrap it around the cat.
    Carefully, he picked the cat up, cradled it in his arms, then took it back to the loading dock.
    Unsure of what she should be doing, Susan locked her car (and immediately wondered why she bothered since one window had been completely shot out and the rest of the car looked like it’d survived a war zone—but then old habits die hard) and followed them into the dock, which led to a small storeroom. As soon as the kid shut the door and set the cat down, Ravyn returned to being human. He braced one bloodied and blistered hand against the right wall and kept his head bent down as if he was exhausted.
    Sure, why not? He really
was
the cat. Made about as much sense as the rest of her day. And hey, if she had to be delusional, at least he had the best naked backside she’d ever seen, except for the fact that there were numerous bullet holes riddling almost every inch of his exposed flesh.
    But then he was only naked for a few brief seconds before a pair of jeans and a T-shirt appeared on him. It didn’t take long before the shirt was saturated in blood.
    Susan cringed at the sight of it. How could he still be alive, never mind standing upright?
Just play along with the delusion, Sue. What the hell
? “He needs an ambulance,” she said to the kid.
    Ravyn lifted his head to look at her over his shoulder. There was a small bit of blood on his lips, and for the first time she saw his fangs when he spoke. “I’ll be all right. I just need some sleep.”
    “I have got to start taking drugs,” she mumbled. “At least then I’d have an explanation for all this.”
    A door on the opposite side of the small storeroom was flung open to show two more people running in. A young woman who was around the age of the boy and a tall, dark-haired woman in her mid-fifties. The older woman paused as soon as she saw Susan. “Who are you?”
    Ravyn rubbed his bleeding arm. “She’s with me, Patricia.”
    Patricia gave her a suspicious look but didn’t argue. “What happened?” she asked Ravyn, moving to examine the bullet wound he had in his right biceps.
    “The Daimons have declared war on us and they have some of the police department on their side. I don’t know how they managed it or how many they have, but it’s enough to warrant our undivided attention. They claimed they killed at least one Dark-Hunter, didn’t say who, and they almost got me. We need to warn the others, ASAP.”
    The color faded from the older woman’s face. “How is that possible?”
    Ravyn shook his head. “I don’t know. But they’re coming after us one by one.”
    Patricia turned to the girl behind her, who was a younger version of her—obviously her daughter.