Free Electric Moon by Stacey Brutger

six hours.” Only a few hours
after the original crime from just this morning.
    Raven squinted to see under the gore, searching for a better
angle. “Do you have a flashlight?”
    Scotts barked an order, and one was slapped into her palm.
She shone the light across the woman. Blood and tissue covered her body, the
majority of it the shifter’s.
    Pieces of white bone flashed under the light.
    After the brief scan, Raven reviewed the corpse from the
head down. The woman’s eyes had clouded over to a milky sheen. Half of her face
had disintegrated, small splinters had shredded her features down to the
tendons and skull. The heat had cooked her face, giving it a waxy appearance.
Layers of skin and flesh were pealed back in stages, making her look like a
plastic model in an anatomy lab.
    Her torso appeared in little better shape. Blood saturated the
female’s blouse, obscuring the view, but Raven had seen enough. Even if the
woman had survived the trauma of the explosion, she would’ve bled to death by
the hundreds of individual injuries that littered her body.
    There was a stamp of some kind on the back of her hand,
nearly obliterated by her wounds.
    Raven didn’t recognize the symbol.
    “Well?”
    Raven flicked off the flashlight and straightened. “The
impact indicates she was alive when it happened. Most likely the same scenario as
the last location. He suffered some type of pain. She turned to help him when
the incident occurred.”
    Raven held out the flashlight. “Do we know if these two are
the first murders?”
    Scott’s brows furrowed. “The only ones we’ve found. Why?”
    “Shifters are gathering for the full moon. It’s very
coincidental that the murders have started now.” Raven wondered if this could
be the drug Randolph had mentioned.
    Alpha.
    The conclave would be the perfect place to spread chaos.
    Kill off those pesky shifters.
    There would be no way to test the shifters as they entered.
Each could be a bomb waiting to happen.
    When she surveyed the crowd, Randolph had vanished. She might
not like being the center of his attention, but liked it even less when she
didn’t know where he was at all.

 
     Chapter Seven
     
    SIX DAYS UNTIL
THE FULL MOON
    A large boom jolted Raven out of the bed before she was fully awake. Power surged
along her body in a massive wave, strong enough to bow her back. Current swirled
in the air as if pulled from the nightmare chasing her, the heat blistering
against her skin.
    She cracked open an eye.
    Sunshine slashed through the window and hit her full in the
face. She flinched, squinting to preserve her sight, and swore she’d just laid
her head on the pillow.
    With bleary eyes, she scanned the room, half expecting the
corpses from her dreams to lunge out from under the bed and clamp their clammy
fingers around her ankles.
    Nothing.
    There was no threat.
    Whatever she’d sensed had vanished with her dreams.
    She slowly relaxed then bit back a curse when energy nipped
along her arms and shoulders. As her surroundings filtered to her, she
pinpointed the disturbance.
    Damn Durant and his workers.
    Her lips curled in a snarl at his high-handed ways. She
didn’t mind the remodeling, but it would’ve been nice to have been asked.
    Then she remembered yesterday.
    Jackson.
    Coldness seeped into her skin, and a twinge of doubt stole
over her. He looked very comfortable, even content to be back with his pack.
His glacial eyes had her question everything that happened between them.
    She reluctantly rose and fingered the heavy linen card from
the dresser, the one she’d received from Kevin, knowing she would go to find
out what he was offering.
    She had to see Jackson one more time to make sure.
    She wouldn’t forgive herself if she just gave up on him until
she was convinced he would be better off without her.
    No one in her pack objected when she’d informed them of her
plans to attend the meeting. That Durant had been absent was a non-issue. It
was her decision, and