Free Make Me Howl by Susan Shay Page B

animal hormones raging through my system kept me well warmed.
    And I couldn’t help reminding her of it.
    When we’d gone through the line and filled out the papers, I was ready to move. Too much sitting always made me hyper. “I’ll drive,” I said, holding out my hand for the keys.
    Bella gave me a hard look. “I’ll drive. No telling where you’d take us, given the chance.”
    We waited near a glass wall as a young man brought our vehicle. A new Hummer H3, pure white. “Did you get white for camouflage? So we can hide in the snow?”
    “I leased the Hummer because I wanted to be sure we’d have four-wheel drive and wouldn’t get stuck in the snow. The rental company chose the color.”
    She set the course on the Global Positioning System and pulled out of the lot. Thank God for GPS, because normally Bella can’t find her way around the Metroplex, much less through a different state filled with mountains. And snow.
    Once we were on the highway, through Denver and heading west, we picked up some speed. The road signs flashed past faster and faster. Hit with a deep yearning to feel the fresh wind on my face, I rolled down the window.
    The temperature had cooled considerably since we’d exited the plane. My ears numbed almost immediately, but who cared? I had air in my face and flowing through my hair. Exhilarating freedom filled me, spiking my spirits. I was almost as free as if I were flying.
    “No.” Bella’s gruff bark plummeted me back to earth.
    Jerking around, I glared at her. “Why—”
    Before I could finish my question, she’d rolled up my window and turned on the child locks.
    I couldn’t believe my sister. Usually very malleable, since she’d realized I was under the effect of a Blood Moon and in heat, she’d turned into a real dictator.
    It was difficult to blame her for being so worried since I’d never before gone through both afflictions at the same time. All I’d experienced was one malady at a time, and that was bad enough!
    Reaching in my bag, I pulled out my planner, which showed the lunar phases. I hadn’t read it wrong. We were coming to the time when the moon’s influence over me would be strongest—the phase of an eclipse.
    Being filled with Blood Moon energy was tantamount to putting too much helium in a balloon. The pressure grew more and more as we drove that day, making me want to jet into the sky, zoom along the ground, ricochet around a room, anything to expend some of it. My laugh grew loud, my ideas outlandish and my words something like a machine gun set on rapid fire.
    By the time we arrived at Snowstorm, I could barely sit still. While Bella checked us in, I strolled—if you can call speed walking on well-packed snow a stroll—around the grounds. We’d been there before, back when I was a teen, but the spa had changed immensely. From the looks of things, mainly the rich and famous spent time there these days.
    A heated pool and Jacuzzi steamed outside, and there was another, warmer, glass enclosed pool nearby. A gigantic greenhouse, built in the shape of a Victorian mansion and filled with plants, sat at the edge of the property. New buildings had sprouted everywhere, but they all looked as though they’d been there since about the time the mountains were born. Nothing new, garish or shiny about them.
    At the back of the lodge where we’d be staying were the ski slopes. We could literally walk out the backdoor, put on skis and whiz off for the day.
    Getting back when we were finished was almost that easy. A chairlift to the top of the mountain, and from there it was simple to ski back to the lodge. Or if a skier was too tired or inexperienced to take the more difficult slopes from the top, a shuttle could bring them.
    I waited in the car when Bella got back patting my foot in annoyance by the time she started it. “Did they have our reservation?”
    “Yes.” When I shifted into blasting-words-mode, why did she speak in slo-mo?
    “Full living room? Two