(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 28; Olivia

"Jaylin." He felt Olivia's hand on his back.

Jaylin's body shook and he bent forward with a reflexive gag. Shoving her hand away, he turned to face Olivia. "What happened? Who did that?"

Olivia looked back in the direction of the corpse, completely unmoved. Not even her voice held any sympathy for what laid beneath the mud and leaves.

"Don't know. Finally had enough. Told him I was leaving him. He grabbed that stupid hunting rifle of his and bashed me in the back of the head with it." Olivia ran a frail hand up her neck and into the back of her hair, and her eyes fell shut like she could still feel the hit cracking against her skull. "I don't know. After that, I woke up here. He was dead next to me."

"Olivia, you have to tell someone."

"No. No, I can't do that. They'll think I did it."

"You can't just leave him here."

"Yes I can." Olivia gave an incredulous laugh and grabbed Jaylin by the shoulders. "Jay, this is—this is the opportunity I've needed to start my life over. I've spent years trying to get away from him and now I don't have to run anymore."

"Because he's dead," Jaylin said. "He's dead, Olivia. You have to tell someone."

Olivia's smile fell. She stepped back, crossed her arms and read Jaylin's face for a long while. Then her eyes rolled over the ground as she said, "I thought you'd understand. I thought you'd—I thought you'd help me."

"I don't have time to help you, Olivia, I have my own problems. Stay here or leave, but I'm walking to the police station and telling them there's a dead body in Cedar Park."

He turned and started his way through the trees, feeling blindly around on the rough bark as he made for the light of a street lamp in the distance.

"Jaylin, please," he heard Olivia protest. Then louder. "Jaylin!"

"Stop trying to drag me into your bullshit," he replied over his shoulder. "I'm going."

Then Olivia let out a shriek, one that stopped Jaylin dead in his tracks. Because it was not the scream of a woman. Not the scream of a beast. But both at once.

He froze, all but for the sticks cracking beneath his feet, and Jaylin turned slowly to the sounds she was making—grated, breathy noises, like fluid was filling her lungs and rage was boiling it back up again.

She was watching him beneath her brow, her chest rising and falling again with angry breath. Then Olivia collapsed to her knees. Her chest hit the earth beneath her, bubbles rippling through all of the flesh not veiled by her tank top, her spine rising in some places and falling in others like there was a snake beneath her skin, ravished and angry and writhing for its escape.

Her bones were moving within her body, shifting and rotating, forcing themselves into positions that caused her flesh to rip like paper, blood to spill out onto bruised, blackened skin.

Quills pricked through the discolored flesh. Not quills, but fur. It grew up her forearms, into her shoulders, bursting from each pore until every inch of her flesh was swathed in the dark shag. When she stood in this beastly form, Jaylin saw how truly tall she'd become. Nine feet—maybe even ten feet tall, she towered among the ponderosa's branches. Her legs bowed like that of a wolf, her arms almost human but for the terrible tallons at the ends of her fingers.

But her face—her face was what frightened Jaylin. Because the eyes that belonged to her now were so dark, so hellishly dark. Her canine snout was curling, snarling, baring rows of sharp bloody teeth.