Four Moons: The Complete Collection: (Books 1 - 4)
Contents
First Moon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chaos Moon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Dead Moon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Silver Moon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Author’s Note
Also by Richard Amos
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 Richard Amos
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover by Vanesa Garkova
Chapter One
The machine gun had an endless supply of bullets, tearing up bodies left, right, and center.
Pure bullshit up on the big screen.
I popped some chocolate raisins in my mouth, frowning at the muscle-freak actor who probably had an acorn for a dick to make up for the super-bronze physique that drove the ladies wild. Oh, that panty-dropping smile, that body. Plus, he was on the market, was Blade Phillips, the super hunk, bachelor movie star, just waiting for the right woman to come along and steal his heart away?
Motherfucker loved sucking dick just as much as I did.
I got a vibe.
Blade Phillips’s movies were so bad. Not even the good kind of bad. Just pure torture on the brain cells. I’d rather be at home, blasting some tunes and whipping up a batch of my raspberry and dark chocolate brownies. But the man five rows down from me liked these movies, so here I was, one eye firmly on the back of his head.
The mark: Frank Paulson, warlock.
Dealing out curses for any jilted lover, for the right price, was this arsehole’s specialty. One of his curses had really fucked up the daughter of a millionaire tycoon—I’m talking life-changing shit. Poor woman will never be anything more than a torso and a head with a broken brain now. All because some geezer couldn’t take rejection.
The poor woman’s ex had been one crazy human fuckhead. When I’d come calling on him on the request of the victim’s dad, he’d tried everything to get away. He’d even come at me with a rolling pin complete with rusty nails hammered into it. What a fruit cake! I’d taken his head off without breaking a sweat.
But here was the bigger cash prize, the real target, stuffing his face with a greasy hotdog and sucking on a huge cup of fizzy drink. The end of this wanker would be the final piece of sweet revenge—not mine, but the grieving tycoon’s.
On the screen, Blade Phillips was rescuing some damsel in distress. Did people seriously still go for that shit? Frank Paulson obviously did, totally caught up in the drama.
Enjoy it while it lasts, bruv.
The chocolate raisins were so good. If I didn’t have to watch this prick, I’d be back out in the lobby, stocking up on the chocolaty awesomeness. I swear they were magical, had some sort of healing properties.
Laughter rang in the half-full cinema. The action hero had cracked a joke that I’d obviously missed. My warlock mark was loving it, though, coughing as he laughed, taking a sip of his beverage to soothe his throat.
How much longer was left of this shite?
Patience was one of the few virtues I had. Waiting to kill wasn’t a problem for me, even if I did have to sit through bad movies in the process. Frank could pull an all-nighter in this cinema, and I’d be right here waiting for him.
This was my job.
Fucking good at it, I was too.
* * *
Movie mercifully over, I followed Frank out, keeping a good distance between us, but not too much that he could slip away from sight.
Strutting, the cocky bastard hit the bathroom.
I followed him in, taking a spot at a urinal while he whistled in a cubicle, keeping my cock zipped up while I pretended to piss. Couldn’t have a showdown with my tackle dangling out on full view.
A guy saddled up to urinate a few troughs down from me.
Flushing toilet and Frank came out to wash his hands.
The other guy finished his business and was gone without visiting the sink. Dirty fuckhead!
I made my way to the sink while Frank scrubbed his hands.
“Alright, mate?”
I caught his dark eyes on me in the mirror, a wicked grin on his pale face. He was immaculate, dressed all in black with a neat quiff to his black hair.
He knew I was onto him.
“Not bad, cheers.” I turned on the faucet.
“Having a good night?”
This prick knew I was coming for him.
He cocked an eyebrow at me, flinging water off his hands.
Play it cool. “Yeah, bruv. Blade’s a boss, ain’t he?”
“That he is, my friend.”
I could smell the magic stirring within him.
Could he see the twin katana blades on my back? Most people couldn’t, thanks to the ruby ring on my finger, but this was a warlock of the slippery kind.
He nodded and moved over to the hand dryer.
Another man came in to relieve his bladder.
With all my hunting experience, I’d learned to understand the psychology of a mark like this. He was trying to rattle me, to sweat me out, so I’d make the first move.
The only thing that could ever rattle me was a cake that wouldn’t rise.
I couldn’t take him down here, not with three more blokes coming in, laughing and chatting about football.
Hands dry, Frank said, “Well, have a good one.”
“Yeah, you too.”
He left as another two men entered.
The chase was on.
But any good hunter didn’t go in hard straight away, even if the prey was likely to run. No. It was all about the game.
I took a seat at the burger place within the cinema complex as he strolled out quickly, pushing through the main doors.
A night vampire was sitting at the next table, drinking down an O-neg smoothie while chatting on her phone. She looked me up and down as if I were some fucking rodent come to bother her. I wouldn’t mess with a vamp unless I needed to—which wasn’t very often. They were a pain in the arse to take down.
She turned her back on me. Stuck up cow thought the world revolved around her. Yeah, right. I was too busy calling up my babies.
My wolves blinked into life, gray furred with eyes of orange fire. They nuzzled my hands, licking my skin, their energy buzzing across every inch of me.
No one could see Rose and Bob. They were a part of me and me alone, able to be my scouts, my trackers when I wanted to come at things from a different angle. Being half-werewolf and unable to shift, I had a different version of werewolf senses. Rose and Bob were the metaphysical manifestations of those senses, giving me a pretty good skill set to unleash when on the hunt.
“Good girl,” I said to Rose. “Good boy,” I added to Bob.
When they’d come to life on my thirteenth birthday, I’d known their names straight away. It was weird but so right—like when people say they know what their newborn child’s name is when they look at his or her face.
The vampire threw me a look and moved to another table. Good. I couldn’t stand the stench of the blood drink anymore.
“Follow him,” I whispered.
They padded across the gleaming black tiles of the burger place and passed through the glass doors of the main entrance.
I grabbed myself some more chocolate raisins from the cute guy at the kiosk back in the lobby and headed outside, stuffing the bag into my jacket pocket, and I stepped out into the noise of the city.
It was the end of August, time crawling its way to autumn. The change was already in the trees, beginning that transition from green to gold and red. There was a little bit of a chill in the air that required a jacket, and thank fuck for that. Summers in London were always, without fail, super-hot. At least they had been in all my twenty-four years. Didn’t mean the heat was over yet, though.
Through my babies, now hot on his trail, I could sense Frank the warlock’s magic better, smell his fear, listen to his footsteps. He wouldn’t be able to see them stalking him, no matter how powerful he was.
He was making his way to Stratford skytube station, so I made my way to my motorbike parked behind the cinema.
Frank would be making his way up to the Central Line platform. Every warlock or witch would take the perilous pilgrimage to Hyde Park when they were backed into a corner. I mean, it was so predictable, but I always had to send Rose and Bob on the case because you never knew if that predictability would turn on its head.
Taking stupid chances was a fuckhead’s game.
I’d cut him down before he could realize his doomed dreams of getting away.
I climbed on my bike and took off. I’d follow the red path in the sky that was the Central Line, then go full throttle when Frankie Doodle decided to depart the train in the sky and come back down to the streets.
A pointy landing would be waiting.
* * *
Oxford Street was a funny place. The eastern half was a bustling shopping district. Way back in the day, before I was born, the whole thing was supposedly retail heaven. I couldn’t picture it. The half that was west of the skytube station was not a fun place to find yourself in after dark or before. It was a gang-controlled slum, walled off from the ‘money’ parts of the east by a forcefield of invisible energy to create a border.
The night sky was choked with clouds, a half-moon hidden behind the blanket of darkness. It was gonna rain. There was that familiar metallic tang on the air.
I parked my bike up behind a department store—gotta love the rarity of free parking—and rocked up to the border between east and west. No vehicles were allowed over that side.
A train roared behind the clouds, leaving a trail of red light. Then another boomed and left behind a baby blue stream, followed by a brown streak—all crisscrossing and heading off in different destinations. I tried to avoid the skytube as much as I could as it got too bloody busy all the time. Still, I’d rather that then have to use it when it was underground like it had long before I was born. Moving it to the sky was all in the name of progress, apparently.
There were signs at the invisible border barrier warning those without a valid city pass that they’d be detained for breaking the rules of not having one of those tiny chips under their skin. It was a rule that only applied to the poor bastards who’d found themselves stuck in the slums, their lives run by vicious gangs. Everyone who wanted to wander the streets away from the slums needed to have a city pass. Mine was firmly embedded in my left wrist.
I’d been here many times.
Frank was in there, running down the main stretch of western Oxford Street.
Good. I loved a chase.
I passed through the barrier, a buzzing in my ears as I did, and broke into a run on the other side.
The warlock darted down a side street called Swallow Place. Bob and Rose were hot on his heels. I carried on straight to make for the cutoff, past a group of female prostitutes.
“Hey, baby!” a woman cried. “Wanna do some business?”
I ignored her, speeding up, leaping over a figure passed out on the pavement in a boozy stupor.
“Oi!” came a boom from across the road.
Ah, shit.
Chapter Two
“You deaf, cock sucker?”
I rolled my eyes. “How perceptive.”
“Da fuck you say?”
Men fanned out across the street to cut me off. Six of them, all in vests. Twats. Just because they were ripped, they had to show it all off—probably fans of Blade Phillips.
I was forced to stop, my mark putting good distance between us.
“Stay on him,” I muttered to my babies.
“What’cha saying, faggot?”
The heckler took the leader spot in front of his six brute buddies who waited behind him. He was all overly tanned bulk, with a peanut head and greasy hair that wanted to be slic
ked back but was more ‘I could fry bacon on that shit’ than anything else.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I retorted.
“Pussy has a mouth.”
His posse laughed as one.
The leader folded his big arms across his bulging chest. “You better watch that mouth, boy. I’ll rip you a new smile.”
I didn’t have time for this mugging bullshit. Anyway, I wasn’t smiling.