Red Moon Rising (A Nightcreature Novella): The Nightcreature Novels

By Lori Handeland

Winner of the Prism Award for Best Paranormal Novella

 

Adventure novelist Maya Alexander's peace ends when she is stalked by a Navajo skin walker in the guide of a wolf. Luckily mysterious soldier of fortune Clay Phillips arrives to protect her.  But no one is safe from the danger that lurks close by.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lori Handeland
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781732418981

Lori Handeland

Lori Handeland is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than 60 published works of fiction to her credit. Her novels, novellas, and short stories span genres from paranormal and urban fantasy to historical romance. After a quarter-century of success and accolades, she began a new chapter in her career. Marking her women’s fiction debut, Just Once (Severn House, January 2019) is a richly layered novel about two women who love the same man, how their lives intertwine, and their journeys of loss, grief, sacrifice, and forgiveness. While student teaching, Lori started reading a life-changing book, How to Write a Romance and Get It Published. Within its pages. the author, Kathryn Falk, mentioned Romance Writers of America. There was a local chapter; Lori joined it, dived into learning all about the craft and business, and got busy writing a romance novel. With only five pages completed, she entered a contest where the prize was having an editor at Harlequin read her first chapter. She won. Lori sold her first novel, a western historical romance, in 1993. In the years since then, she has written eleven novels in the popular Nightcreature series, five installments in the Phoenix Chronicles, six works of spicy contemporary romance about the Luchettis, a duet of Shakespeare Undead novels, and many more books. Her fiction has won critical acclaim and coveted awards, including two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Paranormal Romance (Blue Moon) and Best Long Contemporary Category Romance (The Mommy Quest), a Romantic Times Award for Best Harlequin Superromance (A Soldier’s Quest), and a National Reader’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal (Hunter’s Moon). Lori Handeland lives in Southern Wisconsin with her husband. In between writing and reading, she enjoys long walks with their rescue mutt, Arnold, and occasional visits from her two grown sons and her perfectly adorable grandson.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Ared moon rising through a sultry evening sky is a rare and stunning sight. Such a moon will forever remind me of the first time I saw a skinwalker.

Staring at the nearly full moon lifting past the trees surrounding my isolated cabin, I shivered. I told myself I was spooked because I was alone. Growing up in a house filled with brothers, the word alone had never been in my vocabulary. Maybe that was why I chose to be a writer. I needed some quiet time.

However, living in Chicago where every man in my family was a cop, I was lucky to get two minutes to myself. Another reason I’d escaped to Arizona.

Night pressed against the windows. I watched the trees and I waited. Something was out there, had been there every night of the seven since I had arrived. I’d never seen a thing, but I felt watched. I might have blown off my unease as deadline fever, except every morning, in the damp earth at the edge of the clearing, there were tracks.

My cell phone shrilled, and I emitted a sound that was half gasp, half shriek. My heart thundered hard enough to make me dizzy as I punched the on button. Before I could say hello, my agent started talking.

Maya? Honestly, I’ve been waiting all day and half the night to call. I know how you hate to be interrupted when you’re working. How’s the book coming?

It wasn’t. I didn’t have a word written. I didn’t even have an idea. I also didn’t have the advance I’d already been paid. I’d used the money to do a little thing I liked to call eating and sleeping off the streets.

Terrific, Estelle. Best work I’ve ever done.

Uh-huh.

Estelle was no one’s fool, not even mine. Which was the reason I’d hired her.

The book’s due in a month, you know?

I knew.

Through the window, the trees swayed. The moon pulsed. I was completely alone as I’d always dreamed of being. I had nothing to do but write. So why wasn’t I?

Because my greatest fear had materialized. I’d lost it. Whatever the it was I’d had in the first place that allowed me to write some twenty action-adventure novels under the name M. J. Alexander.

I wasn’t rich, and probably never would be, but I had a job I loved. Or at least I had until last week.

I don’t know why you felt the need to fly all the way to Arkansas, Estelle said.

Arizona.

Whatever. You’re so isolated there.

Estelle, a born-again New Yorker, originally from New Jersey, remained vague on the details of any place west of Trenton.

I’m at the edge of the Navajo nation. There are thousands of people a stone’s throw away.

A very long throw, to be honest. I hadn’t seen a single Navajo, or anyone else for that matter, but she didn’t need to know that.

Unlike many tribes that had been relocated to much crappier land than that which they’d been driven from, the Navajo resided on their traditional homeland. Damn near a miracle considering the U. S. of A.’s record in Indian affairs.

I don’t understand you anymore. You’re not the adventurous type.

True. I’d always been Safety Girl, never take a chance, never rock the boat. I didn’t ski; wouldn’t own a skateboard. I drove the speed limit at all times. And skydiving? Yeah, right.

I’d behaved out of character by selling everything I had and moving halfway across the country. This was probably the biggest adventure I’d ever have, and I was already sick of it.

I liked my life to follow a plan; I didn’t care for surprises. Which was probably why my writing block was freaking me out.

My family faced danger every day, so I preferred mine on a page, safely tucked away in a book. My mother had been killed going to the store for milk. She’d stepped off a curb and bam—out went her life. How’s that for adventure?

Since I was six, whenever the phone rang, whenever someone knocked on the door, I caught my breath, expecting the worst. So what in God’s name was I doing here?

I was desperate. I had to do something to jump-start the muse, and moving to the middle of nowhere was the most excitement a woman like me could withstand.

I’ll be fine, Estelle, I said, even though she wasn’t really asking about me but the book, and I doubted the book would be fine. Still, I wasn’t ready to admit that. Not yet

I hit the END button, cutting off my agent mid-word. Then I powered down the phone and threw it onto the couch, before sitting at the desk.

Blah, blah, blah, I typed onto the empty blue screen of my laptop.

Well, at least I wrote something.

I’d taken to talking to myself a lot over the past week. If that kept up I just might be certifiable. At least then I’d have a reason to miss my deadline.

I picked up the headphones I always wore when writing. Listening to instrumental music kept out the real world and helped me focus on the fantasy one. Or at least it used to. Lately, I’d found myself hearing the music and not the magic.

I tossed the headphones onto the desk and went again to the window. Why was the moon the shade of fresh blood? Was it an omen?

I rubbed my arms against the spreading chill of the night. Despite what I’d believed about Arizona, evenings were cool in the northern part of the state, at times reminiscent of the biting wind that blew off Lake Michigan even in the summer. I was used to cold, but that didn’t mean I liked it

A flicker of white in the night made me lean closer to the window. I thought

Reviews for Red Moon Rising (A Nightcreature Novella)

[dearheart_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Initially released in the anthology, Stroke of Midnight, this installment in The Nightcreature series has a slightly different twist to it. Instead of werewolves we’ve got a Navajo skinwalker who is stalking Maya. And only Clay, the Jäger-Sucher sent to the area after a number of bodies had turned up dead, is able to keep her alive.Nice story about two people who come together under the worst of circumstances, each who had been very much alone. And the skinwalker? This guy is really motivated in his need to kill her during the month of the Red Moon.There doesn’t appear to be any tie-in with Sawyer from the Phoenix Chronicles.