Ryder: Full Moon Security, #3

By Glenna Sinclair

This is the third book of the Full Moon Security series containing over 80,000 words of paranormal romantic suspense. For the best reading experience, it is highly recommended to start with the first book of Full Moon Security.

It started with an investigation that turned out nothing extraordinary in Philadelphia. But now Ryder Williams, panther shifter, has run over a phantasmal ghost on the highway outside Camelot, the most haunted town in the US. At least, he thinks he has! Turns out the small town is putting on some kind of music festival to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a witch cursing their town while they burned her at the stake, but not everything is as it seems. As ghosts of residents begin to revisit the living and concert-goers begin to change for some reason into shapes not normally their own, it's up to Ryder Williams and Stephanie Kaufman to save Camelot and all its residents. Not to mention the hundreds of visitors who are now stalking the streets looking for fresh meat. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Sinclair
• Release date: Mar 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9798224616619

Glenna Sinclair

Experience the heart-racing novels of Glenna Sinclair, the master of romantic suspense. Sinclair's books feature strong male protagonists, many with a military background, who face real-world challenges that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Books2read.com/GlennaSinclair Facebook.com/AuthorGlennaSinclair GlennaSinclairAuthor at Gmail dot com

Book preview

Chapter One – Ryder

The woods and farms of southwestern Pennsylvania raced by as I cruised my old Charger down I-70 W. The stretch of road wound through the darkness as time did some of its own racing, moving me closer and closer to ten o’clock, the itching in my eyes a burning reminder of the twenty hours I’d already been awake.

Destination St. Louis, home of Full Moon Security. My employers.

Driving cross country is almost meditative. Trees whip by, your AM radio blares, and the tires hum along that same old tune. Sometimes you hit a stretch of bad road, and that hum gets interrupted by a cough as you catch a pothole, but the voice of the highway’s still always in your mind, whispering its crazed tune about freedom and the frontier.

Tonight, though? Tonight, it was too damn much to handle. The road ahead was blurring in the incandescent headlights of my car, and the trees were taking on ghostly, menacing shapes at the corners of my vision.

I almost wished they really would have been specters, though. Spirits of the wood reaching out with their twisted-into-claws branches as they tried to gather the souls of unsuspecting passersby. Tried to rip me and the other drivers on I-70 W bodily from our steel horses as we so arrogantly rushed through their ancient domain on trails made of concrete and metal.

At least that would’ve made this trip less of a waste of my goddamn time.

I’d been in Philadelphia just five or six hours prior, tramping through the ancient-seeming halls of the Masonic Temple, trying to track down an angry ghost that had shoved an innocent woman down the stairs. Three days ago, I’d found the article on a local Philly blog. After all, the anonymous calls from our secret benefactors had nearly dried up after last fall, when Carter Grant had managed to rescue the mythical phoenix from extinction.

Since rushing out to save his life, I’d had a nagging itch at the back of my mind. That I was being underutilized. That I was wasting away doing normal security jobs to pay the rent, and just keep the lights on. That I had a higher calling, out here on the road, hunting the supernatural.

Finally, I bit the bullet and took the article to my boss, Kris Cole, to try to convince her it was worth looking into. After all, what was a panther shifter with my training supposed to do, if I wasn’t hunting down the supernatural and trying to protect innocent lives? Just seemed like a waste of the good money the United States government had spent on training me.

Well, Ryder, she’d said, her voice deadpan and distant. You’ve got vacation time on the books, don’t you? If it’s worth something, you’ll find it. Besides, I hear the City of Brotherly Love’s nice in March.

I just ground my teeth and loaded up the old Charger. Headed east with my bag of goodies stowed away in the trunk.

I’d just been looking for a little encouragement, that maybe I was on the right track for hunting down something interesting for once. Kris, though, didn’t seem completely there. Seemed unwilling to give me any of the direction I was looking for from a superior. Like her mind was elsewhere, focused on something else entirely.

After a twelve-hour drive and ten surreptitious passes with my EMF reader, not to mention some strange looks from the old codger tour guide over how interested I was in Masonic history, I’d finally decided to just interview the old man to see what he knew.

And that was how I’d given the Masonic tour guide a good belly laugh. In fact, he’d laughed so hard I was worried he might break a rib at his age.

Turns out a piece of ice had somehow fallen from a fountain drink the woman had snuck in, and ended up landing beneath her heel.  He didn’t know how she’d managed to get it in her purse, but he said the cleaners had had to be called in to clean up the soda she’d left behind on the landing. Must have been so badly embarrassed about breaking the rules, that she couldn’t admit she was wrong.

Normally, I would have just stayed the night, finished out my hotel stay in Philadelphia, and taken in some of the sights. But I couldn’t. My face was too damned red at having been wrong, and I could still feel the burn even as I drove west through the Rust Belt of southern Pennsylvania.

And do you know what’s wrong with this country? asked the AM radio political jockey in his faux mid-western blue collar voice, a desperate attempt to trick his listeners into thinking he was just one of the guys, before pausing for seemingly dramatic effect.

No, I replied as I drove past a sign telling me I was about to cross over Sewickley Creek. Up ahead, I could see the bridge faintly lit by my headlights, with a seeming wall of hazy mist rising up from the water on either side. Do tell.

Congress, that’s what! Constant gridlock, nothing ever getting done. Washington was built on a swamp, and those waters seem to seep up through the foundations and floorboards of our Capitol Building!

I nodded along, even though I didn’t completely agree, as my tires thumped loudly at the crossing of the old joints onto the bridge. And I kept nodding, my eyelids suddenly heavy with the long drive.

America needs to wake up! the talk jock suddenly exclaimed over the radio, his voice filling my whole car like he’d stuck a bullhorn in through the passenger side window.

My eyelids snapped open like a pair of those spring-loaded blinds being retracted in an old Looney Tunes episode, just in time to see the woman standing in the middle of the highway, her complexion ghostly white and her wild hair bleached in my headlights as she and I locked eyes for a split second. She wore some kind of belle of the ball gown, the kind of thing I’d have expected to see in Gone With the Wind. Not in the middle of  I-70 W.

Shit! I slammed on the brakes hard, the tires screeching as they locked and sent the Charger into a skid.

She looked at me, her eyes full of burning hatred and practically afire with passionate loathing.

Frantically, I tried cutting the wheel, but I couldn’t swerve entirely out of the way.

The hood of the Charger slammed into her with a sickening crunch of human on Detroit steel, rolling her up and over onto the windshield. As she passed up and over the window, her long flowing hair splayed out around her face like Medusa on a bad day, we continued to lock eyes. I could feel that flaming anger within her as she stared through me with her achingly blue eyes. Anger strong enough to make the forges of Hell seem like a walk through a Canadian winter. Anger at the whole world, at those she’d thought had wronged her.

I gasped as I came to, my head snapping up, my heart pounding, the hair on the back of my neck standing at attention like they’d spent ten weeks in basic. The tires thumped as I finished crossing over the bridge and put Sewickley Creek in my rearview, my right foot still on the accelerator like it had never budged.

Jesus Christ, I breathed. What the fuck was that?

The AM radio jockey continued his rant. What America needs is a return to the principles of our foun—

I snapped off the radio, killing his speech. I put both hands back on the steering wheel and took a series of deep breaths as I pulled the car off onto the interstate’s shoulder, bringing it to a stop. I closed my eyes for a moment, tried to convince my heart to just slow down for even a moment. Even behind my shut eyelids, though, I saw the woman’s face. Saw the lack of fear, or of surprise. Just...hatred. One hundred percent pure rage. The likes of which I’d never experienced before in my life.

A car raced by me, its taillights coming on for a moment as it slowed down, but quickly picked up speed again as the driver realized my car wasn’t broken down.

I’d been in combat before. A tour each in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Marine, so I’d had my share of adrenaline rides. Roadside explosions from IEDs, nighttime raids on insurgents, firefights that seemed to last for days, or weeks even, with the Taliban. After that, when I’d joined a government organization hunting down supernatural threats to national security, I’d fought vampires and demons around the world, even brought down an apocalypse cult in South America when they’d taken over an ancient, hidden Mayan city.

Wanna know why 2012 wasn’t the end of the world? Well, that’s classified.

But you’re welcome, all the same.

This, though? I might have just hit an innocent woman on a dark highway, all because my eyes had decided to droop at the wrong time and place. Given a choice, I’d rather have gone off the road and hit a tree instead. At least it would have just been me, then!

Hands shaking, I turned off the engine. I checked the side mirror to make sure no more cars were coming. Satisfied I was in the clear, I reached over with my right hand to open the car door and let myself out. I swallowed hard as I looked back down the highway. I’d come to a stop maybe a hundred and fifty feet past the bridge, and I began to jog back up the shoulder towards it.

Shit, shit, shit, I cursed, my eyes taking in the road ahead. Goddammit.

As a panther shifter, my night vision was great, better than that of any human I’d ever met. Eyes peeled for signs of the woman, I closed the distance and came to a stop on my side of the bridge.

I blinked hard as I stood there, dumbfounded.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

I blinked again as I looked around my side of the freeway, tried to find any evidence of the woman I’d just hit. Sniffed the air to see if I could smell her blood with my extra-sensitive senses. All I got, though, was a nose full of spring-time creek water. Of budding trees in the woods, of a young doe somewhere farther southwest of me.

What the hell? I asked, still frantically looking for a sign of the woman whom I’d likely just killed.

Had it just been a dream, though? Just my mind wandering off while I drove, shutting down for a moment from exhaustion?

But I felt fine. Felt perfectly awake.

My heart began to slow, my breath began to come back down, and suddenly my body tired. The exhaustion crept into my limbs like a ton of cinder blocks chaining themselves to my arms and legs.

Or did I?

I groaned as I sat back on the concrete barrier and wiped a hand down my face, the rush of the adrenaline quickly fading away till it was nothing but a memory. Ryder Williams, I whispered to myself and the side of the road, you need to get some goddamn sleep. Or some fucking coffee, at least. Shit, you should just get a drink.

I eased myself up from the bridge’s barrier and stomped back to my car, a slow, methodical walk this time as I dragged my heavy combat boots, and my sorry ass, every step of the way. I checked again for cars on that lonely stretch of highway and climbed back into the Charger. I started up the engine again, sent it roaring to life, and flicked on my headlights. I might be able to see in the dark, but the state troopers probably wouldn’t believe I could. And, with what I had in the car, I didn’t exactly relish the idea of getting pulled over by one of them. Ex-military or not, I was going to raise some eyebrows if they got into the trunk.

Up ahead, through the hazy Pennsylvania night, I could just barely make out another sign, its metal face painted green with white lettering.

Camelot.

Next exit.

Camelot it is, I said to my car’s empty interior as I put my boot on the gas and pulled out onto the highway, my hand still shaking as I shifted up into second, third, and finally fourth gear.

Still, though, as I pulled off I-70 W onto the marked exit ramp, that woman’s eyes appeared before mine. That ice blue that seemed to look right through me, that burning flame of rage that seemed to consume the world around it.

As I followed the signs for Camelot north into the hills of Pennsylvania, my hand still trembling on the steering wheel, I knew I needed two things. The first was a good night’s sleep. And the second was a stiff drink.

And I definitely didn’t need them in that order.

But, when I saw the lights illuminating the town, and the variety of wild costumes all the people packed into the cars next to me were wearing, I began to wonder if I was going to get either of those.

What the hell? I asked my empty interior as I peered out at all the people surrounding me. At the sexy witches and comic book characters. At the men dressed as vampires and Star Wars heroes and villains.

It looked like Halloween in the town of Camelot.

And it was still only March.

Seriously, what the hell?

Chapter Two – Stephanie

Come on, Jeff, I groaned into the bar’s old phone, the one that had been there for years before my dad had passed away, you can’t fucking do this to me, man! This is the second busiest goddamn night of the year, and the crowd’s getting too heavy!

I’m sorry, Steph, he said, his voice weak and sickly. You think I’m happy I’m missing out on this pay day? He paused, coughed. I cringed internally, and externally, at how painful and wet it sounded. Got rent due at the end of the month, same as everyone else. But I’m fucking dying here, boss.

Jeff was my second call out. Well, technically. The first, Christina, I’d actually sent home because I was worried just looking at her for too long was going to give me whatever weird variety of plague she’d contracted. Her skin almost had a green tint, and thick yellow mucus was running from her nose like a faucet someone had left on by accident.

I’d sent her home because I knew, with Jeff and I both behind the bar, we’d be able to handle anything. He’d been Mom’s second-in-command for years, before Mom passed, and I knew he and I could take anything this place threw at us.

But, with him sick, I was at a loss. There was no way I was going to get through tonight all on my own. Phone cord twisted up in my hand, I leaned back against the wall of the back room, sighing loudly into the phone. Shit, Jeff. What am I going to do?

Well, what would Sharon have done?

I shook my head. I knew exactly what Mom would have done: the same thing she’d done every year. Work her fingers to the bone and make a killing, even while she was shaking her head at the crazy-ass tourists who came to Camelot every year, without fail, for one weekend in March.

Who wants to celebrate some old lady dying, anyways? she’d always mumbled as she grabbed more ice from the back.

Which was, to be precise, almost the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I just hadn’t yet figured out how I could blow up a bar without it looking intentional.

Kidding, of course! Even after everything Mom and I had been through together, this was one of the only places I still felt close to her. Like she’d walk through that bar one night, help me and Jeff with closing up.

She’d work it like any other night, whether you guys showed up or not.

Exactly, Jeff said, his voice high-pitched and nasal from the sickness. Just channel Sharon, or something. You got this, champ.

Gee. Thanks for the encouragement.

Only problem was, I wasn’t Sharon Kaufman. She’d been a hard-nosed retired factory worker who’d decided to buy a bar in the middle of freaking nowhere after she got laid off in Pittsburgh. After she’d bought up the place, she hadn’t even had enough leftover money to change the name on the sign.

I was just Stephanie. Not the woman who’d kicked an abusive asshole of a husband out on his ass, or held a strike placard high on the union line. Not that the strikes helped, of course. The layoffs had still come.

I twisted the phone cord more tightly, wound it around my hand as I bit my lower lip. I wanted to cry, to tell him that I wasn’t a champ. That I wasn’t some tough old broad like my mom had been. I was me. A girl who’d been left a bar when her mom died, who was just trying to keep this place afloat and make it from one day to the next.

I wasn’t some tough guy or gal. I wasn’t her son, any more than she’d been Stan.

Don’t worry, Jeff said, coughing again into the phone. What’s the worst that can happen?

They could get such shitty service from the owner that they burn the place to the ground.

Well, then you’d get that insurance money you’re always joking about.

Too bad Stan & Sons is in Camelot. Probably only be enough to buy a bus ticket back to Pittsburgh.

Jeff laughed weakly on the other end. Don’t worry, champ, I believe in you.

Yeah, I said, thanks, I guess. Don’t think your good vibes will pour any shots, though.

He chuckled again, his breath ragged in my ear. You’ll be fine. Now, go pour some drinks.

I sighed deeply, nodding. Yeah, sure. I’ll get to it. You get better, okay?

If I can walk, I’ll try to come in tomorrow.

Really, I didn’t want him pushing himself too hard. Jeff was the closest thing I had left to family in this town, and his getting even sicker because he didn’t rest was the last thing I wanted for him. Only if you feel better. All right?

Yes, ma’am, he breathed, then promptly tried to cough up both lungs. Just like your mom, you know that?

I winced, pulling the receiver away from my ear as I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone. Due to the coughs, he still hadn’t gotten out his own farewells by the time I’d hung the heavy receiver back in its place, though.

I stood there, staring at the phone, the rumble of the patrons growing louder in the back of my hearing. I didn’t want to do this. I really didn’t want to. But, Jeff had been right. Mom would have done it, even if she’d been as sick as Jeff. Because the mortgage didn’t pay itself, and there was always a bill in the mail for the lights.

Out in the front of the house, the crowd was getting thicker by the second as the visitors came streaming in to get ready to celebrate Winifred O’Bannon’s death. For the last fifty or so years, the town had been putting on a little celebration of her execution by mob, and the curse she’d placed on the town. Year after year, it had gotten bigger and bigger, with people coming from all over the world to tour our haunted little burg, and to see the bands that played.

Not that the town was proud of what their ancestors had done, or anything. Nor were they proud that they had had to invent a haunting like they did. But, when the coal seams had dried up, they’d all had to make a living somehow, and making up a haunting was about as worthwhile as digging chunks of carbon out of the dirt and stone.

This year was different, though. After some big event production company came to us with their plan for the big anniversary, the town had been intrigued, but cautious. After all, it was the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary, and the crowds were going to be pretty sizable even if these bigwigs from Philadelphia didn’t manage to throw their big party.

Bigger than Bonnaroo! the promoter had said when they pitched the idea.

Not that any of the older townsfolk knew what the musical festival in Tennessee was. You mean Woodstock? I asked, just trying to be helpful.

Yeah! H. H., the main promoter and money man behind the whole operation, had said. Exactly! Bigger than freaking Woodstock! We’re even gonna have Maneki Neko here!

While the elders hadn’t exactly approved of their foul language, or known who the hell Maneki Neko was, the council voted unanimously to approve it. After all, we all had to scratch out a living up here in the mountains. Any way we could. Even if we didn’t keep up with popular culture.

I turned around, leaned against the back room’s cool wall. I laid my head back, right next to the phone, mildly hoping Jeff would suddenly call to tell me he’d turned a corner and was now well enough to come in.

I sighed, the sound of the crowd getting louder and louder out in front.

He wouldn’t, I knew. But a girl could hope, couldn’t she? I was desperate here, and not even finding any straws worth grasping at.

All right, Stephanie Kaufman, I said, my eyes looking up at the ceiling as I impersonated Mom’s no-nonsense, but still caring, voice, it’s the big game, our star hitter’s injured, and you’re up to bat. You got this, champ. You got this.

And, for a brief moment, it was almost like she was actually there. Standing by my side, her hand on my shoulder as she rasped her encouragement, the smell of Marlboro Reds thick on her words.

I smiled up at the ceiling, gave a little nod. Thanks, Mom.

I headed back out to the front of the bar, barely pausing as I saw the wall of people crowding in at the bar. Devils and witches and zombies. Past presidents of the United States. Current presidents, even. A hundred characters from the cast of a hundred movies.

And, boy, were they raucous, rowdy, and ready to drink.

Bits and pieces of speech drifted to my ear, rising from the rumble of the sea of humanity in front of me.

Miss!

Can I get some service here?

What’s taking so fucking long?

Only way I was going to handle this crowd was by letting them know I wasn’t going to be pushed around, I realized. I took a deep breath, took it as deep as I could, and felt the air flow into my lungs and into my diaphragm. Felt...something else flow in right alongside that air. Like a memory or a distant thought.

And then it was on me in a rush. This feeling of empowerment. Of something strong and unflappable, and I was acting without even thinking about it. Just going into it like I’d done this all a thousand times before.

I stomped my tiny foot against the concrete. All right! I shouted above the din, both hands cupped around my mouth like a megaphone, the smell of old cigarette smoke suddenly filling my nose.

The crowd quieted a little, and dozens of pairs of eyes settled on me from within masks, and from behind layers of makeup. Except for one. Those were plain old, normal, human eyes looking right at mine.

Oh. Oh my. Those were nice.

Dark brown, piercing me from within his heavy features. A little stubble over his lip and chin, and short-cropped hair. I guessed he was in his early thirties, and he wore the years well. Something