Full Moon Strays Ch. 01

This story is a bit wordy and fairly long, so if you are looking for immediate gratification, you might want to look elsewhere. It contains heterosexual and lesbian sexual activity.

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The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between actual persons, living or dead (or just confused) is entirely coincidental. Please do not copy/redistribute the story, in part or in total, without the author's permission.

This story takes place in the entirely fictional city of Springfield, California, so don't go looking for it on a map. And in my little fictional world, there are no unwanted pregnancies or STD's, except as plot driving devices. The author encourages the practice of safe-sex.

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"Full Moon Strays . . ." Part 1

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Once again, Jane made her way home from work. She almost scoffed at the idea of calling what she did "work." It almost made it seem legitimate to sling brown sludge into bent and broken shells at the local Taco Shack. As on most days, she had scored some of the leftovers and had salivated at the thought of it. And between the doors of her place of business and what constituted her home, she had found someone worse off than herself who needed the nourishment more. This time, it was Old Ben, a homeless man she had encountered before. He had thanked her, she had smiled while her stomach rebelled, and she had been on her way home.

She arrived at her dingy, twelve-by-thirteen studio apartment in the worst part of Springfield. There was a twin bed, a two-burner stove, a mini-fridge and tiny shower stall next to the toilet. Once inside, she secured the three chain locks and two deadbolts, and finally took a moment to relax. She took off her hair net and let her raven-black hair fall, and that took quite a while. Jane's hair reached all the way past her butt. She was only about five feet, five inches tall and was petite on top of that. She wasn't emaciated, but she wasn't particularly muscled either. She had narrow hips and a flat stomach and breasts that, while not huge, seemed a little bit too large for her frame. She was pretty, though she never wore makeup and rarely looked anyone directly in the eye. She was afraid they might look through her eyes and see the weakness that dwelled in her soul.

When Jane had turned seventeen she had grabbed an old suitcase, everything she could carry and had run away to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune . . . anything to get away from her small-town world, her stepfather with the drunken breath and wandering hands . . . the black eyes and the crying while curled up in the dark corners of her closet.

She thought things would be better under the bright lights of Los Angeles. Then that city had chewed her up and spit her out. She had found herself lying on her back on a number of "casting couches" while looking for acting jobs, none of which she had gotten. One such encounter had left her pregnant, but she had lost the baby and been left barren forever more.

Jane had worked at a number of crap jobs, trying to make ends meet. She had even broken down once and done a porno movie, but the director had considered her a "dead fish" when she just lay there and let the guy fuck her. So he had handed her some money and told her to find another line of work. She hadn't felt ashamed at the time, but rather . . . she had felt empty. Just like with the casting-call guys. Sometimes, she tried to pretend it was love, but she never quite fooled herself.

Then she had hooked up with a guy named James, a used-car salesman who picked her up at a restaurant where she was a waitress and brought her to Springfield with promises of a better life. That promise had lasted about a month before his wife found out.

Each excruciating, dragging, harsh moment of her existence was like another hammer blow to the nails of her coffin. She had walked the Earth for only twenty-one years, yet she felt . . . old. She had barely had a childhood, and now it seemed that even Death had passed her by. It was as if the Grim Reaper didn't think enough of her to even bother killing her. So she kept walking through the world between her two jobs and one apartment; the shadow of an insect in a jungle of steel, concrete and glass.

Jane sat down on her bed, grabbing a hairbrush and pulling it through her locks, feeling the silky smoothness of her hair sliding through her fingers. It was so relaxing to her, and it was her tradition when she got home. She knew she didn't have long to rest, as her second job was awaiting her.

Then, she heard a pounding on the front door of her apartment. Her hands trembled and her face recoiled when she heard that raspy voice on the other side.

"Oh . . . Ja-ane!" Victor said. Victor was her landlord, and was the type of man that other slumlords were ashamed to associate themselves with. "You know rent is due tomorrow. Open up. I think you need to consider my offer."

Jane almost spit at the door. He knew how desperate she was for money most of the time, and he had offered to lower her rent on any given month in exchange for certain "liberties." Once, she had given him a hand-job because she had gotten sick and missed some work that month. She had done a lot of things in her life that she regretted, but reaching her hand underneath that beer-gut and grabbing that disgusting creature's member still burned through her eyelids when she slept sometimes. She had washed that hand for twenty minutes, trying to get his stain off of her pale skin and out of her soul.

She stood up and went to the door, undoing the bolt-locks but leaving the chains in place. "I . . . I'll have your money," she whispered at the contemptuous forty-year-old on the other side, who was leering at her with unabashed lust. She had picked up quite a bit of overtime, and wouldn't have to resort to . . . doing favors. One of her few pleasures in life was seeing his face when he realized he wasn't going to get anything extra from her. As soon as his mouth started to scowl and his eyes darkened, she flashed him a little smile and then closed the door. As they said in the Princess Bride, Jane Collier was only "mostly dead." There was still a spark in her, fighting and flickering against the encompassing blackness.

She sat down for a few minutes, staring at the wall and waiting for Victor's clumsy footsteps to signal his departure. She changed into her Big Al's Fried Chicken uniform, walked out the door and into the darkened streets.

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A few minutes later . . .

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'God, I'm late again!' Jane thought as she hurried through the streets. 'Mr. Smith is going to be so mad!' She decided to take a short cut through some back alleys that she would normally rather avoid. Sometimes she hated living in an urban jungle. As she made her way past piles of trash, she thought of her home in the country . . . where she had lived until her father had died and before her stepfather had entered the picture. She thought of wooden fences, round bails of hay, the garden next to the house and that old beat-up tractor that her father had taken her for rides on. That was the last time she remembered being happy.

Suddenly, she heard a series of whimpers, thumps, and yelps coming from another alley nearby. It sounded like a dog in pain, being beaten by something heavy. She took a step in the other direction. She couldn't be late for work. She couldn't afford to lose her job . . . it was none of her business anyway. Then she thought of some poor animal, getting kicked around by some mean man or hoodlum or some crazy homeless person. It wouldn't understand why, but it WOULD understand being in pain. For a moment, she remembered her stepfather's hand busting her lip open after she had made too much noise coming home late one night. She hadn't understood it at the time. She had just wanted her real father back, because she knew he would've protected her. Jane turned around and crept back towards the sounds.

'Maybe if I make a noise, whatever is attacking that dog will get scared and run.' She stopped. She had just peaked her head around the corner and saw not one but two . . . men? . . . standing at the other end of a dead end alley and overlooking a very large, furry pile of animal that seemed to be twitching. The two entities were wearing immaculate business suits, had shaven heads and were wearing sunglasses . . . in the dark . . . in an alley. They also wore leather gloves, which were mostly frightening because they seemed to gripping the cold metal of knives.

Normally, Jane would have been filled with terror at that moment, but terror was normally reserved for those with something to lose. There was a part of Jane, however, that still clung to the charade that was her life. Her hands began to tremble and her lungs released a scarcely audible gasp. Then the two standing figures turned and faced the end of the alley where Jane was hiding.

"I'm going to call the police!" she shouted, lacking anything better to say.

One of the figures shook his head and smiled. All his teeth seemed to be far too pointy. "That would be a very . . . terrible . . . mistake," he hissed, his words escaping his mouth like dead air from a pharaoh's tomb. And then both of them headed towards her at an inhuman pace.

"No," one of them rasped. "Finish it. I'll get the girl." The other one stopped and snarled some kind of response.

Jane was running blindly, but she knew that the man behind her would easily catch her. So she ducked behind a dumpster, reached down and grabbed a board from an abandoned shipping crate, raising it to shoulder level. She barely heard the footsteps, but she stepped out and swung with all her might at head level. The board impacted the man's . . . the thing's head, smashing its sunglasses and causing him to drop his knife. Then Jane saw those glowing red eyes, and she felt terror unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"Foolish mortal," the thing said. It punched her in the midsection, sending Jane flying fifteen feet through the air to crash into a wall. She fell to the ground like a crumpled wad of paper . . . like trash.

Jane couldn't remember being in that much pain before. She knew her ribs were broken, and she could almost feel herself bleeding internally. Her face was cut in several places from her crash and her shoulder was dislocated. She was going to die. And strangely, she was almost tempted to thank her attacker. It would all be over soon.

Then, as her vision began to fade, she heard some horrible growling from all around her . . . from back towards the alley and from the direction of the street. She saw her attacker . . . saw him staring first in one direction and then another. He snarled and tried to locate his dropped weapon. Then a . . . dog . . . jumped on him from out of nowhere, but it was bigger than any dog Jane had ever seen. And it seemed strangely . . . bipedal. Then a second such animal impacted Jane's attacker, and she heard the man in the suit begin to scream. She saw two more such animals rush past her and head towards the alley. She hoped they got to that other dog in time. Jane's thought was that maybe . . . just maybe . . . her life had made a difference in the end. As her eyes began to close, she saw a hairy, monstrous face staring down at her. No . . . wait . . . it was human after all. It was a very handsome young man.

This new man looked at someone or something off to one side. "We need to get her back to the Den," he said shortly. Then Jane and the conscious world became strangers to each other.

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Some unknown time later . . .

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"She seems to be waking up!" came a voice from the void. Jane wanted to open her eyes, but was afraid of what she'd see. But a dull throb in her ribs caused her to moan, which had tipped everyone off. But who was "everyone?"

There was a pause. "Listen, we know you're awake, so you might as well stop faking." That voice was definitely a female.

"And Talia should know a thing or two about 'faking' it," came a male voice.

"Bite me."

"Not tonight. I have a headache."

Jane opened her eyes, expecting to see monsters. There was an annoyingly bright tungsten light directly overhead, and Jane was lying on a long metal table. A number of young men and women surrounded Jane, including the handsome young man she had seen briefly earlier.

"Where . . . am I?" she groaned, trying to sit up but quickly lying back down as the pain in her ribs became excruciating.

"Well, that's a bit of a long story." That was from a beautiful black girl, the owner of the first voice she had heard. "I'm Talia, and these rogues are Michael, Mindy, Matthew and . . ."

"Two many 'M' names," Jane muttered. 'Damn,' she thought. 'It's like an episode of Beverly Hills 90210.' This thought came when she noticed that everyone Talia pointed to was a highly attractive young person.

Talia smiled. "And the last person is Nathaniel," she finished. "And you are?"

Jane wasn't sure what to do. If these people were going to harm her, they could have easily done it by now, and the bandages around her waist indicated they had actually helped her. Maybe that was what she wasn't quite able to trust. "Jane . . . Jane Collier," she whispered. Her eyes had fallen on Nathaniel, whose face she had seen back in the alley. "I know you," she said.

He smiled. He had a cute smile. "We were getting worried," he said. "You've been out for a long time. We weren't sure that Arthur was going to be able to save you. You took a pretty good shot there." A new man walked up, a little older than the rest, but still quite fetching and wearing a doctor's smock.

"What happened?" Jane said, beginning to panic. "How long was I out? What were those men? Where . . ."

"Shh," said Talia, placing one long finger against Jane's lips, bring the girl to a screeching silence. "You have a lot of questions, and you might . . . have problems with some of the answers. But in response to how long you've been here, the answer is four days."

"Four days!" Jane said, sitting upright despite the searing pain. She tried to get off the table, but her body simply wouldn't allow it. She also realized that except for a few well-placed bandages, she was dressed only in her undergarments. "Where are my clothes?! I need . . . to go. My jobs . . . God, I've probably been fired! And rent was due . . . oh God!" she said slumping back onto the table. "I'll lose my place, or I'll have to . . ." Jane stopped, her shoulders shaking as tears began to fall. She had lost everything. She knew what Victor would demand of her in order to let her keep her apartment, and she knew she couldn't do it. She would rather die than touch him again.

Talia looked alarmed and moved to comfort the girl. "Arthur . . ."

"I'll give her some tea that will help her sleep," he said.

"NO!" Jane screamed. "No more sleeping! I need to get to work! I need to find a new place . . . to . . . to live," she said. "Everything's falling apart."

Talia waved everyone else away. "We will help you, but you need to rest. When you awaken, we'll explain everything to you," she said.

Jane was in no condition to fight. She already felt her meager physical energy draining. "No," she murmured as Talia cradled her head and began to croon a very soothing sound. "Have to . . . go . . ." But once again, it was lights out for Jane.

Talia looked at Arthur. "She's so weak," she whispered. "Are you sure she'll be alright?"

"Yes. She won't be teaching any aerobics classes anytime soon, but she'll live."

"And you're sure she has a Talent?"

"Absolutely," Arthur whispered back. "I felt it when I was healing her."

Talia stroked the girl's long, beautiful hair. "I hope so. She won't be allowed to stay otherwise, and it seems to me that this girl is one who probably desperately needs a family. And if she hadn't distracted the enemy, we would likely have been too late to save Robbie."

"We'll call a pack meeting tomorrow when she awakens. Has Red gotten back yet?"

Arthur grimaced. "No, not yet. She's going to be so pissed! First, Robbie goes on a solo hunt while she was in Los Angeles, in direct violation of her orders. Then we bring back an outsider to the Den."

"Then I guess Robbie had better be the first one to talk to her when she gets in. He's the only one she probably won't eviscerate on the spot." He glanced over to another curtained area, where Robbie was laying and recuperating. He had been beaten badly by the hellspawn, and even his advanced regenerative abilities could only go so fast. Hopefully he could stand up before his big sister got home.

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The next day . . .

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Jane awoke with a start, but noticed the pain was less than the day before. She opened her eyes and took a look around. She seemed to be in some old, long building, but there was no natural light. It looked like a subway station, but one that hadn't been used in a long time.

"This particular station was buried back in the fifties, and the city never thought it would be cost-effective to excavate it," said Arthur, who was sitting nearby. "We diverted some power-lines and water-pipes down here and voila! Instant home-sweet-home!"

Talia approached. "Red and Tarloh are ready, and everyone is waiting." She looked at Jane. "Are you all right to move?"

"Where . . . where are you taking me?" she asked.

"Down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland," Talia said with a grin. "C'mon."

Arthur brought up a wheelchair. "Wanna go for a ride?"

Jane lowered her eyes. "Do I have a choice?"

Talia lifted the girl's face and smiled. "Actually, today is all about choices my dear." She waited for Jane to nod, and then she and Arthur helped the girl into a wheel chair.

"Clothes?" Jane asked timidly.

"No time," Talia said, but she did grab a blanket and drape it over Jane's partially naked form, then wheeled her up a ramp and into what had once been the station's lobby.

At one end of the lobby platform was a large table as well as a couple sets of old bleachers. There had to be at least thirty or forty people gathered in that area. She recognized a few from the last time she was awake. But there were two new faces that demanded her attention.

One was a male, older than the rest, appearing to be in his mid-thirties. And when Jane saw him, the phrase "alpha male" reverberated strongly in her mind. Before he sat down, she could see he was easily six-and-a-half feet tall and as broad at the shoulders as a bison. He was dressed in the clothes of a transient, but even those could not hide his formidable physique. He had blue, piercing eyes staring out from beneath a mop of dark curly hair and he had the beard of a Viking warrior.

Next to him was a woman. 'No,' Jane thought, 'the word "woman" seems so inadequate.' She was a vision. She was herself six feet tall and dressed in tight red leather that clung to her hourglass figure, with full hips and a firm-looking bosom. Her face should have been looking down on Jane from a billboard, advertising slim cigarettes or skin-care products, and her eyes sparkled green. She had curly red hair that flowed chaotically down her back, and there was a streak of white that went right down the middle of it.

"Not many women like her," Talia whispered, sounding a bit amused. It occurred to Jane that it had been a few moments since she had last breathed. "It's okay," Talia continued. "She has that affect on people."

"Well," boomed the voice of the alpha male, "it appears our 'guest' has arrived." The rest of the crowd went quiet. "You are Jane Collier?"