" Blood Moon" by Carol Davis (Novelette)

Genre:  Supernatural

Type of Short Story:  Novelette

Summary:  Will Bronson is a single father with an 11-year-old son, traveling from town to town, surviving on the pay from odd jobs. Struggling to stay one step ahead of the thing that killed his wife nine years ago: a werewolf, one of the thousands that stalk human prey throughout the world.

In the years since Elizabeth Bronson was murdered, Will has learned the truth about what's out there. How to track the wolves down and kill them. So when a stranger sends a message saying "Help me," Will can't say no. After he meets the mysterious owner of a battered RV parked on a dirt road in the middle of the Colorado Rockies, he can't walk away -- even though by staying, he's putting his son's life, and his own, in mortal danger.

Because there's a wolf close by. And it's ready to kill again.

Excerpt:

The boy lifted his gaze, looked at Will long and hard. When he spoke, his voice had a catch to it, one that packed more of a wallop than if he’d stood there complaining for half an hour. “That’s a lot of people,” he said. “More than a hundred people died? Didn’t anybody notice? Why didn’t anybody notice? Why isn’t it on the news if a hundred people–”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that supposed to be okay? Is that normal?”

“It’s just a guess,” Will told him. “That the wolf got them. People disappear all the time. Get tired of their lives, so they run away. Start up again somewhere else. Nothing says they’re all dead.”

“But they could be.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’re dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know there’s crap going on all the time,” Danny said wearily. “I know the world’s full of rapists and killers and thieves and bad things happen to good people. I know all that, Dad.”

There was a “but” hanging in the air.

It went unspoken.

When Danny’s expression began to collapse, Will closed the distance that separated them and wrapped an arm around his son, pulling Danny in against his chest.

“Could use your help,” he said after a minute, close to the top of Danny’s head. “That thing’s covered a lot of ground, and we don’t have a lot of time to find it.”

“I ought to be in school.”

That, spoken into the folds of Will’s shirt. Will sighed silently and rested a hand against the back of Danny’s neck.

“We ought to be a lot of things,” he replied.

“But it’s gonna kill again.”

Will couldn’t argue that. He could give Danny that much, that bit of honest assessment; he wouldn’t have argued the point with an adult, and Danny, stepping back away from Will so he could look Will full in the eye, had pretty much stopped being a little boy a lot of miles back.

“We’re gonna do what we can,” Will said.

“He should have called Jeremiah a long time ago.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Will said again.

Then he steered Danny back toward the RV.

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