Blood and Rain Read Online Free Page B

Monster!” Heath said. He made claws with his hands and stalked toward Kim.
    â€œQuit it with that dumb shit,” Kim said. She broke into laughter as Heath tackled her and nuzzled his face into her neck.
    â€œWhat’s all this about?” Kim’s mom appeared in the doorway in her pink, fluffy housecoat.
    â€œOh hey, Shauna. My dad called. They found a body out on Christie Road. He says looks like an animal attack. He says he wants us all to stay here tonight.”
    â€œAbsolutely. Boys?” Shauna said. She looked at Heath and Alex, who were both peeking out the window. “Boys, you can stay downstairs. I don’t want any funny stuff.”
    â€œOkay,” Alex said.
    Heath nodded.
    â€œI’m going to bed. Why don’t you kids settle down for the night? I have to work in the morning.”
    â€œOkay, Mom,” Kim said.
    Sonya watched Shauna scoot down the hall and back into her bedroom.
    â€œDo you guys think it was for real?” Sonya said.
    Kim sat next to her on the couch. “You know what these two are gonna say.”
    â€œYeah, well, I don’t believe in the Full Moon Monster. It’s just a bunch of bullshit from the Crypto Insider .” Sonya thought the weirdos behind the weekly bizarro paper were a bunch of bored creeps who probably huffed gas or sniffed too much glue.
    Heath squeezed in next to Kim. Alex plopped down Indian-style on the floor facing the couch.
    â€œYou know what Old Mike told me,” Alex said.
    â€œOh yeah, listen to a drunk,” Kim said.
    â€œLast summer he told me and Jason Schneider that Gilson Creek was home to a werewolf.”
    â€œThat’s the same thing as the Full Moon Monster, idiot,” Heath said. “Full. Moon.”
    â€œNo, dude. The Full Moon Monster is something made up to sell copies. I’m talking about a real werewolf.”
    â€œI vote we watch a movie,” Sonya said.
    She’d heard enough of this crap years ago. She remembered being in fourth grade when practically everyone in town was talking the same nonsense. She even got yelled at by Paul Glidden’s younger sister who was a grade ahead of her. She’d said that the sheriff should be fired. That he let her brother die. It wasn’t fair then, and she wasn’t about to start listening to that crap now.
    â€œMy uncle thinks it’s real too. He says that it killed all those—”
    â€œShut up, Alex.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Sonya fought back the tears. “I don’t want to talk about this stupid werewolf shit tonight, okay?”
    Alex put his hands up. “All right, I’ll shut up. I’m sorry.”
    She put the attacks of 1997 in her rearview years ago. Outside of Kim and Kim’s mom, no one understood all the shit she and her father went through that year.
    The beast made its way out of town and passed through a little patch of trees that gave way to a small field. Just ahead, it spotted a hideous green-and-yellow trailer. Beside it sat a two-car garage painted the same ugly colors. Lights and loud music blared from the garage.
    The beast broke for the small building.
    Keith Turcott was trying to figure out how to change the oil in his old Escort. His father was useless when it came to teaching him anything. Keith always had to figure out these kinds of things for himself. He’d been doing things this way for sixteen and half years; all things considered, he thought he was doing pretty well. His drunken father could just sit in that piece-of-shit trailer and waste away, for all he cared. His mother was no better. She parked herself in the back room and watched episode after episode of Law & Order: SVU , smoked her menthol cigarettes, drank coffee and Kahlúa, and stuffed bags of Doritos into her face.
    They were a couple of fucking losers. No way was he getting stuck here with them. He wasn’t about to grow up and grow old, just to give up. He was moving to Boston after