Moon Shadows Read Online Free PDF

rarely happened, but the reassurance was worth the cost.
    The floors were concrete, the walls stone, and thick. An old cast iron washtub stood in one corner. A small, efficient laboratory ranged under one of the bricked-in windows.
    At the far wall was a cell, eight feet long, six feet wide.
    Released, Amico went to his cushy dog bed, circled three times, then settled in for an afternoon nap.
    Simone booted up her computer and sat to make some notes. It was important, she told herself, to detail her reaction to Gabe. It was different, and that made it an anomaly. Any change in her condition—physical, emotional, mental—was religiously recorded.
    I’m in love! she wanted to write. His name is Gabriel Kirby, and he has beautiful hands and makes jokes. When I kissed him I felt so alive, so human. He has beautiful brown eyes and when they look at me something lights up in my heart.
    But she didn’t. Instead she noted down his name, his age, and occupation, added salient details from both their meetings, and termed her feelings for him a strong physical and emotional reaction.
    She noted down what she’d eaten that day, and added the time she’d taken her last dose of pills.
    She used the washtub and soap of her own making to scrub her hands. All the while she tried to keep her mind a blank, to keep hope in check.
    Moving to the counter, she pricked her finger, then smeared two drops of blood on a slide.
    She studied it through the microscope and felt a little bump of that restrained hope. There was a change. After nearly a decade of studying her own blood, she couldn’t mistake a change.
    She shifted the slide to her computer and began an analysis.
    The infection was still present. She didn’t need technology to tell her what she felt , but there was a slight increase of healthy, normal cells.
    She brought last week’s sample on screen for a side-to-side study. Yes, yes, there was change, but so little. Not nearly enough after three full months on this formula.
    There should be more. She needed more. Maybe increase the dose again. Or adjust the formula itself, increasing the amount of skullcap, or the sarsaparilla. Or both.
    She let her head fall back, closed her eyes. Eleven years, and she’d barely begun. Herbs and drugs, experimental serums obtained illegally, and at great cost.
    Prayers and charms, medicines and purges. From witchcraft to science, she’d tried everything. And still the change in her blood was so slight it would make no difference when the moon rose full.
    It was she who would change, in pain and misery. Locked by her own hand in the cell to hold the monster she’d become. Guarded by the only thing in the world she could trust without reservation.
    The dog who loved her.
    For three nights she would pace that cell. It would pace—snarling and craving the hunt. A fresh kill. Hot blood.
    All the other nights she was a woman, just as caged.
    She longed for love, to be touched and held. She craved the connection, craved knowing when she reached out a hand would be there to take hers.
    But she had no right, she reminded herself, to long or to crave. No right to love.
    She should never have let him into her home. She’d breathed him in, she thought, and had breathed in the vision of what could be if not for that one moment that had ripped her life to pieces.
    And now that she had, she was ready to weep and wail because her progress wasn’t enough. She should be rejoicing that there was progress at all.
    And she should get to work on making more.
    She worked late into the night, stopping only to feedAmico and let him out to run. Locked in her lab, she adjusted her formula. When the pills were ready, she noted the time. Swallowed them.
    She shut down her lab, locking the basement door behind her before going out to whistle for Amico.
    But first she stood in the dark, under that three-quarter moon.
    She could feel its pull, its light, teasing fingers that