Blood Moon Rising
The night was a slow burn of silver and shadow. The moon—bloated, crimson-edged, and unforgiving—hung above Black Hollow like a silent witness to the sins buried beneath its soil. Aiden Cross stood in the ruins of the old chapel, his gun trembling in his hand, the scent of blood heavy in the air.
His shirt was torn at the shoulder where claws had grazed him, the wound still pulsing faintly with heat. The mark the beast had left behind throbbed beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. Every nerve screamed, every instinct warred—run, fight, howl.
He could feel it now. The thing inside him.
Not just fear. Not just rage. Something older. Wilder. Hungry.
The floorboards creaked behind him.
"Put the gun down, Detective."
Aiden froze. That voice was calm, smooth, and unbearably familiar. He turned slowly to find Sergeant Evelyn Marks, his former partner, framed by the broken doorway, her flashlight cutting through the mist. She looked both furious and afraid, her badge gleaming like a silver accusation.
"You've got blood all over you," she said softly. "Tell me it's not yours."
He tried to answer but words caught in his throat. All he could manage was a hoarse whisper.
"It's… complicated."
"Complicated?" Evelyn stepped closer. "Aiden, half the precinct thinks you've lost it. You vanish for days, show up at a murder scene before we even get the call, and now you're standing in a chapel surrounded by claw marks—again." Her voice cracked slightly. "Talk to me. What's going on?"
He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say everything—the pack, the curse, the beast clawing its way through his mind. But how could he make her believe what even he barely understood?
"There's something here," he muttered. "Something you can't see. Not unless it wants you to."
She frowned. "Aiden, this isn't one of your nightmares. You're bleeding. You need a hospital."
He laughed, low and bitter. "Hospitals can't fix what's wrong with me."
Evelyn's eyes softened, her hand hovering near his arm. "Then tell me who can."
Before he could answer, a sound rolled through the night—low, guttural, echoing through the trees like the earth itself was growling. Evelyn froze, flashlight snapping toward the darkness.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Aiden's pulse quickened. He knew that sound. He'd heard it before—the night everything went wrong, the night he'd been marked.
"Get back," he hissed. "Now."
The growl came again, closer this time. Then, out of the mist, two glowing eyes appeared—amber and merciless. Aiden raised his weapon, but it was too late. The creature lunged from the shadows, all muscle and fury, slamming him to the ground.
Evelyn screamed. Shots rang out.
Aiden rolled, the beast's claws scraping the floor inches from his face. He kicked upward, hard, catching it in the jaw. The creature snarled and retreated into the shadows—but not before Aiden saw its face.
It was human.
Partially.
A man twisted by the curse, his mouth still bleeding from where fangs had torn through flesh.
The moonlight caught his eyes, and Aiden felt his stomach drop.
"Jacob…" he breathed.
Jacob Thorn. The captain of the Black Hollow Pack. The one who'd spared Aiden the night of the first attack.
Now he understood why.
Evelyn was still shouting, still firing into the dark, but the bullets barely slowed the monster down. The creature—Jacob—roared and lunged again, but Aiden stood his ground this time. Something inside him snapped loose—control, humanity, fear—and all that was left was instinct.
He caught Jacob's arm mid-swing, the force vibrating through his bones, and threw him across the chapel like he weighed nothing.
Evelyn's flashlight fell to the floor, rolling to a stop as Aiden straightened. His vision blurred at the edges, veins pulsing with something electric and alien. His senses sharpened. He could hear her heartbeat, smell the gunpowder, taste the fear.
The transformation had begun.
"Aiden…" Evelyn whispered, stepping back. "Your eyes…"
He blinked, and the world snapped into a new kind of clarity—every sound louder, every scent sharper, every heartbeat like thunder in his skull.
Jacob laughed from across the room, wiping blood from his mouth. "You feel it, don't you, brother? The pull of the moon. The call of the Hollow."
"I'm nothing like you."
"Oh, but you are," Jacob growled. "You were born of our blood. The curse was never placed on you—it was awakened."
Aiden felt the words cut through him like a blade.
Born of our blood.
It all made sense now. His mother's strange illness. The night terrors. The whispers about his father, the man no one ever spoke of.
"Why me?" he rasped.
Jacob smiled, fangs glinting. "Because you were the one meant to break the curse—or become it."
He lunged again, faster than human eyes could follow. Aiden met him halfway, their bodies colliding with a sound that cracked the pews. Evelyn fired one last shot before the gun was ripped from her hand by the sheer force of impact.
It wasn't a fight anymore. It was chaos. Claws, teeth, bone, fury.
When the dust settled, the chapel was silent again. Jacob was gone, leaving only blood and splinters in his wake. Evelyn lay against the wall, dazed but alive. And Aiden stood in the center of the wreckage, breathing hard, his shirt shredded, his wounds already closing.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling—not from fear, but from power. The curse wasn't consuming him. It was changing him.
Evelyn's voice was a whisper. "Aiden… what are you?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because even he didn't know anymore.
The next morning, Black Hollow was painted in fog and whispers.
Word of the "animal attack" spread through town faster than wildfire. The locals muttered about wolves, curses, demons—depending on who you asked. The police had sealed off the chapel, but Aiden knew it wouldn't matter. The pack would come again.
He stood at his bathroom sink, staring at his reflection. His eyes looked normal now—blue-gray, tired, human. But the voice in his head whispered otherwise.
You can't hide from what you are.
He gripped the edge of the sink until his knuckles whitened. "Shut up."
The voice only laughed.
Evelyn arrived a few hours later, face pale, her jacket still dusted with dried blood. She closed the door behind her and didn't speak until she was sure they were alone.
"I told the captain you fought off a wolf," she said quietly. "He bought it—for now. But you need to tell me what's happening."
Aiden turned away. "If I tell you, you'll never see me the same."
"Try me."
He hesitated, then finally met her gaze. "I'm one of them."
Evelyn's lips parted. "One of… the wolves?"
He nodded once. "But I'm not theirs. Not yet."
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then she did something he didn't expect—she stepped closer, her voice trembling but steady.
"Then we find a way to stop it."
He blinked. "You don't understand. This isn't a disease, Evie. It's a curse."
"Then we break it."
Her certainty struck something deep in him—a fragile thread of hope he didn't realize he still had.
He nodded slowly. "There's a name I found in the old chapel's records. A witch—Mara Blackthorn. She was executed here centuries ago. The curse started with her."
"And maybe it ends with her too," Evelyn said.
They spent the rest of the day digging through old archives, tracing every clue, every faded note that mentioned the Black Hollow curse. Each lead pointed to the same thing: the Blackthorn Grimoire—a book rumored to hold the original spell that bound wolf and man together.
But it had been lost. Burned.
At least, that's what history claimed.
That night, as the fog thickened again, Aiden's dreams burned with visions of fire and moonlight—wolves running through the forest, a woman's voice chanting in a language older than time.
When he woke, his hand was clenched around something cold. A locket. One he'd never seen before. Inside was a name scratched in silver:
Mara Blackthorn.
By dawn, Aiden and Evelyn were already on the road, heading toward the northern edge of Black Hollow—the part locals called The Wastes. It was a place even the bravest avoided, a place the pack claimed as their sacred ground.
The road curved through dead trees and half-buried crosses, the sky bleeding pale gray. Aiden drove in silence, every sense on alert.
Evelyn glanced at him. "You sure we'll find anything out here?"
"No," he said honestly. "But if the curse started here, it's where it'll end."
They reached the ruins of an old stone manor just as the sun slipped behind the hills. The air was colder here, heavier, thick with the scent of ash and decay.
Inside, they found carvings on the walls—symbols like the ones in Aiden's dreams. At the center of the main hall, buried beneath years of dust and ruin, was a trapdoor.
Aiden's pulse quickened. "Help me move this."
Together, they pried it open. A cold gust of air rushed upward, carrying the faintest sound of whispering.
Evelyn aimed her flashlight downward. A staircase spiraled into darkness.
"Ladies first?" she joked weakly.
Aiden smirked. "You wish."
They descended into the shadows.
At the bottom, they found a room lined with shelves—bones, jars, relics, and one ancient chest wrapped in rusted chains. Aiden stepped forward, his hand trembling slightly as he touched the lock. It crumbled beneath his fingers, the metal rotted with age.
Inside lay a book bound in wolfskin.
The Blackthorn Grimoire.
Evelyn whispered, "We actually found it."
Aiden nodded slowly, but his heart was pounding. The moment he touched it, the air shifted—the whispers turned into words.
"Blood of the cursed. Son of the Hollow."
The floor shook. The walls groaned.
Evelyn grabbed his arm. "Aiden, what's happening?"
He looked up, eyes glowing faintly gold. "She knows I'm here."
The last thing he heard before the lights went out was a woman's voice, soft and cruel.
"Welcome home, my child."