Page 7 of Alpha’s One-Night Stand (Shifters of Clarion #3)

G ONG . . . GONG . . . GONG . . .

The loud sound of heavy bells ringing somewhere above me is the first thing I hear. It’s so loud that it startles me into sitting straight up on the hard ground. I look around, trying to get my bearings. I’m back at the white door of the chapel, the darkness of the nightmare melting around me. I warily move away from the white door, getting to my feet as quickly as I can. My hand still tingles from where I touched the doorknob. It’s like I’ve been electrocuted. What happened to me?

I need a drink. Or two.

I dust myself off and fish my cell phone from my pocket. I’ve been out for two whole hours? I look around and up the path that I came. Clearly, nobody’s been through here. I would imagine they would have gotten help if they saw me lying here in that time.

I’m getting out of here. I start making my way back up the path and in the direction that I think the dorm is in. I’ve lost my bearings before in these woods. God, I hope it doesn’t happen again.

Getting back to campus doesn’t take long. In fact, the path I’m on leads directly to the east side of the school where I’d started walking in the first place. I glance around the woods, wondering how I even ended up near that chapel with such a short walk. As I walk, I realize that no one seems to notice me. Everything looks just as it did two hours ago with students milling about and going to classes or sitting around and talking while eating their lunches in a small picnic area. All very, very normal.

And yet, not normal. At least those woods aren’t normal, anyway.

I enter the lobby of my dorm, and the odd woman is still standing there, smiling like it’s her only job. I start to walk past her, heading to my room to rest my head. I get as far as the stairs when it occurs to me that a drink actually would be nice right about now. My hands are still tingling, and they’re trembling a little. I could use something to chill me out before going to sleep.

I turn around to the woman and ask, “Excuse me?”

She looks at me directly, her shiny blue eyes like doll’s glass. “May I help you?”

“Yes, please. Is there some place I can get a drink? Like a bar?”

“Why yes. There is a campus pub not far from here. Allow me to give you a map.” She walks over to the desk next to her and goes through the drawers. A second later, she returns with a folded map in her hands. She hands it to me.

“The Moonlight,” she says. “I know it’s a corny name, but that’s where you’ll find whatever you’re looking for.”

I take the map and return her smile. “Thank you.”

I have the thought of changing clothes. My leather skirt still has a little bit of dirt on it, but I think better of it. I’m sure the lighting in the bar will be so low that no one will notice, anyway.

Besides, now that I’m set on going, that drink is becoming less of a want and more of a need. That nightmare, the weird chapel, I can analyze it later. All I want right now is to forget for a few hours.

I turn around and walk out of the lobby, following the map down the path. Wow. It’s already almost dark. Wasn’t it afternoon a second ago?

Maybe after this drink I’ll get myself checked out at the school infirmary. Loss of time isn’t a great thing, and I’ll need my wits about me for whatever’s to come when I start my search for my mom.

I only take a few steps when I smell it. The scent of that strange man from the airport. It comes and goes like the breeze, making me feel like maybe I imagined it. I must have hit my head when I fell to be thinking about him right this second. Or at least about his cologne.

I keep walking, and before long I see the lights of the pub on the path. I look at the thick black door and the neon sign hanging over head flashing the word Moonlight at me, a neon cartoon of a wolf braying at the moon next to it.

Wow, that is pretty corny. It’s giving eighties horror movie, in fact. I laugh to myself and walk through the door.