Killer Crescent by Leigh Kelsey

1

“Here Dicky, Dicky, Dicky,” I murmured, crouching in the long grass as I waited for my target’s jogging steps to reach the dark corner of forest where I planned to ambush him.

Dicky Lawson was about as big a douche as his name suggested. A high powered lawyer and a cocky piece of shit, he’d pissed off a list of people at least a mile long. Lucky me, one of them had paid me to make him disappear. Or as I liked to call it, make him go night night. Obviously I took my job very seriously.

“Ah, there you are,” I whispered, grinning as Dicky jogged into view, his long legs eating up the dirt path and a strip of sweat bisecting his blue T-shirt, just visible in the dimming light. He wasn’t one of those joggers who blasted music in their ears; he liked to hear the nature around him, to soak up the full benefit of the experience. I knew because he’d posted those exact words on his Facebook profile a few days ago. And people said I was a psychopath; weirdos who exercised for fun were the real psychos. You never knew what they were going to do next. Bench press a bus for shits and giggles? It could happen.

Watching Dicky cross the dark clearing, I wiped a finger clean on my clothes—all black because it hid the bloodstains; my entire murder wardrobe was made up of jet, onyx, ink, and sable—and shoved said finger in my eye, giving it a good poke before I moved onto the next one until tears streamed down my cheeks. I’m sure there were easier and better ways to achieve the same result, but this worked.

Patting my hoodie to be sure check my knives were there—all present and accounted for—I let out a loud sobbing sniffle and cried out, “Pooky? Pooky, where are you?”

In a frantic rush, I jumped out from behind the tree, swinging my gaze across the clearing, and ‘spotting’ Dicky. “Oh, please tell me you’ve seen a dog around here,” I begged, twigs and bracken crunching under my heavy boots as I ran up to him, and sobbed extra loudly as I clutched his biceps. They were annoyingly well defined biceps for a dickhead lawyer and a night jogger. Shame he wasn’t my type; too full of himself, too slimy. “He’s about this high, and white with shaggy fur. Oh, I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s gotten lost. Or—” I produced a shattered sob, and a damn good one if I said so myself. “Or if he’s gotten onto the road and a car—”

“I’m sure he’s around here somewhere,” Dicky assured me, but with his chest puffed up and a gleam in his eye I didn’t quite like. Like he’d help find the dog so he could brag about it and feel good about himself, not because a helpless little dog might get knocked down. The monster. I was glad I was about to kill him.

“You th-think?” I gasped, blinking more tears down my face. Fuck, my eyes were stinging, but the bloodshot look probably added a touch of authenticity to the role.

“I’ll help you look for him,” Dicky offered, still puffed up with purpose and righteousness as he stepped closer, probably about to offer some halfhearted reassurance until he walked into my knife. Whoops.

“What—” he gasped, but I whipped my blade up and sliced through his throat before he could utter anything else. It was a tidy, quiet job. One of my best, actually, but my favourites were the chaotic, bloody ones.

“Sorry, Dicky,” I said with a laugh at his stunned stare as his body crashed to the leaf-strewn ground at my feet. “But you really shouldn’t have represented that murderer. The girl’s family is not pleased with you.”

I knelt and wiped my knife on his sweaty top, scanning the clearing to make sure we were alone. I’d just break down into traumatised sobs and say I’d found him like this anyway; it had worked before. Why would a twenty-year-old, pink-haired girl with a heart-shaped face and big, blue doe eyes possibly kill someone? Obviously, I was an innocent bystander.

I rolled my eyes, a scoff in my throat. Although … people’s assumptions had gotten me away from the scene safely more than a handful of times, so I was happy for people to think I was a sweet, innocent little girl.

After all, I was a sweet, innocent little girl. When I wasn’t murdering people to pay the bills, anyway.

“Don’t worry,” I told Dicky, reaching into my pocket to pull out a lightweight sheet of silk that had cost me a bloody fortune, spreading it out over his body. And voila! Body magically disappeared. Well, not really, it was just hidden under the camouflage silk, but now passersby wouldn’t start screaming about a little bit of blood and a dead body. People could be so dramatic sometimes. “I already took out your buddy, so you and the murderer can hang out in hell together. Or wherever else you end up,” I added. I’d mused about it often, where people went when they died. It was a recurring thought given my line of work, but I’d never find out the answer. Not until I died anyway, and I’d yet to meet anyone crazy enough to try and kill me.

Everyone knew you didn’t fuck with Rebel Falcon AKA Graves. Well, everyone but the witch community, and especially my family—the Falcon witch line—but they were all assholes anyway. Where’s your magic, Rebel? Cast a spell, Rebel. You’re such a failure, Rebel. Blah. I’d got the final word though, and my dear cousin Antonella had left the pretty bloodstain in the hallway to prove it. Or at least I thought she had; those bastards could have gotten it magically removed, but I hoped they still remembered the vital lesson: don’t piss me off, or I get stabby.

The sun had dropped by the time I got Dicky rolled up in the silk and made sure no one was watching as I hauled him by his feet into the trees, swearing up a storm at his weight. I trained whenever I could, making my body strong, my reflexes deadly fast, but dragging a two hundred pound man was difficult for any woman. Even Wonder Woman would struggle to dispose of a body.

“There,” I panted, rolling him under a bush and giving him a kick for good measure. Sweat rolled off my forehead, and my shirt was stuck to me, but I was almost done and ready to go home, sink into an extra-bubbly bath, and drink champagne from the bottle. I might have lived in a modest one-bedroom flat in Birmingham, but I had expensive tastes in booze, and my little killing hobby—well, my very serious murder career—could pay for a few luxuries a week. Anything too crazy, and I’d have nothing left for rent. Killing people was not as lucrative a job as people believed; there just weren’t enough people around to kill. Criminals tended to take out their own enemies, which was just rude—some people were out here trying to earn a living.

“This is your fault, Dicky,” I muttered, kicking his legs again even though he was stone cold dead and had done nothing to me personally.

I always got antsy around the full moon, and I could see it rising now, tainted strangely pink, like the moon had got her hands bloody killing someone, too. It was a witchy time of the month, when all the magical bastards gathered and cast spells for good health and prosperity and everything else that made me gag. Everything else I’d been excluded from for as long as I could remember. I was a dud, a failure of the powerful Falcon line, and they hadn’t let me forget it for a damn minute.

But who needed magic when you had sharp, pointy objects?

“Right, Dicky?”

I glared down at the camouflaged lump. “Well, that’s just rude, there’s no need to ignore me.”

Yes, I was talking to a corpse. I never said I was sane.

Pinkish light bathed the ground as I gathered my bag from where I’d stashed it and changed into non-bloody clothes—also a lovely shade of ebony—before I pulled back the silk sheet to take some pretty incriminating photos. Thank fuck I wasn’t hooked up to the cloud.

Dicky’s grey face and the bloody gash in his throat winged its way through the airwaves to my client, with the message: Dead as a doornail. You’re very welcome, good sir, no need to thank me, just wire the rest of the £20,000 into my bank.

I got back one word, which was a bit stand-offish, but that was clients for you. They couldn’t muster a single manner, let alone manners. The text just read, Done.

A quick check of my bank had a grin splitting my face. “I’m eating well tonight, Dicky. Chinese and Indian. Ooh, maybe pizza too.” A groan rattled my throat to match my rumbling stomach. “Garlic bread, with cheese and herbs. Fresh doughnuts. Oh! I want a whole box of Chupa Chups lollies. In cola flavour.”

Dicky didn’t reply, but I’d honestly have been worried if he had. So far that hadn’t happened to any of my corpses, but with magic in the world, you never knew. Luckily, I kept a taser in my pack just for zombies. And for targets who got touchy feely; those got tasered in the dick. Or the tit; turns out I was alluring to all genders.¹

I logged out of my bank and hit my number one speed-dial, winding a strand of bubblegum hair around my finger. “Hiii, Julius.”

“Oh, no, not you,” he groaned, seconds away from putting down the phone.

“I have a present for you,” I cut in before he could end the call. “It’s worth five grand for you.”

“I hate you,” Julius grumbled, dour as always. “Give me the address.”

I grinned, and told him where to find dear old Dicky, bouncing on my toes with excitement. I’d found Julius by accident when he was apprenticing to one of my first, waayyyy more expensive cleaners, and we’d started a heart-warming friendship of me nagging him to strike out on his own and him giving me the same level of glare as a cat being woken from a two-hour nap. Now, he got a much bigger cut, and I got bodies disposed of cheaper. Win-win. Plus, Julius had a sweet tooth, unlike his previous employer. I just didn’t trust people who hated cookies. It was unnatural. Like jogging for fun.

“You’re my favourite,” I told Julius, and put the phone down before his groan could finish. “Right, then. Time to go home.” I grinned; I could already taste the prawn balls and doughnuts.²

I reached my arms up, stretching out the kinks from dragging Dicky, and bent to retrieve my expensive silk sheet when pain lanced through my middle, stopping me. The vicious pang sent me crashing to my knees in the undergrowth, a gasp tearing up my throat. “What … the fuck?”

It felt like lightning had struck, like a hot poker had been shoved through my back, but I collapsed onto my side and reached back … and found nothing. No wound, no sword, not even a measly little kitchen knife. “Kittens,” I swore. I didn’t believe in god, but I did believe in kittens, and right now having a little furry face pressed to mine would make me feel a whole lot better about the pain shifting through my insides.

A bone broke in my leg, and I screamed, loud enough for birds to take flight from the trees above. Loud enough to draw attention to myself. Thank fuck Dicky was still concealed, or we’d have had a much bigger problem. At least I couldn’t be arrested for my bones snapping in two, which they continued to do, sending cracks of agony up through my legs, and then down my arms. Limp and useless, I fell forward so fast that dirt coated my tongue. “Ugh.” I spat it out, but there was no removing the gross taste on my tongue, and I swore my sense of taste doubled, and then tripled, just to piss me off. I gagged, my stomach twisted up on itself, and screamed through clenched teeth as my spine realigned—

“Oh, no,” I rasped, as I got a sneaking suspicion of what was happening. But it made no damn sense. I was from a witch line, not a furry, snarly beast line. “Please—” I panted, as the plates in my spine shifted. “Let me—be a—kitten—shifter.”

But there was no such thing. There were only witches, vampires, and wolves. And the chances of me being a secret vamp just discovering her bat form were… Yeah, pathetically slim.

The pain erupted like a fire doused in petrol, and my back arched, my body twisted as I panted and screamed. No one had come to investigate the screaming—that was either good or bad. But Julius would be turning up soon, and I had no idea how to explain this. How a dud of a witch was suddenly shifting.

Deep bronze magic flashed in the corner of my vision, and the pain washed away, replaced by a sensitivity that was almost as bad. Too many sounds competed for my attention, condensing into a droning buzz that gave me an instant headache, and the smells of dirt and trees and Dicky’s blood shoved up my nose until I gagged. And that was before I tried to shove up to my feet, and claws gouged the dirt under me, the earth rubbing against the pads of paws.

They weren’t cute, ickle kitten paws, either—I knew without hunting down a reflection that I was a wolf, my legs too long to be a kitty, and my fur the deep greyish black of the Silver Sable wolf line. The wolf line my mum must have had a dalliance with in her youth. Oh, she was in so much trouble. Not that she’d have to deal with the family finding out; she was long gone, killed by a spell gone wrong when I was two. But I knew our family would strike her from the family tree in a petty rage. Witches were stupid that way.

They were so focussed on keeping the lines pure, on maintaining the strength and power of our magic, they didn’t see they were becoming scarily like Death Eaters. Some lines were progressive and liberal. The Falcon line was not.

And I was the illegitimate love-child of a witch and a wolf.

Perfect.

Good thing I never saw those fuckers anymore, and I had my own content, murdery life. But that life was quickly becoming a sack of shit; now that I was stuck with a wolf form, I’d have no choice but to deal with this shifting agony once a month. This was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday night.

Although … a wicked thought occurred to me.

There was a rival assassin who’d always irritated me to no end. As a wolf, I could piss on all his clothes. People tended to get judgy when you did that in human form. Why are you taking your clothes off, Rebel? Why are you squatting over those expensive shirts, Rebel? Why are you giving me a death stare why you vengefully pee, Rebel?

People were so annoying with their societal rules. In my society, anyone could take revenge in any way they deemed, even if that involved a teensy splash of urine. And a wolf form. Fuck, I had a wolf form now, and I had no idea what to do until the moon set and the sun rose.

Did moons even set? I had no idea. I was a failure of a witch and an epic badass of a hitlady—I didn’t know moon phases and what parts of the forest to avoid and which wolves not to pick fights with. Kittens, I didn’t even know which wolves were the alphas. Knowing my luck, I’d piss off the biggest, baddest alpha. But then I could just stab him when I was back in human form. That thought cheered me up; I did like to get stabby and all creative with bloody patterns. I’d once carved Twilight Sparkle into some gross dude’s back. She was the prettiest, bloodiest, goriest My Little Pony I’d ever seen.

Focus, Rebel!I was adjusting to the thick haze of scents and the noisy clamour, able to pick out individual sounds and isolate scents. And now I wasn’t completely overwhelmed, I needed to get out of here before Julius turned up. I liked the guy well enough, but I didn’t want him knowing a secret about me. And this seemed like the sort of thing I should keep secret. Dual-bloods weren’t a thing around here. Maybe in the super liberal covens and packs down in London, but chances were I’d get chased out of Birmingham with torches and pitchforks. Witches were fucking crazy.

Must be where I got it from.

Padding tentatively across the ground, and marvelling at how sensitive my paws were, how the wind ruffling through my fur felt as amazing as having my hair stroked, I approached dead Dicky and snapped around with my new, unwieldy jaws until teeth closed around soft silk.

I reeeeally hoped no one caught me now, because having to explain why a wolf was carrying around a sheet was not going to be easy. Unless they thought they’d misseen and were going crazy. It happened to the best of us. Craziness, that is. My own mind broke five years ago while I hid under my sister’s bed as her boyfriend burst into the room in a rage. But I didn’t like to think about that day, about her soft pleas and his deep growls and the blood afterward…

Sometimes I thought that was where my obsession with the red, gushy stuff had started. But I’d always enjoyed breaking my cousins’ noses and watching the crimson flow, so maybe I’d always been a little fucked up. It was fun breaking people’s noses; you should try it.

My ears twitched at footsteps a few paths away, and I rolled my enchanted cloth into as small a bundle as I could manage with paws and jaws—hey, that rhymed; I should start a band called that!—and snapped it up in my teeth, trotting away.

Well, I’d planned to trot away, all elegance and powerful muscle. But I might have swerved and stumbled across a few roots, and maybe walked snout-first into a tree before I found a hiding place behind a thick bush—don’t snort at thick bush, don’t snort at thick bush—and watched Julius stomp his way into the clearing. He sighed huffily at the sight of Dicky but snapped on a pair of gloves anyway.

Leaving him to his job, I carefully picked up my legs and tiptoed away. Tip-pawed away? The air smelled amazing away from Dicky’s copper and rot scent, and I gulped it down, tasting oak trees and rich earth and … was that a squirrel?

I groaned, and the sound emerged as a low, rumbling growl. My mouth filled with saliva. Don’t chase the squirrel, Rebel, I warned myself. But I was too wolfy to ignore that enticing scent, and I took off at a sprint, wind whistling past my black and silver fur as I finally got the hang of these loping legs and strange paws. My wolf form was fucking awesome, and I let out an overjoyed yip. Shame I couldn’t film myself; this would make an epic TikTok. One minute, cute, innocent pink-haired girl, the next—BAM!—super vicious killer. Well, I was a super vicious killer no matter what, but they didn’t need to know that. Shifting could be my party trick. My once a month, fun as fuck party trick. If it wouldn’t get me kicked, punched, and screamed at, I’d make a game of shifting in front of unsuspecting humans just to see the looks on their dumbstruck faces.

Wait, no, back to the squirrel. Mmm, smelled tasty.

I ran head-first at the tree the squirrel scarpered up, the delectable fucker disappearing into a nook in the trunk and poking out its little face to give me a look that quite clearly said, ha-ha, can’t catch me now, big scary wolfie.

Next time, Bitesize,I promised, but all that came out was a low snarl.

I whipped my head around as I caught another scent. Bigger, but still fucking delicious. I gave the squirrel a toothy grin and raced off—and skidded to a halt, and forced myself to turn back. I picked up my forgotten silk sheet, and raced back toward that enticing scent.

I slowed to a prowl a few paces away, the thrill of the hunt singing through my blood as I peered through a bush into someone’s back garden and—

No, I hissed at my wolf. I mentally rolled up a newspaper and bopped her on the nose. No hunting, bad wolfie.

The mouth-watering scent was a beautiful grey cat, and no way in heaven, hell, or earth was I hunting a kitty. So I tucked my tail between my legs and skulked back into the forest. There was plenty of time to go squirrel hunting before the sun came up. If I was lucky, Julius would have cleared all signs of my murder antics by then, and I’d be able to go home to the nice chunk of money sat in my bank account.

Unless a human saw me and phoned the police—or the RSPCA.

Then I’d be shoved into the back of a van and shipped off to fuck knows where. Imagining the looks on their faces when they opened the van doors to find a naked, human woman was almost worth getting caught.

But no way in hell would I survive that questioning. And I’d definitely be on the witches’ radar then. There’d be no keeping the Falcon line away from me. And life as I knew it would all go to shit.

Better not get caught, then.

The wind ruffled through my fur as I stalked back through the forest, letting the sounds and smells wash over me, and taking it all in. This was my life now. I snorted through my nose at the absurdity of it. If I’d been in human form I’d have been singing yo-ho, yo-ho, it’s a werewolf’s life for me.

But as I passed through a clearing and the pink light of the blood moon fell on my fur again, I could have sworn magic rushed up through me. Witch power.

Not good.

Not good at all.