CHAPTER 1

– INTRO –

Excerpt:

From the February 2017, Series 29, issue 2 of The New England Journal of Astronomy

BLOOD MOON - A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth rotates between the moon and the Sun, blocking 90% of the Sun's rays. The remaining 10% bends around the planet, filtering through the upper atmosphere, bathing the moon's surface in red light. The farther the moon's orbit moves away from the Earth, the more intense the light striking the moon becomes and subsequently the more reflected light reaches the darkside of the planet.

Such events occur approximately once every six months. Although, as they rarely last over 20 minutes, are only visible from one side of the planet at a time, and often obscured by cloud cover, most lunar eclipses go unnoticed.

Excerpt:

From a batch email sent out by the director of The Johnstown Space and Aeronautics Laboratory, Deadrock, Mo., to all science department affiliates.

On May 5, 2022, the Moon's orbit will swing farther away from the Earth than it has in 150 years. During that time, a lunar eclipse will occur at 1:13AM and last an unprecedented 31 minutes.

If weather permits, we ask that our European affiliates train their instruments on the moon and record all pertinent data.

Thanks

Robert J. Cummings

Managing director, JSAL

Excerpt

From the May 6, 2023, BBC news report by Alex McDonald. BBC Channel 3, 9:00 AM report.

Last night, 17 unexplained maulings- all attributed to undetermined animal attacks- took place at a club in the heart of London. The unknown animal dismembered victims beyond recognition. Only one victim survived and is currently in critical condition.

Crime scene investigators identified most of the victims using personal identity cards found at the scene. Those not yet identified are awaiting autopsy. Those who may have survived the attack disappeared prior to authorities arriving on the scene. Authorities are searching for missing business executives, a club employee and an unidentified female patron.

Excerpt:

From a communique from the desk of the lead science director at the International Science Symposium, June. 30, 2022.

The European Counsel of Astronomy predicts that on November 8, 2022, a lunar eclipse will occur while the moon is at its lowest point on the horizon. During the eclipse, the Earth will swing closer to the sun than it has in 10,000 years. And all this will take place during a planetary alignment. Symposium astronomers have dubbed the coming event a Super Blood Moon.

All affiliates, please take note. During this once in a lifetime eclipse, the moon will appear twice its normal size and cast more light than usual.

Counsel astronomers agree the lunar cycle will remain visible for over 45 minutes and be visible even through light to moderate cloud cover.

The Counsel was only partially correct.

Approximately 8 minutes prior to the eclipse beginning, the sun threw out an enormous solar flare. The flare struck the Earth head on. Solar radiation bathed the Earth in an electromagnetic storm that disrupted 85% of all communication across the daytime side of the planet. No one had ever recorded a flare of that size or intensity before that night.

Temperatures on the daytime side of the planet rose an average of 45 degrees in minutes. Because the unexpected radiation energized the upper atmosphere, the Super Blood Moon cast 24 times more light onto the darkside of the planet. Three times more than predicted.

The moon hung in the sky, cloaked in a fiery corona that shone like a giant red eye. Many who saw it said the moon looked like Satan's eye, peering out from a reddish hellscape.

Ancient werewolf lore predicted that werewolves cloaked in the light of a fiery Blood Moon are invulnerable to any means of harm. And on that day, the forces of good and evil would once again fight over the souls of humanity.

What scholars failed to predict was that Santo Guerrero, longtime fugitive from el paquete de sangre de Guerrero- The Guerrero Blood Pack- would meet his destiny that night. And so would all of humanity. But before that could happen, he would have to make it through tonight.

– CHAPTER 1 –

11:20 AM, May 5, 2022

A few hours before the lunar eclipse.

On the highest point of South Street, Bromley, Santo Guerrero, stood in his dark parlor. He peered through the rippled Victorian Era glass as the cold stars rotated behind the ghostly white orb overhead. Pale, twinkling witchlight heralded the approach of his oldest tormentor. The Blood Moon. Santo hated the moon, but he bore a special hatred towards the blood moon. Lunar eclipses affected him the worst.

The beast lurking deep within him felt the infernal pull of the coming lunar eclipses and struggled even harder to break free of its meat prison. It was a test of will Santo had almost lost many times before.

A searing pain tore through his upper body and he tore his jacket open, revealing three long, ragged scars furrowing through his muscular chest. The slashes were deep, starkly bright lines carved into his coffee skin. From the jagged, rippled look of them, the wounds had healed untreated.

Santo fought to control his emotions as the moon turned a faint pinkish. He needed to keep his unwanted passenger in its meat suit lest it go on another murderous rampage. He dare not lose control of the wolf again. Not that his prisoner was a wolf, exactly. The creature inside him was only part wolf. The other part was something far more dangerous. That part was nephilim. Or in his case, fallen nephilim. Santo's pack were the descendants of a fallen angel. Lucifer's most loyal and strongest ally.

The upper edges of the three scars pushed outward as if something inside wanted out. He grabbed his chest as a searing heat burned like three stars forming beneath the scars. And then agony dropped him to his knees as sharp nails dragged along the inside of his scars. Fucker really wants out, he thought, gripping his chest and gasping through the pain.

But he couldn't let it out. He wouldn't let it out. So, he marshaled all his strength and fought it down. When the pain finally subsided, he saw the droplets of blood on his scars and knew how close he had come to losing control. The possibility of what his dark passenger might do when the moon burned red drew gooseflesh up his arms.

It had been 150 years since its last escape and even after all those years, he still bore the wounds of that bloody experience. And now, the creature was trying to use his old wounds to escape. His scars had become zippers, and he was just a coat to be taken off and cast aside.

Santo considered going down into the cavernous basement and chaining himself to a wall. That had worked before. He knew it would work again. But the idea of placing himself in burning silver did not appeal to him. Silver had been used to hold him before and the pale, sunken scars of that long incarceration still encircled his wrists. But both the scars on his body and the memories of his long incarceration still haunted him. When he had finally escaped his captors- a feat not of his doing- he swore he would never let silver touch his skin again.

Santo knew the creature would get out again someday. It was inevitable, but he hoped it would not be this day. But who could tell? Certainly not him. He was amid a lifelong battle that had turned his body and mind into prisons. A prison for the beast and a prison for him. Two immortal combatants forever tied together in a cage match. Each struggling to overpower the other; neither willing to give up.

The wolf had escaped when he was just a boy. He hadn't been able to control it back then, and that loss of control had ended in a bloody week-long feeding frenzy. Santo's inner demon had left a swath of mutilated corpses from one side of Texas to the other. But before his pack had run him to the ground and chained him to a wall like a rabid dog, he had killed countless innocents and the one person he loved most. His sister, Sonata.

The people he trusted had chained him to a dank stone wall because his alter ego did not play well with others. It had never been what you might call a people person. No werewolves were. But unlike normal wolves, his dark passenger didn't even get along with its own kind. Not that there were many of his kind left in the world. What his family had failed to tell him was that one in ten thousand werewolves are born with nephilim blood. He was the first in generations. They also failed to tell him that his nephilim side would remain dormant unless he went out in the light of a Blood Moon.

During the creature's outburst, the beast had killed one of his cousins, dismembered two others and disfigured many more in the chase. Wolves regenerate easily. Unless other wolves inflicted their injuries.

Santo's inner demon hated the Guerreros. All Guerreros. He supposed it even hated him for being a Guerrero. That malignant hatred of family is the one and only trait the creature and Santo shared. They both hated their familia, and unbeknownst to each other. They hated themselves, too. The creature hated the Guerrero family for locking it inside Santo, and Santo hated them for not telling him the creature was inside him. But neither man nor beast would ever get the one thing they both wanted- to be free of the other- nor would they ever be free of their destiny.

Santo stared into the black sky. His old tormentor would be in full bloom soon, spewing its eerie color of dread over the dark landscape. It would reach down and pull the long buried wolf to the surface of his skin like a poultice, drawing a yellow milky pus from an infected wound.. Even now, with the moon still over the horizon, it was already fighting to get out. And the closer the moon came, the harder it would be for Santo to keep the creature in.

Santo loathed the days prior to the coming of the Blood Moon. The days leading up to the eclipse always wore him down. Bit by bit, he became a frazzled wreck, second guessing everything he thought he knew. He hated his curse. Not that his transformations were a curse. They were not, and he knew they weren't. But the knowledge of why he had his unwanted abilities did little to change the constant whispering in his ears. Let me out. Let me out. It was always in his thoughts, an unceasing mantra in the back of his mind.

If Santo's adolescent atrocities had taught him anything, it was that a freed beast was a beast beyond control. That's why he would never risk becoming part of the human world. Or the wolf world. It wasn't safe for anyone, but mostly, it wasn't safe for him. He was a fugitive who didn't need the added attention.

There were nights when the full moon hung in a temperate night sky. Lighting the land and beckoning the beast. Nights when Santo longed to be done with all the running, all the hiding and all the loneliness. He longed to be free of this hellish nightmare. A nightmare that had gone on for nearly two centuries. But freedom was not an option for him, and he knew that. He was the part owner of a vicious mauling machine. A destroyer of all things. And if he did not take steps to control the beast within him, the beast within him would surely take steps to control him. It had tried before and damn near succeeded.

It's a clever bastard, he thought ruefully. Even with all the guilt of his past slaughter weighing him down, Santo still had to fight to keep the creature in during a full moon. And that burden was nothing when weighed against the soul sucking draw of a Blood Moon. The influence of the moon tripled during those nights. And on those nights he often blacked out, waking the next day in a panic, expecting the papers to be filled with reports of grisly deaths. But this coming Blood Moon was beyond his worst imaginings.

He just wanted to say fuck it, swing the door into his soul wide open and let the beast tear its way out of him and run wild and free. Then it would be over. Someone would come and put him down for good.

To hell with the consequences, he would meet his dark destiny head on. Or maybe not. Who knew what the truth about his future really was? And his family had lied to him about what he was becoming.. Could he really trust them now? Maybe letting the beast out wouldn't lead to the apocalyptic end of days everyone predicted. Maybe the prophecies of his youth were all just a load of bullshit. Just empty horror stories to frighten a little boy. And maybe cow shit smells like roses.

But after all the years of hiding and what he had done all those years ages ago, he knew that was the real load of bullshit. So, every 6 months, he wrestled with his darkest urges just to save a world that did not know he even existed. But he always wondered how much longer he could keep this shit up? He didn't know. He wasn't even sure if he even cared anymore. What was the point?

In the icy darkness behind him, a grandfather clock ticked steadily onwards, marking off the cruel passage of time and announcing the approach of his old, familiar fears. The fears that always came out of the void on nights like this. Fears buried beneath mountains of bygone doubts and insecurities. Disfigured fears dragging his bloodiest memories behind them like a parade of the damned. A hundred festering corpses. A long ago massacre of men, women, children rising from the grave to make sure he never forgot. All shambling past him with their dead empty socketed gazes fixed on him accusingly. And each followed by an undead troop of grinning, disjointed goblins with jagged wolves' teeth dripping in the unholy red moonlight. Satan's seventh level of Hell parade. A bloody spectacle created just for his amusement.

As the edge of the pale moon darkened, Santo wondered if he would blackout this time? For some strange reason, this Blood Moon felt different somehow. Could he actually stop the creature before he lost himself in its desire, or would it use him to kill again? And worse yet, what if he didn't want to stop it? How many would pay the price for his failure this time? Good Christ, did he actually have the strength to fight anymore?

Lush greenery better suited to a New Orleans swamp than the British countryside sprawled across the rear of the Guerrero estate. In all its years of flourishing, wild and unkempt, no passerby had ever noticed anything other than the tops of the giant trees. How could they? The entire estate existed behind a 12-foot high brick wall no one had ever peered over.

Many who passed the walls thought it was an ancient, ivy covered invitation to keep out. So that's what they did. They stayed away. Mostly, Santo was okay with that. The isolation didn't bother him. Well, maybe it did a little, but he knew the wall was there to keep something inside, not out.

Long ago, he had commissioned workers to plant wolfsbane around the perimeter of the grounds. Today, ivy and wolfsbane cover both sides of the ancient stone wall.

So, for 15 decades, he had stayed in at night. Even on nights when the moon didn't shine. Lest he risk blacking out, losing control and getting over the wall. An unexpected transformation was a possibility. So, why take the chance?

However, he went out during the daytime hours, when he taught paranormal and occult studies to undergrads, looking for a few quick credits. And even then, when he was at the school, he kept to himself. He ate alone. Traveled alone. Did everything alone. Except for that one time, recently, when he had stopped to talk to an undergrad.. But he was sure she had forgotten all about him by now. It would do her no good to meet a man who never aged. There would be too many questions leading to too many lies.

So, there Santo stood, locked in his nighttime prison, expecting everything was about to go straight to hell. A living cage as ancient and impossibly old as was its eternally youthful owner. A mid-twenties looking, brown skinned, black-eyed fugitive of the oldest wolf pack in America, hiding on the other side of the world.