Dark Side of the Moon: A Dark-Hunter Novel (Book 9)

Chapter Onenbsp; nbsp; Seattle, 2006 nbsp; BOY EATEN BY KILLER MOTHS. nbsp; Susan Michaels groaned as she read the headline for her latest story. She knew better than to read the rest of the article, but something inside her just wanted to feel kicked this afternoon. God forbid that she ever took pride in her work again. . . . nbsp; nbsp; Bred in a lab in South America, these top secret moths are the next generation of military assassins. They are genetically engineered to think their way into an enemy’s lair where they bite the neck of the target and infect them with a concentrated poison that is completely undetectable and that will render the victim dead within an hour. nbsp; Now they have escaped the lab and were last seen heading north, straight for the central U.S. Be on guard. They could be in your neighborhood within the month. . . . nbsp; nbsp; Dear Lord, it was worse than she’d imagined. nbsp; Her hands shaking in anger, she got up from her desk and headed straight into Leo Kirby’s office. As usual, he was online, reading some poor slob’s blog and making copious notes. nbsp; Leo was a short, lean man with long black hair that he always wore in a ponytail. He also had a goatee, cold gray eyes that never laughed, and a strange spiderweb tattoo on his left hand. He was dressed in a baggy black T-shirt and jeans, with a giant Starbucks travel mug at his elbow while he worked. In his mid-thirties, he’d be cute if he wasn’t so damned annoying. nbsp; “Killer moths?” she asked. nbsp; He looked up from his notepad and shrugged. “You said we were going to have a moth invasion. I just had Joanie rewrite the story to make it more marketable.” nbsp; She gaped in total astonishment. “Joanie? You had Joanie rewrite the story? The woman who wears tinfoil in her bra so that the people with x-ray vision can’t see her breasts? That Joanie?” nbsp; He didn’t flinch or miss a beat. “Yeah, she’s my best writer.” nbsp; Talk about insult to injury. . . . “I thought I was your best writer, Leo.” nbsp; Sighing heavily, he swiveled his chair to face her. “You would be if you had any imagination whatsoever.” He held his hands up dramatically as if to illustrate his point. “C’mon, Sue, embrace your inner child. Embrace the absurd that lives amongst us. Think Ibsen.” He put his hands down and gave another weary sigh. “But no, you never do, do you? I send you out to investigate the bat boy who lives in the old church belfry and you come back with a story about moths infesting the rafters. What the hell is that?” nbsp; She gave him a droll stare as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s called reality, Leo. Reality. You should stop shrooming long enough to try it.” nbsp; He snorted at that before he flipped to a blank sheet of paper on his notepad. He set it beside his coffee. “Screw reality. It don’t feed my dog. It don’t make my Porsche payments. It don’t get me laid. Bullshit does that . . . and I like it that way.” nbsp; She rolled her eyes at his beaming face. “You are such a toad.” nbsp; He paused as if an idea had struck him. He reached for his pad, where he quickly scribbled something. “ ‘Employee Kisses Toady Boss to Discover an Ancient Immortal Prince’ . . . better yet, a god. Yeah, an ancient god”—he gestured at her with his pen—“a Greek god who’s been cursed to live as a sex slave to women . . . I like it. Can you imagine? Women all over the coun