Bad Moon Rising

Those of you who've read my story

'Time After Time'

will remember that the 'villain' is a woman called Amber Lytton. One day I found myself wondering what might have happened to Amber. So here it is. If you haven't read

'Time After Time'

it might help you to do so first—give you an idea of how unpleasant Amber could be.

Characters in sex scenes are eighteen years old or over. All characters and places are imaginary—any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 to the author

"...Don't go around tonight/Well, it's bound to take your life/There's a bad moon on the rise..."

Creedence Clearwater Revival 1969

* * * * *

Prologue - Werewolf Moon

The drunk sat on the pavement's edge, muttering and crooning to himself, apparently oblivious to the carnage he'd caused. Only once did he glance towards the other side of the road where his '98 Shogun with its massive bull-bars was buried in the side of a Mini Cooper. "My car... my poor li'l car..."

The police had closed the road off and a couple of constables were working to divert other traffic approaching the cross-roads. The first traffic officers on the scene, a hard-bitten long-server and the probationer he was mentoring, were speaking to their sergeant.

"His name's Jerry Poulton, sarge," the probationer said, jerking a derisive thumb at the drunk, "Checked him out—he's already serving a five-year ban for drink-driving. His car was impounded at the time, must have obtained this one on the sly."

"And he's drunk now, Al?" This to the older officer—part statement, part question.

"Don't quote me, Mac, but if you strike a match anywhere near him you'll blow half the town away."

"Breathalysed him yet?"

Al Pearce shook his head. "Too busy trying to get the emergency teams down here to try to save the other driver—it's a woman." He pointed to where a fire and rescue crew were working, cutting the Mini apart to release the driver. A doctor and ambulance team were standing by to take over when they could. "It's a bad 'un, Mac," he added.

Sergeant McKeown nodded. "Okay, let's sort him now."

The drunk looked up as Mac approached. He appeared to be uninjured save for a few bruises. " 'm a werewolf," he announced. "Jus' an innocent li'l werewolf." He gestured towards the wreckage. "Her fault, stupid bitch, in the middle of the cross-roads when I came along." He blinked at Mac. " 'm a werewolf, you know..."

"What's this werewolf shit?" Mac asked his colleagues.

"There's a werewolf mask and gloves on the passenger seat of his vehicle," explained the younger officer, "Must have been to a fancy dress party."

" 'Sright, marvellush fancy dresh par'y. Me werewolf, you Jane." Poulton sniggered at his own wit then lapsed into sadness as he gazed again at his vehicle. "My poor li'l car..." His 'poor little car' was practically intact. "Stupid bitch, in middle of cross-road..."

"Witnesses?"

"Enough," Pearce said, "She was going across on a green light. Lon Chaney Junior here overtook a line of stationary traffic and jumped the red light. One of the witnesses estimated his speed to be about fifty, maybe more. Witness is a professional lorry driver so his guess is probably better than most."

"Who's Lon Chaney?" the probationer asked, "I thought his name's Jerry Poulton."

The older cops ignored him. "Right, let's get him breathalysed."

The drunk looked astonished when Al Pearce approached him with the breathalyser. "Werewolvesh don't play with balloonsh..." he slurred, "Fangs rip 'em up..."

The sergeant stepped forward, speaking quite reasonably. "You haven't changed yet, Mr Poulton, so it's quite all right for you to blow into the nice balloon."

"You shure?" Sergeant McKeown nodded. "Oh, a'righ'." The breathalyser almost burst into flames when Poulton blew into it.

"Bloody hell!" The three policemen stared at the breathalyser in astonishment. "That's got to be damned near a record. It's a wonder he's conscious let alone able to talk. Okay, Al, he's under arrest. The wagon's just arrived so cuff him and put him in the back. By the book—read him the standard caution now and once more at the station—make sure you record times and witnesses to the caution. He's in no state to understand properly now so repeat when he's eventually sobered up in the morning. I can think of at least half-a-dozen charges to throw at him and we don't want some smartarse lawyer getting him off on a technicality. And tell the wagon crew and the custody sergeant to keep an eye on him. Could cause us problems if he pukes and chokes himself."

The drunk gave the handcuffs a bleary gaze and dismissed them with a flap of the hand. "Them's no good, chains can't hold a werewolf."

Once again the sergeant was the voice of reason. "These are special silver handcuffs, sir. We're issued with them in case we ever have to arrest a werewolf."

"Oh, okay... tha...s clever..." Poulton obligingly held out his wrists. The probationer cuffed him, hauled him to his feet and led him lurching to the waiting wagon. He returned in time to hear the sergeant saying: " Christ, we really get them. How come he got away with just a couple of bruises?"

"Well, with those bull-bars that thing's built like a tank and while he may have been totally rat-arsed, he had enough sense left to fasten his seat belt. And the doc reckons because he's so pissed he was probably fully relaxed at the time of impact which would have saved him to an extent. We should have expected something like this tonight, Mac." He pointed towards the full moon.

"Oh yes..."

An astonished probationer glanced up then stared at his seniors. "What's the moon got to do with it? That's just superstition, surely?"

The older men laughed. "Maybe, maybe not. When you get a bit of spare time, son, have a look at some of the statistics—you'll be surprised. Most full moons mean headaches for us, especially autumn and winter time. Petty crime goes up, various categories of assault go up, drink-driving goes up, domestic violence goes up, you name it, it goes up. And as for the real crazies, the certifiable ones, don't even go there... Maybe it's nothing to do with the moon but the figures will make you think a bit." McKeown shook his head. "You two carry on. I'd better see how the rescue team's getting along."

The sergeant walked over to the tangled vehicles and stood by the doctor who handed him a driving licence retrieved from the woman's handbag. "Name's Amber Lytton," he said, "Can't tell how she'll do until we get her into hospital. I gave her a shot to keep her under. Right now it looks touch and go."

Sergeant McKeown shone his flashlight on the licence. "Nice looking lass," he commented.

The doctor looked into the Mini just as the rescue team lifted the roof from the car. He gave a laconic grunt. "She was..."

Amber Lytton - not a very nice person

Amber Lytton poured herself a glass of wine and sat back to relax, satisfied that her plan to wreck Tina Grey's life was as tight as she could make it.

Amber had a strong streak of malice in her make-up and she was a firm believer in the old Mafia adage that revenge was a dish best eaten cold. People who'd crossed her in any way found that out sooner or later. And right now she had almost completed the recipe for her next cold dish. Within the next few months the tall butch was going to find herself in very deep slime that she would find it difficult, if not impossible, to crawl out of.

Okay, so her little scheme to break up Hal Mercer's romance with Berry Osborne (in itself an act of revenge) had come unravelled. Well, she could live with that, you win some, lose some. She'd heard that Hal and Berry had married so good luck to them. But the reason her plot had failed could be summed up in two words: Tina Grey. The interfering bitch had put paid to Amber's carefully constructed pattern of lies.

Even so, Amber might have been prepared to let the whole thing go but for the fact that Tina had slapped her around to force the truth out of her. And that could not be forgiven. If this came off, Tina wouldn't see the light of day for a number of years.

Amber, an IT and security expert, had bought a laptop specifically for this operation, making a trip to London to buy the machine there and registering it under a false identity. With it she had gone into the dark web and set up a string of proxies around the world, ensuring that the trail would be nigh impossible to trace back.

Tina Grey worked in The Deep Velvet Bar, a lesbian nightclub in the small historic town of Helmsford. Amber had hacked into the club's bank records, checking the accounts back for ten years. Every year without fail, the most profitable day of business was New Year's Eve when takings were often three to four times the average. This coming New Year, following close of business, the takings would disappear from the club's bank account and reappear in Tina Grey's personal bank account, to the penny. As soon as this was accomplished and Tina was under investigation, the laptop would be broken down and hard disk and other components smashed before distribution among a number of different rubbish dumps around the county.

Even if investigators eventually concluded that Tina had been framed, she would suffer an uncomfortable few months and no employer would be likely to trust her ever again.

However, Amber knew that the unforeseen could upset even the best-laid plans (Sod's Law, or Murphy's Law, call it what you will: that if anything could possibly go wrong, it would) so she had taken certain precautions. She had set the laptop up with a password virtually impossible to crack while attempts to gain access by another party would result in the hard disk wiping itself. She had also rented a long-term secure cabinet in a storage facility some seventy miles away, again under a false identity, where she kept the laptop. The storage cabinet's key was hidden among the roof rafters of her house.

Now all she had to do was wait several months for New Year's Eve. In the meantime she'd enjoy the anticipation of pressing the necessary buttons to set the ball rolling.

Amber was about to take a first sip of her wine when a buzz from her mobile showed that she had a text message.

[LA: Feeling frisky. How about you? Want to come over now?]

Leonie Ashton!

Stupid bitch, thinking Amber was at her beck and call day and night. Amber glanced at her watch. Nine-thirty. She didn't know why she put up with the solicitor. Yes she did. Was it Lenin or Stalin who coined the phrase 'useful idiots'? Well, Leonie Ashton was Amber's useful idiot and it paid to keep her sweet. One day she'd stop being useful and then... and then... Amber grinned an unpleasant grin...

Amber had nothing at all against casual sex, she'd had more than her share, but Leonie had a thing about giant dildos and insisted on using one in all their encounters. To keep Leonie happy, Amber pretended to enjoy the toys, even to the extent of telling others in their games how much she relished them. In truth she loathed the things.

She thought about telling Leonie her period had started but that would probably be added piquancy for Leonie whose tastes were often bizarre. Amber decided to go along with it, keep the other woman happy for a week or two.

[AL: Ditto. On my way.]

Amber slipped on an autumn-weight coat and left the house to get her Mini Cooper. At least it was a clear and dry if rather cool night with a full moon just rising above the horizon. Roads were fairly clear too—they'd probably stay that way at least until she reached the Newcombe Parva/Merrovale cross-roads.

When Amber reached the cross-roads she was pleased to see the traffic lights were green in her favour. These lights could take an age to change and being stuck behind a red light was frustrating. She upped the gas slightly as she passed through the green lights and suddenly became conscious of a huge vehicle with blazing headlights bearing down on her like a ravenous beast. It was too late to take any kind of evasive action—the last thing Amber saw before impact was the full moon leering down at her...

* * * * *

Life was pretty much of a blur after that. There were periods of light and darkness, awareness and confusion, pain and terror... she was uncertain of who she was, eventually accepting assurances that her name was Amber Lytton. The thickset woman with the short grey hair visited her frequently, claiming to be Amber's solicitor although Amber had no recollection of the woman. She was unable to recall anything about herself before the sight of those huge glaring headlights swiping her broadside. The nice Indian neurologist told her not to worry, that in such cases memory loss was common. She slept a lot. Once, when they thought she was sleeping, Amber was sure she heard the doctor telling a nurse that full recovery of memory was doubtful. A masseuse treated the whole of her back several times a week to prevent bed-sores. Once the masseuse complimented her on the elaborate tattoo on her back. Tattoo? She had no idea that she had a tattoo. A physiotherapist came regularly to exercise her to help regain some muscle tone.

Then one morning they told her she was going home. Home? Amber had no idea where home was. They sedated her so that the journey would be as comfortable as possible and she awoke in a huge, luxurious bed.

As the mild sedative wore off, Amber fought her way from sleep and struggled to sit up. "Where...? Who...?"

She could see someone else in the room, a young woman who came to put an arm around her for support. A soft Welsh voice said: "I'm Cerys, Amber. It's okay, my lovely, it's okay, you're home now. You're safe here..."

Cerys

There used to be a comedy sketch show on TV called

Little Britain

. One of the regular sketches was set in a small Welsh community and the main character was a oddly-dressed young man whose boastful catch-phrase was: "I'm the only gay in the village."

Well, that was me. Cerys Morgan. The only gay in the village. There were some differences from the TV show though. My place was about two miles out of the village. And it wasn't really a village but a small market town, Pen-y-Dyffryn, near the Black Mountains and some twenty-odd miles from the border with England. As for me, I'm not a oddly-dressed young man but a jeans-and-sweater clad young woman. And I'm damned sure I wasn't the only gay around—it's simply that I was the only one who'd had the gumption to come out publicly. It had taken me a long time to recognise myself but when I did, why hide it? I had never cared much for what others thought of me so I let the word be known. I'd probably upset a few folk but most people couldn't have cared less. One time or another several of the local farm lads thought they might be able to convert me but they soon learned their lesson. I've got a nifty right knee and an accurate aim.

My parents had died in a hill-climbing accident while I was very young and I was brought up by my Uncle Huw and Auntie Gwen who had a small farm three or four miles from Pen-y-Dyffryn. The two made sure I had a very happy childhood and as they were the most important people in my life it was only right that I came out to them first. I told them over tea one evening, not quite sure how they'd react although hoping for the best because they were a kindly and broad-minded couple. Huw had looked at me for a long minute then said: "Well, I suppose you are what you are, Cerys

fach

, and I guess there's no altering that so give me a hug." He wrapped strong arms round me, saying: "If anyone gives you grief, girl, I'll kick their arses, I will."

"And when he's tired of kicking backside, my lovely," chipped in Auntie Gwen, "I'll take my turn!"

As the only out gay girl around, I had to travel a bit for romance (oh, all right then, for sex!). I was a student and member of the LGBT Society at Cardiff University and after uni I went to all the Pride events within easy travelling distance. I had a number of dates with women I'd met on-line but nobody with whom I'd have liked to make it permanent.

It was in England, though, in a town called Newcombe Parva, that I got involved with Amber Lytton. My Great-Auntie Meryl, who'd lived in England for some years with her late husband, had died recently and left me her house, a small terraced workman's home dating back to the early 1900s. Probate had been granted and the house value well below the inheritance tax threshold so that was one worry less. I came along to supervise the sale which didn't happen as quickly as I had anticipated. The place was cheap enough but the estate agent said there was a temporary lull in the market. "You'll just have to give it a little time," he told me.

So I stuck around. Work wasn't a problem, I'm self-employed, my latest project had been finished maybe a month before and I could afford to take a few weeks off. I called Uncle Huw and Auntie Gwen—who were keeping an eye on my cottage and caring for my dogs—to let them know my revised plans. But truth be told, I was getting a bit bored and wishing I'd brought my laptop to do some work rather than having the semi-long break I'd promised myself. Then I heard about Amber.

I was in a local charity shop looking through the books for sale. It's a strange thing about charity shops; they all seem to have the same books at the same time and invariably those books are the ones nobody wants to read. I've sometimes wondered if they clone them when the shops are closed to the public. Then serendipity! I found a copy of

Tipping the Velvet

which I'd heard of but never read. Understanding the author to be a gay woman, I decided to give it a look and took it to the counter to pay.

There were two women at the counter, the shop's volunteer help and a pleasant-looking older woman probably in her late-sixties or early-seventies. The volunteer was saying: "Well, knowing how you feel about her, I think it's very commendable of you to do this."

The older woman shrugged. "I'm doing it as a favour for the hospital, not for her. But we've got a problem. Lydia Osborne and I can only do the daytime and the district nurse has other duties. We're in urgent need of a full-time carer who's prepared to live in and so far no luck. It'll likely only be for five or six weeks. You know anyone?"

The volunteer shrugged, shook her head.

I said I was getting bored, perhaps this was a job I could manage. "Excuse me, ladies, I couldn't help overhearing. If you need a carer for somebody, perhaps I'd be suitable."

Interest aroused, the pair stared at me hopefully. "Are you a carer?"

"Not now," I admitted, "but when I was at university I had a part-time job as a carer. I had pretty wide experience—senior citizens, chronically ill and housebound people, special needs children, you name it, I've probably seen it."

"The pay's not very good but you'll have room and board."

"The money doesn't worry me," I said and briefly explained my circumstances. "I'd just be happy to do a job for a few weeks to stop me going doolally. Anyway, who's the patient and what are her needs?"

"Her name's Amber Lytton," the older woman told me, "She's thirty-ish, been in a bad traffic accident. She's been in hospital for a number of months, some of it in an induced coma. There's not a lot more they can do for her and hospitals are dangerous places for sick people, there's always a strong risk of infection. The local hospice can't help as they're full right now. If she could be moved home it would be better for her and free up a hospital bed." She held out her hand. "I'm Mary Tallis."