This story is a bit wordy and fairly long, so if you are looking for immediate gratification, you might want to look elsewhere. It contains heterosexual and lesbian sexual activity.
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The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between actual persons, living or dead (or just confused) is entirely coincidental. Please do not copy/redistribute the story, in part or in total, without the author's permission.
This story takes place in the entirely fictional city of Springfield, California, so don't go looking for it on a map. And in my little fictional world, there are no unwanted pregnancies or STD's, except as plot driving devices. The author encourages the practice of safe-sex. Finally, as the name implies, this is part of an ongoing series. It would benefit the reader greatly to examine the earlier stories for background information and descriptions.
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"Full Moon Strays . . ." Part 6
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Red was a lycanthrope . . . a powerful creature whose physical existence shifted between her human form and a half-human, half puma entity. She wasn't meant for or fond of enclosed spaces. The inside of a passenger train definitely counted as "enclosed." But nevertheless, she found herself sandwiched between an elderly gentleman who smelled faintly of mothballs and a pretty young woman with her arm in a sling. It was this latter creature . . . Jane . . . who had brought Red to this place.
A few months earlier, Red had simply been worried about hellspawn activity in the underworld of Springfield, California. Since then, Jane had showed up, helped save Red's brother (another lycanthrope), manifested a powerful magical Talent, been almost killed twice and had fought an ancient and evil creature, almost losing her life and sanity in the process. Jane had come to the Strays a fragile and breakable creature, and the Shoggoth had preyed upon that and fed upon her growing mental instability. It had come so close to devouring Jane's soul that Red shuddered to think about it. Now, Red was escorting the woman she had unexpectedly and secretly come to love back to where she had grown up. And more importantly, she was taking Jane back to the thing Jane had been running from for years . . . the thing that had broken her spirit and sense of self-worth . . . the man, if he could be called that, that had hurt Jane so very badly so very long ago.
Jane could feel herself getting closer to her home town with every jostle of the car, and she felt a chill creeping down from her brain and infesting the rest of her body. 'Do I really want to do this?' she asked of herself. 'No, I'm pretty sure I don't,' she thought. 'But I need to.' Her arm crept around Red's and she rested her head on the woman's shoulder. She knew the lycanthrope was uncomfortable leaving the Den in such a time of turmoil.
"It'll be dark when we get there," Jane said absently. They would take the bus from the train station to the sleepy little town she had once called home. "If you want, you could get some sleep now and . . ."
"No, that's okay," Red replied, pulling her girlfriend closer. "I don't think I could sleep now anyway." She paused. "Are we going straight there?" She didn't need to explain where "there" meant.
"Yes," Jane whispered, almost fearfully. She still didn't know what she was going to do when she saw her stepfather. She hadn't seen Jack in many years . . . not since she had run away. It occurred to her that she hadn't even considered what she would do if she saw her mother. Jane's feelings about her mother were . . . complicated.
The two women slipped back into silence. It would all be over soon enough.
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Outside of Springfield, CA . . .
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Deep in the recesses of a mountain cave, the Shoggoth stirred. It sensed that the creature it had grown to despise with unbridled passion had left the area, heading westward. Part of it was in still in her mind . . . not enough to exert influence, but certainly enough to know when its host was missing. As soon as the sun set, the Shoggoth would take flight for the first time since that pathetic little world had come into existence. It would not report back to its master that it had been foiled by some pathetic human, however powerful she might be. The Dark One would not wait for his foe to recover . . . it would attack as soon as possible. It would all be over soon enough.
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In the Den . . .
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The few remaining Strays, along with Natasha, were once again gathered around the central table. They had been debating where to move the Den for hours. Robbie was acting as his sister's surrogate, arguing to keep the Strays where they were. But he was outnumbered, even with Nat stepping in on his side as an "outside" voice.
"This place just isn't safe anymore," Shield was saying. "There's so much bad mojo around that it's next to impossible to put up solid defenses."
"So you want to move to a slaughterhouse? How much worse can the mojo get?! And it has no power, running water and . . ."
"That can all be arranged and you know it," Tarloh interrupted. "I'm sorry, the big man said, less confrontationally, "but I don't want to sleep so close to wear we've buried our friends. This place was good to us over the years, but we've got to go."
"And we've got to find some allies," Talia said, trying to shift the conversation to something they all agreed upon. Robbie would beat his case to death just because he knew it's what his sister wanted.
"But who the hell would want to hook up with a bunch of people in the path of a God?" Nathan asked.
"Not a God," came a voice from out of nowhere. "Just something that wishes it was."
The Strays reacted with a start. Only one person they knew could be invisible, and that was Anya, who was sitting in plain sight. So if the hidden voice wasn't hers . . .
Suddenly, a purple and green mist formed in the center of the table, and it seemed to crackle with lightning. Then red sparks shot out the side, while the mist formed the head of what humans would call a dragon. The dragon's head roared, but the roar sounded more like a lion.
Tarloh had collected himself quickly and was actually rolling his eyes. "Lothar, would you can it?! You almost scared my people into doing something rash."
The mist vanished and standing in the middle of the table was a slightly pudgy young man, no more than twenty-four, wearing purple robes with an assortment of gold moons and stars and random symbols decorating it. He also wore a large, conical hat with similar decorations and a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses.
"How did you know it was me?" came the now slightly-nasal and much-less-booming voice.
"Because you have the tackiest entrances of anyone I've ever met," Tarloh grumbled. Lothar, or Lothar the Magnificent as he liked to be called, was a wizard from Los Angeles who had been helping Tarloh and the Strays in recent months try and identify the source of the Hellspawn threat. It was Lothar who had directed them towards the legends of the Elder Gods.
"Tacky?!" Lothar blurted. "I worked hard on that entrance!"
Most of the Strays had recovered and were curious about the newcomer. They had all heard of Lothar, but only Tarloh, Red and Talia had ever actually met him.
