Blood Moon (22 page)

“Pleasure,” I said, eyeing his approaching
partner.

“Adams,” his partner said, his dirty-blond
hair slicked back and his hazel eyes soft and inquisitive. He was
new. I could smell the inexperience on him. His apprehension,
too.

They told us about the three homicides
they’d been investigating, all of the details sounding eerily
similar to our own investigation. Naturally, they scoffed when I
told them about my underground vampire club theory. It annoyed me.
My nostrils flared, and my vision was clouded with red.

“Got me this far,” I snarled through gritted
teeth. “So, if you wanna continue to ride on my coattail, I suggest
we get moving.”

That shut them up. Satisfied, I turned
abruptly on my heel and led the way toward the entrance. The closer
we got, the stronger the scent was. My stomach rolled, and I fought
to suppress the urge to retch. I tried to focus on the scent of the
trash that wafted from the alley, but even the smell of rotting
food wasn’t enough to relieve the assault on my nose. I inhaled
deeply, thinking I could hold it until we got inside and away from
the stench, and just like that, my sensory memory kicked in. I was
instantly transported to when I smelled it last: in Samantha
Turner’s apartment, just the other day. It was death I smelled in
the air, only this time, it held the coppery notes of blood…and a
lot of it.

But where was it coming from?

The combination of smells attacked each of
my senses, burning my throat like acid, and my skin prickled as
tiny beads of sweat formed all over my body. Blood pounded through
my veins, my heart increased in tempo and strength while my arms
trembled, and every muscle in my back tensed almost painfully. I
didn’t know what to make of what was happening to me, but it
worried me. A lot.

Even though I found it repulsive, I followed
the scent to the door, reaching out and grabbing the doorknob. It
didn’t turn all the way. Locked. I considered knocking to announce
our presence, but something pushed me to try the door again. This
time, the muscles in my arm tensed as I turned the knob one more
time. Something metallic snapped within the door, and the knob
turned effortlessly in my hand before the door swung open. The guys
didn’t notice, which was fortunate, because I wouldn’t have known
how to explain it if they did.

What happened next caught me completely off
guard. The smell that plagued me in the alley hit me like a freight
train, knocking all the clean air from my lungs until my entire
body felt polluted. We’d found the source of the smell, and my skin
crawled as I took the first hesitant step into the building with
David, Keaton, O’Malley, and the two Phoenix detectives on my
heels. Waves of nausea crashed in my stomach the farther inside I
walked, and my eyes adjusted to the dark quickly. Much quicker than
normal.

The stench filled the air like a heavy smog.
It was hard to keep moving forward, my movements slow and
staggered, almost debilitated. My eyes scanned the dark for
anything out of the ordinary as my fingers curled like talons. It
didn’t take long for me to realize that my reaction to this smell
wasn’t just disgust, but that my body seemed to be readying itself
to attack.

David noticed this, coming up beside me and
looking at me with concern etched into his forehead. “You feeling
all right?” he asked.

The warehouse was suddenly bathed in light.
David and I to whipped around to see Keaton over by the wall,
pointing at the light switch with his thumb. “Not all of us have
natural night vision,” he joked, and I realized that it hadn’t even
occurred to me how dark it was.

The six of us looked around the open space
together. It looked like any night club would look after a wild
night: chairs knocked over, bottles and glasses littering the floor
and tabletops. There was nothing special or particularly memorable
about this place; it looked like an abandoned building that had
been turned into a night club with little to no renovations.

David, O’Malley, and Keaton had their hands
on their guns while I didn’t. It took a minute before finding it
weird that my first instinct
wasn’t
to reach for my weapon
in the off chance we might be ambushed. Normally, having my gun
ready to grab would give me a sense of security, but I didn’t feel
like I needed it. I felt like if something were to jump out at me,
I could deal with it without the use of a firearm.

It was a very strange feeling…but at the
same time, a very powerful one.

“I’m okay. It just smells in here,” I
confessed to him, only to be met with a quizzical stare. “Doesn’t
it?” I inhaled another big whiff and instantly regretted it when
the smell hit the back of my throat, making me gag.

I expected David to look at me as if I’d
lost my mind, but instead he urged me to continue. “I don’t smell
anything other than stale beer and alcohol that’s been spilled and
left to dry, but that doesn’t mean you don’t. You seem to have
picked up an uncanny sense of smell, so if you say you smell
something, I believe you.” My lips curled up into a relieved smile,
and he continued. “What do you smell?”

I glanced over to where O’Malley and Keaton
were currently looking around the building, then over at Burns and
Adams behind the abandoned bar. “Well, in addition to the alcohol,
the most dominant smell is…decay. It smells like something rotten
has been in here for days—maybe even weeks.”

“Anything else?”

“Blood,” was all I said. “And a lot of it.
This could be where the murders were committed.”

I don’t think it was intended for me to see,
but David’s entire frame shuddered. “Okay, we’ll get CSU down here
to check the place out.”

David talked to Burns and Adams, who made
the call while I continued to look around the building. Glass
bottles littered the floor, and we walked carefully to keep from
kicking them as we navigated the room so we didn’t disturb
anything. Our shoes stuck to the alcohol that had been spilled, and
we weaved around upturned tables and bar stools as we looked for
something useful. Really, I’d been hoping to find actual people to
question, but this place looked abandoned. And recently.

It was beginning to look like we were too
late. Maybe they decided to move onto another location when they
found out the police had been to Donovan’s club back home. My
frustration mounted quickly, the rage at being too damn late making
my entire body shake. By the time CSU arrived, I was too anxious
and unable to take it anymore; there were too many people in one
space, and I couldn’t focus on anything other than how trapped I
felt. Always underfoot.

I started for the door when David stopped
me, catching my hand. “Where are you going?”

I looked through the open door and caught
sight of the full moon in the darkening blue sky.
Freedom,
a
soft voice—mine—whispered in the back of my mind
.
I
was…
drawn
to it in a way that I couldn’t even begin to
describe, and, suddenly, being outside was all I thought about. All
I wanted. “I need some fresh air to clear my head. It’s crowded in
here, and I can’t think straight. I’m going to take a walk around
the area, see if there’s something there.”

David nodded, understanding. “Okay. Hurry
back, though, okay?”

“I will. I’ve got my phone. Call me if they
find anything,” I told him before squeezing his hand and heading
outside.

The minute the cool air hit my face, I
closed my eyes. It felt amazing against my skin, and I inhaled
deeply, the air out here seeming so much cleaner than it did
inside. It was still tainted, though, and I wandered a little
farther down the sidewalk, rounding the corner in search of a less
polluted source of air.

When I found it, my entire body felt
rejuvenated, and my feet picked up their pace. I was speed walking,
and I didn’t know where I was heading; I was just happy to be
outside and moving. All of my frustration and anxiety slowly faded
as my legs moved a little faster than before.

Cars passed on the street, and I noticed all
the people milling by me, sidestepping. The city never bothered me
before, but for some reason, now it was too busy—suffocating,
actually—and claustrophobia threatened to grab hold of me again. My
palms were sweaty, my heart still racing. Every pair of eyes seemed
to turn to me, like I was on display, so I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going, but the
feel of the wind through my hair and on my face as I ran faster and
faster was exhilarating. For a moment, all I heard was my pulse
pounding in my ears, my adrenaline spiking as I rounded another
corner and followed a path away from the bustling activity of the
city. My body temperature rose, which wasn’t uncommon when I ran,
but my skin itched, crawling and rippling, and every muscle in my
body burned like it was on fire. Instead of making me want to stop,
though, it pushed me forward. It struck me as weird. It was unlike
anything I’d ever felt before, but I accepted it because it felt
oddly natural.

The sensation of running with wild abandon
wrapped around me, allowing me to get so lost that I didn’t hear my
phone ringing at first. Even when the sound did register, I ignored
it. I was no longer in control of my own body. Something else was.
It should’ve worried me, but I felt strong—stronger than ever
before—and I welcomed the feeling.

When my phone rang again, my hand, feeling
dislocated from my body, pulled it from my pocket and tossed it to
the ground. Shocked by this, I considered going back for it, but
was quickly overruled by whatever force controlled me, and I kept
on my path toward the outskirts of the city. Soon I forgot all
about the phone and civilization as the bright full moon pulled my
focus again, and I darted into the night.

W
armth surrounded
me as my mind breached the barrier between sleep and reality, and I
groaned as my eyes fluttered open. The instant the sunlight
streaming in from the window above the bed caught my eyes, pain
pierced my brain and forced me to slam them shut again. A painful
jackhammer-like pounding lingered even as I pressed the heels of my
hands against my eyes, plunging me back into darkness. Sadly, this
did little to cease the relentless throb, so I pressed harder until
bright white spots formed, eventually merging into
one
bright white spot.

The moon.

I knew that wasn’t what it really was, but
for some reason, it invited a flashflood of images that felt both
dream-like and real at the same time. While I had trouble sorting
through them, one thing remained constant, and that was the silver
orb that hung in the darkness like a full moon on a starless
night.

The threat of rain was thick in the air as
the wind rustled through the leaves of the trees overhead. The rich
smell of the cool soil was almost intoxicating, but that feeling
soon dissipated when a sharp growl cut through the blackness.
Yellow eyes and a threatening flash of white directly below them
gleamed as the animal—a large wolf—stalked out from its hiding
place amongst the bushes that appeared out of nowhere, but that
wasn’t where the growling came from.

Its light brown fur gleamed in the silver
light of the moon, and it looked oddly familiar as it stepped
closer. I passed the thought off as ridiculous because all wolves
looked alike, didn’t they? A deep pulse
—a heartbeat, I realized
in my conscious state—
filled the silent night air as it stalked
forward, one deliberate step at a time. Its amber eyes shined
bright, never blinking as its hot breath mixed with the cool desert
air, forming a thick cloud of fog that spiraled up around its
head.

Then, with a threatening bark, it leapt, its
jaws open wide and ready to strike.

With a jolt, my eyes snapped open, my pulse
thundering in my ears as I stared at the white wall in front of me.
In addition to my headache, my memory of last night was somewhat
muddled, mixing with the strange recurring dream I’d been having of
the wolf attack. My mouth was dry, feeling like it was full of
cotton balls. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was
suffering the world’s worst hangover. The problem with that theory,
though, was that I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol. This
didn’t negate the very real fact that something was seriously wrong
with me.

Slowly, I pushed myself off the bed,
focusing my attention on anything other than how my arms trembled
under the physical exertion this one simple act used. Every muscle
in my back tensed and ached as I struggled. When my eyes fell to my
hands, I gasped upon finding them filthy, dirt and bits of grass
wedged beneath my fingernails.

Confused, I tried to jog my memory, but came
up empty time and time again. As I continued to rise, the cool bed
sheet fell from my body—my apparently very naked body. My eyes
wandered over my arms, noticing thin, pink scratches running the
length of them beneath the dirt and grime that covered my skin.
They also covered my chest, upraised, and they tingled slightly
like newly healing skin when I touched them. I should have been
able to remember how I got them, but I didn’t.

White teeth and amber eyes flashed against
black again and again, but I continued to shake it off as another
bad dream brought on by the memory of the wolf attack. For some
reason, it wasn’t so easy. I let my head fall back, staring at the
roof, as the flashes continued and the faint taste of copper formed
on my tongue. Each of these little revelations made my head hurt
more, and I sat up tall, stretching my arms up over my head in an
effort to release the tension in my spine as my eyes wandered
around my room…

…or, what I
thought
was my room up
until I really took in my surroundings. The haze of sleep snapped
back like a recoiled spring, slapping me in the face. Honestly, I
wasn’t sure how I made this mistake to begin with. The white walls
were the only thing in common with my bedroom. Gone was all of the
artwork that adorned my walls, and my furniture was missing, having
been replaced with contemporary black pieces I didn’t recognize at
all. Plus the windows weren’t in the same place as the ones in my
room, and the bed was on the opposite wall.