Blood Moon (38 page)

Remembering David lying in a growing pool of
his own blood, my eyes snapped open, and I scrambled onto all
fours. My feet skittered on the floor, my limbs foreign and gangly
beneath me, before the pads of my feet found traction on the slick
surface. Samantha was still quick, but I had the advantage of being
slightly lower to the ground as I slipped away from her and bit
down on her arm. My jaws were ridiculously strong, and I shook her
from side to side, refusing to let go. She cried out in agony, and
then I felt a
pop
as I dislocated her shoulder.

Before I could rip it from her body, she
wound up and kicked me square in the throat. The act forced me to
let go—but not without tearing a chunk of her disgustingly cold
flesh from her arm—and I slammed into the couch. The cushions kept
me from getting too winded this time, but the blackness still
descended again.

I like it here, but I know I can’t stay.

Breathing heavily and my heart racing, I
pushed myself back up, shaking off the disorientation in my head,
but by the time the fog cleared, Samantha was gone. I growled when
I found a scrap of fabric from her shirt on a thick shard of glass
that remained lodged in the window frame. I made a move to go after
her when I heard the low, bubbling groan of David just below.

Panting breathlessly, I looked down and
noticed the red-brown fur covering what used to be my hands. Now
they were paws. The blackness threatened to take over as I refused
to accept what just happened. My knees weakened, and I stumbled
when I pushed myself forward, my vision clearing and then darkening
once more.

Hold on,
I mentally willed David as I
approached him, nudging his hand with my nose. His eyes stared at
me, wide and disbelieving as he struggled for each breath; he
looked terrified, and that’s when I mentally retreated. I
disappeared back into the darkness, unwilling to acknowledge that
he’d really just witnessed any of this. I spiraled deeper and
deeper into denial, the pit bottomless as I continued to
plummet.

“
Brooke,”
The voice I heard was
hoarse…strained and quiet. My name was repeated over and over
again, and I felt something cool against my cheek. Slowly, the
shadows slipped away once more, and when I opened my eyes, I was
staring down at David in my arms…my
human
arms. I was mostly
naked, my clothes having torn when I shifted, only shreds of them
remaining and hanging around my neck and waist. They did little to
conceal me, but I couldn’t be bothered to worry about that right
now.

Pain radiated from my right wrist, left
shoulder, and both of my hips, but I pushed all of that aside when
I watched David struggle for another breath, blood bubbling out
from a horrible neck wound. The glass had sliced through his
carotid and he was bleeding out. I placed my hand over the wound,
hoping to staunch the bleeding, but with every beat of his heart,
blood oozed between my fingers.

His hand was on my cheek—that was what I
felt when I was lost—and he stroked my cheek with his thumb. “I’m
so sorry about earlier,” I whispered, pressing my face into his
touch while I continued to slow the bleeding. “I was scared.”

He shook his head; it looked painful and
like it took a lot of effort on his part. “N-no,” he managed to
say, blood filling his mouth due to the severity of the
laceration.

Things looked grim. I choked back a cry,
trying to remain strong for him. His breaths came fewer and shorter
in between, and I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to his.
The difference in our temperatures was a frightening contrast.
“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded, holding him tighter. “You can’t leave
me. You promised we’d be together. You have to fight.”

Not seeing any sign of him fighting, I
decided to try my hand at bargaining. I needed to make him see that
he had something to fight for.
Me.
“I’ll marry you,” I told
him between my sobs. “We’ll have babies—tons of
them—just…
please
don’t leave me. I-I love you.”

“Love…you…too,” he managed to gasp, his lips
turning up into a small smile.

I stroked his dark hair as I held him
against my chest, trying to regulate his body temperature. Based on
touch alone, I knew it was dangerously low and dropping by the
second. The naturally pink color of his complexion was noticeably
paler, and when his hand dropped limply from my face, tears fell
from my eyes.

“David?” I whispered, my voice cracking with
emotion. He inhaled in one more short breath and exhaled it before
letting his eyes close. Afraid when he didn’t take another breath,
I shook him. “David!” While he didn’t say anything or open his
eyes, he took a shaky breath, and I sighed with relief. His
heartbeat was still weak and uneven, but the sound of sirens in the
distance told me that help was on the way. Someone must have called
the cops when they heard the gunshots and all the noise. They’d
make it here in time to save him. They had to.

I looked around the room. It was in
shambles, the window broken, and I was sitting, practically
bare-assed, my clothing shredded, in a pool of David's blood. I
knew I should stay until the emergency response teams arrived, but
my anger started to escalate until my skin blazed and my hands
trembled. I had to find Samantha Turner and make her pay for what
she did.

No,
I told myself.
I have to stay
here. It’s the right thing to do.

“G-go,” David stammered weakly, opening his
eyes as much as he could.

“No!” I cried. “I can’t leave you.”

“You n-need to find h-her. St-stop her.”

Even though I knew I should stay until the
paramedics got here and stabilized him, I knew he was right. Every
fiber of my being told me as much. Shaking, I slowly lowered
David’s head back to the floor. “Hold on,” I told him softly.
“Fight, David. Help is on the way.”

He nodded once, his eyes fluttering closed
again as if to preserve his energy. Gauging how far away the sirens
were, I told myself he’d be in good hands within less than a
minute. I stood up and stared out my broken window. Samantha was
out there. I didn’t know where, but she was close. I could still
smell her. Without another thought, I launched myself into the
night to go after her.

I
let her scent
guide me as I ran down the sidewalk. I kept to the shadows, hoping
for the element of surprise should I find her. I followed her scent
as it steadily grew, but then it faded into the night for no
reason. I wasn’t sure what happened, but I was about to double-back
when Nick jumped out of the yard to my right, surprising me.

I took in his frazzled expression, his eyes
wide, mouth open as he looked me up and down. “Jesus, Brooke,” Nick
exclaimed, horrified. “What happened?”

“I… David… He…” I stammered. He waited
expectantly, and I immediately realized how this must have looked
to him. What was worse, he wasn’t entirely wrong: this was my
fault.

“It wasn't me,” I rasped. He remained
silent, and I grew defensive, like maybe he didn't believe me. “I
swear I didn't do what you must be thinking!”

Eyes widening in surprise at my outburst,
Nick held his hands up in surrender. “I know,” he assured me
softly. “I was at the house already. The place was crawling with
cops. I got as close as the broken window and caught a brief
glimpse before I was almost spotted. I followed your scent
here.”

A cold breeze picked up, reminding me that
my clothes weren’t doing what they were intended to, and I
shivered.

“Come on, we should find you some clothes,”
Nick offered, but I stopped him.

“We can’t. I have to find her. She’ll get
away.”

“I’ve got her scent. I’ll help you track
her, but first, we need to get you into something that’s not going
to get you noticed,” Nick explained, leading me to a neighboring
house.

All of the lights were out as we walked
through the yard and toward the back door. I had my suspicions
about what he might do, so when he reached for the knob, I stopped
him. “This is illegal,” I hissed.

“You need clothes, and we don’t have time to
go shopping,” he shot back.

There was a metallic snap as he turned his
wrist and broke the doorknob. “Wait here. I don’t need you tracking
anything inside.”

Looking down at my legs, I noticed the blood
and dirt that covered them, and I understood. He wasn’t gone long,
returning a few minutes later with a damp towel, long-sleeved
shirt, jeans, and a pair of sneakers. “These should fit.” I was
about to start stripping when Nick shook his head. “Not here. The
alley.”

Once we were shrouded in darkness, I wiped
the blood from my body as best I could before stripping out of my
torn clothes and putting on the others. The clothes he’d stolen
covered any dried patches of blood that remained on my body, and
for that I was grateful. But I could still smell it, and it only
invited flashes of David’s barely breathing body.

I replaced that image with one of the
paramedics helping him. In that vision, he was still weak, but he
was awake and the bleeding had stopped. By the time I got back
there, he’d be okay. Maybe even in the hospital, but he’d be okay.
He had to be.

Once I was changed, Nick took the towel and
my clothes, tossed them in a near-empty trash bin, and lit them on
fire. I really had to fight to ignore the fact that he was
destroying evidence, but I understood why. As I watched the flames
brighten the alley, its warmth spreading toward me, I reflected
back on what the hell just happened.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick draw
something to his nose, and I recognized it as the scrap of fabric
from the window.

“Hey,” I whispered, approaching him. “That's
evidence.”

Nick turned around, eyebrows raised. “You
really want your entire department—your father—chasing that thing?
Trust me when I say it won't end well. She's headed back to her
nest. There are more of them.”

The thought of more of those—whatever she
was—running around stressed me out, and I could feel the beginning
stages of the change happening again. My bones shifted, muscles
realigned. What the hell was going on in this world?

The dancing flames were almost hypnotic,
making it easy for me to get lost in thought as I replayed
everything that happened and tried to make sense of it all. This
woman—Samantha Turner—was
dead
. We found her body in the
park, completely drained of blood, and yet, she stood in my living
room, looking and acting stronger than any other corpse I’d ever
come across. How was that even possible?

You know how it’s possible, Brooke,
a
voice told me
. You just refused to believe it was possible
before now.

I remembered how her eyes had darkened, how
her strength rivaled my own, how sharp her teeth were as they
grazed along my skin… I gasped, but before I was able to dispose of
the idea, Nick came up behind me and placed his hands on my
shoulders, anchoring me in my new reality.

“She’s a vampire, isn’t she?” I deduced,
feeling the tension in Nick’s hands. He turned me around slowly.
His brows were raised and his eyes were wide as he regarded me.
“And not the warm and fuzzy wanna-be type.” Nick still didn’t
reply, possibly out of shock that I figured it out. “I’m right,
aren’t I?”

Offering me one solitary nod, Nick beckoned
me closer. “Yes,” he replied hoarsely. “Vampires do exist…and the
woman who attacked you is one of them.”

The tempo of my heart increased until all I
could hear was my blood pounding through my veins and in my ears.
His confirmation shouldn’t have made me uneasy, but it did. I no
longer lived in a world where the only monsters out there could be
handcuffed and put behind bars. Vampires and werewolves were in a
league all their own. How could I fight that?

“For decades—centuries, even,” Nick
continued, “we’ve hunted vampires. It’s just what we do.”

Every word he said affected me in the exact
opposite way I thought it would. I figured I’d have been less
receptive to his explanation, ready to slough it all off as the
ramblings of a crazy person. So it surprised me to find I actually
felt better knowing all of this. It was like everything made sense
now.

“So, yes,” Nick said. “She is a vampire…”
Another pause, this one lending an extremely dramatic air to our
conversation. “But she’s not the one you need to worry about.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins, and my
body prickled with sweat. “Sh-she’s not?”

Nick shook his head solemnly. “The one you
need to worry about is the one who sent her.”

“Wh-what do you mean ‘the one who sent
her?’” I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

Nick took a moment, probably trying to find
the best way to explain himself—he’d always been cautious,
especially as of late. “We—the Pack and I—are almost certain that
she was turned as a message…to you. We’ve been tailing her for a
week now.”

Confused, I stepped back, the backs of my
legs hitting a pile of trash. I fought the tremble in my knees,
using someone’s fence to hold myself up as this new information
swirled in my head like an early morning fog. “A message? From
whom?”

“From the one we’re hunting,” he replied,
staring down at his hands. My eyes followed his gaze, watching as
he fidgeted and cracked his knuckles nervously. “Gianna.”

That was the name of the club we had been
searching for. Clearly not a coincidence, I realized. This
information made me dizzy, almost as though I’d been on a carousel
that was moving much too fast, and my head buzzed. Who was Gianna?
Why was she sending someone after me?

Before I could verbalize any of these
thoughts, however, something shoved its way to the front of my
mind. It was muddled, but eventually the image cleared, and I
remembered something I saw recently. Something I never thought to
tell Nick about until just now because I didn’t believe it to be
true at the time.