Blood Moon (40 page)

David was gone. He died in my living
room—without me there, because I’d been so hell-bent on tracking
down the monster that did this—and there was nothing I could do to
bring him back. I should have stayed with him.

Nick warned me that
I
was dangerous,
and now I believed him. How could I not? I was so careful around
David, and yet he died anyway. Was it because of what I had become?
I was starting to think so, but I was having difficulty sorting it
all out in my head. Everything was pretty jumbled in there due to
my lack of sleep. I didn’t get much the night before—if any, to be
honest. My eyes were swollen and heavy from a combination of crying
and exhaustion, but every time I closed them, all I saw was David
being thrown across the room before bleeding out on our living room
floor.

The memory made me shudder violently, but I
let it play out, feeling far too weak to fight it this time.

It had been five days since David’s death.
Five days, and it still wasn’t any easier. How was I supposed to go
on knowing that Samantha Turner was there for
me
and David
just got in her way? He was nothing to her…and everything to
me.

I hadn’t done much since it happened. I was
put on bereavement leave, and I didn’t argue the strong
recommendation from my father. There was no way I could be expected
to put my all into a case, given the circumstances. So, I did
nothing. I didn’t go to work. I didn’t watch TV. My parents offered
me my old room since my house was still an active crime scene. I
was okay with this new living arrangement, though, because I didn’t
think I could walk by my living room every day and not relive every
detail of that night.

I already felt the emptiness that his
absence brought. My anxiety heightened exponentially by the second
and refused to relent, and I didn’t like it one bit. The reality of
David’s absence in my life suffocated me until it felt like all the
air had been sucked from the room.

Taking several deep, cleansing breaths, I
pressed my head against the cool tile wall, closing my eyes as the
water rolled down my back. Soon, my thoughts were thrust right back
to that night.

My anxiety spiked, rage consuming me wholly,
and I pulled my arm back and punched the tile wall of my parents’
shower, over and over and over again. I screamed as tears flowed
freely down my face. Blood covered my knuckles as shards of tile
fell at my feet. The bathroom door flew open so forcefully that the
knob cracked the wall behind it, and my mom rushed to my side,
draping a towel over me before leading me out of the tub and to my
old bedroom.

As she sat me on the end of my bed, my hands
shaking and oozing blood, I looked up to find my father watching
from the hall, horrified and looking helpless. It was a look I
hadn’t seen in his eyes in years.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not really sure
what I was apologizing for. The cuts? The mess in their bathroom?
Being an absolute train wreck? What happened to David?
Everything?

“Oh, honey,” Mom soothed. “You have no
reason to apologize. Not after everything you’ve been through.” She
assessed my wounds as best she could before turning to my father,
who made his way to the doorway of my bedroom. “Keith, grab me the
first aid kit from the bathroom, please,” she requested, taking my
hands in hers as gingerly as possible and trying to gauge the
severity of my injuries.

When Dad returned with the first aid kit,
Mom took everything from him and soaked some of the gauze in
rubbing alcohol to clean my cuts. It didn’t matter how lightly she
touched; each pass over my skin set my nerves on fire. I welcomed
the pain though, because I deserved it. It should have been me, not
David.

Sadly, the pain lessened with every second
that ticked by, and as the blood was cleared away, I saw that my
skin was already knitting itself back together—a wolfy perk I had
forgotten about. I chanced a quick glance her way to see her
eyebrows pull together, confused.

“I, uh, guess it looked worse than it really
is,” I said, trying to draw her focus from this oddity.

She looked doubtful at first, but since she
didn’t really have an explanation for it, she accepted it at face
value and continued to clean and bandage my hand. Meanwhile, I
heard my dad down the hall, cleaning up the shattered tile and
tossing it in the wastebasket.

After she left, I took a few minutes before
getting dressed. I pulled on a black knee-length shift dress and a
pair of black heels and walked out of my closet. I paused at the
foot of the bed. Even though it wasn’t the bed from my house, I
stared at it for much longer than any sane person would, focusing
on how the blankets on my side were rumpled while David’s side
looked untouched.

Because it is,
I reminded myself.
He’d never lie next to me again.

The phone rang from the kitchen, jarring me
from the morbid turn in my thoughts. This wasn’t new or unusual as
of late. The phone had been ringing off the hook since the day
after the incident. My mom offered to unplug it since I had no
intention of talking to anyone yet, but I told her not to worry
about it. It was the only thing that kept pulling me back from
reliving that awful night over and over again.

In addition to all the calls, people also
kept sending flowers. The house was starting to resemble a
florist’s shop, and while the gesture was intended to be sweet, I
was baffled as to why someone would send something as delicate as
flowers to someone whose loved one just died. To remind them that
something beautiful only lasted so long before it wilted, died, and
then began to rot? Nice sentiment.

Assholes.

All right, so I was a little bitter. Could I
really be faulted? I’d finally made peace with what I had become
and was ready to tell David that I wanted more from our
relationship. This news would have made him happy, but before I
could deliver it, his life was taken from him by something even I
didn’t fully understand yet.

But I was going to figure it out. As a cop,
that was what I did.

When the phone stopped ringing, I deduced
that either the machine or my mother picked up. With a sigh, I
headed back toward the bathroom so I could get ready to face the
day…even if it was the last thing I wanted to do. Every day since
losing David had been rough, but I feared today would be the most
difficult of all. Today, we buried him. This made it final. This
made it
real
.

After my hair was done, parted in the middle
and pulled back into a sleek chignon, I met my parents out in the
living room. Dad helped me into my black knee-length jacket before
doing the same for my mother, and then we left the house. I slid
into the back seat of his car, clasping my hands in my lap and
staring a little too intently at them as we drove across the
city.

All of this took me back to the day of
Bobby’s funeral. It was all too familiar and unsettling, and I knew
my parents felt it too. I sensed it rolling off them in waves of
despair and fear. Mom might not have known David as well as Dad and
I, but she knew how I felt about him, and she approved. He was the
first guy she approved of since Nick.

Nick.

I still hadn’t heard from him since that
night. He said he’d check in when he knew something, and the fact
that I hadn’t heard from him meant one of two things: he’d come up
empty-handed, or he’d suffered the same fate as David.

Or maybe he bailed. Wouldn’t be the first
time he left you to deal with tragedy alone…

I refused to believe the uninvited
suggestion, because something deep inside told me he’d changed. And
he couldn’t be dead, because I felt certain I’d have sensed it. I
had to believe that, because I didn’t know that I could handle the
alternative.

We arrived at the church, and I wasn’t
surprised to see so many officers in their uniforms. O’Malley,
Keaton, Clarke, and the rest of the department donned their
uniforms as a sign of respect for their fallen comrade. I debated
doing the same, but ultimately decided against it. I just wasn’t
feeling worthy of the badge these days.

Dad led Mom and me to the front of the
church where we sat in the second row behind several people. The
woman directly in front of me was crying, while the man next to
her—her husband, presumably—had his arm around her, holding her
against him while she sobbed onto his shoulder.

David’s parents. Not only would it explain
why they felt the way I did—like their hearts had been ripped from
their chests—but I could tell by their smell. They shared a similar
and unique scent with their son.

Before I could even think about what I was
doing, I reached forward and laid a supportive hand on the woman’s
shoulder. Startled, she lifted her head from her husband’s shoulder
and turned to face me. She was shocked and confused at first, but
then a look of recognition flashed in her eyes, and she offered me
a small smile.

“Brooke?” she asked, and I responded with a
nod, not trusting my voice enough to speak. “I can finally put a
face to the name.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Samuels,” I managed to say, my
voice breaking as guilt consumed me again. “I’m…I’m so sorry for
your loss.”

“
Our
loss, sweetheart,” she
corrected, tilting her head to one side as she reached out and
tucked a wayward strand of my hair behind my ear. “He cared so
deeply for you.”

Tears formed in my eyes, blurring my vision,
but before they had a chance to fall, the pastor started the
service. Everything about it was beautiful, and David’s cousin,
Darryl, delivered an emotional eulogy filled with only the best
memories. It made me wish that I’d known David back then, or at
least gotten more time with him to hear those stories in his
words.

After the service ended, O’Malley, Keaton,
Clarke, and a few others from the precinct joined a couple of
David’s cousins, and they carried David’s coffin, draped with the
American flag, out to the hearse that would transport him to the
cemetery. When everyone arrived, we gathered around the plot of
land where David would be laid to rest, and I looked across the
hole in the ground to find his parents.

Seeing David’s name on the dark gray
headstone made my stomach roll, the reality already starting to set
in. The first of several tears fell as the pastor spoke again, and
when the 21-gun salute started, I jumped with every shot, the sound
of the shots drowning out every gut-wrenching sob I released.

Standing next to the grave with my arms
crossed in front of me, I watched as the flag was removed from his
coffin and folded into the standard triangle, and I empathized with
how his mom and dad must have felt as they were presented with it.
She couldn’t stop crying, and this definitely wasn’t helping. I’d
barely composed myself as the coffin was lowered into the ground,
and when the pastor spoke his final words, people started leaving
for the celebration of life function being held at a nearby
hall.

My well had run dry as the tears finally
stopped. Not because I wasn’t still sad, but because the shock had
finally set in. O’Malley and the rest of the precinct—including
Clarke—gave me their condolences after having done the same to
David’s parents, and then headed to the hall. I stayed for a
minute, staring down into the grave as dirt slowly covered his
coffin.

Even though I tried, I couldn’t will myself
to move, even as David’s parents approached and we officially met
for the first time. Just one more regret to add to my ever-growing
list, I suppose.

God, I was a shitty girlfriend.

“Are you coming?” Dad prodded, nodding in
the direction he parked the car.

“Uh…” I croaked, clenching my eyes and
shaking my head. “Go on ahead. I need a minute.”

He looked down at Mom, who nodded her
assent. “Okay,” he agreed. “Do you want to take my car?”

I shook my head again. “No. I’ll walk or
call a cab or something.”

“You’re sure?” Mom asked, seeming uncertain,
but when I assured her I’d prefer to walk the few blocks, she
acquiesced.

Time had no real value once I was alone.
Seconds blurred into minutes, and minutes into hours. The only
thing that alerted me to the passing time was the setting sun and
darkening sky. The sky exploded in a brilliant burst of color
before darkening, and soon, the wind picked up, bringing with it
the late-autumn chill that traveled up my spine like an icy finger,
paralyzing me in place.

Then Nick’s familiar woodsy scent filled my
head, and I felt a slight reprieve. “You’re okay,” I said aloud as
he approached, the grass and leaves crunching under his feet. I
kept my back to him, still staring down at the fresh grave before
me, but my shoulders softened with relief.

“I am,” Nick responded, coming up behind me
and resting a hand on the small of my back. “How are you holding
up?”

My lip quivered, and tears threatened to
fall again. “It’s touch and go,” I replied honestly. “Where have
you been? You were supposed to check in. I was worried.”

Nick was silent for a moment. “I figured you
had enough to deal with without me showing up.”

“I killed him.”

Nick grabbed my upper arm and turned me to
face him. Holding me at arm’s length, he gazed deep into my eyes
with the deepest sympathy. “Brooke, no.”

“M-maybe not directly, but she was there for
me, wasn’t she?” He didn’t need to answer; I saw the truth in his
eyes that I was right. “She was there for me, and he was just a fly
in her ointment.”

“Yes.”

I processed this for a moment, my anger
returning and turning into something else I hadn’t felt in years.
The emotion built and took on a life of its own. My body trembled.
I recognized this from the other night: this was the first stage of
the change. If I didn’t keep it from overtaking me completely, I’d
fall victim to it again, and I needed to maintain my focus and stay
lucid now more than ever.